If I didn’t have anything else on my plate I could do a Reddit x Lenin type response to most of the stuff in the book in not too long and format it.

I could crank out a better book in two weeks lol.

Yeah, most “tankies” have heard of the cia thing, the anti-settlers bs, and so on, while the great gatsby and Zeno’s paradox are fairly common knowledge. Its totally unclear what he’s trying to accomplish, even how he thinks this would impress anyone.

I think the point is that they have better analysis or knowledge, but that’s still an absurd way to put it.

It reads more like bourgeois philosophy. Needlessly complicated, expecting you to be familiar with the subject matter before you read the book, and being an exercise in showing the reader just how much the author knows and has read.

Schopenhauer reincarnated but he likes Hegel now. None of the examples are even particularly obscure though.

I haven’t read losurdo either but I’ve heard he’s good.

You know you’re not saying anything new. People have been having this debate for centuries. I recommend Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-criticism for understanding why the two schools can’t mix this way.

Your proposition that everything could be just a projection from god’s mind is a rehashing of George Berkeley’s position. He was an ardant idealist who hated materialists, and he thought that the only reason things still exist when you stop perceiving them is that god is keeping them there. Where does god exist if this is all a projection?

Rene Descartes (also Christian) thought that there was some ideal realm where souls lived and they were somehow freely controlling human bodies in the material realm. That’s an absurd idea because how can things interact if they are not part of the same world.

There is the kantian and humean idea that we can never know beyond idealism because we are subjectively observing things and cannot know the “thing in itself.” They have the logic there, and it’s definitely true that we can only know relative truth from a materialist perspective (recommend the Ego Tunnel on this topic).

Still, the Marxists are most compelling that it doesn’t matter what elaborate ideas we think up if they do not correspond to how things are in practice. Functionally there is socially informed objective reality and reliable sensations. If this were not the case then how can people make computers and such? Why can’t someone invent things based on their own contradictory physics? Are experiences on drugs or while asleep equally real as everything else? Surely there are rules embedded in the world we inhabit. Whatever someone thinks doesn’t matter unless it corresponds to practice.

Anyway, read theory and think critically about it before you come up with your own silly theories.

Read on practice first

https://youtu.be/gTxJjFwd7kY

Class struggle in the Soviet Union or globally? More investigation may be due, but my impression is that he continued many of Khrushchev’s policies and the USSR continued to decline in this era.

As I expected. Khrushchev was not just revisionist for denouncing Stalin. That’s all a lot of people care about, but he declared the end of class struggle and implemented bad “reforms” that led to the rotting of the union from the inside. Brezhnev did nothing to reverse such revisionism.

Lmao checks out.

Spoiler that shit. It’s long.

“You were made to dominate and these [slur]s have taken that from you.” Vs “Society lied to you, you aren’t superior.” Vs (libs, what they mostly hear) “what are you talking about? Everything’s fine, esp for you. Let’s just do more pink capitalism.”

No, Amerikkkan dominance is great, we just just need to vote it back into the right hands.

Darn revisionists alledgedly following the tried and true Marxist-Leninist method.

It’s if the scales of the other are the quadrants on different (but not exactly more meaningful) scales.

Fair enough

No one is worshipping cockshott. “Cults of personality” are a liberal concept. What matters is ruthless criticism of all that exists, ie evaluating all claims of any individual or organization critically. I’m not even a cockshott fan, I just heard he was decent and saw a couple decent videos. I have yet to do my own critical evaluation.

Not to start this struggle session again, but his prostitution take isn’t that bad. Under capitalism prostitution is a sorry means of survival or petty bourgeois lifestyle. “Sex work” under socialism is an absurdity. People can fuck whomever and still get the minimums for life, but it doesn’t make sense to pour money into an unproductive industry. If anything - as cockshott implies - stay at home parents are worthy of monetary compensation for their contribution to society.

I was aware of the terf stuff and unequal exchange stuff, but didn’t have much exposure to it. I will look into those links.

I’m sure this person is an exact representative of every single person who practices Islam.