/edu/ - Education

Have you read On Dialectics by Mao, Dialectical and Historical Materialism by Stalin, or Dialectics of Nature by Engels? All of these are worthwhile introductory texts.

>>23090
Dialectics comes from the word "dialogue". Meaning back and forth between two parties. To have a dialogue you need two people, otherwise it's simply not there. It's like trying to figure out the sound clapping with one hand makes.
Dialects is kind of this deceptively simple idea that things " exist " in relationship with other things, in motion. So think of you seeing a chair, the photons are moving back and forth. The idea of the chair exists in your brain but also the chair exists outside you. You also understand the chair as a discrete object with some purpose or order of sorts (it's to sit, you can identify a chair). In a way the chair exists in the relationship between you and the chair through time. Without you observing it, it could not "exist" as this is a human concept and a human experience, but the chair also exists outside human experience, it is in relationship with the ground. The ground opposes it and the chair opposes it. The forces are balances and hence the chair appears stationary.

Hegel applies this to a bunch of things, mostly related to culture, knowledge, the question about what being is, history. It's a trip!

Regarding monads in Haskell, I think those are easier. It's just a wrapper class that defines:
A way to create new values: new List("one element")
A way to run functions on the "inside" of the wrapper class, although what this actually does depends on the implementation. Eg: list.map( x => x * 2 )
Or
nullableValue.map(x => x.getName() ) // null safe, only runs the map if the variable contains a value (isn't null)

And has a join or flatten function that flattens nested monads of the same type.
Eg: list( list(1), list(2)).flatten

The reason why this is all so weird is that there are different wrapper classes or use cases that can be either shoe horned or actually fit quite nicely to this pattern. The effect of all this is that some languages (or libraries) add support to make working with these structures more generic.

For example, the "monoid" type class already has support in many languages. You can add numbers, strings, arrays, with simply using the "+" . every type implements what "+" actually means.

Nazi-kun carrying the entire thread again uwu

Dialectics is when thing change

>>23163
deadass?

https://redsails.org/what-is-dialectics/

p good modern summary

>>23091
why are you recommending mao and stalin on dialectics? they barely understood it

>>23090
Dialectics is when things become other things, or when two people converse, or when nationalism is good actually.

>Every time a Marxist pseud attempts to explain them it's like a Haskell programmer attempting to explain Monads.
Because to maotards and other MLs it's quite literally a mystical force to excuse a lack of investigation of the object, i.e. that they invoke a priori principles. Mao's 'On Contradiction' is probably the most childlike document ever produced by a world leader lol. It reads like a reddit post. Nothing but dogma, dogma, dogma, with no deeper understanding at all. Exactly why tankies think they can cite this in response to just about any concrete criticism is beyond me. It's every bit as abstract and formalistic as any Hegelian work, with none of the insight lol, and this whole current of "Marxist" thought that obsesses over 'dialectics', from Engels to Lenin to Mao, is just completely worthless. It tells us nothing and is unrelated to communism in any practical way.

It's not even sophistry, it's just completely vacuous. It's literally just a study of logical forms. There's no way to progress from abstract categories like 'contradiction' and 'negation of the negation' to insight about the actual content of the object being studied. Insofar as it actually has a content, it is just describing proper scientific inquiry, i.e. appropriation and working-up of the subject-matter itself. No special knowledge of an abstract ‘dialectics’ is required for this.

Insofar as Marx had a method, it was simply 'to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connexion.' You don't get an inch closer to this by starting with empty abstractions like 'internal contradictions'. Abstractions like 'contradiction' can only be established through a process of generalisation. At most, they are conclusions, results established after examination of the specific objects themselves. Maotards, on the other hand, reverse the whole thing, so that we are supposed to start from abstractions like 'internal contradiction' and then work our way from that to some sort of actually concrete content. The general notion that everything contains both internal and external contradictions, for example, doesn't allow me to understand why ice cream melts in the sun. You would have to actually examine the nature of ice cream and of sunlight themselves, and their interaction.

