/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3495566]

In this moment. I am enlightened - not because - of some phony sexist capitalism, but...because, I am enlightened: by my own intelligence." Laurie Penny

[Anonymous No.3495568]

I know this is a troll thread, but my jimmies are beyond rustled. BEYOND RUSTLED.

[Anonymous No.3495576]

This is getting out of hand.

[Anonymous No.3495582]

I love you, Laurie.

[Anonymous No.3495612]

>>3495576

There's 4 up now

[Anonymous No.3495906]

I've spent my last 3 weeks in the deep woods of northern Scandinavia, training recon work - can someone give me the short version of what is happening?

[Anonymous No.3495920]

>>3495906
Some bloggers that go to /pol/ tried to "troll" or "raid" other boards with a video of Laurie Penny, presumably in an attempt to increase the power of their subsequent "trolling" of her twitter account. That failed, and their raid of /lit/ backfired since a few of us already read her work, as well as enjoy her non-threatening mild attractiveness. So now she gets mentioned every so often as opposed to not at all.

[Anonymous No.3495924]

I actually liked her from what I read on /lit/. Then I looked her up on YouTube and she's like, hyper-statist.

Unions, Laurie, not legislation.

[Anonymous No.3495933]

>>3495924
She's friends with Owen Jones, hopefully he'll put her on the right track. He seems to be arguing for a return of the radical left atm.

[Anonymous No.3495989]

>>3495933

Owen Jones is a retard of the highest calibre

[Anonymous No.3495993]

>>3495989
Your prose is a retard of the highest calibre

[Anonymous No.3496026]

>>3495993
ur gay

[Anonymous No.3496033]

>>3495924
>Then I looked her up on YouTube and she's like, hyper-statist.
It depends what she's arguing against. Generally she's a communist with a central focus on labour value. Ultimately, she wants power decentralised and put into the hands of the masses, but with free market restriction and a meritocratic education system.

When she's debating certain politicians, she puts an emphasis on the working class or egalitarianism, which means she argues for more state involvement with certain issues, but it's not her default stance.

She's not too pro-state, just her ultra-prole role sometimes needs it. There was a recent article bashing the 'welfare system and benefit cheats' in which she turned around and said tax evasion by the upper 1% costs the economy 25 billion a year - 100 times that of any false welfare claim, and this led to her saying the state needs to be more vigilant with enforcing taxation.

Yeah, I'm not to keen on state involvement myself, but I can see why her constant attack on class in our current society sometimes needs it as she can't always turn around and go full Marx-mode.

[Anonymous No.3496511]

We have seen enough

[Anonymous No.3496590]

What happened to the LP Q&Q? Did the Anon who talked to her get stage fright?

[Anonymous No.3496593]

>>3496590
>LP Q&Q?
wut.

*LP Q&A

[Anonymous No.3496617]

>>3496033
>a meritocratic education system

The education system is already "meritocratic" and it's busted.

[Anonymous No.3496631]

>>3496593
>>3496590
Two /pol/ guys replied and were all weird and shit. I'm sure we'll ask again at some point, but I'd suggest waiting a bit.

[Anonymous No.3496702]

>>3496617
>The education system is already "meritocratic" and it's busted.
No it's not. I'm not sure what country you live in, but there is a giant gap in the quality of education. Go to an inner-city school in the ghettos, then visit one in a nice suburban middle-class area. A meritocracy would see all children with the same education and being able to go on afterwards and prove themselves, each being valued on their own merit. Granted they can't because of a range of other social problems, but the education system is far from an equal base. Not even mentioning private schools.

[sage No.3496725]

stop this shit

[Anonymous No.3496809]

>>3496631
Doubt it. She was probably scared of by the thread she was linked to.

[Anonymous No.3496820]

>>3496809
I'm pretty certain she'd already posted here by that point.

[Anonymous No.3497014]

>>3496820
Really? I don't think she'd even heard of /lit/ before she was linked to it.

[Anonymous No.3497702]

So who actually said what to get this meme started?

>>3497014
Perhaps not /lit/, but she'd certainly heard of 4chan. There's no way she hadn't.

I'm really hoping she does one- not just because I think she's a good writer and I've questions to ask her, but because I would love to see 4chan stop being written off as this thoroughly malevolent shithole. Someone like Penny engaging with it would go a long way.

[Anonymous No.3497708]

>>3495576
ok the kant one got me

[Anonymous No.3497716]

Can't wait for the Laurie Penny wave to pass on by

[Anonymous No.3497983]

>>3497702
Reddt.

Some kid on /r/atheism came up with a shitty quote that he thought was inspirational.

Everybody bagged the shit out of his stupidity.

It's all over Reddt, but no idea how it got to /lit/

[Anonymous No.3497986]

>>3497983
/r/atheism is the biggest shithole on the internet.

Saging out of principle.

[Anonymous No.3497988]

>>3497983
vary painful to read.

[Anonymous No.3498003]

>>3497983
Do people actually try and like.. write quotes as quotes?

[Anonymous No.3498015]

>>3497983
>/u/aalewis
>page not found

Robbed of what was most likely a comedic goldmine

[Anonymous No.3498022]

>>3497983
I can't get over the hilarity in the fact that this guy actually thought he was saying something significant and capable of influencing others

[Anonymous No.3498025]

>>3496033
>When she's debating certain politicians, she puts an emphasis on the working class or egalitarianism, which means she argues for more state involvement with certain issues, but it's not her default stance.
I would point to the state of the left in Britain since the whole New Labour shift as the culprit for this. A lot of left ideals have been left in the dust since then, with pretty much all groups moving towards the centre. There isn't really atm any major active group that advocates abolition of state as it's primary or immediate aims, though we may see this change depending on what Mr Miliband decides to do in the future.

[Anonymous No.3498039]

>>3497983
Just an FYI, this guy was trolling, and as made apparent by this thread, he did a great job of it.

[Anonymous No.3498058]

>>3497983
Guy who asked again. And people look at me funny when I tell them 4chan is more intelligent than the site we can't post.

And I get what the kid was going for and he probably doesn't deserve this, but it just can't stand up as a phrase. Nietzsche or Kazantzakis probably said exactly what he was trying to do decades ago, too.

>>3498003
Yeah, they're called aphorisms.

>>3498025
I'm not too familiar with the current state of the Left in Britain, but Penny seems healthily allergic to New Labour.

>advocates abolition of state as it's primary or immediate aim

Is this a useful thing, though? My own basic attitudes are essentially anarchist, but I'm not aware of any serious anarchist group that aims for immediate abolition of the state. It's all rightfully about building the new world in the shell of the old.

As far as Penny, again, it seems like her interests are entirely nonelectoral and her advocacy of state intervention is purely on a pragmatic, what-can-we-do-to-improve-the-lot-of-the-working-class-right-now ground. Which I'm down with.

[Anonymous No.3498052]

In thees moment, "tugs shirt" I am eupholic. "Rubs nose" Not becaush, of any phony liberal totalitarianism, "snort" but becaush, i am enlighted by the foucaultian genealogical method, "tugs shirt" anti semitism, "rubs nose" genocide and so on.

[Anonymous No.3498142]

>>3498058
>Is this a useful thing, though? My own basic attitudes are essentially anarchist, but I'm not aware of any serious anarchist group that aims for immediate abolition of the state. It's all rightfully about building the new world in the shell of the old.
The typical aims in Britain tended to be syndicalist on the far left. There are still communes in Wales and things, and as far as I know they've remained as far left as ever, but any group which goes out into the community/society (that is "active" as it were) have all moved further centre. When Labour moved right, every other active group did the same in order to keep/widen their base, and generally the further left you go the more numbers are an issue. There's also been the whole "occupy" and "entrepreneurial" style activism come to the fore in the last 5 years or so, and as far as I can see they tend to be centrist, and tend to pull in a number of people that otherwise might have been involved with the older more distinctly left groups. There's also this division between theory and pragmatism: when I was in the far left group, we weren't discussing Bakunin or the Anarcho-Syndicalists, we were very much focused on what was currently happening, esp on the local level. It wasn't until after my involvement ended I began to be better acquainted with these ideas.

>As far as Penny, again, it seems like her interests are entirely nonelectoral and her advocacy of state intervention is purely on a pragmatic, what-can-we-do-to-improve-the-lot-of-the-working-class-right-now ground. Which I'm down with.
This is essentially what I'm talking about. I'm sure she was as pleased as I was that Ed Miliband did the speech to the coal miners last year: that's a sign of hope that we can go further left again.

[Anonymous No.3498175]

>>3495920
>a few of us already read her work
>as well as enjoy her non-threatening mild attractiveness.

0/10

[Anonymous No.3498180]

>>3498142
>occupy activism

This is centrist? In the States, the core of Occupy has been quite radical and managed to get people less radical to act unreservedly in radical ways.

I once had a conversation with someone describing them holding a teach-in on anarchism with a diverse group consisting largely of older couch liberals. At the end, no shitting you unless he was shitting me, this eighty year old grandmother enthusiastically raised her hand and said "that sounds wonderful, but... do we have to call it anarchism? Can we just call it 'consensus' instead?"

>entreprenurial activism

Do you mean the neolib bullshit of e.g. giving away a pair of shoes to someone in the Global South if one buys their shoes made in the Global South?

