I am re-reading Harry Cleaver's "Reading Capital Politically" to hopefully use it as the basis for an introductory study group on economics (as it covers a few chapters from Capital 1) but not sure if it will bear any fruit.

Just started taking a sociology course and I'm eager to read all of the material (it includes Marx, Gramsci, Weber and others) yet I feel intimidated by the amount of work expected - a large volume of reading, annotation and writing expected weekly. Anyone have similar experiences with how to manage rigourous social science courses for newbies?

>>4992 Take notes and think about what you read as you read. Think about how they all interact. Write and highlight the fuck out of the text. Apply the concepts to random ideas throughout your life and daily experiences. Engaging with material is what makes it stick over time. If you dig flash cards look into anki. If you like nested things look into a personal wiki or roam research. Overview classes aren’t difficult because it’s all just general overview of the fields within a field. You got this bud. I’d also suggest >atomic habits >make it stick >how to read a book >deep work

>what you're reading Finished "Is Socialism feasible?" (Geoffrey M. Hodgson, 2019). Meh, he's like a less intelligent and more verbose Alec Nove (mixed economy good and maybe some co-ops, NHS also OK, big socialism bad). In a footnote he complains that the writing of writers such as "Marx are marred by anti-Semitic remarks." The sentence the footnote is connected with doesn't mention Marx (nor the sentence before that or the page or the page before that page). My impression is that the author had a to-do list of bad things to say about commies and when rewriting parts in the main body of the text, he forgot to change this footnote. Authors of the far right get a careful reading and polite response, for left-wingers he analyses a few slogans and finds these lacking in nuance (page 156): >An even cruder misunderstanding is that public good means ‘good for the public’. While anyone who has taken Econ 101 should spot this error, it is nevertheless widespread. The term ‘good’ in this context does not mean virtuous or worthwhile. Instead in this case it means objects of trade, including traded services. Bad things, like tobacco, heroin and personnel mines, are also goods in this sense. As leader of the UK Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn has opined that ‘education is a public good’ and suggested that this implies that it should all be provided by government and funded by taxation. All three leaders of the UK Green Party since 2012 – Natalie Bennett, Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley – have repeated the phrase ‘education is a public good’. He continues on this on page 157: >Influential organizations are led by people who have not learned the lessons of Econ 101. Then on page 158, there is this breathtaking finding: >Nevertheless, with education there are also strong positive spill-over effects. Educated people help to raise the levels of public culture and discourse and can pass on some of their skills to others. Educated people are also vital for a healthy democracy. Page 159: >Consider the positive externalities of education. It would be impossible or socially destructive for every educated person to charge a fee to participants in an intellectual dinner conversation, or to invoice the government for making a well-informed choice when casting his or her vote in the ballot box. The internalization of these positive externalities is impossible or undesirable. So the message is that your soundbite is bad, and even though I agree with the gist of what you say here I must denounce you since you fail at econ 101, even though I disagree with econ 101 myself. As you can probably tell by now, he's a pretty shitty writer. I picked up the book because Cockshott's TANS is in the references, but he doesn't actually discuss sortition etc. (I don't believe he has actually read it). He also refers to the work of Rudolph Rummel when discussing the USSR body count. If you don't know who that is, see this thread: https://archive.fo/GCcfp

I'm pretending to do my homework. Never posted here before, and I want to read theory but I'm always procrastinating. Help me, I'm in neverending pain.

>>5018 Read the books atomic habits, deep work, and make it stick. Do your homework anon.

>>5019 Thank you... Last time I tried reading a book for productivity I almost read half of it. I'm afraid that nothing I read will work because my impulse control is so fucking abysmal. Anyway, I'm trying to fix something that someone helped me write for my assignment, which is overdue at this point, but god fucking damn, my douchebag-ass neighbors just had to throw a fucking party with alcohol and blaring music right when I'm most worried about submitting this shit ASAP. It's midnight, and it sounds like it's coming from inside my house. Makes me wanna shoot myself, I'm actually tearing up. Sorry, I just wanted to get it out my chest. I think I'll stick around this board from now on and try to actually read something.