If you try to impose a pre-established method upon the subject-matter, naturally you will only produce a version of the subject-matter modified by your method, by the a priori principles you have forced the content to conform to. That's why Marx's method wasn't really a coherent 'method' or set of steps, but rather the simple observation that one must study each object in detail, and allow it to 'speak for itself', as it were. It is, if you want, a critique of 'method', but pseuds focus on the presentation itself rather than the content.

>>23493
you did a great job simulating someone who is entirely wrong!

>>23496
none of this has anything to do with mao's brainlet concepts tho

>>23493
>abstractions
>a priori principles
>tankies

i hope you know you are literally proposing to replace dialectics with the form of thought explicitly opposed by marx that he pretty much built his entire body of work to fight against. instead of attacking dialectics you could just attack marx directly, if you wernt an ignorant/coward

The Holy Family furnishes a whole load of examples of what happens when you think knowledge of 'dialectics' is a worthy substitute for knowledge of real history. For example, in Chapter 2:
< In real history the cotton industry was founded mainly on Hargreaves' jenny and Arkwright's throstle, Crompton's mule being only an improvement of the spinning jenny according to the new principle discovered by Arkwright. But Critical history knows how to make distinctions: it scorns the one-sidedness of the jenny and the throstle, and gives the crown to the mule as the speculative identity of the extremes.
This is the speculative method, whereby reality is made to conform to philosophical categories rather than vice versa.
Marx and Engels target this method directly later on:
https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch05.htm#5.2

In simplest terms, dialectics is the philosophical method in which relations are taken to be the primary object. Non-dialectical thinking puts "things" first and lets the relations in between arise in turn. Dialectical thinking on the other hand puts the relations first and lets them characterize the objects of study.

For instance in Marxism, the bourgeoisie and the proleteriat are characterize each other through their mutual relation and their relation to the mode of production.

I don't know that much about Hegel but his philosophy of consciousness characterizes its stages of development through its relations to itself and to the outside world. This is probably a very crude reading but you get the point.

>>23140
>this is applied in different modes of *becoming*
>being-nothing-becoming
>form-content
>identity-difference
>appearance-essence
>quality-quantity
>being in itself - being for itself
and so on

great examples, i always just simplified this to essence and form– a process of analyzing things not entire modes of "becoming." I should make another attempt at Hegel

>we can see this logic heavily applied in marx's capital, in the primary distinction between abstract and concrete labour for example, which also becomes the difference between commodities and money (C-M-C/M-C-M), and labour and capital, by which, each have their being in one another and so achieve mutual recognition.

Abstract and concrete labour do not become "the difference between commodities and money." They become the difference between exchange and use value respectively. There's no contradiction between money and commodities either; Marx quite literally called money the "money commodity" in capital ch3. Money is a commodity that has utility in its ability to be easily exchanged and its representation of value, while its exchange value is the quantity of congealed abstract labour time, or numerical value. There is no "mutual recognition" for money and commodities, however there does exist this relationship in use value and exchange value. Good stuff otherwise~

its not one or the other

its both, and using this fact you can find out how to make it be neither

Either don't think too hard about it or go read a ton of Adorno, maybe Houlgate or Jameson. Adorno's lectures on dialectics and lectures on negative dialectics are both good and clear imo but there just isnt really a way for someone to explain it to you in an imageboard reply without either wildly oversimplifying in a way that makes it seem trivial, leaving you wondering what the value of the concept is, or devolving into walls of indecipherable schizobabble, leaving you wondering what the value of the concept is. You will note that this thread has both of these phenomena. There are many Marxists who don't know anything about Hegel, and there are many people who call themselves Marxists but just sort of mean that they believe in a type of magic, and they call that magic "dialectics". The fact that both of these groups will just assert their vibes about dialectics as the meaning of the word without clarifying their priors, and the fact that neither of these lines up at all with the way German Idealist and Marxist concepts are talked about by scholars and marxologists (who themselves are not often unified), exacerbates the already significant difficulties learning about this concept. This is all to say that the most important thing is for you to not listen to imageboard users' explanations of complicated philosophical concepts.

