/lit/ - Literature

>>11724248
How bad did his ass smell?

ARISTOTLE BTFO

Show me exactly where he explains that.

>>11724248
No it is believing the dialectic can be applied to technological advancement

>>11724261
It was pretty clean because he pulled all of his theories through there

>>11724248
He has never read György Lukács, "History and Class Consciousness"

what a pleb

I wonder if any 4chan faggot has read even one of Marx's works or they're just being brainlets as per usual.

>>11724371
I read the manifesto once...

>>11724375
The 60 page edition?

>>11724407
I'll have you know it was the 200~ page penguin edition.

>>11724371
He makes a few interesting points and concepts but most of them are held back by the retardedness of his narrative of class and capitalism, he sours the rest of his ideas. There is no imminent revolution, history isn't defined by class struggle, communism is laughable utopian talk and this isn't even getting into the mental gymnastics the the neomarxists who who actually realized (unlike classical marxists) that his theories were flawed.

>>11724486
>I'm illiterate, therefore he's wrong

>>11724495
Fantastic rebuttal.

>>11724508
What exactly is there to rebuttal?
>his ideas are retarded and and he's wrong because because
>heh, debate me

>>11724514
I clearly said that his central ideas are completely wrong, such as class struggle as the history, or an imminent proletariat revolution. Do you deny he said this or that these are actually true?

>>11724475
Great, now read 5 more.
>>11724486
>makes arguments to counter Marxism that have been repeated millions of times
>doesn't actually prove that he's read any of his works

>>11724519
Class struggle? Absolutely. Revolution, whether imminent or at all? Debatable.

Race is a far bigger divide than class, although sheltered litboys will be triggered by this post.

>>11724532
So you're saying that Marx didn't believe that? I think you need to read more Marx instead of other Marxists who reconciled his views.

>>11724534
He seemed to be very adamant that the proletariat revolution was the natural outcome of class struggle. Marxist to this day say that it was supposed to happen, but capitalism some how stopped it, which I find utterly laughable.

>>11724532
>n-no, you have to read everything he wrote to understand him!
classic brainlet cope

>>11724539
This is a good example of why Marx was wrong about class, it is not a defining featue of history and man, nation, religion, ethnicity, culture make up a much more important part of identity for most people. Men die for their country, who dies for their class?

>>11724371
I consider myself a Marxist and I have only skimmed his wikipedia page. Deal with it

>>11724557
>He seemed to be very adamant that the proletariat revolution was the natural outcome of class struggle
Yes he was. Now tell me your credentials so I know I'm not wasting my time explaining myself.
Capital volumes 1 & 2 here.

>>11724588
kek

>>11724557
Where did I state that, brainlet? I said you provided arguments that I've heard before which leads me to believe you haven't actually read anything by him. I, personally, have read Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and some Russian Commies and some post-Russian Communism studies.
>>11724567
One read book is not nearly enough to understand something as complicated as a political ideology, retard.

>>11724631
You haven't read a single thing from him save for the manifesto, didn't you?

>>11724660
So your argument is guilt by association therefore the argument is is negated?

>>11724660
You don't have to read any of him to understand he made hypotheses about the future that turned out to be 100% false, and that he himself couldn't even expand upon what communism would look like in action

>>11724679
>you don't have to read any of his hypotheses to understand his hypotheses
Been nice talking to you, come back when you do read some.

read mcluhan DESU

>>11724673
Only in this case, where it's pretty obvious the person is just repeating arguments mulled over for years that I hear quite often when I discuss Communism with others who I know for a fact haven't read a book by Marx.
>>11724679
Yes, you do. Otherwise, you're just blindly stating things without actually knowing they're true. Without reading an entire body of work of his and understanding it, you have no right to discuss Marxism. And /pol/, or whatever 4chan board you're getting your facts from, is not an accurate source of information about anything, if you haven't learned that yet. So go read one book and then you can sound credible and disagree with his ideas.

>>11724362
>>11724371

>>11724557
>Marxist to this day say that it was supposed to happen, but capitalism some how stopped it, which I find utterly laughable.

But it literally did happen.

France 1871. Russia 1917. Germany 1918. Spain 1936.

Just because it ended up unable to organize internationally and defeat the combined forces of global capitalism doesn't mean it didn't happen.

>>11724752
one person give you an argument (class struggle is not the motor of history...) and you denied it because you listen this argument from hipsters in your block.
tell your fucking arguments, what insufferable cunt.
you are the reason anybody give a fuck for revolution this days.

>>11724371
I've literally read Capital Volume 1
He was a fucking retard

>>11725279
>one person give you an argument (class struggle is not the motor of history...)
This isn't an argument, it's a statement. A statement without any arguments.

>>11725325
history is multifaceted. history as class struggle is only a part of the multifaceted history. is enough argument or i should make a book?.

>>11725353
IIRC marx said something similar but said that class take precedence

>>11725455
Convenient. The individual and struggle between him and ohers is obviously the ground floor of history. Class is a superfluous secondary phenomena

>>11725462
yes, your POV isn't "convenient" at all, surely you deduced the primacy of the individual after a lot of research and didn't use it as a starting point

>>11725516
it's just the normal starting point, you have individual agents who have various relations to each other, the agents are the building blocks of society and history

>>11725516
Its literally the primary origin of all experience. What fucking research do you need to see from inside your own fucking head. Holyshit

>>11725462
That is not a convincing dismissal. You can say the same thing for all other distinctions as well

>>11724666
I bet he doesn't read anything beside wikipedia articles about topics he hear in the youtube cult he is in.

I love attributing Marx' words about how people are meant to work and find meaning in work and that industrial capitalism has removed the worker from their work and alienated them to people like Rand and watching idiots say that it's absolutely 100% correct

>>11725455
>IIRC marx said something similar but said that class take precedence
if he is saying all others multifaceted parts of history are under the umbrella of "class struggle". no, definitely hes not saying something similar.

>>11725613
would libertarians even disagree with that just on principle? They would disagree about how to solve it, or if it can be solved, but i think most of them understand the idea of being alienated, and feeling disconnected from what youre doing.

>>11725620
There's a general terrified feeling and complete stigma with giving Marx even an inch of respect amongst the right even though loads of his work isn't even left or right and is mostly just calling out what he's observing and happening to workers in industrial capitalism

>>11725629
i really dont like Marx but I understand that he was a genius and had lots of valuable things to say.

>In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.
Everything that Marx ever said was wrong.

>>11724375
late marx is pure cringe

>>11725526
>>11725536
it's reductive nonsense, like it or not you're not just an individual

>>11725974
that's not the point man, of course we have relations to other things, it's just that it makes sense to think of things in terms of the basic units, and for society the units are individuals

for the large scale processes a kind of thermodynamics emerge, where you can't predict the behavior of the inividual unit, but patterns emerge. Marxist class analysis is one such pattern, but there are others, and the basic unit remains the individual

>>11724720
>>11724752
Demonstrably false. It is easy to understand why some mathematical theorems and formulas work the way they do; confirming so in a formal proof is a much, much more rigorous process that goes above and beyond just understanding that it is true.

The same is true of events in history: someone said something would happen, and it didn't. You don't need to look at the proof (the source material) to understand that.

Do you even think through what you type before you send it?

>>11724248
Culture and philosophy do influence people. Marx never says that it's class and economics alone. But culture / philosophy / ideology have a dialectic relationship with the class nature of society. It's the base vs superstructure. Economics affects culture, and likewise culture has an affect on economics. It makes perfect sense. Or would you rather ignore class altogether and take the brainlet approach of "muh culture" without seriously analyzing the origin and development of culture in a material, scientific way?

>>11724248
>lol dude nuffin but class and economics exist
But this is true.

Base forms the superstructure, nigga.

I wouldn't call history a class "struggle". I'd say, for the most part, the masses have been kept quiet and content by the means of entertainment and messages of hope, and they will practically rise up against the upper classes and actually rule themselves. They cannot complain about anything if they don't know they can speak out for themselves.
For the most part, I think Marx underestimates ideology's value as a way of instilling values (most importantly morality) and of tying people together. Likewise, I'd say LVT ignores how scarcity, consumption trends, and commodity fetishism can inflate the fuck out of the value of certain commodities.
I wouldn't say Marx is wrong as much as I'd say his work is in need of revisions, expansions, and improvements.

>>11724248
>study economics intensely for most of your life
>decide everything is economics

wow.. a True Wise Genius of His Times

>>11725974
>you're not just an individual

In the first place I am. That's meant to be the whole point of dialectics. There's a reason Hegel didn't start with classes but with the encounter with the Other

>>11726262
>>11726279
>if we say "base and superstructure" enough times, it will give off the impression we have workable theory

>>11726361
Or maybe if you would only bother to read deeper into the theory, you wouldn't have to rely on the simplified summaries of online anons. All I can say is that it's up to you to read up on the theory and decide for yourself its validity. No one can do the thinking for you. See for yourself if it's just repetition or if it's a workable theory.

>>11726320
read the 18th brumaire

>>11726326
>>study economics intensely for most of your life
>still misunderstand value on first 2 pages of magnum opus

>>11726396
How can there be a super structure post post-structuralism

Memes aside, there is seriously no better alternative than historical materialism. That's why all serious academic works are now from the standpoint of materialism, and why Marx is considered one of the founders of anthropology as a field.
Hating marx is like a kid hating Christianity because his parents are Christian. No real argument other than contrarian hatred.

>>11726432
>nothing better than historical materialism
Wew sure doesn't sound like dogma!

>>11726434
Feel free to offer an example of an alternative sweetie

>>11726438
You think nothing is better but you can't think of alternatives?

>>11724248
>lol dude nuffin but [redacted] economics exist[s]
true

>>11726441
You are not offering any. Do not reply with any more sophism.
You are not contributing anything at all with these non-posts.

>>11724248
He was a product of his times unfortunately, capitalists are brainlets, and commies/facists are just retardation of a different flavor. I hate getting fucked in the ass by economic group A, lets get fucked in the mouth by political group B

>>11726438
sure, pretty much anything. Spenglerian view of race formation, growth, and death for one. Race used here in the sociological rather than biological sense. Class, in the material sense, only becomes hyper meaningful when looked at through material analysis. Ironically, marxist analysis helps achieve the very conditions it seeks to avoid by making all alternative sources of power (religious authority, nobility) seem meaningless to the public, and therefore meaningless in actual practice.

>>11726453
I'm not the guy you replied to originally. I interjected when you claimed your system to have no better alternative, then left it to another to suggest those alternatives. As though you hadnt considered your own claim to begin with.

