/lit/ - Literature

>>5666258
Doesn't exist around here. Everyone's securely plugged in.

>>5666258

I find the concept of " radical leftist bookstore yet" self-contradictory.

In a true radical left economy, "bookstores" wouldn't exist. Just public libraries, public libraries as far as the eye can see.

>>5666258

Fuck off

>>5666258
Fuck book-stores
Book-cafés are obviously better
But yeah, I guess I have

mm yes and i couldnt relate to them due to spaghetti.

>>5666258
I walk past it every now and then.

last time was like 6 years ago when i took a class from erik olin wright and he made us drop like 50 bucks on his shitty book and we could only buy it there

No, but I've been to the local anarchist info-shop.

leftism is no longer about workers rights and has been corrupted by capitalism to be all about identity politics and destroying the native worker with a non stop flow of immigration
All major communist movements are dead or irrelevant.

How long has it been since you visited the local center-right christian democratic coffee shop, lit?

>tfw the only radical book stores I have are charity shops.
>tfw you don't have a local anarchist cafe where you can eat red beans and rice whilst reading some kropotkin with Dimitri.

>>5666407
>anarchist

>>5666391
>tfw I work at one (minus the coffee, it's just a bookstore).
Owned by the Southern Baptist convention. I get some real winners as customers sometimes.

>>5666388

>>5666388
Thats how you see it because you havent inserted in them

>>5666258
>>5666354

i'm in Philly and i've been to an anarchist library, it was pretty neat

>>5666391
Gag me with a spoon

>>5666426
anytime bb

>>5666413
>statist

>>5666391
>go into Christian shop
>they have nothing on Gnosticism
>show me to the door when I ask for something related to it

>>5666443
>go into architecture bookshop
>ask for fiction section
>they don't have one

>>5666454
>Gnosticism
>not Christian

>>5666454
You certainly wouldn't struggle to find fiction in a Christian book store.

>>5666443
>Like they didnt think for certain you weresaying agnosticism.
>Like pleb in Xtian bookstore knows about The Gospels of Judas, etc

>>5666354
It's pragmatic, if your going to exist in a market economy you've got to start somewhere. The focus on the internal structure of the business, trying to make them more egalitarian and giving workers an equal voice in production (or at minimum, a share in the company).

They tend to help other cooperatives as well, creating a federation of sorts between groups. It's more of an insurgency tactic, rather than a pure revolutionary one. Rome didn't happen in a day and it took 30 years for the anarchists to take control of Catalonia.

>>5666443
>Christian store
>No Aquinas, Anselm, Kierkegaard, etc.
>Only copy of Augustine's Confessions is not only abridged it is "updated to today's language!"
Fucking shit, m8. They have a million different Amish romance fiction novels, but no fucking Aquinas?

>>5666258
actually yes i have. i used to live quite near one.
turns out being a radical bookshop doesn't pay the bills so they had to turn into something more like a normal bookshop. they still have all the smash-the-system stuff but it's kind of hidden behind the displays of chick lit etc

>>5666458
Most fundamentalists see gnosticism as heresy.

I live in the suburbs, so no.

>>5666483
And Gnostics believe mainstream Christians are technically Satan worshipers.

>>5666493
>live right on the edge of the suburbs
>bookstore is just a mile away

>>5666500
Well, so why would they have your books?

>>5666437
>The Bourgeois state is the same as dictatorship of the proletariat

fucking anarchists

>>5666555
Both are ruled by men and their innate desires.

>>5666564
yes

>>5666388
>All major communist movements are dead or irrelevant.
Hehehe, good worker... good worker...

>>5666466
>it took 30 years for the anarchists to take control of Catalonia.
and see where they are now

>>5666258
If you mean the pirate bay, yeah. I live in the middle of nowhere, redneck infested rural USA.

Cleveland has a surprisingly good one. Most expensive regular books are like 5 bucks, and all of the zines are free.

>>5666477
Same here. It's pretty cheap, still. All of the political stuff is in the basement where they hold poetry readings and the like.

Yes. They overcharge for all of their merchandise, even the pamphlets.

>>5666861
Name of store?

I've been to Housman's off Kings Cross. Pretty expensive.

Don't know about any radical bookstores around where I live.