In light of this communication problem, and the fact that every single person who uses the word means something different (and most mean nothing at all), you might again be left wondering if the concept has much value. You wouldn't necessarily be wrong to wonder. If you read Grundrisse with a lot of Hegel background, it's quite clear just how deeply the mode of presentation in Capital is influenced by Hegel, and there are many books you can read on this point if that's what you're interested in (it's far from one of the standard texts on this but I enjoy Schmidt's History and Structure as an explanation and counterargument against the Althusserian effort to delete Hegel from Marx, but there is also Moseley, Arthur, countless others). If that is your only interest in Hegel and dialectics then I can do no better than to leave you with pic related chunk of Heinrich.

Good article here about the concept of assemblage that also iluminates the difference between closed and open dialectics.

My understanding is that closed dialectics sees it as a process of two opposites crashing into each other, whereas open dialectics acknowledges that the two 'opposites' still inform each other.

>>23096
Good post. Dialectics is seeing the relationship between two elements as the fundamental unit instead of the element in itself. I think understanding this loose definition is a great start.

>>23515
If relations are treated as "things" you don't really know anything. Relations implies there are things to relate, and you're back to reducing an object ad infinitum. It doesn't tell you anything about genuine knowledge, and you wouldn't superimpose dialectic onto science in that way.

What really happens in a scientific approach is supposition of something, for example "the world exists" and then demonstrable proof of that supposition based on how we have defined it. It's very easy for science to invent phantoms and reify them, while conducting the most thorough and proper science with a genuine interest in the world, presuming you believe there is a world to study (which, if there isn't, then anything you're saying is bullshit and intended to be so, and there is no discussion to be had regarding what you said).

On some level you have to accept "the world exists", whatever its nature, since without it, why are we here speaking of this matter? You may doubt this existence or any particulars about it. You can certainly doubt your existence, because there was a time where you did not exist, and you could very easily ask the question of what would exist if you didn't exist. You cannot take your existence for granted. What you can't really do is disregard that there is a world and continue to say anything about it with any meaning. The problem is not solipsism or insanity, but that without a "world", there is no basis for any knowledge whatsoever, even if that world was entirely a fiction created by some unknowable malevolence.

So basically when defining things you're really saying "this section of the universe does that". You would require a concept of "doing" anything, but it is far easier to conceptualize actions than "beings", which rely on many assertions to speak of any "thing" existing. Whatever preliminary assertions one makes about "things that do something", it is what those things do that define anything real, before you can speak of verifiable "things". The important thing for us is to speak of things that can be verified as facts, rather than that which forever remains supposition. That is, the facts we have are those that withstand our best and honest analysis of the objects in question. You would have to hold that there is a world outside of yourself where any of these facts are relevant, and then you have a question of what this sense-experience that is "you" does, which every child asks in some way.

None of this will be found in a philosophy textbook of course but it can be reconstructed trivially.

Basically, if you have to relitigate "Being" ad nauseum you're wasting your time. You can reconstruct a model with clever wordplay, and use this model to describe an ideal model of what happens, but if you deal with abstractions very far removed from the object of inquiry, you are further removed from a description of what you ostensibly explain.

I should say here that what Marx writes in Capital was always intelligible to students of classical political economy and those who studied the British tradition, and so no "dialectics" is necessary to justify Marx's claims. It does help to understand Marx's thinking and why he writes as he does, either to see the trick he's playing or to ask a serious question of what happens based on the assumptions of classical political economy. Marx was the first, by his admission, to work with "abstract labor", and that was really the breaking point. Before, the labor theory was somewhat vague, since it was primarily a moral claim rather than a scientific one. Ricardo made a violent assumption that labor values are, absent any compelling reason to believe otherwise, equal, but quickly moves to remind the reader it doesn't actually work this way in any complex society, where there are already established customs and expectations that are valued by the participants. What working with abstract labor does is answer pertinent questions like the "Machine Problem", and if you have a mind for operations research, this is really important. Managers have to deal with labor as an abstraction if they want to do anything other than motivational speeches or cracking the whip, and the factory requires this task to produce a product. To Adam Smith, everything in the factory is accomplished by the arrangement of capital, and that included the human workers themselves as "human capital". Basically, it is the technical knowledge of the workers that is valued as capital or stock, rather than any intrinsic value to human labor-power by itself. Smith's claim is that the labor-power is what we are really contesting, rather than any particular pre-existing wealth such as gold or food. Basically, humans know how to produce things, and over time their labors diversify as a society becomes more complex and no "universal man" can possibly do everything or should do everything. All of the labor in Adam Smith is only valuable once it is engaged in productive capitalist activity. If you labor for yourself and there's no money or contract involved, it is economically without value, regardless of any claim that you need to do these things to live… like breathing or sleeping.

