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Are Trots basically the scholar-monks of communism?
(hexbear.net)
At most hesichates who fling shit at one another.
marx2mao.com is another good one. Marxists.org still has the largest archive afaik but a while ago I noticed some questionable editing on some articles that some might find ... Controversial
Lemme quote CriticalResist again
Marxists.org is ran by trots and they've been known to edit stuff to fit their bias -- notably in Mastering Bolshevism from Stalin, whole sections are missing and they give the work a completely different name. They've also removed portions and footnotes from Progress Publishers (Moscow) books.
As much as possible, we shouldn't use them. You simply cannot know if their edition of a book will be truthful or not. They also rely on old translations for many texts, while I've found that newer translations tend to flow better.
Here are libraries we can use other than marxists.org. Make sure their own copies don't come from the MIA though obviously.
Fuck me, I didn't know about this
How long have I been misguiding the working class
I feel like a site that just took the list of worka from marxist.org, used their own translations/versions, and added some notably missing worka would do well so long as it had a catchy url.
What exactly is a scholar monk? Trots have a selective canon, generally one intended to promote the idea that Trotsky was the co-revolutionary with Lenin and that one should engage primarily with Trotsky's speculative (and historically, a failure revolutionarily) works in exile. They talk about transitional programs so much they forget to engage critically with their failure to produce the revolution that requires transition.
I think there is a parallel in that Trotskyists are often correctly labeled as "academic Marxists", which is really just an insult meaning, "a self-labeled Marxist that is wrong and does no organizing but uses a lot of words and references from Marxist theory". Is that a monk scholar? They catalog and go on at length about hypotheticals but fail to do praxis, e.g. converting the nonbelievers and educating the believers?
Marxists.org is useful in that it makes works available for free and is an easy to remember domain. There are other projects doing similar things but they don't have the luck of owning a domain called marxists.org.
a funny connection my sleepy brain came up with this morning reading a post about trot book clubs i'm not seriously saying they are actual scholar monks that hasn't been a thing since the end of the middle ages
Of course, friend. Sorry if I came across as belligerent or argumentative, I mean to just be riffing along as well.
it's all good. text medium and all and most of us are neurodiverse im sure. sometimes i'm afraid to riff about stuff that goes too deep into serious territory because i am very much a leftist layperson.
learning the legendary Iron Head Technique by slamming my head with trot newspapers
I think @[email protected] with her work on ComLib is a great example of someone fulfilling that role, digging into older important texts and keeping them accessible and available, in modern, epub format, only not a Trot. Shoutout! 
the monastic orders diversify!! the Marxist renaissance draws ever closer
I haven't added any new epubs in like..........
oh god it's been 8 months? 
They're still great epubs! Not sure how many downloads you get, but I check ComLib first when looking for an epub of a book I intend on reading (though I basically know what's on ComLib at this point). Take your time, comrade!
I don't know either, I don't really have good logging setup (nginx is logging but I don't actually use it, maybe I should turn it off? Or actually try and use it)
I do have a few in progress. But also Denna's book has been taking quite some time. It's 19 chaps (13 done) and some 500 pages. And then as I joked about I just kinda keep starting new ones.
The endless desire to start new projects before finishing the one you're on, I know it well 
Sounds like someone just finished reading A Canticle for Liebowitz
Or Anathem
no, but the bordigists are:
The movement, even if it is weak in terms of numbers of adherents, that works on its newspapers, on its meetings, on holding factory discussions, to free revolutionary theory from unprecedented adulterations, from opportunist contaminations, thus performs a revolutionary labor, a labor for the proletarian revolution. (Activism)
🫡 to our wonderful revolutionary librarians
And such comfy armchairs!
library socialism ftw
Monks were mostly self-sufficient in a feudal economy though. The equivalent is probably some commune where the collective occasionally publishes a zine.
Only small minority were, as most monastic orders were founded to pray and only in some monks laboured. Overwhelming most of monasteries were funded with some kind of backing, so they either had serfs or some other income as fiefs. Both catholic and orthodox churches were nearly always biggest landowners in their countries.
Medieval life hack for self sufficiency: all you need is a simple robe, a vegetable garden, a modest lifestyle, discipline and community, a constant stream of large sums of money for taking in third born sons of aristocrats, high taxes paid to you, being a landlord over large areas of fertil land and of course literally owning the poor peasants who live there and do backbreaking labor for you. Actually, scratch the modest lifestyle.
Like a Marxist Invisible Committee or a Marxist CrimeThinc
prolewiki.org also has a library
totally unrelated but i want that emblem for my stellaris empire. i've been looking for that exact thing
this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
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