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Bob le Moche posted:I don't think there's that much morality involved in Marxist theory, I think it just is perceived that way by people whose economic interests are not those of the working class because Marxism can only appeal to them on a moral dimension. There's a huge amount of morality in Marxist theory. Which is fine, there should be. It is based on morality, on a conception of 'species being', on an idea of what human social behavior 'should' be like, etc. What do you see in Marxism that isn't moral? The analysis of the necessarily conditions that occur when capitalism moves forward?
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Nov 3, 2014 15:26
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Bob le Moche posted:Maybe I've just read the wrong books by Marx or maybe you guys are talking about the wider range of Marxist authors but (aside from the communist manifesto obviously) I find his analysis to be pretty much a descriptive theory of history/economics without much in the way of what things "ought" to be. What do you think the 'species being' is, then?
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Nov 3, 2014 15:57
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Bob le Moche posted:I always read it as basically meaning little more than "human nature" (and to be honest it's one of the things in Marxist theory I find a bit problematic/unnecessary and stay away from, but maybe that's because I didn't understand it correctly?) It is absolutely central to Marx's theory, and it isn't 'unnecessary' at all. Marx makes the argument that productive work, and the connection with labor, is a necessary and vital part of the 'species being' of humanity, that without that our lives are suffering and alienated. That is the energy that infuses his criticism of capitalism; it is not primarily the unfairness of the distribution problem, but the divorce between the laborer and his labor, the alienation of people from themselves, society, and work through the atomization of labor that he concentrates on. All of Marx's economic analysis of the process of capitalism, the increased atomization and taking wages down to the minimum necessary for the reproduction of class, all of that only has weight and force because of the moral ideas behind it. otherwise, what's the problem with the capitalist system? Why is unequal distribution a problem? quote:Or, rather, [a human being] is a conscious being – i.e., his own life is an object for him, only because he is a species-being. Only because of that is his activity free activity. Estranged labour reverses the relationship so that man, just because he is a conscious being, makes his life activity, his essential being, a mere means for his existence. Marx's critique is that capitalism reverses the way things should be. OwlBot 2000 posted:A lot of people draw a line between young philosopher Marx and older social scientist Marx. Who are these people? How do they deal with the obvious philosophy in his later works, like Critique of the Gotha Programme? Obdicut fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 16:09
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V. Illych L. posted: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. What do you mean by 'simply'? Obviously Marx didn't think that these problems were just signs or signifiers; alienation is seen as counter to what he sees as the essence of human existence. quote:The problem of capitalism is that it's bound to fail, structurally. There is no one problem of capitalism, there are many, and Marx spends a lot of time talking about the negative effects of capitalism on human beings. The problem is not just that it will fail. quote:. 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. They neither tried to do this or succeeded in doing that, and why are you dividing up between their academic and non-academic work? quote:The species-being is, quite simply, the material-dialectical formulation of human nature, i.e. the sum of social relations at a given time. No, while Marx does often sum up human nature as socially constructed, much of what he says about species-being clearly shows he thinks there is an innate human nature. His identification of species-being does not rely on social conditions: quote:In the individual expression of my life I would have directly created your expression of your life, and therefore in my individual activity I would have directly confirmed and realised my true nature, my human nature, my communal nature quote:Complaints of proletarian alienation aren't really moral complaints, they're reasons that the proletariat isn't going to tolerate the system forever. They are both. They are very much, extremely moral complaints, they are absolute condemnations of the state of alienation as robbing human beings of meaning and purpose in their life. And to the extent they are reasons the proletariat isn't going to tolerate the system, they only have power in them because of this moral force, because the system is antagonistic to human nature and frustrates species-being. Otherwise, what is the force behind alienation? Why are you alienated? quote: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. A Marxist analysis would also say that those slaves were being denied fulfillment of their species-being, which would explain why they adhered so strongly to religion, etc. I really don't get how you can read Marx and not be able to see that he has a very strong idea of what human life should be like. He is not just trying to build a stable system. Edit: Another bit on species-being, alienation, and its relationship to capitalism that clearly shows moral force: quote:Since man alienates this mediating activity itself, he is active here only as a man who has lost himself and is dehumanised; the relation itself between things, man's operation with them, becomes the operation of an entity outside man and above man. Owing to this alien mediator – instead of man himself being the mediator for man – man regards his will, his activity and his relation to other men as a power independent of him and them. His slavery, therefore, reaches its peak. It is clear that this mediator now becomes a real God, for the mediator is the real power over what it mediates to me. Its cult becomes an end in itself. Objects separated from this mediator have lost their value. Hence the objects only have value insofar as they represent the mediator, whereas originally it seemed that the mediator had value only insofar as it represented them. This reversal of the original relationship is inevitable. This mediator is therefore the lost, estranged essence of private property, private property which has become alienated, external to itself, just as it is the alienated species-activity of man, the externalised mediation between man's production and man's production. All the qualities which arise in the course of this activity are, therefore, transferred to this mediator. Hence man becomes the poorer as man, i.e., separated from this mediator, the richer this mediator becomes. When you're talking about man having 'lost himself' and being 'dehumanized', morality couldn't be more clear. In addition, this bit shows Marx's argument is a parallel between the idea of alienation of species-being and alienation of material, labor, and private property. Obdicut fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 16:27
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Bob le Moche posted:
I think that the 'unsustainable' argument is the weakest because it is the least historically accurate (Capitalism can survive labor uprisings just fine) and, if it is unsustainable, that doesn't lead to an argument that some other system is actually sustainable: it might be the trivial observation that all systems change/fail, and so gives no weight or need to actually advancing the end of capitalism, since there's no reason to believe what comes after would be better or would be stable.
