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Active Quasar
Feb 22, 2011

Cpt_Obvious posted:

This is an interesting flip you've made. Declaring the older ideology, Liberalism, as the cool new kid while simultaneously deriding the younger ideology, Marxism, as old and unfashionable.

This is the conclusion I came to after the discussion on the GE thread about Neoliberalism vs Liberalism. The "neo" in "neoliberalism" is just a marketing Shiboleth to make it a newer economic theory than Marxism/SocDem/Keynsianism etc. because "let's return to the failed ideologies of the 19th century, which gave rise to fascism" wasn't particularly saleable.

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The Oldest Man
Jul 28, 2003

ronya posted:

Classical theories (incl Marx) of business cycles usually assert in some form that business cycles occur when investment increases at the expense of consumption or vice versa - for Marx the organic composition of capital keeps increasing from ever-increasing investment (accumulation) and corresponding decrease in consumption (immiseration)

This is not what we observe in business cycles, which is that investment and consumption both increase at the same time during booms and decrease during busts - i.e. that they co-move together

It's possible to explain this in various Marxist ways but it's always necessary to extend the theory

It sounds like you're trying to assert that Marx predicted that investment would continuously move inversely with demand, but I'm fairly certain he didn't and the theory is that capital accumulation inevitably creates over-production, which will eventually create a collapse in profit (can't sell cotton bail #100 for profit as he did #99 because there simply is no more demand for cotton at that price) such that the capitalist cannot sustain the maintenance of their capital resources (they're producing at a loss once upkeep is accounted for), and at least partially idle their machinery as a result. They then stop taking inputs from other production processes upstream of them, which then also must idle since they are now overproducing. That in turn will spreads the demand shock as labor all along the production chain finds itself idled as well and unable to draw wages, which creates a general crisis as suddenly everyone finds that they're over-producing everything in comparison to the collapse in consumer demand. But all of this is described as a chain reaction that takes place once a critical threshold of over-production is breached, not as the two variables having an inverse relationship.

IE, Marx's description of the drivers of economic crisis in https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch17.htm doesn't match up with what you're saying.

Sharks Eat Bear
Dec 25, 2004

Not to ignore the current discussion, but I wanted to go back to a post from a few pages ago and follow up with a pointed question:

SurgicalOntologist posted:

Besides philosophy of perception there are other relevant philosophical traditions like the American pragmatists (William James, Dewey, Peirce), who argued that the only way to conceptualize philosophical problems like knowlege, language, beliefs, etc was by looking at the real-world effects of something rather than playing with ideas. For example, truth is not based on logic relationships built upon foundational axioms but rather truth is a functional description of the result of a practical inquiry in the real world.

Basically you can see this kind of debate back to Plato vs Aristotle, often called realism (or materialism) and idealism, most notably to me in philosophy of mind but it permeates everywhere.

Anyways, in the years since my studies I've been exposed to Marxist thought and particular a materialist view of history. And I can't help wondering how my professors who dedicated their life to a materialist philosophy of mind, and connect their work to various philosophical traditions back to Aristotle, never mentioned Marx. And Wikipedia makes no connection between Marx and pragmatism. I assume politics has a lot to do with it, since these are mainly American philosophies.

I don't know where I'm going but I'm wondering if Marx or any of his followers made any connections to philosophy of mind, and if anyone has any specific readings to recommend given my background (I haven't' read most of the foundational works yet).

Well, if you google "marx pragmatism" or 'marx "ecolgoical psychology"', you do get some scattered academic papers mostly behind paywalls. Here's two readings that may be interesting: "Dewey, Hook, and Mao: on some affinities between Marxism and pragmatism", and "The dance of pragmatism and Marxism" from marxists.org. Maybe I should have read those before posting but I'll read them now. I'd be curious what those of you think you may be better versed in Marx than I.

Edit: poo poo, I guess Sidney Hook (who I had never heard of) was a well-known Marxist philosopher who was a student of Dewey's. I guess have some reading to do...
second edit: OK, well, he started out as a Marxist at least...

I've always had a predilection for pragmatism and as I learn more about historical materialism I have the same perspective -- it seems like there is a lot of agreement between the two philosophies/analytical approaches, and I'm eager to learn/read more about how they can hang together, so to speak. And this gets at one of the biggest challenges I've had with the leftist discourse on this forum, specifically about the case against "lesser evil" voting... :can:

I suppose it might be a stretch to apply a materialist analysis to voting choice/strategy, but to me I've never found the arguments against lesser evil voting compelling, because they seem to ignore the material/pragmatic reality that one of two candidates will be elected (obviously focusing on the US here) and that 99% of the time the Democratic candidate will be less harmful than the Republican.

Not to say that the Democrat won't still be harmful, or that voting is the only or most important form of civic/political engagement, or that individuals can't have valid emotional or idealistic reasons against voting for the lesser evil... but I don't think I've heard a strong argument against lesser evilism that's grounded in material conditions as opposed to idealism/emotion, unless the argument is in favor of accelerationism.

Obviously not trying to vote shame or argue about specific candidates, but really just want to clarify what the materialist and/or pragmatic argument is in favor of voting for a 3rd party candidate (or not voting) in a decidedly two-party system. :shobon:

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Accelerationism, or things peripheral to it, are broadly I think the best materialist argument against lesser evil voting. Basically the idea that the electoral system cannot provide the needed changes because they are outside its scope, and that the longer it dominates political thought in a country the more dangerous the political landscape becomes due it its failure to address the needs of the population.

Also depending on the specific electoral system of a country you can make the argument that it is desirable to sabotage the success of particular parties to delegitimize their ideas and install your own, particularly relevant in the UK at the moment.

But more broadly the conflict I think is between the obstruction that the electoral system presents in its ability to monopolise political effort and expression on ultimately fruitless endeavours, and the idea that it can give leftists "breathing room" despite the same mechanism also potentially drawing support away from leftism by propping up the legitimacy of the electoral system itself.

Active Quasar
Feb 22, 2011

Sharks Eat Bear posted:

Obviously not trying to vote shame or argue about specific candidates, but really just want to clarify what the materialist and/or pragmatic argument is in favor of voting for a 3rd party candidate (or not voting) in a decidedly two-party system. :shobon:

My argument, under the assumption of fair actors, would be:
A vote for one of the diumvirate is, inherently, a vote for the status quo of having a diumvirate in the first place. As the personal costs to the politicians for going against the donor class are greater than those of losing an election, voting for the lesser evil is guaranteed to produce regressive outcomes, although (potentially) with greater or lesser velocity. Voting third party cannot produce a change now but over time, could produce incremental support as the base grows. At some point, assuming growth continues, it will reach a critical threshold where it will have actual leverage. As the current process is monotonically moving towards worse and worse outcomes, the sooner it can be stopped, the better. Therefore voting third party now, even at the cost of immediate-term increase in velocity of that process, will decrease the time-scale to actually reverse the process of harm. Never voting third party guarantees eternal harm.

Of course, if socialists ever gained such leverage, they'd simply change the rules (i.e. the assumption is violated), so my actual argument would be that a party provides a point of organization to project a message and reach people that you would not have otherwise reached. This kind of support is necessary to achieve the kind of direct action (i.e. actually taking power outside of the current "rules") that is actually necessary to achieve change. The syndicalists of the early 20th century didn't wait to be elected, they built power themselves. The current "democratic" system will never allow anything other than continued capital concentration but parts of it can be co-opted to enable the real work that needs to be done.

OwlFancier posted:

But more broadly the conflict I think is between the obstruction that the electoral system presents in its ability to monopolise political effort and expression on ultimately fruitless endeavours, and the idea that it can give leftists "breathing room" despite the same mechanism also potentially drawing support away from leftism by propping up the legitimacy of the electoral system itself.

Also this. Delegitimizing the electoral process will make it far easier to persuade people into direct action because that then becomes the only route to expression. The system provides the illusion of that and therefore draws energy away from activism.

Active Quasar fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Nov 11, 2020

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Basically whether or not you actually reach the point of becoming an acclerationist, the arguments that lead there are pretty important ones because you can't just like, ignore the strucutral limitations of electoralism or the effects that it has by existing.

