/edu/ - Education

A cybernetics reading list from the related thread on leftypol:

- Towards a new socialism, P.Cockshott
- Arguments for socialism, P.Cockshott
- Imperialism in the 21st Century-John Smith
- People's Republic of Walmart
- Brain of the Firm, Stafford Beer
- Human Use of Human Beings, Norbert Wiener
- Cybernetics, Norbert Wiener
- Designing Freedom, Stafford Beer
- The Knowledge We Have Lost in Information: The History of Information in Modern Economics, Philip Mirowski
- Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High Technology Capitalism, Dyer-Witheford
- Cyberwar and Revolution: Digital Subterfuge in Global Capitalism, Dyer-Witheford
- Cyber-Proletariat: Global Labour in the Digital Vortex, Dyer-Witheford
- Inhuman Power: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism, Dyer-Witheford

You have read TANS, haven't you comrade?

Add ecology to cybernetics too.

But something I've been thinking a lot about lately too is about the possible need for a critical evaluation to the basis for the supposed need for a vanguard party as argued by Kautsky and Lenin, or especially of the petit-bourgeois form that democratic centralism entailed.

Today we are in a period of real subsumption to capital, neoliberal globalization has integrated all feudal corners of the world into the world-system of capitalism and the working classes are larger than ever before in recorded history, with several major technological revolutions happening in the last 100 years (relations- and means- of production advancing in our favor) while the contradictions are mounting (extreme increase in the organic composition of capital, RoP in imperial core treading to alarming low in the middle of this century). Secularism and irreligiosity is the norm in the developed world, while the struggling developing economies are coping with appeals to supernatural beliefs.

When I read Marx I get the impression that all of his practical advice alluded to the implication that we ought to focus our revolutionary educating, agitating and organizing in the advanced regions of the world, where the tools are advanced and abundant and the class contradictions are at their most extreme. Our task is primarily to pierce social alienation at the workplace, bourgeois propaganda via massmedia in times of leisure and accomplishing this via a far more workers party form than either the orthodox Marxists or the Leninists were able to do, due to having a semiliterate and overwhelmingly religious proletariat to work with.

What do you guys think?

>>4136
>People's Republic of Walmart
Very superficial. This is just for getting liberals to change their perspective; so if you already are pro-socialism, there's no point reading it.
>Imperialism in the 21st Century
Nothing to do with cybernetics. It's getting shilled on Bunker by "third-worldists" from rhizzone.net, as it is all about the claim of exploitation through unequal exchange. They don't reply to questions about the book (aside from "AHAHA YOU ARE WHITE ROFLZ"), so I doubt they have actually read it themselves. Here is a repost about it:

Right at the beginning he says that the first-world buyer of a shirt made in the third world benefits from the VAT he pays to the government because he gets some of that back in government services, so both he and the government benefit from him paying the VAT, how does that make sense to you? Let's make it even more simple: Suppose he gets all of the tax back from the government (that should make the case easier for those wanting to show he is benefiting from the tax), picture a coin wandering from him to the government as he buys the shirt and then back to him from the government, how would you see that as showing him benefiting from the tax? Picture the guy buying shirt after shirt. John Smith says this coin ping-ponging between the buyer and the government is not just a sign of an ongoing extraction from the shirt producer, but itself in its amount constitutes a measure of some of it. So, following the Baran-Sweezy Memorial Prize winner John Smith, suppose a rise in both VAT and government gibmedats results in a shirt-price increase by the amount of the rise and now two coins going ping-pong between buyer and government as the first-worlder buys shirt after shirt from the third-world, this means he is now benefiting more. Does that make sense to you?

>>4145
>Walmart
In the OP I say this is a good book for socdems as opposed to one for socialists. Either way it is useful to read to disseminate lib ideas easier.
>Imperialism
This thread is about bringing new ideas, bringing communism into the 21st century. This isn't a cybernetics thread solely, that book has been recommend by many comrades, while I haven't read it yet I believe it is useful to study. Idk this VAT thing seems exceedingly nitpicky over one sentence. If you have an overall criticism of the book I'd love to hear it

>>4144
>ecology
why doe

>Vanguard
Yes I think this is the pivotal question for us. I mean there is no reason to believe a vanguard is the way apart from it has been proven to work (under certain conditions) but as Marxists, this shouldn't be sufficient. This is why we need new analysis rooted in our space and time.

I also thing while it seems good that we aren't religious anymore, the 'job' of religion (as an opioid) is being replaced by other things. We have some people looking up to Elon Musk as a god figure, some looking towards environmentalism for their purpose and blind faith, etc etc.

Regrading Marx, he was a product of his period, and that was one of great unrest in Europe. France deemed it necessary to exile him for his writings, you get where I'm coming from? This shaped his attitudes when it came to organising, and made it a lot easier for him to organise proles, since the revolutionary energy was already there. Lenin recognizes this in Left Wing Communism, it is really fookin' difficult for communists in places where there isn't this energy or general class consciousness.

I feel like I missed something in your last paragraph though so please let me know. What do you mean by 'far more workers party'?

>>4147
>this VAT thing seems exceedingly nitpicky
Can you repeat in your own words what you think is said in that paragraph? Taking for granted that what is said there about John Smith's book isn't a misrepresentation, can you follow the argument against what Smith is saying and do you agree with it?

>>4154
Hahahaha what is your point? Why are you so insufferable?
>Explain the extremely basis concept of VAT to me right now!! I want 1000 words on whether the benefit a buyer gains from VAT is exploitation or not!
You've misread every post so far yet want to give me some high school quiz on your copy pasted out of context quote. If you have read the book you'll be able to critique it, if you just want to repost some arbitrary quote about VAT I can't discuss it IN REFERENCE TO THE TEXT because I haven't read it.

To clarify for you, I never said this was a misrepresentation. It is nothing in the context however. because it isn't a critique of the work. Perhaps I could post some quotes from books you haven't read and we could simultaneously wank over how big brained we are and pop-quiz one another?

>>4155
>1000 words
It's a short paragraph, about the size of the post you just wrote.
>If you have read the book you'll be able to critique it
I did read Smith's book and I agree with the copy-pasted argument against Smith, which is why I posted it.
>if you just want to repost some arbitrary quote about VAT I can't discuss it IN REFERENCE TO THE TEXT because I haven't read it.
You don't have to read the book, since you were only asked whether you are able to restate the paragraph in your own words and whether you agree with it under the condition that it doesn't misrepresent Smith.