Or am I completely missing what you mean?

>we weren't discussing Bakunin or the Anarcho-Syndicalists, we were very much focused on what was currently happening, esp on the local level.

My experience is the same, and I think it's just the general political trend right now in legitimately Left circles. This is mostly a good thing- it points in a more anarchic direction, and it doesn't waste time yelling at the state to do something or yelling at the state to go away. (Well, not too much time.) For me, privileging practice is a matter of theory.

But it's also because we've gotten to a point where everyone is roughly convinced of the same set of values, read the same theoretical works, and find them not precisely useful in the current moment, except as entertainment, like most receptions of Zizek.

We need a new way of conceiving of what the Left does, basically.

[Anonymous No.3498190]

>>3498142
Oh, and I wouldn't really take hope for state intervention programmatically going further left. Maybe it's different in the UK. I hope it is. But in most parts of the world it seems like our best bet is just ignoring the state inasmuch as possible, just as they ignore us, unless there's an actual, immediately achievable concrete way to bilk money from it for the working class.

Why? Simple reason is that I don't expect most current states to last more than a few more decades.

[Anonymous No.3498277]

>>3498180
>Do you mean the neolib bullshit of e.g. giving away a pair of shoes to someone in the Global South if one buys their shoes made in the Global South?
No, or at least not entirely, there's a section of political activism that focuses a lot on making something like activist businesses. They seem to see the way forward as small, self sustaining groups that work within a capitalist framework. Tends to be in response to problems perceived as immediate like climate change, and as far as I know is fairly new. I know for sure there's been a growth in people involved in the last few years if nothing else.

>This is centrist? In the States, the core of Occupy has been quite radical and managed to get people less radical to act unreservedly in radical ways.
To clarify, the group I was involved in was the furthest left group based on my campus. I'm also more talking about not "THE Occupy movement" but the return of occupy actions, that really started again around 2008/2009ish iirc with some of the student protest groups, esp around Gaza/Israel and education. I would think a lot of the people involved in that would think themselves further left than they were, but seemed to be incredibly reactive for the most part, and so tended to be very confused about their aims/demands. Since the whole camping side of thing has become a more normal part of it, those communities seem to have it more together.

[Anonymous No.3498287]

>>3498180
>We need a new way of conceiving of what the Left does, basically.
Forgot to reply to this. This is my opinion too, to some degree always has been, and this was a big part of why I've gone away from the active groups. I'd rather spend more time right now looking at and familiarising myself with previous works and thinkers and only keeping half an eye on current affairs rather than protesting and discussing. I know I wasn't the least knowledgeable person among other lefties on politics, but I certainly lacked a lot of relevant knowledge and perspective. Protests also tend to feel like banging your head against a brick wall.

[Anonymous No.3498495]

same dawkins-quote fag

1/10

[Anonymous No.3498506]

>>3498277
>...something like activist businesses. They seem to see the way forward as small, self sustaining groups that work within a capitalist framework

I read a brilliant article on this years ago. I can't remember the exact economic principal, but it was attempting to merge labour theory of value with capitalism. Essentially it had capital split evenly between employees, but with employees paying some kind of 'taxation' percentage to the hierarchy of the business. So a capitalist could invent a product and start a company. The more successful his company is, the more money he makes, but employees get paid relative to their labour value(with respect to market fluctuation) - if they start manufacturing and selling more, they get paid more. Instead of a fixed hourly rate, they get a variable wage that increases with labour and market.

[Anonymous No.3498536]

>>3498495
>same dawkins-quote fag
See: >>3497983

[Reggie Kray !YFAV8ElgIU No.3498560]

>>3498506
It's a nice system, but it wont work.

The capitalist will just hire more people. If this happens, the value of labour is diminished as the profits are divided between more people. The capitalist, now taking a cut from all the employees, is producing more products so makes more money. It's in his interest to keep hiring more people, generating more capital and reducing the value of each employee further by hiring more people.

Also, why should the employees be penalised for market fluctuation? If they make 300 products a month, but the capitalist owner can't sell them, why should their labour be devalued?

[Anonymous No.3498591]

>>3498180
>We need a new way of conceiving of what the Left does, basically.


This is why I'm not active anymore. 10+ years of hearing this same thing,

[Anonymous No.3498594]

I met Laurie Penny at a Question Time tweet along in a pub around Somers Town. Would fuck.

[Anonymous No.3498601]

>>3498594
Is this you?

