You must be lying down. If you stand up, Our Capy is unfortunately trapped inside a mirror. This can happen by accident. You can't knowingly walk into and through a mirror because the other you on the other side will see you coming and stop you. But if you absent mindedly shuffle about near the corner of a mirror, maybe looking for some grain that might have fallen nearby and be reflected, that's it, you slip through and swap with the other you. You can get back out but it's tough because, again, it's got to be by accident.
If the state is defined as the only legal perpetrators of violence…
Is that the right definition? It could be a good place to start. You might want to look up John Austin. This article may be useful: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legal-positivism/ If Austin is useful, you might want to check exactly how he reflected Bentham and then see if Marx said anything about that part of Bentham. Marx wasn't generally kind to him lol.
If you find this legal view of the state and keep reading you may come across Kelsen. If so, or if you're otherwise interested, have a look at Max Adler, The Marxist Conception of the State: A Contribution to the Differentiation of the Sociological and the Juristic Method. It's an old text but may be useful.
Otherwise, is the state the 'only legal [perpetrator] of violence' or does it have a monopoly on violence? Is there a difference?
I've yet to read it but Ralph Miliband's The State in Capitalist Society could be useful, too.
If you are going down a legal path, Pashukanis and Renner may be essential reading. Even anti-communists treat them seriously. I'm unsure if he's an anti-communist, but Fuller's Morality of Law relies on Pashukanis. Fuller was involved in one of a few great debates in jurisprudence in the twentieth century. His was the Hart-Fuller debate. Hart being the arch-positivist. You'll see him mentioned in the Austin article cited above, along with Kelsen (Pashukanis gets a line about some Marxists rejecting positivism).
(For those who are just passing by, legal positivism is basically the idea that there is a difference between what law is and what law ought to be. I.e. law doesn't necessarily tell you what is moral and law doesn't necessarily have to be moral.)
Almost everything it built will have long since crumbled. Except for food. There will be relics like loaves of sliced bread, stacks of burger patties, snacks, luminescent drinks. The preservatives will keep them in pristine condition.
In that case, if you go for something by Harvey, try the article first. The book is good and relevant but it's more of a Marxist approach to geography. Or a way of explaining Marxism through geography. Depending on your perspective. The Crawford book, especially, will get you pumped for switching to trade school. Or rebuilding a vehicle.
Remember as well that there's a route back to the office if you go to trade school now. Some big companies will even pay you to take a degree later if you have the talent and motivation for it (which you do if you got into uni in the first place, even if you've gone through a rough patch with some current modules). It may depend on your location, though.
Have you read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? I read it a long time ago, before having any political awareness so I can't remember whether it's liberal. But I remember it helped me think through some of what you're going through after I'd gone the other way (started with manual work, then went to uni). Iirc the argument is to work with your hands.
I probably did the opposite of what the book suggests. But I found a way to do white collar work and have a 'craft'. I think the craft thing is important. To me, at least, as it feel like I'm doing something for me, loosely speaking.
I'm still glad I did the manual jobs and I still do a bit now and again, depending on the job and ol' employment situation. But it dragged on me in the end. Even though I loved working with my hands and seeing the fruits of my work and even enjoyed seeing other people be happy with the result, most of the job was doing things that objectively made the world worse (or will do, in the long run) and I got constantly fucked over by employers. (Not that that's unique to blue collar industries.)
I don't envy you your decision. It's not an easy one. It tortured me and I wasn't overly well because of it for a long time. I think I made the right choice now but on bad days and nostalgic days I wish I went the other way. I hope you don't suffer with the choice.
Before you make your decision, you might want to read some of David Harvey's work. I'm thinking Rebel Cities and 'On the Deep Relevance of a Certain Footnote in Marx's Capital'. The (short) article explains how he used Capital when he sat on a city planning panel in Korea (South, I assume). You'd have to think about how to do it; but there's a way of staying in urban planning and making a difference (eventually). It's whether you can stomach doing the neoliberal thing for the rest of the time and for however long it takes for you to become an authority.
"Don't send the files to the press. It'll look suspicious. Send everything to Russian intelligence and ask them to send it to our press. Nobody will question it. Plus everyone knows that emails don't work unless they go through a third party. It's just how it is."
Conservatives are liberals, too. I read the top comment in this thread as distinguishing between the far right (fascist or fascist-adjacent, some of whom pose as or are conservatives) and liberals (conservatives, 'progressives', radlibs, and all the radical tendencies that talk about revolution but whose actions reveal them as liberals).
So in the US, that both parties appear to be conservative is because they're both liberal parties. (For now. They both have cryptos and far right members who will be leading the charge to fascism when it comes to it if we're not already there.)
All these years, libs have been blaming crime on video games, music, and other media. Should we be shocked that it's projection? That they base their worldview on games like Civ VI and Masters of Orion where you click 'send spy' and a little avatar walks across the border and hides among the designated enemy?
The US state department lawyers and the British House of Lords have evidence. That's why they're pursuing convictions of the Chinese leaders involved. No, wait— sorry, I misremembered. They both concluded there is insufficient evidence.
Thank the Lemmygrods above!