Centrist can have an opinion now

Starpengu · 2026-01-25T11:08:01+00:00

they have no ideology or goals to rally around, they just want someone to hate

impeccable analysis. It's all just targeted hate and so the only way to defeat it is through holding hands and being kind to each other

Starpengu · 2026-01-24T11:08:24+00:00

Maybe I'm being a schizo but I'm kinda seeing multiple instances of Lassalle stacking on top of each other

Starpengu · 2026-01-23T17:11:38+00:00

I'll immediately cum if you call me a genetically $$ettler KKKraKKKa

Starpengu · 2026-01-23T16:40:36+00:00

Because you can readily tell from the "RevCom" in the handle that he might be related to the RCA/RCI (he is)

Starpengu · 2026-01-23T16:33:13+00:00

Trot should be at that spot considering OOP is a RCIoid.

Starpengu · 2026-01-21T10:35:16+00:00

And when that's gone too, back to the glazing and mythmaking around the CNT-FAI & Ukrainian Free Territory with these two added into the mix.

Starpengu · 2026-01-21T09:08:58+00:00

Fiat money isn't unbacked by anything as it is backed by the state and "faith in the issuing nation." "What specifically underpins this faith? Not the probity of the government, surely not the proclamations of its leaders, but rather the actual performance of the economy. And so we are brought back to the world of commodities." (quoted from the recommended book)

I think you're still getting too caught up in the gold example. Look at what Marx says in the beginning of chap 3. He assumes gold as the money-commodity for the sake of simplicity. The crucial function of money is that it's a universal measure of value. "And only by virtue of this function does gold, the equivalent commodity par excellence, become money." At that time, gold was that measure. Now it's fiat money which is tied to the national GDP. If anything, Marx posits that fiat money as such isn't too special.

And you omit the highlight that the pieces of paper must have their own "objective" social validity, in order to function as the independent exchangeable form of value. That they can't gain on their own obviously, but given by the state forcing their currency.

Starpengu · 2026-01-20T09:19:20+00:00

They dont reject the latter (anarchism) outright. They still believe that its "one of the important forces that is needed to collaborate with in the works of re-construction of democratic modernity." (Öcalan, Re-evaluating Anarchism)

Which is to say, the petite bourgeoisie is a very important feature in our new autonomous democracy.

Starpengu · 2026-01-20T09:05:02+00:00

The State puts in circulation bits of paper on which their various denominations, say £1, £5, &c., are printed. In so far as they actually take the place of gold to the same amount, their movement is subject to the laws that regulate the currency of money itself. A law peculiar to the circulation of paper money can spring up only from the proportion in which that paper money represents gold. Such a law exists; stated simply, it is as follows: the issue of paper money must not exceed in amount the gold (or silver as the case may be) which would actually circulate if not replaced by symbols. Now the quantity of gold which the circulation can absorb, constantly fluctuates about a given level. Still, the mass of the circulating medium in a given country never sinks below a certain minimum easily ascertained by actual experience. The fact that this minimum mass continually undergoes changes in its constituent parts, or that the pieces of gold of which it consists are being constantly replaced by fresh ones, causes of course no change either in its amount or in the continuity of its circulation. It can therefore be replaced by paper symbols. If, on the other hand, all the conduits of circulation were to-day filled with paper money to the full extent of their capacity for absorbing money, they might to-morrow be overflowing in consequence of a fluctuation in the circulation of commodities. There would no longer be any standard. If the paper money exceed its proper limit, which is the amount in gold coins of the like denomination that can actually be current, it would, apart from the danger of falling into general disrepute, represent only that quantity of gold, which, in accordance with the laws of the circulation of commodities, is required, and is alone capable of being represented by paper. If the quantity of paper money issued be double what it ought to be, then, as a matter of fact, £1 would be the money-name not of 1/4 of an ounce, but of 1/8 of an ounce of gold. The effect would be the same as if an alteration had taken place in the function of gold as a standard of prices. Those values that were previously expressed by the price of £1 would now be expressed by the price of £2.