[Reggie Kray !YFAV8ElgIU No.3498620]

>>3498591
But the conversation is so important. If we carry on the way we are, UK and USA are going to be in the same situation as Greece. The majority of 'first world' counties are effectively in a ponzi scheme - the only way to meet debt is outsourcing to third parties who charge interest. The UK national debt is rising by £100,000 every ten seconds, and the government has now overspent to nearly £40,000 for every employed person. That's 40k each they will need to claw back from us.

The 'leftist' strategy now of saying "Okay, keep capitalism, but tax more for social services and equality" is making things worse in the long term. New-labour, Tory and LibDem are so similar that their respective manifesto's will all lead to economic breakdown within two decades.

The new-left (and right) need to factor in some kind of globalization tactic to address cheap Asian manufacture and third world refinery. Most countries are desperate for reform, and they can have it too, but our western desire for blind consumerism (reinforced by an ineffectual system) is shackling the world.

In our current state, the system is spiralling out of economic stability. All it will take is a few revolutions in the right countries, coupled with our military incompetence, and the fragile political card tower will come crashing down.

[Anonymous No.3498775]

>>3498594
Met Laurie Penny? @PennyRed @You #Jealous

[Anonymous No.3499285]

>>3498620
so whats the solution from the left?

[Anonymous No.3499292]

>>3498601
>Writer, Musician, Performer, Spy. By day I sing songs and tell stories to children under 5 on behalf of the Library Service.
But worrying the whole spying on under 5s thing.

[Anonymous No.3499296]

>>3499285
robots do all the shitty jobs
end of scarcity
posthumans
singularity
it's coming - and we should make it work for us

[Anonymous No.3499300]

>>3499296
>singularity denier detected.
What's wrong? Scared of Kurzweils enormous digital cock?

[Anonymous No.3499306]

>>3499296
I think we need to stop putting off the present for the future. "Post-scarcity" seems to be an important part of this, but I don't think it requires robots, nor do I believe anymore that it's going to make things better/work, at least not in the way its portrayed.

[Anonymous No.3499322]

>>3499306
>but I don't think it requires robots
Robots are the worst thing possible. The more robots we have, the more people are forced out of jobs. If a product can be produced for less by software, CNC or automation, then that option will always be taken.

[Anonymous No.3499340]

>>3499322
>The more robots we have, the more people are forced out of jobs. If a product can be produced for less by software, CNC or automation, then that option will always be taken.
It's not an issue if they are the robots, software, CNC or automation of the people, with production communally owned. Though I'm suspicious that if we just wait around that will happen, industrial capitalism used to be argued as a kind of necessary temporary evil, but has changed in the last 100 or so years to be poor people deserve or need to be poor. Even if we live in a post scarcity society, if we continue with this paradigm, we'll have post scarcity based on sweatshops and robots.

[Anonymous No.3499357]

>>3499340
>with production communally owned.
We're not ready for post-scarcity yet. We need the capitalist drive for personal wealth pulling millions of people through university degrees and into productive roles. We need new products, faster computers, faster travel, new energy sources, our advancement is speeding up and we cant do it without capitalism.

If we had adopted global communism when Marx proposed it, we would still be stuck at the tail end of the industrial revolution.

[Anonymous No.3499956]

>>3499300
I read that as 'clock' and got confused.

[Anonymous No.3499993]

>>3499322
Not all jobs are manual, and the increased technology can provide more jobs than the ones it takes away. look at all the online internet entrepreneurs.

[Anonymous No.3500557]

Posting in an epic LP thread.

[Anonymous No.3500579]

>>3499993

Yeah, look at all them before the tech bubble of 2001. Just look at all of them. Most people hate those fucks anyways, except for people like moot and mister facebook.

[Anonymous No.3500605]

>>3500579
You may hate them, but you love using their html based products.

[Anonymous No.3500628]

>>3495989
That works out well considering that Laurie Penny is also a retard.

[Anonymous No.3500630]

>>3500605

[Anonymous No.3500649]

>>3500628
>Laurie Penny is also a retard.

-Mental retardation (MR) is a generalized disorder appearing before adulthood, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors. It has historically been defined as an Intelligence Quotient score under 70.

-Laurie Penny (born 28 September 1986) is a British columnist, blogger and author. She studied English at Oxford, graduating in 2007, then completed her NCTJ in journalism. Penny's blog was launched in 2007 and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2010. She has written columns and features for several publications, and is a columnist for the New Statesman, The Guardian, Vice, The Independent and The Nation. In 2012, Tatler magazine described her as one of top 100 'people who matter', and The Daily Telegraph ranked Penny as the 55th most influential 'left' writer.

[Anonymous No.3500686]

>>3500649
#1 vagina award

[Anonymous No.3500693]

>>3500686

[Anonymous No.3500712]

>>3500693
If a girl can play vidya with her vagina, she deserves some kind of metal.

In my opinion...