/lit/ - Literature

I visited the Karl Marx haus in trier. All the gifts (chocolate, art works, busts) the cashier is selling are handmade by people nearby. No bullshit import.
Also I bought the manifesto of the Communist party (but I didn't read it, since it's the English version he printed in London).
Reminder that Marx' birthday is coming soon.
Also :
>capitalism will crash in your lifetime
>feels good

I figure this would be a good place to ask this question:
I wanna dive into marxist theory and read some of Marx', Engels' and Lenin's works (as a start anyway).
These are the works I wanna read to get me started:
Marx/Engels:
Theses on Feuerbach
Value, Price and Profit
The German Ideology
The Communist Manifesto
Das Kapital
Wage Labour and Capital
Critique of the Gotha Program
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Anti-Dühring

Lenin:
Materialism and Empirio-criticism
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism
What is to be done?
The State and the Revolution
The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism

What should I start with, and should I add something to this list?

Cheers.

>>6412020
>capitalism will crash in your lifetime
this is actually possible
thx automation

>>6412020
>>capitalism will crash in your lifetime
>>feels good

Social democrats will ruin this for us again

>>6412364
pretty good list m8.
Start with Wage Labour and Capital & Value Price and Profit.
I'd ditch the Manifesto.
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism is only good if you want to delve further into leninism.

>>6412020

>capitalism will crash in your lifetime

Before or after the rapture?
Or maybe together with the singularity?
I'm sorry, I often fail to keep up with apocalypse cults.

>>6412364
I recommend beginning with these ones.

Karl Marx: A Brief Biographical Sketch With an Exposition of Marxism (1), The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism (2), Theses on Feurbach (3), and Principles of Communism (4)

>1 - by Lenin; https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/granat/index.htm
>2 - by Lenin; https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm
>3 - by Marx; https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm
>4 - by Engels; https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

Also, add Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy by Engels and Reform and Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg. It might be a bit expensive, but Lars Lih's Lenin Rediscovered is great to understand the context behind What is to be Done.

>>6412364
Every time we have one of these threads there's this damn question.

Who was supposed to be working on that Introduction to Radicalism/Marxism list?

You guys can't organize for shit.

>capitalism will crash in your lifetime

I thought this was 2015, not 1918.
Why do you reds still believe this?

If alive would Marx cringe about his cult of personality, or just like in life work with Engels to mock academics who were turning his guideline into final revelation, and use it as an excuse to lazily make sweeping generalizations of culture and history?

>>6412561
apocalypse = end of the world
socialism = end of capitalism

It's not far fetched. Tribalism, Feudalism and Mercantilism are all long gone. Why can't Capitalism also come to an end? Why is it some infallible, indestructible thing to you capitalists?

How do you people not see that communism was just a power grab to centralize power in the hands of few people? The fairytale they sell you is bullshit to get some useful idiots to bring the few to power

Any libertarian socialist marxists here?

>>6412656
Well they shouldn't read Lenin for starters.

>>6412674
>If alive would Marx cringe about his cult of personality

It's difficult to argue that someone enjoy this status when every single one of his would-be "followers" only agree with the basic premises and inner logic of his work and not with his actual positions.

>>6412682
That's a contradiction, my friend.

>>6412547
>thx automation

You mean "thx culture of last men beta males." You're welcome.

>>6412685

Anti-Leninism is the most corny and ludicrous element of today's Left. You're not going to make Marxism politically correct and mainstream by trying to isolate the "bad apples"

>>6412674
yeah he would, even though it's more of a pop-culture thing.
>>6412673
>what is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall

>tfw modern political discourse is pretty much designed solely for internet arguments

Somebody should write a book called "What Happened to Praxis?", and then we'll all give it good reviews and it will sell well and inspire blogs and magazine articles and nothing will change. :)

>>6412682
>libertarian socialist
>muh authoritarianism

>>6412694
this.
I understand the resentment for Stalin (bourgeois politics, social imperialism, "socialist commodity production", purge meme etc.). But Lenin was an authentic revolutionary and modern marxists should read and appreciate his work.
And I'm not even a Leninist.