>>11726453
Imagine that one day a culture arises that judges class based on spiritual state. Those who are forced to sin are considered lower class, those who remain pure are the elite. What other way is there to look at history they ask? There are no other alternatives

I threw you this bone, but Jesus christ you're a fucking retard and your posts deserve nothing but ad hominem

>>11726471
Race is constructed by class through man's access to resources, and exertion of power by privileged classes within that culture. Spengler's approach is almost nonsensical and it does not in any sense stand up on its own as a form of analysis or method, it is quite silly to say that he is a viable alternative to materialism.

>>11726496
So a person's thinking is framed by their immediate position with respect to resources? Wow, it's almost like something Marx said.

>>11724248
You being retarded is a product of (no)class.

>>11726515
if you want to abstract resources that far, sure, but resources are absolutely not restricted to material.

>>11726510
It's nonsensical to you because you're trying to jam it into your preconception of history through material analysis.

>>11724319
But also reduces the human agent to a mechanistic bystander, which even if you accept metaphysical materialism is stupid because Marx was working with incredibly rudimentary anthropological research as well as a psychological field that would go on to celebrate Freud several decades later. Marx ultimately makes the same mistake as the liberals in that he presumes we operate rationally with regards to economic enrichment (provided we have attained class consciousness), but we aren't built that way.

>>11725974
We used to be primarily family. Leftists saw this as evil and oppose it to this day, and capitalists saw it as a reason for their employees to demand higher wages.

>>11726432
>stealing credit from Feuerbach

>>11725206
>karl marx says world revolution happens
>a few happen most of which fail
>the few places it did happen end up collapsing or abandoning it entirely

And none of these would have even happen if Marx didn't "predict" it.

>>11725206
>Just because it ended up unable to organize internationally and defeat the combined forces of global capitalism doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Yeah its not because life in all those places became absolute garbage

class is nerd bullshit, the only real struggle in all of history is between aryans and non-whites

>>11726781
ah yes, workers weren't actually exploited, they were just brainwashed into believing that they spend most of their days doing dangerous work and living in absolute poverty

>>11726822
What does that have to do with the fact that no communist/workers revolutions occurred until after the Communist Manifesto was published? Communists purport that the revolution is a natural phenomenon that is DESTINED to happen yet it never it never materialized in human history until it was articulated in his manifesto, after which the only revolutions that were attempted were all based on his ideas. It's pretty clear that the communist narrative of inevitability is little more than wishful thinking. There is no natural law which condemns capitalism or hierarchical oppression to eventual decline or replacement by some other system. Such a linear view of history shows both ignorance and confirmation bias.

>>11726822
>implying hierarchy and exploitation is bad
>implying it is avoidable
>implying the workers cared if they were exploited as long as they had enough food and decent working conditions

>>11726834
>What does that have to do with the fact that no communist/workers revolutions occurred until after the Communist Manifesto was published?
The Paris Commune

>>11726845
>the workers cared if they were exploited as long as they had enough food and decent working conditions
Considering that even labor unions and parties sprung up in countries that didn’t undergo revolution, it seems like they do care

>>11726845
>implying hierarchy and exploitation are the same thing
>implying their poverty wasn't artificial thus avoidable
>implying workers had any of these

>>11726834
is this bait or you really this historically illiterate? revolutions and slave/peasent uprisings certainly did occure before Marx holy shit

>>11724569
Ever heard of civil wars?

>>11726870
>as long as they had enough food and decent working conditions

Try and keep up old man.

>>11726874
>>implying hierarchy and exploitation are the same thing

They both existed and continue to exist, why would you argue against this tard?

>implying their poverty wasn't artificial thus avoidable

Poverty is the natural state of the world, the industrial revolution clashed with poverty and created a horrible system, yet it was a needed phase to attempt to overcome poverty.

>>11726881
Yes and? Your greentext is taking what is often a compromise or acquiescence to be acceptance.

>>11726885
>They both existed and continue to exist, why would you argue against this tard?
>why would you argue against being taken advantage of

>Poverty is the natural state of the world, the industrial revolution clashed with poverty and created a horrible system, yet it was a needed phase to attempt to overcome poverty.
poverty certainly wasn't the state of the ones exploiting the very people that produced their shit.
maybe that's why workers revolted, because they wanted to benefit from the very things they themselves made?

>hurr durr only economy matters
read foucault brainlets

>>11724375
>not Kapital

>>11728433
read marx brainlet
base and superstructure

>>11728433
You mean Nietzsche. Why would you read the poorer power dynamics analyst when you can read Nietzsche?

>>11724371
just because a person can think for a long time and express themselves eloquently, doesn't mean that the ideas they think on have any merit or value. I can philosophize on the relationship between bread and menstruation but the outcome will always be stupid nonsense, much in the same way the vast majority of marx's ideas and arguments ended up being stupid and nonsensical

>>11725288
Me too.
Explain why he was a retard, I can follow.

>>11724475
Yeah which is 3/5 forewords by other faggots and 1/5 marx and his shit and 1/5 title blank pages etc

it's sad how internet retards will rabidly repeat their hick parents' regurgitations of their hick government's propaganda about "communism" as if they were actual criticisms of marxism, yet turn around and literally praise mein kampf, evola and other such garbage.

it's sad because it shows a trend that encompasses and supersedes 'internet retards', a wider trend of society towards fascism and barbarism

>>11726752
Feuerbach's materialism is literally the thing that Marx used as a punching bag when expounding on his own historical materialism.

>>11726636
>reduces the human agent to a mechanistic bystander

>" The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.

Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity. Hence, in The Essence of Christianity, he regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and fixed only in its dirty-judaical manifestation. Hence he does not grasp the significance of “revolutionary”, of “practical-critical”, activity. "
-Marx

>>11726636
>reduces the human agent to a mechanistic bystander

>"The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.
>Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity. Hence, in The Essence of Christianity, he regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and fixed only in its dirty-judaical manifestation. Hence he does not grasp the significance of “revolutionary”, of “practical-critical”, activity."
-Marx

>>11726695
>be leftist
>don't oppose the family
I'm confused now, am I actually a conservative?

>>11730673
This only reinforces what the other anon said. Marx's materialism is totalizing. See >>11725808

>>11730779
You're being disingenuous. I know you're aware of Engels's work.

>>11730813
how does this address anything of what you think you are addressing?

the claim was that hm makes the human agent "a mechanistic bystander", the reply is that this is exactly the opposite of what hm does, and now the claim turns into hm being "totalizing" (which has to do with humans being bystanders how?) and a quote from the manifesto with no commentary, as if it was supposed to show anything other than your misinterpretation of it

>>11730825
>I know you're aware of Engels's work
ok, I thought I've only read two or three essays and excerpts by Marx a year ago, but I guess I actually have a doctorate in marxism or something

>>11730858
If you don't know what you're defending, then don't defend it.

>>11724248
Yes, it is

>>11730833
Marx criticizes Feuerbach of possessing a crypto-idealism in his conception of sense perception. As such, Marx's rebuttal to this position is totalizing. This necessitates that the subject possesses no agency (as per the quoted post), and therefore must have a mechanistic relationship with social/material conditions.

>>11730880
I'm not defending anything. (There was no attack in the first place.) I'm just saying that I always thought that I was a leftist but according to your definition I'm not one, that confuses me.

>>11730999
There is a strong leftist tradition of hostile opposition to the nuclear family.

>>11731042
Never really witnessed that, honestly. Of the few Marx essays that I've read one was explaining how important and natural the relationship of men and women is, so there's that.

>>11731122
Ok, but you should recognize that the other anon's post was in recognition of a trend rather than an absolute statement.

>>11731131
>you should recognize that the other anon's post was in recognition of a trend rather than an absolute statement
Well, unlike you, I can't read minds and deduce how much communist literature you've read and that you meant to communicate the existential quantifier with a sentence that uses the universal one. Would be great if you wrote with more precision and clarity in these cases. (But then your writing wouldn't have that cool apocalyptic ring to it, wouldn't it?)

>>11731131
>in recognition of a trend
why would anyone believe you that it's a trend

>>11731386
"The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State"

>>11726905
There always were and always will be people who are more successful than you. As well as people who exploit others. But that does not mean, that poverty is caused by exploitation.
In the current state of capitalism, even people who do not want to work will not starve to death, even if that would be natural in your world view.
In the USSR it was your duty to give all your property to the state, and hoped for the best, that some of it eill get back to you. Even if other people wanted to help you, they couldn't, because they also had nothing to share.

>>11731386
>What will be the influence of communist society on the family?

>It will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely private matter which concerns only the persons involved and into which society has no occasion to intervene. It can do this since it does away with private property and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way removes the two bases of traditional marriage – the dependence rooted in private property, of the women on the man, and of the children on the parents.

>>11724371
for me it's both

>>11728789
That can applied in every philosophy

how does marxism reconcile itself with the fact marxists are overwhelmingly cancer? they're meant to be the most advanced segment of the proletariat by definition, if they weren't they wouldn't be marxists. yet this is clearly not the case.

>>11732476
forgot pic

>>11732481
Unruhe is NAZBOL and therefore is one of the most advanced beings alive. If you can't see why this Ubermensch should be our God Chairman you're definitely a sionista.

>>11724248
Back to >>>/pol/

>>11724248
>never has done any manual work in his life
>"Dude! I know the best what the working class wants!"

He is literally the same thing as iphone-communists nowdays

>>11732504
Yeah, bro. Only blue collar labourers should be allowed to write about economics.

>>11730946
your sentences don't actually connect with each other as an argument

marx, again
> The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.
>The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.

>>11724248
> Reads Ben Shapiro/Petterson's blogs and never touched his books (or just the manifesto, just like a typical normalfag).
> Marx is totally a retarded. Look mommy, I'm being smart on the 1nt3rn3tz.

Read the fucking Capital faggot, the three books.
The manifesto is his least relevant works, it's just a manifesto, I don't know who was the retarded that thought that it was a good idea to turn it into a book.

