[Marx] I put on my anti-coat and wizard hat

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(Thread IKs: dead gay comedy forums)

Centrist Committee: Aug 6, 2019

The Voice of Labor posted:

so in 10 years when the boomer die out, generation x comes to full political power and burns whatever is left of the world for 40 years. then millennials get their turn then socialism is o.k. in 'merica?

posting about generations in the marxism thread lol

# ? Jul 8, 2021 02:40

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# ? May 26, 2024 01:33

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

Maybe once all of congress is a Kirsten Sinema we'll finally have a revolution out of sheer annoyance

# ? Jul 8, 2021 03:02

indigi: Jul 20, 2004; ^{how can we not talk about family

when family's all that we got?}

I hope and pray this doesn�t happen but it would be very funny if she fell into the Grand Canyon multiple times like Homer

# ? Jul 8, 2021 03:15

wynott dunn: Aug 9, 2006; What is to be done?

Who or what can challenge, and stand a chance at beating, the corporate juggernauts dominating the world?

indigi posted:

I hope and pray this doesn�t happen but it would be very funny if she fell into the Grand Canyon multiple times like Homer

not me

# ? Jul 8, 2021 05:35

Hodgepodge: Jan 29, 2006; Can't post for 215 days!

there was a time when lots of americans were socialists

as a canadian it pains me to say good things about americas, but its true

# ? Jul 8, 2021 05:44

Top City Homo: Oct 15, 2014; Ramrod XTreme

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

Maybe once all of congress is a Kirsten Sinema we'll finally have a revolution out of sheer annoyance

all of congress is kirsten sinema

ie for show

# ? Jul 8, 2021 06:42

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

https://twitter.com/Irkutyanin1/status/1412764268647354371?s=20

# ? Jul 8, 2021 14:31

Red and Black: Sep 5, 2011

What is the deal with the relative and equivalent forms in chapter 1 of Capital?

My understanding is that if you're trading your coat for 20 units of linen then the coat is seen in the relative form, because it's being related to the linen and the linen is in the equivalent form because it's being made equivalent to the coat. And I guess if you're the person trading the linen for the coat the exact opposite applies. But why bother distinguishing between the relative and equivalent form? How does this add to the analysis?

# ? Jul 8, 2021 17:55

indigi: Jul 20, 2004; ^{how can we not talk about family

when family's all that we got?}

got this ad for anticommunist/antisocialist children�s books on Duolingo lol

# ? Jul 8, 2021 18:17

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

Red and Black posted:

What is the deal with the relative and equivalent forms in chapter 1 of Capital?

My understanding is that if you're trading your coat for 20 units of linen then the coat is seen in the relative form, because it's being related to the linen and the linen is in the equivalent form because it's being made equivalent to the coat. And I guess if you're the person trading the linen for the coat the exact opposite applies. But why bother distinguishing between the relative and equivalent form? How does this add to the analysis?

there's one footnote which clears up a lot of confusion in the first chapter: specifically, when marx writes an equal sign, he doesn't really mean "equals", he means "is worth" or "trades for"

so there's actually an important difference between 20 yards of linen = 1 wool coat and 1 wool coat = 20 yards of linen; in each statement, the second thing is used to measure the worth of the first thing. after a little while he'll replace the linen with gold and show you how currency came about

# ? Jul 8, 2021 18:25

Red and Black: Sep 5, 2011

Ferrinus posted:

there's one footnote which clears up a lot of confusion in the first chapter: specifically, when marx writes an equal sign, he doesn't really mean "equals", he means "is worth" or "trades for"

so there's actually an important difference between 20 yards of linen = 1 wool coat and 1 wool coat = 20 yards of linen; in each statement, the second thing is used to measure the worth of the first thing. after a little while he'll replace the linen with gold and show you how currency came about

So is this just Marx's way of describing the thought process of exchange prior to the emergence of money?

# ? Jul 8, 2021 18:56

MeatwadIsGod: Sep 30, 2004; Foretold by Gyromancy

Red and Black posted:

So is this just Marx's way of describing the thought process of exchange prior to the emergence of money?

Right, it's just describing the logic of trade at the level of commodity producers. Given Marx's disdain for bourgeois economists of his day using Robinson Crusoe to describe what "natural" tribal economies were actually like, it's probably fair to assume he's not actually arguing this is what trade was like before metal currency was introduced. But the equivalent form is important for when he brings money into the argument because of its function as a universal equivalent that can be exchanged for all commodities.