>>6412696

Dunno, capitalism seems to always reinvent itself at the point of severe crisis?

Marxists are a shitty oracle.
They've been predicting its imminent downfall for almost 2 centuries now.

Allow me some scepticism.

>>6412692
B8?

>>6412714
well marxism isn't deterministic, so yeah, socialism is not THE prediction, it's one possible outcome.
This is why the working class needs to take power.

>>6412705
>not liking Stalin purge memes

>>6412714
Marxists thought it was going to collapse during the 20th century because half the world being communist/socialist.

>>6412686
I think if he were alive he'd so how hopelessly outdated proletariat vs bourgeois is.

>>6412730
purge mems are cool.
The purges itself are a meme too and a shitty one.
RIP Rubin ;_;

>>6411979

Why all the pinkos on lit? Can't we have a /pinko/ containment board?

>>6412739
because not all of 4chan is filled with retarded reactionaries

>>6412739
/lit/ has always been a little leftist but recently we've had a marxist surge. I'm guessing there is like some redditors or whatever that lost their subreddit or some shit. It's weird. Also the mod is clearly marxist since he/she allow shit threads like this but won't allow discussions around fascist literature.

>>6412739
>implying we're pink
>implying we're not red

>>6412743

>implying subscribing to marxist dogma is any better

>>6412727

I know, but Marxists everywhere ( maybe a more intelligent few don't ) have this "It's just a matter of time"-attitude.
I'm not a Zizekian, but I agree with him that the train of history is not on your side.

And the working class taking power now will cause a fascist take-over, aka authoritarian capitalism. Which is to me the most likely outcome.

>>6412682
Sounds infantile.

>>6412751
Not even a marxist, only like him for his thourough analysis, but he still had issues. (outdated history is the most obvious)

>>6412751

Watch one of Zizek's movies, anon.

>>6412733
Like every marxist does? Good to know

haha guys, remember when the social democrats stopped the revolution in Germany therefore dooming the Russian one as well and then acted surprised when it devolved into counter-revolution and got mad and sided with the right against us but then the soviet experiment started heading towards its long-delayed collapse and their would-be allies on the right no longer needed them and then destroyed 100 of social democratic designs in less than a decade

that was a funny damn time, i hear they're still mad over it

>>6412748

Most of the namefags are bleeding heart gommie pinkfags too. I guess a counter /pol/ is necessary, but every second thread is on /lit/ is like "Will my wife love me if i read Das Kapital" "Will drinking a gallon of a Marxist's semen improve my complexion?", "I can't get a job because I majored in medieval literature, can Marx tell me what to do?"

>praise yourself as a patrician in one thread
>call for the destruction of the class system in this one

Is pic related a good intro to the overall marxism project? Looking at the table of contents it seems very expansive, a good way to get one interested in various thinkers/subjects and allow exploration on their own.

However, it seems a very polarizing work. Obviously a huge bias, but that shouldn't be a big issue to separate author's feelings from the work. Or is it the case that he's too baised and it gets in the way?

>>6412776
>implying

also, most leftists on /lit/ are anarchists, not MLs

>>6412771
>"Will drinking a gallon of a Marxist's semen improve my complexion?"

boy oh boy you're about as witty as a cement block

>>6412694
>>6412705
It isn't bad apples.

1) The RSDLP(b) was bourgeois in class composition
2) The RSDLP(b) were substitutionalist in action
3) The RSDLP(b) seized an intact bourgeois state and used it as a repressive apparatus
4) The RSDLP(b) repressed the organs of class power, the workplace soviets
5) The composition of capital has changed once in a major way (Fordism) and once in a minor way (post-Fordism, or contemporary Fordism) since the major analysis provided by the RSDLP(b)
6) Considering 1 and 2, there is nothing to learn from the method of the RSDLP(b).

