Why is Marxism only embraced by young, middle class intellectuals? Why doesn't the working class act in their own self-interest?
pic related
>>1109070
Also I'm aware of the irony that Russell was a socialist. The quote's appropriate though.
the working class doesn't act in their own self-interest because most working class people haven't heard of anarchism
The only thing the working class cares about is their paycheck
Young, middle-class "intellectuals" are contrarian by nature (see: 4chan)
>>1109067
whats in the interest of marxists and whats in the interest of the working class may sometimes diverge.
Because Marxism has always led to labor unions being banned, and because the theory is more academic than populist.
getting worked to death building canals isn't in the working class's interest
>>1109090
Why do Marxists ban labour unions? I thought Marxism was a very pro-union movement.
>>1109096
because labor unions will stand up to the bureaucracy's demands of the "free" workers, so they must be disbanded and preferably gulaged
Many working class parties have Marxist beliefs
>>1109096
I think the idea is that the state is one big labor union.
>>1109106
Nothing can go wrong there.
>>1109067
For the most part capable, intelligent people make it to the middle class. The western countries are pretty meritocratic for adults, ad the classes are maintened by child-rearing.
because the middle class is too busy working to participate in retarded political bullshit and muh ideology circlejerks
You'd have a hard time finding a 'Marxist' who wasn't under the age of 24 and still a student.
Funny how left wings ideas only thrive around higher, younger class, eh ?
It's like grown ups or those who have faced the true harshness of having a low paycheck don't support them, amirite ?
>>1109114
this basically
most people are too busy with work and too disillusioned with politics to give anything complex the time of day. though marxism would like nothing more than to lift the all-consuming nature of work from the backs of the working class, they don't have the patience nor the care to have the patience to put valuable escapism time after work towards learning philosophy of what their rational self-interests are.
>>1109122
They used to. There are many socialist labor parties in other countries. McCarthy era attitudes killed socialist labor parties in America.
>>1109128
>There are many socialist labor parties in other countries.
How many of them enjoy mainstream support though?
Because Marxists are mistaken as to what actually is the self-interest of a worker.
Here in Norway an average worker makes probably 50000+ dollars a year, and he makes a lot more if he works over time.
The question is, is it really in the self-interest of a worker to destroy the capitalist system that creates all this wealth that can be redistributed by the State?
I don't think it is.
>>1109067
Because the US working class is in China
>>1109096
Because Marxism is more about power to the intellectuals whose line of expertise doesn't make them wealthy, than it is about power to the workers. Once intellectuals establish themselves as the ruling class, then unions become enemies of Marxism. If you want to get ahead in a Marxist state, you have to be an intellectual, otherwise you might accidentally say something heretical at the wrong time and it will cause your downfall.
>>1109067
>Why doesn't the working class act in their own self-interest?
Because they don't want to starve.
Self-interest is a spook, by the way, at least according to how both liberals and communists use it.
>>1109147
So your saying it's not the working class who is getting their surplus value extracted, its the intellectuals?
>>1109123
It's not even that all the time.
In America, both the political right and left have effectively evangelized such a massively anti-intellectual load of horseshit, that philosophy and learning are the last things that would ever constitute escapism.
But they could. A book is enough.
>>1109137
/thread
>>1109179
The working class gets their value extracted, the intellectual receives the revenue.
>>1109137
Thread.
>>1109178
So I said "that's not your self interest, that's my wallet!"
>>1109137
Not for long
>>1109189
"Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just self-interested to see me?"
>>1109067
Because Marxism is actually not in the working class' self-interest.
It serves the interests of the intelligentsia.
>>1109192
As does any teleological movement since Zoroaster. The intellectuals were just called 'priests' back then and the utopian society was the Kingdom of God
>>1109205
The "intellectuals" of the Church, so to speak, are the monks.
>>1109205
Right. Marxism is basically a cult of academia.
>>1109210
An apocalyptic cult. Its core ideology is a worldview divided between good (the have nots) and evil (the haves), and a final battle between good and evil, resulting in a final victory for good, which will continue on living in a paradise for the workers (the worker's revolution and the classless society).
All of these elements have been part of human thought since Zoroaster first conceptualized them. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are virtually build around them.
>>1109222
Which Zoroastrian text are you referencing, if you don't mind my asking?
>>1109067
Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals.
>>1109067
>Why is Marxism only embraced by young, middle class intellectuals?
It isn't. Young bourgeois, nomenklatura, intelligentsia, "professional-managerial," "new petits-bourgeois," and petits-bourgeous intellectuals tend to embrace all-absorbing metaphysics (cf: Anti-Dühring), and at the same time over-report their own importance, and at the same time are over-reported in scholarly and popular presses.
You've failed to account for the most basic sourcing biases in coming to your conclusion on this point.
>Why doesn't the working class act in their own self-interest?
We do. We have a dual interest as the sellers of alienated labour-power to maximise our wage, and as the alienated producers capable of producing without ownership to abolish the wage system. Don't be rude and call generations of workers stupid for attempting to maximise their wage.
You honestly need to read more union level labour history of the tankie parties.
>>1109486
Most working class people I know don't foremost want to abolish exploitation, they foremost want to get in on it.
>>1109486
>Don't be rude and call generations of workers stupid for attempting to maximise their wage.
But maximising their wage isn't in their self-interest, seizing the means of production is.
>>1109547
>self-interest
Have you read Notes from Underground?
>>1109553
I have not, no. Could you explain what it is?
>young, middle class intellectuals
Dude, WHERE? In Europe? Singapore? Chile? Zambia? The least you could do is make it clear what you're talking about.
>>1109556
It's a short story by Dostoevsky about a recluse who chooses to be a loser as an expression of not being beholden to popular theories of self-interest. The first ten chapters are philosophical discourse
>>1109067
>talks about muh exploitation
>gets his maid pregnant and throws her out on the street
I can't take his work serious because he was a horrible person. Also it has a lot of flaws, like the personal/private property thing? Who decides what is personal and what is private property? If it's something that is used for production then what about my sexual organs? Are you advocating for rape?
