pull your head out of your ass and keep it simple Anonymous 11-06-23 02:06:44 No. 14131 [Last 50 Posts]
the way i explain the labor to people is very simple. I cut straight to the chase.> 2 If you pay them exactly what their work is worth, you don’t make any money, your business won’t grow, and you’ll get bought out by some asshole who pays workers less. > 3 If you pay a worker more than their work is worth, you’re losing money, your business will shrink, and you’ll go out of business. > 4 the problem is the system, because the way the system is set up, workers have to beg for a job from people who own the places we work at, and the bosses only give the job to the lowest bidder, the people willing to do the most in exchange for the least in return. > 5 everybody who can't get a job has to keep looking for a job until they get so desperate they start selling themselves for less and less > 6 even with how little they pay us they think it's too much. so they constantly look for ways to make more money and pay less money. > 7 they send our jobs overseas to where the labor is cheaper, and they want us to blame the people overseas even though they're the ones sending the jobs off and calling themselves job creators while they do it > 8 they hire a bunch of overeducated nerds to make machines and programs to do our jobs for us, so they can fire us, and then they take credit for what those nerds make > 9 they give the jobs to people who just got here and are usually running away from some fucked up shit like war and are therefore more desperate than even the average schmuck here is > 10 despite all this shit they do to get rid of us or make us work for less money, they still need to sell the stuff they make, and if everyone's too poor to buy that shit, then they gotta lower the price > 11 the faster they make stuff, the cheaper that stuff is because less work goes into makin it, and money is just a piece of paper that says some work got done "oh but this is stuff marx says!" yeah but he says it real fancy and takes a long time. keep it simple stupid.
Anonymous 11-06-23 02:56:35 No. 14136
>>14135 >German workers read the first edition of Capital voraciously yeah because
1) Marx was German and he didn't need to get translated
2) the red scare isn't as strong in germany as it is in other countries since the German people were literally liberated by communists from the nazis
3) the GDR existed and made reading marx a mandatory part of the education system
It's not about poor people being "folksy" and "illiterate" it's about them being so exploited that they don't have much free time, and deliberately deprived of a marxist education by the bourgeoisie. Illiteracy is a systemic problem anyway, not a problem inherent to workers. Illiteracy is on the rise in the US and child labor has returned. This isn't because workers are getting dumber, but because the bourgeoisie are getting more ruthless.
Anonymous 11-06-23 03:00:34 No. 14139
Volume One: How Capitalism Works
Anonymous 11-06-23 03:02:13 No. 14140
>>14136 I'm talking about the first edition of Capital, published in 1867
>>14137 It's implied in the OP pic and text
Anonymous 11-06-23 03:12:37 No. 14145
>>14140 >I'm talking about the first edition of Capital, published in 1867 god this reeks of insecurity. like you're afraid porky's watching and he's gonna think you're dumb if you don't insist the average german facotry worker immediately went out and bought a copy of capital the moment it was released and immediately read the whole thing with zero trouble while doing one handed pushups in their free time.
prove to me with even a single source that the first edition of capital published in 1867 was "voraciously" read by a majority of workers in germany the second it hit shelves, as you are suggesting. the manifesto was a pamphlet for workers. Capital was a theoretical work of political economy. yes obviously many workers read it, and many were and are capable of understanding it, something nobody has tried to deny but which you insist on making the conversation about.
Anonymous 11-06-23 03:14:30 No. 14147
>>14143 >You can, however, make a big show of patronizing to workers who you think can't comprehend anything i can, but i'm not. however you want to pretend that is the case. you seem heavily invested in that perception for some reason and don't want to let it go even after i've disavowed that idea several times. I THINK WORKERS CAN READ CAPITAL VOLUME 1, 2, and 3, OK? THE REAL QUESTION IS, CAN
YOU READ THIS POST?