Does Arkadia International Bookshop count? They are quite rebellious in their spirit and have a small section dedicated to Marxist literature, next to an underground chapel with a picture of Heidegger on the altar.

>tfw modern anarchists have no understanding of organization
>tfw modern anarchists are mostly edgy teens or bourgeois lifestylists (same thing, really)
>tfw worried that anarchy might result in oppression since the 'average person' doesn't understand anarchy, moral relativism, and coersion

>>5667299
go and change that, m8, the only way

where do you live?

>>5667350
Around Philadelphia, but I'm too busy with work to do anything about it. My brother volunteers at The Shoe, and once I get more free time I might start doing stuff there.

But I've heard everyone working there is a vegan, so they might not take so kindly to anti-lifestylist redpilling.

>>5667299
>>tfw modern anarchists are mostly edgy teens or bourgeois lifestylists (same thing, really)

It's always been that way m8, anarchism is petite bourgeoisie nonsense.

there's a marxist store in cambridge mass run by a little old couple that's had the place for decades. if you're in the area, check it out.

>>5667367
Hey, Lenin was a middle-class intellectual, but look at what he did.

>radical Leftist bookstore
>spending time/money to get things that are free on the Marxist Internet Archive
/lit/ is truly too bourgeoise for me

>>5667393
Lenin was an individual intellectual (who was upper class, not middle, by the way). The appeal of anarchism lies in the masses dissatisfied with their current conditions. As anarchism lacks a proper idea of state and history, it reduces its Marxist roots to "give more to me" and "masses are brilliant and capable of everything" type of romantic nonsense that inspires peasant rebellions and mob rules, but nothing permanent. Bakunin was a sentimental idealist, whose humanism might have helped to self-consciousness of the masses, but he could create nothing that could last for more than a lifetime. There is a reason why the countries with the largest anarchist movements (Spain, Italy, Russia) fell into reactionary statist dictatorship largely justified as an act against anarchism, unable to fight a properly organized foe.

>>5667363
Being a dedicated anarchist is a fuckton of work.
Most anarchists I know are constantly at meetings, volunteering, and etc.
I'm too lazy to be more than an armchair anarchist: I like to have dinner at home and take walks and stuff.
I live in Berkeley for reference, btw.

Anyone ever been to Red Emma's in Baltimore?

>>5667363
>anti-lifestylist red-pulling
Please explain.
Are you saying anarchy is not a way of life?

>>5667232
Guide to Kulchur

>>5667798
Anarchism as lifestyle is by far its worst incarnation (AnCaps and national anarchists don't really qualify because they aren't actually anarchisms).

Assuming it is possible to live 'ethically' outside capitalism while capitalism persists is liberal, petit-bourgeois garbage.

>>5667363
so all anarchists should eat three burgers a day and drive an SUV lest they're lifestylists?

anyone know any in liverpool apart from news from nowhere

>tfw you realize that marx was an anarchist
>tfw 'classical anarchists' were aristocratic reactionaries
it's a weird feel.

>>5668816
>tfw you realize that marx was an anarchist

No.

Just fucking no.

>>5668816
>tfw you realize that marx was an anarchist
Well, literally, sure.
>tfw 'classical anarchists' were aristocratic reactionaries
Explain.

The closest bookshop with leftwing views is like an hour away from me, such is life living with my parents

>>5668811
This is a retarded false dichotomy and you know it. Lifestylism is defined by a conflation of (usually consumerist) personal ethical choices with political action. It also typically comes with a heaping dose of self-regard and implicit judgment of "the sheeple" (aka the working class) for their necessary survival strategies under capitalism.

>>5666493
>>5668828

people who need to get a bike

>>5668849
I have one, however I don't enjoy the uphill return home

>>5667497
>>5666354

people who don't realise that visiting a bookstore implies spending money on anything

>>5668860

people who need to stop being fat

>>5668868
>visiting a bookstore implies
doesn't imply*

>>5666420
saved as modernleftismiscapitalism.jpeg

>>5666426
Like, grody to the max. Bleh

>>5666258
I grew out of Marxism when I was 18.

>>5669538
im not even a communist but if a brute can kill people doesn't it mean the brute is the better person

>>5666420
If Capitalism always wins in a head to head match up against Communism doesn't that mean Communism is the inferior theory?

