this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2025
20 points (100.0% liked)

Books

486 readers
3 users here now

For all books - fiction and non-fiction.

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Makan@lemmygrad.ml
20
Inventing Reality vs Manufacturing Consent (lemmygrad.ml)
submitted 4 days ago by invent_the_future@lemmygrad.ml to c/books@lemmygrad.ml
10 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

hello beautiful people, I've read Parenti's Inventing Reality and have in my shelf an unopened copy of Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent (as well as Ellul's Propaganda)

now I love Parenti but don't really care for Chomsky, I was gonna give him a shot but honestly in light of the recent Epstein connections I really cba; also I've skimmed through some of Manufacturing Consent and I can't escape reading it in Chomsky's awful talking cadence, whereas obviously I loved so many passages on Inventing Reality where Parenti's usual eloquent passion shines through so beautifully

so I'm thinking of gifting Manufacturing Consent to my sister for xmas, which is someone quite left-leaning but still very haunted by the scary ghosts of communism; and I feel like the book is way less overtly marxist than Inventing Reality, which might be a good thing in this situation

my questions are then: for those who've read it, am I missing something by not picking up Manufacturing Consent? is it so boring that it's not even an interesting gift?

ty, xoxo

top 10 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] darkernations@lemmygrad.ml 20 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

  1. On Chomsky: https://redsails.org/on-chomsky/

  2. On brainwashing: https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/

so I’m thinking of gifting Manufacturing Consent to my sister for xmas, which is someone quite left-leaning but still very haunted by the scary ghosts of communism

  1. May be consider Blackshirts and Red by Parenti instead, or Washington Bullets by Prashad.

  2. Read Manufacturing Consent only if you have the time so you understand why Inventing Reality is way better. Manufacturing Consent is the best one could hope for without dialectical materialism (also Parenti is a significantly more lucid writer).

  3. Read the Brainwashing article thereafter by Roderic Day above to progess on your dialectical materialist journey even further.

Parenti is so readable that his work can win over someone who may start off as anti-communist; heck he's probably a big reason why a lot of MLs who are westerners are MLs. If there was one person (there isn't) you could credit who turned me into an ML it would be Parenti.

[–] invent_the_future@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

thanks a lot for the further reading reccomendations, I believe I've read the Nia Froome text but I'll be sure to revisit it

also thought about gifting Blackshirts and Reds before, probably will do it eventually but just as a more personal gift anytime but xmas

[–] darkernations@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

🫡

Frome is just an awesome marxist writer and their twitter feed is an excellent resource to up one's game in dialectical materialism and philosphy in general. The whole trio (Malone and Day) are generally excellent writers on Redsails.

One of my favourite pieces by Frome is this:

https://redsails.org/the-problem-of-recognition-in-transitional-states/

I am a philosophy layman though, so stuff likes this challenges me and for me can be quite dense. I've currently got this on my deeper read (read it once already, next time involves research, reading around and notes - like I barely know Spinoza):

https://redsails.org/aristocratic-marxism/

[–] invent_the_future@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

do you have any idea what happened to redsails? I don't really use twitter so I'm probably missing out on information but I did notice they stopped publishing texts on the website around this time last year

also I'm right there with you, one of my favorite dense philosophy essays is this one: https://redsails.org/maoist-and-daoist-dialectics/, it's not necessarily hard to follow but it introduced whole new notions foreign to me and I'm so grateful for it

[–] darkernations@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 3 days ago

I forgot why they stopped, I understand Day is taking a break from social media/internet due to life stuff. Malone and Frome are still very much active on Twitter.

[–] davel@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

https://redsails.org/the-problem-of-recognition-in-transitional-states/

Interesting.

Why are there so many trans tankies? What is the beef between trans studies and queer theory?

The problem of recognition in transitional states is the difficulty of assigning to a definite set an object that possesses some of the features of two mutually exclusive ones, and the harms attendant on failing to do so. Socialism is not capitalism; hence capitalist traits are evidence of non-socialism, and vice versa. On this excluded middle hinges the standard argument against the socialist credentials of any given country: “Look, they’ve still got commodities. They’ve still got accumulation. They’ve still got bureaucracy, repression, and elites. They’re still impersonally dominated by the market.”

Trans and queer theory share a deep suspicion towards any assumption of an excluded middle. What, then, distinguishes them? My claim will be that queer theory, as opposed to trans studies, remains more imbued with Western Marxist pessimism and theoreticism, whereas trans studies, as opposed to queer theory, arises from trans experiences with direct parallels to those of Really Existing Socialism, and thus tends to express a greater optimism and realism. The terms in which trans theorists and others criticize queer theory are anticipated at nearly every turn by homologous arguments to be made against Western Marxism in favor of Eastern Marxism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_excluded_middle

The problem is that liberalism is an idealist and metaphysical –ism, not a materialist or dialectical one. For this I might recommend Georges Politzer’s Elementary Principles of Philosophy.

[–] darkernations@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

The problem is that liberalism is an idealist and metaphysical –ism, not a materialist or dialectical one. For this I might recommend Georges Politzer’s Elementary Principles of Philosophy.

Thanks, though I think that's already a given here!

(Politzer's work is always generally a good recommendation though).

The exploration here goes deeper and, for example, considers why may a particular explanation may be self contradictory and incomplete if it proposes that others are trapped in an unknowing ideological state while oneself is an knowing state while in conditions that reproduce the ideology but does not explain how the latter transitioned from the former to the latter - why does a non-DM approach may diagnose a problem but offers no treatment and how DM finds the treatment.

(^you see this problem arise in lemmygrad, for example, when people are aghast when explained "brainwashing" isn't actually much of a thing but not have a theory of mind of how they escaped it while others are trapped in it)

It's an article I recommend after reading something like Politzer's work as an example of exploring how DM navigates complexities of reality to find a solution.

I means quotes like

but instead returns to Hegel, describing Butler’s theory as an example of the “Unhappy Consciousness” because it contains within itself an Althusserian split between a knowing scientist (who is pessimistic about the possibility of mutual recognition) and a hopelessly ideological subject capable only of misrecognition.

...And...

"In order to be meaningful for their proponents, they have to presuppose epistemic asymmetries which cannot be justified within these forms of thinking”

...and...

makes the case that there is a trans-antagonism inherent to queer theory’s valorization of universality and virtuality

... while tackling Nietzschean aestheticism makes the whole essay in some ways a work of art.

[–] ComradeRandy@lemmygrad.ml 18 points 4 days ago

It pisses me off to no end that Inventing Reality is out of print

[–] davel@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I think absorbing the CliffsNotes (not literally) of Chomsky & Herman’s book is enough. The 1992 documentary does a poor job, IIRC, so that’s probably not the way.

Some criticisms/explanations of Chomsky’s faults:

[–] TankieReplyBot@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 3 days ago

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: