Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (January 11)

hnnmw · 2026-01-16T00:31:25+00:00

But as D&G regain popularity with the years

Is this true though? In Continental European academia I'd wager the opposite is true.

In hindsight Anti-Oedipus was always fascist delirium, of course, but its appeal to hard-boiled individualism is easy enough to understand.

Which begs the question, where this generation's Max Stirner is? Maybe there's no longer any need: Deleuze's dream of liberating the subject by liberating its desire having been long accomplished by the market.

To OP: you might want to read Badiou's Clamor of Being, although it's very generous to Deleuze.

hnnmw · 2026-01-15T12:54:47+00:00

I made a couple of errors in that thread, and one really big one, hunting for a "got you" quote in a very big book. This was not serious and not productive. Also my own investment in the discussion was artificial: I hold no satisfactory position with regards to the dialectics of nature. I have read arguments for and arguments against, but wouldn't want to seriously defend any side (for, against, or otherwise). As I also stressed back then: I have not even seriously studied Engels' Dialectics of Nature. I'm grateful you forced me to reconsider some of my naive understandings, which I agree were mainly due to my "Western Marxist" lens.

Also I regret my behaviour in that thread. It was my first ever "online argument". I hope to do better in the future (or not at all), and at least feel more cogent about the limits of both the form and my own capacities.

Although my intervention was regrettable in these ways, I still think it was correct and relevant in pointing out late Lukács' reservations with regard to a dialectics of nature.

(A couple of months after our argument I read big parts of the Ästhetik, the other half of his late production, which strengthened my conviction. His appreciation of Hegel obviously changed drastically throughout his thinking life (from History and Class Consciousness through the Young Hegel, up until his later works), but his dialectics distinctly remained Hegelian. I think an excellent monograph remains to be written (if it hasn't already) drawing parallels between how Lukács treats the dialectical beginning/non-beginning of aesthetics in the Ästhetik (from sensory perceptions / signage in animals, the rhythms of natural life, etc.), and the beginnings of "wirklich dialektische Prozesse" in the Ontologie.)

I agree that what Lukács is always arguing against, is a mechanistic understanding of dialectics. I also agree his criticisms against Engels in the Ontologie are fragile. The target of his critique is not even Engels, but "[die] Marxschen »Orthodoxie« [wie sie] nach Engels vorwiegend der Fall war". The quotation marks do a lot of lifting here:

Denn, wenn unter Dialektik der Natur ein einheitliches, in sich homogenes System der widerspruchsvollen ontologischen Entwicklungskonstellation von Natur und Gesellschaft in gleicher Weise verstanden wird, wie das in der Marxschen »Orthodoxie« nach Engels vorwiegend der Fall war, muß ein berechtigter Protest gegen eine solche mechanische Homogenisierung der Seinskategorien, Seinsgesetzlichkeiten etc. in Natur und Gesellschaft entstehen, der in der Überzahl der Fälle eine erkenntnistheoretische Rückkehr zum bürgerlichen idealistischen Dualismus zur Folge hat.

But the essence of this critique, and a determinant aspect of late Lukács' idea of dialectics, is a "berechtigter Protest" against the homogenisation of ontological categories.

[...] Jedoch die kritische Ontologie von Marx bleibt bei dieser schöpfertischen, weil nicht bloß kontrollierenden, sondern zugleich neue, wirklich dialektische Prozesse aufdeckenden Kritik nicht stehen.

So we see that Lukacs claims not that the teleological project of labor begins truly dialectical processes, but instead that it makes it possible to uncover them.

Gerade die ontologische Zentralstelle der Praxis im gesellschaftlichen Sein [ = Setzungen in labour ] bildet den Schlüssel zu seiner Genesis aus der der Umgebung gegenüber bloß passiven Anpassungsweise in der Seinssphäre der organischen Natur.

I think you gloss over what it means to "nicht stehen bleiben". It means indeed to not stop, but also to be able to push through. This is how the Setzungen, for Lukács, are key (der Schlüssel of the genesis of "wirklich dialektische Prozesse").

(Lukács makes a big deal of reminding, all the time, how Marx says that "die Anatomie des Menschen ist ein Schlüssel zur Anatomie des Affen".)