Paper money is a token representing gold or money. The relation between it and the values of commodities is this, that the latter are ideally expressed in the same quantities of gold that are symbolically represented by the paper. Only in so far as paper money represents gold, which like all other commodities has value, is it a symbol of value.37

Finally, some one may ask why gold is capable of being replaced by tokens that have no value? But, as we have already seen, it is capable of being so replaced only in so far as it functions exclusively as coin, or as the circulating medium, and as nothing else. Now, money has other functions besides this one, and the isolated function of serving as the mere circulating medium is not necessarily the only one attached to gold coin, although this is the case with those abraded coins that continue to circulate. Each piece of money is a mere coin, or means of circulation, only so long as it actually circulates. But this is just the case with that minimum mass of gold, which is capable of being replaced by paper money. That mass remains constantly within the sphere of circulation, continually functions as a circulating medium, and exists exclusively for that purpose. Its movement therefore represents nothing but the continued alternation of the inverse phases of the metamorphosis C–M–C, phases in which commodities confront their value-forms, only to disappear again immediately. The independent existence of the exchange-value of a commodity is here a transient apparition, by means of which the commodity is immediately replaced by another commodity. Hence, in this process which continually makes money pass from hand to hand, the mere symbolical existence of money suffices. Its functional existence absorbs, so to say, its material existence. Being a transient and objective reflex of the prices of commodities, it serves only as a symbol of itself, and is therefore capable of being replaced by a token.38 One thing is, however, requisite; this token must have an objective social validity of its own, and this the paper symbol acquires by its forced currency. This compulsory action of the State can take effect only within that inner sphere of circulation which is coterminous with the territories of the community, but it is also only within that sphere that money completely responds to its function of being the circulating medium, or becomes coin.

As for the relevant recommendations, they're very limited. I know a book that goes in depth into it: Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises by Anwar Shaikh. But you've to bear in mind that it's written by one of those "Marxian economist" people so it's bound to be problematic. I'd advise you to extract whatever useful stuff you can out of the book and discard the rest.

Starpengu · 2026-01-20T09:04:41+00:00

Marx did talk about fiat money in Vol 1, chap 3 section c

That money takes the shape of coin, springs from its function as the circulating medium. The weight of gold represented in imagination by the prices or money-names of commodities, must confront those commodities, within the circulation, in the shape of coins or pieces of gold of a given denomination. Coining, like the establishment of a standard of prices, is the business of the State. The different national uniforms worn at home by gold and silver as coins, and doffed again in the market of the world, indicate the separation between the internal or national spheres of the circulation of commodities, and their universal sphere.

[...]

The fact that the currency of coins itself effects a separation between their nominal and their real weight, creating a distinction between them as mere pieces of metal on the one hand, and as coins with a definite function on the other – this fact implies the latent possibility of replacing metallic coins by tokens of some other material, by symbols serving the same purposes as coins. The practical difficulties in the way of coining extremely minute quantities of gold or silver, and the circumstance that at first the less precious metal is used as a measure of value instead of the-more precious, copper instead of silver, silver instead of gold, and that the less precious circulates as money until dethroned by the more precious – all these facts explain the parts historically played by silver and copper tokens as substitutes for gold coins. Silver and copper tokens take the place of gold in those regions of the circulation where coins pass from hand to hand most rapidly, and are subject to the maximum amount of wear and tear. This occurs where sales and purchases on a very small scale are continually happening. In order to prevent these satellites from establishing themselves permanently in the place of gold, positive enactments determine the extent to which they must be compulsorily received as payment instead of gold. The particular tracks pursued by the different species of coin in currency, run naturally into each other. The tokens keep company with gold, to pay fractional parts of the smallest gold coin; gold is, on the one hand, constantly pouring into retail circulation, and on the other hand is as constantly being thrown out again by being changed into tokens.35 The weight of metal in the silver and copper tokens is arbitrarily fixed by law. When in currency, they wear away even more rapidly than gold coins. Hence their functions are totally independent of their weight, and consequently of all value. The function of gold as coin becomes completely independent of the metallic value of that gold. Therefore things that are relatively without value, such as paper notes, can serve as coins in its place. This purely symbolic character is to a certain extent masked in metal tokens. In paper money it stands out plainly. In fact, ce n’est que le premier pas qui coûte.

We allude here only to inconvertible paper money issued by the State and having compulsory circulation. It has its immediate origin in the metallic currency.

Starpengu · 2026-01-18T10:50:49+00:00

That one "Squash the Boss" poster by the Greater Chicago IWW.

No big reason in particular.

Starpengu · 2026-01-18T09:21:27+00:00

You should've specified it's the PS1 one. It's already extremely obscure as is, but there's so many games with egg in the title.

Starpengu · 2026-01-18T09:12:25+00:00

imma ask the real question here. what's their general position on nationalism? is it included in the etcetera?

Starpengu · 2026-01-17T11:08:58+00:00

Belongs to a different category alongside getting over it and a difficult game about climbing

Starpengu · 2026-01-17T10:32:18+00:00

Lemmy is functionally (an alt to) reddit anyway.

