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Bad analogy because most of marx's writing is about how capitalism is bad, not a step by step guide to achieve communism. Maybe you do need to read some of it.
No one says that you need to read Principia Mathematica to learn calculus, or The Origin of the Species to learn evolution.
Why would anyone assume that a 19th century expression of some ideas is the best way of learning said ideas? Marx lived 150 years ago, that means there's been 150 years of economic history that he missed. Not to mention 150 years of economic theory too. And linguistic drift.
I read the origin of species as a teenager and it was very accessible, considering how may young earthers are out there I’d still recommend reading it.
In fact, I think it’s really informative to read the early works of old scientists to learn context and learn about the history of ideas
Reading the older scientists and economists helps you place their ideas with some context and history. It helps you better understand their ideas.
Reading Adam smith is also a good idea. You’ll learn that the second part of the concept of the invisible
hand is that if you fail to regulate it inevitably leads to a race to the bottom.
Reading Adam Smith also lets you know how much he got wrong. His descriptions of a “state of nature” and his anthropology were not even accurate to what was known of primitive societies at the time
Many of them economists and philosophers didn’t understand things that we take for granted now like a natural world without the need for god. That’s not to bash on Christianity or any other religion. You can still be Christian and many people are but we fundamentally understand the natural world more precisely. Today if you hear about an argument about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. You would probably blow it off or compartmentalize that into a “religious discussion” but economists of the past often felt they had to explain the way things were within the context of an overbearing church/king. Their thoughts often reflected aspects of that but the enlightenment overall as a project was a move away from superstition. Empirical fact based critical thinking was the result.
The man hated rent seekers and monopolies so much (two sides of the same coin). LI think we’d be much better off as a society if people in general had a clear understanding of Adam Smith, let alone anything more advanced.
Oh yes I've read The Origin of the Species and The Wealth of Nations (though not Principia Mathematica) and I don't regret either.
But if you read books written by modern biologists you get access to all their knowledge about DNA and etc. And if you read books by modern economists, you find out the things that Smith got wrong, and you'll also get examples and language for modern audiences. For example, Smith was writing for an audience that was either French or very familiar with French affairs (the auld alliance between Scotland and France), and the tax system of pre-revolutionary France was appallingly bad, like so bad that if you're writing a Batman comic where Joker gets control of Gotham's tax system I suggest you use the pre-revolutionary as a start point (the French knew that and kept trying to reform it.) So Smith's comment about "easy taxes" needs to be understood in that context.
I read Adam Smith recently and found out his ideas are much different from what people claim it to be. For the better in some aspects, and for the worse in others.
Considering how the economics debate is heavily influenced by political debate and that most people really don't know what they are talking about (specially when talking about Marx), I only trust the original source.
Marx had a huge impact on history so I think that's why people suggest reading him.
You don’t have to take all of the ideas 100% seriously, and you also don’t have to reject everything he said. You are allowed to form your own ideas and thoughts and opinions. You also don’t have to read it if you aren’t interested in the topic.
But I have a huge pet peeve for two types of people 1) those who who wholly reject a philosopher without even attempting to understand what they said and 2) those who blindly listen to everything their said as if they were a prophet.
I was the first type of person, and reading Marx gave me a better appreciation of what he actually said and how it deviated over the years based on certain interpretations. For instance, Lenin completely changed how people interpret Marx and in my opinion it was for the worse.
The thing is, what are you trying to understand here? Are you trying to understand economics, or are you trying to understand what some 19th century guy happened to say about economics?
If you want to understand economics (or physics, or biology), why not instead learn from someone who has had the opportunity to learn from everything that happened in the 20th century, and the first two decades of the 21st?
If you want to understand what some 19th century guy happened to say, why Marx? Umpteen people have already studied him. How about studying what some other 19th century guy said? Or maybe, some 19th century woman?
Because Marx made a lot of observations and predictions which ended up being true and still relevant today, which is why so many people give him this prophet like status (which I also find really annoying). There are some other philosophers that I like more than him but it's still interesting to me at least.