>young | middle class | intellectuals
>Marxists
Pick one anon.
As a former soviet citizen who got this retarded shit shoved down his throat half his life, I really despise you Marxists. It's incredible.
Hail Capitalism.
I think most Americans associate Marxism with the state and its functions. In which it only takes a trip to the DMV or being forced into jury duty to change their mind about giving such devices an expansion of power. If you work in the government this is exceptionally apparent. With public unions, things get very decadent.
Most Americans don't want more bureaucracy in their lives.
>>1109137
>USA is the only country on Earth
>>1109618
The west
>>1109067
>implying the middle class is not part of the working class
the working class includes everything from NASA engineers to Vietnamese farmers working in their rice paddies.
I think what you meant to ask was: "why lower income people in the western world are not overwhelmingly leftist/Marxist?". There are many reasons for this, but the big ones are these:
1) low income workers in the west still "enjoy" a bit from the exploitation of third world people. they might not be rich, but they can still buy cheap smartphones, have internet connection, clean water, electricity, and a warm house. all of these wouldnt be possible without slaves mining rare metals, coal, or working in sweatshops in third world countries.
2) poor education and vulnerability to capitalist propaganda.
3) western leftist political parties care for minorities more than poor whites. this makes poor whites feel alienated and occasionally they vote for nationalist parties.
>>1110424
More like: working class people hate Marxist shit because it's shit.
>>1109067
1. Because to know more about communism than "USSR be evil and shit" you need to read books which many working class people do not.
2. Many of them do.
>>1109547
Yeah man it's totally in my rational self interest to kill my boss and collectively commandeer my workplace.
Nah. I'd rather just go to school, learn marketable skills, and ignore most of the pseudo-intellectual marxist propaganda that we're force fed in humanities classes.
The truth is that marxism has always been by and for the bourgeois intelligentsia, so much so that marx had to redefine bourgeois because the original definition fit marx and his peers perfectly. Even still, engels fit marx's definition to a T.
>>1110462
>learn marketable skills
You haven't solved anything. You're still just a better paid prole.
>>1109067
Because they realise that they are much better off under capitalism, even if some academics think that them selling their labour is "exploitation".
>>1110469
>They're better off under capitalism.
>>1110465
>being a prole is inherently bad
Typical bourgeois faggot dreaming about power.
>>1110462
>The truth is that marxism has always been by and for the bourgeois intelligentsia, so much so that marx had to redefine bourgeois because the original definition fit marx and his peers perfectly.
This cannot be stressed enough.
>>1110475
Yes, because by virtue of being a prole you're getting less than you're worth.
>Power
It's not about power, it's about being comfy.
>>1110483
>he believes in the Marxian LTV
Into the trash
>>1110488
>LTV
LTV doesn't matter as much as anti-communists think it does.
If you make a thing and sell it naturally you're going to make more money if a portion of the profits don't go to someone who made nothing.
>>1110474
>facebook memes
Indeed they are. Should I remind you that the number one cause of death in America is obesity?
>>1109668
>former soviet citizen
Proofs, mein tovarishch.
>>1109132
All of them outside the US.
>>1110759
Yes because starvation and bread lines are obviously preferable.
>>1110779
None of those parties are actually socialist though, because socialism (state ownership of the means of production, central planning) was a massive failure.
>>1109067
Because the working class values their cultural identification over the artificiality of class identification that only vapid intellectuals can contort themselves to see as truth. The folk will always ultimately unite as a unit against all that try to separate it, and when in spite of the Machiavellian tendrils trying to burrow into its cracks and fractures to tear it apart it at length regains its consciousness of itself and of the forces that are arrayed against it, those that acted underhandedly for its destruction will face a day of wrath like no other without mercy or relent.
>>1110474
>capitalism doesn't work for me but for others therefore it is flawed
i fixed it for you
>>1110787
>Starvation
More like eating something normal because McHeartattacks aren't sold like they're going out of fashion.
>>1110939
You forgot the part where 90% of the population starves.
>>1110957
You forgot the part where these places have an actual history and not some rhetorical narrative that can be reduced to a few points.
>>1110957
Do they?
Because I'm quite positive massive famines didn't happen after Stalin died and from what I've heard in the latter half of the USSR no one went hungry. Even if you watch 80's videos of USSR supermarkets there's still lots of food there even if they don't look like bright garish western goods.
>>1110952
>nationalism is absolutely meaningless
Cultural identification always has and always will trump economic identification. Your false reductionism of construing material economics as being behind all separate and higher aesthetics and idealisms that in reality transcend its base materialism is your downfall.
>>1109067
>Why doesn't the working class act in their own self-interest?
They do.
The problem is that Marxists don't realize the interests of one region's working class do not automatically coincide with those of another. So why should a worker put the interests of "international labor" over his own?
Since Marxists are upper class intellectuals first and foremost they see the working class as a homogeneous blob of simpletons who must be guided for their own good, and they honestly believe the lie that a working class man from the first world has more in common with his third world equivalent than he does with the bourgeois classes of his own country.
Which should be obvious nonsense because it expects us to believe that there's no difference between a Chinese steelworker and an Islamic fundamentalist bricklayer in the Islamic State, yet ivory tower Marxist "intellectuals" still insist this is the case to the detriment of us all.
>>1110975
> Cultural identification always has and always will trump economic identification.
Just look at any revolution where people from the same culture kill each other because of reasons. People can see themselves as oppressed class, while hating people from the same culture. So it isn't always that straightforward as you implying.
>>1110971
>North Korea
Don't even pretend to be communist.
>Venezuela
1. Under Chavez poverty and hunger actually decreased.
2. It's not a communist single-party dictatorship, if people hate the socialist party so much they can just not vote for them.
>>1110975
It does in the third world in in earlier European history where and when people were very uneducated.