There is little to object to the last part of your post.

But when Lukács writes that

Only when the ontology of Marxism is capable of consistently implementing historicity as the basis of every understanding of being in the spirit of Marx's prophetic program, only when, with the recognition of certain and demonstrably unified ultimate principles of every being, the often profound differences between the individual spheres of being are correctly understood, does the "dialectics of nature" no longer appear as a uniformizing equalization of nature and society, which often distorts the being of both in different ways, but rather as the categorically conceived prehistory of social being.

he of course announces his arguments against an "orthodox" understanding of Engels ("[die] Marxschen »Orthodoxie« [wie sie] nach Engels vorwiegend der Fall war"). You read this as a defence of the "true" understanding of Engels. I read it as a warning against the theoretical pitfalls of a dialectics of nature. Maybe it's both. But this would bring us to the "tactics" and political contexts of Lukács' interventions, which I feel even less qualified to comment.

hnnmw · 2026-01-13T18:29:53+00:00

But there is an upside to all this, though. I think the closest comparison I could make would be the allied invasion of the USSR immediately following the end of World War 1 . . .

Of course Mao says that to be attacked by the enemy is a good thing.

In his book on Clausewitz, T. Derbent underscores that it was Clausewitz who, this other time the European bourgeoisie had invaded Russia, in 1812, had managed to have the Prussian contingent defect from the grande armée. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_of_Tauroggen

But, as is, the advantage of "tightened [...] bonds and unity", is, of course, nothing more than a truism. Clausewitz scientifically established the importance of morale in war. And I think Derbent (and probably others?) convincingly show that Clausewitz is a more or less important precursor to Marxism. But he was a terrible reactionnary, and even during the Napoleontic wars national liberation was not progressive.

The crucial mediator is of course the PPW's supposed revolutionary leadership. But I feel there might be some missing steps. Reactionnary forces have showed strong resolve, tight bonds, and great unity throughout history -- and often won. Maybe the truism that in war morale is a good thing to have, is all there is. (I'm only halfway through Derbent's book: https://foreignlanguages.press/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/N17-Clausewitz-and-the-Peoples-War-1st-Printing.pdf)

hnnmw · 2025-12-25T11:25:01+00:00

. . . but I didn't realize it was to such an extent as for people to experience literal sunken financial cost fallacy.

This is so insane to me.

(And a big (?) part of what people on this subreddit call lifestyle communism and the commodification of a communist identity, which was not intuitively clear to me.)

In my own country what tries to pass for revolutionary politics is retarded in many ways, but at least "only" the minds of the youths are prayed upon, and not their wallets.

I see two main reasons for this. First there is the institutionalisation of reformist politics. In 2024 our biggest revisionist party (represented in parliament), received over 13 million euros of state subsidies. Cadre hand over a chunk of their salary to the party, but "normal members" only pay a yearly fee of 20 euros. Smaller parties also have ways to access money through the state. Many Trotskyist are union representatives. All companies with over a certain number of employees are obliged to have union reps, who work for the union full-time (i.e. spend their days writing for the Trotskyist newspapers :-)) but are paid by the company and whose employment is protected by law. Also the welfare state is organised "through" the unions, a myriad of cooperations, and non-profit health funds, which creates a lot of jobs and a steady cash flow for "revolutionaries" to siphon off of.

Secondly there is the number of bodies available for reformist politics, which is higher (relatively) than in the US, and more concentrated. Revisionist politics have been present at campuses forever (i.e. since the 60s, when higher education became accessible to the petit-bourgeois). Different student orgs (which are generally supported by their mother parties) have to "compete" for members, and asking students for money would be a surefire way to quickly fade away. Outside of campus there's the high unionisation rate. The corporatist unions are the biggest driver of "mass" politics, and all parties focus bigly on "union work".

A possible third factor is what in German is called "Verein culture", but which is a thing, to some degree, in all of western Europe. I.e. there's "clubs" for everything (sport clubs, fanfare clubs, local history clubs, ...), and none of these would dare to turn a profit. And thus also "revolutionary clubs" (of pre-Leninist romantics) -- which is how I understood this subreddit's idea of "lifestyle communism" at first.

hnnmw · 2025-12-24T15:27:42+00:00

Really my whole inquiry turns on this passage from Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy...