>>11732504
Jesus, are you really that retarded?
He was an academic, a journalist, he was the manager of a journal, a writer.
He was literally a fucking writer, how did you not know that? Did you ever notice that he WROTE STUFF? And a lot of stuff (and that's not even close to everything that he wrote): https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/date/index.htm

Since you are a faggot that never reads nothing, here's a short bibliograohy about him: https://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/m/a.htm#marx
I doub you'll even read that. You'll give me something like "it's a leftist site" or "it's communist propaganda" like a true faggot that you are.

postmodernism, now of course for Marxist historians this has meant that the archaic period can be viewed as a period of class struggle, now I am not going to be pushing a Marxist line in these lectures and I certainly don't want to defend Marxism as a current political believe which has been proven to be quite bankrupt but I do want to draw to your attention that as a line of interpretation of understanding ancient societies it cannot be ignored that is to say we have to address the fundamental question what impact do the basic economic relations of society have on the history of that society Marxs would say where a man and woman stand economically is really the prime relationship that that person will have with the rest of their community and so for many marxist historians the archaic period is a period in which wealthy Athenians and wealthy Greeks are virtually at war with the poor with the domos with the people.... Well it is an attractive approach in some aspects and yet as more historians have looked at specific incidents recorded in poetry or better in the work of ancient historians like herodotus that the more it appears the real conflict was not between the rich and poor but between various competing aristocratic groups.....

>>11732476
how do you reconcile with the fact that your'e GAY?

>classes didn't exist for 99% of history
>dude history is class struggle better starve my children to death lol

>>11733218
Marx aknowledges that the moving force of the capitalist in his era was competition against another capitalists, he was no stranger to this.
What a stupid refutation. Those relations of competition between aristocratic families he would argue were an offshoot of the economical relationships between them.

>>11733530
they did it for the Timê and Kleos

>>11733530
When the Achaeans fight at Troy for the restoration of Helen they are winning tîmê for Menelaus . Likewise when Achilles refers to his prize (geras) - the loss of which causes him to be without honor (a-tîmos) - he means Briseis. Briseis and Helen and Chryseis are prizes on the level of narrative, but on the level of poetry and cult nothing less than immortality is at stake. In Iliad 1, an argument over a woman who is a prize becomes a struggle between two epic figures for tîmê.

>>11731461
>>11732238
so 2 writings by one man more than a hundred and fifty years ago, cool
do you see how dumb it is to talk about a "trend" when there are leftists of so many stripes and even those who consider themselves under the same stripe may (better said, considering the left's unquenchable thirst for splitting, "do") have differing views on a number of issues, including the nuclear family
btw I wouldn't call the second quote "hostile opposition" since it posits that the transformation of realtions between the sexes will come as a natural result of the transformation of the economic system, "hostility" would entail some kind of ban on the nuclear family in my opinion

>>11733530
also alexander did his thing for Timê and Kleos

>>11733630
it is "hostility" in the mind of the conservative whose final objective is to reproduce the current relations. any possible thought of these changing, or the substratum of these changing therefore rendering them impossible thereafter, is from this standpoint considered as an attack.

>>11724248

Pretty much.

>Jesus said, "There was a rich man who had much money. He said, 'I shall put my money to use so that I may sow, reap, plant, and fill my storehouse with produce, with the result that I shall lack nothing.' Such were his intentions, but that same night he died. Let him who has ears hear."

>>11730673
>by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.

The more you read Marx the more you realize that he was a BIGGER troglodyte than Lenin.

>>11724248
If you view it not as a theory aimed at accurate prediction but as a way to trick the goyim into murdering each other, it isn't retarded so much as it is brilliant.

>>11734193
you are misreading the quote, as did the other dude. start by looking up the context for 'idealism' in germany's academic circles and how it was used by the german idealists, hegel and the young hegelians

>>11733586
I am not gonna try to make an analysis of the culture of pre-classical greece because I know nothing about it, but what Marx is saying is NOT that the direct reasons for everything anyone does are economical and that's all people ever think about.
Instead, he would try to explain the importance of "honor and reputation" in the Age of Heroes of Homer, or in greek culture in general through their relation with nature, aka their economical context.
He talked about greek religion specifically (and this could extend into many other pagan religions) as "nature worship" and how it was only possible in an environment where the forces of labour lacked the technical knowledge of nature

No, its the only relevant theory of history.

>lol dude nuffin but class and economics exist
He never said that.

>culture and philosophy influencing people PFFFFF nah
He never said that.

>you can literally make a money god if he isn't oppressed dontcha understand human nature aint real??
He never said. Read about superstructure.

>>11724248
>Is history as class struggle the most retarded theory in the history of philosophy?

there a lot of more retarded, but yeah it's pretty retarded

i liked the guy who got asked for alternatives to historical materialism and said "race". like you're not even trying to hide that you're a dumb fash anymore, i thought that was reserved for /pol/ memeposting

>>11724371
Just give up on /lit/, it's an utterly worthless cesspool of the worst self-congratulatory philistines and anti-intellectuals. This place is even worse than /mu/ nowadays. Trump and /pol/ killed this whole fucking site, you can't go anywhere without being flooded in a ceaseless flood of diarrhea from snot-nosed teenagers, Reddit rejects and kekistanis.

>>11724557
capitalism has gone a completely different direction from the one predicted, and now the social relations and the incentives of the working class are completely different. Im also quite critical of historical materialism, but class struggle is an undeniable concept. You cant say that today there is no class struggle, you just have to look at the economic relations between workers and owners (capitalists). Ca`pitalism is a system that blackmail workers into selling themselves as labor for the capitalist class, which exploit this labor in to the market as commodities. You can see a clear distinction between economic situation and control, and the difference between standards of living that come with them, between private owners and those who sell their labor to them. These economic relations then translate themselves into the political system, you can see how the private sector is copletely benefited by law in the majority of countries if you compare to, say, denmark. It also translates into education of children, schools and universities are shamelessly forming kids just to "have a job", in other words, is a machinery of labor manufactoring for these capitalist owners. I would like to go deeper into these topic so please tell me what you think of this

>>11735460
>Ca`pitalism is a system that blackmail workers
do you seriously believe this

>>11735471
yes, because if you refuse to be exploited in other to enrich someone else, or either exploit someone else, you dont deserve nothing since the only way for someone to eat is to have a salary. To put it more simple, either you work for enrich us, or you die of hunger.

>>11735479
>you dont deserve nothing
but of course you don't deserve anything for no reason, why would you?

>>11735460
>denmark
really don't understand this epic northen socialism meme. is it too hard for you retards to look at an economic index chart?

>>11735479
in order to enrich someone else*

>>11735482
why do you say that? explain yourself

>>11735486
a priori nobody owes anyone anything else. The capitalist is not blackmailing the worker, the two are just entering an agreement.

For almost all of human history, the situation was 'farm or starve' for almost everybody. That situation is still possbile, but most people opt for capitalism instead, as seen by peasants in china preferring to work in those shit factories than be farmers.

You can argue the capitalists are being dicks to the workers by squeezing them as much as possible, but not all of them are like that, and evne if they are it is still not blackmail or exploitation, it is them being dicks.

The proles can band together and make unions and stuff in response, which is their version of being dicks(read: seeking power over others)

>>11735479
pretty sure work is mandatory in every economic system senpai, unless you think resources can produce themselves

>>11735484
it is not socialism, its social democracy. socialism is, and i quote wikipedia, "Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership and workers' self-management of the means of production[10] as well as the political theories and movements associated with them.[11] Social ownership may refer to forms of public, collective or cooperative ownership, or to citizen ownership of equity.[12] There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them,[13] though social ownership is the common element shared by its various forms."
in denmark the means of production are privately owned. However, workers have much more economic freedom, since trade unions have a pretty high control over economic issues regarding workers. For example, i belive they dont have a minimum wage, as it is decided between between trade union of a specific labor, and rich people has to pay way more taxes as well as other left leaning economic policies.

>>11735505
just so you know, the communist manifesto (the most entry-level marxist text there is) says literally in the first couple of pages that the bourgeoisie had been the most revolutionary class in society and that the current mode of production was completely unthinkable to the feeble minds of feudalists and prior societies. it also explains how the opposition between the capitalists and the workers, the real material struggle, is based on their conditions of life and reproduction, not on petty moralism. appealing to ruling morality (ie "nobody owes anyone else") is self-defeating.

>>11735510
I know it's social democracy senpai, I was referring to the all too common "european socialism" meme. I was commenting this passage
> you can see how the private sector is copletely benefited by law in the majority of countries if you compare to, say, denmark.
which is factually wrong, as denmark has one of the highest indexes of economic freedom, higher than america, ie less regulations and stuff like that

is /lit/ a leftcom board (post-modernism is ultra-left)?

>>11735505
>a priori nobody owes anyone anything else. The capitalist is not blackmailing the worker, the two are just entering an agreement.

it is not an agreement, since if said worker doesnt want some boss to be a "dick" with him, all he as left to do is to either starve because he has no salary or study to be a "dick" to other workers. And to say that capitalists are not always "dicks" is to completely lie to yourself or be misinformed. In this globalized capitalist system, either you are a "dick" or you stay out of market competition, since to pay workers more, let them work less hours and others "non-dick" moves is not beneficial to them. And to say that "unions and stuff" are a dick move is to completely dehuminaze workers, as if they didnt have the right to defend themselves against explotation.


>For almost all of human history, the situation was 'farm or starve' for almost everybody. That situation is still possbile, but most people opt for capitalism instead, as seen by peasants in china preferring to work in those shit factories than be farmers.

that doesnt make it any more morally acceptable, it even agrees with marx in his history of materialism, in which the economy would naturally evolve from feudalism to capitalism

>evne if they are it is still not blackmail or exploitation
It is explotation because if a worker creates 10 $ worth of value a minute the capitalist who employed him need to cut off a fraction of that so that he can leech out personal profit from the fruit of said workers labour, effectively making the working class subordinate to the capitalist class, with no other option other than starve.

>>11735516
how does that address my points about using the term blackmail and exploitation?

you can call it petty, but you would agree in practice you don't have to give people your things wouldn't you

>>11735556
the capitalist is engaging in labor as well by running the company, his positions affords him more power

the value produced is not produced just by the worker, it is produced by the entire company's operations. The worker enters into a voluntary contract that lets him use someobody else's stuff to produce something, and receives money for it.

you cannot quantify how much value the worker added by the total output, which is the output of the entire system including managers, shareholders, investors, whatever

>>11735508
then you agree with me that the private owners, since they live off the work of others, are unacceptable exploiters
>>11735530
i was the context of workers right, and i dont like social democracy, i was just trying to make a comparison with somethin material
>>11735560
there is a distinction between private property and personal property

>>11735556
the dick move thing was that they are both trying to get power for themselve, it's just one starts with way less power in the first place.

Having nothing, and agitating for people wiht a lot to give it you is maybe somewhat understandable but itsnt some noble thing,

>>11735575
there is a distinction in Marx's head, but they are both in reality just shit someone owns.

