👍 or 👎?

I'm surprised that it took me this long to stumble on this book, by chance, and that it's not mentioned anywhere when looking for introductory reading. Everyone seems to compile their own reading list on introducing people to ML, but no one mentions that the CPSU went to great lengths to create their own "definitive" introduction. Which kinda begs the question why is it not mentioned (seemingly) anywhere?

I remember reading or watching something that I can no longer find about how US public education creates a false economy for its students by its use of numeric grades which they accumulate throughout their schooling and how these grades are a kind of currency exchanged for being "good students."

I don't know if "false economy" is the correct term though. The wiki says:

a false economy or hallucinated economy is an action that does save money at the beginning but which, over a longer period of time, results in more money being spent or wasted than being saved.

But this is more about economizing as opposed to a broader concept of "fake" economy with a fake currency that incentivizes certain behaviors over others. Perhaps these are short-term over long-term behaviors (like in the wiki above) or that the grades can only measure limited aspects of students performance but are a reification of subjective performance into absolute worth or like Goodhart's law the grades are a key performance indicator (KPI) and don't actually measure what they should be measuring. The topic itself isn't strictly about education and can applied more broadly.

Does anyone know if there is a better term or if I'm off base and completely wrong?

I'm trying to typeset "State and Revolution" in german and a lot of sources use a kind of double emphasis. E.g. marxists.org has cursive and bold and cursive. These seem to largely match up with the german translation from 1972 where there is cursive and c u r s i v e   w i t h   l a r g e   k e r n i n g. This makes the text very weird to read and there doesn't seem to be a proper rhyme or reason to when super-emphasis is used.

~~If I compare this with the original I cannot make out any such emphasis, there seems to be l a r g e   k e r n i n g on some words, that might match up but
a) there doesn't seem to be two types of emphasis
b) large kerning can often be an artifact of stretching the line to fit the block
c) I don't know russian and can barely read cyrillic so maybe I'm I'm imagining things.~~

Not an original, if one has a link to one I would appreciate it. Or 1,500€, either will do...

Basically I would like to do away with the strong emphasis and just use one type of emphasis, cursive of course, like Knuth intended when he blessed us with T~E~X, but would like someone to confirm whether there is a proper reason for this or if it's present in the original before I do.

Posting in /c/theory because it's about books or something I don't know, I'll let the mods sort it out.

Couldn't find any such emphasis in any other translation, even an old 1926 doesn't have it so it's gone from "my" edition. Fairly sure it's a weird choice the typesetter made that got copied and then spread. Goes to show how little technicalities like proper spacing between letters can make a great difference in how a text is interpreted and why proper typesetting is crucial.

Explain the bookclub: We are reading Volumes 1, 2, and 3 in one year and discussing it in weekly threads. (Volume IV, often published under the title Theories of Surplus Value, will not be included in this particular reading club, but comrades are encouraged to do other solo and collaborative reading.) This bookclub will repeat yearly. The three volumes in a year works out to about 6½ pages a day for a year, 46⅔ pages a week. However, we're a bit ahead of the curve right now, and can slow down to about 35 pages a week.

I'll post the readings at the start of each week and @mention anybody interested. Let me know if you want to be added or removed.

Just joining us? You can use the archives below to help you reading up to where the group is. There is another reading group on a different schedule at https://lemmygrad.ml/c/genzhou (federated at !genzhou@lemmygrad.ml ) which may fit your schedule better. The idea is for the bookclub to repeat annually, so there's always next year.

Archives: Week 1 – Week 2 – Week 3 – Week 4 – Week 5 – Week 6 – Week 7 – Week 8 – Week 9 – Week 10 – Week 11 – Week 12 – Week 13 – Week 14 – Week 15 – Week 16 – Week 17 – Week 18 – Week 19 – Week 20 – Week 21 – Week 22 – Week 23 – Week 24 – Week 25 – Week 26 – Week 27 – Week 28 – Week 29 – Week 30 – Week 31 – Week 32 – Week 33 – Week 34 – Week 35 – Week 36 – Week 37 – Week 38

Week 39, Sept 23-29 – Chapter 22 and Chapter 23 of Volume III

Chapter 22 is called 'Division of Profit. Rate of Interest. Natural Rate of Interest.'