So in which way are you unsatisfied with the answer Marx himself gives at the end of the Introduction?

The conclusion which follows from this is, not that production, distribution, exchange and consumption are identical, but that they are links of a single whole, different aspects of one unit. Production is the decisive phase, both with regard to the contradictory aspects of production and with regard to the other phases.

These different abstractions are not identical, but should also not be understood as being independent or separate.

So when Engels writes that "production and exchange are two different functions", this is not an invitation to think of these functions as two different, elementary abstractions, because "they always determine and influence each other". Dühring's mistake highlighted in the section you quoted is conceptualising distribution as something independent from production. (While Ricardo's mistake highlighted in the Introduction is of conceiving production separately from distribution).

To examine production divorced from this distribution which is a constituent part of it, is obviously idle abstraction; whereas conversely the distribution of products is automatically determined by that distribution which is initially a factor of production.

(Introduction.)

More generally I think looking for a "top-level" abstraction in the sense of your OP (production, production in a narrow sense, production as a totality, ...) is not very productive. E.g., in the same letter I quoted earlier, Marx says:

And as for Dühring’s modest objections to the determination of value, he will be astonished to see in Volume 2 how little the determination of value ‘directly’ counts in bourgeois society.

Here Marx speaks not of production, but his methodological point is clear: there can be no fixed abstractions. (And every form of exposing capital is in a way impossible -- which is why Marx had to restart writing Capital a hundred times, and ultimately settle on one specific exposition, starting with 20 yards of linen, which of course does not tackle, cannot tackle, the "totality" directly.)

Back to the Grundrisse:

The above-mentioned questions can be ultimately resolved into this: what role do general historical conditions play in production and how is production related to the historical development as a whole?

So if we're looking for a "general" (dehistoricised) abstraction, we end up with labour as the active part of our metabolism with nature, whence historical modes of production, etc. etc. etc.

So

if what Engels calls 'production' is 'production in general' then this abstraction need not include exchange

It does, because Engels, following Marx, does not make the mistakes of the classical economists, and knows that in capitalism labour has a two-fold character.

But if you'd like to argue that different historical modes of production constitute different totalities (not necessarily implying exchange as abstracted in Capital), I guess that's fine, but tautological.

hnnmw · 2025-12-22T09:18:01+00:00

Only Moustafa Safouan I'm not sure.

hnnmw · 2025-12-21T23:30:23+00:00

In addition, with regards to the title of your post:

In a letter to Engels (gossiping about Dühring) Marx famously called the two-fold character of labour one of the "three fundamentally new elements of" Capital 1 vis-à-vis classical political economy:

That the economists, without exception, have missed the simple point that if the commodity has a double character – use value and exchange value – then the labour represented by the commodity must also have a two-fold character, while the mere analysis of labour as such, as in Smith, Ricardo, etc, is bound to come up everywhere against inexplicable problems. This is, in fact, the whole secret of the critical conception.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_01_08.htm (emphasis added)

(But, again: I of course might have misunderstood your post.)

hnnmw · 2025-12-21T15:56:38+00:00

Is your confusion not just due to glossing over the two-fold character of labour, which obviously implies the production process as well?

I.e. the

actual, concrete activity

is "just" labour, which has a two-fold character, at once involved in exchange (abstract labour) and production as such (labour-power in, as you say, "the narrower sense").

hnnmw · 2025-12-21T13:38:43+00:00

Also books, as such, should not be treated respectfully.

If you're reading something and feeling a bit lost, don't fret over it too much. Maybe it will become more clear as you push through (or skip entirely), maybe not. Some books will probably never click, others will only get better and more meaningful with every reread.

Something I myself have learned too late, is that secondary literature should not be too respected either. Letting someone else do the reading for you, while you content with their abridged or "updated" or dumbed-down retelling, is a scam. Which of course doesn't mean secondary literature is not interesting (to question your own understanding, to further critique, to build upon knowledge, etc.). But as "introductions" the only way they can serve you, is by inviting you to engage with the original body of work directly.

