Random political thought thread.

[Lark]

I'd like everyone to recommend a single political book for me, I like to read about the topic of freedom mainly but I'd not exclude anything right away.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

I'd like everyone to recommend a single political book for me, I like to read about the topic of freedom mainly but I'd not exclude anything right away.

No Logo by Naomi Klein, which these days reads more like prophecy.

Been a while since I read this but she really opened my mind about the perniciousness of Brand Culture, and how production and consumption of goods was replaced by production and consumption of brands as the dominating force in American capitalism.

Overall I think brand culture ties in and seemed to grow in tandem with practices like copyrighting slogans and even ideas; the ever increasing drive by capitalists to commodify everything under the sun.

Nike’s Just Do It ad campaign, soda companies bringing samples to high schools to pass out to students during their lunch breaks (this happened at my high school), Che Guevara t shirts sold in expensive designer stores... that about sums up brand culture

 

[Red Herring]

QAnon goes European


As I said this should be treated as ISIS and my government has my full blessing in countering this.

If I may add to this:

On October 3rd (German national holiday) a person or persons unknown went on a destructive spree and damaged several dozends of valuable exhibition pieces in several neighboring museums in Berlin. The museum administration had kept this from the public for two weeks, but apparently the hottest trace the police have is that Attila Hildmann, a vegan chef gone internet conspiracy celebrity (basically a crossover between Alex Jones and Kanye West) had recently told his followers on Telegram that the Pergamon Museum "has contained the throne of Satan for thousands of years" and that the museum is the meeting place of a satanistic elite. Now, that might sound like a simple case of mental health issues, but given the pizzagate story in the USA it is very well possible one or several of his followers acted on this and threw that oily substance on the Egyptian sarcophagus and the 60 or so other museum pieces that got damaged.


EDIT: I just read that there has been a graffti spray attack on a sculture (granite bowl) in front of the Altes Museum in Berlin. It is emblematic of the museum and was probably chosen for that reason. The attacks on October 3rd concerned 60 pieces in three museums on the famous museum peninsula in Berlin. This new attack fits in with the previous ones.

 

[Red Herring]

I'd like everyone to recommend a single political book for me, I like to read about the topic of freedom mainly but I'd not exclude anything right away.

A Brief History of Misogyny: The World's Oldest Prejudice by Jack Holland

It's an overview over gender norms and gender relations in the Western world from antiquity to modernity. Holland (who, if I remember correctly, is Irish), does a good job of describing the influence of both Greek hostility to women and Hebrew hostility to physicality and the human body on early Christianity and how which gender was considered more refined and intellectual changed several times over the centuries (as well as who supposedly had the bigger libido). I remember it as a very enlightening and interesting read.

 

[Lark]

A Brief History of Misogyny: The World's Oldest Prejudice by Jack Holland

It's an overview over gender norms and gender relations in the Western world from antiquity to modernity. Holland (who, if I remember correctly, is Irish), does a good job of describing the influence of both Greek hostility to women and Hebrew hostility to physicality and the human body on early Christianity and how which gender was considered more refined and intellectual changed several times over the centuries (as well as who supposedly had the bigger libido). I remember it as a very enlightening and interesting read.

There's a cool book by Aggripa (I think) on the Superiority of Women, I'm reading it at the moment, its one of the first of its kind apparently, and a book (cant remember the author) Feminism and The Female Body, which is an account of "amazon feminism", which has a lot to do with female body building and martial arts, which is less to do with the old chestnuts about equality and superiority/inferiority and more about "practical" or "objective" strength and prowess, I like it a lot.

 

[ceecee]

No Logo by Naomi Klein, which these days reads more like prophecy.

Been a while since I read this but she really opened my mind about the perniciousness of Brand Culture, and how production and consumption of goods was replaced by production and consumption of brands as the dominating force in American capitalism.

Overall I think brand culture ties in and seemed to grow in tandem with practices like copyrighting slogans and even ideas; the ever increasing drive by capitalists to commodify everything under the sun.