Nowadays however it's basically been proven that with economic advancement nationalism goes into the bin where it belongs.
>>1110987
The fact that people from the same culture kill each other does not magically mean they will feel more in common with people from another culture simply because they are both broke.
>>1111001
What about if they are both rich? I remember that aristocracy was more closer to aristocracy from other countries than to peasants.
>>1111007
Only on a superficial level. Rich people being rich has never stopped rich people from hating and killing other rich people.
>>1110998
All you are saying is that with affluence people get brainwashed by materialism and forget their values. Don't pretend to be an enemy of the culture of greed that Communism is only tenable within. Also, I love how you denigrate the proletarians you claim to act in the name of and their value systems for their incongruity with the bourgeois values Communism necessarily derives from.
>>1111021
You cannot brainwashed by materialism because materialism unlike nationalism isn't a simple idea. It's just recognizing the facts of reality.
>Also, I love how you denigrate the proletarians you claim to act in the name of and their value systems for their incongruity with the bourgeois values Communism necessarily derives from.
I'm not talking about the proletariat at large. I'm talking about the uneducated portions of the proletariat (on the global scale this means almost all of them) that are liable to be seduced by nationalist rhetoric. The crux of my argument is that the proletariat in the first world care less about nationalism than ever.
Not to mention nothing I said is even an insult.
>>1111033
>nationalism
>a simple idea
>>1111033
>first world
>proletariat
HA!
>>1111033
> because materialism unlike nationalism isn't a simple idea
How do you know which idea is simple one and which is complex? Both ideas are simple in their cores but got more complicated if you study them deeply i.e. laws of physics or history of the nation, etc.
>>1111033
>The crux of my argument is that the proletariat in the first world care less about nationalism than ever.
Tell that to the majority of working-class white Americans that vote Republican every single election. I'll give you a hint: they're not doing it for economic reasons. The less bourgeois-ified the proletariat is the more they conform to their natural, instinctual values. I thought you Marxists were all about how the bourgeois deluded and led astray the proletariat with their false values.
>>1111042
I suppose the hypocrisy of what I said is unless you consider things from a materialist perspective things like nationalism seem just as real as the food you eat.
But I'm not singling out nationalism as "simple" as opposed to complicated I'm calling a simple idea because from my perspective it is made up - that is it is nothing more than an idea.
>>1111061
>cultural, ethnic, and historical differences are made up
>>1111049
On the contrary Democrats are more popular among the working class than with the middle class.
You also ought to notice that a key point of communism is the more advanced capitalism becomes the closer it is to transitioning to socialism.
>>1111068
Yes they are.
They only matter because people ideologically decide that they matter.
>>1110740
It's actually Heart Disease.
>>1110967
No one went hungry? Hahaha let me guess you are a privileged American! Ask any ex-Soviet alive during the stagnation that occurred! They'll tell you how "eating" went.
>>1111079
>the fact that your grandfather murdered my grandfather doesn't matter
>the fact that your people beat your women and mine don't doesn't matter
>the fact you speak an entirely different language from me doesn't matter
>these points of contention are all in my head
>The only thing that matters is that I work in a shipyard building ships and you work in a coalmine mining coal and that means we are the same and should automatically get along with each other
Marxism.
Marxists should be dragged out into the street and shot.
>>1111079
And ideology is what sets man apart as higher than beast. It is towards higher ideals that human endeavor should be ultimately directed. It is only through the conception of something as higher than material reality that anything higher than material reality can come about. You strive, whether you know it or not, to mire humanity forever in a world directed to only its falsely reduced material concerns rather than transcending human wealth and suffering, breaking the eggs the omelette needs, and bringing the superhuman into existence. Humanity is a rope bridge between animal and overman, you seek not to cross the bridge but to tarry forever in the maintenance of the interests of him who is only halfway across.
>>1111102
I have, the general analysis is that wasn't great but the 90s were way worse.
>>1111079
You are a fucking retard.
What's made up is Marx's social classifications. Which would classify my boss (who lives in a trailer park) as bourgerois and me, a homeowner with no mortgage to pay, as proletariat.
When will you cucks realize that you're the brainwashed ones, holed up in your academic bubble, insulated from reality and incubated by extreme leftist bias within the academy?
>>1111091
Which is primarily caused by....
>>1111130
is that corbyn?
>>1111105
Yes, all those points of contention only matter because of pure ideology.
>>1111141
Yes it is.
>>1111079
By the vary same line of reasoning, class identification is also made up and only matters because people ideologically decide it matters. Of course, that line of reasoning is one of the greatest falsehoods ever disseminated among mankind, and you should probably be shot for undermining all that dreams higher than your grey, soulless "reality."
>>1111145
what a madman
>>1111136
I'm not at university you dumbass.
>Which would classify my boss (who lives in a trailer park) as bourgerois and me, a homeowner with no mortgage to pay, as proletariat.
If your boss actually owns the business the analysis stays true.
>>1111144
As opposed to the pure ideology that we're all the same because we work for a living...
>>1111156
You're right to a certain extent, class solidarity only gains significance if people give it significance.
However it is in their definite self-interest for materialist reasons to do so.
>and you should probably be shot for undermining all that dreams higher than your grey, soulless "reality."
The only dream I want to undermine is the dream of exploiting workers.
Otherwise socialism is very pro-lofty ideals like arts and sports.
>>1109132
Generally they have plenty of support, but "Marxism" or "communism" is a gulag boogeyman. The left all over the world still invokes Marxist thought though, but it is not as kosher to say you want to actually destroy capitalism because that seems extreme for many modern westerners.
It's still more acceptable in the developing world to be an outright anti-capitalist.
>>1111170
Yes, because that ideology is backed by material consideration.
>>1111072
>the more advanced capitalism becomes the closer it is to transitioning to socialism
We are currently moving towards a pseudosocialist regime like Venezuela's, not your particular vision of a fruity socialist utopia.