Anonymous 11-06-23 03:16:56 No. 14150
>>14145 >the average german facotry worker immediately went out and bought a copy of capital the moment it was released and immediately read the whole thing with zero trouble while doing one handed pushups in their free time. nta but that does sound like a stereotypical German factory worker
Interestingly the Weimar German navy was full of communists because of that factory tech connection with ship building
Anonymous 11-06-23 03:27:43 No. 14155
>>14145 >prove to me with even a single source that the first edition of capital published in 1867 was "voraciously" read by a majority of workers in germany the second it hit shelves, as you are suggesting. the manifesto was a pamphlet for workers. Capital was a theoretical work of political economy. yes obviously many workers read it, and many were and are capable of understanding it, something nobody has tried to deny but which you insist on making the conversation about. honestly this. it's the most cited work of nonfiction work of social science published before 1860, but that's in academia. it doesn't mean it was a widely purchased or read book. You can be a communist without reading it, too. Being broadly sympathetic with the aims of communism without having read all 3 volumes of capital is incredibly common all over the world. workers aren't stupid. that's why they don't need to read capital to intuitively know what marx is talking about through their own lived experience. i think some anons over-emphasize reading because reading is how they were introduced through communism, instead of through
working. they confuse the idea that most people haven't read something means they can't read. But illiteracy like the other anon said is a systemic issue anyway, not a sign of low intelligence. and even if a worker is low intelligence, why exclude them from the movement? Low intelligence isn't that important. People with low intelligence shouldn't be exploited either. Someone with a learning disorder, or autism, or brain damage, or dyslexia, etc can be a communist.
Anonymous 11-06-23 04:00:25 No. 14161
>>14145 >>14155 >>14157 https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm >The appreciation which Das Kapital rapidly gained in wide circles of the German working class is the best reward of my labours. Herr Mayer, a Vienna manufacturer, who in economic matters represents the bourgeois point of view, in a pamphlet published during the Franco-German War aptly expounded the idea that the great capacity for theory, which used to be considered a hereditary German possession, had almost completely disappeared amongst the so-called educated classes in Germany, but that amongst its working class, on the contrary, that capacity was celebrating its revival. ..
>The learned and unlearned spokesmen of the German bourgeoisie tried at first to kill Das Kapital by silence, as they had managed to do with my earlier writings. As soon as they found that these tactics no longer fitted in with the conditions of the time, they wrote, under pretence of criticising my book, prescriptions “for the tranquillisation of the bourgeois mind.” But they found in the workers’ press — see, e.g., Joseph Dietzgen’s articles in the Volksstaat — antagonists stronger than themselves, to whom (down to this very day) they owe a reply. The bourgeoisie and academia ignored Capital, at best writing a few dismissive reviews
Anonymous 11-06-23 04:09:00 No. 14162
>>14161 The
Volkstaat was "the central organ of the German Social Democratic Workers Party", the most popular political party of the working class in Germany at the time
>The party press was a vital element of the SDAP's political strategy. The party's newspaper was first called Demokratisches Wochenblatt (Democratic Weekly Paper ) and later Der Volksstaat (The People's State ) and was edited by Liebknecht. The paper was published in Leipzig from 2 October 1869 to 23 September 1876. The party did not yet have its own printers, but Liebknecht was ambitious in his efforts to promote its publications on a wide scale as educational tools for workers. Although most issues of Der Volksstaat were primarily composed of incendiary writing about the German political situation, Liebknecht attempted as much as possible to include essays on political theory, transcripts of academic lectures and even some popular fiction. Anonymous 11-06-23 04:39:04 No. 14164
>>14161 Germans apparently had an unusually high literacy rate for the time, and this could have contributed to their radicalization. I think it is important not to discount the importance of literacy as a
systemic issue rather than simply a reflection of whether workers are "smart" or "dumb." In Afghanistan today, the literacy rate is only 38%. This isn't because Afghan workers are "dumb."
And OP's point is that you should distill points for brevity, not because people are stupid.
>>14163 >treating the working class like unthinking drooling retards Again, nobody has said this. This is an assumption people are walking into the thread with.