Western philosophy is so inferior to Eastern philosophy lmao. Everytime I read about Western philosophy, it's always them explaining Eastern philosophy in the most retarded and obscurantist, over-intellectualized(in an obscurantist way), nonsense shit. It's like I can see the parallels, but it always marvels me why Westerners only respect these fucks, when they're saying what Easterners have been saying forever and way better. Read Easterners, it's so much less masturbatory. All Western philosophers were degenerates for the most part, whatever knowledge they came into is tainted with their degeneracy.

>>23841
This is infantile. One of the big differences in Greek thought was that they were the first to consider democracy a viable concept of political power for a city-state, and no one else thought "democracy" was worth anything for that purpose. In most of the world, kings, priests, scholars, bureaucrats, and warriors ruled, and there was a great aversion against the idea that every free man was a soldier, the way it was for Greek city-states or barbarian nations. Some of the Greeks did this for what was expedient for their situation, but once it stuck, it really stuck.

>>23842
>This is infantile. One of the big differences in Greek thought was that they were the first to consider democracy a viable concept of political power for a city-state, and no one else thought "democracy" was worth anything for that purpose. In most of the world, kings, priests, scholars, bureaucrats, and warriors ruled, and there was a great aversion against the idea that every free man was a soldier, the way it was for Greek city-states or barbarian nations. Some of the Greeks did this for what was expedient for their situation, but once it stuck, it really stuck.
I wasn't talking about the Greeks. I meant Western as in the Germans like Hegel and whoever. Post-enlightenment Western philosophers. Or Spinoza or whatever. Like that era and later. Ancient Western philosophy is another matter. I think the Greeks obviously created very relatable and understandable allegories like how Plato's Cave has stood the test of time.

>>23843
And I am not saying Western = inherently bad. I believe anyone can come into the truth. Many did and didn't write about it. Many did and wrote about it but nobody preserved their writing. I'm just saying acedemic Western philosophy is usually of of some dude that creates 100s of jargons in a convoluted mess of nonsense. Not about trying to use logic to reduce reality to the understandable. Or really with Eastern practice and Christian practice for that matter, soulful prayer and meditation. You need practice to perceive the truth. It's like having theoretical knowledge of athletic performance. It's worthless without practice.

>>23842
>was that they were the first to consider democracy a viable concept of political power for a city-state, and no one else thought "democracy" was worth anything for that purpose. In most of the world, kings, priests, scholars, bureaucrats, and warriors ruled, and there was a great aversion against the idea that every free man was a soldier, the way it was for Greek city-states or barbarian nations. Some of the Greeks did this for what was expedient for their situation, but once it stuck, it really stuck.
Sorry I didn't even read the rest of your post before I had to reply about your misconception. What the fuck does Platonic ideals have to with democracy? I thought we were talking about philosophy? Government only marginally has to do with philosophy.

>>23845
Well, Plato really fucking hated democracy and that's his most famous work.

>>23846
Do you really think so? I think the Allegory Of The Cave is his most famous work and also the concept of platonic ideals. I'm not a Plato expert, but maybe that makes me more qualified to say what his most famous works are.

>>23847
The Allegory of the Cave is in his most famous writing, and he makes that allegory because he's mocking the ignorant masses, and understood that as the basis for effective mind control as he understood it. It doesn't work that way. Everyone must ask questions about the world no matter how far removed they are from knowing anything, and there's no promised land of the secret club that will hold the world. There's just more orgies, more backstabs, and then at the end you die with nothing to show for it.

