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File: 1608528098316.png ( 10.79 KB , 512x512 , uni-painted-red.png )

University communists general Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:38 No.1543 [Reply]

This is a thread for communists who are (or are planning to) study at [b]unnamed[/b] universities the world over.

The thread is to serve as a mutual intellectual support system and meta-discussion for communist students to
· share resources for picking and learning your object of study
· discuss strategies for studies
· weekly rhythms and scheduling outside of the classroom
· organizing the student-body and/or spreading artistic agitation
· all while ultimately staying safe and completing your studies

✊🚩🏴

36 posts and 3 image replies omitted. Click reply to view.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:40 No.4534

How easy would it be going to uni in China? As a non-native, of course.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:51 No.4682

>>2544
In philosophy you can insert your pet issue into any paper if you try hard enough, like woman do with feminism lately.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:51 No.4683

>>4390
Where can I read more about this?

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:51 No.4690

>>4534
If one knows Chinese and scores highly one can go to some good public STEM universities. Technically most people have done English classes in earlier but obviously that doesn't mean they can fluently speak the language. Getting to know the city before enrolling is a good idea too.

>>3540
Don't act too entryist, though, because orgs justifiably don't tolerate that activity.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:51 No.4691

>>3540
Also, unless they already are favorable to Marxism and Communism, it's probably better to start off with revolutionary works that are more relevant to the orgs' issues. Social justice is a part of any communist program, and it shouldn't be too hard to find material that's related.

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9 out of 10 leftists have never read Capital SNLT 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:25:31 No.3745 [Reply]

Just gauging interest in a loosely organized Capital Reading Group. Not sure if a reading group has been done on here but we could agree to read a few chapters a week and then create a thread to discuss it or alternatively make a group signal/matrix for it. If there is no interest then please Sage or Ignore.

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SNLT 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:40 No.4539

>>4446
ideally i want this to dove tail into Vol 3, I also don't have the bandwidth to host another Vol 1 reading group unless someone wants to take that torch i dont mean to imply I'm doing really anything more than reading the chapters and participating in discussion

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:41 No.4553

>>3770
I can't join. It says "no known servers"

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:41 No.4562

Gee

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:47 No.4635

>>4562
Whillikers!

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SNLT 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:50 No.4674

This week we are reading chapters 11-14, and we will be dividing chapter 15 over the 2 weeks after.

This may change with holidays but the plan is to start Part 5 after the new year.

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How to learn economics? Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:48 No.4637 [Reply]

I consider myself fairly intelligent when it comes to reading papers, but I'm really struggling with this one.

This paper is about an education program in Indonesia and the long term effects on the job market. I'm used to studying more sociological papers, but this also includes lots of statistical analysis and words like function and regression that I don't understand.

Also, I've read this passage 10 times and don't understand it

>The production function in the formal sector exhibits constant returns to physical and human capital combined. The fact that the increase in the share of educated workers led to a movement of workers from the informal to the formal sector indicates that the elasticity of substitution between labor and land in the informal sector is smaller than the elasticity of substitution between labor and capital in the formal sector.

Can anyone help me? If I want to understand this stuff, what kind of courses should I be looking at?

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:48 No.4638

I'm not a student but I read shit like that occasionally. The author is not making up a private jargon. The language is utterly generic econ stuff. So I don't understand how you can fail to understand it. You can and should just look up the terms you don't understand.

Elasticity in economics means flexibility. If chocolate pudding varies a lot in price but I keep on buying the same physical amount month after month, then talking in Economese one would say that my demand for chocolate pudding is inelastic. Inelastic substitution between two things just means that having more of thing X does not help much with a lack of thing Y. (It's common in contemporary economics to not assume a general substitution rate like 5 X make up for 2 Y no matter how many units you have of each, rather it is usually assumed that the ability of the things to work as substitutes for each other gets worse the more you get away from the current proportions. This is not empirically derived, but based on the optimistic assumption that we are close to acting in a very sensible way about things like that.)