>>11735575
>since they live off the work of others
nope, a capitalist creates the company, runs it, manages it and has to bear the burden in case the company fails. the worker arent the sole creators of added value, because it is the capitalist who creates the possibility for value to be created in the first place.
>i was the context of workers right
ah, gotcha. i dont think they have particularly thight labor laws though, i'm almost sure they surpassed in this regard by many other non northen european states

>>11735612
are surpassed*
workers*

>>11735570
These people would have nothing to work with if workers didnt create the commodities that build the value of a company. Their work is merely bureacracy that only exists within the context of private ownership.Workers can manage themselves int producing the items that society needs (In fact cooperatives cooperatives work this way), but employers cant do anything if workers arent there to put their labor.

>The worker enters into a voluntary contract that lets him use someobody else's stuff to produce something, and receives money for it.

Again, this is a blackmail since the alternative to enrich others is to starve. And the fact that capitalists put the items the workers need to make profit does not justificate his actions upon the prole, since it is a mere investement completely counting on their exploitation

>>11735580
so would tou rather be completely dominated by capitalists "dick" moves rather than try and fight for your standards of life because if you do that would be a dick move? it seems as you are unable to humanize this situation

>>11735625
it's just wanting power, it's normal, and i do it too. I dont really believe in 'humanizing' and all that, i mean we are humans, and part of being human is being a dick sometimes so whatever.
>>11735616
The alternative is to try to produce things themselves, which is how it has always been.

>>11735612
>nope, a capitalist creates the company, runs it, manages it and has to bear the burden in case the company fails. the worker arent the sole creators of added value, because it is the capitalist who creates the possibility for value to be created in the first place.

like i just said, that is a mere investement counting on the expoitation that comes afterwards. A capitalist is completely aware of what happens when he put the resources, its not like a worker comes randomly in and starts working for him by himself, he is counting on his exploitation. And you are missing the fact that workers would build the factory, they also would build and move the machinery to it, the capitalist will do nothing by himself

>>11735585
there is a CLEAR distintion. Private property is everything that cant be moved (buildings, industry, land). personal is everything else, with maybe some exeptions like industrial machinery.

>>11735643
you can in fact move a building and people do it all the time

even granted this distinction, why on earth should this matter so much. Why pick this random idea as being so important, what does immobility have to do with ownership?

>>11735635
the trick is what you call "power", in a proletarian context would be not working his ass off 12 h a day (like my father recently did, being 54 yo), being paid decently and other struggles within the capitalist system. You are completely unaware of what this situation its all about. and to think that humans will always do dick move is to challenge psychology, humans personality is not innate, it is shaped in the system in which said specific human is raised, just see kids raised with animals and into the wild, they have never developed "natuarl" caracteristic normal in this society.

>>11735660
>umans personality is not innate, it is shaped in the system in which said specific human is raised
personality is in fact very innate, twins raised apart will be remarkably similar. feral children do not develop language abilities, childhood development can of course be seriously fucked with, but personality is still a fairly fixed thing

and very weak person trying to equalize the power they have with a much more powerful person strikes us innately fair, but we are still talking about power at the end of the day

>>11735635
>The alternative is to try to produce things themselves, which is how it has always been.

How? if the existance of private proparty makes it impossible to an unemployed prole to buy the items and land necessary to do that

>what does immobility have to do with ownership

Because immobile objects are just land and bulidngs. It just seems as a simpler way to define it to me, but maybe someone more well read might give a better response to why is it cathegorized like that.

>you can in fact move a building and people do it all the time

thats just a mental gymnastic and you know it

>>11735671
>personality is still a fairly fixed thing

very opinionated response, you must have read a lot of data to know that. That would also assume that someone born in a, say, ghetto, would have the samy chances of being a, for example, pacific person that living in a safe, stable home and neigborhood

>>11735680
>if the existance of private proparty makes it impossible to an unemployed prole to buy the items and land necessary to do that
but it doesn't at all/ Like i personally know people that started a farm because thats what they wanted to do

If i keep my ipod hooked up to my speakers and bolt them to the floor are they private property? Land i can see as being genuinely different, because it is the location itself, but the other stuff not so much

I in fact would heavily support a kind of communist distribution of the land a nation has to its citizens, though idk what the effect of that would be. BUt i mean all the unused land, not taking away people's land and things, just the territory that the state has and doesnt do much with.

>>11735694
i forgot to ask you, would you please give me any proof of your statement here: personality is in fact very innate?

>>11735694
>That would also assume that someone born in a, say, ghetto, would have the samy chances of being a, for example, pacific person that living in a safe, stable home and neigborhood
It would not assume that, it would assume that a given person would be innately more likely to be pacific, but thier behavior would be mediated by their enivronment

this is the only sane position on this topic, but ive noticed people absolutely refuse to understand the implications of twin studies because it bothers them

>>11735643
its not, "exploitation": the workers wouldn't create value if it wasn't for the capitalist telling them what to do, there would be no value created in the first place if the capitalist wouldn't start a company. this like the lolbertarian argument that taxation is theft because the big baddy gov steals from the capitalist: there wouldn't be property rights if it wasn't for political institutions in the first place
>its not like a worker comes randomly in and starts working for him by himself
what did you mean by this?
>the capitalist will do nothing by himself
you have a pretty simplicist views of markets, sorry to say. modern economies are extremely competitive, and is the capitalist who has to ultimately make sure that his company stays afloat and doesn't succumb to competitors, lest he wants to loss all his money. furthermore, saying that the capitalist doesn't do work is simply factually wrong, look at an elon musk or one these recent memes, they do work a lot

>>11735698
do you think capitalism would work if everyone was doing that? do you think that these people farming by demselves could have the tools they need if no worker was exploited to make them in factories?

>If i keep my ipod hooked up to my speakers and bolt them to the floor are they private property?

stop doing these mental gymnastics. forget what i told you then, private proverty is just indusrty, houses and land.

>>11735680
>if the existance of private proparty makes it impossible to an unemployed prole to buy the items and land necessary to do that
Is this 1800? Are you guys even aware of the reality surrounding you?

>>11735700
https://www.livescience.com/47288-twin-study-importance-of-genetics.html
here is a meme article about it that came up when i searched twin studies. What you want are the Minnesota Twin studies, and then subsequent studies about genetics and behavior, intelligence, etc.

This is no longer controversial, nobody who studies this stuff would think it weird to say personality is mostly innate.

>>11724371
I can almost guarantee you most have not. Once you've read Capital it becomes pretty easy to see who has read it and who is just bullshitting.

>>11735714
forgot to add that the capitalist doesn't inherently profit from his business

>>11735719
I dont believe the worker was exploited though is my point. Most people prefer capitalism to the immense amount of work running your own farm is, even if it is alienating and less fulfilling for most people/

>>11735706
twins are a vey specific scenario. If you mean twins born in the same womb, they of course will be very similar, since they can see themselves in the other constantly, they will be raised as such, and their physical brain structure will also be similar, which probably has a bit to do. I cant really say that humans do not have a nature, but of course it will be very primal things, such as emotional needs, maybe mood and stuff like that. But other things will be taught to the kidn, for example greed is never innate, since the concept of greed is a social construction. This all will be learned thanks to language and the enviroment. This also happens to animals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dEYwQ1dD2g

>>11735714
yes nobody is free under the totalizing force of the market, not even the capitalist. thanks for pointing this out.

>>11735744
>since they can see themselves in the other constantly, they will be raised as such,
the study is about twins raised apart, controlling for the effect of the family upbringing and the twins being aware of each other

by some metrics twins raised apart are actually more similar because they dont consciously try to distance themselves from the other

>>11735744
>the concept of greed is a social construction.
also good lord this is naive. All animals display forms of greed, wanting things more than they need, and humans obviously will have a propensity for greed, greater for some than others.

>>11735714
> they do work a lot

Their bureaucratic work does not even start to compare to all the work that their subordinates and especially workers do to keep the company afloat. To say that capitalists at the top of the workplace hierachy work every bit of the company by themselves is to be blind. Even i capitalists do work, their work AND benefit its just as result of subordination of others.
>its not like a worker comes randomly in and starts working for him by himself
>what did you mean by this?

I mean that capitalists know that they are gonna gain thanks to a labor not of theirs, in every single aspect of physical conditions, fro the construction of factories to the transport of machinery to the building and manouvering of these machineries.

>>11735748
nobody is free under scarcity, whatchagottado

seriously tho, do you have any argument? you completely switched position from "the capitalist just leeches" to "not even the capilist is free"
also
>totalizing force of the market
markets, in conjunction with western political institutions, have caused the single biggest enrichment of the lower classes in the whole history of humanity, i know saying pompous stuff like "totalizing force" is funny, but what's so bad about markets?

>>11735737
but that doesnt make it morally aceptable, neither makes it a good economic system, you are just defending the status quo
>>11735754
i cant say anything on twin studies, i was talking from pure deduction. However that is a case too specific to be relevant in social context
>>11735760
>All animals display forms of greed
They do because they live in an enviroment in which threatens to kill them every day, of course they will hold on to what they have. But are domestic animals greedy? are domestic cats as scareful as wild cats? please watch the video i linked you, you see what i mean

>>11735771
>"not even the capilist is free"
i did not make that argument, i responded that in this response>>11735763

>>11735771
The freerier (dunno if that is correct) the markets, the more capitalists are able to do what they want with workers, which in turn will lead to these employers accumulate the most of the wealth. Look at workers condition in the most economically free markets, and you'll see. Of course these places with especially free markets will be very rich, but the issue is on how this wealth is distributed.

>>11735791
and by dunno if thats correct i mean gramaticallt correct

>>11735775
>However that is a case too specific to be relevant in social context
bro do you seriously not see the implications?

and yes there ar elots of fat cats.

>>11735763
>Their bureaucratic work does not even start to compare to all the work that their subordinates and especially workers do to keep the company afloat.
And? They ultimately pay the price of a possible failure of the company. I didn't say that they work as much as their subordinates, obviously a single person can't work as much as, say, 100 (even though most ceos do have pretty stringent working schedules).
>I mean that capitalists know that they are gonna gain thanks to a labor not of theirs
still not sure about what you meant by that, you made this exact point earlier in the post. anyway, if this is the point, i'll retairate: this argument is fallacious because without the capitalist the workers wouldn't be working in the first place (remember: the amount of jobs is not fixed)

>>11735791
*freer
and obviously the employers will have more wealth than the workers, that isn't a bad thing though. either way, freer markets generally lead to well-being across the board. it would be a total fantasy to imagine that free markets would lead to starvation and poverty among the lower classes.