Reading Lenin is a waste of time if your aim is to recompose our class to destroy the value form.

>>6412764

>watch one of zizeks movies
>take his political philosophies seriously

https://boards.4chan.org/lit/thread/6409400/itt-phrases-that-instantly-identify-a-pleb#bottom

>>6412784
Do you have statistical evidence to back this up?

>>6412785

>implying this isn't you

>>6412798
i am an anarchist, though i bristle at the 'let' moniker. definitely anti-capitalist tho.

also marx is wack. simplistic, reductive versions of history don't really help any one.

>>6412810
>i am an anarchist

Through the best of times, through the worst of times
Through Nixon and through Bush

>>6412810
>simplistic, reductive versions of history don't really help any one.
Read 18th Brumaire you fucking idiot.

>>6412821
ok
>>6412816
pls no

>>6412784
nah, it's left-coms and post-marxists..

>>6412821
18th Brumaire or: Anarchists getting BTFOd

>>6412810

Most anarchists are plebs too. They're mostly indistinguishable from marxists.

sorry based Stirner

>>6412842
kek
anarchists are a contradictory pile of shit

>>6412798
The majority of leftists, tbh, nowadays tend to anarcraps

>>6412794
>you refuse to learn something because your personal prejudice from memes renders it for "plebs" exposing your pleb understanding of philosophy

>>6412793

http://www.revleft.com/vb/russian-revolution-bolshevik-t105275/index.html

>>6412826
>pls no

You remember '36? We went our separate ways
You fought for Stalin, I fought for freedom!

>>6412842
I agree. I use the term loosely and I find much of their perspective to be mired in fetishization of victimhood and resentment which disgusts me. I also loathe them prattling on about rights or justice or any other spooky bullshit.

I do not see anything hopeful arising from the political left, obviously. I just have my little opinions.

>>6412560
>>6412630

alright, thanks for the suggestions

>>6412868
>1500 words sourced from Rabinowitch, A., (1976), The Bolsheviks Come to Power

I'd rather trust my extensive reading thanks, including Lenin's critiques of the RSDLP(b) class composition—my primary source for this—and Pirani's archival work on party-workplace soviet relations.

>>6412858

What did you learn anon. How can I reach your level of Žižekian euphoria? Watch the funny jovial Santa Claus man on the video fallaciously apply Lacanian epistemology to biopolitics for 20 hours then petition the corrupt government of the 3rd world shithole I live in to form a ministry of toilets for flawless ergonomic plumbing which will free the psyche from the plague of ideology.. This is a /lit/ board, make your documentary suggestions somewhere else. Slapjoy is only popular because he hits a nerve with the lazy unwashed masses who were to lazy to read the greeks and have access to youtube or supreme edgelords who are angry with their fathers for making them get a job.

>>6412894
>implying that's all they were sourced from

http://www.revleft.com/vb/introducing-revleft-historical-t120423/index.html

>>6412906
>Unless otherwise stated, all quotes are sourced from Rabinowitch (1976), as the principal work used in this essay

>>6412941

>Bolshevik membership numbers are drawn from both Figes (1998) and Fitzpatrick (2001)

I think I smell something. I think it's... Ah, yes! political irrelevance! Or maybe it's the bourgeois intellectualist elitism! Either way it's emanating out of your Left-Communist ass!

>>6411979
Read Proudhon as well. He was earlier and you'll get a better understanding of early socialism. Many topics typically attributed to Marx was written by Proudhon (such as class struggle, surplus value).

>>6412977
Appealing to bourgeois politics is a bad move, friend. You may as well join Labour, they get elected.

Can someone enlighten me why socialism?

I've given up on Marxism, since a lot of his base assumptions were flat out wrong and his suggested version of socialism doesn't even follow from his premises. (If laborer's are being exploited by capitalists, why should they be exploited by non laborers in a need serving economy?)

