Anarcho-primitivist "Against His-story, Against Leviathan" led me to Debord. Thank you /lit/ for the recs!
Anyone have suggestions for further reading down this path?
>>7354675
Dialectic of Enlightenment and Negative Dialectics should be your next two.
Capital Vol. 1., Chapter 1.
Comments on the Society of the Spectacle - Debord
>>7354799
No. Don't do this.
Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard
>>7354910
>>7354705
>>7354799
No, don't any of these. Frankfurt school marxists, post-modern theorists and debord when he had ruined his brain with booze are all trash.
If you want good stuff related to it then read up on the ultra-left theorists like Camatte and Dauve, they're all influenced by the SI and write interesting critiques of them (eclipse and reemergence of the communist movement and 'critique of the SI' by dauve are good starting places)
Read people that influenced SI like lefevbre
I'm too ignorant about it tho. Only read 2 books that barely touched SI and seen the debord documentary.
No Logo
Illuminatus Trilogy
>>7354675
OP, my advice is to try some real Marxism. Start with Capital, and from there try Engels' Origins and then move on to Lenin (State and Revolution, Imperialism for starters). Learn the difference between Historical Materialism and Dialectical Materialism. Make sure you know WHY Marxism is a science and not just academic chitter-chatter.
>>7354930
I really liked Baudrillard. What issue do you take with his work?
Read other situationists like Raoul Vaneigem and Daniel Cohn-Bandit.
>>7355013
I'm not him but post-structuralism is literally brain-rot.
>>7355013
Not that anon, but he turned into a hard nominalist, nihilist faggot.
>>7355010
>Marxism is a science
What do you mean by this? Marxism is a critical lens, not a science. If it's a science, then so are Hegelianism, feminism, poststructuralism, and semiology.
>>7355023
Why is poststructuralism brain-rot? Isn't it just a logical extension of the idea of Categories?
>>7355026
Also, Engels debunked utopians like you a long time ago.
>>7355010
>OP, my advice is to try some real Marxism. Start with Capital
Started off so well and then you blew it.
But yes, Debord is really just reading Capital, Lukacs, and Hegel and taking the analytical tools and methods and applying them to mass-production society.
So read Capital, then read Rubin's Essays on Marx's Theory of Value, then read Capital again.
>>7355026
Marxism is a science in the sense that it actually explains and analyzes what is going on. Capitalism immediately appears as simply a collection of firms producing and selling goods at prices that amount to costs of production + necessary profit. Labour simply appears to be the free exchange of goods (money for labour, money for products, money for money, etc.).
Marx said that's all well and good, but labour is not a good like any other, its actually the source of value, it is what regulates production, what is under the "price" of things. But not just labor, but labour-time as it is socially necessary and equalized.
Marx basically explains how tons of independent firms without any real planning can somehow create a semi-functioning and rapidly growing economy. He also explains why the logic of capital itself is contradictory, is doomed in its premises.
Marxism is not just a "lens," it is a way of actually recognizing what is occuring beneath the seemingly chaotic movement of forms of value.
>>7355189
Lukacs has his own problems but he's a hell of a lot better than the revisionist/fake-Marxist Frankfurt School or PoMos.
>>7355189
Good summation of Marxism, thank you.
>>7355201
I wouldn't group the Frankfurt school in with the likes of Baudrillard and others. Horkheimer and Adorno were always concerned with developing a critique of the value-form as it subsumed total social reproduction and reality. Not too mention that the best Marxist theorists of value came out of Adorno's classroom.
>>7355000
Your critique of value-form critique type communist tendencies isn't very well grounded considering that Italian autonomism has been the only real revolutionary movement in the West in the past 50 years.
>>7354705
Is there a good translation of negative dialectics?
>>7355226
Literally nothing from the Hotdog School is worth reading. They were revisionists, their works were useless and nothing they wrote contributed whatsoever to Marxism in a significant way.
Real Marxism focuses on the base.
Hotdog School focused entirely on the superstructure.
Real Marxism says culture cannot change until relations of production change.
Hotdog School said change in superstructure would lead to a change in the base.
Marxism is a science.
Hotdog School was anti-science and criticized objectivity.
Marxism rejects metaphysics.
Hotdog School believed in metaphysical understandings of human behavior and had kaballah gods.
The only people who still read the Hotdog School are vulgar leftcomms and hipster grad students.
>>7355404
>base-superstructure
>revisionists
>using leftcomms as an insult
Maybe you should actually read Capital and the German Ideology rather than Engels' tortured popular understandings and Stalinist re-appropriations of Lenin and Marx.
>>7355412
Nah bro I'm an actual Marxist and you see real Marxists don't base 95% of their culture critiques on the theory of alienation or revert to Hegelian dialectics.
Theodor "everything I don't like is fascist" Adorno and Walter "moshiach now" Benjamin are only taken seriously by grad students and crypto-neocon groups like the Platypus Society. Plus they were Eurocentrists which may explain the anti-anti-imperialist positions of their modern day disciples.
>>7355404
Except the early frankfurt school DID talk about the base and the only kabbalist in the group was benjamin, whose works were revised by adorno to be more materialist.
>>7355404
>Real Marxism focuses [only] on the base.
No it doesn't. See: Class Struggles in France, 18 Brumaire of Loius Bonaparte, Civil War in France. Each deal with political phenomena with cultural connotations.
>Hotdog School focused entirely on the superstructure.
No they didn't. Even when they did, the superstructure are just the things that reproduce existing productive social relations, and are internally tied towards them.
>Real Marxism says culture cannot change until relations of production change.
No it doesn't. Not every singular cultural norm is created as in caused (as opposed to "determined", as base/superstructure are identical expressions of the same relation) by class organization.
>Hotdog School said change in superstructure would lead to a change in the base.
This assumes that they believed that changes in productive social relations are always and only caused by changes in the ways they are reproduced, which no-one believes.
>Hotdog School was anti-science and criticized objectivity.
No they didn't.
>Hotdog School believed in metaphysical understandings of human behavior and had kaballah gods.
No they didn't. Only Benjamin dabbled into that bullshit.
>The only people who still read the Hotdog School are vulgar leftcomms and hipster grad students.
The majority of the members of the Frankfurt were MLs, and Left-Communism is a minuscule movement. Anarchists and Trots aren't Left-Communists.
I already refuted your claims here:
https://warosu.org/lit/thread/S7349690/7350378
https://warosu.org/lit/thread/S7349690/7350382
https://warosu.org/lit/thread/S7349690/7350387
Before you continue shitposting, refute my refutation first.
By the way, Positivism was a philosophy invented by the followers of the Utopian Socialist Saint-Simon, and unless you disagree with Marx and Engels's rejection of their Utopian Socialist philosophy, you're not a Marxist. See: Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy and Socialism: Scientific and Utopian.
>>7355421
>Plus they were Eurocentrists which may explain the anti-anti-imperialist positions of their modern day disciples.
God, that retardation feels like a slap on the face. Modern anti-nationalism propped up by the Zionist anti-Germans was not inspired by the Frankfurt school, but inspired by the resurrection of right of the Second International's distrust of nationalist political movements, particularly Rosa Luxemburg's rejection of the Polish nationalists.
>>7355434
>Except the early frankfurt school DID talk about the base
Early Hotdog School =/= what everyone knows as the hotdog school
>the only kabbalist in the group was benjamin, whose works were revised by adorno to be more materialist.
kek. Benjamin based 95% of his work on his hashish-induced religious delusions. Task of the Translator, the text you read in humanities 101, is entirely based on kaballah tikkun magic. Try learning a theory of language that's rooted in science and not voodoo.
>>7355436
>By the way, Positivism was a philosophy invented by the followers of the Utopian Socialist Saint-Simon, and unless you disagree with Marx and Engels's rejection of their Utopian Socialist philosophy, you're not a Marxist.
I know what Positivism is. I don't see how being a positivist makes you a utopian.
>>7355552
>I don't see how being a positivist makes you a utopian.
No, but it definitely doesn't make you a Marxist.
>>7355041
>It's as much a science as sociology
>sociology is a science
0/10 not even one point not even one
>>7355404
>Hotdog School focused entirely on the superstructure.
Can you just lay down for me what this is/why it's important then so I don't have to read it
>>7355436
In that archived thread, when you said Marxism is a science and some anon replied "wew lad", that is literally the only appropriate response to that comment.
Social theories and social critiques are a science? Since fucking when?
Good thread I love you all
>>7354675
Russell Brand name dropped Debord on a talk show, so he's not cool no mo'
>>7355772
>science
>scientific method
>observation/question, background research, hypothesis, test with experiment, analyze data, draw conclusion, report/interpret results
This can be applied to the behaviors of communities of people in given designated areas, like towns, cities, nation-states, in the same way we observe communities of ants who build systems of networks for survival and flourish.
Is it more difficult? Yes. Impossible because we ourselves are human? No. It just means that no one human will have all the answers, no one human can play God perfectly, but that's where the social science community critiques and builds upon observations to gain greater insights into phenomena of human behavior, why we have traditions and how they are disseminated, why we believe in religions and how this comes to affect the greater world, why we produce products and how we consume them, etc. Hence, the social part of social science.
If you, personally, do not want to "name" it science, then fine. But whatever it is, it's just as important as deriving natural laws from observation of phenomena within the universe.
>>7355857
>the 'scientific method' applied to social theory makes it a science
>trying to get people to take your hooey seriously
I do not intend to intone any irony or humor or lightheartedness here when I say sociology is the most pathetic, useless degree possibly available to get in this day and age. I respect practically every arts major, from languages to political science and most other programs and courses off a wide academic buffet, but sociology is just a 4 year bullshit smoothie and I feel deeply sorry for anyone who happens to find themselves in that position when graduation rolls around. Better find a way to monetize your blog, fast. You'll have to switch platforms from tumblr first though
>>7355857
It's possible, but none of these people are doing it.
Scientific analysis of things like towns, cities, and nations is fundamentally statistical. Ask any marxist you meet how many years they have spent studying econometrics and you will have your answer about how scientific it is.
>>7355869
...no one mentioned anything about a social science degree but I'll take the bait.
>sociology is just a 4 year bullshit smoothie
How did you come to this conclusion? Also, which university did you attend? Do you mean your university program for social science is shit or the vastly different social science programs across the world at all universities/colleges are all shit?
A significant portion of the social scientist community (the ones who go on to academia) attain degrees in economics nowadays, anyway.
>>7355871
>Ask any marxist
I would argue that the days of identifying as a Marxist are long gone (albeit with a few exceptions, Zizek being the most popular, and those that do aren't quite pure Marxists to begin with). Marxism is now another tool in the toolbox for analyzing trends in history and capitalism.
---
I'm actually quite curious. Do you both believe that we should rid ourselves of the discipline that is social science? Or are you saying we should simply rename it something else? Or...?
>>7355189
a) Marx didn't invent LTV
b) LTV is false to facts
>>7355913
>Do you both believe that we should rid ourselves of the discipline that is social science?
No, just the fraudulent bits. I doubt there is a single real researcher in the entire field of social psychology for example. Other sub-disciplines are perfectly serviceable, though the inexact/statistical nature of the problems studied lead to an unfortunate amount of ideology and isolated pockets of bullshit.
>>7355552
>Try learning a theory of language that's rooted in science and not voodoo.
Like - Bakhtin?
>>7355020
daniel cohn-bendit wasn't a situationist he was just some guy who was there at the same time
>>7355913
>>7355913
"I would argue that the days of identifying as a Marxist are long gone"
>American
>>7357525
>tfw all the rich marxist research going on in Germany, Italy, and Latin America
>tfw American universities just read Capital as some affect-theory bullshit or attempt to reduce Marx to the post-WWI reception of him among a few intellectuals
Having even some awful physicalist interpretation of the labor theory of value should be the barrier of entry for getting to talk about Marx at conferences.
Didn't realize there was a Debord thread before I posted this:
What exactly separates spectacle from Althusser's interpretation of ideology? I'm going through this at the moment and a whole lot of it basically just a looser version of Ideological State Apparatus with its eye on Art and Entertainment, rather than including education and religion like Althusser did.
>>7358125
The spectacle is not ideology. The spectacle has to be understood as rooted in Marx's analysis of the commodity as explicated in the first three chapters of Capital Vol. 1.
The spectacle is the point at which the production (and consumption) of commodities reaches such a scale, that quantity turns into quality. The commodity no longer appears as a single thing, as an isolated object that is simply a part of a total simple sum. The commodity now relates to other elated commodities in a semi-congealed system of communication between objects. Commodities begin to be representative of a whole network of relayed commodities, which are in the last analysis, representative of determinate forms of social life.
Think of Ikea. You have a huge collection of commodities that speak to one another and present themselves as intelligible representations of life to the worker as consumer.
It is something rooted in the certain form the accumulation of capital took in Fordist production.
I can not stress this enough--the spectacle must be understood as a development of Marx's critique of political economy, not as a conceptual appears for ideology or media critique.