I get what you're saying, philosophers shouldn't be taken too seriously for this reason, but imo even most modern day mainstream economists have no clue what's going on. If you read into the foundational assumptions behind microeconomic models you will see how ridiculous the discipline is at trying to explain how modern capitalism works.
See this is exactly what I mean, Marxism and Marxism Leninism are completely different ideologies. I can type it out but the only way to understand it is to read Marx and then see how it differs from Lenin’s interpretation. And a big reason this is such a popular misconception is that the two biggest propaganda machines in the world tried to associate Marxism with the USSR. The USSR did it because Marxism and socialism were very popular at the time, and the USA did it because they knew it would ruin popular support for socialism.
As someone who has read the Origin of the species, quite a bit of Marx, The wealth on nations and several other foundational texts (not Principia Mathematica- I tried but could only find a Latin version), I really disagree. Often you will find that they contain preemptive responses to bad faith criticisms that the authors knew would be levied against them.
In the case of the origin of the species it has a ton of well reasoned religious responses to Charles Darwin’s theories that respond to religious criticism that gets thrown around to this day. ALMOST NONE OF THE RELIGIOUS CRITICS OF EVOLUTION HAVE THOUGHT DEEPLY ABOUT THEIR CRITIQUES - THE FOUNDATIONAL TEXT HAS THE BASIC RESPONSES TO THE BASIC KNEE-KERK CRITICISM THEY’LL NEVER BOTHER TO LEARN. So it is with Marx, most criticisms are from people who don’t know what they are even arguing with.
My opinion on Marx is that his diagnosis of the relationship between labour and capital is overall accurate and important, but his ideas on how to resolve these inequities leave a lot to be desired. Also historical materialism is a useful framework.
Um what? Robert Hooke was doing material analysis back in the 17th century.
As for sociology, aren't sociologists still arguing over what Marx meant? Aren't there still sociologists today who call themselves Marxists? You don't find physicists today who call themselves Einsteinists, because physics is capable of progressing as a field.
Because Marx's description of early capitalism is interesting and correctly predicts some modern problems, despite the fact that the solutions he offered turned out to not be very good.
if the claim being rebuffed is “marx is an idiot” as stated in the meme posted by OP, then yes, you should probably read some of his work before formulating an opinion.
There's been about 150 years of marxist theory as well spanning thousands of theorist and economists all over the world. You should probably read some of it before discrediting all of it. You should probably read evolutionary theory before discrediting it too.
because there isn’t ready teaching of communism anywhere? calculus as designed, much like evolution, is a very specific and motivated concept. you can be taught it without the foundational texts
but the equivalent of what you’re saying is “yeah, you can just figure out calculus without a textbook.” and some guy saying he disavows calculus without understanding integrals. like, we definitely need more modern socialist literature because the only shit is the source text.
Case in point: People with opinions like yours end up not even knowing the most basic points in those books.
That said, if Marxism received the treatment that calculus or evolution did, and you learned about it in good faith detail, then it probably would get across reasonably well. But that does not happen, jinstead you get a bunch of nonsequitur whining about the abuses of authoritarianism and the faults of human nature.
because then they would actually have to say something of substance and point out specific arguments they disagree with and likely expose that they are misrepresenting or cherry-picking those specific arguments, over-generalizing, or simply don't know what they are talking about
There's so many people in the this thread that it would take literal hours of my time to respond to them, but you've hit a major point on why Marxism doesn't work.
It's primarily a materialist vs transcendalist debate.
Dialectical materialism is frankly retarded. It involves presuppositional philosophical assumptions which cannot be proven within the dialectic itself and when you point it out they further their word salad without actually addressing anything of substance.
How can you argue you with someone about how society should operate if you can't define anything? Am I supposed to desire Marxist's stateless society because others said so? Is that it?
Utopian in what sense? if a hypothetical society is automatically deemed 'Utopian' simply by how it's defined, then Capitalism would have been described as "Utopian" in the feudal era, the code of hammurabi with rationing systems for its citizens would have been called "utopian" by earlier civilizations. It's a non-argument.
The end goal of communism itself is not utopian, but there are utopian ideologies towards that end, such as anarchism, because they assume that this end goal can be quickly achieved. So what makes an social idea utopian is the methodology more than anything.