The Oldest Man
Jul 28, 2003

OwlFancier posted:

Basically whether or not you actually reach the point of becoming an acclerationist, the arguments that lead there are pretty important ones because you can't just like, ignore the strucutral limitations of electoralism or the effects that it has by existing.

Despite the accusations being thrown around, I'm not sure actual accelerationism (as in, wanting things to get worse to enable the revolution or something along those lines) is a common position even among the most militant of the left. Most of them on a day to day basis are doing poo poo like helping the homeless survive the winter and sheltering people who have experienced violence at the hands of the state, and they want that to get better not worse. They don't believe the state and its capitalist owners are ever going to do anything about that, but wishing that more people get thrown into the street, shot, or beaten so that ~our glorious revolution can finally occur~ is some poo poo that will get you beat up among those leftists. "I wish we didn't have to be out here every day jesus christ this is horrific," is a way more common take. I'd say it's more common among edgelord internet trolls than anyone actually involved with left movements.

Beefeater1980
Sep 12, 2008

My God, it's full of Horatios!






How does LTV treat unique goods? For example the difference between two identical houses (same labour involved) where one has a view over Central Park and the other has a view of the neighbouring building five feet away?

Active Quasar
Feb 22, 2011

The Oldest Man posted:

Despite the accusations being thrown around, I'm not sure actual accelerationism (as in, wanting things to get worse to enable the revolution or something along those lines) is a common position even among the most militant of the left. Most of them on a day to day basis are doing poo poo like helping the homeless survive the winter and sheltering people who have experienced violence at the hands of the state, and they want that to get better not worse. They don't believe the state and its capitalist owners are ever going to do anything about that, but wishing that more people get thrown into the street, shot, or beaten so that ~our glorious revolution can finally occur~ is some poo poo that will get you beat up among those leftists. "I wish we didn't have to be out here every day jesus christ this is horrific," is a way more common take. I'd say it's more common among edgelord internet trolls than anyone actually involved with left movements.

Yeah, this is pretty true in my experience.

What I have heard quite a bit, however, is an objection to the democrat party (or the shiny new anti-labor Labour Party in the UK) based on the fact that they are better able to hide their abuses. That's not accelerationism that's "If terrible things happen we want people to see them and understand them as terrible". We've seen first-hand that having a "good guy" doing evil things is actually able to shift people's opinion to apologia for that evil. That's harmful in itself and must be accounted for in any lesser-evil calculation. I guess the main theme running through all of these things is that the Left generally thinks in terms of longer time-spans and definitely past the next election cycle (I would also recognize that conservatives do the same, with their demonstrated competence for incrementalist politics).

Active Quasar
Feb 22, 2011

Beefeater1980 posted:

How does LTV treat unique goods? For example the difference between two identical houses (same labour involved) where one has a view over Central Park and the other has a view of the neighbouring building five feet away?

This almost certainly falls under the aegis of this chapter and its successor chapter.

EDIT: I guess to try and summarise this (becaue I also realize that linking these chapters alone are probably a bit of a "hey screw you, read this dense language") Marx treats land value separately from Labor Value and devotes an entire section of the book to the conversion of surplus profit into "ground rent" which also encapsulates the general notion of differential land value.

Active Quasar fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Nov 11, 2020

Beefeater1980
Sep 12, 2008

My God, it's full of Horatios!






OwlFancier posted:

Accelerationism, or things peripheral to it, are broadly I think the best materialist argument against lesser evil voting. Basically the idea that the electoral system cannot provide the needed changes because they are outside its scope, and that the longer it dominates political thought in a country the more dangerous the political landscape becomes due it its failure to address the needs of the population.

Also depending on the specific electoral system of a country you can make the argument that it is desirable to sabotage the success of particular parties to delegitimize their ideas and install your own, particularly relevant in the UK at the moment.

But more broadly the conflict I think is between the obstruction that the electoral system presents in its ability to monopolise political effort and expression on ultimately fruitless endeavours, and the idea that it can give leftists "breathing room" despite the same mechanism also potentially drawing support away from leftism by propping up the legitimacy of the electoral system itself.