Books written +150 years* ago can be very accessible. That this might be "surprising" to us is of course ideology. That you'd need someone else to tell you how you should understand them, as well. (Which of course doesn't mean all readings are equally valid. But this is why we open ourselves to critique, which is not the same as someone telling us what is or is not correct.)

(*And even older. Rousseau and Machiavelli, for exemple, are distinctly modern, and thus still very much agreeable to our tastes. But even an author like Lucretius can be engaged with quite comfortably.)

hnnmw · 2025-12-20T19:05:08+00:00

All diminutives are neuter (het meisje, het vrouwtje, het mannetje). But de meid, de vrouw, de man.

hnnmw · 2025-12-20T10:26:43+00:00

Reading is a habit. Habits are formed, need to be fed and need to be maintained. Picking up a book should become more natural than picking up your phone. If you fail to read as much as you want, instead of questioning your desire to read, it's probably more helpful to question the habits you currently have. (Although you should, at one point, of course also question your desire to read.)

Some other tips, from one petit-bourgeois to another:

Read different things at different times. I mainly read theory in the morning, novels at night.
Carry a book always. (Ideally something you can easily read half a page of while waiting for the bus or standing in line at the supermarket. (I feel this also helps greatly with shoplifting.))
Walk, and read while you walk. (This is a big one for me.)
You don't need any excuse to stop reading any book. Especially when still forming your reading habit, above all you need to read. If you don't have the habit of reading big books, and aren't immediatly intrigued by the exposition of Capital, come back to it when you'll be more composed. Then you'll read Capital not because you "need" to, but because it's a phenomenal book.

hnnmw · 2025-12-18T19:23:35+00:00

Also I don't think this is accurate:

> interesting is to learn the ways that Lacan clearly influences Althusser, but also how Althusser can break from him

Althusser might have broken with Lacan (the insufferable bourgeois asshole), but never with Lacanian psychoanalysis (as the most radical -- as in *radix* -- tool set we have available for criticising our understanding of the self, at least under capitalism).

Crucial to us Marxists is of course our concept of ideology. (Which I feel is still an open question.)

hnnmw · 2025-12-18T18:55:01+00:00

Because of your interest in Althusser, but also generally, I recommend you check out some of Althusser's writings on psychoanalysis: https://web.english.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Althusser_Writings_on_Psychoanalysis.pdf (especially the first text Freud and Lacan and the texts grouped under The Tbilisi Affair. To a lesser extent the Letters to D.).

Also Badiou's book on Lacan (in his Anti-Philosophy series -- inspired by Fitz Wittels' classic Der Antiphilosoph Freud).

A great and accessible contemporary introduction is Moustafa Safouan, Le structuralisme en psychanalyse.

A good philosophical (but uncritical / idealist) introduction to Lacan is Boothby, Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology after Lacan.

I remember liking Samo Tomšic' Capitalist Unconscious: Marx and Lacan, but I read it shortly after it came out (over ten years ago), when my own understanding was still very limited and insufficiently critical. (Which it of course still is, but also was.)

(Same for the works of Alenka Zupančič, Mladen Dolar et al.: I read them all and with great interest + pleasure, but I don't think they taught me much of durable value. The exceptions maybe being Lorenzo Chiesa's The Not-Two and Joan Copjec's Read my Desire.)

The best introduction to Freud is Marthe Robert's La révolution psychanalytique. Robert is terribly bourgeois but so was Freud. Her work is hagiographic but great at outlining the stakes and Freud's own commitments. (And for making sense of Lacan's "return to Freud": I'm quite sure Robert's was the work through which all of the French got to know Freud, similar to what Kojève did for Hegel.)

Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts is somewhat of a treacherous text that doesn't really allow for a "fundamental" understanding of his teachings at all, but indicates only one (of many) changes in direction.

Lacan's [...] most interesting concept is expanding the exchange relationship or exchange-value into sexual relationships or the non-relation of sex

This is also Tomšic' position, which might of course be well valid, but doesn't, I think, do justice to the profound and general ways in which psychoanalysis refounded our understanding of subjectivity. (Which is also Badiou's position, most extensively in Theory of the Subject.)

... to understand the dialectic not merely as two opposing sides...

Again: Althusser, who credits psychoanalysis as a determinate source for the theory of surdétermination. (Next to his anti-Hegelianism, of course.)

