/edu/ - Education

What is the correct socialist analysis of the Inca Empire? Was it really a proto-socialist society, as some people claim? Or was it just Andean feudalism?

I just accepted a job as a history teacher in china. i dont have a teachers cert and im a little overwhelmed because i want to teach history better than i was taught it.

does anyone have any pdfs/epubs on historiography, philosophy of history and or textbooks on teaching history? i will be teaching to American, New Jersey standards.

Post about interesting historical events, with an emphasis on lesser known ones.
They don't have to be related to "leftism" in any way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls
A list of [i]fifteen[/i] cases where nuclear weapons were almost launched or almost detonated. One case was averted due to Vasili Arkhipov being the only one of three senior officers aboard a submarine to refuse ordering the launch of a 10-kiloton nuclear torpedo at an aircraft carrier, which probably would have started thermonuclear war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859
The largest geomagnetic storm on record. Resulted in colorful auroras worldwide and caused serious damage to electrical equipment (mostly telegraphs at the time, some were reportedly able to transmit and receive messages despite being disconnected from their power supply). Another similar-strength coronal mass ejection occurred in 2012, but it was not directed towards Earth.

So I know what capital is but what gives capital it’s characteristics? And if capitalism is capital reproducing itself in ever expanding processes, then what is it? Does this mean that capital only producing commodities which is what the end product of capital is? No this can’t be because that would be engaging in commodity fetishism. If generalized commodity production is then a phenomena of capitalism then in appearance capitalism looks like a world of exchange values and use values in which is the limits of bourgeois economy because on the surface commodities seem to rule life. But if commodities are nothing but a phenomena and nothing but something taking place in the surface then what is actually capital doing?

If the subjective essence of capital is labor then the product or the commodity appears as the central issue and generalized commodity production the fundamental issue of capitalism. But what then is the objective essence of capital and capitalism?

Capital could only be capitalism if it reproduces itself and so the true essence of capitalism is a social relation. And even more fundamental is the conditions for such a social relation to exist. Predicate to the existence of capital is the deprivation of the means of production from the immediate producer whether that be the land, tools, machinery etc. but that’s not the only deprivation, capital itself must be deprived of labor itself: people. And so the fundamental conflict appears to be dead labor vs living labor and those two being deprived of the other. Capital (dead labor) is useless without the labor process (living labor) but in order for capital to be capital it must continue to keep itself separate from living labor and living labor separate from it, with commodity production being the mediator between the two. And so the true essence of capitalism is capital reproducing a social relation continuously in increasing size. So if capitalism’s objective is to reproduce this social relation why do so many people take commodity production as the true essence of capitalism. Or “changing hands” into that of the state? If the point of communism is to abolish this relation of production to a production in common then it follows that capital will seize to exist in contradiction between dead and living labor. We have seen historically that it doesn’t matter which hands capital is put in, it still exists as capital and reproduces capital relations, so what is it with the misunderPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

Hello all.

I want to create a sync channel for educational purpose with different playlist rotations so we can have people getting educated on leftist thought.

This thread I want to construct the best videos on educating people into the basics of socialism. So the basics of the means of production, the basics of property, and etc. I want it simple, easy to understand and yet thorough enough to explain to someone brand new to socialist thought where if they watch this playlist of videos. They can get a handle of what are the core principles of socialism. I also want to make sure these videos are strictly socialist. No social democratic bullshit please.

Please post your suggestions in the thread and I'll check the videos and we work on getting a nice clean playlist of videos. We can discuss videos if I feel it doesn't quite fit what we should build for this thread.

Please don't bring up communism, anarchism, and etc. This is all about the basics of socialism and getting people beyond social democrat thought.

Reason why I want to do this:

People aren't reading theory and books nowadays. It's a harsh reality and it's hard to make people pick up a book and read it. We leftists need to have a fucking reality check on this. We always want to force people to read theory so much and yet when we watch our opponents in other ideology. They are able to explain their theories and bullshit within a few videos and they get their followers locked in. We need to stop making excuses, gatekeeping and general bullshitting. We can do this. I also understand that we are also under attack via social media companies. There is a way to upload video files and such into playlists on cytube. I just haven't done it in a while but I'll be looking into that as well so we can make our own content without being tied to hosting on youtube and etc.

My first suggestion is this video. I like how it focuses on the main points of what socialism is. It touches briefly on the other flavors of socialist but doesn't go too fair into them but the best part is I like how it makes the statement at the end of the video that calling a political system socialism is just inaccurate because socialism is used to define an economic system.
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

I'm a college dropout in burgerland, and I would like to improve my understanding of math, which was my worst subject in academia. Does anyone here have any suggestions or resources for someone who only speaks English, but would still like to do better than American schooling? Assume that I stopped learning math in 6th grade, or 9th grade for geometry in particular.

Where do most communists stand on the being vs becoming vs nothingness metaphysical debate? This debate is as old as philosophy itself; does a left wing mindset require you to take a particular stance, or is it irrelevant?

Should I read theory in english or my native language? Until now I've only read in german but I never debate or discuss in german so I don't know which is better. Also, which language do you read theory?

An anti-communist friend recommended me these. Has anyone here read them? Are they at all accurate?

So is the universe flat or is it curved? I haven't had the change to read the whole paper, yet, but, from what I understand from the paper and what the lovely people at PBS explained to me is, apparently physicists at Cornell University observed a cluster galaxies under extreme gravitation forces causing gravitational lensing. Now this is nothing spectacular as far as what observation about the universe has lead us to, but, what is interesting is that when the amplitude of light passing over these distortions in gravity are examined more closely, apparently, they fall way out of line with currently, standard, models involving the geometry of the universe which uses triangulation of areas in the Microwave Background Image and Early Super Nova in the Early universe to summize that the universe is flat. This totally flies in the face of our current understanding of the universe and could have damning implications for modern Cosmology; The universe wont expand for ever? What is driving expansion then? Our models for Dark Energy break down. I am literally freaking the fuck out over this right now. HELP ME EDU!