Chapter 23 is called 'Interest and Profit of Enterprise'

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/index.htm

Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

Explain the bookclub: We are reading Volumes 1, 2, and 3 in one year and discussing it in weekly threads. (Volume IV, often published under the title Theories of Surplus Value, will not be included in this particular reading club, but comrades are encouraged to do other solo and collaborative reading.) This bookclub will repeat yearly. The three volumes in a year works out to about 6½ pages a day for a year, 46⅔ pages a week. However, we're a bit ahead of the curve right now, and can slow down to about 35 pages a week.

I'll post the readings at the start of each week and @mention anybody interested. Let me know if you want to be added or removed.

Just joining us? You can use the archives below to help you reading up to where the group is. There is another reading group on a different schedule at https://lemmygrad.ml/c/genzhou (federated at !genzhou@lemmygrad.ml ) which may fit your schedule better. The idea is for the bookclub to repeat annually, so there's always next year.

Archives: Week 1 – Week 2 – Week 3 – Week 4 – Week 5 – Week 6 – Week 7 – Week 8 – Week 9 – Week 10 – Week 11 – Week 12 – Week 13 – Week 14 – Week 15 – Week 16 – Week 17 – Week 18 – Week 19 – Week 20 – Week 21 – Week 22 – Week 23 – Week 24 – Week 25 – Week 26 – Week 27 – Week 28 – Week 29 – Week 30 – Week 31 – Week 32 – Week 33 – Week 34 – Week 35 – Week 36 – Week 37

Week 38, Sept 16-22 – Chapters 20 and 21 of Volume III.

Chapter 20 is called 'Historical Facts about Merchant's Capital'

Chapter 21 is called 'Interest-Bearing Capital'

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/index.htm

Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

What would you say are some of the best or most critical posts on Red Sails? The must read list if you will?

• Concessions
• Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing”

Come to mind. What else would you add to this list?

Edit: Compiled from the comments below:

• Why Marxism?
• China Has Billionaires
• "Tankies"
• The Swerve
• The Lost Horse from 139 BC
• “Black Ribbon Day” and “Double Genocide” in Canada
• A Critical Read of Animal Farm
• On Orwell
• On Chomsky
• On Anthony Bourdain
• Democracy is Not an Ornament
• Water Droplets Drilling Through Rock
• Another View of Tiananmen
• The Xinjiang Atrocity Propaganda Blitz
• Ads Don't Work That Way
• "Brainwashing" as long as Masses, Elites, and Rebels is presented alongside it
• Concessions
• False Witnesses
• Really Existing Fascism
• The Tyranny of Structurelessness
• On the sex trade

I want to share with you all an essay that has been particularly influential on my way of thinking, kind of a skeleton key for how I think about a lot of issues of surrounding male sexuality, and one that might also serve as an entry point into people’s individual inquiries into theory generally or queer theory more specifically.

I encourage you to read the whole thing if you’re at all interested, but this is a work of literary theory. Sedgwick is interested in analyzing the literature of a time in which the conceptualization of homosexuality was changing, and drawing conclusions from them. It’s all great stuff, but I understand not everyone here may find extended analyses of Thackery and Henry James to be their cup of tea, so I’m going to restrict myself to glossing the first section which summarizes most of the key theoretical concepts that she uses in her analysis.

Sedgwick starts off by discussing the work of Alan Bray in order to situate the historical perception of homosexuality in England. Prior to the 19th Century, homophobia was intense, but also theologized, a manifestation of the ultimate disorder and the Antichrist, but simultaneously not something highly relevant to people’s everyday lives: “sodomy was … not an explanation that sprang easily to mind for those sounds from the bed next to one’s own – or even for the pleasure of one’s own bed” (Sedgwick 184). This began to change as the eighteenth century gave way to the 19th as a much more secular and psychologized homophobia began to develop. Readers of Foucault will note that he makes a very similar argument in The History of Sexuality, and indeed Sedgwick references him later in the essay.