Constant returns means that when you are cooking something and you multiply the amount of each ingredient by the same number, the output of what you are cooking also gets multiplied by the same number. If at least one of your inputs cannot be varied like you'd want to, economists usually assume that you can't have constant returns. This is obvious in the cooking example if you really rigorously just follow one recipe with no alternative inputs allowed. Economists usually assume that you can do some substitution still, so you still have bigger output than before, but the growth is less than proportional to the inputs that you multiplied, since you didn't multiply everything. Again, the regular assumption is that prior to your attempt at changing the output quantity you had sensible proportions.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:48 No.4640

>>4638
>>4638
>The author is not making up a private jargon

I never said they were. I said that I needed help understanding it.

Thanks for the explanation.The problem with looking stuff up on google is that they rarely give a direct answer.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:48 No.4641

For understanding neoclassical economics - which in turn is necessary to learning contemporary heterodox economics, because so much of the jargon is shared - https://www.core-econ.org/ may be useful. It's free, designed for students, and by mainstream econ standards avoids a lot of ideological mystification.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:48 No.4642

>>4638
Sorry, I read your exaplantion, thanks for assisting, but I still can't wrap my head around this idea, I think I'm starting to get it…

> the elasticity of substitution between labor and land in the informal sector is smaller than the elasticity of substitution between labor and capital in the formal sector.

by saying the elasticity of substitution between labor and land is relatively low, does this mean that because land is relatively fixed, we cannot simply import many workers to match the productivity, because at a certain point, we need the land to work on?

And then on the other hand, in the formal sector, the elasticity of substitution between labour and capital is relatively higher, because you can substitute labour (i.e. people) for capital (and vice versa, i'm not sure if this is implied to go both ways or not??), and still maintain productivity? So are we saying that the formal sector is more equipped to deal with influxes of workers (or in Marxist terms, variable capital)?

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:49 No.4654

>>4642
Yes. Where the author speaks of capital in the formal sector, he is thinking mostly of machinery and he is assuming that when the conditions of business change in the formal sector it's not that hard to change the mix of people and machinery to get something close to an optimal mix, unlike with land.

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Best editions/translations of the following Marx books? Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:47 No.4631 [Reply]

Everyone tells me Penguin Classic's translation of all of Capital is the best around but what about the rest?

- Paris Manuscripts
- Germany Ideology
- Civil war in France
- Feuerbach
- Gotha
- Grundrisse
- Wage labor and capital

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:48 No.4639

Get whatever tbh.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:48 No.4644

>>4631
Just learn German

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:48 No.4647

>>4644
Not an anglo so learning german would be pretty hard for me.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:48 No.4649

>>4647
>Not an anglo
what's your native language then, anon? maybe if you tell us that we can give you recs based on your native lang and then you can look for those editions. I always prefer to read in my native language, even if I'm pretty confident in my english.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:48 No.4651

>>4649
Spanish.

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Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:46 No.4620 [Reply]

>The free people’s state is transformed into the free state. Grammatically speaking, a free state is one in which the state is free vis-à-vis its citizens, a state, that is, with a despotic government. All the palaver about the state ought to be dropped, especially after the Commune, which had ceased to be a state in the true sense of the term. The people’s state has been flung in our teeth ad nauseam by the anarchists, although Marx’s anti-Proudhon piece and after it the Communist Manifesto declare outright that, with the introduction of the socialist order of society, the state will dissolve of itself and disappear. Now, since the state is merely a transitional institution of which use is made in the struggle, in the revolution, to keep down one’s enemies by force, it is utter nonsense to speak of a free people’s state; so long as the proletariat still makes use of the state, it makes use of it, not for the purpose of freedom, but of keeping down its enemies and, as soon as there can be any question of freedom, the state as such ceases to exist. We would therefore suggest that Gemeinwesen ["community"] be universally substituted for state; it is a good old German word that can very well do service for the French “Commune.”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/letters/75_03_18.htm
What did Engels mean by this?

