Leviathan is an important work historically and politically but it’s a primitive work in the same way basic arithmetic isn’t wrong but doesn’t tell the full story of calculus or discrete mathematics. As far as the historical context goes, it makes sense Leviathan isn’t 100% pure meaningful theory but a bit of a mix of of both strong fundamental ideas as well as extrapolated observations which are since dated or simply lack wider nuance or important details. Leviathan is more important as a work of explaining social/sociopolitical structures than it is necessarily a political framework. Hobbes’s other exploration of law is interesting but again is somewhat historically contextual to the time period it was formulated. As a system of beliefs it’s just too early and primitive to necessarily be held in like pure ideological esteem. There’s a reason even Schmitt who basically revered Hobbes as an inspiration deeply critiqued his political theory - just similarly Leviathan’s sociopolitical ideas draw on some truths but they’re simply too applicable to a specific dated historical context

Bro he bombed Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant during the Lewinsky news cycle and it led to the deaths of several 10s of 1000s of Sudanese people

Me in Hell looking for Bill Clinton:

Yooo

Trump is a degenerate lunatic but the way Hilary lost

The silver lining of any US election is that we get to see one of them lose

Capitalist Realism was really a great read. My biggest problem with it, as is my biggest problem with all of Fisher’s work, is he just doesn’t dive into things deep enough. Hell make an extremely interesting observation or point only to steer away from it before fully seeing it through. Pretty frustrating but it leaves one with a lot to think about

what are some bits that stood out to u

Been a while since I read it, but this passage about callcenters always stuck out to me:

"The closest that most of us come to a direct experience of the centerlessness of capitalism is an encounter with the call center. As a consumer in late capitalism, you increasingly exist in two, distinct realities: the one in which the services are provided without hitch, and another reality entirely, the crazed Kafkaesque labyrinth of call centers, a world without memory, where cause and effect connect together in mysterious, unfathomable ways, where it is a miracle that anything ever happens, and you lose hope of ever passing back over to the other side, where things seem to function smoothly. What exemplifies the failure of the neoliberal world to live up to its own PR better than the call center? Even so, the universality of bad experiences with call centers does nothing to unsettle the operating assumption that capitalism is inherently efficient, as if the problems with call centers weren’t the systemic consequences of a logic of Capital which means organizations are so fixated on making profits that they can’t actually sell you anything. The call center experience distils the political phenomenology of late capitalism: the boredom and frustration punctuated by cheerily piped PR, the repeating of the same dreary details many times to different poorly trained and badly informed operatives, the building rage that must remain impotent because it can have no legitimate object, since – as is very quickly clear to the caller –there is no-one who knows, and no-one who could do anything even if they could. Anger can only be a matter of venting; it is aggression in a vacuum, directed at someone who is a fellow victim of the system but with whom there is no possibility of communality. Just as the anger has no proper object, it will have no effect. In this experience of a system that is unresponsive, impersonal, centerless, abstract and fragmentary, you are as close as you can be to confronting the artificial stupidity of Capital in itself."

Practical lesson based on that passage btw, always pretend you're gonna buy something if you need better customer service

I liked his discussions of capitalist ideology and how it’s changed under post-fordism. I also thought his pop cultural examples to highlight some of this were also really well done. I also really liked how he advocated that we attempt to politicize issues that are typically not thought of symptoms of Capital, such as mental health and liberal bureaucracy. His application of the Lacanian Real and big Other was also really interesting

The way he uses “Stalinism” as a regular punching bag is annoying but it’s easily overlooked if you just substitute that for the USSR under Khruschev or Brezhnev. It doesn’t really take away from his larger more important points, although I know there were certain dogmatic segments on the left that hyper focused on this and used it as an excuse to ignore the rest of the book

Yeah the way he used Kafka to draw out examples like this was really enjoyable. I haven’t read Kafka in years but used to be really into him and it made me wanna go back now that I’d be reading it through a Marxist lens instead of an angry teenager existentialist lens

Oh and the stuff about hedonic depression he’s observed amongst amongst British youths as another side effect of Capital was really great and relatable. Made me reflect a lot on my historical substance issues

Ik a lot of people see it as a doomer book but this amongst other things actually made it quite motivating and hopeful actually imo. Which ik seems counterintuitive lol but yeah idk how to express it quite yet I gotta reflect on the book more