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Nov 3, 2014 16:36
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Bob le Moche posted:Again there is a lot of very valuable descriptive insight about history and economics in Marxist theory after you take out any part where capitalism "ought" to be replaced. Sure, and I'm not saying there isn't. But without the moral force, why is that descriptive insight valuable, especially after the march of history showing that a lot of the predictions are inaccurate? I mean, from your perspective, Marxist theory provides a guidebook to capitalistic exploitation; unsustainability isn't something capitalists every worry about anyway. quote:Honestly I couldn't care less about the moral dimensions of his work and I see them as cluttering up an otherwise clear and elegant analysis. Keep in mind also that I'm saying this as someone who is very much dedicated to opposing capital in my praxis. I don't believe you need to understand Marxist theory as communicating a moral imperative to find value in it. You need to understand Marxist theory as communicating moral ideas to make sense of it, though. Otherwise, why do you care about alienation, about the lack of remotely egalitarian distribution, or any of the rest of it matter? Laphroaig posted:Finally, the idea that a system is sustainable and can persist forever, gives it no moral weight. A static system has no inherently superior moral qualities to a dynamic one, even with a historically realistic assumption of the costs of upheaval in human societies (wars, famine, disease, etc). This is a good point, and in fact, a stable system could be seen as inherently negative. A society could be stable but continually oppress a subclass that lacks enough power or cohesion to actually cause meaningful disruption. The tendency towards change at least offers the hope that the wheel will turn. Only if you think the stable system is also morally ideal is it a good thing. Bob le Moche posted:Slavery did not end because slave owners had a moral epiphany and realized it was the right thing to do. The institution of slavery ended (and only where it did in fact end) for material economic reasons - it was no longer sustainable. This is pretty close to a useless truism: slavery ended where it wasn't possible for slavery to be sustained. Yes. And?
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Nov 3, 2014 16:48
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Bob le Moche posted:Primarily because I have to sell my labor in order to survive and alienation + precarity sucks pretty bad so I'd rather do something about it. When you say it 'sucks pretty bad', from what perspective? quote:Of course I want to believe that for moral reasons I'd be opposed to capitalism even if I benefitted from it overall because I, like everyone else, convince myself that I'm a good person. Marx's argument is that nobody 'benefits' from capitalism, though; capitalists are just as alienated, and unfulfilled.
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Nov 3, 2014 17:15
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Bob le Moche posted:For the sake of argument: my own? Okay. What does 'sucking' involve? How are you not making a moral judgement when you say it 'sucks'?
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Nov 3, 2014 17:19
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Bob le Moche posted:Right OK yeah sure in any discussion where you posit the existence of a freely acting agent with you implicitly attribute its choices to a moral stance. It's very much because I'd rather not get bogged down in such discussions of philosophical concepts (not that I think there's no place for that) that I'd rather focus as much as possible on the descriptive materialist elements of economic theory, sociology, and political science. Those descriptive elements are useless without an evaluatory framework, though, as you showed in talking about it. And furthermore, Marx's 'descriptive' aspect extends to the morla, or at the least the philosophical concept of what human nature is and the drives that underpin human economic activity.
