Leftist text suggestions for a right-winger? (No Marx)

Any recommendations for Leftist literature for a Conservative?

I'm currently reading the work of Michel Foucault, as of right now.

Can you suggest some Leftist literature that is not Marx?

Other urls found in this thread:

elsewhere.org/journal/pomo/
jacobinmag.com/2014/12/foucault-interview/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

sure

>elsewhere.org/journal/pomo/

For a right-winger, might look into more left-lib stuff like mutualism and american anarchism. Kevin Carson definetely.

Carson's 'Mutualist Political Economy'
Proudhon 'What is Property?'
William B. Greene 'Mutual Banking'
Benjamin Tucker 'Instead of A Book'
The Liberty Periodical
Clarence Lee Swartz 'What is Mutualism?'

Also Georgism, the seminal text being 'Progress and Poverty'

If you want a headfuck and know basic Smith/Ricardo maybe some Ricardian socialists as well?

Ego and Its Own, obviously.

Oscar Wilde. Soul Of A Man &c. as well as his fictional works.

Hegel, while not left, is worth reading if you can be bothered to.

Utopia, for shits and giggles.

Nietzsche isn't "leftist (whatever the fuck that really means), but if you really want to start to understand the foundations of what allows people like Foucault to make the logical moves that they do. You will find yourself agreeing with him one passage and disagreeing with him the next. This nature of his work really opens of you up to things you might have otherwise dismissed

What's your problem with Marx?

>What's your problem with Marx?

The fact that his theories have been debunked over and over again, and that his ideas led to the deaths of over 100 million people in the 20th Century alone.

Probably just that he's so obvious. He's either read it, or already knows what to read.
Yeah, sure, I believe you're OP.

Why no Marx?

Refer to

Rawls - A Theory of Justice

Essential social liberal text..

>Foucault
>A Marxist

Pick one. Foucault was radically individualist.

>Pick one. Foucault was radically individualist.
I almost feel sorry for you

>debunked over and over again, and that his ideas led to the deaths of over 100 million people in the 20th Century alone.
If you feel that strongly I don't think you are going to get that much out of leftist lit at all

...

What do you think Discipline and Punish is if not a critique of collectivism? (not that I'm some radical individualist myself, but that's what Foucault was).

Well, Leftist isn't necessarily synonymous with Marxist.

OP here.

I've heard Gender Troubles by Judith Butler mentioned by a Leftist academic in a Sociology literature lecture I was watching on YouTube.

Is it worth reading or is it just radical Feminist dog shit?

It's good.

Even if you do believe in the billions and trillions of people communism is claimed to have killed and even if you do believe Marx was somehow directly responsible for it that still would not disqualify him as a thinker. Plus the amount of people who claimed to have debunked him with some half-assed strawman maneuver has to surpass the numbers of alleged "victims of communism"

He's not directly responsible for it; he's indirectly responsible.

Everything from Marx's Labour Theory of Value to his idea that a society without money could work in the modern era have been debunked countless times.

>What do you think Discipline and Punish is if not a critique of collectivism
a study of how the government creates power structures to control the thinking and behavior of the people. He specifically deals with how this came about after the Industrial Revolution. Its clearly informed by Marx's critique of class and how the government exists to uphold the capitalist system.

>Well, Leftist isn't necessarily synonymous with Marxist.
No but if you are that dismissive of his ideas then how could you possibly learn anything else with an open mind?

Never read it, but Judy seems pretty on the level

This exact thread has been posted before. It's a good idea for a thread and I thought about making it before but this is pure bait I think

>Marx's Labour Theory of Value
Well shiiieeet you better tell Neo Classical's that because Adam Smith came up with that idea.

>a society without money could work
Like most societies prior to the invention of currency? Wealth doesn't have to be confined by money

Hegemony and Socialist Strategy by Laclau (2nd ed.)

Rules for Radicals by Alinsky.

