Ask a Marxist anything.
>>7831135
when are you turning 16?
do you ever regret the hours you've wasted reading about the left's version of the zombie apocalypse?
What's been the biggest adjustment for you in transitioning from highschool to university?
Did Trotsky do anything wrong?
>>7831135
what books keep you from killing yourself, atheist?
Why did you think you could just bulk buy and ideology/identiy?
Is it hip to be square?
Also, how would you react if I robbed your house?
>>7831135
dat materialist consumerism
>>7831135
Why have you re-positioned your books for a new photo (and it's the exact same collection, I remember), when the earlier photo was perfectly good for re-posting your exact same thread subject, and was actually a better photo since it emphasized the weathered-ness of Capital, i.e. your cred?
What's the deal with Lukacs' allleged insistence that "Marxism is still true even if every one of its details is false"? Isn't this leftist metanarrative emotionalism innoculating itself against facts and improvement, a la Revelation?
>>7831135
Fuck off, Andrew.
>>7831192
Which is in no real way actually something critiqued by Marx. A critique of consumerism is actually something more akin to a spontaneous ethic completely immanent to capitalist social formations, placing the standard of responsibility in the realm of individual actions within the realm of exchange rather than in non-moral, object-oriented given structure of social existence.
>>7831205
There are some new books in there.
Looking back on my notes to that essay. Lukacs is attempting to defend Marx from both the German revisionists who envisioned the possibility of transcending the negative tendencies of capitalist development and bourgeois critique. He does this by stepping back from a traditional defense of science, in the validity of its claims, in the working out of its predictions and instead chooses to highlight the framework, the epistemological shift engineered by Marx.
Marx's methodology rather than the particular theories are what is essential about Marx's works. This methodology is related to his object of study (a particular, historical social formation); a relation to that object that isn't one of contemplation, but rather one that recognizes the practical, subjective nature of that object, its ability to be reconstructed given a certain level of knowledge, self-consciousness; dialectics as a logic in concept and reality in which fixedness gives way to movement and mechanical causality is replaced with structural interactions; an analysis of the object, political economy, in its own terms--not from any ethical or moral or transcendental point of critique; the limits of the science, it being a study only of social formations rather than nature, or the thing in itself.
>>7831209
blah blah fuckfing nerd lol
so what will you do when the masses realize it's a sham and burn your bourgeois offices to the ground
![[MD] Space☆Dandy - 08 (1280x720 Blu-ray AC3).mkv_snapshot_12.06_[2016.02.25_16.44.41].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/nwOUZLd.jpg "[MD] Space☆Dandy - 08 (1280x720 Blu-ray AC3).mkv_snapshot_12.06_[2016.02.25_16.44.41].jpg")
>>7831135
I see you're missing chairman mao's little red book.
>>7831265
That'd be the happiest day in my life. Revolutionaries often find themselves overtaken by the truly radicalized masses.
Wish I had an office. Lower-class prole through and through--immigrant parents and barely above minimum wage job.
>>7831135
Do you lift?
>>7831135
Was das kapital insufferably boring? It seems like it would be. It also seems kind of pointless because mainstream neo-classical economics and even behavioral economics just totally disregards Marxism altogether.
>>7831278
A couple months into a modified SS--basically just added regular upper body accessory work. Unfortunately doing it on a cut but I'm not completely new to lifting. Did a SS run a couple years back.
Just barely hit 195lb for dls and 180lb for squat. OHP and bench are laughably babyweight.
>>7831135
Best translation of Das Kapital?
>>7831277
gee if only there were some kind of institution you could attend for a few years and learn skills that are more valuable to society
oh but that would cost money of course, if only there were some place you could go and borrow money for a period of time
so sad that the proles cannot escape the poor decision making of their parents
>>7831135
>Gramsci
>Lukács
>Adorno
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0KwdtCmvWg
http://henrymakow.com/frankfurt-school-satanic-judaism-in-action.html
http://henrymakow.com/2016/01/Frankfurt-School-is-Illuminati-Jewish-Satanism.html
>>7831285
>It also seems kind of pointless because mainstream neo-classical economics and even behavioral economics just totally disregards Marxism altogether.
They're dealing with completely different problems, theoretical frameworks, conceptual apparatuses, structural assumptions, etc..I regard Marxian work as a science in the Kuhnian sense. It's a shift in the structure of a science (political economy) that inherits certain features from classical political economy but also represents a qualitative break from it. Marx goes to great lengths to explicate how capitalism itself conceals and mystifies attempts to formulate adequate knowledge about it.