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Nov 3, 2014 17:29
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Bob le Moche posted:Is it not OK for me to ascribe value (a moral judgement, yes) to a reading of a text which discards claims about ethics? And to ascribe more value to this than I do to any ethical claims? This is what I meant with this post http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3677666&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=4#post437175509 I don't understand what you mean at all. We're not talking about a text that discards claims about ethics. Furthermore, when you say that " In that sense, openly pointing out the reality of how a social relation of power functions is a radical act that always benefits the oppressed." How on earth do you define 'oppression' in the absence of ethical claims?
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Nov 3, 2014 17:43
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Bob le Moche posted:Sorry I was trying to say: a reading which focuses on the parts of the text which are not about ethics. And of course I am myself making ethical claims and moral judgements. One of which is that I'm saying: I'd rather use intellectual tools other than those of ethical discourse when attempt to understand and describe society/politics/economics because I see this as more productive (yes subjective statement of value). But I don't see you actually doing this, because you're talking about the usefulness of this discourse in revealing 'oppression', which is an ethical description of society/politics/economics. If all you're saying is that Marx's economic theories are separable, sure. But why on earth would you, in order to talk about ethical claims like 'oppression', separate out the ethical claims of Marx? That's what I don't get: i'm totally on board with the idea that Marx can be used (not is, but can be used) as a purely economic theory. But you're not doing that, you immediately apply it to an ethical position, which makes it confusing as to why you're ignoring the ethical underpinnings of the original theory. I'm also confused why, if you think it's more productive to avoid ethics in talking about society/politics/economics, you keep talking about ethics whenever you talk about them.
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Nov 3, 2014 18:06
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Bob le Moche posted:Has anyone read Alain Badiou's ethics? I haven't yet but it's on my reading list: it sounds like it might address the frustrations I increasingly have been feeling towards ethical discourse in general as it relates to these problems. Evidently I'm having a lot of trouble expressing exactly what I mean here. Answer 'yes' or 'no' depending on whether you think it's ethical. I'm not sure what the difficulty of that question is. quote:
I'm not sure what you mean by 'our culture', which doesn't have a single view of racism. Many people are admitted and open racists. Etc. quote:Which is the more liberatory stance? "My landlord is amoral and a racist", or "My landlord reproduces racist aggression towards me despite having the best of intentions because of the role they have within the institution of private property". Neither. Either. Again a confusing question. The answer lies in what you do after coming to that stance, not in the stance itself. quote:Does the working class need to believe stronger that freedom is good and exploitation is bad to become revolutionary? Or do they need a better understanding of the reality of the capitalist mode of production and how it operates in practice? Here I think is your huge mistake: you take 'freedom' and 'exploitation' as though they're objective ethical values. They're not. Many of the working class believe they are not exploited. They believe exploitation is bad: they don't think they are exploited. Many others do understand they are exploited, that their surplus labour is parasitically siphoned off. If your goal is 'inspire the working class with revolutionary fervor' then you need to be able to engage with the actual views of the working class, which are non-monolithic. You've kind of wandered far afield and I really don't know what any of this has to do with your idea of looking at Marx solely as an economic theory with no ethical underpinning. Can you connect the dots?
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Nov 3, 2014 19:00
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OwlBot 2000 posted:No it's exactly the point. The working class will revolt if it feels it has no other way to survive - of course it will feel that it is "morally right" to revolt and save their families, just as the ruling class will feel they are morally right to retain their power and property. Morality itself springs in part from social relaitons and material conditions. It's really not exactly the point. It may be, to you, an important point, but Marx clearly, clearly thinks that human beings are suffering under alienation, that it is problematic in and of itself not just because it is destabilizing. Why are you ignoring what he writes about species-being, fulfillment of human nature, etc--and that capitalists are also alienated? Furthermore, Marx does not predict revolution when class reproduction becomes impossible--to 'save' their families--but instead from awareness of their conditions of alienation and exploitation. You never answered before when I asked you who these writers are who separate Marx the early philosopher from Marx the later social scientist. I'm very curious about this because I don't see any curtailing, at all, of Marx as a philosopher later in his career. Das Kapital is the only work I can think of that fits that, but there are plenty of other works in that time period that are highly philosophical.