I have read non Marxist socialism, and they make a lot more sense, but it solves the problem of exploited labor and distribution, but creates a problem of invested capital-associations of workers have a higher incentive to produce for consumption, rather than maintaining or increasing capital expenditure for future consumption. This is why socialist countries typically grow very slowly in standard of living.

>>6413003
>I've given up on Marxism, since a lot of his base assumptions were flat out wrong and his suggested version of socialism doesn't even follow from his premises. (If laborer's are being exploited by capitalists, why should they be exploited by non laborers in a need serving economy?)
You gave up on Marx before you started obviously.

>capital
Then it isn't fucking socialism is it?

>socialist countries
Yeah, you've not read Marx at all.

Socialism is the abolition of money, capital, exploitation, work, class, states, governments, and nationality.

It is not the government controlled investment of capital.

>>6412991
>implying I'm using 'political relevance' as to advocate for reformism


>show me any Left-communist political organization that had influence whatsoever in any political landscape whatsoever (when they're not just tailing behind trots, anarchists, or social-democrats)
the goddamn Hoxhaists have had more historical sway than you fuckers

>>6413028
>implying I'm using 'political relevance' as to advocate for reformism

Yes, yes I am. Outside of revolutionary moments politics is bourgeois superstructure. There is no independence of the state, and the only way to be "political" in the sense you're using is to accommodate to the terrain available: reform.

>show me any Left-communist political organization that had influence whatsoever in any political landscape whatsoever (when they're not just tailing behind trots, anarchists, or social-democrats)
You should know the KAPD and AAUD were larger than the KPD until 1921. What was happening until 1921… I don't know, something in Germany.

>the goddamn Hoxhaists have had more historical sway than you fuckers

Yes, they controlled a state, wherein wage labour was conducted, and the Hoxhaist state and bureaucratic apparatus controlled the circulation of value in an expanded form:

>implying I'm using 'political relevance' as to advocate for reformism

No, stating it, with proof from your own lips.

>>6413013

I've read conditions of the working class by Engels which initially interested me. I've also read a third of volume one of Kapital.

>abolition of capital
No, it's the abolition of rent, profit, and interest from capital. We will still have machines and equipment whether you call them means of production or capital.

>socialist countries
Communism is where money and the state dissolve, there's still an intermediary where the workers own the means of production but it's not like standards of living are going to accelerate when the government and money disappears from socialism. I consider Eastern Europe as socialist countries back before they readopted private capitalism, whether you want to call it state capitalism or socialism, it's still where private property is abolished.

Also, there's a reason I said association of workers. I know that a state also extracts surplus value from laborers. It still doesn't mean these workers have an incentive to vote for increased capital (means of production if you prefer) expenditures, versus current consumption.

Before you go to your no true socialism argument, just tell me how socialism would improve my standard of living as a member of the middle class to the post class society. To the point where we increase our social safety net to guaranteed income, I don't see any point for true socialism.

>>6413074
>No, it's the abolition of rent, profit, and interest from capital. We will still have machines and equipment whether you call them means of production or capital.

Capital in Marx means a very specific thing, it isn't a physical object. It is a social relation between people about how they use each other and objects. No object is "capital" outside of capitalism, no object is "capital" unless it is reproducing the value form in an expanded manner (making surplus value, which is realised as profit).

Fucks sake. CP-ML, can you take this one?

>>6412696
>the tendency of the rate of profit to fall
Can someone explain the current status of capitalism in the context of this for me? There are people out there who think capitalism will just automatically run itself into the ground, but it seems like the system has slowed down significantly in the face of rising organic composition / falling profits, and investment isn't just going to fling itself suicidally at the full productive potential of cybernetics / robots and whatnot.

>>6413124
As markets get saturated, capitalism requires progress in new technologies and industries for higher profit margins (due to higher risk). If we get to the point where capitalism discovers everything then we will move towards more competition. It's not a huge issue as any rent seeking will be mitigated by competitors. Risks will reduce along with returns, and holders of capital will increase consumption and decrease investment.

