In your own words, explain Marxism
>>8051644
worship of an immaterial fantasy realm that appropriates the language of materialism in order to be taken seriously.
stupid shit for faggots and retards
>>8051644
Muh feels and gibsmedats
Belief that workers create value which will inevitably lead to the expropriating of the surplus value scalping class, as technology changes.
>>8051644
Psychohistory and meme magic.
>>8051644
Personal atomism
>>8051644
A corroding envy of one's betters
>>8051644
a gross misunderstanding of human history and the economy
>>8051644
Don't even bother, go read Mises
>>8051675
You're retarded.
>>8051675
>having a low opinion of Marxism makes you a Nazi
It really is like a religon.
>>8051644
>"Wives are property that must be shared"
>-The Communist Manifesto
>>8051704
Look, I've spent a long time on forums listening to clowns who sound exactly like you spout off about how much they can't stand Marxism, and I have news for you. It is always because they are greedy tools who worship money and power. Prove me wrong Mr. High and mighty libertarian.
>>8051713
Oh, now it's only libertarians who hold a low opinion of Marxism. You know most people are neither Marxists nor libertarians.
>>8051713
Fucking dumbass.
>>8051719
We call those people "not idiots".
>>8051675
libertarians=fascists?
Trying to convince yourself that your dick should be a pussy has done a number on your brain lad.
A NEW STRAIN OF PRE-ARYAN MATRIARCHY, WILL BE PURGED WHEN SQUADS OF ARYAN BODYBUILDERS/SURFERS BURN DOWN THEIR GRASS HUTS AND FORCE THEIR WOMEN INTO SUBMISSION W/ HYPERBOREAN SEXUAL RADIANCE
>>8051719
I'm not hearing any actual critique here. I'll wait a bit.
"Workers get whored by Capitalists yo."
It was a revolutionary idea (forgive me the pun) for its time but it didn't age too well with todays possibilities of automatisation and basic income.
>>8051737
What do I need to say beyond that it makes sweeping, unfalsifiable claims?
>>8051741
The basic income is a great issue I often use against libertarians who of course don't support it even though Milton Friedman was a major advocate.
Marx specifically predicted that communsim would emerge when technology reached a saturation point in which technological fetishism declined relative to the actual use value of a machines work.
>>8051741
That would mean the worker's party that controls all the power would be robots at Amazon.... Oh wait...
>>8051733
Where did he get a wordworth Iliad without a fucking embarrassing cover?
>>8051749
Do you think stating that Marxism - an ideology - makes unfalsifiable claims makes you sound smart?
It doesn't
>>8051644
basically the rich control everything and keep it for themselves, and the poor delusionally take it like a bitch. thats summing it up in a sentence. fuck you if you want more, you bourgeoisie piece of shit
>>8051751
Hey, Facebook, gov't here. Good job with the building an empire and iirythang. That's ours now. For the people, Comrade.
>>8051758
I agree, state control in the Stalinist sense is bad.
>>8051754
No, but I think it's a valid criticism given that people use that ideology in a predictive manner and claim it provides a rational way to view the world.
>>8051763
Hey, Facebook, mob of farmers here. Good job with the building an empire and iirythang. That's ours now. For the people, Comrade.
this thread sucks.
/lit/ has been so horrible recently.
is there something in the water?
>>8051751
Well, most "libertarians" I encountered don't go further than "I WANT LOWER TAXES AND UHH FREEDOMZ, AND STOP WELFARE" without really understanding the idea behind libertarianism.
>>8051769
Do you know any living human being who believes this?
Put another way, do you think capitalism will continue to exist forever?
>>8051780
"This is water"
>>8051784
I think there can be dramatic changes in the economy as technology changes, but I wouldn't count on those not involving private entities controlling capital. The specifics of Marx's predictions of a certain kind of revolution are looking pretty far gone now.
>>8051644
The natural response to evils of capitalism.
>>8051751
Milton Friedman was an advocate only in that it would be the most economically efficient way of dealing with income redistribution. He favored abolishing all other gibesmedats and giving people cash if we're going to do welfare.
The reality is that poor people who are savvy enough to use the system probably get much larger subsidies in the system as is than they would under UBI.
>>8051800
So on other words you agree with Marx's historical dialectic ?
>>8051801
What is this your first day at discourse school?
>What is Capitalism?
The natural response to evils of Marxism.
>>8051802
Friedman I'm pretty sure stated he didn't intend negative income tax to completely replace the welfare state.
>>8051806
>things change in any way shape or form
>ah ha! Marx was right again!