>>1111174
It is also in the self interest of he who cares more for the lofty aesthetic striving of humanity than for the amount of food on his plate to support nationalism or any other aesthetic ideology he chooses. Please stop pretending that everyone orders their sets of values in the arbitrary way you do, and that your ordering of values is somehow more meaningful or righteous to pursue. It may be in your ideological interests to advance socialism, but it is in many more people's ideological, aesthetic, and value-based interests to trample your face into the ground for the things they hold dearer than material economics.
>>1110759
>having this poor of an understanding of nutrition
go get >>>/fit/ desu
>>1111161
>If your boss actually owns the business the analysis stays true.
Which is why marx's classes are retarded.
>>1111203
Except they hold those ideas dear for literally no other reason than "they just do".
You can say what you like about socialism but one thing you cannot is that it's arbitrary. Unlike nationalists that dislike people for being a different colour, speaking a different language, having a different favourite TV show, eating pizza with the crust first, or something equally retarded.
>>1111190
It's undeniable that society gets slowly more socialist as time goes on, the very fact that things like Universal Basic Income get debated in this day and age when 100 years ago welfare or even universal suffrage for that matter would have seemed like total madness.
Even if we transition to quasi-socailism, it's more socialist than we would have been the day before and it's not like history will stop there.
>>1111136
Yeesh what crawled up your asshole and died? Pure Marxists are pretty much extinct, same goes for capital-c Communists. You've got Badiou, Žižek, and Lefebvre—and Lefebvre's dead. This kind of philosophy will be extinct in a few decades. Scarce few but <B grade undergraduates swallow Marx. At the master's level, professors shred Marx. Marx is completely lacking in philosophical and scientific rigour. His examples are falsified. His logic is in shambles. Nobody uses Marx's ideas as Marx envisioned them. Marxism is always hybridized with another discipline for the simple reason that the mechanics and reference points in Marx's arguments do not work.
What you end up with is a sociologist who takes Marxism, swaps out the parts, and ends up with some new Marxism-like idea. For Class, instead of "Marx-proper", some line is drawn by lifespan or "happiness" or similar, and classes are redrawn from there. You won't see this if you're only reading abstracts etc. And frankly there's no reason to read any more deeply since these are thought experiments—actual models take more effort than creatively reading Marx.
Now there's an annoying trend, both by "left" and "right" wing thinkers of all stripes, to consider Marxism as if it's an ideologically rigid object. It is not and it never has been. Claiming "lefties are brainwashed by the Marxists!" is both a half-truth and an admission of your own brainwashing; undergrad sociologists are taught about Marx like how psychologists are taught about Freud. It's presented as a solid theory, and only once you've absorbed the it do you get the privilege of dissecting it. Most smart people notice this after reading the course syllabus. But the same brainwashing happens in anti-Marxist cliques—presenting Marxism as a rigid object, but instead, insisting that it's wrong and uses anti-Marxist writings instead. Doing so lets you caricature philosophical opponents as "Marxist" when that term rarely applies to anyone at all.
>>1111282
You can say any value set is arbitrary. It's arbitrary that you want to live as long as you can. You can give a bunch of personal reasons, but they don't matter for me or that guy. I could just as easily say I just don't enjoy being alive.
It really is arbitrary whatever you are advocating for, and honestly if somebody is an opponent of yours and they acknowledget that then it may be impossible to convert them to your side. You might just have to kill them on the off chance your ideas are ever pitted against each other in a real struggle.
Thats why you've got to kill fascists at some point. Was anybody going to convince Hitler to become a communist? No, and his access to power and influence meant he had to be killed along with all of the people that were going to follow him.
>>1111293
>Marxism is always hybridized with another discipline
I'm very aware. And the rest of your post is just putting words in my mouth. With that hybridization Marxism and it's divisive, overly simplistic models live on.
>>1111282
Why they hold those values, even if there is no "good reason" for them at all, does not matter if the values are genuinely held. If it gives their ego more pleasure to be of a nation than to be of a higher level of material well-being, then it is the rightful and righteous interest of the man holding this valuation to act in service of it even if doing so acts against the service of a value they value less highly. All values are equally arbitrary and are given meaning by the ego's deriving pleasure and meaning from them. Again, if one considers their aesthetic interest to be more valuable to them than their material interest, regardless of the reason or lack thereof or how arbitrary or "stupid" it may be, regardless even if it was inculcated in them by another to serve a material purpose, then it is their innate right as self-autonomous Man to endeavor in all their strivings to the interest of this value. tl;dr eat shit and stop trying to undermine the autonomy of the ego in choosing its valuation of the external world to act upon for its own self-determined interest.
>>1111183
The fact that your grandfather killed my grandfather and your society encourages polyamory while mine encourages monogamy are material considerations.
>>1111366
>society encourages polyamory while mine encourages monogamy
Marx actually mentioned this criticism in the manifesto and conjured the excellent retort that capitalism already has and encourages a community of women.
The American working class vehemently believes that through hard work they can one day own the boot stomping on them.
>muh nationalism vs communism
Find me a communist movement that was not nationalistic.
Find me a nationalist movement that was not socialistic.
>>1111355
However it must be said that it only gives the ego pleasure because they have been conditioned to derive pleasure from such ideation. You cannot say such things about materialism, everyone anywhere of any age derives pleasure from eating a nice meal, or having a wank, you are simply biologically developed to feel such a way giving it meaning just by virtue of living. Nationalism on the other hand is an absolute and total social construct, any significance given to it or taken from it only matters because of collective consciousness which is perfectly subject to change.
You do not choose to be a nationalist, you learn to be a nationalist. And just as easily you can unlearn it.
>>1111396
>communist movement that was not nationalistic
It was nationalistic in a specific sense.
Same like socialism under nationalism is specific and distinct from Marxist socialism.
Nationalism in traditional sense is incompatible with communism simply because communism is inherently internationalist.
Just like nationalism in traditional sense is incompatible with modern neoliberalism and neoconservatism.