The former is theory, the latter is political action, the two combined are the bare-bones canon of contemporary leftism.

I'm dismissive of Marx's ideas because historical evidence has shown his ideas to be dangerous.

But that doesn't mean I'm not open to opposing opinions. I will read Marx eventually, but I will never be a Marxist. I'm a Capitalist.

As I said in the OP, I'm reading Foucault right now and I appreciate his arguments in Madness and Civilisation.

Well im still not sure how much you will get out of Foucault or Marx but enjoy user

I can appreciate an argument without accepting it. Even if I end up completely disagreeing with the author, it's worth it for the intellectual stimulation.

...

political unconscious by fredric jameson

...

...

OP again.

Is Leftism inherently anti-Capitalist?

I realise that Capitalism is a right-wing economic system, but isn't Social Democracy-which is a form of Capitalism-Leftist?

Social-democracy is basically a centrist option. Most leftist movements have been historically anti-capitalist.

I suggest you read anything by Zizek, "The Wretched of the Earth" by Fanon, and Mao Zedong's essay "On Contradiction."

>I realise that Capitalism is a right-wing economic system
>isn't Social Democracy-which is a form of Capitalism-Leftist?

You are contradicting yourself

one of his theories is that theres a distinction between labour and capital and that those two have interests that dont align. The truth is that pretty much everyone nowadays accepts marxism, but cold war propaganda was hella effective.

No, I'm not.

Capitalism is a right-wing ideology. Social Democracy is Capitalism with a Leftist spin of State intervention and the promotion of social justice.

Leftism aims for a more equal society. Capitalism leads to hierarchical societies. It's common you'll find most of leftist thought actively opposing capitalism, whether it be because of capital accumulation or because of property rights, wage stagnation, and the profit motive which lead to it.

If not socialism, at least consider an alternative like Syndicalism.

Social democracy is centrist.

Syndicalism is basically a theory of practice, not an alternative to 'socialism' at all. The goal of syndicalist practice is the socialist society.

>Socdem
>Leftist

trying to position politics spatially is pure rhetoric, the further you get someones position to be from whatever you call the centre the weirder and and more wrong it is.

its pure ideology

you need to read Hegel to understand dialectics

I thought that under syndicalism, not every industry would be managed by workers. Whether Syndicalism is a "mixed economy" of cooperatives and traditional businesses, or not, you should still consider the benefits such an economy could bring. Consider China, for example, which is partly socialist, partly market-driven.

Fuukoh always looks like a nigger.

Any leftist texts that advocate statism/monarchy?

Karl Popper
Unfalsifiability

Marx belongs in the same camp as the rest of the post-modernist bullshit.

Ideally, the camp with the gas chambers

Marxism critiques capitalism well, but the system he proposes is preposterously stupid.

>Statism
Practical applications of Communism/Social Democracy

>Monarchy
No.

Popper is a positivist hack.

How many post-modernists have you read?

capitalism's historical evidence has shown the ideas to be dangerous

It's considered canon feminist philosophy, problem is it's hard and requires a lot of reading on Foucault, psychoanalysis and the other french feminist authors Butler constantly refers to.

Honestly it sounds like you didn't read Capital and your dad/teacher/friend told you it was debunked. Exactly what was debunked? Labor theory of value? The transformation problem? Underconsumption and overproduction? Falling rate of profit? I can also guess that your dad/teacher/friend did not read Capital. And let's say you read something else, like for example Class Struggles in France; are you saying his class analysis was scientifically inaccurate? And then you'd have to explain yourself!

I know Capital is daunting but you should just give it a try or not pretend to have read it

Dude, Foucault was neoliberal. He was openly neoliberal. Just look it up. Jesus.

Neoliberal or not, his writings are great, but not free from criticism. He was openly a neoliberal.

>Value to his idea that a society without
Spain, 1936 got rid of money and worked.

"Modern era", lol. Money is old as shit, btw. If anything, it's all the more possible now, especially when money barely even touches hands or wallets. But you'd know this if you read Capital instead of pretending to.

>een posted before. It's a good idea fo
Lol, on point with Adam Smith, on point with pre-money societies.

By the way the labor theory of value is constantly being proven correct again and again by contemporary economists

Do you even Lenin/Rosa?

Nah bro, you don't need to read newton to understand gravity. Great intro book on dialectis: Formal Logic and Dialectical Logic by Henri Lefebvre

Nah dude, syndicalism and worker's management is a transitional step towards socialism but is not socialist. In the transitional period, the workers are doing the role of the bourgeoise. Through democracy and destruction of the state, workers management is substituted by democratic management of the whole economy. Worker's self management is desirable but not the last step, if only on of the first. With the dissolution of the state, worker's councils dissapear too and become managed by the whole population (democracy). With this too, paradoxically (dialectically would be a better word), democracy is also abolished.

If you read the communist manifesto, you will find references to most utopian socialisms that unknowingly ended up advocating statism. We're talking Blanqui, Proudhon, Bakunin, Stalin, Sismondi, etc.

There's socialism that advocates monarchy, mainly the monarchy itself at the beginning of capitalism. That's also in the manifesto.

BTW this is all very well covered by Lenin in The State and Revolution and Mandel's Workers Control and Self Management (Not 100% sure on the title of that last one but something like that)

I work at a indie comic shop and both my bosses are huge feminists, and let me tell you the truth: most feminists either hate Butler for [reasons] or namedrop her because she'll likely be one of the big tinkers in history and etc., and neither side has really understood her (or Foucault's, or Lacan's) shit, really.

>a study of how the government creates power structures to control the thinking and behavior of the people.

But it's not just government that Foucault is against, it's power generally, whether that be the state/government or the norms of society. Foucault's entire career is examining the structure of power relations, and his ideal is the end of vertical power. He was very much an individualist, and would consider social controls of the collective to be equally if not more oppressive than state-imposed ones. He's just not an individualist in the ancap way.

How the fuck genociding entire races for mineral resources and then literally draining the planet of mineral resources, not to mention war, famine, poverty, the nearly seasonal crashes and crises and power vaccuums left everytime some american cunt decides to imbalance and topple entire governments he wants [insert literally anything from petrolium to a imaginary communist menace here]

Dude, this is very much leninist apology, syndicalism is a form of local self management by workers and occasional trade of surplus between communes.

jacobinmag.com/2014/12/foucault-interview/ Check it.

Let's leave the discussion of whether it's a leninist apology or not aside for the moment. I'm not a leninist but it's not the point.

You are right in that it is a form of self-management by workers, but it has to go a step further if you want to reach socialism. You're basically saying "we should stop at the proletarian dictatorship"; the revolution needs to go further than this.

This is not anti-worker autonomy theory. This is asking how are we going to make the proletariat dissapear? As long as control of factories is not in the hands of ALL the workers but just in the hands of each respective factory's workers, you're not socializing the means of production but sectorizing them. As long as the concept of trade is still present among worker's association, you still have capital and surplus value.

The whole of the population must be able to decide on what gets produced and how, not just the factory workers isolated from the rest of society.

The fact that you get rid of money is not evidence of having gotten rid of commodities, it has just transformed money into a different commodity. You need to abolish trade altogether to destroy the commodity. When a worker hands an incomplete car to the next worker in the production line it's not trade. The same principle must apply to the rest of society while keeping democratic control over production.

What you're suggesting is not democratic and will just end up creating a new bourgeoise from the workers in advanced and advantageous factories. Do you think industry in central america can compete with industry in the USA? It cannot, and cannot compete even when both industries are self-managed.

To really reach socialism you have to go past the transitional proletarian dictatorship into the abolishment of commodity production. This means large, global scale. You know who was against that? Stalinism with its socialism in one country ideology.