>>8051806
Do you agree that the best most efficient way to travel is by horseback?
>>8051815
So you don't even understand the dialectic and are just trolling. Got it.
>>8051806
So on other words you agree that the most efficient way of proving a witch is by seeing if they drown?
>>8051810
Too bad that doesn't make any sense since capitalism came first. Try again.
The most objective empirical unit of analysis wrt history is wealth and ownership. The most defining aspect of any person's life is their relationship to wealth and the system which generates it (class). Systems of wealth and ownership (in dialectics, this is the thesis) change when lower classes demand a more fair system of compensation (antithetical to capital interests), from which a new system, the synthesis of those competing forces, arises.
Marx postulated that the end stage of capital is a system in which land, resources, and means of production are all controlled by workers collectively instead of their productive labor being taken from them by the capital class who currently own the means of production, given that in a historical context, the shift between systems of wealth seems to tend towards more equitable systems distribution over time.
christianity for the industrial age
>>8051829
>Marxist being retarded
Nothing to see here.
>>8051829
>So you don't even understand the dialectic
libertarians are basically crypto-Protestant moralists.
> 'hard work' is good
>God (the market) always rewards 'hard work'
>hence, 'hard work' and property are one and the same
>accumulation of surplus property is a sign of the virtuous man and the elect.
>>8051836
Uhm. You've just proven you're not familiar with Marx's historical materialism.
>>8051775
>the farming industry is being subverted by Facebook somehow
>>8051810
>capitalism came as a response to marxism
ayy lmao eastern europe why not learn about things before you talk about them
>>8051843
Leave it to a Marxist to need a clear, concise line drawn for them. Preferably a queue line for bread.
>>8051802
Well what if the dumb ones blew their free basic income check and started to starve and die of disease? From a kindhearted liberal perspective this would be really awful and problematic and there would be calls to bring welfare back.
I know they're not getting much as it is but I know a lot of poor people who would squander any government cheque on cigarettes, alcohol, and lottery tickets and not buy food or pay rent. Then they would be asking for gimedats again.
>>8051841
More than that though, I feel there is a natural defence mechanism amongst the Horatio Algiers types. They have to knee jerk that Marxism is bogus without even having read Marx let alone Weber, otherwise they feel that they may not enter the capitalist class themselves. Reminder me of Augustines apologia.
>>8051841
who said libertarians AREN'T protestants? they aren't mutually exclusive...hardworking protestants don't want to have their hard earned wealth stolen by the government and given to a bunch of corrupt catholics with 20 kids
>>8051711
Subtle trolling, my fellow. I can tell you read the Manifesto, and are intentionally subverting its meaning by taking key phrases wildly out of context. However, non-readers will not know you are playing the fool and thus will be horrified, while hardcore Marxists will be filled with rage as they slam on their keyboards to argue against you. Masterful.
>>8051856
Like I said, I don't think Friedman advocated for the total abolishment of the welfare state. My u derstanding is that he was morally opposed to state compulsion to care for the social misfits.
>>8051870
It would be extremely disengunious to not acknowledge that historically "marxist" societies have advocated for the abolishment of "bourgeoise" marriages
>>8051870
Hopefully not keyboards made by the bourgeoisie, but rather, keyboards made by the people. Oh wait China. Oh wait.
I know this wasn't an issue back then, but it turns out people want to be married. Ask the gay rights movement in America.
>>8051865
what did he mean by this?
>>8051644
A secular religion and, like every religion, incapable of satisfying the Is-Ought problem to justify why anyone should adopt it's conclusions at all. It's a spook responding to a previous spook. The Hegelian cycle of spook lives on.
>>8051870
"On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty. "
>>8051870
The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.
He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.
For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.
Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.
Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.
>>8051926
Women are literally property though
>>8051956
>Capitalist=hippy
>Women=Property
>No stay at home lesbian parents
=You don't know what the fuck you're talking about
=BTFO
=>>
>>8051967
>Not recognizing this on lit.
Wew lad
>>8051644
A reaction to Capitalism as seen by a man who lived in a time and place where Capitalism had no regulation and was allowed free reign by government to act upon the public as it wished.
>>8051977
"I don't even know what a troll trolling a troll, while fishing for troll b8 in a b8 captcha for trolls is anymore."
-Aloysha Fydorovich Karamazov
>>8051999
Nice. Impressive.
>>8051758
Facebook, like many tech companies, had a lot of help from Uncle Sam via CIA investment funds. And They are free to sell your data to the government or anyone for that matter, cause it's a free market, right? Libertarians tend to forget about the 'industrial' component of the military-industrial complex. the surveillance-war machinery is larger and increasingly privatized. But anyways Zuckerberg is a randian/Protestant hero and we should all line up to fellate him.