But, if education affirms over and over again that you will never know, and knowledge can be made proprietary and the domain of the elite fellows, they can keep pushing and cajoling you as far as that will take them. The world doesn't actively police that. The world only produces the sad consequences over and over again, and we live in the wreckage of their brilliant system.

All of that said, it's probably for the best that humans don't know much beyond that. It scares me to think what humans would do is they were determined to win and got over themselves long enough to build a far more effective evil.

>>23856
>there can be no historicity to monism, and so the Spirit must progress apart from it.
Had to get ChatGPT to help me out with you.

<This statement suggests that monism— the philosophical view that all things are ultimately one, or reducible to a single substance or principle—does not allow for historical development or change in the way that Spirit (often referring to human consciousness, reason, or dialectical development in a Hegelian sense) does.

<Historicity implies a process of change, evolution, or progress over time. If monism asserts that everything is fundamentally one and unchanging in essence, then it leaves no room for a dynamic unfolding of history. Therefore, the Spirit, which is often associated with progress, self-realization, and historical movement, must develop independently of monistic thought.

<This could be a critique of monism for being static or insufficient in explaining historical and spiritual progress, possibly in favor of a dialectical or pluralistic view of reality.

Progress and change are illusionary. Well things progress more towards God, the source itself. Like in Plato's allegory their is a light that shines behind shadow puppets, you are that shadow puppet obscuring the perfection God with your imperfection. The only change is removing yourself before God so God can shine forth unobstructed. But all these changes are illusionary because all is contained within the immutable God and any finite change in this imagined reality has no effect on the infinite being.

>both carl jung and rene guenon said that east is superior to west, but this makes us wonder - why the west in the first place?
once again I am going to ask ChatGPT to decipher your cryptic statements whether the AI gets it right or wrong.

<This statement suggests that both Carl Jung and René Girard, in their own ways, viewed Eastern thought or culture as superior to the West. However, the second part—"but this makes us wonder – why the West in the first place?"—raises a deeper question: If the East is superior, why did the West emerge as such a dominant cultural, philosophical, or historical force?

<One possible interpretation is that the West must have had some necessary or inevitable role in human history, despite its perceived inferiority. Perhaps the West contributed something unique—technological, philosophical, or social innovations—that shaped global civilization in a way the East did not. Alternatively, it could imply that the supposed superiority of the East is more complex than it seems, given the West's historical prominence.

<This line of thought could also be questioning whether historical development (particularly the rise of Western dominance) was accidental or inevitable, and what factors led to it despite claims of Eastern superiority.

I think as Swami Vivekananda talks about, Indians basically invented mathematics and everything else, then they went deeper and realized that reality itself is not real. This is all imaginary bullshit. So playing in the sand making sand castles that fall into the sea is all very meaningless. Everything you need is inside yourself already. There is nothing to search for.

Now that we've got all that out of the way.
>wut dialectics?
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm
Here.

>>23861
>and yet the gospel must be given to all the world
All will come to the truth in their own time. That's "God's Plan."

>>23861
>well this is why i think that "history" as a concept is inherently western, since westerners live in the "illusion" of progress. but i would also say that some illusions are true. for example, why has God cast us into this shadowy realm to begin with?
Well I'm sure you've heard of Yuga theory. I'm not really concerned with it. It's very silly, in the book he talks about how the other sages miscalculated the progression of the yugas.

But anyways, we are all just experiences of God. Our true self is only God itself. You see that is the world of life and truth. There is no us. Only God. God is the only being that has or ever existed. We are just God's imaginary characters in God's imaginary world.

So finding the truth is like lucid dreaming, realizing you are the dreamer instead of the imaginary character within the dream.

>>23863
I agree with Viveknanda, that all supposed knowledge without out attached experience proving the knowledge true, is rote memorization, imaginary bullshit. Even if the knowledge is 100% correct, without experience, it's not the same at all. Analogies, like reading a book about the perfect three point shooting technique. It has to be learned by practice. And also that once you connect with that which is the program is constructed to connect you with, you need no teacher or guru anymore, you are connected to the same fountainhead that everyone else who constructed the sage advice is attached to. That is the goal. To teach a man to fish.