I'm investigating about Object Oriented Ontology. The name has semblance to a programming concept which is pure neoliberalism and makes me want to shoot myself. There is still a lot about philosophy that I don't get, it sounds radically different than hegelianism (and materialist/marxist hegelianism), because as I have understood it so far, it ignores the human element in the understanding of reality. An object is never just itself, it exists in relation to a shit ton of things, and these relations are social in nature. The social part is human. It could be animals of course, but the point is that a set of consciousnesses has to create said social relations of objects. Zizek doesn't seem to have too many qualms on this area as far as I've seen, so maybe I'm missing something obvious. And it seems OOO is kantian + heideggerian in origin? Which ignores the advances made by hegel and marx to "unify" the phenomena and neumena.

>>5023 Hmmm, from a youtube comment of a lecture of the star of OOO: >Most of the issues raised by Harman in this lecture were solved long ago by Hegel. It's disturbing how many philosophers can still continue to work in the shadow of Kant. So maybe I'm not that far off the mark. I feel a need to tell everyone IRL about my shitty understanding of Hegel, but nobody seem to give a shit TT_TT

>>5023 >a programming concept which is pure neoliberalism and makes me want to shoot myself How many layers of ideology are you on right now?

>>5023 I don't think OOO is kantian or heideggerian explicitly. Maybe just on the most vague levels. Would like it if someone else could clarify.

Rafiq thread was excellent. My collection of his compilation of posts grows and I am very happy with the discussion there.

>>5022 Did you get your stuff done anon? Did you at least get some sleep? It's all gonna be okay bud.

>>5053 Thanks for taking the time to read it, Comrade

Saw this in the OP of some poltoid bait thread on /leftypol/ where OP claims he tricked a Marxist professor into gifting him his old books and then burned them. Wondering if there are copies of any of them in socialist website/newspaper online archives, libgen, internet archive, wayback machine etc

>>5082 go check on libcom, im pretty sure i saw something like radical america there

Finished "I Am a Strange Loop" by Douglas Hofstadter. It's musings about how minds work without talking about the brain as an organ, very autobiographical and full of tedious punning (I admit I'm somewhat biased against puns in general as I always think about the poor translators when I encounter them). He makes the point that language doesn't only have metaphorical meaning in a few sentences here and there. People talk and think in metaphors and analogies all the time, it's just that we usually only explicitly call out the big and wild ones. He gives an example of you eating a cookie from a plate and remarking it's delicious, some kids then eagerly grab similar-looking cookies from the plate (instead of pulling the one you said is good out of your mouth like a REAL SCIENTIST would, stupid kids). The kids reached a conclusion through a mini-analogy. Hofstadter has actually worked on a computer program that finds analogies and my hope when picking up the book was he'd describe it in some detail as well as other AI research, but he doesn't. Instead he craps on soul-body dualism, ultra-individualism, and John Searle's Chinese room argument. He argues against these three entangled issues (or is it one issue?) very well, but I didn't need any convincing. I'm more like Hofstadter when it comes to that than he is himself.

"The Invention of Capitalism" by Michael Perelman, very good book about Adam Smith and other classical economists. It's a common trope among Marxists that economics used to be more scientific while the bourgeoisie had been a progressive force and then took a nosedive post Ricardo. The book shows that the change to capitalism was not a basically automatic outcome of tendencies within feudalism, but to a great extent helped by political machinations, with our respectable philosophers/economists being quite aware of that and being for a rather hands-on approach despite how they are remembered. There's some real vile shit in it from their private letters.

>>5082 guess that guy succeeded his goal of triggering me because wow, fuck that guy. burning a book isn't the most evil thing you can do but it is one of the most transparently, pointlessly evil things you can do, IMO

>>5499 I thoroughly enjoyed reading "Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Hofstadter. The rest of your post was good, I have little to comment on, but I enjoyed your review. >I'm more like Hofstadter when it comes to that than he is himself. Based and marxism-pilled.