>pic unrelated
it's what comes up when you search for images of Engels

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Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:47 No.4624

>>4623
>Does he think the transitional state be exactly the same as the state that precedes it?
It’s core function of class domination is the same, because class domination is the defining feature of the Marxist understanding of the state. The difference is that it now works to secure the proletariat as the ruling class.
>because "state" does not adequately describe the dictatorship of the proletariat that is to be present in the transitional stage.
Why not?

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Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:47 No.4625

Ruling classes' power needs constant maintenance, therefore it constantly needs a state, therefore letting the state wither one day would be full retard.

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Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:47 No.4626

>>4625
What if there's no ruling class?

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Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:47 No.4627

It means the dictatorship of the proletariat is not about freedom, it is about destroying bourgeois power. Therefore it will be "authoritarian," "totalitarian," "oppressive," etc. There can be no freedom until classes cease to exist and the state fades away.
We need to realize that his has been a weakness in previous attempts at socialism. We need a reign of terror that will make Stalin look like a pacifist.

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Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:47 No.4628

>>4624
>It’s core function of class domination is the same, because class domination is the defining feature of the Marxist understanding of the state.
Then why did Engels say the Paris Commune ceased being a state?
>the Commune, which had ceased to be a state in the true sense of the term.
If the Commune was a DotP according to Marx, how can Engels say it had ceased to be a state?

States arise as forms of class domination 'out of' class struggle, but does that necessarily mean that what we consider a state is the 'only' form of class domination? For example, why can't a band of workers in a city get together and kick out, kill, exile all the land owners and appropriate their wealth? Is that not class domination in the absence of a state?

>Why not?
I don't know. Engels said the word "community" should be substituted for "state". I am asking why? Surely he didn't mean it as a stylistic choice, there must have been a reason why the word "state" and its definition became poorly suited for the task, for Engels, after the Paris Commune. Did Engels want to expand the definition of the "state" to include other forms of governing or did "state" refer to a particular historical form of class domination?

>>4625
>Ruling classes' power needs constant maintenance, therefore it constantly needs a state, therefore letting the state wither one day would be full retard.
That's close to what I'm getting at. Humans will always need some sort of organisation, a system of reproduction of society. Unless we're all gonna become a linked super-brain and humans will coordinate and build society together just as easy as we lift a glass of water and drink from it alone Why does organisation always have to be called a state, especially when Engels was ready to drop that term in 1875?

Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

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Calculus Review General Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:33 No.4457 [Reply]

This is a thread to review/learn calculus.

We will all be reading through James Stewart's "Calculus" 4e edition.

see: http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=67AF6FA4D6DAB692F81A09B6A2EBCC7B

This is inspired by my need to review undergraduate mathematics due to work/school purposes. I'm a bit rusty and I've forgotten a ton of math.

We will start by doing problems from his algebra review pdf which is prep for the calc problems.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:36 No.4486

Based. I'm a maths grad and am free to help if you reach any impasses.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:37 No.4497

>stewart's calculus
>not keisler's infinitesimal approach
take the hyperreal pill

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:39 No.4532

>>4461
3. 2x(x-5) = 2x^2 -10x
4. (4-3x)x = 4x - 3x^2

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:46 No.4613

>>4480
How is this possible, did you just rote memorize the algebra rules you needed in Calc?
You need a decent grasp on Algebra to pass Calc.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:46 No.4617

>>4613
Took Algebra 1 for 4th time in college and moved up literally all the way from there until Calc 2

it was really hard because I basically gave so little of a fuck past the 6th grade I still struggle with some basic calculations even after 2 years of non stop mathematics

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this chart Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:51 No.3354 [Reply]

How accurate is it?

