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'The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the weapon, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses.' - Karl Marx
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why does Marxism keep having separate definitions for words from how they're commonly used? isn't this confusing?

>In Marxism "science" doesn't mean the empirical method and the accompanying peer review process of testable explanations and predictions. No. It just means anti-utopian.

>In Marxism "revising" doesn't mean coming back to an earlier work and updating it based on new information. It means betraying the "immortal" anti-utopian "science" by doing a deviation.
>In Marxism "productive" labor doesn't refer to whether labor is useful, but whether it makes a profit.


Is this just a result of poor translation from German to English or did Marx decide to come up with his own vocabulary that overwrote existing words with new contexts? Shouldn't he have coined neologisms instead, to avoid overwriting existing words with new confusing definitions?

Words and their definitions are arbitrary and used by the ruling class to control us. Redefining terms can unveil the truth. The term 'state', for example.

Terms are defined for the sake of analysis and argumentation.

words have different meanings based on context? and youre telling me this now?

>>17861
Basically, the coloquial retard definitions of some words are not useful for analysis

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marx should have called science flibbleglorf

he should have called revisionism shcklenhimf

he should have called productive iouaghnwoig

>>17860
You actually should complaing about German words not being able to translate to your shitty language aptly.

>>17864
Karl marx should have called private property "commercial property" to distinguish it more from personal property so low eye-queue individuals wouldnt mistake marxism abolishing private property as taking toothbrushes away in 2023


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>>17866
literally true though

Marx didn't come up with the term "revisionism," that came about later when Eduard Berstein tried to pass off his extremely anti-Marxist theories as being Marxist still, claiming that he was just "revising Marx."
The word "science" is much, much older than the definition of it you give here, and has a very contested meaning. The "peer review process" wasn't even a standardized thing at the time Marx was writing.
In basically every knowledge domain, words are used in precise, technical ways and can have different meanings than how they are used colloquially. Part of learning Marxism, or anything else, is learning the vocabulary.

I do think we need better introductory texts, but really this isn't at all a Marxism thing, you're going to run into this same phenomenon if you try to learn about anything beyond just a basic pop-culture level understanding.

>>17869
Berstein rejected significant parts of Marxist theory that were based upon Hegelian metaphysics. And to be fair, does metaphysics have a place in historical materialism?

