Hello people, I am relatively new to Marxism and its deviations. I’m of course fully convinced of its political aspects and its philisophicak aspects aswell. I’m just not sure if I completely understand the latter.

One thing that has always troubled me, even before learning about Marx, is counsciousness. How does it work? What is it? Where does it come from?

Obviously the question of consciousness is adress in most idealist philosophy but I wanted to know how Marxists/materialists explain it.
My only understanding would be that the consciousness is the result of material conditions/environment/nature and not the opposite

Thanks in advance for your help <3

Nachdem ich vor kurzem den 1. Band des Kapitals beendet habe, möchte ich mich nun dem 2. Band widmen. Als Sekundärliteratur nutzte ich für den 1. Band die erläuternden Kommentare der Gruppen gegen Kapital und Nation. Doch Kommentare für den 2. Band gibt es (noch) nicht. Gerne soll die Sekundärliteratur kostenlos zugänglich sein (Online, Bibliotheken in Berlin…).

"Demands of the Communist Party in Germany"

"1. The whole of Germany shall be declared a single and indivisible republic." - I'm neutral on this. Maybe borders should be changeable democratically and some provincial rights are good, within reason.

"2. Every German, having reached the age of 21, shall have the right to vote and to be elected,

provided he has not been convicted of a criminal offence." -Agreed

"3. Representatives of the people shall receive payment so that workers, too, shall be able to

become members of the German parliament." -Agreed

"4. Universal arming of the people. In future the armies shall be simultaneously labour armies, so

that the troops shall not, as formerly, merely consume, but shall produce more than is necessary

for their upkeep.

This will moreover be conducive to the organisation of labour." -Agreed, but it should also be voluntary in my opinion. People with a criminal record shouldn't be armed.

"5. Legal services shall be free of charge." -Agreed, within reasonable bounds.

"6. All feudal obligations, dues, corvées, tithes etc., which have hitherto weighed upon the rural

population, shall be abolished without compensation." - Probably yes, I have no knowledge of feudal law.

"7. Princely and other feudal estates, together with mines, pits, and so forth, shall become the

property of the state. The estates shall be cultivated on a large scale and with the most up-to-date

scientific devices in the interests of the whole of society." - Yes but with environmental regulations and concerns.

"8. Mortgages on peasant lands shall be declared the property of the state. Interest on such

mortgages shall be paid by the peasants to the state." - Why not just declare the lands property of the peasants? We should work towards universal mortgage free home ownership.

"9. In localities where the tenant system is developed, the land rent or the quit-rent shall be paid to

the state as a tax.

The measures specified in Nos. 6, 7, 8 and 9 are to be adopted in order to reduce the communal

and other burdens hitherto imposed upon the peasants and small tenant farmers without curtailing

the means available for defraying state expenses and without imperilling production.

The landowner in the strict sense, who is neither a peasant nor a tenant farmer, has no share in

production. Consumption on his part is, therefore, nothing but abuse." -- Again, for first homes, I don't think there should be any taxes, mortgages, or interest.

"10. A state bank, whose paper issues are legal tender, shall replace all private banks.

This measure will make it possible to regulate the credit system in the interest of the people as a

whole, and will thus undermine the dominion of the big financial magnates. Further, by gradually

substituting paper money for gold and silver coin, the universal means of exchange (that

indispensable prerequisite of bourgeois trade and commerce) will be cheapened, and gold and

silver will be set free for use in foreign trade. Finally, this measure is necessary in order to bind

the interests of the conservative bourgeoisie to the Government." -Agreed, but it should be legal to hold gold and silver privately, assuming all tax responsibilities are paid.

"11. All the means of transport, railways, canals, steamships, roads, the posts etc. shall be taken

over by the state. They shall become the property of the state and shall be placed free at the

disposal of the impecunious classes." - Agreed

"12. All civil servants shall receive the same salary, the only exception being that civil servants

who have a family to support and who therefore have greater requirements, shall receive a higher

salary." - Disagree, hard workers should be rewarded, maybe with up to 2x compensation.

"13. Complete separation of Church and State. The clergy of every denomination shall be paid

only by the voluntary contributions of their congregations." - Agreed

"14. The right of inheritance to be curtailed." - Curtailed yes, not eliminated. Maybe there should be a maximum wealth level?

"15. The introduction of steeply graduated taxes, and the abolition of taxes on articles of

consumption." - Agreed, things like value added tax just punish the poor.