1. Drooling retards are people too, and deserve to not be exploited by the ruling class. only nazis think otherwise.
2. nobody said the working class is drooling retards, what is rather being suggested is that they don't have very much free time and are overworked and underpaid, and instead of telling them to read a 19th century german manuscript that is several hundred pages it might be more useful to distill those ideas into casual conversation that can be had between workers in the work place.
Anonymous 11-06-23 04:43:08 No. 14168
>>14158 >The fact that you think people just cannot read these texts means you inherently think they're dumb wrong. I think people who work 40 hours a week, go to school (for things besides Marxism) and have children at home don't have
time or
energy doesn't mean I think they're dumb. You think "dumb" is the only possible explanation for why someone wouldn't read something. And you keep ignoring that i have said several times already that illiteracy is a
systemic problem not an individual failing. And even if they were dumb (they aren't). So what? Being dumb shouldn't be a death sentence. Obviously some people have mental disabilities, learning disabilities, etc. but I'm not suggesting most workers do.
Anonymous 11-06-23 04:44:08 No. 14169
>>14164 The US has 80% estimated literacy, and that's low as far western countries go
Also teaching yourself to read and write is a thing
Also this is a different goalpost from "workers can't read because they're so busy working"
Anonymous 11-06-23 04:45:09 No. 14170
>>14167 Workers can definitely read Das Kapital
I have
Also sometimes I put it on as an audio book when I put the lights out and go to bed Anonymous 11-06-23 04:49:10 No. 14175
>>14164 > Drooling retards are people too I like how you deny that you think the working class is dumb and almost immediately call them dumb
> what is rather being suggested is that they don't have very much free time and are overworked and underpaid, and instead of telling them to read a 19th century german manuscript that is several hundred pages it might be more useful to distill those ideas into casual conversation that can be had between workers in the work place. Thinking that theory should be dumbed down makes that theory redundant. Also texts like the communist manifesto are not hard to read at all. In marxs time his writings were popular with the masses as the other anon points out. Generally working class people do not have the time to go as in depth but thinking that they're toddlers that need things to be dumbed down for them is extremely condescending.
>>14167 >I certainly can't. I seriously doubt you work full time so i guess in your case its just a skill issue
>>14168 >You think "dumb" is the only possible explanation for why someone wouldn't read something You're the one who thinks theory should be dumbed down, why would it be dumbed down if you inherently don't think the working class is smart enough to understand it.
Anonymous 11-06-23 04:51:54 No. 14178
>>14175 >I like how you deny that you think the working class is dumb and almost immediately call them dumb you missed what i was saying entirely. I'm saying there are some retarded people (like, as in actually mentally disabled), and that those people are worth treating with dignity and not exploiting them. I'm talking about literal retards as a separate category from workers. i am saying that
even if workers were retards (a premise i have never stated nor agree with) it wouldn't exactly be an indictment of workers, nor a license to exploit them. only the most deliberately uncharitable reading of what I was saying could have yielded your present interpretation.
Anonymous 11-06-23 04:55:53 No. 14182
>>14177 ok. i can read capital, but I'm having a hard time getting my sister to do so. She has 3 kids and works two jobs. Her weekends are spent driving her kids back and forth. What do you suggest she
should do?
Anonymous 11-06-23 05:02:45 No. 14186
>>14178 > I'm talking about literal retards as a separate category from workers lmao is this a bit? why would theory as a whole be dumbed down in some weird attempt to reach the actual mentally disabled? It's such a small group of people wouldn't it be more worth while to focus on the working class as a whole?
>>14179 > condensing them down into a few well-placed sentences is important to, you know, create a mass movement among people who couldn't give a shit about "eggheads" but do give a shit about not having their wages stolen That's not how mass movements even form, if telling people what to think was how it was formed then activist groups would be more successful than they actually are. The communist movement emerges through the working classes fight against capital and consciousness is something it may or may not acquire in its own experience.