>>23865
Your external actions don't matter as much as your internal character. And when you change your internal character, you won't be driven to engage in the same external actions. Every sinner if they could truly see themselves and cry their hearts out. All of us would. God is so real and we reject it. God is all around us all the time, especially in everyone.

>>23866
But there really is no "internal character" other than god itself. All blemishes are external character, God is our only internal character at the root. Like Sri Chinmoy said, paraphrasing, "people think that the spiritual path means freedom, but it actually means enslavement to God." "Free will" itself is a sin. The only right thing to do is to submit to God's will in everything, but it's not easy to do.

>>23866
>Every sinner if they could truly see themselves and cry their hearts out
*,they would fall to their knees and cry their hearts out

>>23867
> All blemishes are external character, God is our only internal character at the root. Like Sri Chinmoy said, paraphrasing, "people think that the spiritual path means freedom, but it actually means enslavement to God."
And this is why people can't commit to the path. Because they're still attached to desire. You have to renounce all desire for wealth, power, sex, praise, even the desire to do good itself. God is desireless because God is complete. Once you turn your desires to the eternal fountainhead, you will find they are met immediately, they are cancelled out without the need to try and fulfill them. All questions are immediately answered. You can use the fountainhead to achieve desires, but the result is you will end up even more confused.

(ok I realize Ayn Rand said fountainhead but I like the word. It's a good word instead of source or whatever)

>>23870
I dig it, but like all the Swamis I like are kinda like "fuck the Vedas, but also the Vedas are cool." I think it's better to try and discuss things in practical terms instead of stories. It seems like those kind of ideas were made for a lesser time. I like the sayings of Christ as I have quoted already in this thread instead of the story of Christ and whatever later nterpretations decided by council. That's dumb as shit. I really hate that Christianity wants to be religion by democracy or something. That's stupid. That makes no sense. I guess it's better than religion by dictatorship, but you just got to think for your fucking self.

>>23866
>>23867
>Your external actions don't matter as much as your internal character
>when you change your internal character, you won't be driven to engage in the same external actions
>there really is no "internal character" other than god
>All blemishes are external character
would the blemishes of external character, that drive a difference in external actions characterise a independent personhood? As in as that's the dependant variable to the constant of god that effects the ability to commit to the path. Thus environmental context determines the degree of external blemish that opposed to the antithesis of gods internal character is a sum difference that defines a separate ego. Synthesising into an independent personhood that is both part gods internal character and part desire.

>>23873
>would the blemishes of external character, that drive a difference in external actions characterise a independent personhood? As in as that's the dependant variable to the constant of god that effects the ability to commit to the path. Thus environmental context determines the degree of external blemish that opposed to the antithesis of gods internal character is a sum difference that defines a separate ego. Synthesising into an independent personhood that is both part gods internal character and part desire.
Yeah definitely. That's what I was saying before. It's all God's plan and all will come to God in their own time. I like the idea of reincarnation. I think if you ask anyone, I don't know, some say "oh I want to see my dead relatives again," well I think at the heart of it, at least selfishly, we all just want another shot at life to do it over knowing what we know now don't we(and I've heard some theories of reincarnation say that people reincarnate in association with people they've known in past lives.) Well it's all a very nice thought I think it's very ideal, but I won't say I have any real sure notions of that.

What I really do have experience with and surety of is that we are some kind of consciousness behind this physical body in some way. I am not going to say I can give you an absolute definitive explanation of that. In experiences where you can experience it directly, it doesn't mean you can formulate an explanation that will make sense in another frame of mind or experience right? That's why I was talking about, the conceptual things I was talking about, like Vivekananda says you must go and experience it for yourself or you have nothing.

>>23874
>to me, you cant transcend desire, since this is itself a desire to relinquish desire, and so becomes paradoxical.
At the preliminary stage it seems like that. It's why people come to these kind of epiphanies in extreme circumstance like near death experiences and etc. When you accept like:
>Oh this is it
>I'm about to die
>all my desires will forever go unfilled I guess
>well whatever
Then you can be free from it. That's why Salvia was a very epiphanal for me because it made me truly feel and believe my life was over. It helped me break out of the attachment to my ego. Ego death I guess as they say.