This won't destroy capitalism. What would destroy capitalism is oligarchy (from a few people owning all the capital) since it would not be capitalism anymore. Since information is very difficult to be acquired from a centralized control structure, oligarchies will have huge diseconomies of scale.

I'm not saying capitalism won't fall, I just think it won't be something that we foresaw.

>>6413124
well most marxists aren't sure either. There are some value-formers and post-marxists that believe that the TRPF is shit (Heinrich, even Harvey IIRC), while others like the value-critique folks and the TSSI folks are defending it.
I'm most familiar with the value-critique approach so yeah I'll try to explain it (no bully pls, tired af + not native english)
Automation led to less value production, which would have been a serious problem after the IT-revoluion, if there hadn't been a massive blowup of the financial sector (GDP multiplied itself a few times in just a few years). In order to counter the effects of the TRPF, fictious capital was used to keep investement in capital possible. The accumulation of fictitious capital led to the creation of financial bubbles, which are basically the only things keeping the economy intact at the moment, even though they are obviously unstable.

>>6413100
I just said you can use means of production if you prefer when talking about machinery. There's a sociological argument Marx makes, but the more important one is the economic argument. I doubt most people would care if they were slaves if they got everything they wanted and didn't have to work very hard.

any german here?

>>6413172
Was the IT revolution mostly just a bunch of hot air? I mean it obviously had a big effect on productivity, but wasn't really like the major boom-producing technology waves of the past? Instead, it just resulted in a speculative financial bubble. I think this is because it represents automation for itself, not a new labor-heavy sector for people to just shift into like from agriculture to Fordism.

>>6413224
>I think this is because it represents automation for itself
exactly.
While the fordian revolution decreased the amount of labor needed in the production of some commodities, it also facilitated whole new labor-heavy possibilities of extracting value, which greatly outweighed the labor-time lost due to automation.

>>6413047
>Outside of revolutionary moments politics is bourgeois superstructure.
Look at all these left-communist revolutions!

>>6413268
Service work

All previous uses of mechanisation against the class have resulted in financial bubbles btw.

Y'all comrades need more history.

>>6413290
service work is a neoliberal meme.

>>6413306
there's a great article by krisis on how service work creating enough value to keep capitalism stable is a myth.
It's in german though. I'll post it anyway.
http://www.krisis.org/2007/arbeit-ohne-wert

>mfw someone disagrees with me

>>6413319

>>6411979
>tfw communist
>tfw communism=terrorism in my third world country
>tfw always have to say I'm democratic socialist, and still people think I'm a terrorist

>>6413377
communism is terrorism though

>>6413392
who dis nigga is

>>6413377
>democratic socialist
maybe it's because you're a fucking liberal masquerading as a radical

>>6413392
individual terror =/= state terror

>>6413402
Dzerzhinsky

“We stand for organized terror - this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Soviet Government and of the new order of life. We judge quickly. In most cases only a day passes between the apprehension of the criminal and his sentence. When confronted with evidence criminals in almost every case confess; and what argument can have greater weight than a criminal's own confession?”
― Felix Dzerzhinsky

>>6413392
Felix Dzerensky, the head of the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police.

>>6413406
>maybe it's because you're a fucking liberal masquerading as a radical

Nope. It's just that communism means terrorism since there were terrorist in my country claiming to be communist, so communism is frowned up.
If I said I was a communist I couldn't change anything. How can I have a good political career and actually do something if people call me terrorist?
The communist party of my country does nothing but discussing all day about revisionism while people give a fuck about that.

>>6413412
>the head of the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police.

>>6413435
communism-baneism (Nolanist tendency) confirmed

>>6413423
Reformists and other moderate reactionaries desire a revolution without a Revolution, and Virtue without the means of enforcing it.

Bourgeois civil society will not just transform itself from within towards any form a socialism without militant revolutionary agitation. Socialism cannot be achieved via the undermining of social conditions, but only via uprooting the very social foundations of what society is build around, and this can only be carried through with violence.