>>8051824
Thanks for taking this seriously unlike most people here
>>8052163
>anyone who thinks there are problems with Marxism is just shitposting
Is Marx-posting the new Christposting?
>>8052167
What no I was saying he was taking the question seriously instead of answering with a meme calm down
>>8052177
>criticisms of Marxism are just memes
>>8052177
A few people have done that already, including myself; or was this thread, like anything over 140 characters tl;dr?
With full disclosure: I am not a Marxist, and I am highly critical of Marxism, communism, and socialism in general, but I’ll try to be as fair and objective as possible before offering my personal opinions (read: vitriol) later on. The ideas advocated by Marx and Engels are hardly comparable to Marxism today beyond a few broad concepts, so I’ll try to address those concepts only as they are currently accepted by modern Marxian thinkers.
Marx’s thinking largely followed from Hegel’s dialectical idealism and Feuerbach’s materialism (which had its earliest roots in Atomism and Epicureanism, but was largely informed by John Dalton’s discoveries). Hegel’s dialectic, highly simplified, following Kant and Fichte, was a conception of the history of ideas: that ideas (theses) have a competing ideas (antitheses), which are combined or reconsidered in each other’s lights to create a new idea (syntheses). Marx applied this model to Feuerbach’s physicalist conception of an Atomic, material world to create dialectical materialism and historical materialism (not to be confused with Stalin’s essay of a similar name). Dialectical materialism turns the focus of that dialectical model away from thoughts and ideas toward economics and revolutions (which were quite common in the 1840s while Marx and Engels were creating the greatest body of their work).
Historical materialism is a concept that applies this thinking toward a history/historiography similar to Rousseau’s which was highly similar to the historiography of positivism, which was in its infancy at the time. According to Marx, societies went through three stages: a period of Feudalism, where the primary authority was God and the king; a period of limited democracies and republics, where the bourgeois used their overwhelming capital to control the proletariat; and a period of communism, a classless, stateless society where the means and products of industry were owned and distributed on a collective basis. Brief periods of violent revolution would border these stages of civilization. Of course, those who’ve read Plato will hear notes of Republic in the harmony.
(1/3)
>>8052233
Marx believed that the way that a classless society would come about was through revolution. This revolution would be spurred by an angry and oppressed working class. As industrialization would lead to diminishing wages and increasing labour for the workers, they would one day rise up and overthrow the bourgeois, seizing control of the means of production and establishing a “dictatorship of the proletariat”, which would either wipe out the bourgeois and other classes (Marx and Engels envisioned nine classes in total) or educate them and induct them into the proletariat. After finishing the process of industrialization, destroying or educating the land-owning classes and those who support them (such as the church and the aristocracy), and destroying all vestiges of bourgeois society such as the nuclear family and religion, the dictatorship of the proletariat (of which Engels used the Paris commune as a small-scale model) would finally introduce a communist society, without classes, without a state, without religion, without scarcity.
This revolution was not only class-based, but racial as well, and also geographic. Marx mainly wanted to apply his theories to Germany, England, France, and the United States, and one Marxist criticism of the USSR was that Soviet society had barely begun the process of industrialization when the October revolution began. Marx also considered that certain social and racial groups, such as American blacks and Jews were incapable of revolutionary thought, at least without great exception or herculean effort, and when asked specifically about the concept as it applied to the German Confederation and the territories of its states, argued that only Germans, Magyars, and Croats were revolutionary, and that Poles, Slavs, Serbs, Jews, and other people-groups would either have to be exiled or exterminated. This point of Marx’s was abandoned as early as Leninism.
Another idea which modern Marxists’ often refuse to consider is accelerationism: that a classless society can be hastened through free trade, the idea being that nothing drives industrialization and class-tensions more than capitalism. While few post-Lenin Marxist thinkers accept this and even few advocate it (exception: Antonio Gramsci), the concept has been latched onto by many radical thinkers on both the left and the right, from Nick Land to Ted Kaczynski.
Marx also believed that the working class were too moral to revolt effectively and too uneducated to revolt intelligently, and he and Engels called on intellectuals to lead the revolution and manage the dictatorship of the proletariat: a group called the “vanguard”.