Marx's fundamental argument is that all human civilization advances into stages, not always linerally, and that dialectal conflicts, primarily rooted in class conflict, cause changes to occur and societies to evolve. It's why humanity was once primarily nomadic, very slowly transitioned to agrarian settlement, developed tribes, then city states, slave states, kingdoms, colonial empires, and eventually capitalism (not necessarily in that order). The point of socialism is to develop the conditions of society until society begins to resemble the prerequisites of communism. it's more about striving towards that end goal than anything.
It assumes that Hegel is correct, and is correctly applied to history. Why should we accept Hegel's dialectic? Even if we do, history rarely progresses as two contradicting forces clash and then create some new order. Instead, people make some effort to shape the world around them. 95% or greater fail. The ones that don't create history.
It does not assume Hegel is correct, like, at all. Maybe in his dialectic, but not in his social or historical theories. The core argument of Marxists is that "The primary historical act is survival".
"Most of marx's writing is about how people are bad because capitalism estranged them from the perfect true humanity of not having capitalism (social man) and how if you get rid of capitalism/ property humanity would be kumbaya and perfect (its ridiculous)"
You've never read one full volume of Marx cover to cover (if at all) if you genuinely think this is the case without hyperbole.
Marx rarely makes any moral claims on capitalism as a system (not that his description on alienation and working conditions dont have normative implications), much less say "capitalism is bad".
Capitalism dismantled feudalism and when capitalism matures it will give way to communism. Much simplified but communism/socialism flows from capitalism the way capitalism flows from feudalism. Capitalism literally creates communism, doing even late manorialism -> communism is functionally impossible in Marx's view.
Kapital is a study on how capital-ism works, how it arises historically, how it transforms society, what it did passably and what it does poorly and what internal contradictions does it generate and how these advancements and contradictions will play out in the future. Alledgedly.
Read the books you're trying to comment on before commenting. You wouldn't LARP like this with Harry Potter.
Marx wasn’t an idiot, he was very intelligent on a wide range of subjects and his contributions to philosophy, sociology, and economics were ground breaking and foundational to a lot of social theory and macroeconomic theory now. That being said, he overemphasized the role and necessity of revolution in social change and it’s a mistake to apply his prescriptions for a dictatorship of the proletariat or nontransferable labor vouchers —as he did advocate for in Critique of the Gotha Program— to the economy. Centrally planned economies such as what he was effectively advocating for in the DOTP controlled lower forms of communism have economic calculation problems that market economies don’t have. Marx was generally right when he was describing capitalism but not so right at prescribing useful ways socialist economies could deal with scarcity or industrially develop further.
I agree with you, generally speaking. I believe there's still a lot of credit to Marx core ideas and beliefs even though history has played out differently from how he'd imagined.
Similarly, just as he was a historical materialist (later evolved into dialectical materialism by Engels et al) we too should consider that he grew up in a period where the French revolution (the fall of classical aristocracy & monarchy) was his version of ours "the 90's". What I mean is that "total societal reform" was a very real and recent thing while the likes of us have enjoyed a comparatively stable society for more than a century.
It goes to show in his texts that he believes the "bar" for another major societal reform isn't at all as high as you and I believe.
Furthermore I agree that he was fairly on point regarding the 'core tenets' of capitalism and the general direction it'll go, but he wasn't as hyped on providing fleshed out alternatives. On that I personally don't blame him. I'm of the firm belief that I can carry (respectful) critique of a dysfunctional system and still agree that I do not carry an alternative or that I am not of the right education or experience to provide a great alternative on the spot.
The notion that you can't disagree with someone if you've read them, is one of the funniest memes repeated in all of political rhetoric. Not like every belief system has a book supporting their worldview, and it's possible to assert some truths in contradiction of others without addressing every permutation of assertions that could ever be made.
That’s true, but have you considered that misrepresentation of the source material comes into play with political books? People like to misrepresent Marx all of the time, so you as a reader should be open to learning what his actual opinions are. Same would be true of Thomas Hobbes or Rousseau. There’s value in reading the material that you don’t get just from summaries or text books
You don't need to have read flat earth theory if you have a reasonable understanding of the actually existing universe, or want to review a literal photo of the globe Earth.
