It’s really disappointing seeing someone getting upbears for saying that if you don’t read theory, you’re a counterrevolutionary liberal.
I can’t even get out of bed in the morning for like 3 hours, let alone make time in my day to read after the pile of stuff I have backed up that I need to do.
Am I the only one that feels this way?
Try some good faith and assume whoever is speaking does not expect disabled people to perform actions they cannot but also does not feel the need to point it out because they assume it is a given. I know that is not how the world works but as leftists it's how we want it too and this is a leftist website.
I think we should dedicate a bit more effort towards seeing each other in good faith and developing a bit of thick skin, partly for the sake of making sure we don't crumble when actual foes are messing with us.
I feel like if I had worded this comment less diplomatically, it's the sort of thing one could be shunned and banned for. And I think that's a problem.
Thanks but genuinely that’s not my immediate assumption, and then even more so, my question was to the people in this comm, because I am affected by a comorbidty of adhd called rsd, something people here understand very well, and for you what could have been taken in good faith, couldn’t for me, not because I’m not being charitable, but because I couldn’t help but feel ashamed about something I had no control over.
And I’m not even trying to call you out, but telling me “maybe you should just act in good faith” when I came to a comm to ask people who have similar experience a question, doesn’t really come across in whatever way you’re trying to have it come across, unless you’re just being mean about it.
Well I have autism, adhd, anxiety and bipolar so I am a member of this comm just as you are. I suffered from avoidant personality disorder for along time becuase I was so sensetive to rejection. I honestly do understand what it is like. It's not my immediate assumption either it is a learned response I built up over a decade of fighting my anxiety to help me face the world. My first response is always fear or shame or doubt but I have trained myself to dismiss that first thought as just my illnesses and instead choose to have have good faith in my fellow humans and tell myself that people are being kind to me. Or atleast try to. I don't always succeed I still have lots of problems I am not facing because of shame and guilt in my life. I am getting better at it the more I try.
I was just trying to share what helped me. I'm sorry I probably could have worded myself better but communication is not my strong point since I spent over a decade not doing very much of it. When ever two people communicate there is always miscommunication as everyone has different persepctives. It takes a dialogue to get to the truth and sometime that dialogue is with two sides of yourself. You are on a leftist website some part of you must beleive humanity is capable of being nice and helping each other and working together for all our betterment. You just have to nuture that part of you. I do know how hard that is and I know it is daily struggle and I am sorry if I sounded dismissive of your stuggle.
Ah, okay, my bad. No, looking back on it, your advice is helpful especially with you mentioning about this being a learned part of your perspective.
Other than that, I apologize for assuming you didn’t know what I was going through because if I hadn’t assumed that, then your initial post would have made sense. Idk why I assumed that too, probably because I’m working in “real life, no one understands this” mentality, but you’re right.
Your insight here was incredibly helpful, and I think I’ll go forward being able to be better about things since I’ll probably be like “just remember what septbear said, don’t assume your immediate emotional reaction is how people view you.” It’s been a life long struggle of mine, and I only recently (like maybe 2 weeks ago) was diagnosed with adhd and RSD, and so it’s been like “I have all of the validation that I have ADHD + RSD but none of the work has been done by myself to now reframe my life experiences and build reinforcing strategies.
I want to stress that I apologize for the portion of my response where I essentially said “you don’t know what I’m going through!”, because if I had exercised a bit of good faith, I wouldn’t have immediately assumed you weren’t working from an informed perspective.
Don't beat yourself up. It's an illness you literally cannot help your response. I did not take it personally. I'm glad I could help you and I'm sorry for not explaining myself better the first time. Luckily we established a dialogue. and worked things out :big-cool:
No one is calling you out or any neurodivergent comrades. Literally just engage with what you can and however you can to contribute to revolution.
It is not totally impossible to engage with theory in the 21st century with all the tools available to us now. I’ve said there are books, ebooks, audiobooks, YouTube videos, podcasts, lectures, there is literally a Das Kapital Manga.
