https://xcancel.com/TechnicallyRon/status/1813502080557932942

Excellent recommendations! Thank you!

The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World,

This looks excellent – thank you!

Thank you for your response!

What I meant was that their analysis felt like it complicated traditionally marxist positions, eschewing the deterministic trajectory of history (not a bad thing) and being concerned more with the characteristics of individual freedom within early societies rather than more causal ‘class-like’ elements that constrain or enable that freedom. While their problematization of centralized hierarchical states does seem to echo the more utopian visions of a post-socialist, communist society, in our given time and in the context of problems of a global scale, it seems appropriate to be skeptical when these past observations start to turn into present prescriptions for adopting ‘flexible and creative’ forms of organization that have, in the last century, been ineffective at challenging power or ushering in meaningful and lasting alternatives. If you do have a chance to read it, though, I would recommend it.

Michael Hudson

I thought he only wrote about contemporary economics; I’m now looking into his book on debt forgiveness in the bronze age, which looks a bit ‘over-specific’ but nonetheless quite relevant to the era I’m asking about – thank you for the recommendation!

soundcloud link

Jacques Pauwels has a good book detailing both how the Allies’ second front was indeed an attempt at capitalizing off of an inevitable Soviet victory (and mitigating Soviet influence in Western Europe in the aftermath), and also how little resistance the Allies faced on the Western Front because German soldiers were terrified of the Soviets and fled west to surrender/be protected by to the allies.

Always bring a steward.

HR’s first impulse when receiving a serious sexual harassment complaint from my coworker was to reframe everything my coworker said in the most downplayed way. Like a, “oh shit this is serious. . . how do I get this employee to make it sound like it wasn’t a big deal”. Inhuman Resources indeed.

Another good one is this counterpunch piece which describes the Soviet rationale around the build up towards the Nazi invasion of the USSR, the millions of Polish lives saved from occupying eastern Poland, and also the wholly justified Winter War up in Finland.

It’s funny how weak the propaganda coming out of the west is and has been for the last fifty years. Oh, leader x’s actions don’t seem rational? That’s because they’re insane, not because we’re lying to you as if you were children.