(2/3)
>>8052240
About here is where my thinking seriously diverges from Marx to a violent degree. Even though I’m skeptical of the Hegelian model of dialectics and Rousseau’s conception of history, and I reject atheism and materialism, I believe this is where Marxism fails to a spectacular degree. Given that the vanguard is largely from outside the working class (again, Antonio Gramsci is a notable exception, God bless him), it follows that they are largely from the upper-middle class, the bourgeois, and the aristocracy, and in most cases, they are. Which, I believe, is why some of the most notable victims of so-called revolutionary states were of the working class: in North Korea, North Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic SSRs, Ukraine, Angola, the purges, the list goes on. This is also why I believe that the working class hold political views that are almost the polar opposite of the modern vanguard. Being almost entirely of the bourgeoisie, the vanguard do not understand the working class.
I also take exception to the modern Marxist’s complaint that the historical failures of revolutionary governments were the result of imperfect revolutionary societies. First: it is laughably naïve to suggest that there is such a thing as a perfect revolutionary society. Second, fully industrialized, highly secular societies with populous working classes and great wealth divides, supported by a powerful international community working towards revolution perfectly describes North Korea, North Vietnam, Cambodia, East Germany, Cuba, and several other big, fat, Marxist clusterfucks of the 20th Century.
I do, however, generally like the idea of accelerationism, though not nearly in the same way as Marx.
(3/3)
>>8052259
Vodka, no doubt, comrade? I'm having a spot of vodka, too, cheers.
>Lurk if you can't drink and post at the same time.
>>8052272
Haha yeah ok
>>8052243
>the vanguard are bourgouisie and thus can't understand the working class
Nonsense. You also fail to take any account of the role of democracy in Marx's conception of Socialist organisation of labour
>>8052284
>democracy
>>8051644
My own words, huh? Okay:
Blimber fob bawl dibba dorp.
>>8052320
Anthony Burgess plz leave
>>8051644
Free stuff for everyone, you know, except everyone actually pays for that stuff indirectly, basically like sharing.
>>8052233
I've read most of Rousseau's works, where did he imply anything like a dialectic? Just wondering what I missed.
>>8052284
Even when democracy is present in a (theoretical) revolutionary society, the vanguard, to a hefty degree, must exert their will over the proletariat if they wish to achieve a truly socialist society. The reason for this is that the working class, much like the upper classes, have a fundamental human desire and need to accrue capital, and (especially in more capitalist societies), an optimism in social mobility. When you see Marxists, especially Trotskyites and their ilk, argue for open borders, it is the working class who argue most fervently against them, because they have the most to lose from immigration. The ideological enemy of Marxism, religion, is the most deeply held belief of the proletariat. When Marxists demand more slow and steady changes toward more socialist societies, it is the working class, not the billionaires, who fight back the fiercest against the increases in income tax that surely follow. The vanguard must fight the working class at every turn, because the working class will stonewall almost every advance made toward communism. An open revolutionary democracy, especially voting exclusive to the proletariat, can only end in free trade, rampant religious belief, capitalistic ideologies, and protestant work ethic.
Of course, revolutionary democracy has never occurred historically, was never advocated by Marx or Engels (and was ridiculed by Marx and Lenin both), and is generally regarded as a stupid idea by Marxist theorists, so you're so wrong you made a right, then made two more, and now you're far left.
>>8052345
He didn't, his conception of historical progress was more or less: the primeval world/naïve goodness --> feudalism/religion --> republics and democracy/science, reason, and philosophy. This is from Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, though I haven't read his full works, so I may be slightly mistaken in my interpretation. Sorry if I accidentally implied that he had published theories on dialectics. I would have explained further, but the topic was Marx, not Rousseau.
>>8051644
"My feelings and delusions of self-worth, therefore you should wear pic related and we can move at the same speed for fairness! That thing is called privledge btw bourgeoisie scum!"
>>8052432
I've never made this connection before. Interesting. I can see how Rousseau had a massive influence on Marx in terms of critiquing bourgeoise institutions and the accumulation of capital. Civilized society is, after all, "the profoundest plan to ever enter the mind of man."
>>8051713
As a Pole that has actually experienced Communism, I can tell you that your millennial hipster views on Marxism are wrong. You're not the oppressed one, you know who is? The homeless, the drunk, the people that do not want to actually work and have a shitty attitude towards work. All the rich have their money in Austrian Banks anyways that the country can and will not reach.
Go ahead, tell me how good Marxism is, because I'm sure you know all about it from reading some dumb books and blogs.
>>8052592
>back to /pol/
the jewish master plan
>>8053712
based pole
>>8051841
Nah I just really like the non-aggression principle.
>>8053738
Are you retarded? Marxism is the natural enemy of jews.
>>8053830
Marx and Trotsky were fucking Jews and the entire October Revolution was filled with Jews in all the important places.