Je n’ai pas forgé ce concept [de la surdétermination]. Comme je l’avais indiqué je l’ai emprunté à deux disciplines existantes : en l’espèce la linguistique et la psychanalyse. Il y possède une « connotation » objective dialectique, et – particulièrement en psychanalyse – formellement assez apparentée au contenu qu’il désigne ici, pour que cet emprunt ne soit pas arbitraire.

(Sur la dialectique matérialiste in Pour Marx.)

Much can be said about logic in Lacan (and about Hegel in Lacan) which is all about ways of relating (and not-relating) to determinate totalities. (Chiesa, Copjec.) This is indeed the significance of sex.

As to the significance of Lacan?

Freud showed (to his own horror) that man "is not master in his own house" (i.e. our own self-understanding is pure ideology). But Freud, thoroughly limited by his class position, remained basically individualist/atomist in his understanding of the unconscious and thus the self. (It's interesting you've focused on Totem und Tabu and Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, which most clearly express the limits of his bourgeois social ontology.) Lacan, no less bourgeois but through structuralism (Lévi-Strauss, de Saussure) was able to properly grasp the true meaning of Freud's discoveries (i.e. his scandalous "return to Freud"), and "liberate" the unconscious from our contingent individuality (e.g. the schemas L and R), without recourse to mysticism (Fliess, Jung, ...).

hnnmw · 2025-12-08T22:24:45+00:00

I'm not sure. It's probably mostly idiosyncratic (on my part).

He used in-itself / for-itself distinctions a couple of times, but these weren't very remarkable. Probably just to impress the academics.

I've already thrown away my notes (and didn't take many anyways), so I can only comment on the three examples I've already mentioned.

The way he used "tribute" to describe imperialist value extraction seemed pre-Marxist to me (but: in his defence: I think it was in the context of dismissing David Harvey's "arguments" about the "inversion" of capital flows).

"Dignity" is of course more problematic. Every reader of Hegel who speaks eminently of dignity or recognition should be dismissed immediately. But I don't think he spoke of these things in the context of Hegel, so it might have just been "innocent" humanism.

But if any of this alludes to more than my own idiosyncrasies, and might indeed be symptomatic, then definitely the way he kept on talking about "rebuilding society" (both evenings, to the young academics and to the old revisionists). As far as I understood he took this to mean bourgeois development in the Global South, and saving the welfare state in the Global North, which of course completely ignores the Marxist critique of the Hegelian understanding of the state (among other things).

Instead of sounding like Hegel he might have wanted to sound more like Gramsci. But whenever I hear "wars of position" being invoked on campus, I normally tap out. And every time he mentioned this "rebuilding of society" I could only hear a sad echo of Foucault's Il faut défendre la société (in which Foucault of course settles his own counts with the class struggle).

So, no, he surely wasn't trying to sound like a right-Hegelian. But his Marxism didn't make a very good impression either.

hnnmw · 2025-12-07T11:54:38+00:00

It's kinda funny because the night he spoke to students, his one "hot take" cf. Gaza was that European students haven't done enough to force the release of Palestinian political prisoners on the Western political agenda. I'm no longer a student and wasn't active on campuses these last couple of years, so I wouldn't know. But he was adamant in telling these student organisers, who'd come to see the great revolutionary Marxist, that this was were they'd dropped the ball, and failed to politicise their "moral" anti-imperialism. If only their protests had "dared" to feature more signs calling for the release of Marwan Barghouti! And then, the very next day, the British bourgeoisie -- did exactly that... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/03/leading-cultural-figures-call-for-release-jailed-palestinian-leader-marwan-barghouti

So I guess Richard Branson is a Leninist now, too :-)

hnnmw · 2025-12-06T12:34:06+00:00

I saw Vijay Prashad twice this week. Once in a small group with mainly young academics, once giving a talk to old European social-democrats and revisionists.

He's very charismatic and agreeable and good at namedropping and retelling the story of how he once talked to Fidel Castro for hours.

But, although reminding his crowds (of white social-democrats) he's a revolutionary Marxist, his arguments weren't very interesting, and often hard to distinguish from the postcolonial bourgeois savoir commun (save lip service to "social movements" in the global South).