So you're kinda right but distinctions must be made.
>>1111293
>It's presented as a solid theory, and only once you've absorbed the it do you get the privilege of dissecting it
Which is entirely nonsensical.
There's no reason for it to be presented as a solid theory in the first place if it is not actually a solid theory. If you advocated that heliocentric should be taught as a solid theory before you got the privilege of "dissecting it" and learning actual physics people would rightfully view you as a lunatic.
It's obvious that teaching Marxism so that it can "be dissected" is just euphemism for teaching people to think like Marxists then giving them the tools to apply that Marxist thinking in a way that it does not immediately get dismissed out of hand as Marxism.
>>1111387
> the excellent retort that capitalism already has and encourages a community of women.
What the hell does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
>>1111434
What are you on about?
>>1111409
>deriving pleasure from a nice meal is innate behavior
>preferring the company of people that are like you on the other hand, must be taught
>>1111366
Sort of. Marx's concept of material conditions wasn't that rigorous from what I understand. I think Engels even stated in a letter that the ideology of a group of people was a material condition to be considered.
Fundamentally though I get the gist of what they meant, and it doesn't seem like a difficult concept. The belief was basically that modes of production have a large effect on ideology, and modes of production are dependent on material circumstances. So (this is just me talking out of my ass for a second, so placeholder argument follows) belief in a pantheon of seemingly aristocratic gods may arise because there is an aristocracy that supports this kind of pantheon, and the aristocracy is there because available technology, population and resources seem to cultivate aristocracy and slavery as a advantageous system of production. If material conditions change, a new system of production may be more advantageous, and clinging to the old ideals that arose from the past system of production is just not realistic. You're most likely going to fail, and the ideals are meaningless anyways because they were just circular justification and creation of meaning to understand the social order that then existed.
But ideology and existing institutions are a kind of material condition because they are formidable networks. You could feasibly have multiple different kinds or variations on a kind of production just given certain knowledge of technology, population and the same basic environment. Whichever one is dominant may have more to do at that point with the existing institutions and how they impede or promote the growth or evolution of new institutions. Like for instance (another kind of fake argument) you might say that belief in a paradise after death was a response to shitty living conditions, and the ideology that one should live for the afterlife could reinforce a secular stagnation, though progress could be possible.
>>1111439
That's precisely what I'm asking you.
How does the claim that capitalism is encouraging a community of women retort the argument that national differences are every bit as material as economic differences?
>>1111475
w-what?
I was talking about polyamory v monogamy
>>1111451
>People who are like you
What constitutes "like you", is exactly what you have to be taught.
>>1109067
Let's say you are an average poor person. You live month to month. If you go too long without a paycheck you are at a critical risk. The only saftey net for you in this is government which will give you cash if you start falling too far behind.
Would you quite your job to join a radical revolutionary movement? You've already severed your primary way of getting enough resources to survive (job) and you risk pissing off the saftey net that you relay on when you lose the job (government).
It is NOT in the worker's self-interest to start a communist revolution. It will only become that way if their job's wages becomes unbearable while at the same time the government does not provide adequate social programs. But governments aren't stupid and they know this, if the workers start getting rebellious they will just increase their minimum wage or expand the social programs. Once they do this the risk-reward of a rebelion is no longer in their self-interest.
What's funny is the champion of expanding social programs+minamum wage are the same Liberals that want a rebelion. If you want a rebelion they should ask the government to abolish minamum wage, all social programs and all worker rights.
>>1111409
A value being learned instead of innate does not reduce its conformation to the unique interest of the ego, if anything, it strengthens it. People value a good meal because it conforms to their animal inclinations that exist at the lowest of their existence and that everyone shares. People value nationalism or other higher ideological aesthetics because they have found that in their particular turns of ideal existence they conform more than other aesthetics to the individual desires and temperments of the unique form of their ego. Because of this, propagating these arbitrary ideals becomes a way of imposing one's individual nature and its unique qualities on the world around them material and ideal. If one holds higher human striving to be more valuable than base animal interest, then the abstraction of an ideal and its need to be learned to be appreciated only strengthens its value as a laurel of egoistic human interest over the unconscious striving of the animal id.
>>1111452
> If material conditions change, a new system of production may be more advantageous, and clinging to the old ideals that arose from the past system of production is just not realistic. You're most likely going to fail, and the ideals are meaningless anyways because they were just circular justification and creation of meaning to understand the social order that then existed.
Then the whole argument is pointless as what works will work and what fails will fail and no man is wise enough to determine which is which ahead of time. It's the economic calculation problem all over again only in a cultural context rather than an economic one.
Marxist social engineering is a fool's errand.
>>1109520
>Most working class people I know don't foremost want to abolish exploitation, they foremost want to get in on it.
>>1109547
>But maximising their wage isn't in their self-interest, seizing the means of production is.
I'm going to be really fucking trite and point out the emergent contradictory ideologies generated by the relationship of the social worker to social production at the point of production here.
>>1109520
Yes, this is my experience. The revolutionary moment crystalises, however, when fighting to "get on" in it. The point isn't for workers to think better and then start a bourgeois party with a programme, but to act in their immediate interests, which outside of exceptional buy offs like 19th century imperialism in the Southern UK puts them into conflict with capital with great rapidity, which then raises the living question of control over production.
>>1109547
>isn't in their self-interest
I'm sorry, how did your ideological posturing abolish the wage relation?
>>1110462
>so much so that marx had to redefine bourgeois because the original definition fit marx and his peers perfectly.
>>1110479
>This cannot be stressed enough.
Shame it is fallacious.
>>1111500
>people have to be taught to know that an apple and a banana aren't the same.
ITT: More retards who keep misusing words.
Marxism = a historiography perspective
Communism = an socio-economic system which, according to Marxism, will follow Capitalism
Socialism = a political movement
>>1109067
>Why doesn't the working class act in their own self-interest?
The death of unions around the early 1970's created a vicious cycle where in re-unionizing the workforce becomes impossible.
Worker conditions have stopped improving despite a steady increase in per-worker productivity, which resulted in a severe shortage of work compared to an excess of workers (made worse by lax immigration policies). This resulted in a severely skewed employer-employee dynamic where the employer has all the power. If some workers do try to unionize, their employer is free to simply fire them all and find new workers who don't complain as much.
>>1111492
I brought those up as hypothetical cultural differences that divide nations and are every bit as "material" as the arbitrary Marxist distinction between proletariat and bourgeois.
Anything beyond that is entirely irrelevant to my argument.
>>1111522
Wordage doesn't matter as long as people understand the idea that you're trying to convey, l2linguistics before making yourself look like an idiot by raising objections over semantic "correctness."
>>1111552
The cause doesn't matter. What matters is that there's far less unskilled/low-skill work to go around, and somehow people are still expected to hold full-time 8-hour jobs.
>>1111552
>It isn't.
Please supply a citation and quote for Marx's 'initial' 'definition' then his 'later' 'definition' and demonstrate how Marx wasn't a recipient of surplus value.
Oh wait, you're talking out of your fucking arsehole. Marx was bourgeois and knew it.
>>1111517
Kind of my position, but I also see how it opens up a space of possibility for being an advocate. For instance, I think new takes (non-leninist) on more socialist modes of production are possible with the tech we have right now, and I figure that is the position of most modern leftists that aren't purist Marxists (internet Marxists).
Material conditions just seems like a way of dismissing the existential importance of ideology or social institutions. It's basically saying that these things only exist to serve some kind of purpose. I may be totally off base with what Marx intended the argument to be, though I know that he was somewhat upset that many people took his "dialectical materialism" idea as a really rigid, predictive thing. But I do generally interpret it as him just trying to debunk contemporary ideology and in some way indicate how socialism could be a natural evolution out of capitalism.
But if human ideology can be considered a material condition, then the entire thing is not very predictive at all because it's hard to say what is possible right now. You can fight to institute socialism, or a modern feudalism, or whatever. Maybe they will fail right now, because opposition was to strong, organization was shit, whatever, but maybe the next push wins.
But it also allows authoritarian Marxist states to give justification for whatever they're doing as being dialectical, or that whatever you're doing is non-dialectical. They elevate it into a science, which it isn't. It can't predict anything, it is entirely non-rigorous.
>>1109210
>Marxism as a cult of academia
Isn't him who created the pejorative term ''intellectual'' who basically mean Bourgeoisie
>>1111575
You're a fucking idiot m8. You could just google it before making yourself look like an idiot.
Marx didn't define bourgerois, which is a french word. Bourgerois meant "upper middle class academic urbanite" which described Marx and his peers perfectly. He redefined it to "owners of the means of production" which still basically applied to Engels.
There you go.
>>1110952
How come most bourgeois around the world have been dismantling nationalism and replacing it with globalism since the end of WW2?
>>1111647
>You could just google it before making yourself look like an idiot.
No, mate. I read Marx instead.
>Bourgerois meant "upper middle class academic urbanite"
No it fucking didn't.
>He redefined it to "owners of the means of production" which still basically applied to Engels.
And to Marx himself.
Maybe you should try reading instead of googling.
>>1111293
It's not hybridizing, it's maturing. Modern left-wingers don't advocate for violent revolution, they advocate for social democracy to make it a smooth, peaceful transition. They don't advocate for the full nationalization of all industry because they recognize the considerable structural defects that form in a command economy over the long term, and advocate for a syncretic system where you use the strength of one to overcome the weaknesses of the other.
The Marx/Freud analogy is apt and you could even add Charles Darwin to the list because you're describing men who pioneered a completely original way of thinking even if their actual ideas are not considered up to modern standards.
Before Freud nobody was thinking about someone's mental state as a health issue even though psychoanalysis is bullshit and only applicable in extremely specific circumstances.
Nothing about biology as a cohesive science made sense before Charles Darwin put forth his theory of survival of the fittest which describes how biology takes form over time, and has since undergone extensive modification to the point of being quite different from Darwin's original vision.
Before Karl Marx nobody was really paying attention to the way that society chose to organize its labor. Marx not only described how our modern society organizes labor, he also examined historical means of organizing labor and realized that over the span of millennia, emancipation has been the general direction of history since class stratification peaked in the slave-owning societies of classical antiquity.Early Marxist methodology proved to be woefully unprepared to meet the needs of a modern complex economy, but here we are 150+ years after Marx and you've got Thomas Pickety proving that income inequality A: always rises over time unless consciously addressed and B: is actively harmful to society, and now you've got a scientifically rigorous case for "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer".
>>1109109
Excuse me, but objections to party rhetoric are not at your paygrade level. Your pay will be docked accordingly and reallocated to a W-34 Rhetoratician 3rd Grade. Additionally, your housing application has been rejected and may be resubmitted no later than the first of May, 2020.
>>1111651
They haven't, it's true to an extent that nationalism has been redefined but on the whole the ruling class seem to like it.
>>1111692
>No it fucking didn't.
Dude google the etymology. You're wrong. Why the fuck would a german man make up a french word?
>>1111781
Bourgeois didn't mean upper middle class, nor did it mean academic.
It meant urbanite, but your use of "urbanite" shows both a deep illiteracy and an incomprehension of the burgher, of the bourgeois.
>>1111552
>This is because of an increase in automation.
What else would it be? Ambrosia infuesed vitamin water? There's only so many ways you can swing a hammer.
Do you think catching fish with fishing equipment vs catching fish with your bare hands doesn't count as an increase in fisher productivity because it "cheats" using technology?
>>1112232
>What else would it be?
Extension of the working day, intensification of work performed, increase in skill composition of labour?
Have you actually read Capital?
>>1109067
>Why is Marxism only embraced by young, middle class intellectuals? Why doesn't the working class act in their own self-interest?
