cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/54566460
Books, pamphlets, manifestos, you name it/whatever. Please just leave out terminally online "bread"tubers, thank you.
Ideally from a few reputable Anarchist to get a better picture. The literature doesn’t have to be exclusively about authority, but should mention it in relative detail.
Edit: Since I rightfully got called out on the following sentence in another thread as being demeaning of online educators work
Please just leave out terminally online "bread"tubers, thank you.
I should maybe clarify that I meant people like Contrapoints who have delightfully little to do with any kind of leftistm, let alone Anarchism
With the exception of “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” (which I read as a teen, but in a way more akin to how you read a novel and not really in a scientific manner), I haven’t heard of the other works you mentioned. Will look into them too.
“Scientifically” re-reading the classics and then expanding into stuff I haven’t read yet is definitely on my “priority Todo”, I really should get around to it.
(I haven’t gotten around to it for years, the brainfog and all the other baggage ain’t helpin’)
I know what you mean! I’ll probably read through the r/TheDeprogram Study Guide after the Capital volume 1-3 reading threads finish later this year, and adjust my own reading list as well. I like to reread the classics, I think I’ve read Socialism: Utopian and Scientific 4 times by this point.
From the Deprogram Reading List thread:
Reads like an endorsement; coming form a grad admin and all :p /lh /hj
Being honest, I agree with the Grad admin, I’m pretty pro-China and pro-AES. There’s a difference between what I would consider to be good, Marxist critique, and ultraleftism, which is what Marxism Today falls under. A lot of his videos are pretty good, but the MLM perspective does result in some idealist critique that reveals itself to be inadequate the longer we observe China’s trajectory.
I – in turn – tend to agree with excluding the modern-day PRC from AES/state socialism and do think something akin to “bourgeois state of a new type” is an adequate categorisation ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also calling Maoists ultras/idealist 💀
I’m aware we disagree here, and I’m not trying to derail. I’m okay with disagreeing.
For the PRC, public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy, and governs the large firms and key industries. The working class is steadily advancing in material conditions, and as production develops it is increasingly planned. A bourgeois state would not allow capital to be so constrained and boxed in, and at the same time a state cannot be anything other than an extension of the ruling class. In China, this class has been the working class since the revolution, and it is backed up by the fact that the CPC is supported by over 90% of the population.
The PRC certainly isn’t much farther than the primary stage of socialism, as they call it, but already aspects of the intermediate stage are appearing. Reality more closely aligns with the CPC’s stated goals and strategies than it does their critics, which is why most ML orgs back China and consider it socialist right now.
As for Maoists, I don’t mean Mao specifically. Mao was a Marxist-Leninist, and his contributions to China and its developments in socialism have been critical. Mao is one of history’s most important Marxist-Leninists. However, I disagree with the univeralsality of strategies like the cultural revolution, protracted people’s war, and so forth, while Maoists see them as universal to every revolution. Maoists tend to come to the conclusion that revolution is impossible in the global north, which just ends up pushing responsibility onto the global south. That’s why I consider Maoists to be ultraleftists, not just anyone that supports Mao and upholds Mao’s contributions to Chinese socialism (also called Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong Thought), which I am fully in support of.
Just figured I’d elaborate a bit, you don’t have to respond.
Didn’t mean to sound confrontational, thanks for the response nonetheless <3
No worries! I feel like if there’s disagreement, then it’s only fair that I give my honest and clear justifications for what I believe, the other party can decide what they wish from there. You weren’t confrontational, IMO, it’s more that I responded the way I do to pretty much any disagreement for the sake of open discussion and transparency.