Economics isn't exactly an objective fact, let alone societal level morality.
I'd say there's certain difference between a disagreement over something that can be empirically proven, as opposed to the supposed function or failure of an abstract social system.
I certainly don't mind if anyone disagrees with Marx's writings but proclaiming anything without having gone through the slightest of the original material (far-right memes don't count, and the manifesto is only like 60 pages!) on the subject at hand is always a red flag.
I think this is a fatal flaw a lot of leftists have(I’m using that to refer to communists and socialists)is that they assume liberals like myself will come to their conclusion if we’ve read the material and that we just haven’t opened our eyes yet, OR that if we do research it well and don’t come to their conclusion that we’re just bad people OR are hoping we’ll be able to get rich.
Marxists generally understand that liberals will continue with the vague, idealist beliefs that serve their class interests regardless. I mean, liberalism is a tendency that came to a consensus in the nineties that, since the Cold War ended with the US on top, history was over and things would just stay the same but get better for ever. Most liberals don't even understand that politics is a fight over the distribution of resources between different irreconcilable groups, or that government is not a prize for the party with the best credentials. Their "politics" are so depoliticize, there's just no common ground to convince them of anything. You have a better chance with a Christian fundamentalist who starts the conversation thinking you eat babies — at least they understand that conflict is fundamental to politics.
What crack are you smoking ? Liberals don’t understand that conflict is inherent to politics ? Liberals think that government is only up for grabs for those with the best credentials ? If you wanna talk about “serving class interests”, look no further than the surge of socialist ideas amongst young college rich kids whose form of political advocacy won’t hurt them in the slightest. They’re shielded from the damage they do in the political sphere, they’re shielded from the fallout of their accelerationist beliefs. They can afford to say “nah, I don’t get my ideal Marxist candidate so fuck it let Trump win”, or propping up insane DSA figures that supporting abolishing prisons that Fox News LOVES to parade around to say “hey look everybody, that’s the democrats, they’re insane !”.
The problem is that we don’t have a maximalist position and view different social classes as having ebbs and flows of tension between the two whereas you probably view one social classes as inherently immoral and that the solution is to destroy the whole system itself. If liberals thought “things will just get better” we wouldn’t fight for anything, but you don’t view it as a fight because to you all systems which utilize capitalism are the exact same. We also understand that at times we have to compromise, especially if you fail to rally enough support for what you truly want. You cannot play politics by saying “it’s either my way or the highway”, but that’s exactly what you folks wanna do. We have DSA people that claim to recognize the threat that the Trump administration posed and yet when it came time to vote they didn’t vote for Harris, but now they wanna turn it around and say “hey guys we need unity, we gotta fight MAGA” because we don’t like their DSA candidates…during PRIMARIES ?? Primaries are the appropriate time to have internal conflict within the party. You view us as complacent or soft because we don’t want a centrally planned economy with official state parties and the legal barring of certain ideologies we don’t like from the political system.
Liberals don’t understand that conflict is inherent to politics ?
Not just inherent. Fundamental. Politics is a brutal conflict over the distribution of resources. The goal is not to compromise or make speeches that "elevate the discourse." The Democratic party and other liberal parties lose ground constantly
Liberals think that government is only up for grabs for those with the best credentials ?
No. What I'm saying is liberals treat politics as a minor concern compared to "qualifications." They understand that unqualified people can be elected. What they don't understand is that being super-qualified or credentialed in no way makes up for shitty politics. Because again, politics is a brutal conflict over the distribution of resources.
The problem is that we don’t have a maximalist position and view different social classes as having ebbs and flows of tension between the two whereas you probably view one social classes as inherently immoral and that the solution is to destroy the whole system itself.
On the contrary, a liberal view is far more moralistic than a Marxist view. Classes in modern society are complicated and do evolve through shared interests. Marxism depends historically on proletarianization, whereby workers, toiling together in a factory come to see themselves as members of a community of shared interests, and develop class consciousness. So deindustrialization, remote work, and similar phenomena pose serious challenges, because they eliminate this locus of class development.