[citation needed]
>>1112336
You know, just because some other cunt is posting /pol/ shit doesn't mean you have to become a cunt and join him by posting yet more /pol/ shit.
>>1109147
Hey asshole
Shut your mouth and stop offering opinions on things you know nothing about
>>1112357
>When's the last time a western country experienced a famine?
IIRC Netherlands, 1944/45, caused by German and US imperialism.
Why don't you stop posting /pol/ shit and talk about famines prior to 1990?
>>1112381
>about famines prior to 1990
Why not? The biggest ones all happened in communist countries.
>/pol/ shit
Your mother should've aborted you, leftypoltard.
It's literally impossible to discuss Marxism with bourgie westerners. Everybody has an opinion why he's wrong but nobody has an understanding of the material. /his/ is objectively the worst place to discuss philosophy. Y'all niggers want to fucking talk but nobody wants to listen. You all take intellectual shortcuts. You don't do your homework. You'd rather repeat platitudes you read elsewhere, or make shit up that your idiot counterparts are too stupid to understand is wrong. That's why you're all here and not speaking to an audience who matters.
Everyone needs to remain silent where they cannot speak.
>>1112394
>bourgie westerners
AKA the biggest marxists.
>>1111850
>backpedalling
>>1111710
Good post, what you said about Marx is pretty apt. Marx's greatest contribution was to start talking about the material relations which underlye society.
>>1112403
They are not the biggest Marxists, right now you're literally just making shit up in alignment with your biased world view. You have no bit of tangible evidence to back up what you just said. Not one iota.
It's just platitudes and memes.
>>1112406
I'm sorry you're a fucking ahistorical cretin. Try reading some early modern history.
>>1112414
Yes they sure are. In Eastern Europe everyone but children of former nomenklatura parasitic class abandoned marxism, but it's still alive and well in Europe and the US.
>>1112398
It doesn't matter whether he's wrong or not. Why don't you talk about US food supplementation PRIOR TO 1990 OR FUCK OFF TO /pol/
>>1112423
He's right and you're getting BTFO left and right.
>>1112428
>triggered
>>1112436
Not him but what's a fifel?
>>1112426
>look at me I can make wild baseless assumptions!
Your assertions will not convince me. Give me evidence.
>>1112398
The only way you could get $200 a month for just you is if you had no income at all.
one, that isn't completely true, and two, working class people are generally not as educated and don't have the time or money to think about politics and -isms all day
>>1112441
I'm Eastern European. It's literally always the career slackers or the parasites who are whining about the fall of communism, most people don't give a fuck.
>>1112433
Are you suggesting Marx wasn't bourgeois, or that the category of bourgeoisie in early modernity referred to a middle class in a class society as opposed to a fraction of an order in a society of orders?
>>1112436
So talk about them in reference to the period WWII to 1990. Don't try to be the biggest dickhead.
>>1112426
>Eastern Europe
most of eastern europe had it thrust upon them by the soviet union
>nomenklatura parasitic class
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_parliamentary_election,_2015#Parties_standing_in_the_election
pretty sure if 60% of poland were a parasitic class the economy would implode
>>1112451
I'm rather certain that bourgeois/burgher referred to city-residents with the general understanding that these men were neither peasants nor aristocrats. In which case, they could be considered to occupy the original 'middle class'.
>>1112446
Nah dude i make 20k. 40 soon though, just got a new job.
>>1112460
Yeah, I should have been more clear, you'd have to have no net income.
>>1112459
Except neither aristocrats nor peasants were classes. Aristocrats were the chief of the nobility, and the nobility were an order, or estate, or state. Similarly, the order which burghers were members of was the third estate, which was shared with peasants, itinerants, and generally all other non-noble or clergy.
I don't think you have either a historically or theoretically informed conception of class, and you appear to have no social history of the early modern town.
>>1112457
>taking anti-Marxists seriously
He repeated twice his opinion that there are no Marxists to my demands for evidence. He's just going to backpedal and demand his worldview is still correct and you must respect it
Can someone tell me what the fuck is a Fifel?
>>1112476
Aristocrat and nobleman are more or less synonyms.
>>1112457
Those guys are social democrats, not marxists.
>>1112492
It seems to be a proto-Germanic term for "monster".
>>1112476
>Except neither aristocrats nor peasants were classes
Now you're just trying to mince words. Yes, I know about the trifunctional schema and the fucking ecclesiastical/military/economic estates of France, that's fucking HS material.
>I don't think you have either a historically or theoretically informed conception of class
You'd be wrong.
>>1112492
>Aristocrat and nobleman are more or less synonyms.
And yet Marx's "bourgeoisie" and the early modern burgher aren't.
Just how sloppy is your reasoning? More or less sloppy than your mum's pig sperm filled cunt?
>>1112471
Pretty sure it's cushier than that. I know you can get cash benefits too along with food stamps.
I knew a lot of rich jewish girls in college who were on food stamps despite getting a couple grand a month from their daddies.
>>1112520
And yet you insist that the bourgeoisie were "academic." Get a refund on your 2 year college.
>>1112528
Oh? Where did I claim such a thing, retard?
>>1112522
My reasoning? I wasn't a part of your retard debate you faggot.
>>1112528
He's not me.
Bourgerois did mean upper-middle class urbanite, and being an academic is pretty much implied.
Just stop backpedalling and go back to leftypol.
>>1112492
An irritating marxist namefag who could only respond to criticism by saying "read Capital", like some type of broken communist tape recorder.
>>1112537
oh fucking gee would you look at that
eat shit
>>1112542
Proves nothing.
An 8 year old could photoshop that.
Can we just build labor camps on the moon to send Marxists there?
>>1112547
https://gyazo.com/7a942ffbc51d1e61de7d14f93742b439
You're so fucking pathetic that you'll probably accuse me of fucking with the API calls next.
So, again. Eat shit.
>>1112544
uhuh
>>1112563
This guy's just not very smart.