We literally talked in the comments in my post and I privately messaged you apologizing and explaining things. Wtf?
Yeah, but look at what comm you’re in and the question I asked. I was asking the people who usually are here.
I wasn’t stirring shit or trying to slander you, you did dm me and were good, but I made this post asking other nd comrades for validation, because, maybe (key word) something you don’t know, is ADHD comes with other comorbidites of which I have 1 of them: RSD or rejection sensitivity disorder.
Almost no posts here blow up, so it’s not like I was expecting to wake up to a whole thing. If we’re acting in good faith, please try and understand that almost nothing here ends up going onto everyone’s active feed lol.
there is literally a Das Kapital Manga
also iirc it was criticized for making karl marx too hot, making it harder for students to actually learn from it.
You don't need to read theory, at least not directly. The problem is people actively shitting on Marxist theorists like Lenin and Mao like V**sh and the Reddit Anarchists, who are very obviously counter-revolutionary.
Just participate in discussions around Marxism and you'll get a clearer and clearer picture as you go. Human knowledge has been disseminated for thousands of years through discussion.
ADHD is fucking weird like that
even the simplest shit like me deciding to get some water and 20 minutes later I realize that I've been doing something else instead of getting the fucking water
and then 40 minutes after that I find myself cooking dinner!? WATER :screm3:
You know that thing where every few months you passionately find a new random hobby and are life or death serious about it until you hyperfocus on it so much that you feel like you’ve immersed yourself in it completely, regardless of how much you have or haven’t actively engaged in it but just learned about it, and then one day you wake up and it’s gone and you pick a new thing for a few months ?
😳 I really need to go get tested, every time I hear people talk about their experiences with ADHD it matches my behaviors to a T
Haha I would totally not recommend you visit r/adhdmeme. It was totally not relatable to me as a undiagnosed ADHD person. Just funny memes haha.
Use your often crippling curiosity and poor prioritizing as a weapon against yourself if you can. :)
That's honestly how I know everything I know now, You have some great advice and I look forward to using it to get even more based
What would be an easier medium for you to consume theory? If you did not know there are audio books versions of some of these books. Some are on YouTube, you can pirate others and you can also check out marxists.org' collection: https://www.marxists.org/audiobooks/index.htm
Something I like are podcasts or YouTube vireos that analyze theory "with you", like a pretend book club. David Harvey's video on Das Kapital were often recommended to me: https://youtu.be/gBazR59SZXk
There is Rev Left Radio's Red Menace where they do the same for more than Das Kapital: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9VMwPK_SqUuE-DQkFtceSbIjE5dzN6QA
The Book Club on hexbear could be a good thing if camaraderie would help. I do not know how to join, I think it is on !literature@hexbear.net, but you can look into that. Or maybe this comm could have it's own book club? I don't know.
There is also text to speech if you prefer. I do not know desktop options for that, but c/libre can probably help. On Android, librera reader is FOSS, so no ads, and has TTS. Check it out here: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.foobnix.pro.pdf.reader/
Finally, if books themselves are the problem, you can try videos like Paul Morrin's Socialism 101, they are short and to the point and he plans on doing 201s and 301s, he also does livestreams with interesting people check it out: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0J754r0IteXABJntjBg1YuNsn6jItWXQ
This is not to say that your problem is easily solvable, I do not have ADHD, I do not know the struggles you face. But I hope those will help you or anyone else find a workable solution. Because expanding your understanding of Marxist theory is important for you and the people you want to help. However, anyone telling you are "counterrevolutionary" is an asshole. This attitude is the one stopping us from moving forward. We are here to help people, to change material conditions and being an ass because someone struggles in a way you don't is probably a type of liberalism, if it is not, add it to the list!
Thanks for the resources, and while reading is indeed a problem, and audio books/TTS are great, the issue is a lot more nuanced than “just read something but in a different way.”