>In the Study it is noted that the terms “immanence” and “immanent” are certainly used in Marxism, but that “evidently” this use is only “metaphorical.” Very good. But has he in any way explained what immanence and immanent mean “metaphorically?” Why have these terms continued to be used and not replaced? Purely out of a horror of creating new words? Usually when one new conception of the world succeeds another, the earlier language continues to be used but is used metaphorically. All language is a continuous process of metaphors, and the history of semantics is an aspect of the history of culture: language is at the same time a living thing and a museum of the fossils of life and civilization. When I use the word disaster no one can accuse me of astrological beliefs, and when I say “By Jove,” no one can believe that I am a worshiper of the pagan divinity; nevertheless, these expressions are a proof that modern civilization is a development of both paganism and astrology. The term “immanence” in Marxism has its precise meaning which is hidden in the metaphor and this must be defined exactly; in reality this definition would truly have been “theory.” Marxism continues the philosophy of immanence, but rids it of all its metaphysical trimmings and leads it on to the concrete basis of history. The use is metaphorical only in the sense that the former immanence is superseded, has been superseded, although it is still presupposed as a link in the process of thought from which the new link has been born. On the other hand, is the new concept of immanence completely new? It appears that in Giordano Bruno, for example, there are many examples of such a new conception; Marx and Engels knew about Bruno. They knew about him and there remain traces of Bruno’s works in their notes. Conversely, Bruno was not without influence on classical German philosophy, etc. Here are many problems in the history of philosophy which could be usefully examined.
>The question of the relationship between language and metaphor is not simple, far from it. Language, however, is always metaphorical. If it is perhaps not correct to say that every statement is metaphorical in respect of the thing or the material and tangible object indicated (or the abstract concept), since that would broaden too much the concept of metaphor, it can still be said that present-day language is metaphorical in respect of the meanings and ideological content which the words have had in earlier periods of civilization. A book on semantics—that of Michel Bréal, for example—provides an historically and critically reconstituted catalog of the semantic changes of certain groups of words. Many errors both in the field of learning and of practice derive from not taking account of this fact, in other words from not having a critical and historical view of the phenomenon of language: (1) An error of an aesthetic character, which today is being to some extent corrected but which was in the past a ruling doctrine, is that of regarding as “beautiful” in themselves certain expressions as distinct from others in so far as they are crystallized metaphors; the rhetoricians and grammarians swoon at certain words, in which they discover who knows how much virtue and abstract artistic essence. The very bookish philologist’s word “joy,” which suffers agonies as a result of certain etymological or semantic analyses, is actually confused with artistic delight: recently we had the pathological case of Language and Poetry by Giulio Bertoni. (2) A practical error which has many followers is the utopian idea of a fixed universal language. (3) An arbitrary tendency towards absurd word innovations, which arises from the problem posed by Pareto and the pragmatists regarding “language as the cause of error.” Pareto, like the pragmatists in so far as they believe that they have created a new conception of the world, or at least that they have originated a certain science (and that they have therefore given words a new significance or at least a new shade of meaning, or that they have created new concepts), finds himself faced with the fact that traditional words, especially those in common use, but also those used by the cultured classes and even those used by specialist groups dealing with the same science, continue to keep their old meaning despite the innovation of content, and this has reactions. Pareto creates his own “dictionary,” demonstrating his aim of creating his own “pure” or “mathematical” language. The pragmatists theorize abstractly about language as the cause of error (see G. Prezzolini’s little book). But is it possible to rid language of its broad metaphorical meanings? It is impossible. Language is transformed together with the transformation of the whole of civilization, through the flowering into culture of new classes, through the hegemony exercised by one national language on others, etc., and in point of fact continues to use metaphorically the words of preceding cultures and civilizations. No one today thinks that the word “dis-aster” is bound up with astrology, and those who use it in this way are considered to be wrong. In the same way an atheist can speak of “disgrace” without being thought a follower of predestination, etc. The new “metaphorical” significance broadens with the broadening of the new culture, which, on the other hand, also coins new words and borrows words from other languages and uses them with a precise significance, i.e. without the broad aura they had in the original language. So it is probable that the term “immanence” is known, understood and used by many people for the first time only in the new “metaphorical” significance given to it by Marxism.

Die semantoids die

Language is a tool of communication that's heavily contingent on context. Congrats on just figuring this out.

>>17870
Bernstein didn't understand what he was talking about. Marx already rejected Hegel's metaphysics. Marx's method of materialist dialectics is not Hegel's metaphysical dialectics. Revisionists (and they basically all do this) love throwing out dialectics claiming that they are cleansing Marxism of metaphysics, but Marx's dialectics AREN'T metaphysics. Materialist dialectics is the core of Marxism, but many don't seem to be capable of thinking dialectically.

>>17860
Because playing semantic games with definitions and context is an important part of twisting theoretical arguments to justify domestic political and geopolitical alliances.

>>17874
Not related, but I honestly don't "get" dialectics.
I mean, I understand it's about coming to "truth" through the arguing between two different point of views to arrive into a sort of "middle ground" or something.

But I don't entirely get it. For example, what if I grab two completely opposite things: capitalism and communism. I compare them and say "Hmmm, I see, both of them have a point. Maybe the best thing is Social Democracy which is a middle ground between them!!". Obviously this is not correct.

>>17876
The arguement is reality. The thesis is your mom's womb. The antithesis is my dick. The synthesis is you. Dialectical materialism.