This shift coincided with new kinds of persecutions. Gay men had long been subject to “‘pogrom’-like” legal persecutions, which had a disproportionate effect due to their random nature, but now, with this new secular homophobia, all men, whether gay or not, became unable to determine whether their bonds with other men were free of any homosexuality. Thus this relatively small-scale legal violence could now have an effect that ramified out through society at large. Sedgwick calls this “homosexual panic”: “The most private, psychologized form in which many … western men experience their vulnerability to the social pressure of homophobic blackmail” (185). It is precisely because what is “homosexual” as a concept is arbitrary and forever shifting, unable to be pinned down, that a man can never be totally certain that he is clear of it and the consequences that come from being labeled with it. This is particularly true in the 19th century because “the paths of male entitlement required certain intense male bonds that were not readily distinguishable from the most reprobated bonds” (185). On one hand, society virtually mandated intense male bonds (boarding schools, the military, etc.), but on the other hand, absolutely forbade that these bonds cross over into homosexuality, ensuring continual anxiety on the part of men about their relationships transgression this invisible and constantly shifting boundary: “In these institutions, where men’s manipulability and their potential for violence are at the highest possible premium, the prescription of the most intimate male bonding and the proscription of (the remarkably cognate) ‘homosexuality’ are both stronger than in civilian society–are, in fact, close to absolute” (186).

If you’ve ever wondered why many all-male institutions (sports, the military, etc.) are on one hand virulently heterosexual and homophobic, yet, on the other hand, homoerotic or in some undefinable sense “gay,” this is why. These institutions mandate close bonds while absolutely forbidding them from being erotic in nature, in a way that casts a constant shadow of homosexuality over them. In turn, these institutions and the individuals involved must be at pains to constantly assert their heterosexuality to the extent that it in turn calls their straightness into question. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” All male relationships stand under the shadow of homosexuality by their very nature. The desire for intimacy between men, whether enforced or not, is always under the shadow of the prohibition of becoming too close. Meanwhile the constantly shifting and arbitrary nature of “homosexuality” keeps men from becoming to comfortable that they are safely outside boundaries of the dreaded gayness. Is wearing your hair long gay? Maybe! Dressing nice? Maybe! Washing your ass? Maybe! Having sex with a woman? Quite possibly! Who knows? Paradoxically it is only the openly homosexual man that is free of this double bind.

This essay is particularly influential in queer literary theory, because it provides a framework for understanding the queerness inherent in texts that are not explicitly gay. Wherever men are, homosexuality follows them, relentlessly, inescapably. Those characters, good friends, is it truly totally platonic? Those two enemies whose hate for one another consumes them, say Batman and Joker, is there not something a bit erotic about their all-consuming obsession for each other? The domain of queer theory, then, is not merely the ghetto of officially queer texts, but rather everywhere. The very act of censoring, silencing and excising homosexuality from art only ensures that it is paradoxically ever present and inescapable, and this is true of the world, not only of the text.

I’ve long been interested in trying to expose people to a broader conception of theory on here (I’ve been" threatening to write an essay on what "The Death of the Author actually says for a long, long time ). If this stuff is interesting to you, let me know. I'm also trying out the crossposting feature so if I've messed that up let me know.

Hey, all!

For over a month, I've been spending a lot of my free time creating this list of theory. The impetus for this project came from two things: first, this post by @iie@hexbear.net titled "I wish we had a hexbear wiki compendium of good books on 20th and 19th century historical topics" which set the idea in motion in the background of my mind; and second, the desire to expand the currently very small geopolitical reading list in the news megathreads. Initially, I focussed only on books directly to do with imperialism and current-day politics and geopolitics. Naturally, these events required context, so I expanded the list to include more of the 20th century. Then, I realised more nation-focus works would be necessary, and more communist theory, and it kept growing into... this. I have gone through almost every post in c/literature and c/history, looked through a significant chunk of lemmygrad and prolewiki, and gone through the bibliographies and references of several significant works (such as Prashad’s The Poorer Nations and The Darker Nations).

I haven’t the time nor energy to search every nook and cranny of the internet, so it is absolutely guaranteed that I have missed a lot of books. I am certain that this list isn’t even halfway complete - it’s more of a prototype right now. But it still has hundreds of books on it, categorized into many different sections.