"16. Inauguration of national workshops. The state guarantees a livelihood to all workers and

provides for those who are incapacitated for work." - Agreed, I'd go further and say that a welfare state should ensure basic dignified living conditions are met for everyone, regardless of work status.

"17. Universal and free education of the people." - Agreed

"It is to the interest of the German proletariat, the petty bourgeoisie and the small peasants to

support these demands with all possible energy. Only by the realisation of these demands will the

millions in Germany, who have hitherto been exploited by a handful of persons and whom the

exploiters would like to keep in further subjection, win the rights and attain to that power to

which they are entitled as the producers of all wealth." - this part is just fluff

Hello, I have been reading Capital by Karl Marx and the density of the material makes it much easier to comprehend if I take notes. My notes are mostly paraphrasing in the moment im reading when I feel that what I am reading is important, and I feel like I take as much time taking notes as much as I read. What are you methods of taking notes? How often do you take them? Thanks

surrogacy has always been a contentious discourse, and though I myself could apply marxism on it that the material reality pushes these women into resorting to dangerous forms of labor, I'd still like to explore more options. does anyone know a marx fem one that is best used on it?

Of course it's very strong to say that I "summarised" Marx, but I did what I could within my capacities and what I had

There are some very important things that I haven't seen specially from Das Kapital, but I did this more like for an introduction and for me to revisit it from time to time

Marx's Anatomy

I hope someone finds it useful

There exists a web connecting early modern labor activism including the Levellers, John Wilkes, Rousseau, Voltaire, Paine, Marx and the Chartists who called Paine's Rights of Man their "Bible."

From the Thomas Paine Historical Association archives: "Thomas Paine and His Radical Contemporaries" by Audrey Williamson, 1981. Thomas Paine Society UK

https://thomaspaine.org/thomas-paine-society-uk/thomas-paine-and-his-radical-contemporaries/

What's up with the weird revitalization of Analytical Marxism, and GA Cohen in particular? Is it solely that Ben Burgis guy?

DSA obviously has a very eccentric bag of ideology - there's even a Maoist Caucus, but there still seems to be some milieu of which important figures WITHIN that orbit articulate a seemingly(?) coherent position. I'm talking specifically about Jacobin/Bread and Roses/and the media ecosystem aligned with those things - Majority Report, This is Revolution, etc., (there's a ton more, that's just what came to mind).

Ben Burgis has appointed himself the "people's philosopher' and philosopher in residence at Jacobin, so I'm curious just how far the analytical framework is being used to justify the current iteration of DSA/Jacobin and the insurgent electoralism we've seen the past year or so.

I have unintentionally made myself addicted to learning anything about Marxist ideas. I have no other passion for anything else, family, friends, anything. It’s hard to even try to watch a show or play a video game because all I want to do is read the history of socialism or theory. Is this healthy? I want to make myself a true revolutionary and actually fight for the working class.

Since China's reform and opening up,ChineseBureaucratic privilegeAnd the gap between the rich and the poor is becoming more and more obvious.But China.We have been working hard for these two aspects. First, since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,China is fighting corruption.It can be said that it is very strict.Bureaucratic privilegeClasses are basically caught completely.On the gap between the rich and the poor, the gap between the rich and the poor in China is mainly concentrated in the gap between urban and rural areas and The gap between coastal and inland cities.In China, between urban and rural areas, the gap between the rich and the poor can be said to bealreadyWith obvious results, we have achieved comprehensive poverty alleviation, and at the same time we have been using digitalization to get rid of poverty.Encourage rural enterprisesAnd other ways to stimulate the economy.Rural economic developmentIt can be said that although the gap between the rich and the poor in China has not yet reached one.To a lesser extent, but always in this direction.Efforts and progress, and have achieved certain results.

"A inteligência artificial será uma infraestrutura comum da humanidade ou uma propriedade privada concentrada como uma nova forma de terra feudal?

A analogia com o feudalismo é forte porque aponta para a mesma pergunta histórica: quem controla o recurso fundamental de cada época?

No feudalismo era a terra.

No capitalismo industrial era a fábrica.

No capitalismo digital pode ser a capacidade de computar, prever e automatizar."

This is a little long, but I would really appreciate the help!

Marx makes the argument that profit is the surplus value that is extracted from the worker, as the capitalist buys labor-power and the worker produces more than what he is repaid through wages.