# ? Jul 8, 2021 19:04

indigi: Jul 20, 2004; ^{how can we not talk about family

when family's all that we got?}

I�m not going to lie. that sounds like the most boring poo poo ever

# ? Jul 8, 2021 19:09

comedyblissoption: Mar 15, 2006

indigi posted:

got this ad for anticommunist/antisocialist children�s books on Duolingo lol

somewhere theres a preschool where kids use tokens to rent non-communal toys and playground equipment

# ? Jul 8, 2021 19:13

Southpaugh: May 26, 2007; Smokey Bacon

indigi posted:

I�m not going to lie. that sounds like the most boring poo poo ever

lol

# ? Jul 8, 2021 20:25

mycomancy: Oct 16, 2016

indigi posted:

I’m not going to lie. that sounds like the most boring poo poo ever

# ? Jul 8, 2021 20:31

Cpt_Obvious: Jun 18, 2007

Where's the lie tho.

# ? Jul 8, 2021 20:33

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

MeatwadIsGod posted:

Right, it's just describing the logic of trade at the level of commodity producers. Given Marx's disdain for bourgeois economists of his day using Robinson Crusoe to describe what "natural" tribal economies were actually like, it's probably fair to assume he's not actually arguing this is what trade was like before metal currency was introduced. But the equivalent form is important for when he brings money into the argument because of its function as a universal equivalent that can be exchanged for all commodities.

yeah, he's not actually gesturing to a hypothetical past but in fact to the present day, pointing out that if you CAN trade 20 yards of linen for 1 wool coat, and you can also trade 2lbs coffee for either of those things, then A) the thing you're trading FOR plays a different role to you, the trader, than the thing you're trading AWAY and B) there must be some underlying quality that you're actually using to evaluate what trades for what, because coffee and wool certainly don't have commensurable utility

# ? Jul 8, 2021 20:36

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:

Where's the lie tho.

the lie is in that this stuff actually owns

# ? Jul 8, 2021 20:37

indigi: Jul 20, 2004; ^{how can we not talk about family

when family's all that we got?}

many things that own are also super boring

# ? Jul 8, 2021 20:48

Top City Homo: Oct 15, 2014; Ramrod XTreme

indigi posted:

I�m not going to lie. that sounds like the most boring poo poo ever

if you dont want to hear marx talk about coats or whatever just read this instead

https://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/pe/index.htm

its 70% right and 30% meh

# ? Jul 8, 2021 22:15

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcpPLxRb0xE

# ? Jul 9, 2021 10:48

Raine: Apr 30, 2013; ACCELERATIONIST SUPERDOOMER

i've run out of excuses and it's time to actually read more theory instead of my preferred "osmosis" method

gonna finish up this list gradenko_2000 posted last year

quote:

"Contradictions of Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics" by Lenny Flank is a great introduction to Marxist economics. It's a little critical of the Soviet Union/Marxism-Leninism at the very end, but the first three-quarters of the book is excellent as far as the sort of thing that you might get from Das Kapital in a much more digestible form.

"A People's History of the Russian Revolution" by Neil Faulkner to get a good history of that. You can follow it up with "Rise and Fall of the Leninist State: A Marxist History of the Soviet Union" by Lenny Flank if you want to keep going.

"Liberalism: A Counter-History" by Domenico Losurdo if you want an explicit breakdown of why liberalism is a morally bankrupt ideology.

"Why Minsky Matters" by L Randall Wray for a post-Keynesian treatise on modern economics by the same people behind Modern Monetary Theory, basing their work from one of the few people who predicted 2008.

"Alternatives to Capitalism: Proposals for a Democratic Economy" by Robin Hahnel for a long discussion on an alternative economic system.

"The Origins of Capitalism" by Ellen Meiksins Wood to get a good picture on how Capitalism actually developed historically (and how Capitalism is not just "people trading stuff")

"Unspeakable" and "America: The Farewell Tour" by Chris Hedges to see how the USA has been on the road to implosion for a long time now. This may give you sadbrains - it did for me.

"Maoism and the Chinese Revolution: A Critical Introduction" by Elliott Liu if you want a backgrounder on the PRC.

"Late Victorian Holocausts" by Mike Davis if you want to know about how colonialism and imperialism has been loving over the Global South since forever.

"The City: London and the Global Power of Finance" by Tony Norfield and "Fictitious Capital" by Cedric Durand if you want to know about how financialization has transformed the economy (for the worse), which is relevant to how we got to our current market-crashing moment.

"My First Days in the White House" by Huey Long if you want Bernie Would Have Won fanfiction

probably gonna skip the bernie one but any other bangers i should be reading?

