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I was on a work trip with a couple colleagues, and we were having dinner and drinks. One of the colleagues and I were discussing a book he recently finished, and then moved onto other books we really enjoyed or were very impactful in our lives. The third coworker eventually says, is all you talk about books?
Guess which way that guy voted …
🤣
crazy how they try so hard to disencourage us from it anyway they can huh.
yeah couldn’t imagine why
For anyone wanting a place to start with theory, I made a basic Marxist-Leninist study guide. feel free to check it out!
O7
O7
Is that John candy?
yup
What movie this from?
I think saw that one when I was a kid. Need to do a rewatch.
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Yup
one hour later and less than 5 paragraphs… only half read/understood. lol
It’s about ghosts or something, which is cool, I guess!
It takes you more than an hour to read five paragraphs?
is it possible to ready anything from capital and understand it the first pass? lol
It is possible to read capital and understand parts of it in the first pass, yes. Especially if read with a group, and/or with supplementary stuff. PSL’s Reading Capital with Comrades podcast was a great review every two chapters. I also recommend David Harvey’s lectures or supplements for deeper dives, after its had time to digest. David Harvey’s got some funny views on Marxism, but he digs into a lot of the footnotes and history which is where all the flavor is.
Reviewing Harvey’s material while criticizing his politics is a great practical application of Marx’s method of critique!
Have you checked out the new lectures going over the Reitter translation? Was considering following that for my next read of Capital.
Not yet, I’m gearing up for a re-read though. I’ve heard mixed things about the new translation. Good to know Harvey’s got some lectures out on it though! I’d be interested to hear his takes about differences. I might check out his lectures on it as a pre-read, def a good call-out!
Do you have a copy of it yet? When are you planning on rereading it?
It isn’t actually Harvey that has lectures, but instead Paul North, the editor! That’s why I am curious about it, more than anything. I do have the book, but have not begun it and don’t plan on reading it until next year at the earliest (too many works ahead of it on my reading list for now).
Yeah makes sense. I’ve been absolutely crawling through Black Reconstruction, but its a work that lends itself to a slow burn. Too much IRL organizing, not enough time for reading! In my heart I’m just a book club left comm, which is why I gotta keep my ass in the struggle lol.
It’s become where most of my reading is articles and internal communiques/bulletins, ntm writing. It does make me miss when study was my highest priority. I’m sure you can relate! But practical work leads to practical study. I’m just a self educated worker, so I never learned to like “complete assignments”. Instead, a comrade says something that pisses me off and it sends me on a quest to prove them wrong. Currently doing a deep dive on Gramsci’s formulation of hegemony, and how it relates to academic formulations particularly in the field of international relations. But stuff like this pulls me away from cracking a 1000+ page doorstop and crushing it, like I used to.
Education and pedagogy is a full time job! On top of all the other work i find myself doing. Especially in our current sectarian phase where even the most clearheaded comrades are ideologically all over the place.
Lol kind of a side quest comment
I didn’t know about this new translation and I think it’s cool, that people do the work to make it more accessible. I’m just a bit surprised to learn, that it’s still based on the second German edition, because “it’s the last edition approved by Marx” before he died. Is Reitter mistrusting Engels? In German language, everyone reads the MEW version, which is based on the fourth edition. Engels says in the foreword to the third edition, that the changes are based on detailed comments by Marx on the French version. I trust him on that. He adds more of Marx changes and additional changes to the fourth edition of the German text by Marx daughter Eleanor, which are sensible too: she adds the original English versions of citations from English texts, instead of the versions which were translated to German and then retranslated to English. Which just makes total sense, but was also a lot of work for Eleanor, to find the original English versions of all those cited books. Everything else added by Engels is clearly marked.
The MEW version of capital, based on the fourth German edition, was published by the SED of the GDR and closely based on the version approved by the Soviet Unions CPSU. Reitter basing it on the second German edition instead, doesn’t avoid the necessity of all this editorial work, it just replaces Engels as an editor, which I find a bit strange. But still, I’m not against this edition. It’s great, that it exists. It’s just interesting to think that everyone is reading slightly different versions of the text.
Yea, it’s very strange to me. It is more approachable when it comes to language, and there are tons of footnotes for comparing with different versions, but the odd way it’s handled means it isn’t the definitive version, but a version.