Nike’s Just Do It ad campaign, soda companies bringing samples to high schools to pass out to students during their lunch breaks (this happened at my high school), Che Guevara t shirts sold in expensive designer stores... that about sums up brand culture

I second Naomi Klein.

The Communist Manifesto - Marx and Engles
Notes of a Native Son - James Baldwin
They Thought They Were Free - Milton Mayer
The Deficit Myth - Stephanie Kelton

 

[Jaguar]

FFS, you sound like a small child with that whiny voice. Not a judge.

 

[SurrealisticSlumbers]

Over the past year, I have slowly come to realize that I'm probably best politically aligned / identified as being neo-Marxist (post-Frankfurt School), with anarchist leanings. I know I have much reading ahead of me, which will serve either to cement or somewhat modify these current views, although I'm always going to be categorically left of center; that'll never change. On my reading list are the works of Rosa Luxemburg, Kropotkin, and Rudolf Rocker. If anyone can recommend titles from these authors I absolutely must read first, please do.

While I still hesitate to use the "C" word to define myself, I'm on a journey towards better understanding the perspectives of other leftists in their respective countries, with a view towards what I can do in my own country to protect myself and others against the onslaught of laissez-faire, late-stage capitalism (and its bedfellow, corporatism) and help effect the needed changes. (This would benefit most of us in the U.S. today, who are effectively now the working class whether we want to admit it or not; we've clearly reached the point where we're all some variety of proletarian, just with slightly differing levels of privilege... but when we get down to brass tacks, proletarians.)

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

So MegaKaren is now a justice?

Well, Joe will pack the courts (which isn’t illegal) if has the dem majority in Congress. There will be rivers of elephant salt.

 

[Jaguar]

.

 

[ceecee]

Over the past year, I have slowly come to realize that I'm probably best politically aligned / identified as being neo-Marxist (post-Frankfurt School), with anarchist leanings. I know I have much reading ahead of me, which will serve either to cement or somewhat modify these current views, although I'm always going to be categorically left of center; that'll never change. On my reading list are the works of Rosa Luxemburg, Kropotkin, and Rudolf Rocker. If anyone can recommend titles from these authors I absolutely must read first, please do.

While I still hesitate to use the "C" word to define myself, I'm on a journey towards better understanding the perspectives of other leftists in their respective countries, with a view towards what I can do in my own country to protect myself and others against the onslaught of laissez-faire, late-stage capitalism (and its bedfellow, corporatism) and help effect the needed changes. (This would benefit most of us in the U.S. today, who are effectively now the working class whether we want to admit it or not; we've clearly reached the point where we're all some variety of proletarian, just with slightly differing levels of privilege... but when we get down to brass tacks, proletarians.)

Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution by Peter Kropotkin

 

[Virtual ghost]

Over the past year, I have slowly come to realize that I'm probably best politically aligned / identified as being neo-Marxist (post-Frankfurt School), with anarchist leanings. I know I have much reading ahead of me, which will serve either to cement or somewhat modify these current views, although I'm always going to be categorically left of center; that'll never change. On my reading list are the works of Rosa Luxemburg, Kropotkin, and Rudolf Rocker. If anyone can recommend titles from these authors I absolutely must read first, please do.

While I still hesitate to use the "C" word to define myself, I'm on a journey towards better understanding the perspectives of other leftists in their respective countries, with a view towards what I can do in my own country to protect myself and others against the onslaught of laissez-faire, late-stage capitalism (and its bedfellow, corporatism) and help effect the needed changes. (This would benefit most of us in the U.S. today, who are effectively now the working class whether we want to admit it or not; we've clearly reached the point where we're all some variety of proletarian, just with slightly differing levels of privilege... but when we get down to brass tacks, proletarians.)

Here is where I have to kinda object, just if you don't like your system that doesn't mean you are one of those that where the most iconic enemies of that system. It can be but there are alternatives.
In other words you can be generally against uncontrolled laissez-faire without going far to the left. Although in English speaking countries that is kinda controversial position: Anti laissez-faire centrism or right wing. Therefore how does that work ? In the name of our national sovereignty, Christian values, personal freedoms and well being of our people we demand that access to healthcare is declared a human right, that big foreign corporations don't have all the say here, that water supply remains common good and that education costs little (Since stupid/ignorant people can't really be independent).