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Nov 3, 2014 19:11
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:You continue to conflate a judgment ("Workers of the world, unite!") with the analysis that leads to that judgment. Really unclear who you mean by 'you'. If it's me: "Workers of the world, unite!" is a political decision about the best way to combat the problems that are revealed through Marx's analysis. One of the primary problems, really the primary problem, is the alienation of all members of society, the prevention of people from living fulfilled lives as human beings by the need to reproduce themselves and their class inside the capitalist system. That is an absolutely essential part of Marxist theory. Whether you're talking about Marx himself or the later-day Marxists like Adorno, this holds true.
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Nov 3, 2014 19:27
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:A cynical person could read and agree with every single word in Capital and side with the bourgeoisie. Deciding the things revealed by Marx's analysis are problems worthy of solving - that is a political judgment that relies on, but is still separable from, his analysis. If you ignore large parts of Marx, you can separate the economic analysis and use that as a guidebook to being an exploitative capitalist. I already said that. That involves, however, ignoring all the things Marx says about alienation: if you believe Marx, then even the bourgeois are alienated and unfulfilled under capitalism. Karl Marx wrote a lot more things than Das Kapital, by the way.
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Nov 3, 2014 19:42
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Bob le Moche posted:What difference does it make if the bourgeoisie is in fact not alienated and is quite fulfilled under capitalism? It would mean a key part of Marxist theory is fundamentally wrong. To elaborate a little, it opens the door to all sorts of problems: Is life a zero sum game, then, where some will always be unfulfilled in any system? Why are they fulfilled--is hedonistic pleasure, or social status the actual 'fulfilling' aspect? Etc.
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Nov 3, 2014 20:17
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OwlBot 2000 posted:Also, please don't confuse "Marx's opinions on things" with "Marxism". The former is trivia, the latter is a framework for studying history and society through the lens of material conditions, technological progress and class struggle. Who are you saying is confusing this? So far nobody has presented Marx's opinions on things. Again, can you please explain who the people are who separate the 'early' philosophical Marx from the later, social scientist Marx, and how do they deal with the fact that Marx was super-philosophical in his late period, too? Bob le Moche posted:Here is an excellent resource for anyone interested in learning more about the kind of alienation the bourgeoisie is facing in our society: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23FirstWorldProblems How are those things related to alienation, in the Marxist sense? Kurnugia posted:Yeah, cuz people behave like loving cogwheels based on their income level or something. Marxism is so loving dumb I can't fathom how anyone could take it as serious attempt to explain historical causalities. Marx doesn't say people behave like cogwheels based on their income level. How much Marx have you read?
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Nov 3, 2014 20:44
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icantfindaname posted:great, now just go tell the capitalists that and we're off to Marx-land I did and they set the dogs on me and then garlanded my chains with flowers.
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Nov 3, 2014 20:51
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Kurnugia posted:Marx was a insufferably boring writer, so none. Then you should probably shut the gently caress up about Marxism. Reading second-hand analysis isn't sufficient. Your critique is a standard one but there's easy answers to it under Marxist theory. Also, Marx is a pretty drat rocking writer, for a sociologist. Try Adorno if you really want to be bored. Or Durkheim.
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Nov 3, 2014 20:55
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icantfindaname posted:Okay if you want to known why Marx was wrong here it is: "Alienation" is not a thing that actually exists and can be measured or quantified in any way. Marx gives many ways to look at alienation, and it's totally fine in the social sciences to talk about things that are hard to measure, like 'fulfillment'. quote:What you can measure is money, but according to Marx alienation is more important than lack of money, so a society in which material resources are 'fairly' distributed, however that is decided, does not actually satisfy Marx's complaints about alienation. You conflate money and material resources here, but whatever. This is true. Marx isn't content with redistribution as a solution to alienation. quote:Basically he wanted bloodly revolution for its own sake with no plan for society that would be demonstrably better. Really dumb oversimplificiation. Owlbot are you just going to dodge my question forever? Pretty lovely of you. Obdicut fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 21:11
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icantfindaname posted:Ultimately I just think Marx's vision is extremely unconvincing. He wants a revolution to fix 'alienation' a concept which isn't adequately defined, and doesn't specify an actual way to get rid of it. When this is pointed out leftists get defensive and insist it's the only solution. There's so much wrong here it's hard to start. First, there's plenty of non-Marxist leftists. Second, Marx's prescriptive theory is completely separable, with no problem, from his critical analysis of capitalism. You say alienation isn't adequately defined; that's your opinion, but alienation is a really solid, good concept that most people can grab onto and understand conceptually. I'm not sure why its ineffableness is such a challenge to you; again, in social sciences you'll always be talking about concepts like this. And he does specify ways to get rid of alienation.