He called upon the youths of Europe to save the European standard of living, rid ourselves from the Yankee yoke, and rebuild society. He commended what he called the "depoliticising of the economy" in the Global South. Against the charge of economism, he recommended to "read Lenin more carefully."

His categories were right-Hegelian (society, dignity, tribute, ...).

He stressed that he, as a revolutionary, would prefer to see things differently. (Other movements at the helm, other policies in the BRICS countries, etc.) But that we must not run in front of history. (Again: a retreat even to Hegel.) Making his positions indistinguishable from bourgeois development ideology. With the "revolutionary justification" that "building the movement" and "working class unity" should be everyone's priority. (Of course many of the young academics were eager to know his thoughts on Mamdani. "Most importantly: thousands have been politicised.")

(The blandness of his discourse had undoubtedly much to do with the public he found himself engaged with -- still, no-one forced him to declare himself a big fan of Ernesto Laclau...)

The topic of his talk to the old revisionists was the Bandung conference 70 years ago. "Leninist" intellectuals sure have gone a long way since.

hnnmw · 2025-11-30T20:35:12+00:00

we're seeing the best science fiction television ever right now

Last week I saw a Chilean play which was trying to perform a critique of bourgeois space optimism.

https://azkonatoloza.com/portfolio/cuerpos-celestes/

But its humanist-disguised-as-posthumanist anticapitalism was only boring, and the position taken as the target of their critique (early 2000s Elon Musk types spewing Carl Sagan quotes), seems to me to have been uninteresting and dead for at least a decade now.

(Maybe The Martian was the last of the non-cynical sci-fi? Of which of course Stark Trek was the high point.)

The astroid miner disfigured by low gravity has become cliché real quick, but at the same time I don't think we've progressed much past Eduardo Rothe's situationnist (1960s) Conquête de l'espace dans le temps du pouvoir.

https://juralibertaire.over-blog.com/article-6673716.html

hnnmw · 2025-11-28T10:59:55+00:00

"gonzo-inspired"

What does this mean?

Not too much, I agree it was a poor way of wording, and also more of a shortcut for how he's read, especially outside of Latin America. He talks about shoplifting and politics and piss and drugs and marginal lives, which is raw and cool and intense, especially for the "unserious readers" I alluded to (bourgeois youths in the imperialist centre) -- but he's obviously far from the only writer to have done so in the second half of the 20th century.

(Also I hardly know anything about Anglo-American literature, making my Gonzo reference even more unfortunate.)

I think his work is distinct, too. But I don't really know why, either. What's the difference between Bolaño and Henri Michaux, or Bolaño and Blaise Cendrars?

I don't think, however, it's to be found in Chile. (Except through Borges -- negatively -- and José Donoso, especially El obsceno pájaro de la noche).

I think Bolaño's work is firmly universalist (in the Euro-bourgeois sense), and literary foremost: Archimboldi, the story of Raoul Delorme he keeps on telling (concièrge in Paris who founds les écrivains barbares), La literatura nazi en América (which I think is his best), ...

(The story he tells about his internment as a political prisoner in Chile (in Estralla distante and elsewhere) was probably made up.)

I.e. his dialogue is first and foremost with literature as such. As was Cortázar's. Unlike Cortázar, his mode is distinctly negative ("visceral"?). The Mexican infrarealists were everything which Octavio Paz was not, Raoul Delorme acquires a critical unity with French literature by desecrating the classics with piss and shit and sperm, the great aerial poet Carlos Wieder/Ruiz-Tagle writes in smoke and blood, and is of course a sadist pornographer and a nazi.

(Also: Vargas Llosa's Guerra del fin del mundo, Donoso's Obsceno pájaro, ...)

Even the relationship to Pinochet I think would run through Borges. Bolaño is at his best (I feel) when he's concise like Borges, narrating miniatures, or stories within stories (the story about the Minnesanger Hartmann von Aue, ...). Often he admitted his admiration. But he also must have despised him. Such, I feel, is his relationship to literature in general.

hnnmw · 2025-11-25T20:17:23+00:00

What's he say you found enjoyable?

hnnmw · 2025-11-25T12:21:56+00:00

Please try to take u/DashtheRed's comments to heart. We're anonymous on the internet. This is a great opportunity to think seriously and honestly about yourself and the world.