I don’t know, the implication of the materialist analysis of history to me seems to be that it can’t really be accelerated. Once material conditions compel the collapse of the capitalist mode of production, it will be abandoned. If material conditions don’t compel it (for example if enough people can be given an acceptable enough life through accommodation with capital) then the change won’t happen. The system has to collapse under its own weight.

You could try to accelerate the collapse in material conditions but at that point you’re basically smashing stuff and inflicting pain in the vague hope it crashes the system. I don’t think there’s any evidence that it does - the system is resilient. “After Hitler, us!” is the only communist experiment in accelerationism that I’m aware of having succeeded in accelerating things and the results were, uh, not as advertised.

In 2020, the only use I can see for revolutionary violence is to make capital unsure that it can win a big fight, so that dispute resolution mechanisms are kept running and boring old socdems can extract more temporary concessions (that capital will immediately start trying to roll back).

Beefeater1980
Sep 12, 2008

My God, it's full of Horatios!






Disnesquick posted:

This almost certainly falls under the aegis of this chapter and its successor chapter.

EDIT: I guess to try and summarise this (becaue I also realize that linking these chapters alone are probably a bit of a "hey screw you, read this dense language") Marx treats land value separately from Labor Value and devotes an entire section of the book to the conversion of surplus profit into "ground rent" which also encapsulates the general notion of differential land value.

Thanks, this was what I was looking for.

E: OK after reading those, Marx is saying that land value ultimately derives from productive value (either agricultural or industrial). I don’t think that is sufficient to explain the difference between a home in a pleasant place versus an unpleasant one, although it does explain why a house in NYC is more expensive than the same one in eg Bogotá Colombia. I think the theory is excluding factors that matter to people.

Beefeater1980 fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Nov 11, 2020

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Yeah but that's in the sense that you cannot actually do politics or affect things, the material conditions will cause people to have whatever political views they have and you will simply be pushed along by the tides of the world.

Which is true in a sense that the world is deterministic and whatnot but humans like to think they have free will and that we have choices in what we want to advocate for politically and that certain ideas may rise to prevalence based on their pre-existing traction at an opportune moment.

Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

Beefeater1980 posted:

Thanks, this was what I was looking for.

E: OK after reading those, Marx is saying that land value ultimately derives from productive value (either agricultural or industrial). I don’t think that is sufficient to explain the difference between a home in a pleasant place versus an unpleasant one, although it does explain why a house in NYC is more expensive than the same one in eg Bogotá Colombia. I think the theory is excluding factors that matter to people.

Don't forget, Central Park has a view because of the millions of man hours that go into maintaining it every day.

Beefeater1980
Sep 12, 2008

My God, it's full of Horatios!






OwlFancier posted:

Yeah but that's in the sense that you cannot actually do politics or affect things, the material conditions will cause people to have whatever political views they have and you will simply be pushed along by the tides of the world.

Which is true in a sense that the world is deterministic and whatnot but humans like to think they have free will and that we have choices in what we want to advocate for politically and that certain ideas may rise to prevalence based on their pre-existing traction at an opportune moment.

There’s a bit more scope for action than that; IMO the implication for people deciding what to do is that unless and until it’s clear that material conditions have collapsed then the best use of our time is to each do our bit as scary socialist bogeymen or reasonable compromisers depending on our circumstances, try and recognise that both groups have a role and minimise friction between them, and on a day to day basis try to make other people’s lives a bit easier. And to keep an eye on conditions and if it does look like they’re really collapsing, have a plan for making sure the outcome of a violent confrontation is a socialist government and not a fascist one.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Beefeater1980 posted:

I don’t know, the implication of the materialist analysis of history to me seems to be that it can’t really be accelerated. Once material conditions compel the collapse of the capitalist mode of production, it will be abandoned. If material conditions don’t compel it (for example if enough people can be given an acceptable enough life through accommodation with capital) then the change won’t happen. The system has to collapse under its own weight.

You could try to accelerate the collapse in material conditions but at that point you’re basically smashing stuff and inflicting pain in the vague hope it crashes the system. I don’t think there’s any evidence that it does - the system is resilient. “After Hitler, us!” is the only communist experiment in accelerationism that I’m aware of having succeeded in accelerating things and the results were, uh, not as advertised.