>>11735794
>and yes there ar elots of fat cats.
bad argument. deliberately using comedy to disvalidate it withou actually saying nothing about it.
>bro do you seriously not see the implications
Show me a study that demonstrates innate traits such as greed, tendency to violence etc.
But first answer me, why would anyone be greedy in a post-scarcity society were all needs are covered?
and even if these negative traits were innate, you still agree with me that capitalism is wrong even under this context, since this inherently greedy, violent or whatever people could gather the means to do their evils through money or state power. In a socialist society in which class was abolished even if these people came to be these "evil" they would not have the physical means to put their evilnes into action

>>11735791
No, that's not what a free market is. A free market actually requires a fair amount of laws and regulation to work. For example: 18th century economy had no free market, since it created monopolies and thus made it impossible to have competition (a defining feature of a free market).
Also, you're conflating a bunch of different issues. Namely economic freedom, worker rights and redistribution: economic freedom doesn't directly translate into less worker rights (by worker rights I mean labour laws) nor do less worker rights automatically translate into less redistribution nor do either of these automatically translate into less or more income inequality. To give you an example: denmark, since we already talked about it, has both more economic freedom and more worker rights than the usa, and less severe income inequality.

>>11735803
>And? They ultimately pay the price of a failure

and what about everyone reling on the company to eat, dont they pay the price of a failure? dont the inmense majority of workers and subordinates loose their job because of that? you seem to be unable to empathize with anything that isnt a business man
>workers wouldn't be working in the first place
of course, in a capitalist context. however im an anti-capitalist, and this is one of the reason i dislike it, because you rely on enriching others to eat yourself. Also, capitalist would be unable to create jobs if the services they produce were not consumed by the working class, proving once again how capitalists live off of others.
>I mean that capitalists know that they are gonna gain thanks to a labor not of theirs
i meant that they are deliberately investing in the exploitation of others to their own personal gains.

>>11724248
no Hegel’s development of the spirit is worse

>>11735807
hing kong, which if im not wrong a country (?) with one of the freest (dont know hwo to type that) markets, is known to have very poor working conditions and wealth inequality
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/economy/article/2097715/what-hope-poorest-hong-kong-wealth-gap-hits-record-high
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/12/26/chronically-overlooked-long-hours-poor-working-conditions-hong-kongs-service-industries/

>>11735612
it really is a waste of time to try to discuss marxism (and Im sure anything else) on this site.
The constant rotation of the people you're arguing with guarantees that no matter how many times you say something, you have to explain it again every single thread.
Literally all you have to do to understand the marxist concept of exploitation is read Capital.

>>11726510
>Race is constructed by class through man's access to resources, and exertion of power by privileged classes within that culture.

Oh anon, please tell me you don't actually believe this. "Socially constructed" is probably the dumbest pejorative disguised as a pseudo phrase yet invented. It's absolutely meaningless, no one sets out to construct a racial group or a nation or whatever, it lingers and develops gradually in the collective unconscious for generations, there's nothing arbitrary about it, it's as natural as it is for particular animals to form herds and packs.

Spengler was wrong about nothing.

>>11735846
i see, but capitalist markets completely benefit capitalists nontheless, doesnt dispove my other points. Still curious on what you have to say on hong know though

>>11735886
oh yes? could you please define what a social construction is?

>>11735866
currently Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China; it comprises of a city and the outlying rural islands.

>>11735886
>collective unconscious
ok buddy

>>11735847
>and what about everyone reling on the company to eat, dont they pay the price of a failure? dont the inmense majority of workers and subordinates loose their job because of that? you seem to be unable to empathize with anything that isnt a business man
>>workers wouldn't be working in the first place
Yes, but they ultimately don't actually lose any money and
A- Can find a new job, and most of the time they do
B- Are/Can be subsized by the government. Here we have something called cassa integrazione, basically when a worker is fired or the company fails the capitalist is obliged to pay him some months. Leaving aside the singular policy, my point is: the effect that a company failure has on the worker can be eliminated or at least alleviated by political action, it's not inherent.
it's defenitely not true that I can't emphatize with worker class people lol, my dad is a construction worker and I've worked with him several times
>of course, in a capitalist context. however im an anti-capitalist, and this is one of the reason i dislike it, because you rely on enriching others to eat yourself.
I feel like this is your typical fixed pie thinking, a party gaining something doesn't necessarily mean that a party is losing something.
>Also, capitalist would be unable to create jobs if the services they produce were not consumed by the working class, proving once again how capitalists live off of other people
once again: fixed pie thinking
>i meant that they are deliberately investing in the exploitation of others to their own personal gains.
gotcha

>>11735885
I understand the marxist theory of exploitation, it's ultimately based on a ricardian theory of value which has been superseded by marginalism. If the LTV was true capitalism would have been kaputt by now.

>>11735902
>>11735908

cucks

>>11735902
can you? lmao, literally a meaningless word that gets thrown around daily in the social sciences to avoid thinking deeply about things, equivalent to 'problematic'

>>11735919
>I feel like this is your typical fixed pie thinking, a party gaining something doesn't necessarily mean that a party is losing something.

The workers are loosing the wealth they produce into the hands of the capitalist. If a worker produces 10$ a minute, the capitalist must cut off a fraction of it in order to gain himself, without doing any actual work. Then you'll say, but he puts the factory and the items needed to make them work. Again this is false, he pays other people to build the factory and the items, so even in the creation of the actual workplace he is exploiting workers. I argue that no one should benefit from others this way, and i argue that nobody should be raised to live this way. I argue that workers do not need a capitalist that distributes their need in his personal interest, they can themselves work to satisfy society's needs in the name of colletive profit.
>once again: fixed pie thinking
you didnt pointed out why that argument is wrong
>gotcha
gotcha what

>>11735945
>can you? lmao, literally a meaningless word that gets thrown around daily in the social sciences to avoid thinking deeply about things, equivalent to 'problematic'.
this shows off how misinformed you are, you critize a concept you dont even understand. a social construction is a concept which exists only within the contexts of a certain society by means of transmission. For example, laws. Laws only exist within our social context because we are raised to know the concept of the state and his function, but we arent actually born with the concept of laws in our heads, is a concept SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED, imean, builted by the collective contract of recognizing it. Do you understand?

>>11735998
recognizing it and unconciously teaching it*,

>>11735958
>Then you'll say, but he puts the factory and the items needed to make them work.
This doesn't really matter, what I'm saying is that the capitalist
A-Creates the possibility for value creation in the first place, if the capitalist didn't want to enrich himself value wouldn't be created
B-Is the one who ultimately the main burden is put on in case a company fails
It doesn't matter if the capitalist built the machines or not, surely you if capitalists suddenly started building the machinery with their hands you still wouldn't be ok with capitalism, no?
Furthermore this argument is ultimately based in the LTV, which has been long superseded.
>you didnt pointed out why that argument is wrong
The argument is wrong because it is a kind of fixed pie thinking: the thought that one party gaining something must automatically result in another party losing something. Economical transaction aren't a zero sum game, generally if you're buying something the seller isn't "living off" you, because you both gained from the transaction.
>gotcha what
gotcha as in "I finally understood what you meant"

Class struggle is in no uncertain terms an objective material fact of economic life and history and has been for thousands of years. But to define history AS identical to the class struggle is a paltry reductionism on par with many others in the history of social science, such as genetic determinism.

The theory of economic determinism as it is sometimes called, and which Marxists call dialectical materialism, posits that the productive infrastructure and how the ruling class decides to organize it is the mainspring of history. Given that the capitalist mode of production tends to yield antagonisms between capitalist and workers who exist in a tenuous relationship, the friction created by their contradictory goals as classes tends to yield much of the substance of history, but it is a far cry from the huge number of motivations behind historical developments.

>>11736050
Wait a sec ill answer

>>11724333
based, redpilled and underrated

>>11736134
imma go to sleep now, I'll respond you tomorrow is the thread is still up

>>11735807
>and obviously the employers will have more wealth than the workers, that isn't a bad thing though.
Debatable. Higher inequality leads to all kinds of shit

>>11736141
yeah i was about to tell you that, i will post my answer tomorrow hopefully i dont forget

> history as class struggle
> great man theory of history
Many many theories of history are pants on head retarded. Who comes up with this childish shit?

Marx's mistake was to strip the supernatural/mystical aspect from the Hegelian dialectic. "Dialectical materialism" is the true supreme meme, at no point does Hegel ever give you even the slightest idea that the dialectic is supposed to be totally materialist. That's the whole reason he talks about spirits so much. The occultic/supernatural element cannot be separated from the dialectic.

>>11736279
>great men don't exist
t. submediocre homo domesticus
enjoy being constituted by your milieu

>>11724375
lmao

>>11725462
Most people as individuals don't give a shit about history. History is an emergent property of human society, which itself is shaped by the methods of reproducing that society and the material conditions there upon.

>>11735791
> The freerier (dunno if that is correct) the markets, the more capitalists are able to do what they want with workers, which in turn will lead to these employers accumulate the most of the wealth. Look at workers condition in the most economically free markets, and you'll see. Of course these places with especially free markets will be very rich, but the issue is on how this wealth is distributed.
Yes we all know Marx's predictions but how you respond to almost an entire century (that's 100 years for those of you not keeping up) of growth in living standards, caloric intake, average incomes, life expectancy and so on? Literally the opposite happened for a century as the middle class was created and we got to the point where home ownership reached peaks of 70 fucking %.....how is that not pause for thought when people were claiming more and more people would be forced into manual labour and the rich would be hoarding all the wealth and property ownership would cycle only to the top over time? Is everyone forgetting that not many people owned property, had social mobility or could escape poverty in the middle ages.....the figures are there for you to see.

You're just looking at recent figures under a corporatist and socialist blended system and going "see! the 1% have a higher share of stuff" and then arguments divert to the useless discussions about "yes but the economy is not a fixed pie so wealth created and handed 90-10 to one group is not taking anything away from anyone" and so on. It's all rather tedious.

> Look at workers condition in the most economically free markets, and you'll see.
See what? You look at varying different times and you see workers conditions rising with productivity and capital goods from capital investment of saved profits, you see work hours dropping, wages increasing, this wasn't done in a Union vacuum.
> Of course these places with especially free markets will be very rich, but the issue is on how this wealth is distributed.
That's sorting implying that everyone else remains poor or becomes poorer? They have statistics on average incomes, incomes per sector, incomes per job, living standards, life expectancy and so on. We can see whether people are better off or worse off and yes in places like Hong Kong and Chile people became significantly better off. To the point where poor people in China would flee to HK to live in cages just at the chance to get a menial job there and climb the ladder that exists in HK.