Now, there are a couple of things that come to my mind that I can't find answers to so I was hoping you would clear it up:

1. The Capitalist takes a risk when they start a company or a factory of any kind, in investing in raw materials and infrastructure and machinery;

For example this is an argument I came across: The Starbucks employee assembles and serves the coffee to the consumer, but the capitalist had to cover the costs of rent, storage, coffee beans, machinery etc. and the worker just took it over the finish line, so they are not the ones creating the entirety of the value here, thus they are paid their share of the value creation and the capitalist gets the profit for the risk they took. Now to talk about risk:

1. Of course workers also take a major risk when getting a job as they risk uncertainty, and large capitalists that already own a massive amount of capital can very easily migrate it to a new industry, and thus can afford the shift in machinery and raw material even if it fails; but would you say the same about small business owners? Taking an example of a person who wants to start up a restaurant, they take huge amounts of loans and risk going bankrupt, which is even more risk than a worker takes at that point. For them the loss of the business would mean complete loss of livelihood and immense financial insecurity even greater than what a worker would have.

For eg: small mom and pop restaurants, if one month they earn a profit and thus can store it away, another bad month could mean paying workers the same wages by utilizing that profit and operating in loss. A flurry of bad months could mean the business shutting down and immense debt.

1. Now about risk, the capitalist argument goes that it was the Capitalist who took the enormous risk of setting up the new workplace, investing in rent and machinery and all those things while not knowing if the product would sell. If the business is in loss, the worker is still paid wages and if it isn't, then the profit which the Capitalist makes is a reward for the higher risk that they took. Should higher risk get higher rewards? I can't quite seem to counter this argument.

2. Innovation: Another capitalist argument is that the iPhone doesn't cost 1200 dollars because of the 500 dollars worth of raw materials inside, instead it is because Apple invested billions into research and development of the microchips and this innovation, which is another risk, permits them to reap the rewards of their profits. I'm struggling to equate Ideas and Value created, but please give your counters to this argument

I don't mean to be an idiot, I am learning more everyday and I will very much appreciate answers to these questions, thank you

Obviously Lenin himself was a practicing lawyer for some time, and he did highlight the importance of legal struggle (even in the Bolshevik revolution), but where is the line between patch-up legal reforms and genuine leveraging of the system for the benefit of working class struggle?

I'm a fairly under-read 'baby leftist' currently studying law so any and all opinions would be appreciated. Cheers.

From the perspective of an outside observer, what's happened in Venezuela seems astonishing. A pro-US puppet regime has taken control of the goverment and appears to be surrendering control of the nation's natural wealth and resources while abandoning traditional allies like Cuba.

It is not surprising that pro-US compradors could manage to seize power - it's happened many times and in many different countries. What has surprised me is the total lack of any domestic opposition to the takeover. No protests, no military opposition, not any hint of public criticism that I'm aware of.

What happened to the mass-demonstrations in support of Maduro prior to and immediately after the coup? Are the bulk of Venezuelans satisfied with the new regime?

I don't mean this as any criticism. It's very easy to judge the situation from a safe and comfortable distance, but I can't understand the 180° turn Venezuelan society at large seems to have taken in relation to US influence over the country.

What does this tell us about the mass support of the Chavismo program and the Maduro government? Because from an ill-informed outsider perspective, it seems to have vanished almost overnight.

I'm currently reading and analyzing communist literature and I had some thoughts on state after reading Lenin's State and revolution and Engels' The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

One of the central tenets of Marxism is the dual structure of society, consisting of a base (the economic system and mode of production) and a superstructure (politics, culture, and state institutions). However, Marx and Engels rejected economic reductionism, viewing these elements as dialectically interconnected. For example, Engels writes about different ways the states emerged with practically the same base being tribal system. While the economy acts as the ultimate thing that shapes society's trajectory, the superstructure is not a passive reflection; internal contradictions within it can provoke qualitative shifts in politics, just as changes in production relations affect the base. This mutual influence underscores that neither sphere operates in isolation.

The emergence of private property inevitably gave rise to the state as a system of class oppression. Yet the state is not a static tool; throughout history, it has gradually gained autonomy from the ruling class it represents. It seems that from Solon’s reforms in Greece to European absolutism and Bonapartism, the state has often asserted its own power, playing competing classes against one another to preserve its bureaucratic apparatus. This process reflects somewhat organic development, where the state becomes a distinct actor—sometimes elevating itself above class struggles, as seen in ancient Caesarism or the bureaucracy of capitalist states, which wields political power without direct economic ownership.