Currently reading Engels' Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. It's an interesting work. I've only read the very beginning so far, but am very interested in seeing where the rest goes. On another note, I've been thinking a lot about Kant and his transcendental idealism. I recently read Marx's Theses on Feuerbach and Engels' Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, and both touch on Kant's philosophy, though the Theses do it more indirectly. Reading these I think I've been able to understand and form a pretty consistent critique of transcendental idealism from a materialist point of view, though this only makes me more interested in actually reading Kant, which I haven't. I guess I'll work on studying him more closely as I read these other Marxist works. I'll probably start with Descartes then Hume or something like that. Might check out Leibniz at some point too. >>5978 So the book shows how economists/philosophers like Smith and Ricardo were not just responsible for indirectly 'justifying' liberalism, but also directly engaged with its politics, all the while knowing its flaws and surrounding opportunism? That sounds pretty interesting, I guess I'll check it out sometime. Will add it to my 'critique of liberalism' reading list.

halfway through my first book since probably middleschool, Against Empire by Michael Parenti I wish this board was more active >>5992 someone did this on /mu/ once too, they got a whole suitcase full of EXTREMELY rare Three Six Mafia tapes and other very valuable Memphis Rap releases and were like, >I no longer agree with the message of this jungle music, it promotes violence and degeneracy and then procedes to start melting them and throwing them in the garbage

>>6018 I've had this book for a while but have put off reading it. Maybe it's time. >>6024 You can make it more active comrade. Look through the catalog and see if there's anything you like if you don't wanna make a thread! >>6020 Based. One of my favorite Engel's works, was a huge breakthrough moment for me in getting the 'bigger picture' of humanity.

Anyone read Ted Reese's book "Socialism or Extinction: Climate, Automation and War in the Final Capitalist Breakdown"?

Am reading Carr's History of Soviet Russia. Currently on Part 3 (Socialism in one coutnry), vol. 1. PARTS 1 and 2 were really good.

Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations". When people sit alone at home and do philosophy, they rip words out of their usual social contexts, and with these shifted meanings they "find" many "logical flaws" in how normies are talking. Wittgenstein points to normal usage of words and while he gives many weird scenarios, their purpose is to highlight by contrast something about how language normally works. No familiarity with other philosophical works is needed to read this. The less familiar you are with philosophy, the more often you'll say to yourself while reading: Well, isn't this banal. The more familiar you are with philosophy, the more likely it is you will get a headache.

Having a quick skim through .pdf attached atm

It's Christmas comrades. Time to get some mulled wine and armchair away the days with good books. Still working my way through Zizek's Living In The End Times. Very much enjoying it regardless of its length.

Passages from the Life of a Philosopher" by Charles Babbage (copy from standardebooks.org). Disjointed ramblings about physics and engineering, how annoying street musicians and beggars are, his fascination with his figurine "Silver Lady" etc. He also makes lists about which ethnic groups play which annoying instruments in public and who encourages them (e.g. "ladies of doubtful virtue"). He got harassed a lot in public over his opinion on banning street music by the mob. While he's explaining his calculating Difference Engine at an exhibit: <…I was insulted by impertinent questions conveyed in a loud voice from a person at a distance in the crowd. My taste for music, and especially for organs, was questioned. As for his other politics: <In the course of my efforts to inform myself of the real wants of those around me, I profited much by the experience of one or two friends, both most excellent and kindhearted men, whose official duties rendered them far more conversant than myself with the subject. Mr. Walker and Mr. Broderip, both of them magistrates, were amongst my intimate friends. Mr. Walker, the author of The Original, maintained that no one ever was actually starved in London, except through his own folly or fault. <Whenever any further extension of our representative system becomes necessary, the dangers arising from the extension of the personal suffrage may fairly be counterbalanced by giving a plurality of votes to property. About half the book is like looking at a REEEing Pepe with a monocle. Not recommended.

Hey, this is anon from earlier in the thread. I fucking passed the bar exam! Woo! Anyone know of any resources for leftist attorneys?

>>6337 https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/index.htm

>>6338 I lold

>>6337 Not sure if this is what you're asking for, but have you heard of Evgeny Pashukanis? Soviet law theorist, seems like the most important thinker in marxist critical law theory. I keep hearing things about him in local marxist circles, and he does seem interesting, but I haven't yet read anything from him. https://www.marxists.org/archive/pashukanis/index.htm

>>6337 Congrats man! You're free!

