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What, no, Marx's central critique is that capitalism is inherently an unstable system - alienation etc are simply properties by which the inherent contradictions of the capitalism as a system of production are made clear. The problem of capitalism is that it's bound to fail, structurally. Any utopian/moral implications are purely secondary. I mean, it's pretty clear where Marx's own sympathies lie, but both he and Engels tried very hard to avoid relying on moral arguments in their more academic work. Thence "scientific socialism" - it's not meant in the modern sense of "scientific", it's meant as an opposition to primarily moralistic "utopian" socialism. The species-being is, quite simply, the material-dialectical formulation of human nature, i.e. the sum of social relations at a given time. It, like so many other terms introduced by Marx, is a tool used to illustrate the inherent instability of capitalism. Complaints of proletarian alienation aren't really moral complaints, they're reasons that the proletariat isn't going to tolerate the system forever. A Marxist analysis of, say, the old American system of chattel slavery would probably point towards mistreatment of slaves as a reason for why slaves would end up being rebellious, which makes slaves poor workers, which makes chattel slavery an unsustainable productive system. The moral aspects of this would be left unstated, because they're not really interesting except insofar as that they motivate certain individuals from exploiter classes to join forces with the slaves.
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Nov 3, 2014 16:17
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a definition is not an assumption, no if "A" is defined as a grammatical word in one context and as a logical symbol in another, you're not "assuming" that "A" is one of those things, you're saying "for the purposes of this conversation, A is used to refer to..." and the only reason to question that would be if you're a complete loving idiot
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Dec 4, 2014 17:26
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what are you talking about the labour theory of value is a tool for economic critique and analysis you nitwit
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Dec 6, 2014 01:56
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The institutions of terror were still a Thing. For a society of rats to emerge, you need social structures in place that make ratting people out such a viable proposition. Such structures indicate a very unhealthy society at a much more fundamental level than simply "there were bad people at the top doing bad things", IMO. If this is correct, it sounds a lot like how the Nazi party operated - kick the lower rungs up into a frenzy, pick the worst idea of the lot, rinse, repeat.
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Feb 9, 2015 11:49
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corn in the bible posted:I think we need to be honest with ourselves: the reason marxism has not worked in the past is simply that non-workers continue to exist within the new "Communist" states -- a true marxism revolution would involve the sudden and mandatory transition to subsistence farming as that is the only way to avoid a need for administrators (also known, of course, as class traitors to any real Marxist) and guarantee food for all those who are willing to work for it. All those who refuse this model are, however unknowingly, tools of capitalism. Pol Pot lives!
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Feb 11, 2015 12:48
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JeffersonClay posted:In Marxism still alive news: is this... anime marxism???
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Feb 13, 2015 23:08
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asdf32 posted:The point to my use of the word relevant in that way is that there are literally people, in this thread, who think Marx is still the place to go to understand contemporary economics or politics. They want to use his writings as a guide for actual policy. america is not the world
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Feb 15, 2015 20:11
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Obdicut posted:Because Phlogiston Theory is fundamentally wrong, but Darwinism is fundamentally right. I think, perhaps, it would be better to say "in line with/informing current research" than "right" or "wrong" to be honest, or we'll just see him pivot back on this point by saying "Well, Marx was wrong so he's clearly irrelevant"
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Feb 16, 2015 10:58
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Also, Marx's take on the Labour Theory of Value is entirely unproblematic in mainstream economics, given free-market conditions. Most modern economists don't really use it for a lot, but that has to do with what sort of questions they ask rather than the validity of the theory
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Feb 16, 2015 16:53
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JeffersonClay posted:It is wholly incompatible with mainstream economics-- it's a rejection of marginalism. no it isn't Under efficient, free markets, the price of any commodity will be at equilibrium at the aggregate cost of labour put into procuring said commodity. Obviously the real world isn't efficient, free markets, but that's not really relevant to a lot of what Marx is doing with his theory of value. Marginal utility is essentially an inefficiency, something distorting the desirability of a commodity. The LTV and marginalism are different ways of looking at the same problem, but they're not essentially incompatible. It's entirely possible to accept a labour theory of value while talking about marginal utility as an empirical influence on prices (Marx does something of the sort when he talks about use-values and so on, though that's more direct utility), and I'm sure marginalism is a more useful definition in contemporary research, but this doesn't mean that either theory inherently rejects the other as such, though many proponents of both will reject the other. It's important to realise that the LTV implicitly encompasses supply problems in that the raw materials for any given commodity must be located and extracted, etc., and demand in the concept of use-value, like marginalism implicitly encompasses labour time as a component of supply. It's looking at the same system through different lenses, trying to do different things with it - Marx builds a theoretical case for exploitation as well as for the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, most marginalists look at the specific mechanisms of price-setting in empirical situations. e. reading my post, I'm not super lucid right now. I'm going to bed, and if this is completely incomprehensible give me a howl
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Feb 16, 2015 23:54
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asdf32 posted:Is Marxism dead? Evidently not.
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Feb 17, 2015 19:05
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