A little bit of a Capitalism and remember all those "$1 a day, slave wages"? Well pic related:

Sorry for jumping into the discussion but I just don't understand why all of this ignored? Hate Capitalism all you want, lump it in with Corporatism, idealize a better society according to your values, no worries but why ignore clear demonstrable results according to different economic environments we can observe through history?

>>11730813
>>11725808
You would do well to note that Marx's materialism, as the result of "turning hegel on his head" was still a philosophy in its infancy. The relationship between consciousness and ideology and the material world isn't a direct one, and overdeterminism as a concept works very well to clean this issue up. Ironically, by thinking that the world of ideology was simply the real world inverted, marx was till hostage to Hegel's idealism.

>>11736306
Then it can't be claimed to be scientific, so what's the point? Then you've just got left wing and right wing spiritual politics battling it out for who's higher meta truth's should be emposed on society? Surely we've got to maintain rational debate and empiricism to some degree?

>>11725996
Marx's reasoning and internal logic was largely sound. If capitalism had developed in the way he had described, it would have almost certainly resulted in some kind of communist society. It's incredibly important to understand exactly what his argument is because unlike raw math, history is contingent and things can change.

His theory was that increasing accumulation and consolidation of industry would both provide the incentive and necessity for a vast expropriation of the means of production from capitalists as economies of scale make private ownership irrational and a fetter on production. It took a lot of effort by capitalist states to avoid this fate.

>>11736306

>>11735998
>dude lmfao nothing is real and everything is made up who cares

>>11736402
>history is contingent and things can change.
>not being a spenglerian determinist understanding the logic of history

this board is embarrassing

>>11736483
>tfw u have the most boomer understanding of history

>>11736400
Yes, but only to a point. Restricting debate purely to the empirical shuts off an entire swath of the human experience.

>>11736532
Yeah the subjective side. I have no problem with spirituality, personally held truths, meta views based on faith, whatever you want but keep it out of politics because at the end of the day policy is what you force on society and nothing subjective should be forced by some on others, we need justification to go to such extreme measures. I don't know why these shouldn't be kept seperate.

>>11736552
>nothing subjective should be forced by some on others
impossible, since the ordering of society is in itself a subjective endeavour

>>11736608
I should probably rephrase that but yes all opinions are normative but you can theories that are backed up objective reality. Everything else should be voluntary and done through persuasion.
> inb4 Peterson and Sam Harris rock up debating truth

Why Marx said he was not a Marxist? Why does everyone blame Marx for the atrocities of Communism?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ECxxRofU-I
You can get the Jewish religion out of the Jew but not the Jewry out of him.

>>11736747
theories can be backed up by "objective reality" and still be false, like the theory of suicide prevention by lowering science spending

>>11736832
why would you call yourself an ist/ian based on your own name?

>>11736856
Well that's the problem isn't it, conclusions drawn from reality are still normative but that doesn't mean that using reality, truth, facts, and as much objectivity as possible isn't preferable to forcing pure subjectivity on other people at the point of a gun. Let subjectivity lay in the realm of voluntarism where it can do less harm and be chosen by those that value it.

ITT: people who have never read Marx or have never heard a lesson on him at school

>>11736879
> b-but my professor said
There's only so much Marx and other Marxists and ex-marxists talking about Marx that 1 person can stand reading before going insane. Similar to Facist gobblediegoop as well.

>>11736864
People called themselves Marxist, then Marx said "I'm not a Marxist"

>>11724752
>Yes, you do. Otherwise, you're just blindly stating things without actually knowing they're true. Without reading an entire body of work of his and understanding it, you have no right to discuss Marxism. And /pol/, or whatever 4chan board you're getting your facts from, is not an accurate source of information about anything, if you haven't learned that yet. So go read one book and then you can sound credible and disagree with his ideas.

Unless you have read the entirety of /pol/ and understand it, you have no right to deliver judgement on /pol/. So you better start reading those archives, you wouldn't want to be an illiterate idiot like Marx, who discussed religion without having read all available religious literature there is.

You're using the classic trick of the pseudo-intellectual. Let's say I call tarot card reading a bullshit method to predict the future, to which a tarot card reader might then respond that I haven't read all the tarot card literature, that I probably don't even know what the combination of a sword and a queen means. It's pure signalling, you provide no knowledge other than the knowledge that you know yourself to know better. As such, the only thing you've conveyed so far in this thread is that you read books and that others don't. For such-a-nerd like you the book is a fetish object, a hard covered flaccid dick that is waved around to convince of an intellectual virility of which the very scene indicates the lack.

>>11736904
The fact is this thread is ridiculously puerile, my retarded Amerimutt dude

>>11736368
>Hate Capitalism
Not even Marx hate capitalism, ffs. Marxists are not anti-capitalist but post-capitalist

>>11736962
Shhht, Americans don't get it. Leave them in their demented ignorance ;)

>>11736962
>>11736966
Then stop trying to force it and let it happen like Marx predicted then bro.

>>11736987
Lmao who forces it? No one is a libcuck on 4chan, leave your basement and try to talk with actual leftists

>>11736987
But Marx predicted that we would force his predictions to come true after being made aware of them.

>>11732726
This says nothing of Marx's Hegelian denial of subject metaphysics, which renders his social determinism as mechanistic. I'll say this one more time: Marx's materialism is TOTALIZING. All actions are determined dialectically.

>>11737009
One more -ism and I kill your mom.

>>11736966
i can see why you're so smug when that next stage of history is just around the corner

>>11736306

Even worse, Marx simply says "dialectic" as a magic word to keep his naive realism afloat.

>>11736306
>Heleg's Spirit is to be intended in an occultic/supernatural sense
What a fucking retard

>>11735585
>there is a distinction in Marx's head
There isn't actually. What there is is a distinction between public and private property.

>>11736306
>that's the whole reason he talks about spirits so much
you do know at least that for hegel "spirit" is not the same thing you think of as "spirit", yes? it's not a spooky ghost with powers of moving history.

the whole point of "making dialectics materialist" was a critique of hegel in the first place, not simply taking his system as is. you could read marx's critique of the philosophy of right (NOT the fucking introduction, the actual critique) to see how many times he raises what is essentially accusations of needless idealism and moving the onus of agency from the real content (ie people, institutions, social organizations etc) to his abstract "Absolute Idea that manifests itself in order to transcend its manifestations and become for itself"

>>11737009
you know that "being totalizing" and "reducing the subject to a mechanistic bystander" aren't the same thing right? HM is supposed to be totalizing, it's a theory of history as a whole. it's not a neat idea that you kinda use sometimes when it feels right, it's supposed to explain literally everything. that you think this in itself constitutes a critique is on you and nobody else

>>11737000
How do you know it's not a self-fulfilling prophecy and caused by suggestion? Similar to Jewish conspiracies and so on?

>>11737458
first of all the point some other dude made earlier in the thread that no "worker's revolutions" existed before marx is kinda begging the question, since marx wrote at a time when the worker's movement was just consolidating itself. it's not like there could have been a worker's revolution in the 17th century because there was no such thing as a sizeable working class that constituted a pillar of society.

however, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Peasants%27_War

>>11737458
Because materialism, duh.

>>11737483
Then why weren't wars like the peasant wars the most common sort of wars, why were religious wars so much more prominent, when religion is secondary to the class struggle in the order of things?

>>11737521
It's not secondary. "Religion" in feudalism was THE ideological apparatus of the ruling order. You seriously think Luther and his movement had no roots in class society? One of the points Marx makes (maybe it wasn't him personally?) is that class rarely shows up as itself, especially when it comes to pre-capitalist arrangements. It is always mediated by ideology, by the superstructure that is imposed on (or springs out from) the process of reproduction of society. It's this ideology, implicit or explicit, what makes the actual people do the actual things that reproduce the current order. The point of HM is to trace this back to the material conditions that give rise to it, not simply to say like a vulgar physicalist "well you know that's just economics". The claim is not that stock market numbers are what create the revolution.

>>11737533
I see, when class struggle is prime, it confirms marxism, when it isn't, it also confirms marxism.
>One of the points Marx makes (maybe it wasn't him personally?) is that class rarely shows up as itself, especially when it comes to pre-capitalist arrangements.
It's the point that every sophisticated conspiracy theorist makes to cover the plot holes.
>The point of HM is to trace this back to the material conditions that give rise to it, not simply to say like a vulgar physicalist "well you know that's just economics". The claim is not that stock market numbers are what create the revolution.
What's the point of tracing something back to class struggle when you have already decided before hand that it stems from class struggle?

This actually makes the stalinist show trials the purest of marxist praxis; you are guilty of crimes against the people, you will therefor be tortured until we get a confession that traces those crimes back to you.

>>11737612
>already decided before hand
that's what you're missing. the claim that history is moved by class is made a posteriori after HAVING LOOKED at history. much like the claim of the antagonism between workers & capitalists is made after seeing the actual society in which it manifests.

>>11724248
Nothing as retarded as the fat commie you posted, which for and in itself proves he is a retard, even ignoring literally all his predictions failed to come true and his ideology killed billions.

>>11737627
>the claim that history is moved by class is made a posteriori after HAVING LOOKED at history
<Religion" in feudalism was THE ideological apparatus of the ruling order. You seriously think Luther and his movement had no roots in class society? One of the points Marx makes (maybe it wasn't him personally?) is that class rarely shows up as itself, especially when it comes to pre-capitalist arrangements

It's not ''after having looked at history'' when a look at history requires HM to explain things that are not class as being in fact class manifesting itself as something other than itself. You did not conclude those theories from history, to then find out that there is guy called Marx who came to all the exact conclusions you came to.

Now do explain, how can it be made evident that history is moved by class without the use of a theory that already presumes history is moved by class in its explanation of it?

>>11737741
> <
have you seen work by [non-marxist] historians who use the HM framework? you ARRIVE at class by means of investigating the historical movements in detail, not by superimposing class on things like Luther's theology. The point is looking at what really happened, how populations moved, what kinds of relationships and institutions were born, abolished or reformed, what interests were at play, etc etc etc.

I think your conception of class is not in accord with the marxist conception of class.

>>11737768
Then why do we have to take note that class most often does not appear as itself, why does taking a look at really what happened require us to take note beforehand that there is a factor which requires special attention if this very factor is supposed to follow from looking at history without prior assumptions?

>>11737443
That Anon is right, Kierkegaard's critique of Hegel can be applied very well to Marx

>>11735958
>work to satisfy society's needs in the name of colletive profit.
is terrifying to think there is people out there who think shit like this.