>>23874
>that in the west, man's alienation becomes something abstract in philosophy and then concrete in religion, and modernity (capitalism) is about dealing with this. this is also why i think capitalism is inherently western - and in particular, protestant. marx understands well from feuerbach that capitalism is not just a "mode of production", but is a religion, where man worships his abstract essence in the visage of particular appearance.
That's kind of interesting, but the whole point of the truth is God doesn't respect circumstance. Renunciation means that the state of the world is really of no concern to you anymore. Yes you'd like to make the world a better place, but all you can do is the best that you can do. No need to worry about imaginary shit anymore. Like how does the world today compare to the time of Jesus? Is it relevant? Not really other than it is a world ruled by governments and sins.

Man who is that church that actually followed Jesus's message of radical hoboism? Is it Mormons? Jesus literally recommended everyone just go to a new city and start knocking on doors and preaching the gospel and someone there will surely give you room and board free of charge.

"Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road. When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you. Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. "

>>23856
>who is more moralistic than marxists today?
All that is done in "economics" is moral philosophy. In the actual scientific world, the products in question are not freely exchangeable. A loaf of bread is only useful for what it materially is and what it does for you. Humans can consume this bread for sustenance, and knowing that other humans want this bread, humans can exchange it, but at the end everyone needs substantive goods and services rather than the "idea" of those goods. The universe doesn't assign a price tag to anything, or care at all about our notions of civic worth. If you looked at human behavior from afar you would see crops, energy, construction materials like iron etc., and a lot of pointless bickering over a problem that would be trivial if it were about the resources themselves. That was never the contention.
In the past, exchange and commerce were a distinct sphere and kept apart from production. The merchant doesn't produce anything whatsoever. It merely allocates something that already exists. That never actually changed. What the labor theory did was move the topic of inquiry away from gold, crops, or any particular notion of a "universal substance", and ask instead what wealth and value are generally. The point isn't to say "labor is the substance of value" and all must be abased to this singular substance, but to say, "we do this because we are commanding other people to do things", at a basic level. What is really accomplished is moving the topic away from the goods themselves, which can be any type of good or service that is useful. Instead, technology itself as something humans build and trade becomes the interesting subject. The goal would be first to build more efficiently the goods that already exist, and then to produce goods that previously didn't exist, such as firearms that require a supply chain or battleships that require a greater supply chain still. That is why commodity exchange became general, rather than someone suddenly figuring out "labor is the substance of value" and asserting it for spurious reasons or just because it felt good. If you think like that, you are oriented towards commanding technology, rather than hoarding gold or crops and seeking rent. You would still have hoards of gold and rent-extraction. That doesn't go away because you say you have a new system. What changed is that there is now a new situation and new institutions that were singularly concerned with commanding technology, where before that process was haphazard. Pretty much everyone in the American and French Revolutions was big into science nerd shit and technology, and that was the interest of the corporate government that managed this overseas trading empire the British were running. They were less committed to tradition or land and more committed to doing whatever was needed to acquire newer technology and holding knowledge as a monopoly of the new ruling class/interested parties.
All of that was inherent in Adam Smith and Ricardo, but it faced a problem in that it lacked any substantive "core" to prove the theory with science. There was not then a general theory of intelligence or human psychology. It was in the late 19th century that such a thing would become the new ruling program, and that's what we suffer under now. Marx is one contributor to this new thinking, and far from a universal link in the chain so to speak. Marx was not that big during his lifetime, and the Marxists remained marginal in world socialism until the Bolsheviks prevail. Even in the early USSR, the Marxist tendency competes with the other socialist ideas that were still alive at the time, and the communist orthodoxy we know today was only set down during the Stalin era (and by the opponents of Stalin). The pissing match between Stalin and Trotsky became existential claims about the universe itself, which seems to be a bit much given the enormity of what humanity was up against. But, that all moves far away from our topic here.