>Hence, nothing prevents us from making criticism of politics, participation in politics, and therefore real struggles, the starting point of our criticism, and from identifying our criticism with them. In that case we do not confront the world in a doctrinaire way with a new principle: Here is the truth, kneel down before it! We develop new principles for the world out of the world’s own principles. We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm > It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment regards as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and what, in accordance with this being, it will historically be compelled to do. Its aim and historical action is visibly and irrevocably foreshadowed in its own life situation as well as in the whole organization of bourgeois society today. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch04.htm At which point since consciousness is the result of class conflict, it makes no point to dumb down theory when spreading theory is not how movements start and it weakens the movement for when the time for theory comes in.
>>14180 >Also the basics of marxism are dizzyingly simple, as OP has exemplified. There's nothing wrong with stating simple ideas simply. there's something extremely wrong for thinking its a good idea to dumb down and neuter theory to try and making more presentable when spreading theory is not even how movements start.
>>14181 yes it is, the communist manifesto is already a good summary, what is wrong with spreading that? and why does the idea of workers reading further need to be thrown away at all?
>>14183 > if someone else suggests that workers don't have very much free time to read you'll leap on them and say they're suggesting workers are dumb or illiterate why else would one try to "compress" theory if they fundamentally did not think the working class could understand it? That in inherently shows that they think the working class is dumb.
Anonymous 11-06-23 05:04:25 No. 14187
>>14182 Have informative quick conversations with her after you read a chapter
Hell read it with the kids while your babysitting them then have a group chat when you pass the baton back?
Kids are a lot of fucking work, she'd appreciate that
Anonymous 11-06-23 05:06:49 No. 14190
>>14186 >lmao is this a bit? why would theory as a whole be dumbed down in some weird attempt to reach the actual mentally disabled? that's not what i was suggesting at all.
let's go back to where the "retard" comment first dropped.
>>14163 >treating the working class like unthinking drooling retards is so based comrade i responded indirectly, because I don't think workers are retards. But my brain immediately went to a 2nd thought. because your statement
<treating the working class like unthinking drooling retards seems to imply that being "retarded" is something worthy of contempt. it obviously isn't. so on top of your first assertion, which is that you
assume i was saying "workers are dumb" (i wasn't, i'm not, i'm literally a worker, why would i call myself dumb???) you also were assuming that "dumb" is a bad thing. it's not. it's not bad to be dumb. if someone is dumb they shouldn't be exploited. THAT DOESN'T MEAN WORKERS ARE DUMB. THEY AREN'T. but
even if they were it doesn't mean anything and is totally irrelevant to the thread, got it????
Anonymous 11-06-23 05:17:57 No. 14199
>>14194 Texts like the communist manifesto already exist to be accessible and movements and consciousness grow as a result of conflict not the spreading of "summarised" theory, compressing thoery only hurts those who want to read further and it hurts the movement for when it goes on to political demands and the party, when theory is put into action. There is no reason to compress it unless you think class conflict only occurs and intensifies if a worker can read a instagram infographic or something instead of a book.
>>14197 I like how you just admitted to thinking that the communist manifesto is fundamentally wrong
>>14198 >popular appeals and policy proposals are more important than theory No it's not, communism is not a pr campaign
>Hence, nothing prevents us from making criticism of politics, participation in politics, and therefore real struggles, the starting point of our criticism, and from identifying our criticism with them. In that case we do not confront the world in a doctrinaire way with a new principle: Here is the truth, kneel down before it! We develop new principles for the world out of the world’s own principles. We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm > It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment regards as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and what, in accordance with this being, it will historically be compelled to do. Its aim and historical action is visibly and irrevocably foreshadowed in its own life situation as well as in the whole organization of bourgeois society today. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch04.htm Anonymous 11-06-23 05:22:08 No. 14207
>>14201 Oh nevermind they're there in OP
but it does bring me to something
Relate it to their lives yeah
This is why I'd especially emphasise Chapter one
Any worker gets it in their bones
Anonymous 11-06-23 05:29:46 No. 14214
>>14212 The key to understanding capital isn't being able to get the jokes marx makes in it, and google exists so anything a person doesn't get they can easily look up
>>14213 It was never EVER the core of their action, their main efforts were towards labour organising and labour agitation.
