u/ConsistentGiraffe8

Hi, im interested in the CCRU and political theory/philosophy as a whole for a pretty long time now. Im writing my master thesis at the moment and after reading a few older essays by mark fishers i began thinking about the CCRU again and after all these years I’m still fascinated by it.

I wondered if there is any biography-like book about the CCRU. I’m talking more about the people that contributed to it, the cultural climate, personal visions and how the members related to each other and their ideas and not about necessarily the concrete ideas that came from these authors. I’m really interested in the „community“ of the CCRU, what motivated them, the things that happened between the members, maybe something like a timeline, what they saw in it and maybe what we can learn or not learn from their approach in the end.

Is there something like this? And if not, could it be interesting to look for these things and collect the information we still have, talk to people that were connected to it etc.? Or is there just not much to discover or reconstruct or explore? I’m absolutely not an expert for the CCRU or anyone involved, I’m just very fascinated by the concept and some of their authors (Fisher, Land) and would be happy to get some input. Thank you guys.

Could it be that Al's adverse effects on the environment are leading to a change in their behavior, e.g. lack of water sources that causes them to move closer to cities?

Could it be that Al's adverse effects on the environment are leading to a change in their behavior, e.g. lack of water sources that causes them to move closer to cities?

Hello everyone, I got radicalized the last few years because of the things happening in Germany and around the world.

I was a social democrat, thought in the framework of liberal democracies, and thought marxists are too quick to dismiss the positive effects of a capitalist economy, that is regulated by a state.

In the last few years I saw that almost every point of a Marxist analysis (reformism doesn’t work, imperial wars, rise of fascism in liberal democracies, stagnating wages, capitalist crises (climate, corona etc.), failure of liberals to address problems accordingly etc.) came true, and describe the reality in a more accurate way than the regular idealistic understanding of liberal democracies.

So I read a lot, learned more about the basic stuff: materialist view instead of idealistic view on things, class relations, alienation, accumulation of capital, dialectical materialism etc. I studied political theory for a long time so it’s wasn’t that hard to get into it, but it was really hard to fight all the misconceptions in my head about what Marx allegedly wanted/said. I thought in a different way my whole life, so these positions were pretty mind-blowing at first, especially because even in academic circles I often got taught the same stuff about Marxism as people hear in high school. What I mean with that, is that they look at the Soviet Union and extrapolate then why Marxism is destructive and doesn’t work, often even without really knowing anything about Russian history or the actual texts Marx wrote.

I’m still very new to all of this and admittedly have a lot of reading and work to do, but one question in particular, regarding practical politics, won’t stop bothering me, and its a critical one. I don’t see why I should support Hamas specifically or any of the BRICS states in general. The more I read, the more economic Marxist positions make sense for me, and it’s a blast to learn so much new things, but I just don’t get why China, North Korea etc. are often supported in Marxist circles. As I said, this is a „beginner“ question I guess, so the answer may be obvious, but supporting these states or organizations is why I don’t really want to jump head first into all of this stuff.

Maybe you can help me broadening my understanding, straighten out my misconceptions, and any helpful resources in general for learning more about Marxism are appreciated highly. Thank you all.