Marx isn't doing economics, but political economy in a radical way--political economy denoting the original field of study that attempted to formulate how capitalist economic relations (could) generate a harmonious, cohesive social body. Marx basically said you couldn't and analyzes the main concept of political economy (value) to show how value itself presupposes a contradictory, disharmonious social formation.
And Volume 1 has some top banter--Marx is an extraordinarily good stylist. Volume 2 can be rough towards the end. Volume III is uneven as hell, but when its good its good.
>>7831324
but /r9k/ hates our little green friend, and this is an imageboard so i might as well attach an image
>>7831295
Fowkes is standard and it'll do just fine.
Once you actually do get into Capital-centric Marxism then translation issues become apparent but don't worry about that for now.
That essay collection The Constitution of Capital has suggested revisions for certain problematic translations throughout though if you get to that point.
>>7831317
Explain why Sraffa didn't destroy Marxism.
>>7831135
If you had to serve under any of these three, who would it be?
Stalin, Castro, Mao.
>>7831135
Tell us how YOUR implementation will be different. Go ahead, we are all ears.
>>7831307
delete this
>>7831135
Did your really read the German ideology and still withhold yourself to an ideology?
You're a faggot
>>7831307
>falling for the CS meme
You clearly aren't a crossboarder. There are no guarantees friend.
morning bump
Cute collection OP.
>being a Marxist
>>7831135
thoughts on Society of the Spectacle?
>>7831135
Why have you read all those books?
Good for you.
Why are you a marxist?
>>7831935
Why have you got that italian translation?
fuck off kike (puppet)
>>7831317
Is Jameson as good a Marxist critic as he claims/is claimed to be?
>>7831935
That'd be impressive if this was 1977 and and we were at an SWP meeting.
>>7831948
It's a Hegelian reading of Capital stretched to its limits. Falls into the same trap any strong Hegelian reading of Capital does though--mystifies the object of its analysis while not recognizing the contradictory nature of capital and its inability to subsume completely all human activity. Recognizes the object-oriented nature of Marx's analysis though which is good. And definitely should not be read as a critique of "consumer culture".
>>7832017
Jameson is of the Anglo-American academic tradition that, while indebted to Marx, pushes Marx's analysis far beyond its limits--which is possible of course given the nature of the science but is often done in a way that isn't completely mediated. The commodity-form is determined by particular production forms driven by particular consumption mediation (exchange) and can not be extended as far as somehow subsuming all aspects of life. Adorno is to blame for all that and his left-wing students did a good job of correcting and revising the method.
I like Jameson but he's an aesthetic theorist really. He's not interested in the critique of political economy.
>>7831135
Why does Marx focus on labor as being that which produces wealth rather than labor in combination with resources, social systems, and technology?
>>7832029
He does exactly what you say he doesn't. Labor involved in the valorization process always has its concrete expression acting as the bearer of the abstract aspect of labor. The production of commodities is always of particular commodities in particular ways and as such, the particular arrangement of labor vis a vis technology and the use of "resources" always have a mediated effect upon their social, abstract expression in the commodity's exchange value.
Capital is first and foremost analyzed as a social form, as a social system. The material aspects of production enter into the analysis only in so far as they determine or are determined by that social form (generalized commodity production, the existence of money as capital, wage-labor as predominate form of labour, etc.). Marx speaks a great deal of the technical composition of capital (productivity) and its essential role in determining the rate of surplus-value.
Further, in regards to social systems, Marx traces the particular social formation of capitalism in a series of increasing concretions of the founding abstract principles. We start with simply two classes and their relation to the commodity-form and we continue on in Volume III to determine an internally differentiated, though unified capitalist class.
>>7832059
Interesting, what does he say about the role of the financial system, especially lending?
>>7831135
Anti-semite.
>>7832079
So capital can be considered as a circuit, it has to pass through particular forms and social moments to become capital, to generate a value about that represented by its initial investment.
M-C...P...C'-M'
M being money.
C being the commodity.
P being the production process.
C' being surplus commodity + original commodity value.
M' being original investment + surplus in money form.
The problem is that this process is not always a smooth, continuous process and is moreover, always existing in all moments and forms at all times. There are always going to be money hoards generated at certain points during the capital circuit (the specifics on this are less important, but the source of hoarding is also explained by Marx in Volume II). The problem is that hoards, unlike in previous social formations, are not particular forms of wealth under capital--capital is only capital insofar as it grows through valorization, the production process.