In 2020, the only use I can see for revolutionary violence is to make capital unsure that it can win a big fight, so that dispute resolution mechanisms are kept running and boring old socdems can extract more temporary concessions (that capital will immediately start trying to roll back).

I haven't read Vol. 3, but I think this is linked to something we brought up earlier - things can have use-value without having value, and, once you've got a full-fledged capitalist society going that's trading a specific money-commodity around, things can have prices without having value (or, as in your example, one thing's price can be higher than another's even if they contain the same amount of crystallized human labor). So, the two houses are of equal value, but for contingent social and physical reasons they are not of equal price. However, if one of them was much more labor-intensive to create than the other, you'd expect its price to be concomitantly higher, because price and exchange value flow from/gravitate towards value even if they don't perfectly mirror it at all times.

Active Quasar
Feb 22, 2011

Beefeater1980 posted:

Thanks, this was what I was looking for.

E: OK after reading those, Marx is saying that land value ultimately derives from productive value (either agricultural or industrial). I don’t think that is sufficient to explain the difference between a home in a pleasant place versus an unpleasant one, although it does explain why a house in NYC is more expensive than the same one in eg Bogotá Colombia. I think the theory is excluding factors that matter to people.

Marx was primarily concerned with agriculture and industry so you do have to read between the lines a bit. I'd agree that he's not directly treating your case but he makes two points:

1. Intrinsic value of land. Agricultural productivity (or e.g. a waterfall that can be used for industrial production) in his example but natural beauty in your example.
2. Invested capital. Tilled soil and buildings in his case but the labor invested in central park or the amenities nearby in yours.

To expand on that last point I'm pretty sure he explicitly treats proximity to a resource (I think it was for grain sale to a city which resulted in land prices being higher for less productive soil in one case) SOMEWHERE in part VI but I can't find it. I'll have to reread that chapter.

I think those two points can pretty well generalize to exactly the example you propose. The intrinsic value being rooted in "beauty" rather than specifically being captured in production of some commodity is tricky though and I want to give it some more thought after going through part VI again.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Beauty arguably has a use-value in a similar way that a bed does, or a chair, or anything else we use to derive comfort because humans clearly need that.

It also has an exchange value which is socially constructed and heavily dependent on social ideas about what beauty is at any moment in time and all the attendent high society bollocks about fashion.

As to how it is produced, well presumably it is produced both in the human brain directly (because a thing isn't beautiful until you look at it and interpret it as such, beauty is a thing in our heads, there is no material particle of beauty) but also in the social sphere because how we are socialised to perceive beauty and what to perceive as beautiful determines how we produce it via perception, something arguably is more beautiful if we are socially primed to regard it as high status. A tree is beautiful (can be used by people to produce beauty in their brains) but trees are all over the place, their beauty is produced at will by anybody who looks at them, thus the socially necessary labour time to produce their beauty is nil.

The socially necessary labour time to produce the beauty of an isolated or unique location is equal to the cost of getting people to that location and keeping them there long enough to produce the concept of beauty by experiencing it, so areas of uncommon natural beauty presumably have a higher value than areas of commonplace beauty even if they both have identical use-value.

And I'm sure you can wangle something together about how there is money to be made telling people they cannot be satisfied with the commonplace and must desire the extraordinary and whether that constitutes an attack on the ability to produce their own beauty for the purposes of marketing it to them as an exotic thing etc but theory makes my brain hurt so I'm going to stop there.

OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Nov 11, 2020

Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

Disnesquick posted:

1. Intrinsic value of land. Agricultural productivity (or e.g. a waterfall that can be used for industrial production) in his example but natural beauty in your example.
2. Invested capital. Tilled soil and buildings in his case but the labor invested in central park or the amenities nearby in yours.

So, in the specific case of Central Park, I think a certain amount of explanation is required.

Central Park includes:
A zoo.
Multiple fancy restaraunts.
A giant manmade pond
Distinctly manicured landmass larger than Monaco
costs almost $60 Million a year to maintain
Over 50 sculptures
over 9000 park benches
etc.

The value of the real estate near Central Park can very much be attributed to labor.