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:46 No.4612

I wikipedia this you wikipedia that
based /his/ chart nonetheless

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:46 No.4614

>nazis and soviets get high wackiness quotient
>"our guys" and everyone else don't
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:46 No.4616

>>4614
The Canadian got 90%

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:21 No.1382 [Reply]

What if I wanted to read more or less "contemporary" philosophers like Sartre, Beauvoir, Adorno, Deleuze, Zizek, Badiou, etc.. but don't have the time and, dare I say, sufficient interest to go through Kant, Plato, Aristotle, and all the other classical authors of philosophy? How much do I have to lose? I'm willing to spend a couple of months reading Plato, but I think I'm only willing to go through secondary sources for Aristotle. Same goes for the philosophers that predated the "contemporary" ones mentioned above. I'd be willing to read a history and primer on German idealism and maybe even read primary enlightenment texts if I have to.

So how much do I have to lose? People who are good at philosophy please answer.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:21:29 No.1442

>>1387
t. theorylet
without philosophy there is no Marx

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:43 No.4574

>>1387
>political economy
So shitty philosophy?

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:43 No.4575

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This might be better in a separate thread but whatever.

Would it be a bad idea to learn French by reading the untranslated works of Deleuze and Guattari? Perhaps I should stick to the existentialists.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:43 No.4578

Thanks for the material in this thread guys, really good stuff.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:44 No.4582

>>4575
I think it's good to practice any skill just on the threshold of difficulty, so my guess is that if you're in the process of learning French D&G might be not ideal. (They are, after all, often regarded as infamously unclear.) That's why my own French reading at this moment is just newspapers and popular histories. But if it works for you go for it.

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Can you help me debunk this wehraboo historian Anonymous 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:19:04 No.220 [Reply]

This guy Is called nigel askey, and is apparently a legitimate historian. He published a paper debunking TIK's claim that the K/D ratio of the soviets during WW was 1/1.6, instead claiming that the soviets lost over 4 more times as many combatants as the Germansduring WW2. Here is his paper. I'm not a qualified historian and I dont have access to acrhives or time to research, so I can't debunk him.

http://www.operationbarbarossa.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Essay-alt-view-TIK-presentation.pdf

I checked out his website and alsthough he does seem to be knowledgeable, he makes certain ridiculous claims that the "Vicors write history" in WW2, and the allies covered up how technologically and tactically inferior they were to the germans.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:22:22 No.2008

>>1841
I've read that 1.3:1 irreplaceable casualty ratio is also what US and British forces had fighting against Germany.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:14 No.3045

>>2008
Where did you see that?

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:24:52 No.3362

Post some more Wehraboo arguments and get to debunking them!

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:38 No.4519

>https://s1.desu-usergeneratedcontent.xyz/trash/image/1606/50/1606504832714.jpg
&ltLe epic "Muh poor Warsaw unhelped by evul Stalin"
What is with /pol/ and putting their ideology into everything including porn?

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:44 No.4595

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrKDBFJoo2w&ab_channel=USNationalArchives

Some archive documentaries

Also can anyone help me find an old documentary about Nazi atrocities? I remember it distinctly because among the footage used were filmed portions of Belarus villages and a literal piles of baby corpses torched alive by the nazi scum.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:32 No.4449 [Reply]

Penguin Random House Parent Company buys Simon & Schuster

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:40 No.4538

I'm jelly of first worlders, they can get books for so cheap. Everything here is expensive, even used books in tatters.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:41 No.4552

Does that mean the Penguin classics catalog will get bigger?

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:42 No.4564

>>4449
They should burn all the Chodehouse books if they are going. Chodehouse is baby crap. I don't read it and I don't need it shoved down my fucking throat cause manbaby will pee pee his pants if you don't read it.

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:43 No.4579

>>4527
>shopindie
unfortunate word choice

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Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 05:26:43 No.4580

I truly can't stand hearing about Chodehouse. Try talking about something I actually care about. Even just one page. Everyone here backs me up too. They don't want to hear some fat geek recite his favorite Chodehouse gags. Try to read and discuss somethin I fucking care about. Chodehouse peeves me off to no end.