>>11730633
Internet culture is not real culture. Never equate the two. The trends on the internet, from left to right, hold no significant sway in the real lived experienced life outside your computer screen. Raw numbers can prove this. There are no nazi uprisings in the usa, they are no swellings of leftists hobbycock. They are fringr movements employing memes and propaganda on the internet to sway opinion. Only fools fall for it, and fools die first.

>>11738735
i didn't say the wider trend is that of nazi uprising (yet), but fascism and barbarism. as one can easily see in trump's victory, le penn's almost victory, brexit, putin's continued rule, the emergence of ISIS and modern islamic fundamentalism, and other general mass-populace movements towards isolationism, protectionism, nationalism and related forms of embracing spooks to the detriment of self-consciousness

>>11737679
>muh billions
Capitalism killed trillions.

>>11738803
*quadrillions
get your facts straight, comrade

>>11735360
Dont forget illitreate idiot amerisharts who deny anything that doesnt fit their government mandated dogma.

>>11735803
>They ultimately pay the price
Which is?

>without the capitalist the workers wouldn't be working in the first place
Without the capitalist the workers wouldn't be working for a wage. Which is the point.

>>11726510
Literally untrue for most of history. Given that for most of human existence, humans existed and competed as roving hunter-gatherer bands with little class stucture, most conflict was ethnic and not class-based.

It's true that as human civilizations grew throught Eurasia, various classes emerged, but even those had a fundamentally ethnic core. Look at India, the proto-Indo-Europeans conquered the Dravidian natives and established a caste system based on PIE supremacy over the native Dravidians. Then look at the divisions within the PIE peoples. The top was the Brahmins - spiritual and intellectual leaders - followed by Ksatriyas - esentially warriors and nobility. This would be reduced to class distinction in Marxist though but was really much more; this reflected a metaphysical idea: the supremacy of mind to matter.

This distinction arises again and again throughout history. Whether it is the estate system in France or a hunter-gather village, humans have long recognized the superiority of priests/shamans to warriors. What may be referred to simply as "class" is actually a metaphysical idea of mind over matter.

>>11739035
>humans have long recognized the superiority of priests/shamans to warriors
what about sparta, the vikings, rome... let alone the HG tribes, whose "ethnic conflict" is something you're merely speculating about [with a simpler explanation being competition over territories, game and plants, whenever such competition existed at all in a solidified form]

>>11738735
Very comforting world you live in. Sadly, this just isn't true. Internet culture impacts other areas of society. "qAnon", a poster from this very site, has been a major impact on the republican party, the right wing media, and how possibly millions of people view the government. The real world impact of internet culture is real and considerable, and having an internal separation between the two in your head, as I imagine most posters here do, does not accurately reflect how broader society sees it.

>>11739341
clown world
the spirit's been learning a lot more about itself through the internet and the results are not spectacular

>>11739274
>what about sparta, the vikings, rome.

Didn't say that particular dichotomy (wise/strong) for classes existed everywhere, though it did in Rome. Worth noting also that amoung the Vikings Odin the wise is above Thor the strong.

>let alone the HG tribes, whose "ethnic conflict" is something you're merely speculating about

There are countless examples. Not even mentioning the ethnic conflicts in recent history, their are the conflicts between PIE and Dravidians, Bantu vs Khoisan in Aftica, Finnish vs other Scandinavian, Cro-magnon vs neanderthal (given inbreeding between them neadnerthals can't really be called a different species). Besides the cro-magnon vs neanderthal (which is simply too old), every other one of these conflicts had an aspect of "othering" the other group based on biological and linguistuc differences between the two (i.e. ethnic differences). Literally just google "ethnic conflict".

That doesn't even begin to include the religous conflicts throughout history (although I'm willing to exclude religous conflict from ethnic simply because it is such a motivating force for conflict that it practically deserves its own category). Remember also that territorial conflict between tribes is also ethnic conflict. If they weren't ethnically differentiated there wouldn't be much need for an all out group conflict.

I'd like to point out that I'm not saying class conflict hasn't been a driving force in history, I'm saying that there have been many, and that ethnic conflict has been a more major driver than class conflict.

>>11738782
History has yet to determine if those instances will develop into further barbarianism (though i dont believe that they will). Im confused as to how those instances will hinder self-consciousness, as you say. Care to esplain? Couldnt those instances be argued as pushing towards the self-consciousness you claimed is not being striven for?

>>11732403
I feel you brah

>>11739341
Unfortunately i can only provide my subjective experiences as a citizen of the usa. But you speak with the same certainty i used in my initial post. Care to give some examples? Qanon influencing the republican party is not proven, in fact, all the examples you gave are up for speculation and still dont excuse the vast majority of us citizens, willfully or not, ignorant and indifferent to the happenings of the internet and any such drama or scandals that may arise. Internet is just another media. The best part of it all is, as Mr Creator would say, lol nigga just walk away from the computer screen. I go outside and very rsrely see anything related to the internet culture. I live in california where one would expect such ridiculousness to thrive but alas.

>>11739697
i mean self-consciousness in the marxist sense, of human society taking control of its own reproduction rather than (as per marx's argument) humans being controlled by the productive social processes themselves as if they were a force from above. the lack of this kind of self-consciousness is a precondition for the barbarism, which constantly poses the problems and contradictions of life (and therefore their solutions) in terms of something external to humans [the nation/the race/the tribe/etc]. it is not a social problem that there is a lack of good jobs in america, but a problem with the fucking thirld-worlders. it is not a social problem that we have crises of overproduction and society suddenly collapses, as in the 30s, but the inherently greedy nature of jew bankers. it is not a social problem that the conditions of the working classes get worse whenever such a crisis happens, but (again) the fucking immigrants that are being forced on us by ethereal powers-that-be like the EU, hence the solution is posited in terms of something such as the nation working for itself, the eradication of the supposed causes of the problem, or the return to [idealized] older ways of living, as opposed to taking conscious control of the social forces that create these situations and making society exactly as we please

>>11724248
he almost got it right
It's actually the history of all struggles over disparity, including those of wealth/class

>>11739753
Ah i see what you meant. Is there any lit on such measures of controlling society? It seems society is not as easily malleable as we once thought. Old habits die hard, so to speak. Do sociologists and anthropologists view society as playdough? Sure, it could have gone any such direction and taken any such shape but once cemented, it appears to be very difficult to initiate positive changes, whatever they may be.

>>11739896
there is a lot of it, surely, and there is the practical example of "actually existing communism" like the URSS or China, despite their ultimate failures owing to various factors.

the marxist position is that idle speculation about the "ideal future society" from the standpoint of current, pre-conscious one is merely a theoretical mystification and that these kinds of problems can only be rationally approached when there is a practical basis for them (surely you've heard the phrase "material conditions" used by vulgar marxists thousands of times, but it kinda refers to this). the prime insight is borne out of the critique of currently existing social relations, and the call for their abolition, rather than any sort of futuristic vision.

>Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.

>>11724248
Yeah it is pretty weak but probably not the most retarded. I think Marx wasn't materialist enough, though, really. Technology and environment are everything. Class is a consequence of that.

>>11739960
>Technology and environment are everything. Class is a consequence of that
that... that's literally marx's argument...

>>11724371
if you ever expected lit to read you’re the one who should be judged

>>11724248
>Is X the most retarded ever
The answer is no. You picked an okay candidate but no.

>>11739962
Let me explain what I mean by 'not materialist enough.' For Marx the ownership of the means of production was a part of the base rather than a consequence of it. The same can be said of the patterns of exchange displayed by a culture.

ie
> “the mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political, and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness.”
is something I differ with because technology, demography and ecology determine the mode of production--class is not a part of the 'base' as Marx calls it or 'Infrastructure' as Harris calls it.

As well I would say reproduction is as important as production. Population pressures are as important as technological/ecological change and interact therewith.

Finally, well, pic related

>>11740177
>is something I differ with because technology, demography and ecology determine the mode of production
that is not in contradiction to the quote you posted... the 'mode of production' is literally the totality of the relations of production, which are formed on the basis of the existing productive forces of a given society in a given epoch, and 'productive forces' is nothing other than man's relationship with nature in terms of labor i.e the capacity to satisfy primary needs, generate further needs and satisfy them yet again. sexual reproduction is part of this totality, in fact he calls it "the first form of the division of labor" in the german ideology

you make it sound like the particular form of property in any given class society is a 'given' not determined by anything other than arbitrariness, when that is the exact opposite of historical materialism

>>11740210
>the 'mode of production' is literally the totality of the relations of production
And here is my bone to pick. A lot of things are getting swept into the category of base (the prime mover) here which I believe ought not be there. Unless I am mistaken the mode of production includes the relations of production when in fact the relations of production are only a superficial consequence thereof. This is to say that class is only a superficial feature of a society and its evolution will not be due to conflict in this sphere but only a consequence of population pressures and changes in the methods by which that society provides for itself (technology) and the abundance of natural wealth (ecology).

Maybe you think I am splitting hairs here but I think that the distinction is important. Proudons don't change societies fundamentally. Eli Whitneys do, Malthusianism does. This is my materialism.

>>11740317
by your use of 'mistaken' i assume you're trying to describe the marxist conception of "mode of production" in which case yes you are mistaken since the mode of production is *synonymous* with the relations of production. it is the way in which the productive forces are employed to (re)produce the social conditions of life, hence mode of production. so it doesn't really make sense to say that the relations of production are "a superficial consequence" of the mode of production, as if the way society subsists was something over and above the way it is organized precisely for said subsistence

>>11724333
>Fucking funny post, offers a butt nugget of truth
>trips

Nigga you made it

>>11737483
I don't think you ever got to second of all, I was waiting for second of all.

>>11740929
what do you take the 'however' part of the post to be? if you want it to be more explicit, social revolutions and upheavals clearly existed before marx and the worker's movement empirically existed before marx's writings had reached any sort of limelight.

third of all, if you're arguing with a marxist then their view of history won't allow them to even parse the idea that 'marx's writings' were by themselves what prompted later revolutions, since history is not made by great men who write great treatises that are then executed by great leaders, but by men as a whole [the masses] reproducing and changing their material conditions of life.

>>11740999
Ah yup, I get you now. I understand what you're saying about revolutionary sentiment existing prior to Marx but the point of my post was to ask how we know it's not a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's right for you to point out that the wheels were turning before Marx so that's a good point, however my concern is the Marxists that after reading Marx grew impatient while waiting for Capitalism's "internal contradictions" to play out and have been actively underminning it for over a century now. IF you can grant the capitalists that without these impositions, policies, cultural hijackings, whatever, that the current trend of the 20th/21st century may have been the opposite and continued along the trend of the 19th century, is it not disenguous to call it a natural shift if the trend changing to the one predicted was caused by the actions of those that predicted it? Rather than a natural playing out of the system of capitalism itself? Do you know what I'm getting at there?