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Nov 3, 2014 21:25
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AstheWorldWorlds posted:This is one of the stupidest opinions I have ever had the misfortune of reading, so thanks for that. It's kind of like he ran Goffman through a woodchipper. Kurnugia posted:So far as I've understood, Marx's concept of 'alienation' is a lack of class-consciousness, and the feeling being... I dunno, alienated? Nope. Wrong. You really are going to look like a moron if you try to talk about Marx without reading him. This is common sense.
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Nov 3, 2014 21:27
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Kurnugia posted:Being called ignorant by a marxist is like being called a sheeple by a conspiracy theorist. I'm not a Marxist, I'm just someone who has a clue about what Marx wrote, unlike you. Typo posted:This sounds exactly like Austrians who argue by linking to mises.org in response to any question How so?
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Nov 3, 2014 21:30
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Typo posted:You are asking your question because you just don't understand our great ideology go read our magical bible at Marxist.org/Mises.org I'm sure you'll come around once you go through the 500th chapter of it. Okay. If I'm going to criticize Von Mises, I'm going to read him first. I'm not saying that if you read Marx you're going to be convinced. I'm saying to criticize it, you need to actually understand it, and part of that is reading it. You appear to have not really read anything I've written. icantfindaname posted:Let's see, from wikipedia: Okay. I'm sorry you hosed up what you said, but that's not my problem. And no, the only solution to alienation is not everyone-is-equal, and I'm not sure why you think it is. quote:As long as any differences exist among men this alienation will exist. No, that's not what Marx says, or implied by his theory of alienation. Have you actually read Marx?
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Nov 3, 2014 21:38
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Is the idea that to criticize something you should actually know something about it a strange revelation to you? Do you get that I'm not a Marxist, and I disagree with most of his predictions and his solutions?
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Nov 3, 2014 21:42
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icantfindaname posted:Explain exactly what alienation is if not what I quoted. It's a complex topic that changes over time, but basically it is seperation from our 'species-being', from doing those things that fulfill us. It's a concept that can completely survive being taken out of Marxism; one of my main problems with Marx is that I think that there's plenty of unalienated people these days, or that people are capable of getting to a state of unalienation even under a capitalist society. So to Marx, alienation was separation from your work, not being able to choose the environment of your production, the aims of it, and the receivers of it; this was the root of alienation, but other aspects of alienation came out of this, like alienation from your fellow man, but that comes from the initial idea of alienation of the laborer from their product. So you don't have to have some perfectly equal society to solve alienation. I really don't get how the idea that if you want to talk about a writer you should read them is somehow shocking. Pointing to a 'stack of books' is pretty drat important when you're talking about those books. If you haven't read them, you're not going to be actually able to critique them. This, again, is common sense.
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Nov 3, 2014 21:48
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Kurnugia posted:You really don't see the hilarity in responding to criticism of his ideas with 'you just don't understand'? I see no problem in responding to a criticism of something that is not actually an idea Marx had with "You just don't understand". What aren't you getting about this? It's a really simple concept. If I criticize Von Mises for his idea that gold has intrinsic value, I'm loving up, because Mises didn't believe that.
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Nov 3, 2014 21:51
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Typo posted:But see here's the thing. I'm sorry, but that summary of what I said is not going to substitute for an actual understanding of Marx's ideas about alienation. Nobody reading that should trust I summed it accurately or well. There is no actual substitute for reading the author themselves, and attempting to criticize a work you've never read is, and always will be, pants-on-head stupid. It is totally distinguishable from a 'see mises.org' post. I am not saying "Read Marx and you'll see he's right". I'm just saying "Read Marx, because you're loving up when you talk about what Marx said". I'd say the same thing if someone was talking out their rear end about Durkheim, Von Mises, or Mills. I have no real desire to argue Marx with people who don't have any understanding about Marx, because that's pretty pointless. All I have to say to those people is "Read Marx, so you can actually talk about him." If they don't want to talk about Marx, that's fine. If they do, they really ought to read him. It does make a lovely discussion when people start yammering about someone they haven't read, because they gently caress it up. This is, again, completely common sense.