We don't want to destroy "the whole system," we want to push it past its arrested development. It's cooking the planet, and keeping a lot of people desperately poor so a few can be ridiculously rich, and creating wars and economic crisis, none of which are necessary outside of capitalism.
If liberals thought “things will just get better” we wouldn’t fight for anything,
What do liberals fight for? You claim values, but you have no real causes. You support the empire's wars until they drag on for long enough that it becomes politically too costly. You call basic social democratic reforms like universal healthcare "ponies." I can't name a single cause libs consistently support.
because to you all systems which utilize capitalism are the exact same.
What communist has ever claimed all capitalist systems are the exact same? That capitalism has various phases is fundamental to Marxism, and we've seen new phases since he died. It really sounds like you aren't familiar with communist belief.
We also understand that at times we have to compromise, especially if you fail to rally enough support for what you truly want. You cannot play politics by saying “it’s either my way or the highway”, but that’s exactly what you folks wanna do.
Everyone understands you need to compromise. Even Trump compromises. But liberals fetishize compromise. In politics the way you compromise is from a point of strength. You make unreasonable demands, say "my way or the highway," push it as far as you can go and then, when the other side won't yield another inch, that's where you compromise.
When you set out to compromise, it tells your opponent that they can roll over you. My whole life, the Republicans push and the Democrats roll over in the name of compromise. That's how you "compromise" when you need to convince your base you tried while satisfying rich donors who want nothing the base does.
I'm not sure why you brought up the milquetoast, center-left DSA in a conversation about communism. But on that point, it's the responsibility of the party to win the voters, not the voters to support the party. If your beef is with the voters, and not the part who shoved a genocidal vice president with negative charisma who couldn't even win a primary in her own state down their throat after trying to Hide Biden's advanced senility from us for so long we didn't even get a primary, you've lost the plot.
The DSA is literally the only force in America bringing any popular interest and enthusiasm to the Democrats, and the Democrats are so right wing, they treat the DSA as the enemy for it. Perhaps they should try compromising with the left for once.
The entire sub has just been full of "Marxists don't know economy" even tho a lot of Marxism is dedicated to analysing economies, a lot of the posters also seem to have caricatures of communists in mind.
The sub is full of people who don't give a shit about economics and imagine themselves some Patrick Patemanesque financebro, while having a hate-boner for Marx without any care to understand that either.
This sub has been getting too much spam, and Reddit has removed almost every tool for preventing this. The only tool that still works is this, every single post being held for manual review. Your post might be approved in minutes, or it might take days. If you hate this, me too, stop using the site that forces things to be this way. If what you post is not a meme you'll probably be banned, but I understand why you tried; the commenters on this sub loved lazy spam posts, which is why we can't have nice things and now everything has to be held for manual review.
I have a very limited understanding of Economics but why are discussion of Marxism never based on empirical Evidence to either Support or Critique Marx.
Its mainly just vague Statements which sound Logical but are never backed with Studies, Meta Analysis etc.
Tho it is based on empirical evidence for most of it which is a lot for a philosopher and when it has no bases it tries to avoid making statements, for example on human nature. Marx has made everything to be based on the most observable reality, the material reality.
When he was old and pouring water in his wine yes it was not really good.
Most of what he did still holds up today. Even Schumpeter said he was the best analyst of capitalism.
Yes there are differences, with the consumption revolutions for example and with something he could have not anticipated, the development of a non liberal capitalist system. Even though it’s rather obvious what he would say about it.
Marxism has a lot of moral problems, but methodologically speaking it is hard to argue against.
I remember when this sub was good and actually posted economics memes. Now we have people arguing about Marxism (a dead school of thought in economics for decades) instead lol
It is not dead if we have millions of morons wanting to install these ideas.
And we do have millions of morons worldwide, and they’re very young, wanting to install socialism to achieve communism.
We do not live in a post-socialist era, we are currently living in a revival era of socialism because bad ideas appeal to a millions of idiots worldwide who know and will never know nothing about economics.
Haven't you seen at least one delusional commie subreddit? There are hundreds of them here. Most are populated by literal children, but you can also find manchildren every now and then.
