Looking for something more like this

goodreads.com/book/show/127082.The_Old_Social_Classes_The_Revolutionary_Movement_In_Iraq?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=djixtN8uB4&rank=1

More about material a***ysis of social classes

So a retrospective study of the class struggle and the power dynamics of major events? I’m not sure what the difference is.

Im not against nationalisation, natural monopolies need it

@krishna_bound had an interesting comment in the original thread on evergrande, where they explained that Freddie and fannie macs takeover, despite the difference in label, does technically fit the definition of nationalisation.

Idk isnt the howard zinn book just like, a broad history book
Looking for something perhaps more of a modern a***ysis

don't usually post in this thread because i dont self-identify this way, but that wasn't fully what I said. I was more saying two things; firstly in regards to Lehman Bros, the issue wasn't the handling of the crash, but rather the fact Lehman Bros as a concept shouldn't have existed to begin with - people were saying it should have been nationalized, but nationalizing Lehman is like saying (comparatively) "let's nationalize fentanyl dealing" as if the issue was the organization of the operation instead of the operation itself.
What I said about FM&FM was that it was turned into a GSE, which is nationalization to some degree but in the worst way possible. I've put screenshots of the comments below for those interested.

@ARCADE_GOON @krishna_bound any of you guys ever read anything by Louis Althusser?

@americana

thought you would find this interesting havent watched it my self yet

never read Althusser yet but reading up on that guy is wild

Wym lol

he killed his wife and was unfit to trial due to insanity it doesn't dismiss his philosophical work well maybe the insanity plead a bit, but I know people like Paul Cockshott hate hearing about him due to that

Well damn lol ima burn this book

Yeah, I like Althusser a lot, in part because my own general philosophical interests are in structuralism & post-structuralism which he dips into in most of his work. His stuff is interesting if youre interested in the abstract concept of Marxism but in terms of like "orthodox" Marxist discussions per-se, you probably won't like his stuff a lot. He kinda deconstructs Marxism and his understanding of it is pretty distinct from most other academics or theory writers of his time. His stuff is kinda controversial depending on what background you come from and how you want to view Marxist theories and writings. The closest references I can think of to him are like maybe Lacan and Zizek (i might be wrong on this but i think Zizek attributes his citations to Althusser). His writing is incredibly dense and all over the place though, my (personal) recommendation is to read on the exegesis/retrospectives of his text through like wikipedia or general exegesis texts then supplement it with reading of specific ideas you're interested in. Also probably best to focus on his essays as those tend to be the most direct, unless you find his overall concepts more directly appealing.

to be fair he had untreated schizophrenia and bipolar and was subject to inhumane outdated psychological treatments. it's not like he just killed her out of spite, he was mentally ill and treatments worsened that and his schizoprenia/bipolar basically ate away at his consciousness untreated correctly

I always hear Lacan as well when people mention Louis, have u read Lacan as well?

personally i love the abstract concepts of marxism, sadly u can’t really put them to “use” outside of debates with other nerds

Lacan is like so abstract there's virtually no usage in knowing anything he talks about unless you yourself are interested in basically philosophy, nothing he says can practically be used politically. It's kinda the same way with Althusser to a degree but at least his focus is on extrapolations of Marxism which can be understood as correcting revisionism or something, Lacan is more like hyper-abstract sociology writing which is really just philosophy at that point - same school of structuralism/post-structuralism though.
I haven't read everything from him because quite frankly I just think his writing isn't very good or readable (nor is it really supposed to be). The only two works I've read are Feminine Sexuality & Television. Other than that my understanding of him mostly comes from cross-references to him and reading concept explanations. Also Lacan wasn't solely focused on Marxism and it wasn't the only point of his work although it was obviously applied that way and he did read Marx/Lenin (could be wrong there but my understanding is he had a reading of marxism in a specific manner but most extrapolations to marxism came later from building on his work). If you want that you're better off reading Deleuze

I've got on capitalist reproduction so that's where I'm gonna have to start lol

Bookmarked

I wonder though, and this is from my own knowledge (which may be limited) compared to others ITT. Would the Afghan Communist Party state have even survived long-term even without western intervention in the mix?