Edit: a perfect cheap date is to take someone to central park and rent a rowboat for about 30 bucks. Bring a picnic lunch with booze and cheese and fruit or whatever and eat out on the water. Warning, you will get laid (probably not in the rowboat)

Cpt_Obvious fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Nov 11, 2020

Beefeater1980
Sep 12, 2008

My God, it's full of Horatios!






Cpt_Obvious posted:

So, in the specific case of Central Park, I think a certain amount of explanation is required.

Central Park includes:
A zoo.
Multiple fancy restaraunts.
A giant manmade pond
Distinctly manicured landmass larger than Monaco
costs almost $60 Million a year to maintain
Over 50 sculptures
over 9000 park benches
etc.

The value of the real estate near Central Park can very much be attributed to labor.

Edit: a perfect cheap date is to take someone to central park and rent a rowboat for about 30 bucks. Bring a picnic lunch with booze and cheese and fruit or whatever and eat out on the water. Warning, you will get laid (probably not in the rowboat)

Central Park was just a hand wave; OF and Disnequick are right that what I was getting at was probably more natural beauty plus the absence of ugliness / hazard. Lake Geneva (the Swiss one) versus a fetid swamp would have been a better example.

Active Quasar
Feb 22, 2011

Cpt_Obvious posted:

So, in the specific case of Central Park, I think a certain amount of explanation is required.

Central Park includes:
A zoo.
Multiple fancy restaraunts.
A giant manmade pond
Distinctly manicured landmass larger than Monaco
costs almost $60 Million a year to maintain
Over 50 sculptures
over 9000 park benches
etc.

The value of the real estate near Central Park can very much be attributed to labor.

Edit: a perfect cheap date is to take someone to central park and rent a rowboat for about 30 bucks. Bring a picnic lunch with booze and cheese and fruit or whatever and eat out on the water. Warning, you will get laid (probably not in the rowboat)

I think the point that BE1980 raised also does need to be generalized to a more balanced mix of intrinsic value (beauty) and labor. In the Central Park example, it's extremely skewed to labor, I agree, but I think that was probably more a case of a badly-chosen example and his intent would be better represented by "a nice sea view" or something.

I'm not a big fan of NYC but I'll bear that in mind if we ever do end up going there.

Beefeater1980 posted:

Central Park was just a hand wave;

^^^ beaten

Active Quasar fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Nov 11, 2020

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Hot take while my brain is still fizzy:

The establishment of societal standards of beauty and particularly their centering in the hands of capitalist thought leaders combined with the steady erosion of the public space as a communal space and a space welcoming of human habitation is essentially Enclosure for the human soul, transferring the experience of beauty solely into the realm of high class workplaces, holidays, and residence, your ability to experience beauty is dependent on your ablity to create value for capital and attempts to decommodify this will be resisted.

witchy
Apr 23, 2019

one step forward one step back
Next up on my reading list is Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism. Once I get done with it I'll try and do a writeup.
On a related note I think It'd be nice to have a section of the OP with featured books/essays/articles. A lot of interesting works have been cited throughout the thread and it'd be great to have a curated collection of them readily accessible.
On another related note I can source material including some of the more esoteric stuff, you can contact me at (myaccountname)books(at)protonmail.com and I'll try and help you get ahold of (thread relevant) works.

Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

witchy posted:

Next up on my reading list is Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism. Once I get done with it I'll try and do a writeup.
On a related note I think It'd be nice to have a section of the OP with featured books/essays/articles. A lot of interesting works have been cited throughout the thread and it'd be great to have a curated collection of them readily accessible.

Today I have the day off so I'm gonna try and spruce up the OP, including adding some of the great posts that have been made thus far. A curated reading list is a great idea.

witchy posted:

On another related note I can source material including some of the more esoteric stuff, you can contact me at (myaccountname)books(at)protonmail.com and I'll try and help you get ahold of (thread relevant) works.

I will absolutely be in contact!

axeil
Feb 14, 2006
marxism is a lovely ideology based on 19th century standards of society and culture that are no longer relevant.

it's also completely unfalsifiable and requires its adherents to turn off their brain and constantly say it was failed and if we just try again it'll work out differently (it always works out the same).

the left needs to come up with something new since the world looks pretty drat different today than it did in 1880.

oh they also need to stop cheering mass murder because the guy who did it said the word "marx" once.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

The marxism understander has logged on.