Namely, I can’t even go through my day to day getting (like I mentioned) the basic tasks of human existence done. I can’t eat consistently, or make food when I want to eat, and that’s just one aspect.
The other aspect is in that, even if I start a book, I just cannot will myself to read it. I mean it took me close to a year to read wage, labor and capital, because I’d read a paragraph and not pick it up for 6 weeks or something.
So if I’m answering your potentially rhetorical question pointedly: the medium isn’t the problem (for me at least) the problem is in my general life and with being able to be consistent on any given task that doesn’t come with some mechanism of giving my brain dopamine at video game levels.
That is what I suspected from the little I know about ADHD. I hope you find a system that works for you :stalin-heart:
Exactly this, take your time. You are not at school, if you prefer to jump around, do it. If reading one page at a time works, do it. Find your rhythm and do not compare yourself to others, discipline and consistency will get you far.
There is Rev Left Radio’s Red Menace where they do the same for more than Das Kapital: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9VMwPK_SqUuE-DQkFtceSbIjE5dzN6QA
I've had that one on my listen later for ages now I really gotta set aside time this weekend and listen to it. I love revleft's podcasts anyways I literally just gotta actually start it.
For sure, if you already listen to RevLeftRadio, you'll probably like it.
One problem I've noticed is that Marx is a very bad writer he's a good economist but one of the worst writers ever
I think there’s a lot to this, because I study math, which similarly has this quality of being “exceptionally specific and hard to read”, but because it gives my brain happy juice I’ve found myself consuming all of it as quickly as possible. Now that isn’t so easy, because of how math requires a lot of practice, but I haven’t stepped away from it yet. But I do find that less applied things are not as fun, whereas things like Chaos Theory
I think I’ll try to trigger this “letting theory sink its claws into me” thing and hopefully I’ll still have time for at least some things (like math!)
I would recommend to try to draw schematics or diagrams of the different actors and how they interact like so. One of the things I really enjoy about Marx was trying to imagine these systems myself and drawing out these diagrams out and getting those aha! moments.
things that give a historical or event based lens to set the mood and the setting and develop interest before they really get into the super heavy theory and formal logic based stuff.
You know, I'm sure a lot of comrades with ADHD would love if there was a reading/listening/watch list for theory that fits this description. I'm not saying this to you specifically but in general.
https://youtu.be/oYodY6o172A I think this guys videos are pretty engaging. I think it's very approachable but still cover some very major and important topics. One of his videos is just dedicated to examining the marxist conception of class.
I read some books by Blatchford who while having many horrific ideas was also a professional writer and able to lay out the merits of socialism quite well
Marx is not a terrible writer. He is very precise and has an incredible economy with words. He's also not an economist, he basically said economics is an ideology. In Capital he showed how the categories of political economy like money, profit, wages, value etc all arise from social relations between people, while economics studies these as though they are facts of nature.
I would really suggest putting in the effort to read Marx, it is entirely worthwhile IF you are genuinely interested in communism. It's really not that difficult. It may be boring, but you need to put effort into it and engage with the text.
really hard to read, he goes into long metaphors that just sort of trail off, keeps referencing other rarely read texts
As long as you understand the theory there’s no need to read specific works. There are plenty of other ways to learn and people with ADHD certainly aren’t incapable of learning, you just have to find a way that works for you.
Personally I listen to audiobooks while working out or commuting. You can watch YouTube videos or read small articles on whatever you find interesting. You can learn at your own pace and in your own way (if you want to).
The left loves to tear itself apart with dick measuring contests. Don’t feel bad because some debate lord called you a lib. You have got nothing to prove to anyone.
:heart-sickle:
Listening to an audiobook achieves the same goal. Not everyone can read, hard disagree with that ableist shit.
I have ADHD. I’m a university student who hasn’t read a single book since I was 12. Some people find it hard to, others have jobs and other responsibilities.
Reading poorly translated written text from 100+ years ago, while very helpful, isn’t the only way to learn. I have listened to audiobooks of Marx and State and Revolution, I even uploaded it to mobilism and other piracy sites.
You’re misusing that quote, nowhere did I say writing theory isn’t important for the movement. If anything I’d argue that even Graeber and Chomsky are just as important for modern socialists. The vast majority of people who died fighting for any working class revolution were illiterate.
I just find I'm often tired and don't have the energy for dense economic theory that keeps referencing other books of dense economic theory.
bolo'bolo is a really good read and you can call it theory. I'd say its format is fairly well oriented to the attention-deficient brain.
In addition to audiobooks, there are lots of good zines that condense stuff down to something you can operate on if you have the general social values and a distrust of the mainstream perspective on history.
I had to take several shots at getting through Capital, for instance. This is actually rather common.
TBH I think there's a running "all-positive-feedback-only" demand circulating on this site. We should be able to take a comment saying "you could do more" and not interpret it as a personal attack, because it isn't. At the end of the day we're all on a journey of understanding and improving the world together. Not everybody is going to have the equivalent of a master's in philosophy or history.
Got similar problems, even if I do make it round to trying I can't make it more than a few pages into most theory without getting board and shifting to one of my hundred other tabs anyways. Listening to theory is where it's at imo, I can do that while doing something else more physical.
You're right of course.
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder has no impact on the relative difficulty of flitting from one bit of dopamine filled content to another and slogging through 1000+ page 19th century economic texts and when a comrade with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder tells you that this is untrue and hearing it hurts them the kind and comradely thing to is double down.
ADHD's not just about attention. It fucks with what psychs call your "Executive Functioning".
This website has a pretty good (and well cited) explanation of what that means, but basically it includes
Organizing, prioritizing and activating for tasks
Focusing, sustaining and shifting attention to task
Regulating alertness, sustaining effort and processing speed
Managing frustration and modulating emotions
Utilizing working memory and accessing recall
Monitoring and self-regulating action
That's what ThatsNotPraxis is talking about. I hope you can understand that making a plan to read theory, even in small chunks, and then following through with that plan, is a lot harder for him than it is for you.
I get that you're trying to help, but telling someone with a disability that they should be able to do something, after they've told you they can't because of their disability, is pure ableism and doing it after they've told you they're hurt by people telling them they should be able to do that thing is really unkind.
Thanks comrade. I couldn’t have explained what motivated me to ask people in this comm this question if I tried. :Care-Comrade:
Honestly just do your best to absorb theory through osmosis through the ChapoChat slop and Hakim's youtube videos etc.
Yea! This has been pretty much my go to for the time being. I’m hoping one day, maybe once I get on medication, I’ll be able to sit down and engage with theory. Idk if that’s how it works, because I have no clue what being medicated is like though, so.
That Soviet economic planning game is probably good. There are better ways to understand systems in motion than by reading books. Just like the NASA scientists that finally developed an intuitive understanding of their missions and orbital dynamics because of Kerbal Space Program.
You could theoretically understand urban planning by reading entire textbooks but you could probably develop an intuitive understanding way easier by playing City Building games.
Np comrade :stalin-heart:
I also have ADHD and deal with executive functioning disorder, how it's played out for me so far has just been by process of elimination. I used to zoom on a lot of things but disillusionment from liberal media and entertainment has left me with only communist things to zoom on.
I still can't read books but I've basically just managed to replace the background radiation of liberalism and liberal ideology with communism. I would be completely lost if the chapos here and other communists weren't so funny :comrade-raccoon:
Eh not so sure.
On the internet you're usually reading short essays or post comments that you can go through in 10 minutes at most.
On the other hand in books authors tend to take their sweet fucking time with getting to the actual point, I can totally see this being too much for a person with ADHD.
I disagree with the takes here, you can absorb plenty of theory just by watching Marxists talk and participating in slop and YouTube. Maybe not to the highest resolution and depth but even participating in the discussions and listening to the reading groups on local orgs gets the big picture stuff through.
