/edu/ - Education

>>21650
I'd not focus on whether internal or external contradictions are more important in general (part of dialectical materialism is the rejection of universal logic - no need to generalize things this abstract), instead it's important to just know that both internal and external contradictions exist, and both may spur development. For dynamic systems that are self-moving, internal may play a larger role. For a rock - what internal contradictions are impelling it to change? Another important piece is also Mao's idea that external contradictions only work via internal contradictions. (I think this can probably be justified scientifically, but some people are very against finding dialectical principles like this in nature. It's important imo to not just apply abstract philosophical logic in a blanket way unless its proven to apply to a reasonable large number of domains. Else we just turn Mao into Sun-Tzu). As far as primary and secondary contradictions, I think of it practically (I don't think it holds any real strength as a concept otherwise; i think these things are able to be shown empirically but not beforehand, at least in social issues), like sudoku. In sudoku there are lots of 'contradictions', but usually you'll be pulling at one thread and that lets you pull at another, and so on, until the whole puzzle is solved. I think this relates best to practice, though, and not theory.

>>21658
>a-ha, but thinking about things is in fact philosophy!
This is just the kind of bullshit that phil grads pull when stemlords criticize philosophy but I repeat, you do not need to know philosophy, much less garbage like Hegel, to understand marxism which is at its core just an in-depth analysis of capitalism.

>>21662
First of all, I am also a STEMlord. I majored in computer science and work in biotechnology now. Still, I realized philosophy is indespendible and you won't even grasp that until you've educated yourself.

>>a-ha, but thinking about things is in fact philosophy!
Not my point. Marxism is in itself philosophical and its distinct analysis of capitalism is founded on critiques against and an advancement from other philosophies, that currently still dominate Western society in which people (including you) have been socialized into. You likely operate under fallacious philsophical reasoning as instilled by the primitive philosophy of this society. That you don't like capitalism and prefer socialism doesn't mean much. The fallacious philosophical underpinnings of your thought misconceive of whatever you believe Marxism and socialism is and that will show once you are confronted with concrete matters. You have *some* conception of what Marx's analysis means and you have *some* reason to support it, that doesn't mean the former reflects the real thing or that you are able to replicate his method of analysis once you stand on your own.

>>21652
>>21660
Thanks for the answers, guys.

Told that the reading group may be considering Settlers in the future, I was told whilst Settlers is a culturally important document, it doesn't have much the modern left can benefit from reading it and has many flaws to it.

And I was instead suggested this reading list to better study the question of race and class in the American settler social formation and how racial chauvanism presented itself and sabotage the proletarian struggle for power, something that we can't understand from reading any one book.

Here's the reading lists of books we should read before Settlers:
>A Nation Beneath Our Feet by Steven Hahn
<Workers of the World Undermined by Beth Sims
>Roots of Oppression by Talbot
<The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights by Robin Blackburn
>Whiteness of a different color by Matthew Frye Jacobson
<Black Awakening in Capitalist America by Robert L. Allen

W. E. B. Du Bois is an author that would also be integral to study the question as well

I think reading all these books and authors would give us a good comprehensive understanding, but we should also eventually read Settlers for its impact on the left as well to give us the tools to expose arguements and criticisms of the book by those who haven't actually read it

>>10454
>Told that the reading group may be considering Settlers in the future, I was told whilst Settlers is a culturally important document, it doesn't have much the modern left can benefit from reading it and has many flaws to it.
Black Reconstruction -> Settlers -> False Nationalism, False Internationalism are pretty much the go-to combination for those interested in understanding the thread topic from the context of the New Communist Movement.

This Saturday
Time: 6pm UTC (subject to change if it's inconvenient)
We'll be covering Lenin's The Discussion On Self-Determination Summed Up. (again)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jul/x01.htm
We want to give everyone the opportunity to read and join the discussion, since this text is closing out our introduction to the topic before we move into the modern context in the following weeks. We'll be doing an overview of the Self-Determination question as well, including the question of how the question manifests in the present.

The plan for the readings in the following weeks are:
<1> Decolonization is not a metaphor by Tuck & Yang (2012) (40 pages) https://clas.osu.edu/sites/clas.osu.edu/files/Tuck%20and%20Yang%202012%20Decolonization%20is%20not%20a%20metaphor.pdf
<2> Democratic Confederalism by Abdulla Ocalan (2011) (48 pages) http://www.freeocalan.org/books/#/book/democratic-confederalism
<3> Dawn: Marxism and National Liberation from Tricontinental (2021) (30ish pages) https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-37-marxism-and-national-liberation/

After that, we are planning to look at more specific contexts drawing form this list >>9295 and other places.
Here is the list of suggestions we have been discussing so far.
<Stalin – National Question
<Aimée Césaire
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>10463
Ocelan is the most shameless plagiarist I've ever seen. Is there anyone he hasn't ripped off?

How can you have readings on nationalism without Benedict Anderson or Ernest Gellner?

>>9279
Element client tells me "no known servers" when I try to join.

I got into an argument with my professor on this topic. What book should I read on the great terror and to disprove some lies (especially about how it was to target political enemies)? Also, I heard my professor say the Britain was a liberal democracy, can anyone elaborate on that?

>>21634
>Britain was a liberal democracy
In the sense that it was a corrupt shithole and the political elite controlled the populace's culture and labor, he's correct.

>>16210
>>16210
>tbh tho you are best off joining an effective org and learning through doing rather than reading theory
It is actually possible to do both. It is important that as communists that we make full use of democratic centralism as a method for which we make decisions concerning how we orient ourselves toward the struggle. Democratic centralism, compared to the so-called principle of "horizontalist concensus," enables the most organizationally advanced section of our class, in terms of development, to act quickly, to be able to turn on a dime and take off, starting off in strategized basegroups, and with clear vision of the objectives, and with coherent and developed understanding of the actuality of revolution, set out to intervene in the authentic struggles by the people, amidst the cascade of crises under this murderous system, the current material stage of imperialist capitalism. Our understanding of organization is that in order to that we may help make revolution, alongside the masses, providing them a platform from which they can act in their authentic crises, is that we have to be highly organized and purposeful: that there is absolutely a need for democratic decision making, and it must be a centralized fashion, where we have a debate within a set time frame, we have that necessary discussion time, and then we act, and do what the majority of us said we should do, and orient ourselves to unity of action, even if we might disagree.

>>16213
These do about as much relevant stuff as the DSA
There's no real party organization for workers in the US or really anywhere except for tentatively voting for established libleft parties, in this case the Democrats

>>20220
Seems good, I'll give it a read

>>21544
>>20220
Ok now that I've read it, it seems pretty good for any genuine Marxist organization to get shit done. It's meant to be read as a group and is a from an explicitly Maoist lens.

It outlines the baseline strategies and tactics for a Marxist org quite well. Tbf it's written by actual revolutionaries and not armchairs. Would love to see more takes on organization.

>>21168

Telling a recovering white nationalist to read fucking Marx and Lenin is like telling someone raised in a fundamentalist Christian cult to read De Principiis Naturalis and On The Origin of Species.

We're not a religion, we don't have holy books. Surely we can advance on the "science" of Marxism enough such that there would be newer better books, ie written in the last few centuries.

>>21190
You're essentially right on both accounts; the white race is under attack from two sides, and black americans do have anti-white sentiments within their culture.

Capitalism is not inherently discriminatory enough to save one race over another, and so white people too find themselves always under threat. This is the appeal of fascism, that there can be some higher authority that curbs the chaos of the market, in favor of race, or an ideal for a nation. The other way whiteness is under attack is from radical marxist cultural critiques, that show how whiteness is not a historically consistent or internally coherent (or even able to be definitively delineated) category in reality. They show that whiteness is a coalition of peoples, who have banded together for mutual benefit, gravitating around the wealthy (who already tend to be white, and male, for historical reasons). Marxists (and people culturally touched by marxist ideas, e.g. black progressives) seek to break up "the white race", because what it really is is a politically expedient fiction which gives a wider social base of support to the bourgeoisie.

On the issue of black culture, it's apparent that they have so much culture that is influenced by their african roots, and by the traditions created during slavery, as well as culture that came from the rural white working class, peasants, and lumpen, as well as culture that developed more recently from the urban black working class. This is much larger than just being anti-white (which does exist, and for good reason, when structural racism and individual racism both are still around, holding down and hurting black people).

>>21193
Slurs like "cracker" or slurs like "lol u can't season ur dry chicken breasts"? Bcuz for me, I just laugh at the latter insults cuz they're true, and honestly i think it's important to have healthy inter-cultural banter, like you're still stuck in racism if you feel shocked by anyone lobbing meaningless insults at other people for doing smth different. If you mean individual words… idk what your situation is, if you were the kind of whitey to grow up surrounded by non-white ppl and u got bullied for it and probably need actual therapy, or if you're just offended at the idea of being denigrated based on youPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>they stopped being my friend when they found out i was trans and gay
life imitates art

>>21165
>i always see examples of “anti-whitism” online so it radicalizes more when i'm trying to not be radicalized
>>21159
>i don't want to be one anymore after my life went to shit when everyone found out
so you want to stop being a white supremacist because it's inconvenient for you now, but you can't because you keep shitting your pants at "white ppl cant season they food :joy:" tweets? sorry if misinterpreting

If it's anything like my racist tendencies directed towards myself, the only way to get over it is to bite the bullet and look into each core belief deeper, like >>21357 is doing with race and IQ. If these ideas were something you could just ignore, you would never have become a wignat in the first place. A thread on class collaboration(the idea and history of it) would be well-placed for this goal.

>>20140
There's an app for this too called iNaturalist that this channel mentioned. It shows you species indigenous to your area and even has community features to join people in projects to restore indigenous ecosystems.
https://www.inaturalist.org

>>20139
Does anyone know more stuff like those videos? It's fascinating.

>>20092
How the fuck hasn't anyone even mentioned Masanobu Fukuoka on this thread yet?
He's like the centrepiece of this study.

>>21589
Who is that?

>>21571
I found this book, "How to Read a Tree", it's by a guy interested in natural navigation but it's not limited to navigation, it has lots of stuff about how a trees environment, history and health are reflected in its shape and parts.

It was in 628-630 after the treaty of Hudaybiya when Muhammad sent letters to every Arab ruler and notable non-Arab ones. At that point Muhammad had basically defeated Quraysh militarily, controlled the trade routes going to the Byzantine empire & Europe, and was well-known throughout the peninsula.
Exceptions to that were other Hijazi tribes and the Ghassanids who were vassals of the Byzantines, they were conquered militarily after Mecca.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_career_of_Muhammad#Other_letters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_after_the_occupation_of_Mecca

Of course, since this was a diplomatic expansion based on "trust me bro" and Muhammad's reputation, the Arab rulers did revolt after his death and then subdued. You might argue that this was when the Muslims actually controlled the peninsula.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridda_Wars

>>21596
but why was every other Arabian power, seemingly so easy to conquer then Quarish?

>>21597
Shit snowballs, I guess. They had more men & money by the time of the ridda wars.
Also if you look further into it, the Muslims weren't soloing the tribes in these areas, but had a bunch of local allies supporting their rule against local enemies.

>>21597
the quraysh were wealthier and ruled over a large metropolis
contrast that with agrarian tribes in the middle of nowhere

>>21607
Oh, and not to mention that rote activity has been shown to be robustly more cognitively taxing than actual formalized tests of intelligence, as per more direct neuroscientific research. Haeir is involved in neuroscience, but from a psychometric background. This is an important technical difference.

>>21608
But I am a radical IQ denialist who also happens to believe that, as is heresy, the scale being 'measured' is actually ordinal rather than interval, so the implications here, far from denying human difference, reorient our understanding and render the supposed hierarchy non-linear.

>>21554
he is a race realist in that he believes races are real, but he doesn't believe that there is a hierarchy of intelligence.

>>21607
Sounds pretty interesting what you are talking about. Can you list some litersture I can get into to get a better understanding of the subject?

>>21614
Paul sackett would be a good start.