/edu/ - Education

Oliver Cromwell was the greatest British Revolutionary.
Oliver Cromwell is akin to Robspierre, a revolutionary far ahead of his time, which helped develope a revolutionary tradition within britain and inspire europe itself to light itself aflame in the fires of revolt. His reforms introduced democracy not only to the state but to all of society itself. His New Model army was itself based of a democratic foundation which pushed for discussion and debate within its ranks in order to make the army iteslf a ideological extension of Parlimentary Political thought, something which was also seen within the Red Army.
Since then, a pile of dirt was thrown across Cromwells grave and he was deemed a imperialist, a genocider, and other such statements which were fabricated by the Royalist restorationists with no basis for such claims other than trying to de-legitimize a authentic Revolutionary which was Cromwell. While not as radical as the Levellers or Diggers, Cromwell still stands as a progressive and revolutionary hero in British history, and rehabilitating his image amongst Marxists and Britons as a whole would lay the foundations for a revolutionary revival in Britain.



In short' I'd like to end with a quote from Trotsky: "British workers can learn incomparably more from Cromwell than from MacDonald, Snowden, Webb and other such compromising brethren. Cromwell was a great revolutionary of his time, who knew how to uphold the interests of the new, bourgeois social system against the old aristocratic one without holding back at anything. This must be learnt from him, and the dead lion of the seventeenth century"

https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/britain/ch06.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/hill-christopher/english-revolution/

With all the corporate consolidations and acquisitions and mergers at an all time high and with banks collapsing left and right. Is the ROP just tanking? And I mean so low that there's no way to draw any more profit except through more and more consolidation. To me it seems that the ROP has gone into the negatives and shareholders primacy is the only policy, abandoning long term plans for short term quarterly results.

Preface: This handy set of rules covers most of the games which disinformation artists play on the Internet (and offline). When you know the tricks, you’ll be able to spot the games. Even if you’ve read this list before, you might be surprised at how useful it is to brush up on these tricks.

Update: This was originally apparently written by H. Michael Sweeney.

1. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. Regardless of what you know, don’t discuss it — especially if you are a public figure, news anchor, etc. If it’s not reported, it didn’t happen, and you never have to deal with the issues.

2. Become incredulous and indignant. Avoid discussing key issues and instead focus on side issues which can be used show the topic as being critical of some otherwise sacrosanct group or theme. This is also known as the “How dare you!” gambit.

3. Create rumor mongers. Avoid discussing issues by describing all charges, regardless of venue or evidence, as mere rumors and wild accusations. Other derogatory terms mutually exclusive of truth may work as well. This method works especially well with a silent press, because the only way the public can learn of the facts are through such “arguable rumors”. If you can associate the material with the Internet, use this fact to certify it a “wild rumor” which can have no basis in fact.

4. Use a straw man. Find or create a seeming element of your opponent’s argument which you can easily knock down to make yourself look good and the opponent to look bad. Either make up an issue you may safely imply exists based on your interpretation of the opponent/opponent arguments/situation, or select the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Amplify their significance and destroy them in a way which appears to debunk all the charges, real and fabricated alike, while actually avoiding discussion of the real issues.

5. Sidetrack opponents with name calling and ridicule. This is also known as the primary attack the messenger ploy, though other methods qualify as variants of that approach. Associate opponents with unpopular titles such as “kooks”, “right-wing”, “liberal”, “left-wing”, “terrorists”, “conspiracy buffs”, “radicals”, “militia”, “racists”, “religious fanatics”, “sexual deviates”, and so forth. This makes others shrink from support out of fear of gaining the same label, and you avoid dealing with issues.

6. Hit and Run. In any public forum, make a brief attack of your opponenPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

A lot of you seem to be under the belief that you can have marxist theory without ontological grounding. But to me it seems the positive sciences that say things about the 'world' rely on a totally certain idea of what 'world' means. So why don't we all have a calm discussion about ontology and attempt to come to an understanding of why there are so many of you (usually tankies) for whomst philosophy and ontology appears 'meaningless'? For me it seems to be the most important thing that we properly understand the dependency and aims of sciences (which simply explicate categories about our "external" reality) on a proper approach towards the world. In a sense, I think Marxists also unconsciously on some level agree with this, because you recognise that the bourgeois sciences mainly operate in service of capital, and this is unwanted. But on the other hand you seem to shoot yourselves on the foot by explicitly denying the validity of ontology in favour of vapid essentialism. From where does this 'materialism' come? Even in naive realist ontologies we see that the brain mediates reality, but there is no account for this in the materialist ontology.

I don't see much substance from Marx by way of arguing for materialism either. Deleuze follows kind of a more enlightened transcendental empiricism which I find far more respectable but that required torturous meditation beginning from a throwing away of beings in favour of the search for a proper ontology. But *you* personally, the person who is reading this, how do you understand ontology, if all you've spent all your life on is the pursuit of small-B beings, never evaluating the existential nature of 'world', which rather than being something we are merely placed in, is constitutive of our being?

What was this book about again? It was my least favorite Lenin book. I know it's like the Organon to Engels' Dialectics of Nature, but every single one of Lenin's arguments was so unremarkable that they're forgettable. He's very terse and verbose. Does Lenin argue badly or is materialism a very dull philosophy and we like making shit up (see the post-1968. French Left).