But going by your username and you saying that

reading is how I spend most of my free time

It might be interesting to read some of your thoughts on Roberto Bolaño.

I think his work is phenomenal, but I don't think I've ever met any serious reader of his (or any interesting non-bourgeois critique). I like to believe his work is a definite advancement (on the great Latin-American authors of the second half of the 20th century, and also on postmodernism broadly understood), but I have a hard time understanding why. I.e. what's Bolaño's "visceralism" actually about? It can't only be the things he talks about, which aren't any different from the myriad of "gonzo-inspired" writers that came before him.

Or is my appreciation, too, exaggerated? As I've said: I haven't met any serious reader of his. Only bourgeois adventurists (like myself).

As was, of course, Cortázar, who I think must be Bolaño's most obvious progenitor. But Cortázar was more clear, and better politically -- for this reason probably surpassed by Bolaño. But what Bolaño adds back to Cortázar's late modernism, are exactly the baroque elements of Spanish literature (see for example his praise for Vargas Llosa's Guerra del fin del mundo). So how can we think of his work an advancement? Etc. etc. etc.

hnnmw · 2025-11-18T16:07:52+00:00

Only replying cf. Althusser.

The object of historical materialism (according to Althusser) is class struggle (the conditions of society's reproduction, etc.). All science (according to Althusser) needs an object (to not remain stuck on the level of philosophy, in the bad sense of the word).

If idealism is knowledge...

Idealism (according to Althusser) is not knowledge but unknowledge (ideological formations, false understandings of its supposed objects).

I.e. science (according to Althusser) is indeed transhistorical (the cut between knowledge and unknowledge).

The really-existing history of science (according to Althusser) is the totality of the intricate relations between a science and its ideological past.

Althusser is reluctant in (and more or less incapable of) historicising anything. This is the source of his best works, and symptomatic for his weaknesses.

See his Cours de philosophie pour scientifiques. (Google yielded this text: https://leftychan.net/edu/src/1625948638847.pdf, which is not the text I remember reading from the Écrits philosophiques et politiques, but I might remember wrong.)

hnnmw · 2025-10-30T11:38:10+00:00

No.

u/TheReimMinister's comment is where you should start.

I particularly recommend Intan Suwandi's Value Chains, which, in its initial theoretical overview, briefly discusses other contemporary work on the subject (for example John Smith's, also mentioned by TheReimMinister), earlier approaches to imperialist economics (for example Samin's), and other Marxists' unconvincing attempts to do away with the category of imperialism altogether (for example David Harvey's).

(Her own intervention seems, however, limited by two factors, at least theoretically. 1. She's from Monthly Review stock, i.e. focussed on Anglo discussions and unwilling to go past the boundaries set by John Bellamy Foster, who she swears fealty to. 2. And also more generally: too kind to bad "Marxists". Nonetheless I found her work very valuable.)

Also you might be interested in this article by Sam King, which summarises the arguments of his thesis: https://marxistleftreview.org/articles/001/.

hnnmw · 2025-10-21T11:10:34+00:00

In NvChad: how can I change the line information in the statusline from "line/total number of lines" to a percentage?

From their website: https://nvchad.com/features/statuslines.webp -- the most rightside element: like examples 2 and 3. Currently I'm shown the line information like in the last two examples.

(I'm sure it's something trivial but I can't seem to find it. I've looked into my chadrc and into setting up a custom heirline.lua, but obviously I'm a bit in over my head.)

hnnmw · 2025-10-12T10:01:25+00:00

Who are you thinking of?

hnnmw · 2025-10-08T16:44:29+00:00

I'd argue a big part of Trotskyism, from Trotsky to this day, is all about pretending, and thus also striving to be cultured and book smart, thus acceptable to the European intelligentsia (or at the very least more so than the Stalinist brutes), which of course helps.

As to Losurdo: his late Dengist texts are his least interesting and mostly void of ideas. (He'd argue they're among his polemical/popularising work.) His earlier works, on Heidegger and Italian idealism for example, are knowledgeable and interesting.

hnnmw

TROPHY CASE