'I am not a marxist.' This line is frequently quoted by Marx's sympathizers, to distant him from his more dimwitted contemporary and from his latter interpretors. However, the line was taken out of context. Marx wrote it to argue against his french supporters that, in his views, has betrayed him.
In other words,
He is not furious that his thought was misinterpreted.
He is interpreted to be furious that his thought was misinterpreted.
He did not distance himself from his stalinist posthumously since he was dead.
He ought to distance himself from his stalinist posthumously to maintain the moral integrity of his sympathizers.
Therefore,
Marx is a human historian, a father, a drunken brawler, an economist, a host of refugees, a petit bourgeois that rented a shack in Hampstead Heath....
Marx is a symbol that represents the group of ideas that we interpret as Marxism.
Likewise,
The word Marxism denotes a group of ideas that spans the time of a century.
The word Marxism is interpreted as an idea that can be summed up into words surrounding a single axiom.
The French got Marxism wrong.
The Russians got Marxism wrong.
Everyone got Marxism wrong because they are Marxist.
The French got Marxism right.
The Russians got Marxism right.
Everyone get Marxism right because it is their own strain of Marxism.
>>8051644
A failed idea based on antitheism and bigotry.
ITT Amerifats misunderstanding marxism.
>>8051751
Why should I be robbed of my money to supply the lazy?
>>8051644
Surely the proles would try to get everyone into account if they ever overthrew the oligarchs and became dictators themselves. It's not like they would destroy the history and cultures of their nation and genocide their fellow workers :^)
>>8051644
A social theory from the late 1800s that still enjoys tremendous popularity due to network lock-in effects rather than any particular merit.
Equality for saint and sinner, hard worker and lazy, loyal and traitor.
>>8051644
Abject evil.
>>8054078
Pure ideology
>>8051737
>LE NOT AN ARGUMENT
If you wanted actual conversation, you should have started with some, rather than strawmanning your opponents & acting like a child when they pointed it out to you. There are plenty of socialists, social democrats, anarchists, mutualists, etc. who at least criticize Marx and who can't really be described as 'libertarians' in the American sense. But I guess they're all just filthy bourgeois fascist nazi capitalists to you, right?
>>8054829
UBI is just a drastically more cost effective and less hand-holding way to do what we already do with complicated and expensive welfare programs across multiple levels of government.
I'm down with it in exchange for enacting some sort of eugenics program to reduce the population over a few generations.
>>8051644
The gospel of envy.
>>8053841
Who the hell cares about regular semites, you idiot. We talk about the jews. Jews who control bank.
>>8051644
Jewish gibs and glibs
>>8051644
a materialistic attempt to revert humanity to a status prior to the knowledge of good and evil
>>8051713
you worship power too.
The really sad part is that you arent even aware of it
OP here, thanks for doing my homework for me fags
>>8053830
>what are the Rothschilds
>tfw you start to become a materialist but you end up becoming an historical idealist instead
Books I'm reading for my Marxist criticism class
Karl Marx: Selected Writings (2nd printing, Oxford 2000)
Roland Barthes - Writer Degree Zero
Theodor Adorno - Minima Moralia
and some others not listed yet
these good?
>>8055822
You're welcome any time friend
It's astounding to think of the effect the writings of Marx have had on history. How different the 20th century would have been without his influence.
Agree with him or not his influence on the world is so enormous that his ideas refuse to be dismissed outright.
>>8051833
this
Marxism the unproven belief that every transaction must be zero sum, value stems from labor and ramblings how to fix problems that don't exist.
>>8051713
I haven't met any Marxist who
a) wasn't well of
b) did something for people around him
c) wasn't greedy himself (wanting to have other people money and not work for it)
Prove me wrong Mr High and Mighty Marxist
like skyrim with guns
How is Marx' criticism of Stirner?
>>8051644
'Homo economicus', where the common people find purpose and happiness in their assigned roles in their supposed egalitarian society whilst their flagrant overlords govern and subdue them from an upper elite class of bureaucriarchs. Because SOMEONE has to run the show, right?
>>8055850
Erich Fromm's Marx's Concept of Man is pretty nice too.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/index.htm
Writing degree zero would be quite a tough read if you don't have a general idea about Barthes. Mythologies is a more enjoyable read for me desu
>>8058224
>'Homo economicus', where the common people find purpose and happiness in their assigned roles in their supposed egalitarian society whilst their flagrant overlords govern and subdue them from an upper elite class of bureaucriarchs. Because SOMEONE has to run the show, right?