Have any of you been to Bluestockings in NYC?

>>5669659
Yeah, what about it? Went there a while ago. Feminists there were chill. Went to a little zine making workshop, bought a book by Mumia Abu Jamal on the prison industrial complex.

>>5669667
I volunteer there, acting as the only white cis male. Woe is me. It's a calm little place...sometimes the milieu is smelly, but by and large it's a calm and fine place...do you live in nyc?

>>5666420
Marx does accept that the capitalist society produces "good" things though
he literally says socialism can only happen after capitalism has gone through all the phases

>>5669678
Do the women ever act odd around you? They seemed pretty normal to me but last time I was there was a few years ago... My ex used to volunteer. I know the milieu youre talking about, especially when its hot since I dont think the store has much more than a fan to cool things down. It never did seem to get much business but its still open so they must have a core group of supporters. I live in Brooklyn.

>>5669678
Also, do you ever hear things and just have to keep your opinion to yourself? I think it'd be pretty funny.

The irony here is that all movements for "muh peoples' rule" are created and participated in by the greatest beneficiaries of capitalism. When somebody identifies as "communist" in the US, you can bet solid money that said person is a middle class or above white 20-30 year old academic idealist. These tryhards wouldn't even know about communism if they didn't read about it on the internet. An internet created by capitalist infrastructure.

Of course the person =/= the argument, I'm just saying that this shit is firmly in the camp of "lol white people" and is disconnected from reality. Nobody who actually has life experience outside of a cushy middle class capitalist existence gives a shit about this kind of thing, nor would they be interested in learning. "B-But that's the point, we have to teach them to be intelligent, upstanding members of an egalitarian society!" Uh, have you fucking looked at humanity lately? The reason these people have shit lives in the first place is because they're retarded, complacent instruments of their own oppression. Nothing is stopping legions of proletarians from rising against their oligarchs besides a little thing called human nature.

Also consider why religion is so popular. One of the fundamental doctrines of Abrahamic religions is that human beings are pieces of vile garbage who can only be redeemed by an objective source of morality with magic powers. This idea has lasted throughout the centuries because people subconsciously understand that human being are shit, and nothing short of a supernatural ghost patriarch will save them.

tl;dr Your faggy ideologies are pipe dreams, mere spooks that mean nothing and haven't accomplished anything. In fact, the net suffering on earth has actually increased. Regards, Stirner

>>5669710
>The reason these people have shit lives in the first place is because theyre retarded, complacent instruments of their own oppression.
>The situation they were born in is directly related to the things they did after it

>>5669703
Oh yes, I've developed a tight fucking lip. For instance a woman tending the cafe, in conversation, told me she was an anarchist, and when I asked her to elaborate a bit she confessed that she was a non-practicing anarchist in the way that she is a non-practicing Buddhist. Strange stuff.

>>5669712
This implication could go both ways so I can't really unravel the meaning behind your shitpost.

>>5669703
Oh, and I'm in Queens.

>>5669714
Sounds like my ex girlfriend who told me she doesnt support abortion because life starts at conception but then went on to tell me that she doesn't know the strife and predicaments people get into and wouldn't want to impede on their right to do as they wish with their body. It isn't necessarily a bad thing, just confusing. Why did you decide to volunteer?

>>5669714
>non-practicing anarchist

>>5669714
You can be an anarchist and leave in a capitalist society as well as you can. There would be no way of educating the population otherwise and thinking you either go all out and go away or you accept it all is a way of undermining possible interest.
Still, there are things you can do like: dealing through assembly with everything work realted, have equal pay for everyone or tie the pay to their amount of work and not rank, hold anarchist meetings and try to educate people, promote self organization, talk against societal power structures, and so on.
Bombing people would be even more useless anyway.

>>5669728
Nice, have a friend out in Jamaica but still need to explore Queens more.

>>5669727
You're assuming poor people can stop being poor just by really wanting to, I assume, but you didn't even finish the point so it ended up sounding as if you blamed their inaction for the situation they didn't chose to be born in.

>>5669736
Do you write (graffilthy)? I volunteered to add some small thing to my meager resume, and I've got a decent friend higher up the horizontal ladder so it's light work and free coffee.