Like, help a comrade out here. I fell in a post-Marxist reading hellscape due to bourgeois propaganda and need a hefty dose of sanity to get back on track.

in my country, there is a laborist political movement akin to spanish national syndicalism that appropiated the pro-workers discourse
around the 2000s, they invented the term "popular class" in contrast to the "oligarch class". im not exactly sure of its implications, maybe its a rebranding of the universal "middle class" term, or they (more likely) synthetized an alliance between workers and lumpenproles. what are the implications and consequences of this manufactured discourse?

This video is titled The Gay Body Image Crisis by James Somerton, seemingly its a video essay about gay people's body image issues, but in actuality its just bizarre venting against fit people through ahistorical revisionism.

The main narrative presented throughout this essay is that recreational exercise. physical fitness, and bodybuilding were invented by the Nazis, based on antique statues and these were then bought to the US by gay soldiers, where it shaped first the gay sub culture and later became the mainstream image among the heteros. There are a few obvious problems with these statements.
So modern fitness training in the US started about a hundred years before the Nazi party, In addition, the bronze era of bodybuilding, began with Sandow before the turn of the century: predating WW1, So Americans, gay or straight, didn't inspiration from the SS in regard to body image and exercise.
He also makes a claim that the BMI formula was specifically invited by white supremacist and used by Nazis to find an ideal solider bodytype, so again the BMI also predates the Nazis and while the tables were developed after WW2, and they were based on mortality studies, so the normal weight category was the one with the lowestmortality rate, not the one closest to a SS-Supersoldier
The absolute most ridiculous claim he makes is that he states Ernst Röhm was killed because he was fat and hence didn't fit the image of the ideal man, while the party politics surrounding the so called Röhm coup are not even mentioned. Somerton leaves out the fact that one of Röhms greatest rivals, one who talked Hitler into killing him, was Hermann Göring – a man just as fat as Röhm. Seriously, of course this was about power and politics, not body image.

So at the end of the video Somerton, based on these misleading historical narratives, try's to shame people for being into fit people because that's what "Hitler thought was perfect." like the bodies in the clips he uses are not that uncommon in many young men, that's the bodytype of most fit healthy young men and that can be found in any race of men, I mean the whole bodypositivity, HEAS and fat acceptance movement was always ripe with body-shaming and open scorne of thinner people, that is nothing new. But the politicization of a certain body type, its identification with a political ideology, is. concerning to say the least
like guess who also heavily idealized the muscular body in their propaganda,Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

Things to share: Movies, documentaries and mainly books.
Anything related to socialism, anarchy, communism and so on.

>Absolute beginner material

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm

>More Marx and Engels

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/sw/index.htm

Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

Hello I'm kind of a baby socialist. I understand the core concepts of how capitalists exploit workers, surplus value, labor theory of value and the general idea of capitalist exploitation in third world countries. However, if I try digging into anything beyond that my brain goes blank. Even if say, I'll read Mao's little red book and come out with a basic idea of what he was talking about, I'll immediately lose it the next day. It's really frustrating and difficult to get myself to read more knowing I'll just forget everything overnight at worst or in a couple of days at best.
In general, what questions should I be asking? How to approach a new topic that might seem intimidating or complex for a poopbrain like me?

Lets examine these two men, or more specifically, the way they were viewed and the eras they represent.

Washington - Is supposed to represent the true founding of the US. This aristocratic figure, who through war, created this nation. A Napoleonic figure, in the sense that he led the war personally, and was the one who led the nation personally. His era represents a time where the states were in majority control. When the constitution was most respected. And of course, in some circles, what the US represented and should represent. A WASP nation. A Christian nation.

Lincoln - A man who represents the savior of this nation. This unlikely figure who rose from out of nowhere, and had the wherewithal to be able to keep it together. He represents the beginning of the centralization of the US. What's interesting about him was that he technically represents the beginning what the real nation of the US. Whereas before, they were the United States of America, now its the United States of America, with the US identity finally developing. A strangely Napoleonic move, if I do say so. And lastly, of course, the man who was able to overcome the US's original sin. Slavery.

Now for their detractors, its easy. Some will look at Washington (and Lincoln for that matter) as good for nothing racists. Washington so more because of his slaves. While others (reactoids) will look at Lincoln and curse him for causing the end of the US by allowing the Negro the same rights as Whites.

Now lots of these views are all great man theory. And they don't truly show who they were. They were complex humans, with strange morals. Washington hated slavery, but he kept his slaves. Lincoln detested slavery, but said he wanted ship black people back to Africa. This was pre civil war, but nonetheless, shows that these people aren't as simple as "good American guy" or "evil yakubian devil". But its interesting to see how different political tendencies viewed these two men and what they represented over the years. I would say the image in OP is the best example of what I mean. You have these two opposing forces, choosing two pivotal figures in US history, each representing different values. There is a clear reason for that and why still to this day, you will have reactionary forces calling on the memory of Washington over Lincoln. The left side less so, but still supporting similar ideas. John Brown, RePost too long. Click here to view the full text.