Anonymous 11-06-23 06:01:15 No. 14228
>>14225 Except you can't, you can't compress capital or else you leave something out
>>14224 No it's not
https://organizing.work/2020/05/you-dont-have-to-be-popular-to-win/ Anonymous 11-06-23 06:33:54 No. 14231
>>14216 >compressing theory just hurts those who will want to read further and the movement for when it progresses I don't understand this, did anyone in this thread suggest that we should compress theory and then
BURN ALL THE COPIES OF DAS KAPITAL ? No, right?
People who want to read further can still read, the point of compressing theory would be to reach people who don't want to/can't.
Anonymous 11-06-23 07:14:10 No. 14235
>>14233 >the manifest was explicitly written for that no it was written to agitate workers during the 1848 revolutions. it was
not written to summarize theory. it was specifically an agitation pamphlet
Anonymous 11-06-23 07:41:36 No. 14237
>>14236 It's a proposal for a party program suggesting many reforms we would now call socdem, such as a progressive tax
Revolutionary for its time, but only edging historical materialism is not enough theory to be enough.
Why is the discussion always between Das Kapital and that expired pamphlet? Weren't there plenty of books in-between?
Anonymous 11-06-23 07:50:17 No. 14238
>>14237 >It's a proposal for a party program suggesting many reforms we would now call socdem, such as a progressive tax, Revolutionary for its time The property tax is revolutionary insofar as it leads to the abolishment of property as a whole by ensuring that property is not handed down by inheritance, it's not a monetary tax its the revocation of property as a whole, that's not socdem, that's society in the process of turning private property into social property.
The manifesto is not fundamentally lacking and if still very applicable, which begs why people want to condense down texts when there is zero need to do so?
Also you only say 'Das Kapital' if you're speaking german
Anonymous 11-06-23 08:31:51 No. 14240
>>14238 I've had more use out of reading the kapital manga than that pamphlet.
Sure the pamphlet has some spirited writing, but it tends to state that capitalism is failing without going into why it is.
Anonymous 11-06-23 10:28:15 No. 14243
>>14228 >No it's not ridiculous article, he's talking about some unions organizing (and they're definitely not doing it under the banner of socialism) not a reordering of society and implementing socialism
it's like giving advice about birthing babies when the closest you've come is pushing out a turd
Anonymous 13-06-23 22:24:55 No. 17988
>>14206 > why would it be "modernised" A rewrite of capital with modern examples would actually be interesting and useful. One of the most common dismissals I hear of Marx from liberals and social democrats, and so forth, is that Marx's analysis of Capital was accurate to the time/place in which he was writing, but not now. They basically try to pretend it's all just Victorian England and that things have reformed to be better. Obviously that's not true but it would be helpful to draw on contemporary data to make Marx's points again. Marx obviously draws on a lot of data.
I remember long sections of Volume 1 drawing from English factory data from the 1840s and 1850s, talking about the devastating conditions that factory workers in England experienced, especially children. But lately I see conditions in the USA for example declining to that level. Children in slaughterhouses and so forth. Also Marx's language is often erudite and literary and very of its time. It can be confusing or alienating to modern readers who aren't used to reading things from the 1800s. The English language has changed a lot since then.
fundamentally, no, it is still about workers selling their labor power as a commodity to a capitalist who buys that labor power for less than it is worth, and pockets and/or reinvests the surplus. The circuits of capital Marx identified are still the same. But the particulars have changed. The geopolitics have changed. The tricks the bourgeoisie use to prevent class consciousness from emerging and to mask class antagonism. have gotten more elaborate. I think a re-write of Capital would highlight these changes to the
particulars, or at the very least mention them in a foreword or afterword. Marx himself while he was still alive released a second edition of Capital volume 1 that was different in its particulars than the 1st edition.
As Marx notes in the afterword to the second German edition of Capital, Marx's different editions of Capital reflect his reworking of published material especially in the presentation of the work particularly on the theory of value.
And then of course there is the matter that Capital is an unfinished work. Kautsky obviously released Volume 4, but that is controversial for obvious reasons. Perhaps we need a Marx in our age to finish what he died doing?