>>5669740
Maybe I do, maybe I dont...I know people here and there. I've met some people and have found myself in some heart pumping situations.

>>5669737
I'm not assuming shit, most poorfags are doomed to their shitty lives via systemic oppression. But they are components of that oppression and would create a possibly worse scenario for themselves anyway.

Call me a fedora, but I just don't see any reason for ideology. As I said, all of it seems like a "spook" to me. Even Stirner's gay "union of egoists" seems like a spook created by the Spook Man himself.

>born on planet
>"I must crusade to improve this place based on my idealistic worldview!"

Why? There's no reason to care. Ideologies are simply extensions of biological impetus, i.e. "I must improve my tribe to survive because genes told me so". Haven't we evolved past this? Human beings are now self-aware enough to discard the autopilot motivations hard-coded into us that served to make us a mathematical reality in this universe. Once this is understood, there is no other reason to give a shit about humanity other than hurp it makes me feel good. Which would be fine, if ideology actually did anything. But it doesn't, and it won't, because of an entire treatise worth of reasons outside the scope of this post/website/the internet, and as it stands the world is currently shittier than it has ever been except for a select population (the west + developing beneficiaries of capitalism). There is currently more torture, slavery, and general strife than ever before, all being executed in a host of exciting new methods and technology, if no other reason than progress and a growing population. And there's no reason to believe this will change in the foreseeable future. New problems will arise, new horrors unleashed, etc etc etc.

Ultimately, I'm saying #yolo so why give a fuck. But if you do give a fuck, that's fine and I aint gonna sweat it because #yolo. Sharing ideas because fun. Meanwhile a bunch of idealists worked themselves into a froth and died for an illusion. I guess that happens to everyone in some way or another though, even me.

>>5669754
>"I must improve my tribe to survive because genes told me so"
Yo, protip, science man: genes can't speak.

(Fucking idiots, in your scientism you've degenerated to the lowest, basest, dumbest kind of barbaric animism.)

>>5669744
I miss the smell of spray paint. It's really the scent of my happy days. Do you have a goodreads account?

>>5669755
Protip, personification in language isn't always literal. I never implied human genes are actively attempting to "evolve" or "improve humans", it was a metaphor. Stop being retarded.

>>5669757
What did you write? And nope.

>>5669763
Nothing of note...'ORPHANS' for some small time. It was boyscout stuff. You?

>>5669771
Anso. Not very well known compared to someone like...cash4

>>5666354
When i went to my local anarchist printing press thinking it was a book store they gave me a free book.

>>5669773
Post a pic of your throw up

>>5666564

>this essentialist thinking

oy vey not only are you an anarchist but a spacker also

>>5669754

do you even read Steven Pinker bro?

>>5669804
No, I'm into pop science Dawkins-tier horseshit

>>5669777

>>5669754

Fuck sake man. For all your gibbering about how ideological everyone else's thinking is, everything you just shat onto the internet is suffused with capitalist ideology. You think in ideological terms, but are too self-absorbed to realise it.

Besides, the fact that you are still shuffling around suggests that you are wrong, for no responsible member of a tribe would allow a mongoloid to survive childhood. Moment you loosened your greasy hole someone would have euthanised you.

>>5669810
Nice stuff my man

>>5669845
You have anything of your own or is it fading with more exposure to the sun?

>>5669754
>misinterpereting Stirner's union

You realize that at no point does he make a case for "improving" the world through egoistic acts. Stirner recognizes that it's impossible to go through life without dealing with other people and suggests the union as a way to protect the egoistic interest while simultaneously satisfying the need for cooperation. It has nothing to do with improving anything, nor is it a crusade.

>>5666258
Does that thing exist? I live in a third world country. You can only find radical leftist related books on universities.

>>5666388
If you want to fight for native working class rights, you must value nationalism which the left abandoned decades ago. They has been consumed by globalism, there are currently any number of people on the left who would sell out their countryman for cheap immigrant labor and tell their countryman if he objects he must be lazy or a racist.

>>5669714
>told you she was an anarchist
My, I wonder how long it took to peel away such information.

>>5669710
>stereotypes

I'm a poor minority in the USA and would consider myself a Marxist to an extent.