This is just food for thought.

 

[Lark]

Over the past year, I have slowly come to realize that I'm probably best politically aligned / identified as being neo-Marxist (post-Frankfurt School), with anarchist leanings. I know I have much reading ahead of me, which will serve either to cement or somewhat modify these current views, although I'm always going to be categorically left of center; that'll never change. On my reading list are the works of Rosa Luxemburg, Kropotkin, and Rudolf Rocker. If anyone can recommend titles from these authors I absolutely must read first, please do.

While I still hesitate to use the "C" word to define myself, I'm on a journey towards better understanding the perspectives of other leftists in their respective countries, with a view towards what I can do in my own country to protect myself and others against the onslaught of laissez-faire, late-stage capitalism (and its bedfellow, corporatism) and help effect the needed changes. (This would benefit most of us in the U.S. today, who are effectively now the working class whether we want to admit it or not; we've clearly reached the point where we're all some variety of proletarian, just with slightly differing levels of privilege... but when we get down to brass tacks, proletarians.)

Aye, some of them can be worth a read, I'd not bother with any of the neo-marxists, Frankfurt school or otherwise, Kolakowski wrote a great (and scathing for the most part) history of Marxism which is worth a read. I liked it. Even if I thought that some of my own favourite thinkers, like Erich Fromm, got a real drubbing in it.

Rudolf Rocker is a good read, I liked all of his books when I read them. Personally, I think you may like to read GDH Cole, if you can find any of this books, he was a socialist but thought the patterns of servility produced by capitalism where the real problem, or Bertrand Russell's Proposed Roads To Freedom, largely for the same reasons. These are ideas that I think are dated, most of them badly, although I think they are worth a read out of interest, some of them are very good writers and they can clarify your own values.

Practically most of the best ideas presently revolve around Universal Basic Incomes, or some version of it, the earliest book I know which discussed a version of it was Socialism and Personal Liberty, its still available on amazon, it was written by someone who was an early critic of what the marxists were doing following Lenin and Trotsky's Coup in the country. Most of what he wrote stands up, I'd say. Its also a book that predates the welfare state (for good socialist opposition to welfarism there's GDH Cole, in Irvine's collected socialist works anthology, or even Irvine himself, I think he wrote an entire book on it). Some of the renewed interest in UBI resembles this early thinking. Some doesnt.

Anyway, I think UBI is a good idea because it might permit people to be as capitalist or socialist as they like/have the means to be. Some people will make the break with the having mode or existence and look into the being mode, others wont and might just burn themselves out with drugs and consumerism. Its their call (and their consequences). For everyone else, well, they're free to decide if they want to join a co-operative, a workers council, a balanced job complex (participatory economics), a corporation or a traditional business. I like the idea of an economy which is much more diverse and has both traditional and innovative forms of workplace and management or self-management. None of the "single pattern plans" generated by either capitalism or socialism are anything to write home about.

Good reading friend.

Finally, its just me personally, but I think reading the AD&D typology grids with the axis chaos-law(order) and good-evil, provides an interesting lens with which to appraise most things, political ideologies included.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

Orwell wrote some decent essays on socialism. Some try to paint him as antisocialist but he was antiauthoritarian.

 

[Red Memories]

Orwell wrote some decent essays on socialism. Some try to paint him as antisocialist but he was antiauthoritarian.

I agree, he was far more anti-authoritarian. His books try to encourage people to not become complacent and critically think because the greatest asset to the authoritarian is your complacency or ignorance.

 

[Jaguar]

Crawl back under your rock, Melania.

 

[The Cat]

 

[Lark]

I got a great book called the New Matriarchy today, some sort of socialist matriarchy would be an awesome future.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

I got a great book called the New Matriarchy today, some sort of socialist matriarchy would be an awesome future.

Like the Iroquois?

 

[Jaguar]

Sherriff Jim Clark, you were a real douchebag.