People tend to be afraid of communism because of deeply internalized prejudices stemming from bourgeois dictatorship. Because Communism seeks to overturn the very basis of civil society, the ruling class trembles at the sight of the Communist Revolution. Many people tend to go against their interests because of the prevalence of bourgeois ideology. If no one is afraid of you, then no one sees you as a threat.

Also, where are you from exactly? I can understand where you're coming from if you're from Peru.

>>6413500
>peru
Holy shit how? Hope you are not one of those agents who search for reds in the net.
Well, since I'm from Peru, saying you are leftist means you are a terrorist, that's how most people see it. So saying you are communist is some sort of sin.
If we consider that those terrorists (they were terrorists, they gave a fuck about communism and its leader was a hungry warmonger, they now are allied with druglords) were actual communist, then a revolution will fail as it happened. Not to mention all those failed rebelions made by the MIR.

Just look at the now president Ollanta Humala. People call him leftist (leftist means bad) because he did a small welfare program. What's funny is the left say Humala betrayed them for not being leftist enough. That's how things are fucked up in Peru.
Even if a revolution works and Peru goes full communist, there's the USA and all those foreign powers which will fuck up things more than they did with Cuba.
A violent revolution will be pointless.

>>6413500
Liberal insurrection, not always revolution, forced monarchies to adopt more liberal principles, to the point where countries like the US and UK share similar political systems. What is stopping the same from happening today, only with democracy and socialism?

>>6413726
>What is stopping the same from happening today, only with democracy and socialism?
Inspect how the value form works differently to late feudalism, you'll discover for yourself.

>>6413575
The Sendero Luminoso was fascinating, really, they were a huge Maoist guerrilla that couldn't get peasant support, that's a first (and only) in history.

>>6413838
They were a bunch of zealots to begin with. Plus they didn't believe in their ideas.
Their leader was found drinking expensive wine while doing a greek dance and eating italian ham.

>>6411979
ive been a communist since i was 13, wanting a better life for me and my family but i only started reading marx and lenin when i emigrated to Canada, does anyone have a recommended guide to their works, ive only read History will absolve me, 7 interpretive essays on Peruvian reality and a couple leaflets, also excuse my grammar im a native spanish speaker

>>6414021
Marx and Engels:

You want to read
Peasant war in Germany
Working class in England
Family, Private Property
Capital

To get there you need to read:
Theses on Feuerbach
Socialism: Utopian & Scientific
Critique of Gotha
Wages Price and Profit
Contribution to a Critique


You don't want to read Lenin. Read about the history of trade unions and revolutions instead.

>>6414055

Nice dubs pinko

>everytime it's tried it fails

>>6412793
what does 'recompose our class to destroy the value form' mean?

>>6414230
Form enough of the working class into a revolutionary body capable of surviving without capitalism, and militarily destroying capitalism's repressive apparatus.

>>6414184
This, they always just resort to authoritarianism.

what is the primary process that reproduces capitalism? Is it culture in the superstructure, or the labour process itself, at the point of production?

I keep thinking this is key on where to wage war of manoeuvre/position

>>6414254
It is the labour process. Capital has survived numerous superstructural reconfigurations while wage labour has remained the constant source of profit, of the continued circulation of the value form, and the manner of capital's leaking back in and recolonising free'd spaces.

Capitalism can be sugar coated, as in Sweden or the Soviet Union, or it can be red in tooth and claw like the United States or India. But waged labour is the constant.

>>6414296
who is the best to read on this? harry braverman?

>>6414306
Braverman, Regulation School, Autonomists, World Systems

>>6412020
>capitalism will crash in your lifetime
>feels good
Pleasssssse

Spoiler alert.... Marxism does not work

>>6413289
Well done, comrade.

>>6412557
>implying it's not social democrats crashing the plane

>>6414370
Spoiler alert.... you're letting someone else think for you.

