I swear every time I read some commie stuff I get halfway and it starts referencing other stuff which I click and then I get halfway and then it references something else and suddenly I’m reading critiques from 1800
Lol. If we didn’t do that then we would get accused of not including our sources. But i get your point, sometimes we can tend to be overly thorough.
I view this as being a bit like mathematics. The things we say make sense to someone who is already versed in the subject but for someone who doesn’t already understand or agree with certain concepts or ideas we don’t necessarily want to rehash arguments that were already laid out in works a hundred years prior so we just refer back to those in the same way that when you do modern mathematics you don’t need to repeat proofs that were already done in the 19th century. You can just take those theorems as given and if you are really interested in how they were derived you can still go back to the original literature and read up on it.
Of course you can still engage with and understand the more advanced arguments even without going all the way back to the basics but then you need to accept certain things as axiomatic, because it would take too much time to go back and explain them every time.
Let’s say for instance that we are talking about imperialism. To clarify what exactly we mean when we talk about imperialism we may briefly give the Leninist definition of imperialism. You can either accept that this is the definition or you can ask why. Why is it defined that way and why does it make sense? Well for that you would have to go and read Lenin’s work on Imperialism. Which in turn references but does not necessarily thoroughly explain certain concepts about the nature of capitalism that were worked out earlier by Marx.
You see, you can either choose to go down this rabbit hole and invest the time it takes to really go to the basics and build up from there, or you can take it as given that this has already been worked out and you can try and understand how we apply it to the modern day, which saves time and is more practical. Neither is wrong, it just depends on your personal interest.
At least this person is the polar opposite of that guy from yesterday who refused to watch that video about the great firewall, accused the author of being paid by the CPC, then refused to engage in any good faith until finally complaining about getting “dogpiled” lol.
Definitely. I have liked the attitude i have seen so far from this person a lot. I think the most important thing is being curious and open to learning. Ignorance is only a sin if it’s willful. Unfortunately, as you pointed out, some other people choose go to great efforts to remain ignorant.
It’s so hard to wrap my head around too. I know I grew up around much much more radical folks than your average westerner but still had to get over some internalized brainworms as I grew more mature but I never found it hard to be self critical and have always strove to be able to put myself in others shoes or challenge accepted narratives. On that last part I thank my parents and stepdad for inoculating me pretty well against bourgeois/imperialist propaganda. I remember I got called a lib quite a few times on the old CTH subreddit, but instead of telling everyone else they were wrong and acting smug or superior I dug into their claims and realized “oh shit I have totally been misinformed on or had the most important bits of almost all of history omitted. Fuck me, time to take my ass back to school”.
Humility is key to learning. Admitting that you can be wrong and don’t know everything. Unfortunately in capitalist society the opposite behavior is encouraged and rewarded.
Between that and a lifetime of low wage labor, by the time I started reading volume one I practically skimmed over the first 5 chapters because it all just seemed perfectly obvious when I went through it. If anyone else is trying to read capital but gets bored reading a bunch of simple algebra forms about bolts of linen and wage labor in the abstract because you already have a passing familiarity with Marxist concepts, I usually recommend people skim if not just skip ahead to Chapter 5 cuz that’s where he really starts cooking once his whole economic proof is out of the way.
See my comment here.
You better not be sending me into recursion when I click this
hold my marxist theory, i’m going in.
I swear every time I read some commie stuff I get halfway and it starts referencing other stuff which I click and then I get halfway and then it references something else and suddenly I’m reading critiques from 1800
Lol. If we didn’t do that then we would get accused of not including our sources. But i get your point, sometimes we can tend to be overly thorough.
I view this as being a bit like mathematics. The things we say make sense to someone who is already versed in the subject but for someone who doesn’t already understand or agree with certain concepts or ideas we don’t necessarily want to rehash arguments that were already laid out in works a hundred years prior so we just refer back to those in the same way that when you do modern mathematics you don’t need to repeat proofs that were already done in the 19th century. You can just take those theorems as given and if you are really interested in how they were derived you can still go back to the original literature and read up on it.
Of course you can still engage with and understand the more advanced arguments even without going all the way back to the basics but then you need to accept certain things as axiomatic, because it would take too much time to go back and explain them every time.
Let’s say for instance that we are talking about imperialism. To clarify what exactly we mean when we talk about imperialism we may briefly give the Leninist definition of imperialism. You can either accept that this is the definition or you can ask why. Why is it defined that way and why does it make sense? Well for that you would have to go and read Lenin’s work on Imperialism. Which in turn references but does not necessarily thoroughly explain certain concepts about the nature of capitalism that were worked out earlier by Marx.
You see, you can either choose to go down this rabbit hole and invest the time it takes to really go to the basics and build up from there, or you can take it as given that this has already been worked out and you can try and understand how we apply it to the modern day, which saves time and is more practical. Neither is wrong, it just depends on your personal interest.
At least this person is the polar opposite of that guy from yesterday who refused to watch that video about the great firewall, accused the author of being paid by the CPC, then refused to engage in any good faith until finally complaining about getting “dogpiled” lol.
Definitely. I have liked the attitude i have seen so far from this person a lot. I think the most important thing is being curious and open to learning. Ignorance is only a sin if it’s willful. Unfortunately, as you pointed out, some other people choose go to great efforts to remain ignorant.
It’s so hard to wrap my head around too. I know I grew up around much much more radical folks than your average westerner but still had to get over some internalized brainworms as I grew more mature but I never found it hard to be self critical and have always strove to be able to put myself in others shoes or challenge accepted narratives. On that last part I thank my parents and stepdad for inoculating me pretty well against bourgeois/imperialist propaganda. I remember I got called a lib quite a few times on the old CTH subreddit, but instead of telling everyone else they were wrong and acting smug or superior I dug into their claims and realized “oh shit I have totally been misinformed on or had the most important bits of almost all of history omitted. Fuck me, time to take my ass back to school”.
Humility is key to learning. Admitting that you can be wrong and don’t know everything. Unfortunately in capitalist society the opposite behavior is encouraged and rewarded.
I’m clicking all the “read my other comment” links until I’ve basically read Capital Vol. 1 in its entirety through Lemmy posts.
Between that and a lifetime of low wage labor, by the time I started reading volume one I practically skimmed over the first 5 chapters because it all just seemed perfectly obvious when I went through it. If anyone else is trying to read capital but gets bored reading a bunch of simple algebra forms about bolts of linen and wage labor in the abstract because you already have a passing familiarity with Marxist concepts, I usually recommend people skim if not just skip ahead to Chapter 5 cuz that’s where he really starts cooking once his whole economic proof is out of the way.
You’ll get vol. 2 and vol. 3 from watching all the dang lectures we link too.
Here’s the latest one I linked, Michael Hudson on Marxism, Parasites, and Debt Cancellation
Lmao, I’ve tried to minimize my copy-pasting of comments over time so there’s more links in my comments now, haha.