Ideally all these books would be written by communists, left-wingers, anti-imperialists, and so on - or at least, are written in a style sympathetic to that position. For the purpose of anti-sectarianism, the works of major ideological positions should be fully featured. This obviously means that this is not going to be a reading list where there’s a consistent ideological position which unifies it - authors on this list are going to disagree with each other, and sometimes very harshly. Personally, I also don’t want this list to devolve into shitflinging between different authors on why X left ideology/state/project is good/perfect/materialist/idealistic/bad/flawed/evil, though I think more constructive criticism should be allowed.

Unfortunately, for more obscure events and countries, non-leftists are sometimes the only ones who have written much on them, and so we must resort to them.

Books are usually listed here with their initial publication date. This is not a recommendation that you get that particular version of the book if there are newer editions - you should of course purchase the most recent one - but a) I think it’s best to know when the book was initially conceived of and written so that we know the context of when the information was being conveyed, regardless of newer editions that may add more information, and b) I don’t want to trawl for new editions of these books every so often to update the year numbers. Additionally, books are generally listed in order of publication date. If a subsection accrues many books that fit under that category but span a lot of topics or a large time period, then a new subsection will be created and the books re-categorized.

Want To Help?

Be sure to recommend any books (or, even better, entire reading lists) that I have missed. People in my life tell me that I have a profound ability to miss the obvious, so a massively important book that every communist has heard of and read not being here should not be interpreted as a sign that I’ve deemed it not worthy - I might have just forgotten it. Just as importantly, be sure to recommend that any book be dropped - a book being here should not be interpreted as a sign that I’ve necessarily deemed it worthy. I cast a very wide net.

When recommending books, I advise four criteria:

1. Non-fiction books only. I might consider eventually putting in a historical fiction and alternative histories section, but not right now.

2. Not written by a chud, unless the point of recommending the book is to illustrate how important chuds conceive of the world, such as pieces on American strategy written by people high-up in the state - or if there is literally no other choice (military matters tend to attract chuds, for example).

3. Not too much detail, too far in the past. It would be silly to say that the Assyrians or the Romans or the Mongols haven’t had a large impact on the current world, so books on those topics are fine, but ideally they should be pretty general, and we shouldn’t have a biography for every Roman Emperor or anything like that. The period that I am most focussing on is the 21st, 20th, and 19th centuries, as that’s the best bang for your buck in terms of political understanding of the current state of affairs. This should be as efficient a reading list as possible - reading a lot is hard and life is tiring, and getting lost in the weeds of Cyrus the Great’s military campaigns isn’t helpful if you’re trying to get a grip on the current Middle East.

4. Related to politics and/or history somehow. This is the loosest of the four criteria, and I don’t really want to be arguing about whether a book on how to care for succulents, or a book on pencil manufacturing, or a book on deep sea creatures, deserve to be on the reading list. If you can argue that it belongs, then, sure, I’ll put it on.

Version 1.0 (that is, the very first version):

Added, uh, the whole reading list.

A ton of thanks to @Nakoichi@hexbear.net for letting me know about the Chunka Luta reading list. Also thanks to @Alaskaball@hexbear.net for their party's book repository.

Version 1.1:

Added dozens more recommended books, spread out across the list, notably including more books for Japan.

Added an Indigenous Theory section and reorganized some books into it. Added a Science section and added some books to it. Expanded "Philosophy" into "Philosophy and Theology" and added some books to the Theology section. Added a Multi-Region section in the Regional Histories section, due to some odd books that cover multiple continents. Apparently I forgot Finland existed, so that now has a section, and a book.

I have been recommended a few reading lists, some of which will take me a long while to get through. Nonetheless, if you have more books to add, then continue to recommend them!

We are reading Volumes 1, 2, and 3 in one year. This will repeat yearly until communism is achieved. (Volume IV, often published under the title Theories of Surplus Value, will not be included, but comrades are welcome to set up other bookclubs.) This works out to about 6½ pages a day for a year, 46 pages a week.

I'll post the readings at the start of each week and @mention anybody interested.

Week 1, Jan 1-7, we are reading Volume 1, Chapter 1 'The Commodity'

Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

Use any translation/edition you like. Marxists.org has the Moore and Aveling translation in various file formats including epub and PDF: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/

Ben Fowkes translation, PDF: http://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=9C4A100BD61BB2DB9BE26773E4DBC5D

AernaLingus says: I noticed that the linked copy of the Fowkes translation doesn't have bookmarks, so I took the liberty of adding them myself. You can either download my version with the bookmarks added, or if you're a bit paranoid (can't blame ya) and don't mind some light command line work you can use the same simple script that I did with my formatted plaintext bookmarks to take the PDF from libgen and add the bookmarks yourself.