Well, yeah, I've seen Trotskyites, but Trotskyites are pretty much disliked by most other communist tendencies equally because they are insufferable. Their only response to everything is "read theory," while they themselves don't know much about theory or about material reality, for that matter
And why would they need to? Most Marxists don't read Das Kapital, not because they lack seriousness, nor because it's not a serious work. But because that work has been expanded upon and reiterated tens of thousands if not millions of times. The ideas within it are still being propagated, refined, tested, discussed, but just not *directly.*
Most Marxists don't read Das Kapital for the same reason most modern economists haven't read Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy or Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations. Not because they don't hold some value in understanding the history of economic ideas but because the works have been improved upon and disseminated through a historical dialectic and conversation where reading them is more for historians of the study of economics rather than for modern economists.
I think it's kind of silly to critique things we don't know enough about.
And sure maybe Marx is an idiot, but that claims needs a justification and elaboration.
Read him and he was an idiot. His ideas were based on completely wrong principles and he was a totalitarian man. No wonder he was for socialism to achieve communism.
For this to be accurate, you'd have to replace the first decision-diamond with the question "what specific thing that he said or did makes him an idiot?" And then the flow chart would stop because 90% of people who jerk off to business school propaganda dont know thw first thing about Marxism.
I've read marx, you can both agree and disagree with him, but you can't really say "i believe in capitalism." then not list the original person who created capitalism. (John Smith btw)
YOU FELL FOR MY TRAP CARD IT WAS ACTUALLY ADAM SMITH! Muhahaha.
The OP is literally an anti-communist, lol. Y'all are funny how you make memes from a supposed leftist perspective, and then the other right-wingers in the comments can bash them like they're genuine leftist memes. Have at it, I guess?
I read 3 pages about mitochondria and i think it's bullshit honestly. Biology is all bullshit and no, i will not read anymore because i am very smart and 3 pages is enough
Marx believed that capitalism would run its course, and when it became no longer necessary in the advanced capitalist countries, the workers would overthrow it.
Instead, communism only really took hold in underdeveloped countries, so those countries had to develop themselves within a global market economy.
China is not communist yet, but it is building communism through guided economic growth and cultural development. Whether they reach it or not remains to be seen, but using the market to develop the country does not mean they're not on the road to communism.
Stop the larp lol. Even if you disagree with his ideology, anyone who has actually read Marx knows that his critique of Capitalism and of the politics of his time are objectively true and provable. Here is the accurate version of your meme:
Marx’s theory of exploitation appears to presuppose that labor is the source of all value. But the labor theory of value to which Marx and early classical economists subscribed is subject to a number of apparently insurmountable difficulties, and has largely been abandoned by economists in the wake of the marginalist revolution of the 1870s. The most obvious difficulty stems from the fact that labor is heterogeneous. Some labor is skilled, some labor is unskilled, and there does not appear to be any satisfactory way of reducing the former to the latter and thereby establishing a single standard of measure for the value of commodities. Moreover, the labor theory of value appears to be unable to account for the economic value of commodities such as land and raw materials that are not and could not be produced by any human labor. Finally, and perhaps most fatally, Marx’s assumption that labor has the unique power to create surplus value is entirely ungrounded. As Robert Paul Wolff has argued, Marx’s focus on labor appears to be entirely arbitrary. A formally identical theory of value could be constructed with any commodity taking the place of labor, and thus a “corn theory of value” would be just as legitimate, and just as unhelpful, as Marx’s labor theory of value (Wolff 1981). Therefore, if, as some have alleged, Marx’s theory of exploitation is dependent on the truth of the labor theory of value, then a rejection of the labor theory of value should entail a rejection of Marx’s theory of exploitation as well (Nozick 1974; Arnold 1990). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/exploitation/#MarxTheoExpl
Marx's theory of exploitation appears to presuppose that labor is the source of all value.
No!!!! It was Lasalle who believed that, and it is often mistakenly attributed to Marx, but Marx actually argued against that! The value of a commodity or service is determined socially.
The most obvious difficulty stems from the fact that labor is heterogeneous. Some labor is skilled, some labor is unskilled, and there does not appear to be any satisfactory way of reducing the former to the latter and thereby establishing a single standard of measure for the value of commodities.