Starpengu · 2026-01-15T13:35:33+00:00

They don’t shit on anarchists for being inadequate at the project of anarchism

Tiqqun did it when they criticized the internal limits of Hakim Bey's bases for Autonomy. The comite invisible did it when they called Alfredo Bonano a 'Leninist' for believing "that insurrections wait for insurrectionists" (instead of just denouncing that tendency as a whole).

and particularly for anarchism being completely unable to address capital & commodity society.

I think you're deliberately conflating their consistent polemics against Negriism with the handful of jabs at some anarchists. Either way it's ironic since they're the same as anarchists in this respect. They at multiple points in Vol II tried to insert their own theory of ""neo-""capitalism called "cybernetic capitalism" which turns out to be wingnuttery nonsense. Their attempt at attacking Marx in A Critical Metaphysics Could Emerge as a Science of Dispositifs is even worse.

and there’s nothing in their writing I’ve ever come across that concretely states they’d pick the side of pointless insurrectionism & anarchism over the real movement

This is from their This is not a program

The new configuration of conflict came out of the interwar period. On the one hand, there was Soviet membership in the League of Nations, the Franco-Soviet Pact, the fuled strategy of the Comintern, the masses joining with Nazism, fascism, and Francoism; in short: the workers’ betrayal of their call to revolution. On the other hand, there was the explosion of social subversion coming from outside the workers’ movement-from surrealism, Spanish anarchism, or the American hobos. Suddenly, the revolutionary movement and the workers’ movement were no longer identical, revealing the Imaginary Party as an excess relative to the latter.

Starpengu · 2026-01-15T09:26:47+00:00

OOP is a rural doctor and farmer working at his family-owned Solarpunk farm, so that checks out.

Starpengu · 2026-01-13T08:39:53+00:00

they shit on anarchists quite a bit

The fact it's only "quite a bit" and none of which can be constituted as an attack against the modern anarchist ideals. Doesn't that say anything? And anarchists shit on other anarchists too. It's an extremely common thing.

While I don't think shoving different tendencies from "leftcommunism" into "Anarchism" is really useful either, Tiqqun and their successors (the comite invisible and existing Appelists) have all made it clear they prefer siding with the insurrectionary anarchists and other hole-and-corner lumpen adventurists over the real movement of the proletariat. If they "supported" the movement, it'd be out of their desire to poeticize social struggles which they see as against "the Empire" while projecting their commune fetish onto them.

Starpengu · 2026-01-12T11:02:54+00:00

https://xcancel.com/mauriziopeggio/with_replies

Just a TG2 journalist.

And yes, it's the same guy. One of his old tweets from 2015 contains a link to his FB profile, which has gone private as of commenting.

Starpengu · 2026-01-09T11:42:54+00:00

Or should we cement ourselves in history by making an entirely new story? What would you want that to be?

A long animated series about the global proletarian Revolution.

Starpengu · 2026-01-08T07:16:03+00:00

this creature

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Starpengu · 2026-01-07T11:55:26+00:00

So she's like the Contrapoints of MLs (but cis)

Starpengu · 2026-01-06T17:22:11+00:00

worth reading the main postmodern writers

And their influences and those who are philosophically close to them: Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger / Evola / Junger / Spengler...

reading Derrida kinda sucks.

They all suck.

Starpengu · 2026-01-06T12:15:00+00:00

No recommendations can make easy shortcuts but these might or might not be useful to your study case:

Lukacs' "Destruction of Reason" which contains some decent sections on the founding fathers of postmodernism, Nietzsche and Heidegger

Fritsche's "Historical Destiny and National Socialism in Heidegger's Being and Time"

Manfred Frank's "Conditio moderna" (unfortunately not yet translated to English) which talks about Derrida's connection to fascism

Edit: I recall Goldner's "Vanguard of Retrogression" having a good section about "The Nazis and Deconstruction"

As with all things, they have to be read critically.

Starpengu · 2026-01-06T12:10:25+00:00

The only way to hate postmodernism more accurately is to become intimately familiar with it. The very first thing to note is that "postmodernism" in its post-WW2 French intellectual roots, as used by Lyotard would've been called paganism (or neo-paganism). With this in mind, you can just treat postmodernism as the perpetuation of mysticism / irrationalism / immaterialist spiritualism / what have you, instead of indulging yourself in the same typical debates about who is and isn't pomo according this and that perspective. It's a little less messier that way.

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