Like if it were shown that the opposite of the predictions would occur if not for the marxists meddling and underminning the system itself, would that no invalidate the analysis and prediction? It seems muddy and difficult currently to distinguish between "Marx predicted that we would force his predictions to come true after being made aware of them" and "We like Marx's vision so we are going to try and forcibly create it whether his underlying presuppositions are correct or not".

>>11724248
no

but if youre on 4chan and YouTube, that’s the only philosophical discussion people are interested in having.

>>11724539
you do realise that race is a class issue ?

>>11741124
well, there isn't really a "natural playing out of the system" since the key point is that "the system" is made out of the real activity of real individuals in real social relations... the point is not to ignore explicit political struggle or "abstain" from trying to cause shifts/actively agitate for improvements/trying to undermine the system because it'll move by itself.

it's worth noting that the position of capitalism has been exposed as real contingent at some points in history, such as the immediately post-WW1 period with intimations of communist revolution all across europe following the october revolution (a common position is that, should the german revolution have triumphed, the entire continent would soon have followed due to the immense strength of the combined russian-german proletariat), the post-depression fascist risings (and some more left uprisings such as in spain) and, well, the entire context of the cold war which even though we tend to view as a foregone conclusion *now* was certainly not at all like that during the period (imagine the post-war american mind in '49, when fucking CHINA became communist and it was not clear at the time that they wouldn't become a united power with the URSS)

>>11741252
i believe that the dude you're responding to is not a liberal whining about "racial oppression" but a race realist who takes the nazi approach to history seriously

>>11725634
why dont you like him then?

>>11732225
people think this,,,

>>11741365
> But that does not mean, that poverty is caused by exploitation.
Well he's right at least to a certain degree, poverty is the natural state of man. The question for the old style Liberals was how to create wealth to get out of poverty not who can we blame for poverty and how much of it is caused by our social structures. I'm sure marxists can argue that some poverty is caused directly by how some people are treated by others but the process of natural poverty and wealth creation shouldn't be ignored. Or if it isn't ignored by these people it ought to be addressed beyond "workers create da stuff tho".

>>11741374
there is no such thing as "the natural state of man", all states of man are social and constructed by man himself. thus any particular society functions on the basis of satisfying needs, and by their very nature create new needs, which are either satisfied by their existing mode of production, or aren't... and when there exists a possibility of satisfying new needs in terms of productive capacity but the existing mode of production isn't letting men exploit these productive forces to the highest possible extent, that's when the regime changes - by historical necessity. thinking about historical development and economy in terms of "natural poverty" vs "the creation of wealth" is simplistic and reflects the current ruling ideology, making its categories to be external to society and ruling over it

>>11741374
i literally dont even understand what natural poverty is supposed to be

>>11741374
The process of wealth creation is the technical process of production, capitalism uses this process of production to perpetuate poverty by entitling capitalists as a class to all the surplus proceeds (those proceeds which exceed the requirements of recreating the process).

>>11741404
> all states of man are social and constructed by man himself.
Except for the one where you come into the world naked and resources begin as unformed and useless, I mean don't you guys talk about LTV and how you have to mix your labour with resources and so on? If you don't do anything you start in poverty, yes our society alleviated this with the division of labour.
>>11741432
You are born naked, the world is full of scarce resources not yet used by people. Think neolithic conditions before society formed and we became productive producers and divided labour.
> all the surplus proceeds (those proceeds which exceed the requirements of recreating the process
Except the excess revenue I guess you could call it above the costs of production aren't known until after the fact, yet the agreement under which the goods would be produced is agreed to prior to their creation, prior to knowing what the end profit would be. Not to mention profit is supposed to be a temporary signal for the unmet wants and needs of society. These signals like price, profit, interests rates combined with dividing labour and property ownership seem to have produced a shit load of wealth for everybody, up until recently.

>>11741580
ltv pertains the capitalist mode of production
>you come into the world naked and resources begin as unformed and useless
that's a useless abstraction, since the only point at which anything similar would have been true would have been millions of years ago before our ancestors started to transform nature by way of labor in order to suit their needs. trying to make a capitalist-saving argument out of something like THAT is the epitome of ideology

>>11724371
>"The more work that goes into something, the more value it has"
>shits out thousands of pages
hm i can't help but feel he was personally invested in the idea

>>11741580
> I guess you could call it above the costs of production aren't known until after the fact, yet the agreement under which the goods would be produced is agreed to prior to their creation, prior to knowing what the end profit would be
That this isn't known is an even better case for socialism. Rewarding those who happen to guess correctly, in what is essentially a random process with no skill involved (as every study of the success of hedge funds has shown), is what has fueled the current out of control casino that is the stock market.

>Not to mention profit is supposed to be a temporary signal for the unmet wants and needs of society.
>These signals like price, profit, interests rates
Profit and the associated market discipline is one form of incentive, but its far from the only kind. Managers and workers have plenty of competence without it, through being compensated through wages and bonuses. As Lange pointed out in the depths of the socialist calculation debates, economic signals in socialism will be found in the same process as that of capitalism's, that is through a process of trial and error.

That capitalism has produced great wealth is obvious, Marx in fact predicated his theory on this fact. However, a fixation on infinite growth is not compatible with a finite world. The tendencies of capitalism to consolidate industry, and to accumulate wealth in the hands of a few creates the necessity of expropriation and the end to private property to coordinate production. With vast economies of scale comes an incompatibility of using market discipline to maintain efficiency or to effectively utilize the gains upon which socialized labor and distribution were used to create.

>>11741124
>It seems muddy and difficult currently to distinguish between "Marx predicted that we would force his predictions to come true after being made aware of them" and "We like Marx's vision so we are going to try and forcibly create it whether his underlying presuppositions are correct or not".
It is muddy and difficult only if it is possible to "forcibly create a vision" of society.

>>11741599
So you're saying that people aren't born into the world naked and dependent on others in a state of natural poverty? Only until your parents or others look after you are you kept from starvation and when you grow up you eventually either need to work or have other still look after you but the natural state of man is always poverty which is why we describe economies as wheels that keep turning, if they stop we die. Just because Capitalism has made it easy for you to jump onboard and contribute to society does not mean that absent society and specifically at birth we all start off in a state of poverty. Less your cognitive dissonance go.

>>11741735
>in what is essentially a random process with no skill involved
That's why many economists describe the playing of market forces as a sort of game, but there is risk involved and entrepreneurship requires a lot of skill evident by the sheer volume of failures and the risk is ongoing.

Are you not familiar with the time preference argument against wages being "slavery and exploitation"? The capitalists time preference is always longer and thus riskier, the workers time preference is shorter and takes on less risk. You know how that one goes yeah?
> stock market
> hedge funds
Fuck the stock market and fuck hedge funds, people both left and right are still stupid enough to think that buying stocks = giving money to corporations to spend, it's retarded. People are retarded, I'm sick of explaining basic shit when people claim to know how to reshape the whole fucking society, in this I agree with Peterson, clean your fuckin room first people.

>>11742067
Forcibly bring it to fruition*

>>11742184
>time preference
>natural state is poverty because babies
fuck anon your arguments are a disaster. i have $5, but i'm gonna save them instead of buying some food right now. surely when i come back to it in a couple months, it will have turned into capital. because as the neoclassical says, apparently (?), time preference is the difference between a property-owning individual and a propertyless individual.

you fail to notice that you keep trying to explain the real social phenomena from the standpoint of a purely theoretical framework that already presupposes their existence as a natural given. time preference is not something seen in the objective world that becomes intrinsically related to profit in a way that explain class, it's a model conjured by the economist to attempt to explain the actually observed interest (and it does so always from the standpoint of the consumer- the moment of production does not even enter into the picture).

as for babies being poor... do you not see how you are attempting to say the same thing marx said, but at the last second superimpose the imagined categories of bourgeois economy in order to blindside yourself? the individual man, who is born as a baby, is not "a natural poor", it is a social being whose existence is already entangled in social processes from his very birth. your logic could be utilized to explain away the differences between a feudal noble and a peasant, since they are both "naturally poor" at birth and therefore the real social processes that land one in one class and the other in another can be safely ignored from the heights of anon's ideological categorization

>>11742215
> apparently (?), time preference is the difference between a property-owning individual and a propertyless individual.
No so you haven't heard of time preference before then? The short version of it is that the worker can accept a guaranteed weekly wage now because he values that stability and lowered risk whereas the capitalist says "I'll pay you this regardless of what happens to the thing you produce in the hope that at some point in the future I can get more for it than what I paid you" taking on all the risks associated with whether it sells, whether it has to be discounted, if it's broken, whether it's sold today, next week, 6 months from now and so on. Lower amount now, vs potentially higher amount later. This is why we also have commission based jobs and small business is so hard because when you go from a wage earner to a entrepreneur you realize pretty quickly how sporadic and uncertain your livelihood is. The vast majority of wage earners do not want to have to worry about whether the chair they made is going to sell this week so they can get paid for making it. That's time preference in a nutshell.

> real social phenomena from the standpoint of a purely theoretical framework
There's nothing theoretical about time preference, it's the reality we live. There's also nothing theoretical about mans natural state being in poverty until he can mix his labour with something or can join a social structure that has already mixing peoples labour with resources. If we did nothing we = poverty. It's really not all the controversial to say that we are born naked into the world. We are born as a conscioussness and hopefully with faculties that we can apply to the world or can apply in a social structure to get the things that we need that we don't currently have. I'm not blindsiding anyone, this is all of human history until capitalism and even still if the wheels were to stop you know what would happen. All I'm saying is that the classica liberals were concerned with how people can rise from poverty because that's what human history was, even subsistence farmers were still considered to be in poverty, serfs as well, that was the process they studied and society implemented.

I understand Marx talked about being forced into a social structure and to sell their labour etc but even to that I ask, if not for the system that exists there are alternatives however there is a caveat with them. You can try and be a subsistence farmer in the desert you're born in, might not be feasible. You can try and deny property ought to exist so you can use what you want but that has consequences too.

Have you really never encountered the idea of Time preference before? Despite hanging around here and being supposedly widely read? I'm not taking the piss I'm genuinely curious about your intellectual journey and why you haven't looked into all the other perspectives around? Sounds tunnel visioned to me, with a splash of lazy.

>>11742187
Indeed.