>>6411979
Who S21C/Bolivarianismo here?
http://monthlyreview.org/2015/04/01/chavez-and-the-communal-state/

>>6414359
>Regulation School

that all looks so cool. i wish I could go back to school for this instead of applying for more bad jobs. maybe ill find a cool labour studies program somewhere :s

>>6413289
>mfw Stalinistic States have lasted more than any other kind of revolutionary state
HOXHA WAS RIGHT
Stalin did nothing wrong.

>>6414396
Stalin wasn't perfect but anyone else would've effectively handed over the USSR to the capitalists.

>>6414418
Yes. And fuck Trotsky.

>>6414055
ok but why not lenin? dont tell me ur a luxemburgist or some shit

>>6414418
Stalin did hand over the USSR to the capitalists. He enforced mass proletarianisation. The value form expanded massively, even with a destructive war. Rates per piece shrunk in real terms.

Stalin ensured the real reproduction of value and settled the crisis of the agricultural peasantry by proletarianisation on kholkoz and in new factory cities.

A capitalist in a red flag is a capitalist.

>>6414446
>ok but why not lenin?
You need to read a hell of a lot more about the history of the movement before you can appreciate Lenin's innovations, why they were wrong at the time, why they are more than wrong now, what made them wrong, why Lenin and the RSDLP(b) went wrong, and why the RSDLP(b)'s techniques are not of the present conjuncture.

>>6414418
How many million did Stalin kill?

>>6414418
is this like the "Hitler dindu nuffin" version of Stalin?

>>6414446
He's Pol Potist for sure

A majestic scholar going by the name of Dr. Piketty recently published a book called Capital. it is basically the rejuvenation of Marxism

>>6414527
pic related

>>6414457
Is this a joke? Stalin didn't kill millions.

>>6414532
It isn't bait you numbnutts. You can't market yourself as Marxist, but it is full of Marxian language, and it sets out to re-contextualize Marx's theories and move them back into the limelight of the overarching discourse.

Just read the book

>>6414545
It uses completely different categories, methodologies, and isn't a text aimed at arming the working class for struggle. How is it Marxist?

>>6414561
> Capital Accumulation in the context of a shrinking growth rate.
> Capital is being concentrated and centralized in the hands of the wealthiest 1%.
> Language like "metamorphosis of capitalism"
>Is literally a red and white book called Capital

Can I ask you something? Do you even do economics bro?

>>6414588
>88
Well that explains why you don't Marx.

I could name my dick capital, doesn't mean wanking is marxism.

>1%
You haven't read, or understood, Marx.

>>6414602
Have you read Piketty's book? Why would I point out the esoteric Marxism in something in order to troll?

>You haven't read, or understood, Marx
"It is concentration of capitals already formed, destruction of their individual independence, expropriation of capitalist by capitalist, transformation of many small into few large capitals." Capital Volume 1 Ch 25 section 2
1% is the literal figure.

>>6414602
Also, please name your dick capital

>>6414588
Economics itself is an ideology. *sniff*

>>6414636
Reread the start of 1 and the first three chapters of 2. Capital is a flow process and a result of a social relation. It isn't a literal figure.

>>6414644
Oh Zizek, you know Economics is all a magic trick to allow the Aristocracy to re-establish itself as the ruling class of the global cosmopolitan state

>>6414650
Read Piketty,he accounts for this.
Seriously. I'm not trying to waste your time. If you're being protective of Marx, I can assure you that Piketty isn't trying to supersede him.

Are you a member of a revolutionary party, /lit/?

If not, why?

>implying capitalism will simply collapse on its own
>implying the working class doesn't need a revolutionary party to lead it

Socialist Party of Australia (CWI) here.

>>6414681
*tips fedora*

>>6414681
Immiseration doesn't cause revolution, people simply become despondent. The Vanguard has failed us, the window for revolution has closed. We have failed our prophet, but more importantly, we've failed humanity as whole.

>>6414667
Between you, and my political economist colleagues, guess who I'm siding with?