From what I've seen, whenever a unified state would try to form in that region, whether colonialist or with other political motivations, it would collapse in on itself due to the unique social dynamics being itself resistant to nation-state building. A collection of independent and somewhat decentralized communities mainly ran by tribal warlords. The state had not much support outside of the urban center. I remember reading that there was an internal power struggle between the rural Maoist-esque contingency of the Afghani communists and the Soviet-backed urban Afghani communists sometime during the 70s, so this may have played a part.

i need to finish that

The interview I linked seems to go against thinking as just westerns looking inside out without any actual a***ysis like the classic surface level a***ysis Russia always been "authoritative" so it will always be. There was nation building done even before the communist got into power, they mention the multiple constitutions that Afghanistan had, and went against the notion that it was far left communist forcing their will on a community that wasn't ready for it, as the most laws that then communist enforced were from the liberal constitution before they came to power.

Vijay always laughs off Maoist as ultralefts so he never went into them just mentions them for a second and laughs em off for a second, politically hes way too revisionist for me, but man has an in-depth knowledge of communist history so he always catches my interest with that.

I'm glad Reagan dead

No, and it’s because Afghanistan is a non industrialized, rural, feudal state

Capitalism must develop there first before class divisions that create socialism can exist. The King of Afghanistan (Zahir Shah) was in the process of this before being couped by the progressive Daoud Khan with help from the moderate socialist Parchami party, who were opposed by the hardline Khalqi party. The Khalqi believed that a radical movement into agrarian socialism with the help of the USSR was the way forward.

The Parcham were a bunch of bourgeois college kids from the capital city who understood that their country was not a unified or even interconnected one yet, but understood that capitalism had to be developed before socialism could be introduced, which is why they helped support and move Daoud Khan into power.

It’s ironic because Daoud Khan actually tried to undermine the Parchami’s (and the Soviet Union’s) power once he was in office while trying to modernize the country. Simultaneously, his attempts to modernize the country ended up being marginal and he was growing increasingly unpopular.

This lead to the Saur Revolution of 1978 where the Parcham reunited with the Khalqi to depose Daoud Khan, then once the Revolution was complete, the Khalqi began purging Parcham under Nur Mohammad Taraki before he was toppled and replaced by the Hafizullah Amin Administration (Amin was Tarakis right hand man and would assassinate him in 1979 due to a number of controversies).

After Amin’s entrance to office, popularity would continue to crumble and the Parchami would return to power with soviet backing.

The 1970’s was an extremely confusing time for Afghanistan. Everything from Daoud Khans deposing occurred in maybe a year and a half

Just bc the guy was an insane madman later doesnt mean his work is trash

Althusser has a few interesting concepts

One is his concept of ideology which i don't necessarily agree with. One is his concept of reproduction. He says that capitalism must reproduce itself, this happens through wages being high enough to sustain the population. I also think this is wrong bc mature capitalist economies for the most part have sinking birthrates. But he argues the entire state apparatus is formed to reproduce the status quo, which makes sense somewhere.

The most interesting part for me is that he says Marx still has a few idealist views bc he held onto Hegel. He criticizes Marx here and there for that. For example he says the idea to start Das Kapital with the commodity form is a result of Hegelian brainworms and that it actually harms the book because the first 100 pages are so abstract. He also criticizes historical materialism for having a grand narrative and says this is also not materialist to think that way, he says history has a lot of randomness and chance to it

His interpretation of Marxism is orthodox, no BS, no idealism, really scientific (thats why a lot of radlibs hate him) but I would only read him after Capital.

He has an interesting essay on Lenin's philosophy too but it only makes sense if you've read Lenin's essays on it. Lenin's works on materialism make more sense when you know that in that time there were people seriously doubting about the existence of atoms/nature of atoms

So I say hold out on reading Althusser until you read the primary sources, Kapital and/or Lenin's philosophical writings