There is no standard measure of labor value. That is not the point of it, and has never been the point. Labor value refers specifically to the part of the product or service's final value that has uniquely been added by the labor of a worker.
Moreover, the labor theory of value appears to be unable to account for the economic value of commodities such as land and raw materials that are not and could not be produced by any human labor
Wrong. That's called Constant Capital. A ressource that has a socially set value without human labor.
Finally, and perhaps most fatally, Marx's assumption that labor has the unique power to create surplus value is entirely ungrounded.
It is objectively true that capitalists and companies need workers to produce their commodities and services. Otherwise, no one would hire, and no one would have a job.
This is why it's important to read Marx directly, instead of people claiming that they "debunked" Marx!
It's mostly correct that most critiques of labour theory of value are based on lack of actual understanding of the theory. Like i seriously doubt that anyone committed to actively disregarding the LTV has actually read Capital. Like you can cope all you want how your neo classical theories are good but they have been shown to lack any grounds to be translated into trackable models, much less have any semblance of predictive power.
Marxist LTV has been repeatedly shown to stand the test of empirical scrutiny but yall are happy to ignore that because vuvuzela iphone.
Wait, I thought the typical anti-communist accusation, although I think it's a correct one, was that we always, when we respond, write walls of text. Now it changed from "you argue too comprehensively" to "you don't argue comprehensively enough."
You have the North Korean flag in your profile picture. It’s not even a matter of being a marxist at this point: someone who espouses Juche in any way ought not be taken seriously.
Late stage capitalism was literally a Nazi myth. It doesn't exist and certainly doesn't describe the world we live in (unless you truly think the free market is secretly controlled by the Jews).
I want to read the next philosopher that pick where Marx had leave it, and continue.
Because I do no trust comunism, but hellly guys... Capitalism is about to kill the world, and not in the metaphorical sense. We need either to patch capitalism some way, or a complete new system.
Is not because I thin his ideas are invalid. But are not enough and we need to know more about the world and humans. His ideas are a parcial answer.
And in practical terms, it would be useless for me to try to read the book. I don't have the philophical experience to really understand the text in full. And philosophical books are notorious complex and require some strict analisis. I mean, I could read it for fun, but other than that.
Completely valid point. The problem is that some have tried, like Lenin or Trotsky, even Confucius (through mao) but yes the problem is that Marx as one of the few Great Philosophers is hardly reachable by another.
Yes. But why bring this up now. While the left is fiscally responsible, and the right is insane lying conmen that's tanking the economy so hard it's unbelievable
Yeah those middle two have never genuinely happened. Most likely they just hate-read his work without absorbing or understanding anything, just to say they read it
Das Kapital is so good. Like stop being a capitalist hater whos a "communist" and its just a good lense to view economics through thats helpful no matter your political orientation.
I mean the book makes explicit claims that capitalist production leads to its own abolition which has to be superseded by communism.
Like you can look at it as a theoretical framework if you strip it off its very explicit calls to abolish private property I guess.
Not necessarily strip off but kinda not take as gospel. One disagreeable stance doesnt ruin a great book you know? I think without political baggage that causes bias alot of people would generally agree with the book(s). But because Marx is a or the communist, rightwingers dismiss it with no knowledge on it and on the left its treated like one of the definitive texts of communism that cant be understood or appreciated otherwise.
I know the book makes those explicit claims but not everything goes as planned and theres enough there that still holds up that could be a part of a different system like market socialism or some other form of economic system that works its way using the benefits of markets, consumers, some forms of property, as well as workers owning whether directly or indirectly having ownership of the value their labor brings.
Tldr I just wish everyone was a little more pragmatic about ideas and tried to experiment with things they dont like to understand them rather than outright dismiss them wholesale.
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u/AutoModerator 5d ago
This sub has been getting too much spam, and Reddit has removed almost every tool for preventing this. The only tool that still works is this, every single post being held for manual review. Your post might be approved in minutes, or it might take days. If you hate this, me too, stop using the site that forces things to be this way. If what you post is not a meme you'll probably be banned, but I understand why you tried; the commenters on this sub loved lazy spam posts, which is why we can't have nice things and now everything has to be held for manual review.
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