Probably Magic
Oct 9, 2012

Looking cute, feeling cute.
I missed the part where poverty ceased to exist in the year 2020 as did all wealth disparity, thus proving Marx's theories completely irrelevant.

Active Quasar
Feb 22, 2011
The idea of a "falsifiable ideology" is such a silly mishmash of concepts that it's Not Even Wrong.

Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

Disnesquick posted:

The idea of a "falsifiable ideology" is such a silly mishmash of concepts that it's Not Even Wrong.

One of the best parts of Marxism is that it is, in fact, falsifiable. For example, the existence of an anarcho-capitalist state would disprove Marxism, because Marxism posits that the state creates the necessary oppression that capitalism needs.

Fun fact: there are no an-cap regions on Earth!

Pentecoastal Elites
Feb 27, 2007

Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto and immediately died, and Marxist thought has not developed at all since them because its adherents are too busy turning off their brain and cheering for mass murder.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Cpt_Obvious posted:

One of the best parts of Marxism is that it is, in fact, falsifiable. For example, the existence of an anarcho-capitalist state would disprove Marxism, because Marxism posits that the state creates the necessary oppression that capitalism needs.

Fun fact: there are no an-cap regions on Earth!

Or, hell, just a liberal state successfully resolving the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and proletariat such that class conflict ceases and there's no slide towards fascism.

Active Quasar
Feb 22, 2011

Cpt_Obvious posted:

One of the best parts of Marxism is that it is, in fact, falsifiable. For example, the existence of an anarcho-capitalist state would disprove Marxism, because Marxism posits that the state creates the necessary oppression that capitalism needs.

Fun fact: there are no an-cap regions on Earth!

I'm going to be overly pedantic at this point and say that this component of Marxist thought is the scientific bit and not the ideological component. Basically, the difference between the Manifesto and Capital.

Edit: don't the Austrians always point to Somalia as their Ancap paradise?

Active Quasar fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Nov 11, 2020

witchy
Apr 23, 2019

one step forward one step back

Ferrinus posted:

Or, hell, just a liberal state successfully resolving the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and proletariat such that class conflict ceases and there's no slide towards fascism.

Part of why that line is so prevalent was the new deal defusing the crisis caused by the great depression and the ensuing great society stuff further kicking the can down the road (it doesn't hurt that the US was buoyed by unprecedented prosperity post wwii where we essentially got to take over all of europe's colonial possessions and turn most of the euro countries themselves into client states). For a while there the contradictions were lessened and some people took it to heart that that meant the problems were solved forever but (surprise!) things started falling apart again because liberal governance can only reset that doomsday clock but never stop it.

The Oldest Man
Jul 28, 2003

Ferrinus posted:

Or, hell, just a liberal state successfully resolving the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and proletariat such that class conflict ceases and there's no slide towards fascism.

Or the rate of profit increasing, that would also falsify one of the core pillars of Marxist economics.

Ed: I know that guy is on probation, but can you seriously look at places like Vietnam and Cuba before their revolutions, after their revolutions, today, and compare them with similar colonial states that did not go Full Marxism and say they made the wrong choice? I wouldn't define myself as a Marxist-Leninist, but if you look at Vietnam and go "hm yes, this is a failed ideology that never works" I don't know what to tell you.

The Oldest Man fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Nov 11, 2020

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Disnesquick posted:

I'm going to be overly pedantic at this point and say that this component of Marxist thought is the scientific bit and not the ideological component. Basically, the difference between the Manifesto and Capital.

Edit: don't the Austrians always point to Somalia as their Ancap paradise?

I don't think there's actually much daylight between the Manifesto and Capital. Manifesto just lays out a prediction which Capital lays out the historical basis for. But it's not just a matter of, workers should revolt because it'd be better that way. It's a matter of, the center cannot hold, capitalism cannot sustain itself indefinitely, and the most likely thing to follow it is socialism. (Of course, nowadays, we can append "or total human extinction from climate collapse" to that claim)

Somfin
Oct 25, 2010

In my🦚 experience🛠️ the big things🌑 don't teach you anything🤷‍♀️.