Resources

(These are not expected reading, these are here to help you if you so choose)

• Harvey's guide to reading it: https://www.davidharvey.org/media/Intro_A_Companion_to_Marxs_Capital.pdf

• A University of Warwick guide to reading it: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/postgraduate/masters/modules/worldlitworldsystems/hotr.marxs_capital.untilp72.pdf

• Engels' Synopsis of Capital or PDF

• Reading Capital with Comrades: A Liberation School podcast series - https://www.liberationschool.org/reading-capital-with-comrades-podcast/

@invalidusernamelol@hexbear.net @Othello@hexbear.net @Pluto@hexbear.net @Lerios@hexbear.net @ComradeRat@hexbear.net @heartheartbreak@hexbear.net @Hohsia@hexbear.net @Kolibri@hexbear.net @star_wraith@hexbear.net @commiewithoutorgans@hexbear.net @Snackuleata@hexbear.net @TovarishTomato@hexbear.net @Erika3sis@hexbear.net @quarrk@hexbear.net @Parsani@hexbear.net @oscardejarjayes@hexbear.net @Beaver@hexbear.net @NoLeftLeftWhereILive@hexbear.net @LaBellaLotta@hexbear.net @professionalduster@hexbear.net @GaveUp@hexbear.net @Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net @Sasuke@hexbear.net @wheresmysurplusvalue@hexbear.net @seeking_perhaps@hexbear.net @boiledfrog@hexbear.net @gaust@hexbear.net @Wertheimer@hexbear.net @666PeaceKeepaGirl@hexbear.net @BountifulEggnog@hexbear.net @PerryBot4000@hexbear.net @PaulSmackage@hexbear.net @420blazeit69@hexbear.net @hexaflexagonbear@hexbear.net @glingorfel@hexbear.net @Palacegalleryratio@hexbear.net @ImOnADiet@lemmygrad.ml @RedWizard@lemmygrad.ml @joaomarrom@hexbear.net @HeavenAndEarth@hexbear.net @impartial_fanboy@hexbear.net @bubbalu@hexbear.net @equinox@hexbear.net @SummerIsTooWarm@hexbear.net @Awoo@hexbear.net @DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net @YearOfTheCommieDesktop@hexbear.net @asnailchosenatrandom@hexbear.net @Stpetergriffonsberg@hexbear.net @Melonius@hexbear.net @Jobasha@hexbear.net @ape@hexbear.net @Maoo@hexbear.net @Professional_Lurker@hexbear.net @featured@hexbear.net @IceWallowCum@hexbear.net @Doubledee@hexbear.net

This must be the dumbest motherfucker to have ever existed, I can't believe people consider them to be a genius in anything other than gaslighting and projection. Almost every single line could be ranked among the most absurd takes I have ever read. I did not know that it was possible to experience such intense feelings of cringe outside of Twitter. The industrial revolution and its consequences indeed.

These countries have the citizenry usually unarmed, while the military is usually highly homogeneous (usually ethnic and class unity within the military, and fiercely loyal to their masters).

Many of the citizens and residents that would benefit from material conditions improvement are also some of the least connected to the land, as they are usually immigrants whose families are elsewhere. They would not be protecting their families in any conflict, and would not benefit from the improvement to the lives of legal citizens.

It just seems that the periphery is better equipped for revolution, and Maoist third-worldism is more correct at analyzing the world. But maybe I am going about this analysis completely wrong, so please feel free to correct and link me to resources. Thanks guys

I adapt part of Kevin Carson's Studies in Mutualist Political Economy to hopefully shed more light on the issue. Exploring 1) the Statist origins of Capitalism, 2) the Mercantilist and Colonialist policies used to bolster State-Capitalism, and 3) the Four Monopolies that maintain Capitalist hegemony in the market.

I've found a few .pdfs but nothing I can read on my e-reader.

There will definitely be duplicate books.