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Nov 3, 2014 22:23
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Arri posted:You guys are getting the poo poo trolled out of you and it's hilarious. I think the people insisting they should be able to discuss a topic they don't actually know anything about are probably not trolling, sadly.
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Nov 3, 2014 23:31
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Typo posted:Ricardo is even more outdated than Marx. Predictions aren't a very good way of judging 19th century economists. Still, Marx actually does very well with his central prediction, which is that the divide between labor and capital will tend to increase because of the interaction of capital and surplus value. Do you get, yet, why saying to someone who is saying something wrong about what Marx said to go read Marx is different from telling someone who is disagreeing with libertarian philosophy to go read Von Mises? You kind of dropped out of that conversation.
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Nov 4, 2014 01:55
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Typo posted:But the passage I'm quoting is specifically about the predictions of 19th century economists. Nobody put a time frame on the death of capitalism through class revolution, so it's not even a failed prediction. Seriously, the predictive failures of Marx are huge, but "capitalism will fail" is obviously not disproven. He didn't just predict that, though, he predicted something much more complex, which I think we can take a lot more issue with. My point was that judging people on the success of their predictions isn't that great. Was Marx wrong about what he predicted, in many cases? Yes. Answering 'why' to that, however, is a really interesting exercise because Marx clearly and honestly laid out what he thought would happen, he set himself up for falsifiability. His predictions were a logical outflow from his works, and by seeing where they fail and succeed and why and how we can see the strengths and the weaknesses of his theory and gain insight into economics and political theory as a whole. quote:Are you just trying to find an opportunity to be condescending? No, I find it really irritating that you just stopped responding. You're dodging answering, so I assume you're going to keep doing so, so gently caress it, never mind. You were wrong, and continue to be wrong, that telling someone who hasn't read Marx who is saying incorrect poo poo about what Marx said to go read Marx is like telling someone who disagrees with libertarianism to go read Von Mises. You're wrong in the most fundamental way, which is that I wasn't telling anyone to go read him because he's right.
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Nov 4, 2014 02:08
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Typo posted:
Okay, cool. Glad you're on the same page there, or same page-ish anyway. quote:Dude stop being a massive sperg and gently caress off, I know you want some sort D&D winpoint or something. I dropped the conversation because debating how many pages of Marx you need to read before qualified to debate marxism in the D&D is stupid and nobody is going to start reading it because of you being bellicose in an internet discussion. I don't give a poo poo if you read it or not, but telling someone who is saying things that are factually wrong about Marx to go read Marx is a completely reasonable response, especially when they admit they haven't actually read him. It's nothing like libertarians telling people to go read Von Mises, especially since I wasn't telling anyone to go read him because he was correct. We were never debating how many pages of Marx you need to read. Calm the hell down. Obdicut fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Nov 4, 2014 |
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Nov 4, 2014 02:30
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Typo posted:Look, I apologize for being rude, but what I'm saying is that even if you make a low effort explanation of why the other person is factually, objective wrong, helps to move the discussion forward. Yeah, when you say something very different than what you first said, it does make sense. quote:By all means, we can get hung up on this point forever, or we can go back and have actual discussion w.r.t ITT's topic. We can do both. There's nothing about talking about this that prevents us from talking about whether Marxism is dead or not. For example, more on alienation: One of the reasons I think Marxism is problematic is that there are people who are exploited but don't source their worth in that labor. I know a couple of guys in Arkansas who pick up roadkill all day long, but they are happy as hell with the job because they work together and they're best friends and they crack each other up. They really couldn't give much of a poo poo what they do as long as they do it together. Marx totally got it that there are mechanisms we use to counter alienation, like religion, getting really drunk, or loving a lot, but I feel he missed out on, or didn't believe, that there were people who actually rise above alienation, see and understand the world, and find a way to be fulfilled anyway. I have a huge problem with the 'false consciousness' idea of people like Adorno for this reason, it seems like just snobbishness to say that enjoying one kind of music is real and enjoying another is false.
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Nov 4, 2014 02:55
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HorseLord posted:And then Stalin happened, and a backwater illiterate shithole industrialized in ten years, with nary an invisible hand of the free market in sight. The invisible hand of the free market was all the gently caress over the industrialization of Russia. How on earth have you managed to convince yourself that it wasn't? Where do you think they got all the, y'know, industrial poo poo from? The revolution in Russia was a failure of Marxist theory; according to Marx, England or Germany should have revolted, not Russia. Russia was completely out of order. Stalinism is not communism, and dictators find it very easy to get poo poo done, but their poo poo is often terrible. Stalin was also promoting Lysenko and dooming soviet agriculture at the same time he industrialized. Basically shut the gently caress up about Stalin, Stalin has nothing to do with Marx.