Anonymous 17-06-23 01:03:00 No. 18028
>>18022 >people so horrified at the prospect of reading that they have to hide behind imaginary illiterate workers (because all workers are retarded, apparently everyone you have accused of this ITT has denied that they are saying this over and over again and yet you
keep bringing this assertion to the table because the possibility of the conversation
being about anything else is an
affront to your perception. Anonymous 17-06-23 11:36:11 No. 18030
>>18028 You denying it means nothing, the very existence of this thread and all others like it is proof. What was this thread meant to achieve? The people that did the reading already
can explain things in plain english (and if they can't, further study is required) and the things people here think needs to be "explained" to workers are either common sense or grasped intuitively – the only explanation for threads such as this is people looking for an excuse not to read and consume the simplest information possible and still call themselves communists, and thus discover that hiding behind the illiterate, retarded image of workers they have in their head is the way to go. I've seen this plenty of times with anarchists in particular, I got told "read Marx" is ableist because not everyone has time for that, as if their schedule of browsing reddit and playing videogames would be severely affected by 30min of reading every day. That is already beside the fact that people here think there is anything that
needs explaining in the first place, as if the working class needs to be "convinced" of socialism, which would go against literally everything Marx and Engels stood for (not that anyone in this thread could tell, nobody reads, especially not Marx). Workers don't
need to spend their ever second reading Marx, and the ones that choose to do so don't need much help, Marx is not a complicated read (unless you've had your brain turned into paste by the internet, not naming any names). Dumbing things down serves no purpose and is every bit detrimental, that's how you get "literacy is fascist" anarchoids and Richard "Co-ops = Communism" Wolff and people that think Marx just thought the gubbmint needed to invest in healthcare some more. Good work for the dude at
>>14199 but he made the mistake of thinking he was talking to likeminded people rather than hobbyists that might as well have the mental capacity of a concrete wall
TL;DR fuck modernizers fuck falsifiers read a fucking book
Anonymous 11-07-23 15:12:05 No. 19012
>>18605 Your quote has nothing to do with anything the other guy said, unless your point is "a-ha, proles ARE retarded!"
Frankly, the quote goes against your own point since Marx clearly states workers acquire consciousness through their own actions, and thus dumbing down theory in order to preach to them is useless
Anonymous 11-07-23 15:14:38 No. 19013
>>18246 There's a world of a difference between a shortened version of Capital written by Marx himself and a "Marx summary" written by someone who themselves probably gets their info from youtube or some shit. Literally in the pic your posted:
>If it is not written, some Moses or other will come along and do it and botch it up. Lmao
The Cafiero one is the best and got Marx's seal of approval, but even that one gets some things wrong vis-a-vis Marx.
Anonymous 12-07-23 12:06:14 No. 19021
>>19013 nobody ITT has suggested
> a "Marx summary" written by someone who themselves probably gets their info from youtube or some shit. so there is a "world of difference" between what this thread is suggesting, and what you're pretending the thread is suggesting.
Anonymous 13-07-23 02:40:57 No. 19045
>>14131 sorry if i'm crashing ur thread may i ask you OP when this was useful, like do people appreciate this or is this just a way they can comprehend what you're saying….