>>1112557
Thanks for providing real proofs.
>>1112555
That would require the USA to actually get to the moon first.
>>1112567
Would you look at that.
>>1112540
>Being an academic is pretty much implied
No, no it's not. Bourgeois does originally refer to well-to-do city dwellers, but if anything the implied occupation would be a business person.
>>1112570
Nice movie set, dumbass.
>>1112577
Hahaha.
My greatest life achievement was not being born in a total shithole like Serbia or Macedonia
Any questions?
>>1112541
Maybe because 95% of the criticisms of Marx have no idea what the fuck he was actually talking about and if people actually read him they would know their entire perception is faulty?
>>1111772
>the ruling class seem to like it.
Are you stupid? Both the left and the right benefit from globalism.
>>1112598
why did you cherrypick
>>1112598
Seems to ignore the fact that a lot of former soviet scientists moved to the capitalist West after the fall of the USSR.
>>1112599
Shut up fifel.
>>1112603
It's no mystery that neoliberalism was a complete catastrophe for Russia. Even the most ardent capitalist won't argue that.
>>1112607
>>1112606
That kind of proves his point.
>>1112575
Business as such developed in the 19th century with the corporations acts.
I think you mean "merchant." Or more probably "trade," as most burghers were productive petits-bourgeois before the development of financialisation of mercantile capital over the 17th and 18th centuries.
It is like nobody actually knows the history of European orders and classes.
>>1112603
You don't even need to cherrypick to make Russia look like dogshit in comparison to the USSR.
>>1112614
You're right, I do. At any rate, being an academic is not implied.
>>1112541
Or you know if juvenile anti-Marxists didn't produce pathetic strawmen of their fantasy of a Marx they'd like to hate, and actually sat down and read some serious Marx works, or at least Anti-Dühring, in companion with Kołakowski's magnificent anti-Marxist history of ideas (Main Currents), then perhaps they could graduate to big boy anti-Marxism and produce content worth replying to with anything other than a reference.
But of course that would be a sourced high level of discourse that isn't insulting to other posters.
>>1112624
Academics were almost always ecclesiastic until modernity pretty much, and those that weren't were generally noble or children of the court professions.
>>1112634
fifel was indeed a grade-A shithead, which anyone who'd been here since the beginning, when he actually namefagged, would know.
>>1112641
Whether I'm a shithead or not doesn't change the habit of unread anti-Marxist children posting lies that they saw on a Youtube of a 1950s film warning about Soviet Soldier's penises.
>>1110939
>>1110494
If that were the case, then financial intermediaries shouldn't exist.
>>1109067
>Why doesn't the working class act in their own self-interest?
They do. People almost always do. It is unfortunately a fact that capitalism as it is offers them much more than risking it with some pie in the sky philosophy with no obvious workable praxis moving forward.
>>1109074
Yes, if only they had heard of your promises of luxuriant utopia they would surely be right at your side.
>>1113168
Yes, thus is the entire point of communism.
>>1113192
But, financial intermediaries do exist. So your idea is bullshit.
>>1113168
Have we returned to a conception of rent ala Ricardo?
ffs.
>>1113195
Exactly because we still live under capitalism.
The fuck are you trying to say?
>>1113277
Your idea is bullshit. Because we live under "capitalism". You just admitted that, though, so I guess there's nothing more to say.
>>1113293
W-what?
>Capitalism exists
>Therefore communism is bullshit
What in god's name are you smoking?
>>1113300
>Capitalism exists
I wouldn't be caught dead saying that. You must be quoting someone else.
>>1113307
Clearly you must have some extremely convoluted line of thinking at work here so could you explain it so that whatever you're on about makes sense?
>>1109067
they're the only ones that doesn't experience reality, upper and middle class kids that have experienced 0 hardships usually votes left, wants more economic migrants aka "refugees", they don't want it to their neighbourhood though, it's 100% european
>>1113832
Yup, it's Marxists who never experienced reality, not classcucked capitalists
I know just so many poor people who accept market discipline
>>1114015
>classcucked
>>>/leftypol/
>>1112634
It always baffles me that people don't bring up Kolakowski more. I mean I don't agree with him on things but he's obviously several tiers above the continually re-hashed rhetoric on here
It's almost as if people who get rabidly anti-Marxist on this board are not at all familiar with these main currents in Marxism, if you will
>>1114143
Well, I think Kołakowski is a raving buffoon, but an acceptably academic historian of ideas. I am particularly irate with him over his characterisation of Left Marxism, but the man read what he disliked and attempted genuine critiques based on fulsome reading.
>>1113832
This.
Fuck socialism.
>>1114431
No I mean I'm with you there pal, it's like his chain gets yanked every so often and he goes off.
But the guy takes what he was reading seriously, which is more than can be said for the majority of this thread/board
>>1111772
dude what the hell
>>1115698
>Are you fucking kidding me?
>>1109618
>Singapore has middle-class intellectuals that aren't completely tumblr
>Singapore has middle-class intellectuals
I kek'd heartily.
If you look at Marxist literature is it any wonder that the working class doesn't adopt it? If you were to boil the fundamental ideology down into simpler terms, then it might be digestible, but until then it's only something for middle-class intellectuals to masturbate over.
.>>1109067
>Why is Marxism only embraced by young, middle class intellectuals? Why doesn't the working class act in their own self-interest?
I don't know on which planet you'all live to say something like that, because marxist parties were huge till 25-30 years ago.
Because Marx was completely wrong when he predicted further impoverishment of the working classes. As the general living standards of the lower classes improved in the 19th century and routes to class uplift opened up, the working classes grew more accepting of the system.
>>1112372
lol what a worthless butthurt comment.
>>1112599
>they would know their entire perception is faulty?
this is how you spot a cultist
>>1116372
Marx would've been butthurt as fuck if he found out social democracy that he hated practically saved capitalism. Welfare capitalism is a million times better than anything commies ever came up with.