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“A linen coat costs what it does because women be shopping”
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Grab the new Reitter translation, it flows a lot better.
The meme wasn’t about capital, it was about the communist manifesto, which is very short and easy to read and understand. Engels principles of communism is even easier.
It do be like that
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Theory must be met with practice, they mutually inform and reinforce each other. The important bit is that we cannot rely on simple empiricism and feel out better or worse policies when the entire system needs to change. This is where theory helps us understand what our systems are naturally leading towards, and what will replace them. The world will not be made better by imperialist countries trying slightly different policies gradually, but instead by the adoption of socialism and the end of imperialism and neocolonialism.
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Socialism itself is scientific, the problem is reliance on vulgar empiricism over using empiricism to supplement dialectical materialism. To use a comparison, engineering begins by understanding the laws of physics, then proceeds to apply these laws and create a prototype, before relying on empiricism to refine and improve. Theory in this instance is the study of the laws of social science, and this is tested and affirmed with practice. Your approach denies the theory and overly relies on iterative micro improvements, which can be disastrous while we already have identified root causes of modern ailments as well as solutions.
This is how socialist countries already knew socialism was the answer before implementing it, which they then work on gradually and iteratively improving once it is established.
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The problem here is that, by holding to vulgar empiricism, you are taking an anti-scientific approach while claiming to support science. Again, returning to my example, if I say dropping a ball at sea level into a pit will result in an acceleration towards the Earth at roughly 10 meters per second squared, this is because we have studied gravity. We can test it and verify this, but we already know beforehand how it will end up. In the off chance this fails, we have to obviously reevaluate our understanding of gravity.
When engineers design a new prototype, they do so based on already studied laws of physics that have been tested in real life. They do not begin from scratch, rediscovering the world each time, but instead rely on collective knowledge of how the world works, the laws of physics. Social science is also a science.
Philosophy too is scientific. There is anti-scientific philosophy, such as idealist branches of philosophy like Solipsism, as well as mechanical materialist branches of philosophy like physicalism and vulgar empiricism. These world outlooks do not adequately explain the world and how it functions, even if mechanical materialism is superior to vulgar idealism.
No socialist country has ever claimed to be a utopia. Marx denounced and debunked the mechanical materialist and idealist socialists of the past, and turned socialism scientific by advancing the world outlook of dialectical materialism. The theory of evolution is one such example of a development in science that proves the necessity of dialectical materialism over vulgar mechanical materialism and empiricism. If everyone was a vulgar empiricist, then evolution would be unobservable.
Socialism, once established, already relies on experiment and relying on theory and analysis to plan ahead and deal with problems as they arise. Empiricism is a core part of how this works. The problem is exclusively relying on empiricism, which becomes a rejection of science and knowledge in favor of a vulgar, small worldview.
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“Vulgar” meaning dogmatic, underdeveloped, and incomplete. I haven’t once denied the utility of experimentation and empiricism, just on the reductive use of it. I am aware of the fact that theory comes from experimentation, but it isn’t experimentation itself. A dogmatic use of empiricism is saying we cannot know if dropping this specific apple in this specific place will result in the apple falling until we test it, perhaps that’s a better explanation of the issue.
Contrary to your assertion, I believe in a more scientific approach than that. We move beyond simple, vulgar, underdeveloped empiricism to dialectical materialism, which itself makes abundant use of empiricism. It is the opposite of anti-scientific, it’s the assertion that through practice we form a more and more complete view of the world, and better and better predict what will happen if we do something. Vulgar empiricism removes that predictive element and treats each moment as new and disconnected.
Returning to capitalism and socialism, we can observe definite trends towards centralization and socialization of production, while retaining private distribution. This naturally heightens the gap between the capitalists and workers, despite also killing off competition. The resolution of this is therefore socializing ownership of the means of production, not just the production process itself.
In other words, by analyzing scientific laws through practice, we can better understand how to get what we want without reinventing the wheel every time. Ignoring the laws of science and instead treating everything as disconnected and new, as the vulgar empiricists do, is anti-science.
I just watched that movie again a few weeks ago. such a good one.
what is the title?
Volunteers (1985) with Tom Hanks, John Candy, and Rita Wilson.
thanks!