You see folks, Karl Marx and Freddy Engels, two very smart guys from Germany - my ancestors are German as well, I have the Germany gene in me - they were smart guys, folks, scientist types, and they said, before the socialistic stage happens, you gotta develop the pro-duc-tive forces, productive fellas, not destructive, not constructive, but productive, productive forces, gotta have 'em, can't miss 'em, you really need them to build up the capitalisms, that's what Marx told us, very smart guy, so smart, so then a feller by the name of Mao came along and said you know what, let's jump straight into socialism, no good I tell you, no good - I respect Mao, 70% good 30% bad as they say, but you gotta do the productive forces first, that's what Marx told us, smart guy, so once Mao past away, may God rest his soul, then his buddy DENG came along, now Deng was no dummy, Deng thought bigly, bigly about the future of Chyna - great place, great people, great food, great women with tiny feet, the tiniest, I know 'cause I did Miss Universe, Chinese women had the tiniest feet, had to get their high heels in the children's department over at Macy's, but children, the female child, usually doesn't wear high heels, so they are hard to find, believe me, I looked - Deng said let's do what Marx told us and develop these productive forces, and boy are they being developed! Private property? It'll be gone by 2050, believe me. And Xi told me, he's the current leader of the China, he told me he's oppressing the billionaires, and you know what? I trust him, I trust the man, I mean look at Jack ma, what happened to him? I haven't seen him in outside and when I do, he looks scared, so scared, low energy, quite sad. But me and Xi we're good friends, very good friends and he knows what he's doing folks, trust me, trust the plan, trust God, may God bless us all, the People's Republic of China and the United States of America, both of em, we gotta work together, gotta do it, 2050.

@Nessy @krishna_bound

I'm not welcome in this thread nor do I support the terrible intervention in Libya but this man was Europe's puppet in disguise. They paid him to catch black Africans and hold them, and thats why a good proportion of south-north migrants ended up in slavery. His whole schtick to the west was "leave me alone I'm the one keeping the migrants away from you'

Leaders like Gaddafi comr up with their esoteric ideology bullshit as backwards justification for what they do, not as their initial principle

Youre supposed to not believe in great man theory

Lmao calling him a western puppet is bullshit, why did they overthrow him? Why did he support the IRA? FARC? The ANC? The MPLA? In most conflicts that Libya took a side in, Libya took the side the west was opposed to in most cases. He had friendly relations with some western leaders, and ultimately wasn't anti-west enough, which led to his demise when he gave in to all their demands only to get invaded.

And idk what you're saying about great man theory, I never even said that Gaddafi's Libya was a model that should be implemented anywhere. Libya was much better of with him than after the criminal invasion. The fact that a NATO d***riding mf like you who's from the country that colonized Libya is more keen on criticizing Gaddafi than the NATO invasion that led to open-air slave markets of black Africans is disgusting tbh go f*** yourself

libs love doing oh i don’t support what happened but here’s why it’s not as bad as it seems lmao

And they usually lie about that too

There's gonna be an investigation about operation GLADIO in the Netherlands @Y0rn

dutchnews.nl/news/2022/08/probe-into-secret-resistance-group-set-up-to-stop-cold-war-invasion

The government has commissioned a study into a group of hundreds of volunteers who were recruited during the Cold War to defend the Netherlands against a potential Russian invasion. Relatives of the Stay Behind group, as they were known, have been calling for years for the government to release its records on the group’s membership and activities. Between 1945 and 1992 several hundred citizens were recruited into the secret resistance organisation and given training, with orders not to tell even close relatives about their work. They were also responsible for dozens of caches of weapons, some of which fell into the hands of criminal gangs after the organisation was disbanded. When some of the guns were used by members of Willem Holleeder’s gang in the 1990s, the government covered up the theft to stop Stay Behind’s existence coming to light, the Volkskrant reported. The Netherlands Institute for Military History (NIMH) has now been asked to compile an inventory of documents about Stay Behind and interview surviving witnesses. The institute is due to report back in October, after which the government will decide whether to order a wider investigation. Opening doors Relatives want the government to acknowledge both the group’s work and the tensions that it caused in families who were implicated. Some families only found out that a relative had been recruited after they died. Hadewych Jansen op de Haar, whose father Gerard Pelt was a member of Stay Behind, said: ‘We hope that this commission will actually mean the NIMH can open doors that until now have been closed.’ Pelt spent 30 years as head of sabotage in the operations division, during which time he made notes of around 40 locations where weapons including bazookas were stored underground. Prime minister Mark Rutte and the then defence minister Ank Bijleveld broke the official silence on Stay Behind in February 2021 in a letter to relatives on behalf of the government, in which they praised the ‘impartial, extremely conscientious, and professional’ work done by the group ‘in the interests of our kingdom’. ‘This caused considerable tensions in many families and enforced restrictions in the personal and family environment. Their efforts deserve the highest respect.’