because honestly i think most people get like 95% of this, but it doesnt actually give actionable knowledge, it just tells how the situation is messed up, unfair, and contradicted (and contradictions are difficult to understand - its difficult for people who read marx even… actually it was difficult for marx as well! reproduction schemas are needed in order to understand how something so contradicted functions most of the time… so the big picture stuff is gonna be more confusing than anything even in a simple format)
I know there's the basically ubiquitous conception that communism develops out of the labor movement specifically, but history has proved this to not be the only way communism becomes relevant. It's imo an outdated conception from the 1800s labor movement, kept alive by dogmatic (no shade) leninism
just owing to the fact that this is part of Lenin's apparent model of communism and its relation to the working class . In a democracy, politics already exists for the people (even if there's suppression and widespread disdain and distrust of politics), there's no need to move from the economic to the political. The political is directly relevant in so many ways (i think everyone gets this so i wont even mention specific issues, but i can if it's not clear what i mean; i'm talking about all the various progressive issues that impact people's lives profoundly). There's much more room to activate someone into the wider movement by explaining the situation around some of these issues, and maybe directing them towards an organization, or resources, or just providing some roadmap… but idk this is how i feel, i wonder if anyone else sees it like this
The "you're exploited!" and "capitalism can't go on forever!" always rubbed me the wrong way; theyre correct but what bearing does this have on someone's life? "you could be getting more money if you unionized and fought the boss for it!" everyone knows that, but a problem in this era is that oftentimes they'll just close a workplace down or wait you out and give extremely minor concessions (that amount to keeping your pay the same, rather than a decrease). There's also retribution and blackballing that happens to organizers, in modern times (where finance takes a majority of the profits, and you take a personality quiz before getting hired, and employers can all easily share databases of problem candidates, and a felony bars you from most work…) companies don't need to deal with problem workers. There's chronic joblessness and instability that's maintained by the government and Fed. The workplace struggle isn't what it once was. (still important …. i just wanted to epmhasize how its not the only vector arriving at socialist politics. The varied progressive movements, of which the economic struggles are one part, as well as the communities and cultures of oppressed groups, whose oppression is just as necessary today in the imperialist stage of capitalism as it was in the colonial era.
(if u dont buy that look at nazi economics, how the economy can be stabilized (for some) by dispossessing people of othered identities) )
Anonymous 19-07-23 05:24:37 No. 19885
>>14135 > German workers read the first edition of Capital voraciously. It took me over a month of occasionally looking into this to finally find sales details for the first edition of capital in germany.
It took 5 years, 1867-1872 for Capital to sell only 1000 copies in Germany. I stand by my point. It was not "voraciously" consumed by working class people, it was purchased by political economists and intellectuals of the 1st international in a limited circulation. Perhaps later on in the East German Republic it was consumed voraciously by workers because it was
prescribed as part of a standard school curriculum , but in Marx's life time the book actually received the best sales in Russia. But still, those "best sales" were merely 3000 copies. This was not a widely circulated book outside of explicitly political circles until the 20th century, and it certainly wasn't read widely by non-partisan workers until actually existing socialist states made it part of an educational curriculum.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/DD7A28DA6B069F8E794696759DF72C41/S0037677900144924a.pdf/div-class-title-span-class-italic-das-kapital-span-comes-to-russia-div.pdf Anonymous 19-07-23 05:26:34 No. 19886
>>19046 1. we're in /edu/
2. where is it?
Anonymous 22-07-23 13:31:36 No. 19901
>>19896 Meanwhile in reality the simple fact of the matter is that they can.
Anybody have that screencap saved of the bartender pulling out Capital when a social reading group turned up?
Anonymous 22-07-23 13:41:27 No. 19904
>>19902 Fair enough
In that case I reference this example from
>>>/siberia/428887 >I dropped out at 17 and I could read it. It is of course still a complicated work and influences almost all social/political criticism onwards, but getting through it on its own is very much achievable. The thing you have to realize is that it has almost a literary quality to it, and isn't just dry theory. There's a very specific kind of didactic method throughout it. The historical records show that workers can and did read things like; Capital, and The Origin of Species.
Assuming literacy, so we're disregarding the USA here a downtrodden worker can pick up Capital volume 1 and understand it.
Marx wrote it with that intention.
This is a simple fact.
Anonymous 14-10-24 19:47:57 No. 22824
>>14135 This post is old but its the most important post in the entire website. Why, you may wonder: because its a psyop.
Accuse me of being a schizo, but I think antagonizing simple explanations for morons or the intellectually lazy is an FBI psyop designed to prevent us the commies from flipping the rightoid's target demographic: the intellectually lazy and the morons.
When people say shit like "no need to simplify! no need to dumb down! what are you a classist?" they're just weaponizing left wing rhetoric to prevent you from doing that which will actually work.
So I tell all of you: Dumb it all down, simplify then make it simpler. Make it spread.
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