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Nov 4, 2014 04:50
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HorseLord posted:
A whole lot of communists hate Stalin for, among other things, not being a communist, or being a really, really lovely communist, take your pick. Do you not know this?
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Nov 4, 2014 05:08
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HorseLord posted:Those people are known as Trots, and they inherit Trotsky's pissiness over losing his bid for power, in the same way Bender yells that whatever he misses out on must suck anyway, and promises that his version of X will have blackjack, and hookers. Congrats on becoming the new shittiest person in the thread. Wow. This is turning into a slugmatch between capitalist and communist to see who can make the most embarrassingly moronic statements. There are plenty of non-trotskyite communists who repudiate Stalin. Do you not know this? icantfindaname posted:And a whole lot of communists loved Stalin and kept portraits of him on their nightstand. What's your point, that he wasn't a real communist? How? He collectivized poo poo, that's what it means to be a communist There is almost no argument more boring than "What is real communism" but Stalin's dictatorial power and his extra-judicial and extra-legal maneuvers very clearly make his reign outside 'communism', which under no definition is "one dude is really in charge and if he doesn't like you you're dead". There's a lot more involved in communism, no matter how you define it, than just 'collectivizing poo poo'. Obdicut fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Nov 4, 2014 |
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Nov 4, 2014 05:20
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HorseLord posted:Stalin himself wouldn't call his reign communism either. Your point? Shut up about Stalin, is my point. He has almost no relevance when talking about Marxism.
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Nov 4, 2014 05:39
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HorseLord posted:Is that a fact? Beyond you don't like him? Okay, it has minor relevance in that it's used a lot by people to demonstrate failures in Marx's predictions, and by people to point out failures in centralized economies and failures in science when political dogma is applied rigourously. It's not a very interesting area to talk about Marx, and almost solely a negative one. By the way, can you explain how you thought that capitalism wasn't involved in industrializing Russia? Did you literally think that the Russians tooled their way up from their past state to industrialization in 10 years on their own? icantfindaname posted:The dude came to power in the aftermath of a violent revolution and presided over the first and largest collectivized industrialization in history, both things very much prescribed by Marx. The latter isn't, no. Or rather, moving from a mostly agrarian society aggressively into an industrialized one is not at all prescribed by Marx. You get that part, right?
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Nov 4, 2014 05:48
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Bob le Moche posted:Why are you asking me to do your work for you are you a capitalist? You're fallaciously claiming that the theories of neoclassical economists have been implemented. They haven't. What we have is the ginormous hodgepodge of weirdness and bullshit that comes from our political system and the regulatory process.
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Nov 4, 2014 18:10
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 07:47 |
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Typo posted:
During that same time period, China has super-hosed its environment. Those gains weren't made without costs. And as been pointed out, the Western nations profited hugely, more than China did, from China's industrialization. It is a really difficult calculation to figure out who benefited 'more', but in strict economic terms, first-world/third-world interactions almost always profits the first-world more, for reasons very, very similar to why in capital/labor relations, the interaction almost always profits the capitalist more. To put it into the simple analogy, if a chemical company employs 100 people at a cost of $100/hr, and they all make $110/hr worth of product for the company, the company owner makes $1,000 an hour. The wealth disparity between them increases with every hour that any one of those laborers works. If the next year the owner pays the people $150 an hour, but the worth of the product is now $160 per worker/hour, the owner is still making $1000 an hour. Collectively, the workers make 'more', but unless that amount of money allows them to buy capital (which it almost certainly doesn't) the real, observable effect is that the wealth disparity between the classes grows. This same thing is observable between first-world and third-world nations. You see the improvement in poverty rates, in literacy, in other standards of living, but in terms of economic power between the countries, the first-world makes more. One reason that China has been able to do a bitter better than the average in this regard is because of their zesty, nonchalant attitude towards stealing any and all intellectual property ever and not giving a poo poo. Another reason is that they're even more creative with their banking than we are. But right now they're on the cusp of a huge housing bubble that may really, really choke them down, and they've been really foolish with a lot of their long-term investments; they've failed to actually establish a good higher educational system.
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Nov 4, 2014 19:00
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