>Human nature BS

^the bland, go-to argument for the status quo

sigh...

>>5669899
>you must value nationalism which the left abandoned decades ago
>what is catalan, scottish, kurdish, basque, palestinian, tibetan nationalism

You're a retard, Roger Scruton is a pseudo-intellectual, he wrote hitpieces on smoking for bribes, how sad is that?

>The matter became public when a letter signed by Professor Scruton's wife to Japan Tobacco International was leaked, in which they were asked to increase the payments to £66,000 p.a., in exchange for which "We would aim to place an article every two months in one or other of the WSJ (Wall Street Journal), the Times, the Telegraph, the Spectator, the Financial Times, the Economist, the Independent or the New Statesman."

>>5669710
>The irony here is that all movements for "muh peoples' rule" are created and participated in by the greatest beneficiaries of capitalism

Capitalism is an historic stage of development, of course all people who advocate communism benefit from capitalism. You clearly know nothing about Marxist theory or Marxist analysis of Capitalism, please read up on a subject before you make a blog post about it.

>have you fucking looked at humanity lately? The reason these people have shit lives in the first place is because they're retarded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_k_57WoIPU

U IRL

>>5666388
coherent marxists do not distinguish between native and the foreign working class
t. coherent marxist

>>5669736
>14th street

Being from Philly, this makes me extremely uncomfortable.

>>5672263
>what is catalan, scottish, kurdish, basque, palestinian, tibetan nationalism
Glorified struggles against the man.

>>5666258
When did marxists take over /lit/?

>>5674838
>When did marxists take over /lit/?
When moot created /lit/. Normally we have enough taste to post about texts though. Bookstore threads are just shit.

>>5669710
>I'm just saying that this shit is firmly in the camp of "lol white people" and is disconnected from reality

This only makes sense if you ignore the vast majority of poor as fuck Marxists who live in the third world.

I used to visit the American RCP bookstore sometimes. The selection was pretty good despite the store being run by a weird pseudo-Maoist personality cult.

there's a libertarian bookstore near me

>>5666407
>tfw only anarchist café near me is an hour away with train

>>5676983
So squat a location and set one up.

>>5668823
>No.

Read more

>>5677009
There needs to be enough people active for it to work
I'm in a political youth-organisation in my town, and we're starting a small political book-club, but the number of politically active leftists and anarchists in my town is fairly limited
>tfw only in a semi-big town in Denmark

>>5677031
You should read more.

>>5677031
>Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat

Actually read some Marx you degenerate anarchist scum

>>5677031
is this some "go read young marx for totally not ideological reasons" type of stance

>>5677116
Do you know what a "workers' state" is for Marx?

Hint: it looks nothing like a bourgeois state, and it is definitionally the armed working class.

>>5677116
>political transition
which means that the state is only part of the procedure to reach the communist society, a society with no hierarchic division, an anarchist society

>>5677100
no u

>>5666437
>>5666555
Do genuine anarchists use the term 'statist'? I only see it in the context of anarcho-capitalism (the FB group 'Shit AnCaps say' really melts my brain), then again I'm not part of an English-speaking anarchist scene.

>>5677289
>the state is only part of the procedure

Yes, but this means first we have to create a workers state in order to progress to Communism, which is something anarchists reject.

Communists and Anarchists want the same thing in the end (a classless free society) but their methods of achieving this are entirely at odds, Marx was a Communist(it seems pretty ridiculous to have to point that out) not an Anarchist.

Anarchism is petit-bourgeoisie idealism.

>>5667299
Not that I deem it even remotely likely, but if anarchism was installed today by the people who call themselves anarchists, I'd be extremely worried about all the right-wing assholes taking over in a heartbeat. Unlike today's anarchists, they know how to use guns and like doing ugly stuff with them.

>>5677289
That's the most sketchy claim in all of Marxism. What is and what should be are two different things.

The destruction of the state from the get-go is a big deal in anarchism and a catalyst for a classless and oppressionless society, something Marxist praxis directly oppose.

There's more to ideology than "what should happen some time in the future". When it boils down to it, Marxists cross actual anarchists, yet you're trying to convince us that they are anarchists.

>>5674838
October