# ? Jul 9, 2021 11:10

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

consider this a strong recommendation for Ernest Mandel's "Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx", which goes through Marx's works in chronological order, goes deep into how they relate to each other, how Marx's views evolved and changed in the lead-up to Capital, and even spends some time throwing stones at other economists/theorists that misuse Marx or attempt to disprove him, only to fall short because they're only considering a narrow body of his work or didn't interpret it correctly, deliberately or otherwise

# ? Jul 9, 2021 12:19

Raine: Apr 30, 2013; ACCELERATIONIST SUPERDOOMER

gradenko_2000 posted:

consider this a strong recommendation for Ernest Mandel's "Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx", which goes through Marx's works in chronological order, goes deep into how they relate to each other, how Marx's views evolved and changed in the lead-up to Capital, and even spends some time throwing stones at other economists/theorists that misuse Marx or attempt to disprove him, only to fall short because they're only considering a narrow body of his work or didn't interpret it correctly, deliberately or otherwise

why would i take a recommendation from some random weirdo like you

i'll consider adding it to the list

# ? Jul 9, 2021 12:38

exmarx: Feb 18, 2012; The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

does anyone know the name of that wallace shawn essay about seeing the world through a dialectical materialist lens for a week? the guy who played the t. rex in toy story i mean.

# ? Jul 9, 2021 12:55

HiHo ChiRho: Oct 23, 2010

comedyblissoption posted:

somewhere theres a preschool where kids use tokens to rent non-communal toys and playground equipment

# ? Jul 9, 2021 13:46

Diqnol: May 10, 2010

# ? Jul 9, 2021 13:57

e-dt: Sep 16, 2019

exmarx posted:

does anyone know the name of that wallace shawn essay about seeing the world through a dialectical materialist lens for a week? the guy who played the t. rex in toy story i mean.

an excerpt from his play, The Fever. I just read it in full and it's very good.

Wallace Shawn posted:

The life I live is irredeemably corrupt. It has no justification. I keep thinking that there's this justification that I've written down somewhere, on some little piece of paper, but that it's sitting in the drawer of some desk in some room in some place I used to live. But in fact I'll never find that little piece of paper, because there isn't one, it doesn't exist.

There's no piece of paper that justifies what the beggar has and what I have. Standing naked beside the beggar�there's no difference between her and me except a difference in luck. I don't actually deserve to have a thousand times more than the beggar has. I don't deserve to have two crusts of bread more.

And then, this too: My friends and I were never well meaning and kind. The sadists were not compassionate scholars, trying to do their best for humanity. The burning of fields, the burning of children, were not misguided attempts to do good. Cowards who sit in lecture halls or the halls of state denouncing the crimes of revolutionaries are not as admirable as the farmers and nuns who ran so swiftly into the wind, who ran silently into death. The ones I killed were not the worst people in all those places; in fact, they were the best.

e-dt has issued a correction as of 15:18 on Jul 9, 2021

# ? Jul 9, 2021 14:15

Falstaff: Apr 27, 2008; I have a kind of alacrity in sinking.

Raine posted:

i've run out of excuses and it's time to actually read more theory instead of my preferred "osmosis" method

gonna finish up this list gradenko_2000 posted last year

probably gonna skip the bernie one but any other bangers i should be reading?

If you haven't read it yet, I cannot recommend Blackshirts and Reds enough. It's a real page-turner, easily one of the best nonfiction books I've ever read; while it doesn't delve too deeply into any of them, it nonetheless covers theory, history, and media literacy, and makes it all very interesting.

eta: A warning, it will likely make you angry, but in a very good way.

Falstaff has issued a correction as of 14:45 on Jul 9, 2021

# ? Jul 9, 2021 14:43

Samog: Dec 13, 2006; At least I'm not an 07.

late victorian holocausts and liberalism: a counter-history are both very good

# ? Jul 9, 2021 14:49

my bony fealty: Oct 1, 2008

Falstaff posted:

If you haven't read it yet, I cannot recommend Blackshirts and Reds enough. It's a real page-turner, easily one of the best nonfiction books I've ever read; while it doesn't delve too deeply into any of them, it nonetheless covers theory, history, and media literacy, and makes it all very interesting.

eta: A warning, it will likely make you angry, but in a very good way.