• Verso

• Haymarket

• Pluto Press

• Decolonize Palestine

• Palestinian Youth Movement

• Leeds Palestine Film Festival

• Palestine Festival of Literature

• Islamic Literary Society

• The New Arab

• Settler Colonialism w/ Palestine Reading List

• Dr. Hatem Bazian

• Pink Jinn

• Skin Deep Actions

• Stanford Islamic Studies

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/809005

From The Psychology of Management of Labour Collectives: Guides to the Social Sciences, Chapter 1: The Methodological And Theoretical Foundations of the Psychology of Management of Labour Collectives, pg. 9 out of 386 of the PDF, by Aleksey Mikhailovich Stolyarenko:

Marx, Engels, and Lenin, who developed the science of society, showed that society is governed by objective laws; they discovered these laws and proved that management of the various spheres of society, directions of its activity, and social institutions is effective and progressive insofar as it is based on them. Marxism-Leninism has developed a scientific conception of society as an integral self-governing system. The term “system” is taken to mean an object whose properties are not reducible to a mere sum of the properties of its constituent parts or elements. Not a single property of a single element is manifested as the property of the system.2 The elements function and develop within the framework of the system, so that their properties are subordinated to those of the system as a whole. In the absence of interaction between elements, not a single property of any of them can manifest itself, and it is not manifested in pure form in interaction. System properties always have some traits that are different from the properties of the constituent elements, being a result of integral functioning of the system, a qualitatively specific result of its inner phenomena. The systems approach in science should be distinguished from the “atomistic” of functional approach, which studies system problems in isolation from the conditions and the causes from which they arise. The ‘‘atomistic” approach in the theory and practice of management is manifested in the view of management as a phenomenon independent of all others, as well as in isolated consideration of problems and phenomena that are systemic in nature, one that takes into account only individual cause-and-effect dependences (though they may be correct ones) unconnected with their entire ensemble at a systems level.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/803365

Mentions Samir Amin as well.

A longish, but fascinating, look at the computational constraints surrounding Soviet-style central planning, and some thoughts about how such planning might work with the assistance of modern computing power. You might know Cosma Shalizi from his excellent essay "Cognitive Democracy," which argues that coalitions of people who are more diverse (in all senses) tend to make better decisions.

Excerpt of Condition of the Working Class in England, by Engels, 1845

from the section titled "The Attitude of the Bourgeoisie Towards the Proletariat"

Let no one believe, however, that the "cultivated" Englishman openly brags with his egotism. On the contrary, he conceals it under the vilest hypocrisy. What? The wealthy English fail to remember the poor? They who have founded philanthropic institutions, such as no other country can boast of! Philanthropic institutions forsooth! As though you rendered the proletarians a service in first sucking out their very life-blood and then practising your self-complacent, Pharisaic philanthropy upon them, placing yourselves before the world as mighty benefactors of humanity when you give back to the plundered victims the hundredth part of what belongs to them! Charity which degrades him who gives more than him who takes; charity which treads the downtrodden still deeper in the dust, which demands that the degraded, the pariah cast out by society, shall first surrender the last that remains to him, his very claim to manhood, shall first beg for mercy before your mercy deigns to press, in the shape of an alms, the brand of degradation upon his brow. But let us hear the English bourgeoisie's own words. It is not yet a year since I read in the Manchester Guardian the following letter to the editor, which was published without comment as a perfectly natural, reasonable thing:

"MR. EDITOR,– For some time past our main streets are haunted by swarms of beggars, who try to awaken the pity of the passers-by in a most shameless and annoying manner, by exposing their tattered clothing, sickly aspect, and disgusting wounds and deformities. I should think that when one not only pays the poor-rate, but also contributes largely to the charitable institutions, one had done enough to earn a right to be spared such disagreeable and impertinent molestations. And why else do we pay such high rates for the maintenance of the municipal police, if they do not even protect us so far as to make it possible to go to or out of town in peace? I hope the publication of these lines in your widely- circulated paper may induce the authorities to remove this nuisance; and I remain,– Your obedient servant, "A Lady."