What happens is that these spontaneous money hoards are accumulated into the hands of one independent body that takes it upon itself to utilize stagnant money hoards, to apportion the money of individual capitalists to capitalists at other points of their circuit.
>>7832091
If the money used in lending creates a surplus through using some means of production and laborers, did the lending create capital?
>>7832099
Capital isn't created at any one moment. Capital is the unity of forms in movement. Only the entire movement is capital. Anything that functions in that movement in such a way as to drive forward the growth of initial value is a form taken on by capital. The entire circuit is capital, with money and commodities and production being particular moments in capital's coming into being. Capital is only insofar as it becomes. So that loan, if one moment of the capital circuit, would function as money capital, money used to buy the means of production and labor-power.
Don't think of capital as certain material things. That's a mistake on the part of classical political economy which took capitalism and saw production in general rather than production under a particular social form. Nothing is inherently capital. Capital is a social form, the social double that follows and only lives through materials imprinted by its own needs.
>>7832114
Capital as you're describing sounds almost identical to 'power', except restricted to this social form. Thanks for your replies.
>>7831135
Why are you a marxist?
How do Leninism, Maoism, and Hoxhaism differ?
Is Stalinism just "kill anybody who could not be 100% loyal"?
>>7831135
how much do you make?
what car do you drive?
do you ride public transportation?
>>7831137
/pol/ is that way
>>7831186
>He was on the wrong side of the workers' opposition fight
This is what stalinists really believe.
Go back to whatever hole you came from.
How has marxism changed your life? Do you put the ideology to action in any meaningful way?
What is dialectics?
>>7832975
This question was really first created in a 2,396 year old writing (The Republic). It was also given a more eloquent answer than any Marxist is capable of giving.
>>7831935
Lenin wrote that much?? Wtf?
>>7831259
>>7831135
How long did it take you to read all these OP?
>>7831209
>>7832894
I don't really care about the developments of M-Lism to differentiate.
>>7832899
About $26k a year. I have meager needs so I get by fine.
No car, but I have a bike. Bus commute weekdays, get around on bike weekends.
>>7832916
Trotsky was even further right than Lenin. He wanted full worker discipline.
>>7833196
Do you think Marxism-Leninism is bad? If so, why?
kill yourself OP, or at least read some Bookchin
>>7831135
What did Marx get wrong? What did other prominent socialists get right that he did not?
How will automation impact American Society and our values, ideology, and politics?
>>7831135
>Ask a Marxist anything.
why don't you fuck off back to /pol/?
>>7831135
What is the dialect and how do I learn it?
>>7831135
How do you keep the spines on your paperbacks in such good condition?
What is the best writing of Ber Borochov?
>>7833016
There was once a time before emails and russian phone lines were of questionable use to a banished revolutionary
I still don't know what is dialectics.
>>7833491
He doesn't read them.
How does it feel that your ideology is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of people?
>>7833896
It's just a word that means "style of argument"
so I take you haven't understood anything that you've read?
>>7831135
Have you solved the economic calculation problem?
>>7831135
thoughts on slovak zizek?
>>7831135
I sure as hell hope that you're throwing together a masters/doctoral thesis. Otherwise, you've wasted so much valuable time.
>>7831935
Did you teach my International Relations class?
My professor boasted about his Lenin collection a few times and this is what I imagined it looking like
I understand how you can calculate robbed surplus value on a massive scale, and thus you can approximately know the general level of value held by the capitalist class. But is there anyway to know the amount of value an individual capitalist has, even when assuming prices = exploited surplus labour. Or am I fucked, and I just have to randomly fight within my own class for the scrapes of value robbed from our workers, hoping that I turn a profit?
>>7834486
Marx got as far as deriving the necessary connection between profit and surplus-value and appropriate labor time. The qualitative framework is fully developed in Capital.
He tried to quantitatively derive that transformation but I would argue, along with some other contemporary value-form oriented Marxists, that that attempt is fruitless, or rather secondary to what is much more substantial about Marx's research.
It's just not a useful question really.
>>7834424
Besides the amnesty and the Brady Bill happening under him he was pretty good.
>>7831135
If you're truly a Marxist, what organizations do you belong to? Are you a member of any existing political parties? What have you done (beyond the ivory towers of academe) to awaken, organize, and mobilize the working class?
>>7831135
People have sure written alot about a class of people who can't read.