I'm about done with this and I think it's the best book I've read to throw at a liberal and say look! look what your dumbass ideology really is!

it's very accessible and written for a wide audience and for that alone it's a very valuable work

# ? Jul 9, 2021 15:06

dead gay comedy forums: Oct 21, 2011

one I don�t see recommended often enough is Karl Polanyi�s The Great Transformation, basically the first great work of economic anthropology - how humans had to change their thinking so that a modern capitalist state and the free market economy could work

# ? Jul 9, 2021 16:53

Falstaff: Apr 27, 2008; I have a kind of alacrity in sinking.

my bony fealty posted:

I'm about done with this and I think it's the best book I've read to throw at a liberal and say look! look what your dumbass ideology really is!

it's very accessible and written for a wide audience and for that alone it's a very valuable work

It really is an excellent book. I made the mistake of going from that to reading Bad Samaritans, which isn't... bad, exactly, but it really suffered from the comparison.

Like, here's an excerpt from B&R's chapter on media literacy that immediately brought to mind the way a number of poster superstars in a particular forum tend to take in media.

Learning to Ask Why posted:

When we think without Marx's perspective, that is, without considering class interests and class power, we seldom ask why certain things happen. Many things are reported in the news but few are explained. Little is said about how the social order is organized and whose interests prevail. Devoid of a framework that explains why things happen, we are left to see the world as do mainstream media pundits: as a flow of events, a scatter of particular developments and personalities unrelated to a larger set of social relations - propelled by happenstance, circumstance, confused intentions, and individual ambition, never by powerful class interests - and yet producing effects that serve such interests with impressive regularity.

Thus we fail to associate social problems with the socio-economic forces that create them and we learn to truncate our own critical thinking. Imagine if we attempted something different; for example, if we tried to explain that wealth and poverty exist together not in accidental juxtaposition, but because wealth causes poverty, an inevitable outcome of economic exploitation both at home and abroad. How could such an analysis gain any exposure in the capitalist media or in mainstream political life?

Suppose we started with a particular story about how child labor in Indonesia is contracted by multinational corporations at near-starvation wage levels. This information would not be carried in rightwing publications, but in 1996 it did appear - after decades of effort by some activists - in the centrist mainstream press. What if we then crossed a line and said these employer-employee relations were backed by the full might of the Indonesian military government. Fewer media would carry this story but it still might get mentioned in an inside page of the New York Times or Washington Post.

Then suppose we crossed another line and said that these repressive arrangements would not prevail were it not for generous military aid from the United States, and that for almost thirty years the homicidal Indonesian military has been financed, armed, advised, and trained by the U.S. national security state. Such a story would be even more unlikely to appear in the liberal press but it is still issue-specific and safely without an overall class analysis, so it might well make its way into left-liberal opinion publications like the Nation and the Progressive.

Now suppose we pointed out that the conditions found in Indonesia - the heartless economic exploitation, brutal military repression, and lavish U.S. support - exist in scores of other countries. Suppose we then crossed that most serious line of all and instead of just deploring this fact we also asked why successive U.S. administrations involve themselves in such unsavory pursuits throughout the world. And what if then we tried to explain that the whole phenomenon is consistent with the U.S. dedication to making the world safe for the free market and the giant multinational corporations, and that the intended goals are (a) to maximize opportunities to accumulate wealth by depressing the wage levels of workers throughout the world and preventing them from organizing on behalf of their own interests, and (b) to protect the overall global system of free-market capital accumulation.

Then what if, from all this, we concluded that U.S. foreign policy is neither timid, as the conservatives say, nor foolish, as the liberals say, but is remarkably successful in rolling back just about all governments and social movements that attempt to serve popular needs rather than private greed.

Such an analysis, hurriedly sketched here, would take some effort to lay out and would amount to a Marxist critique - a correct critique - of capitalist imperialism. Though Marxists are not the only ones that might arrive at it, it almost certainly would not be published anywhere except in a Marxist publication. We crossed too many lines. Because we tried to explain the particular situation (child labor) in terms of a larger set of social relations (corporate class power), our presentation would be rejected out of hand as "ideological." The perceptual taboos imposed by the dominant powers teach people to avoid thinking critically about such powers. In contrast, Marxism gets us into the habit of asking why, of seeing the linkage between political events and class power.