There you have it! The English bourgeoisie is charitable out of self-interest; it gives nothing outright, but regards its gifts as a business matter, makes a bargain with the poor, saying: "If I spend this much upon benevolent institutions, I thereby purchase the right not to be troubled any further, and you are bound thereby to stay in your dusky holes and not to irritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery. You shall despair as before, but you shall despair unseen, this I require, this I purchase with my subscription of twenty pounds for the infirmary!" It is infamous, this charity of a Christian bourgeois! And so writes "A Lady"; she does well to sign herself such, well that she has lost the courage to call herself a woman! But if the "Ladies" are such as this, what must the "Gentlemen" be? It will be said that this is a single case; but no, the foregoing letter expresses the temper of the great majority of the English bourgeoisie, or the editor would not have accepted it, and some reply would have been made to it, which I watched for in vain in the succeeding numbers. And as to the efficiency of this philanthropy, Canon Parkinson himself says that the poor are relieved much more by the poor than by the bourgeoisie; and such relief given by an honest proletarian who knows himself what it is to be hungry, for whom sharing his scanty meal is really a sacrifice, but a sacrifice borne with pleasure, such help has a wholly different ring to it from the carelessly-tossed alms of the luxurious bourgeois.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch13.htm

The metaphysical concept is thus constructed with logic and the syllogism. A syllogism is a group of three propositions: the first two are called premises, which means “sent before”; the third is the conclusion. Another example: “In the Soviet Union, before the last constitution, a dictatorship of the proletariat existed. Dictatorship is dictatorship. The U.S.S.R. is a dictatorship. Hence, there was no difference between the U.S.S.R., Italy and Germany, all countries of dictatorship.” Here, for whom and on whom the dictatorship is exercised is not taken into consideration; the same as when one boasts of bourgeois democracy, it is not mentioned for whose profit this democracy is exercised. In this way problems are stated, things and the social world are seen as belonging to separate circles and these circles are inserted into each other. These are certainly theoretical questions, but they entail a certain way of acting in practice. We can cite the unfortunate example of the Germany of 1919, where social-democracy, in order to maintain democracy, destroyed the dictatorship of the proletariat without seeing that by so doing it allowed capitalism to subsist and gave rise to nazism.

- Georges Politzer, Elementary Principles of Philosophy

(Georges Politzer was killed by the Nazis in May 1942)

I want to understand more about these two crises of capitalism. How do they happen? How do they relate to each other?what is the context on the debate in leftist circles around them, as I know some groups prefer to emphasise one over the other. I have read a bit on Michael Roberts' blog, he definitely prefers to emphasise the falling rate of profit but some of it goes over my head.

Any books/articles on this stuff that comrades would recommend?

here is the summary and analysis, feel free to use this to follow along

This chapter is by far my favorite and the most interesting chapter. It is very much detached from the rest of the work, so if you are not caught up with the reading feel free to skip ahead to this one. Once again, I will be leaving the discussion open. Feel free to highlight your favorite parts, ask questions, put in your favorite questions. Try to respond to one other person's comment. Great work comrades for everyone who has completed the reading and keep it going to everyone getting caught up!

English translation by Richard Philcox – https://ia801708.us.archive.org/3/items/the-wretched-of-the-earth/The Wretched Of The Earth.pdf – you'd be reading from page 42 to 311 of this PDF, 270 pages

English translation by Constance Farrington – https://abahlali.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Frantz-Fanon-The-Wretched-of-the-Earth-1965.pdf

Original French text – https://monoskop.org/images/9/9d/Fanon_Frantz_Les_damnés_de_la_terre_2002.pdf

English audio version – https://inv.tux.pizza/playlist?list=PLZ_8DduHfUd2r1OOCtKh0M6Q9xD5RaR3S – about 12h20m – Alternative links

soundcloud audio book english https://soundcloud.com/listenleft/sets/frantz-fanon-the-wretched-of-the-earth

Schedule

8/20/23 - pre-face and chapter one On violence

8/27/23- chapter two Grandeur and Weakness of Spontaneity

9/3/23- chapter three The Trials and Tribulations of National Consciousness

9/10/23- chapter four On National Culture

9/17/23 chapter five Colonial war and Mental Disorders and conclusion

its been a fun ride yall and I will eventually responed to every comment, its been a long week and im getting drunk tonight.

1892 English Edition Introduction to Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels