DJP
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Who are these overly simplistic messages supposed to be for?
Obviously, I don’t think the conclusion is wrong, but this just looks like a description of war with the standard stock response “and the solution: socialism” pasted at the end.
It’s not going to convince anyone that isn’t already on board, and looks like lazy thinking to anyone on the outside.
I appreciate that it’s hard to get detailed messages across in a few words and sorry to sound like a grump. But I probably am!
That article has had an introductory statement added to it that includes this; “In light of the recent growth of revolutionary-sounding but anti-proletarian “Marxism,” and the continuing need to break with all post-Marx Marxists and reclaim the full legacy of Marx’s own Marxism.” I wonder why they include Mattick in this list of “post-Marxists”, but not Lenin, Trotsky, or by extension Dunayevskaya?
Ok, I guess “re-write” could suggest a mal intention. That’s not what I meant to suggest.
Maybe a brief history of the minimal/maximalism split would make a good short article? If not already done?
With regards to point 1. Yes it seems like an oversight to the current web design that all comments are not listed in a single place. How easy a fix that would be I don’t know. A job for someone else.
2. Yes, the impossibilist split certainly doesn’t go back to the first international. It’s important to be accurate and to not try to re-write history making everything a reference to our current favourite views. Especially when communicating to people we presume do not have a high level of previous knowledge.
“The term left wing became popular due to this pamphlet written by Lenin”
I think you’re giving Lenin too much credit here!
“Well, well – talk of the devil”
I thought Paddy did a good job and came across well. Most of the comments under the video say the same too.
“your homeland (i.e. where you were born and bred)”
So our bland conservative is also an ethnic nationalist. Guess that shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.
Some comradely advice: up your production values!
At least for the one talk I tried to listen to (The Howard Moss one) the sound quality sounded like it was recorded at the bottom of a swimming pool! If you want some up-to-date advice on cheap but high-quality recorders and lapel mics, I can be of service. Badly done stuff is not a good look.
“The Ukrainians are attempting to defend their homeland in much the same way most people would attempt to defend their homes (and loved ones) against an intruder.”
But states are not like households, this is exactly the niave view that leads to so bad thinking.
Neither can humanity cannot neatly be divided up into distinct “people’s” each with there own distinct and clearly definable patch of land.
Perhaps is Lizzie wants to offer something useful she can provide an argument as to why she thinks the opposite.
The only thing I can work out she has said on this forum so far amounts to “The way things are is the way they are, and therefore this is the only way they can be”. Some kind of bland conservatism.
Hopefully, my dumping of my YouTube viewing history here is of interest to someone. I think it’s good to try and keep tabs on what things are discussed in the wider ‘out-there’.
Perhaps you could also tell us what savings you found in the reductions isle of the supermarket last week?
That would be just as interesting or relevant.
Wez – You honestly think that everyone that calls themselves a socialist behaves like a placid angel all of the time?
“Once upon a time a valiant fellow had the idea that men were drowned in water only because they were possessed with the idea of gravity. If they were to knock this notion out of their heads, say by stating it to be a superstition, a religious concept, they would be sublimely proof against any danger from water. His whole life long he fought against the illusion of gravity, of whose harmful results all statistic brought him new and manifold evidence. This valiant fellow was the type of the new revolutionary philosophers in
Germany.”It seems Marx must have met LBird
To revive this old chestnut, what is at stake is how we make concepts and how they are related to the real world. In plain language (who calls consciousness or the mind “the ideal”?) it’s something like this:
As our experience of the world has to be mediated through the concepts we make of it (this is the top left box in TWCs diagram) the question arises that when we are theorising are we just self-referentially referring to these concepts or is there a way that these concepts are influenced by the real world.
Note: The idealism of Hegel and Kant does not deny that the external world exists but that all we can know is concepts, not that world itself. Likewise “materialism” does not necessarily involve denying that minds exist or can play a causal role in the world.
These were just some notes to introduce this video, which I thought was good at clarifying:
