I think that was a great takeaway from the reading. It is fascinating to see how capitalism effects different classes under the same system. The writing you quoted at the end of the chapter was great! I agree with their assessment that capitalism is a self defeating ideology, and that the same forces that create/drive it, will inevitably lead to it’s own demise. It MUST be gotten rid of, it CAN be gotten rid of!

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Thank you mods for pinning the post

Edit: I summarized my points and put them in a FAQ section for my future posts. This question has come up many times before so I’ll address it that way going forward.

Study Guide Answer: I believe Marx is implying that social reforms will be a neat little temporary bonus, a bit of utopia brought to reality, only until revolution happens on a world-wide scale liberating the working class for good.

1. My personal dislikes/disagreements about the reading: I must admit that the economic side of Marxist-Leninist ideology is by far my weak point. I have a really hard time grasping some of the economic concepts. As far as the reading goes I have no complaints whatsoever.

2. My personal likes/agreements about the reading: I liked how Engels seems to do the thinking for you in the text. He lays out in plain English a brief summary of Marxian economics. I’m studying Capital on the side, and it was cool to see the main points of that book so beautifully summarized in a few pages.

3. How this could be applied today: Every word of the economic analyses is accurate to today. I find myself going into the store, or on the job, seeing these concepts live in action before me. I think it is awesome to be able to see and understand the world around you more through these texts.

I want to touch on a point these magical bullshido wizards always bring up. They’re full of excuses, but by far their favorite one is this false dichotomy between ‘real fighting’ and competitive fighting. I’ve beaten the breaks off of a handful of bullshido artists in the past, and this is always their main excuse. Claiming they weren’t trying their hardest, that their fighting techniques are too dangerous to use. It is very funny and predictable. It’s also a very bad point that relies on grade school logic. Yes, in a competitive setting you cannot use some techniques and moves. Here’s the problem though, that logic works both ways, competitive fighters are aware of these dangerous moves and can use them too. For example lets use rabbit punches (punches to back of the head or neck), who do you think would be better at this illegal technique? Prime Mike Tyson who has practiced live punching on human targets that can fight back a million times? Or the bullshido master, who hasn’t ever tried live full speed sparring with another human, out of fear of hurting them. I hope that answer is obvious. If you cannot practice your technique on live human beings, you will absolutely not be able to pull it off in a situation that requires it. This is why live sparring is a must!

These frauds that push this bullshido rely on this unfalsifiable orthodoxy. They lie to you about how badass you can be by disarming people with weapons, or how they know some secret technique that any dumb ass can do like eye gouging, and pass that off as a ‘martial art’! They are absolutely full of shit and are trying to scam you out of money. When they pick themselves up off of the floor after getting their ass handed to them, they’ll go back to ol’ reliable. ‘THAT WASN’T REAL FIGHTING BRO I WASN’T TRYING MY HARDEST BRO IN A REAL FIGHT I WOULD’VE WON BRO!!!’ These clowns are very predicable. It’d be funny if they weren’t scamming people and giving people false confidence that can get them killed.

I normally don’t like commenting like this, but some of these suggestions are really bad. At best some of these will make you lose time and money on learning some mystical bullshit pretending to be a martial art. At worst you will straight up get killed with the crap some of these ‘martial arts’ will teach you. When it comes to martial arts, you’ve got to understand that there is absolutely zero regulation on this stuff. I can open up the ‘TT17-jitsu school for super badasses’ on the corner and nobody will stop me. So you have to be VERY careful by looking deep into the program, and the instructor running it, before you sign up. I know from first hand experience, you do NOT want to sign up for a psuedo-martial art.

If they are suggesting anything on this list RUN and find a new place:

• Teaching you to disarm people with a weapon, like a gun or knife.
• Teaching you ‘magical thinking’ or any sort of mystical power.
• Telling you what they do is ‘too dangerous’ (lmao) for competition.
• Doesn’t do live contact drills (VERY IMPORTANT).
• Charging you outrageous fees and making you use their pricey equipment.
• Offering quick and easy solutions to being a deadly fighting machine. (This stuff takes time and practice, there are no quick solutions here.)

I’m sure there are more you can lookup, but these are things to avoid off of the top of my head.

Here’s a list of must have’s when it comes to this stuff:

• The martial art must have some sort of regulatory body, either a belt system, or some sort of competitive institution.
• Does live contact drills, this is absolutely necessary! This is the only way to actually practice and execute what you learn.
• A good instructor that’s verified through the regulatory body. This ensures quality control.

That being said, what type of unarmed combat is right for you? Well that all depends on a few factors, time, money, and access. I’ve run extensive data on the UFC trying to find what’s ‘essential’ in unarmed combat. You’ve got to understand there are two main aspects to fighting, the ground game (grappling, ect), and your stand-up game (kicking, punching, ect.). What I came away with from pulling UFC data, is that having a solid ground game is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. THE FIGHTER WITH THE BETTER GROUND GAME WILL WIN 9 TIMES OUT OF 10! I don’t care what kind of crazy karate kicks your opponent knows, good luck trying to kick me when you’re on your ass in a pretzel! So i STRONGLY recommend building a solid ground game first before doing anything else. My suggestions would be either some type of Wrestling or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. There are others out there that work too, but those arts in particular were by far the most successful from the data.

From there, if you still have time, energy, money, access, ect. THEN you can work on your stand up game. There’s a lot more variety when it comes to the stand up game. There’s a ton of great ones out there. I personally would recommend either Boxing, Kick Boxing, or Muay Thai.

Personally I went with wrestling/boxing, I’m not the best fighter, but I can hold my own.

If all of this sounds like too much time and energy. I suggest going with what comrade puffin said. The quickest and easiest solution to self defense would be to use weapons, weapons will win over anything I just mentioned.

Study guide can be found here

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/guide.htm

You mean like tag people who have participated last? I’m not sure if I’d want to do that, just because I wouldn’t want to annoy people. Sometimes they can’t make it every week, and that’s okay! Maybe if individuals request it I can make that happen, I’m not totally against the idea, I just don’t want to step on toes. I’ll be posting it every week Thursday on c/communism, trying to be as consistent as possible, if I can’t do it for whatever reason I’ll be sure to let people know ahead of time. You can check out my profile if you want to find the latest post. Maybe I can even ask the mods to pin it on the communist community page for the day, if they’d be willing to do that, not sure how that works exactly.

I totally get it, 30 min a week isn’t a lot, but that’s on purpose. They say the best way to digest information is a little bit at a time. Plus to be honest, I’ve got a lot on my plate right now, I wouldn’t be able to do more than that a week without it impacting my life negatively. CriticalResist8 has a study guide on prolewiki, GrainEater has a private Matrix study session as well, those are additional places where you can get more theory and discussion.

Thats cool, I’ll add it to my reading list!

I’m glad that made you happy. :) No worries about not being able to participate, life gets busy, I completely understand!

Yep, that’s where I got it from! Struck a chord with me because I’ve been getting a shitload of hate irl, so that was refreshing to read.

Brace yourselves, the US election is right around the corner. We’re going to be hearing this shit ALOT in the next year and a half. Already dreading it.

I’ve been reading about the Blackfeet Nation, and their experience is exactly how you described it above. It’s a god damned tragedy.

They only have moral arguments but they do not have moral standing.

That is an excellent line, I’m going to use that one in the future for sure.

My theory posts on the communism community have gotten the most traction between that and genzhou. I haven’t had any bad faith libs brigading either (yet).

Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti.

Follow your own course, and let people talk. - paraphrased from Dante

My reading suggestion this week is ‘Thesis on Feuerbach’ it’s a very short read on materialism.

Comrade roux suggested last time to read Wage Labor & Capital it was tied for first so I thought I’d put it up again.

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