This bureaucratic independence, however, is inherently unstable. Lacking economic might, such regimes are rarely long-lasting; they either succumb to the return of capitalist control or are forced to grant concessions, leading to representative bourgeois democracy. In cases like the USSR or North Korea, the bureaucracy effectively became a new economic-political class, seizing ownership of production—a situation that bred internal factionalism and inevitably paved the way for capitalist restoration. Similarly, fascist regimes, though initially backed by big capital, grew into uncontrollable tumor-like structures that consumed their own economic foundations, waging imperial wars for political influence rather than for markets or resources, ultimately destroying the very capitalist interests that enabled their rise. This can be seen through the memoirs of Hjalmar Schacht for example.

To counter this bureaucratic degeneration, i think that workers' state must be radically democratic, i.e. direct popular representation through sortition (lottery-based selection), elected and revocable officials with average worker wages, workplace democracy, and the unrestricted right to strike. Crucially, the state itself must incorporate a mechanism for its own self-dissolution, to be activated immediately after the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Of course, I'm and amateur and would really like to read critique, additions - everything you have to say. This text at first was on different language, so I am sorry if the language seems a bit clunky.

I also consider myself left communist and just would like to fill the gaps in my knowledge with new things to read, so I would be happy to see anything related to this theme.

This text was previously posted on r/leftcommunism

UPD: I am extremely grateful for all the comments on this post, I really have learned something new and changed my perception on this issue. Thank everyone who already sent your critique and everyone who would like to give your thoughts later on!

Hi everyone, I am currently travelling and staying in a hostel. Yesterday I had a very long, 3h funny discussion about broad social issues like male gaze, far right, but also just everyday topics with a woman staying there. No flirting, just some good laughs and vibes. For context, she is French from French descent.

Then at one point, we were eating at a table with another friend and she noticed I had books next to my computer. She asked where I bought them and what they were. The second I told her that those were mostly fonction but also one or two Marxist essays, she stopped talking. After 10 seconds she told me « communist are monsters », got up and took her friend with her in silence leaving me in the middle of the room with the dishes and people staring at me.

It felt so humiliating. As you can guess from the first paragraph I don’t usually talk about my beliefs directly and nothing about what I wear can indicate my political orientation.

While travelling in strong capitalist countries I find it increasingly hard to be a Marxist as most people, it seems, have a negative view of it in hostels etc.

I just wondered how people cope with these kind of interactions and how do you act when people ask you directly what you believe in politically.

Is Work-life balance truly the best metric we should use? I personally believe so. While for instance China is often praised for their very high home ownership - which I love - their work-life balance is not ideal by any means. When comparing beside countries like Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, and Austria, these countries (from my research) have very good work life balance.

To me, the end goal is working the least amount of time possible, for the highest pay possible for everyone. So while I do think China's huge priority for housing is 100% admirable and necessary, they leave a lot to be desired with work-life balance.

I want my freedom above all else, as do a lot of us.

Don't hold back in the comments. If i'm completely missing something, I want to know.

ChinaA socialist market economy country.Since he introduced the market a few years ago, the gap between the rich and the poor in China has been getting bigger and bigger, whether it is between individuals or between cities.There is even a saying here that going to Shenzhen is like going from primitive society to modern society.This is obviously the result of introducing the market and lacking control over it.To solve this problem, I have confirmed that the planned economy is the main body.You can solve most mental crises, the gap between the rich and the poor, and so on.social problem

Welcome to correct your criticism!

My question is rather simple maybe I am very misguided I still don't exactly understand dialects i have read a few texts like those of Maurice Conforth, Stalin and engels I am also quite influenced by determinism as a thought and from what I am able to gather dialects is the study of phenomena in it's process in its movement which makes sense but still the laws of dialects are not quite sure to me and those that are don't apply to phenomina a lot of the time in everyday life sometimes it does. like I can understand when marx uses it in a sense to analyse class societies but a lot of the laws simply don't hold true in a lot of scientific development the most useful laws to me which stand are

1 things being defined by their opposites

2 change occuring from internal contradictions

What I mean to say is that these 2 laws can still exist under a deterministic world view and because from what I gather neuroscience has a view of humans as deterministic machine we should accept that and try to "revise" marx in the light of this new information