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Wow, I did not expect to see Anton Pannekoek appear on Hacker News frontpage. I had read a booklet from him when I was younger that was, we may say, an epistem
by cassepipe 5y ago
Wow, I did not expect to see Anton Pannekoek appear on Hacker News frontpage. I had read a booklet from him when I was younger that was, we may say, an epistemological piece of criticism of Lenin and his followers, attempting to demonstrate how they had in the end a very "bourgeois" state of mind/epistemology and I must say rather interesting for its time. He also spent time attacking Mach, a now almost unknown physicist/philosopher that was very famous at the time. I had read an interesting article on HN about him (can't seem to find it right now).
What you should know is that Anton Pannekoek is an heir of the German/Dutch anti-authoritarian Lef, people who were into workers self-organization/councils and not much into Third International "Communism".
- lastgeniusua 5y agowhat are you reading now if you read Pannekoek when you were younger, I wonder?
- cassepipe 5y agoRobert Brenner and Robert Sapolsky right now. Still interested about systems, especially in how capitalism works (or does not work depending on where you stand) and how it came about. But also a little bit more interested in how human work (as biological systems). Thanks for asking.
- lastgeniusua 5y agothe "doesn't" camp, of course. Brenner in the context of the larger debates or on his own? Have you read Jairus Banaji? What's particularly interesting in Sapolsky's work for you?
- orhmeh09 5y agoHave you read the Dialectical Biologist by Levins and Lewontin? I’ve been thinking of picking it up (no real biology knowledge personally).
- orhmeh09 5y agoFun fact - Mach is the Mach 3 in razor blades, among other places (obscure things like units of measurement).
- Synaesthesia 5y agoHe is my hero. Lenin critiqued his approach to Marxism as "infantile leftism" but I still think council communism is the best form of socialism, it allows workers to express themselves politically and contribute to decision making.