Nap Ghost

Disnesquick posted:

Edit: don't the Austrians always point to Somalia as their Ancap paradise?

Weird that they didn't all loving move there and prove that anarcho-capitalism isn't a fascist lie


The Oldest Man posted:

Or the rate of profit increasing, that would also falsify one of the core pillars of Marxist economics.

Ed: I know that guy is on probation, but can you seriously look at places like Vietnam and Cuba before their revolutions, after their revolutions, today, and compare them with similar colonial states that did not go Full Marxism and say they made the wrong choice? I wouldn't define myself as a Marxist-Leninist, but if you look at Vietnam and go "hm yes, this is a failed ideology that never works" I don't know what to tell you.

According to my girlfriend (who grew up there), Vietnam is severely capitalist with an increasingly thin communist / socialist veil these days; old money slid back into power, corporations did what they do, and the country basically is the joke about selling Che Guevara t-shirts. They're still working on getting universal healthcare up and running. That all said, the people there are pretty gung-ho about communism as both a product and an identity, and it's a pretty obvious place to look and and see that communism and socialism do not in any way mean the end of the glorious consumerism that liberals hold dear.

Actually a quick post that helps folks separate consumerism from capitalism would be pretty handy, since a lot of folks get fed a line of bullshit about how socialism means the end of products and markets.

The Oldest Man
Jul 28, 2003

Somfin posted:

Weird that they didn't all loving move there and prove that anarcho-capitalism isn't a fascist lie


According to my girlfriend (who grew up there), Vietnam is severely capitalist with an increasingly thin communist / socialist veil these days; old money slid back into power, corporations did what they do, and the country basically is the joke about selling Che Guevara t-shirts. They're still working on getting universal healthcare up and running. That all said, the people there are pretty gung-ho about communism as both a product and an identity, and it's a pretty obvious place to look and and see that communism and socialism do not in any way mean the end of the glorious consumerism that liberals hold dear.

Actually a quick post that helps folks separate consumerism from capitalism would be pretty handy, since a lot of folks get fed a line of bullshit about how socialism means the end of products and markets.

One of the reasons I'm not a Marxist-Leninist is because vanguard revolutions seem to me to have an issue with the resulting states regressing to some form of capitalism over time rather than advancing to Full Communism (Now). The point I was making is that if you treat an ML vanguard revolution as a black box instrument, the resulting state of affairs is often way better for the mass of people and their everyday lives compared to beforehand.

SSJ_naruto_2003
Oct 12, 2012



The Oldest Man posted:

One of the reasons I'm not a Marxist-Leninist is because vanguard revolutions seem to me to have an issue with the resulting states regressing to some form of capitalism over time rather than advancing to Full Communism (Now). The point I was making is that if you treat an ML vanguard revolution as a black box instrument, the resulting state of affairs is often way better for the mass of people and their everyday lives compared to beforehand.

It seems like you just need to have the vanguard party leadership not die ever tbh.

The Oldest Man
Jul 28, 2003

SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:

It seems like you just need to have the vanguard party leadership not die ever tbh.

Immortal Uncle Ho actually sounds pretty good and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter

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Cpt_Obvious
Jun 18, 2007

Somfin posted:

Weird that they didn't all loving move there and prove that anarcho-capitalism isn't a fascist lie


According to my girlfriend (who grew up there), Vietnam is severely capitalist with an increasingly thin communist / socialist veil these days; old money slid back into power, corporations did what they do, and the country basically is the joke about selling Che Guevara t-shirts. They're still working on getting universal healthcare up and running. That all said, the people there are pretty gung-ho about communism as both a product and an identity, and it's a pretty obvious place to look and and see that communism and socialism do not in any way mean the end of the glorious consumerism that liberals hold dear.

Luna Oi did a great video about this actually.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMubOw5H-yo
TLDR, they got hosed by global capitalism, and strong-armed into accepting capitalist markets and the like.

She grew up in Vietnam, and is pretty great at explaining that viewpoint. If you want a real crack-ping, she does a great video about the Vietnamese version of the Vietnam War:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efvTJUFQn7A

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