you should start a reading circle.

the easiest is to meet up together and take turns reading aloud, discussing as you go. reading is a skill, and you’ll all get better as you go.

as to what to read, there are many classic intro texts, but something you personally found instructive or insightful or applicable to your situation will probably be particularly meaningful for your friends. you can let questions that arise from there guide your next picks.

if you’re meeting for an hour, something that’s 15 minutes long is probably the right length to get started.

I think framing it as “learned helplessness” is condescending and unproductive.

We should be encouraging people to learn and to think critically, not tell them that they shouldn’t bother, that they would be better off if they didn’t bother, that they can never understand things so just leave it to the experts.

Mao’s “no investigation, no right to speak” slogan is better in that regard in that it privileges people with expertise without putting up an insurmountable barrier in front of the right to speak.

Even on some of the most technical sorts of examples the author of this piece gives, the experts have made bad calls. The history of medicine is littered with malpractice and scientific racism. Perhaps involving and valuing broader perspectives would have helped in some of those cases.

yeah, read against the grain there are some useful insights and it’s certainly a weathervane for how the more business savvy people in the west are beginning to see China. Still, I don’t think the author has a good understanding for what is causing a drain on productivity in the west (i.e., i don’t think it’s COVID measures and DEI) and so I’d take their other analyses with a heavy grain of salt too.

Ehh this article is poorly argued, there’s way better writing on China’s economic performance.

The author starts by just ranting about things they dislike (DEI initiatives, preventing the spread of a pandemic) rather than building a case for these factors being causal. It’s also got some casual/unaddressed anti-communism in it.

This article explains what organizing is and where some of the confusion in terms comes from: https://clarion.unity-struggle-unity.org/2024-06-06-what-is-organizing/

I also like gramsci’s essay here on building the institutions that will replace the bourgeois state: https://redsails.org/democrazia-operaia/

Gene Sharp. This is a good overview: https://redsails.org/marcie-smith-gene-sharp/

Exactly. And this is true of all aspects of our lives, too:

No matter if you’re passionate about cooking or basketball or videogames, if you pursue your passion thoughtfully and honestly enough, you eventually develop a serious awareness that capitalism is making everything worse for the sake of profit. (source)

I think the trick is to recognize that the solution is to move past capitalism into a collective model of ownership, and not bemoan some idealized past where small creators were able to create good game — a reactionary, petty bourgeois fantasy. As you highlighted, indie games are not above the pressures of capitalism.

Nearly everyone in the west is online. There isn’t a “real life” and a “fake online life.”

Creating the tools to build community is important. Having places to share information and resources and experiences outside of spaces controlled by big tech is important and could become even more so if communism really threatens the status quo. That makes tools like lemmy useful.

However, it’s also on the community to treat these alternative spaces as valuable, as something that can be that resource for people, and as a community that matters. Dessalines and others might have built the tools but it is on us to put them to use.

It’s probably more worth my time to take a leaf out of Roderic’s book and not post on here but the idea that he coordinates a network of alts being a more reasonable explanation to you than that he has friends is just too ridiculous. Here’s some contrary evidence for you to grapple with:

You can listen to a podcast I’ve done here: https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/show/8d546709-2b54-498a-a29d-a0bde330a940/id/27767583

You can also watch Roderic on a panel about Losurdo and his book in Stalin here: https://twitter.com/RodericDay/status/1724514720374301034?s=19

Do you really think we are the same person?

My experience as a scientist is that to do good science, you need to be thinking dialectically. I think a lot about why more scientists are not Marxists; people who are good at thinking about the interconnectivity and changing nature of things in their science turn to eclecticism in their political beliefs/philosophy. Part of this is that I think we treat science and politics as such disparate things that must never interact.

A lot of the “business” of science is very undialectical, and that’s where you see the failures of the field manifest. For example, assessment of a scientist’s contributions based on first authorship, journal prestige, etc, encourages bad practices with respect to collaboration and sharing results.

You might enjoy this article by Bernal, a Marxist scientist: https://redsails.org/the-social-function-of-science/

Already we have in the practice of science the prototype for all human action. The task which the scientists have undertaken — the understanding and control of nature and of man himself — is merely the conscious expression of the task of human society. The methods by which this task is attempted, however imperfectly they are realized, are the methods by which humanity is most likely to secure its own future. In its endeavour, science is communism. In science men have learned consciously to subordinate themselves to a common purpose without losing the individuality of their achievements. Each one knows that his work depends on that of his predecessors and colleagues and that it can only reach its fruition through the work of his successors. In science men collaborate not because they are forced to by superior authority or because they blindly follow some chosen leader, but because they realize that only in this willing collaboration can each man find his goal. Not orders, but advice, determine action. Each man knows that only by advice, honestly and disinterestedly given, can his work succeed, because such advice expresses as near as may be the inexorable logic of the material world, stubborn fact. Facts cannot be forced to our desires, and freedom comes by admitting this necessity and not by pretending to ignore it. These things have been learned painfully and incompletely in the pursuit of science. Only in the wider tasks of humanity will their full use be found.