>>17876
that's not what marxian dialectics is at all

>>17878
Basically, the some elements of capitalism (the technology, working masses, etc.) would be preserved in the synthesis of communism. Some elements (wage slavery, the capitalists and wealth owners, pollution) would be done away with.

Everything contains within it the contradictory aspects that allow for development to a higher form.

Thesis: crack inside of a pipe.
Antithesis: lighter flame
Synthesis: you get high and blow out the waste.

The crack and pipe is capitalist society. The flame is the communists. The smoke is the capitalists and wealth owners. The high is communism.

Marxists actually do use these terms in a mainline manner if you are versed even a little on history and economics it will make sense to you:

When Marxists say 'science' they are talking about the process of deriving models from empirical analysis, which is what 'historical materialism' is all about. Science has always been used in this sense, since the Greeks. It's only recently that science took on a much narrower (and non-reflexive) meaning, and still that only exists within a pop-understanding of 'science', most people who are versed in the philosophy or history of science still talk about it in this way. Heidegger is another figure who used 'science' in this way– 'history' is a scientific inquiry. 'economics' is a scientific inquiry. Science just means building models based on empirical data via induction.

As for 'revision' there has always existed a consensus amongst historians as to what 'revisionism' entails – it means to REVISE our traditional understanding of history. ML's get a bit autistic about it to be sure and equate it with an insult.

As for 'productive' labour this is again a kind of 'revisionism' of the historical understanding of the economics behind this term. In the days of classical economics (like Adam Smith), ALL value derived from labour, the labour theory of value was the original theory of value. 'Whether it makes a profit = productive labour' in fact isn't even a mainline understanding of the term. Where are you getting your education on economics from???

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>>17876
>But I don't entirely get it. For example, what if I grab two completely opposite things: capitalism and communism. I compare them and say "Hmmm, I see, both of them have a point. Maybe the best thing is Social Democracy which is a middle ground between them!!". Obviously this is not correct.

>>17876
>>17878
>>17879
>Thesis
>Antithesis
>Synthesis

>>17882
Tell me what dialectical materialism really is

>>17883
And how it can be used to analyze the transformative processes of crack or society

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>>17873
>Congrats on just figuring this out.
are you being sarcastic?

>>17883
We look at the history of the word dialectic, and we see that it's origins are to analyze as opposed to convince, based on it's opposite, rhetoric. While it shares the root for dialogue, and Plato's dialogues are a conversation to come to a truth, it's meaning within the realm of Marxist philosophy is that of an analysis that seeks the truth. Materialism is the idea that all things are based in the material world, that there is no demiurge or realm of platonic forms or god or what other non-real bullshit. To use the term dialectical materialism is more a means to tell what the analysis isn't as compared to what it really is, because the end result is that it's just analysis of the real world.

>>17886
This is rhetoric 101, of course he was being sarcastic.

>>17876
dialectics in the field of marxism is more about identifying the different forces at play that are in contradiction with each other in the real world.
For example, on one side the desire of porkies to get more profit, and on the other the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (leading to neoliberalism, monopolies and imperial policies to try to lessen that contradiction), or the workers wanting to get more of their surplus for themselves / better work conditions (which leads to the importance of syndicalism as tool for workers to be able to bargain with more power, which is the socialist way of solving the contradiction until you change the system altogether, or to violently repress the workers and destroy their organizations, which is the fascist way).
at least thats how I understood it, im a theorylet compared to some people here

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>>17883
Here, this the best explaination ive read.

>>17860
Because its a science, physics has much more complicated definitions for things like charge, gravity and acceleration than commonly used.

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>>17891
tank you anon

>>17893
Theres also this one by the same author about Historical Materialism, they are both great reads.

>>17871
>It appears that in Giordano Bruno, for example, there are many examples of such a new conception; Marx and Engels knew about Bruno. They knew about him and there remain traces of Bruno’s works in their notes.
bruno was based

>>17871
the source of this text btw seems to be Antonio Gramsci - The Modern Prince and Other Writings


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