>>6414681
Sticking a label on a mule and calling it a party won't change it from being a group of friends who all like Lenin in your case, or a sect of child abusing grinders like SAlt, or a reformist wannabe greens like Alliance.

A party is a difficult achievement, easier than a union, but still difficult. More so if you actually intend to learn in and of your class so as to move struggle forward.

>>6414715
Fair enough, now we're just on different sides of the current academic discourse.

>>6414715
So what are you doing to advance the struggle? We are a very small party, yes, but we led the campaign against the East West Link and won. In 2013 we won a campaign to save public housing from being sold off. Two weeks ago we organised the only large-scale demonstration against Reclaim Australia out of all the Australian cities. These are small gains but gains nonetheless. The working class won't organise itself.

I want to be a Marxist but I also think poor people are icky. Really, I just want a friend to bankroll me sitting in a library all day.

>>6414532
>mfuckigfw soviet records admit about 3 million people were murdered under Stalin
>mfw all this delusion

>>6414418
>what is the value form
>le socialist commodity production meme

stalinites are SocDems with guns and gulags

>>6411979
>How have you been studying Marx recently?
Been planning on reading "A General Theory of Exploitation and Class" by John E. Roemer
>>6412682
Libertarian socialist non-Marxist here.

Who /proletarian feminism/ here?

>>6414681
>>6414681
>>6414681

Bump for this

>>6415348
No, that's all stupid pious atheism.

>>6414418
> Civil war deaths
> 1 000 000
Most sources put it around 6 000 000 to 7 000 000, of whom 1 000 000 to 2 000 000 were Jews.

>>6415362
You're not going to get a serious answer from anyone online, because, this is online. That's the most serious answer you can get in this space.

>>6414906
The murders were caused by weak central governent combined with post-civil war feuds and a culture of greed though...

The Great Purges and their excess death showcase Stalin's weakness, rather than his strength. The man could not control the Party.

>>6415401
So why does Fitzpatrick show Stalin writing letters to third tier regional candidate members suggesting they "feud" "greedily" with local party chairs?

Yes, the party was out of control, going through a process of eating itself to ensure Stalinism (Djilas); but, yes, Stalin was encouraging and supervising the particularities of this process.

>>6415401
>After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives became available, containing official records of the execution of approximately 800,000 prisoners under Stalin for either political or criminal offenses, around 1.7 million deaths in the Gulags and some 390,000 deaths during kulak forced resettlement – for a total of about 3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.[54

>being sent to a gulag is just a post civil war dude though!
lol ok

>>6414454
Uh, why are you using the abbreviation instead of just calling them the Bolsheviks?

>>6416271
>>being sent to a gulag is just a post civil war dude though!
Uh, that's exactly what it is? Look at the history of any civil war ever. (The one in the USA included.) Granted, the scale of post-civil-war repression was much larger in the USSR, but so was the scale of the Russian Civil War itself.

Reading this thread reminds me why I own a gun.

>>6416585
T-to spread the revolution, right, anon?

>>6413994
Saying that they're zealots, and that they don't believe in their ideas is a contradiction. I mean, sure nowadays, after the CC disarmed, but the local cadres still continued fighting, yeah, it is fair to say that they (the people who still fight) don't really believe in Communism.

The problem with the shining path, from my understanding, was that the people who founded the movement were urban intellectuals who didn't really understand how peasant life was like, idealizing the peasant to the point where they no longer resemble what they really are. As a result, they acted against the interests of the people they claimed to represent to the point of completely severing themselves from them.

I wouldn't say that eating well leads to a betrayal of Communism. Communists tend not to care about that kind of stuff, like complaining that Che drinking coke that one time, or the Che t-shirts. The only people who think that Communists are betraying their ideals by indulging in commodities are anti-communists.

I wouldn't say that they never believed in Maoism from the beginning, though. The modern Maoist ideology (that is Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, not the weirdo Maoist-Third-Worldists online) was founded pretty much by the Shining Path.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Internationalist_Movement

>>6416585