Thanks for sharing, I see why you were stressed. For what it’s worth, students crying in front of professors about assignments is really not so rare a thing. I don’t think you should be ashamed. It sounds to me like your Prof was quite supportive, and you might want to consider developing your professional relationship with them. Having people to write letters of recommendation for you is handy if you plan to go to grad school, and my impression is that this professor has gone a bit out of their way to guide you better (in their eyes), suggesting they will remember you quite well. You could send them an email during the project asking for their opinion on sources (since this is a concern of theirs), or after the project thanking them for their help. Good luck with the writing process!

It’s interesting to note that the household survey tracked the revised numbers more closely than the preliminary data (final graph in report). There has been a lot of handwringing about why people are unhappy with the economy while economic indicators look good, and perhaps this sheds some insight.

I think dota has a lot of avenues for better understanding communism and dialectics.

As one example, the way the five roles fit together in the balancing of their power spikes and the harnessing of their skill sets towards a common goal, it makes me think of this Che quote:

One acquires in the face of work the old joy: the joy of fulfilling a duty; of feeling important within the social mechanism; of feeling oneself a cog that has its own unique characteristics, that is necessary — although not indispensable — to the production process. And, moreover, a conscious cog. A cog that has its own engine, driven further and further every time, in order to bring about to happy conclusion one of the key premises of socialist construction: the availability of a sufficient quantity of consumer goods for the entire population.

I’m at a loss for what you think I think management is because it certainly isn’t “a single manager to solve problems” nor “top-down” nor excluding of employees from reporting or decision-making. Perhaps we agree but use language differently:

These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm

Of course, we should increase education for everyone. It enables better workplace democracy and efficiency. But as per the article I linked in my last comment, specialization and division of labour (required for efficient production) means some workers will also specialize in management, i.e., become managers.

I’m curious what “current dogma” you’re thinking about that says managers will become obsolete.

I think you are very narrowly defining manager as a manager of capital (i.e., seeking to maximize profits without care for what products are being made). I think you should read this: https://redsails.org/the-relationships-between-capitalists/

As Marx later emphasizes, one consequence of the development of management as a distinct category of labor is that the profits still received by owners can no longer be justified as the compensation for organizing the production process. But what about the managers themselves, how should we think about them? Are they really laborers, or capitalists? Well, both — their position is ambiguous. On the one hand, they are performing a social coordination function, that any extended division of labor will require. But on the other hand, they are the representatives of the capitalist class in the coercive, adversarial labor process that is specific to capitalism.

It is only the last part — the coercive, adversarial role played as representatives of capital — that will become obsolete. The coordination part of management (which includes coaching and motivation and conflict resolution) will remain.

My experience with organizations, from families to RPG groups to community associations to capitalist enterprises, is that in a management void, some people will take on management responsibilities. Since these roles require skill and entail responsibility for certain tasks, it’s better to formalize it and train people for it. Do you not also see this in the organizations you are part of? Or could you be underestimating the amount of labour others are putting in to managing your community?

Workflow optimization and employee morale will still be important under socialism.

Workflow optimization is just management of people/resources/timelines (and is present in non-repetitive jobs too): what processes aren’t working well together, what were the root causes of issues we encountered, how do we fix these problems? This, too, gets better with experience and study and some workers should specialize in this sort of management.

Employee morale (and other aspects of emotional work) will also still be a relevant question under socialism: how do you balance a specific worker’s development interests with the needs of the job, how do you manage interpersonal conflict, how do you build consensus for or mediate disagreement raising from decisions the group needs to make? Straight-up boring old motivation questions also do not disappear just because workers have a stake in the fruits of their labour.

It’s not clear to me why management would become obsolete. Good management (the coordination of people, resources, and timelines) requires skill and is a science, and the efficiency we get from division of labour/specialization suggests workplaces would be better off if some workers specialized in management roles.

See, for example, Krupskaya:

We, Russians, have hitherto shown little sophistication in this science of management. However, without studying it, without learning to manage, we will not only not make it to communism, but not even to socialism.

https://redsails.org/the-taylor-system/

After you read it, you might like this essay: https://redsails.org/maoist-and-daoist-dialectics/

It looks at the influence of Daoism and The Art of War on Mao’s dialectics, and compares this eastern development of dialectics with the branch of dialectics that evolved in the west (eg Hegel, Lenin). (Though obviously these developments weren’t fully independent.) It was a really helpful essay for me for understanding dialectics.

Tao Te Ching by Laozi (there’s a translation by Ursula Le Guin, and many others besides) — 4th century BCE

Maybe also Art of War, by Sun Tzu (5th century BCE).

Both very influential works in Chinese philosophy and literature.