>>6352 >The pre-eminent Soviet jurist of the 1920s and early 1930s, Pashukanis fell victim to the great purges of the late 1930s and was thereafter reviled as an “enemy of the people” until his posthumous legal rehabilitation in 1956. https://www.marxists.org/archive/pashukanis/biog/biogintro.htm stalin purged literally all the good marxists. it's fucking crazy

This site wont let me post threads, i wanted to create a thread with the contents below but the captcha 100% of the time says its wrong or expired so i dunno.. can someone post a thread for me? I have fuck all time but to be a proper revolutionairy i need to read and comprehend much more than i do. I don't have the time to read books and not remember the contents. I was hoping everyone could drop their tips, hints and self-help books on reading and studying more effectively so that we can all become more effective students.

>>6395 Any other examples of important Marxists being purged by Stalin? I have limited experience with Stalin's purges and I don't want to be sullied by Western propaganda information.

>>6399 Lukacs wasn’t purged but he was exiled, and it was sort of his own fault

>>6400 WHat did he do?

>>6398 >make it stick >how to read a book >deep work >atomic habits

https://mobile.twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1335647195341582336 Drones are queered.

Still reading Hegel's logic. (a secondary source on Hegel's Science of Logic). I read ridiculously slow and I've been very distracted lately. I'm like 20% of the book done after months of reading lol. I recently shared the books with a friend and they already surpassed me -.- My biggest hurdle is actually starting to read. The book's material is not easy for me, so I actively try to not read. I can have the book open in front of me, but I'll watch an hour of youtube videos just to avoid starting to read. I'm not sure how to mitigate this.

>>6422 (me) I was reading Capital a while ago, also ridiculously slow. I noticed I've gotten much better at reading, because when I read normie books, I can read them much much quicker and with less effort than before (I still read them slow, but at least I can read now). I stopped reading after chapter 1 *facepalm* but I'm meaning to retake it once I've matured my Hegel knowledge a little bit more.

Finished "A History of Psychology" by Mikhail Yaroshevsky, published in the USSR in 1990. It starts with psychological conceptions of the ancient Greeks. Did you know that they already did vivisection of the brain of animals back then to check what part does what? "Experiments were carried out not only upon animals but even on human beings (criminals who had been condemned to death)." Freud really shrinks to an unremarkable figure when you have broader context. Pavlov and Vigotsky get far more attention in the book and rightly so.

Hi, I watching lectures on LISP right now.

I'm reading "Understanding Syntax" by Maggie Tallerman. My hope was that this book could directly help me programming something with some limited ability for figuring out syntax (I'm mostly interested in automatic summarizing), but the presentation is too informal for that. The author lists many names for particular components of sentences and what kind of checks you can make to figure out whether you guessed the correct name for the component. These checks often rely on your own understanding as an adult human speaker of English. Does this particular switcheroo result in an ungrammatical sentence? This approach won't work for a program (unless the program gets to manage a budget for outsourcing these questions to humans) :/

Im watching this video and from 3:57 onwards I'm stuck because I can't understand what he's saying https://youtu.be/emnYMfjYh1Q?t=242 It's advanced english

>>6488 There are captions available. Is it that you can't hear or that you literally don't understand the words?

Finished "Fashionable Nonsense" by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, a famous book from the 90s about how pomo writers bamboozle their audience with terms cribbed from math and physics that neither the audience nor the writers understand. It's really just that, investigating the crimes against math and physics with a small bit of conjecturing on top about motives. It's not about debunking the targeted authors regarding other themes (e.g. various claims about history) or methods they employ (e.g. psychoanalysis). The book also contains Sokal's hoax essay "Transgressing the Boundaries…" It was funny when I heard about this nonsense getting published by a pomo journal, but reading it is something else. It has over 100 footnotes and while not all of them go to pomo sources, what's in this essay plus the rest of the book shows that he and Bricmont must have read literally thousands of pages of this pomo dreck. The book has been presented in mainstream media like NYT as an attack on the radical left coming from conservatives. This is also how it's seen on the (self-identified) radical left. Like their targets, Sokal and friends are mostly non-Marxist progressives to the left of the US Democrats (people like Barbara Ehrenreich or Chomsky). Though that shouldn't really matter. A physics guy with sympathies that are monarchist or whatever could have also debunked the voodoo math/physics by these "intellectuals" and his claims about that would be just as valid.

Currently reading The Hierarchies of Cuckoldry and Bankruptcy by Charles Fourier. Simply just because I'm a cuck.