A common method of devaluing Marxism is to misrepresent what it actually says and then attack the misrepresentation. This happens easily enough since most of the anti-Marxist critics and their audiences have only a passing familiarity with Marxist literature and rely instead on their own caricatured notions. Thus, the Roman Catholic Pastoral Letter on Marxist Communism rejects the claim that "structural [read, class] revolution can entirely cure the disease that is man himself" nor can it provide "the solution to all human suffering." But who makes such a claim? there is no denying that revolution does not entirely cure all human suffering. But why is that assertion used as a refutation of Marxism? Most Marxists are neither chiliastic nor utopian. They dream not of a perfect society but of a better, more just life. They make no claim to eliminating all suffering, and recognize that even in the best of societies there are the inevitable assaults of misfortune, morality, and other vulnerabilities of life. And certainly in any society there are some people who, for whatever reason, are given to wrongful deeds and self-serving corruptions. The highly imperfect nature of human beings should make us all the more determined not to see power and wealth accumulating in the hands of an unaccountable few, which is the central dedication of capitalism.

Capitalism and its various institutions affect the most personal dimensions of everyday life in ways not readily evident. A Marxist approach helps us to see connections to which we were previously blind, to relate effects to causes, and to replace the arbitrary and the mysterious with the regular and the necessary. A Marxist perspective helps us to see the injustice as rooted in systemic causes that go beyond individual choice, and to view crucial developments not as neutral happenings but as the intended consequences of class power and interest. Marxism also shows how even unintended consequences can be utilized by those with superior resources to serve in their interests.

Is Marx still relevant today? Only if you want to know why the media distort the news in a mostly mainstream direction; why more and more people at home and abroad face economic adversity while money continues to accumulate in the hands of relatively few; why there is so much private wealth and public poverty in this country and elsewhere; why U.S. forces find it necessary to intervene in so many regions of the world; why a rich and productive economy offers chronic recessions, underemployment, and neglect of social needs; and why so many political officeholders are unwilling or unable to serve the public interests.

Some Marxist theorists have so ascended into the numbing altitudes of abstract cogitation that they seldom touch political realities here on earth. They spend their time talking to each other in self-referential code, a scholastic ritual that Doug Dowd described as "How many Marxists can dance on the head of a surplus value." Fortunately there are others who not only tell us about Marxist theory but demonstrate its utility by applying it to political actualities. They know how to draw connections between immediate experience and the larger structural forces that shape that experience. They cross the forbidden line and talk about class power.

This is why, for all the misrepresentation and suppression, Marxist scholarship survives. While not having all the answers, it does have a superior explanatory power, telling us something about reality that bourgeois scholarship refuses to do. Marxism offers the kind of subversive truths that cause fear and trembling among the high and mighty, those who live atop a mountain of lies.

I've considered looking for a way to post that to the media illiteracy thread in D&D a couple times, where it absolutely belongs, but I suspect it wouldn't be worth it so I never bother.

# ? Jul 9, 2021 16:53

In Training: Jun 28, 2008

i never read parenti before but a friend lent me democracy for the few recently and it's drat good...I should read more of his stuff

# ? Jul 9, 2021 17:07

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

I've read three of Parenti's books and all of them were absolute bangers. I feel pretty confident in saying all of them are good.

# ? Jul 9, 2021 17:16

Junkozeyne: Feb 13, 2012

You can read inventing reality instead of manufacturing consent and have a much better time

# ? Jul 9, 2021 17:26

Cpt_Obvious: Jun 18, 2007

Falstaff posted:

I've considered looking for a way to post that to the media illiteracy thread in D&D a couple times, where it absolutely belongs, but I suspect it wouldn't be worth it so I never bother.

Do it. The worst that can happen is you create excellent content for the succ zone.

This is a great quote, and I'm putting this book on my reading list.

# ? Jul 9, 2021 17:54

Centrist Committee: Aug 6, 2019

Falstaff posted:

It really is an excellent book. I made the mistake of going from that to reading Bad Samaritans, which isn't... bad, exactly, but it really suffered from the comparison.

Like, here's an excerpt from B&R's chapter on media literacy that immediately brought to mind the way a number of poster superstars in a particular forum tend to take in media.

I've considered looking for a way to post that to the media illiteracy thread in D&D a couple times, where it absolutely belongs, but I suspect it wouldn't be worth it so I never bother.

Interforum drama, user is on probation for 1 day. Next is a ban + 30.

# ? Jul 9, 2021 18:19

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# ? May 26, 2024 01:33

Falstaff: Apr 27, 2008; I have a kind of alacrity in sinking.

Junkozeyne posted:

You can read inventing reality instead of manufacturing consent and have a much better time

I've already read Manufacturing Consent back in my undergrad days, but in recent years I've been trying to track down a dead tree copy of Inventing Reality to expand on my understanding. Unfortunately, it's a tough book to find at a reasonable price. (I have a pdf copy but I have a tough time reading pdfs, and while I could manage with an epub I can't find one of those either.) Alas!

# ? Jul 9, 2021 18:20

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