Anyway the point I make here is that labor was not chosen because it was "special" or that humans were special. The reason for choosing labor was because at the time, new economic thought argued over what was valuable—human endeavors and their personal/collective virtue, or the land and its product, which is what the physiocrats claimed. The thinking of the past was that wealth was primarily in the land, and human labor or genius contributed very little to that. It only extracted what was already there or rearranged it. For most of history, that was basically true. The technology of the ancient world was simple enough and usually reproduced by guilds that passed down their knowledge as property, and could be reverse-engineered by someone looking at a sword and asking how to make such an implement. There are, naturally, many stories of shoddy workmanship and quality because of how this arrangement was so haphazard. In the centuries preceding free trade, labor accounted for qualities that were not trivially reproduced, like knowing how to build guns or cannons or knowing how to fight better. You only start to see this when you see European armies blasting foreign armies with ease in the 18th century. It was something of a surprise because before then, European armies weren't that distinguished from their Old World rivals. Napoleon beating the shit out of Egyptian armies showed what disparity had grown. (To be fair, the soldiers fighting Napoleon were slaves in a decaying empire, and Napoleon did eventually have to leave Egypt without victory…) But then, Napoleon starts kicking the ass of everyone in Europe and the world could see why this worked and what had changed.

>>23879
Protestantism always preaches the obnoxious need to "change the world"

>>23882
>in one sense, but i would claim something similar in the very institution of science.
I make this claim in my book as well—that science can only exist because someone morally cares about truth pertaining to a world that exists outside of our conceits of it, and values truth over any ulterior motive.
Economics never claimed to be a science in that sense. It is purely about moral philosophy, politics, and things that are only valuable to us. To anything that's not human, our arguments over this topic are absurdities. An alien looking at humanity has no reason to regard any of our struggle as real and would have to ask why we did this. So too can humans ask this question about themselves.

>we are part of the universe in case you forgot
You do know a price exists because of a process of haggling between the buyer and seller in the first place, right? If no one can agree on the price of something, where does science prescribe any price "purely in nature"? Prices are contingent on this stable market relation that exists between human beings in societies with laws, and they are only "observed" by noting the individual interactions of the participants in this market. All of the members of this market are aware that there is a "market society" where this takes place.
This may be odd to you but "list prices" are a very new idea, and they are something that came about with free trade and the liberal idea that this information should be "transparent", i.e. that in-person haggling should be minimized so that any of this could operate smoothly. Instead of the shopkeeper negotiating the price with each customer, the shopkeeper lists a price and "haggles" with the market and other shopkeepers, and sets down a list price with regard to his competitors, rather than the consumer. The consumer can refuse to buy or go somewhere cheaper, but the personal relationship between buyer and seller has to minimized as much as possible. In practice, this personal relationship can never be removed completely, and shopkeepers can build a relationship with particular buyers and offer "special deals", but none of that is mandated by "the system" or policed by it directly.

>but we cant, since we are human. this is what critical philosophy is all about.
We easily can look at ourselves as a dispassionate observer would see humanity. Children do this out of necessity to ask "what am I?" I know a Nazi can't understand this concept, since Germanic thought precludes something a child can do and must terminate such inquiry in all manners possible. It's very easy for us to get over particular conceits about humans. All of that is Germanic and Satanic and retarded.

>class society means monopoly on knowledge
No shit Sherlock… and how successful were those societies at retarding the people? Not very. The only thing those societies could do is keep the conditions of the people miserable by creating wars and famines, and impose a lot of draconian punishments on top of that if the slaves or peasants got too uppity. The ancient world had nothing as noxious as "ideology", and law was often abandoned in favor of brute force when it was against acceptable targets.
The point I make here is that modern revolutions were the first to have an actually competent theory of how to control knowledge. Such things existed since Antiquity (see Plato for one example), but the liberal free trade system was the first to really suggest that this monopoly on knowledge could be rooted in "economics" rather than religious or political thought alone.

>Weber and some Austrian School retard said it was protestantism
They might believe that malarkey, but Adam Smith doesn't operate under any belief that there is a particular magical substance about humans that would make them unique in the universe. The same concept of the pin factory would apply to any agents that would work in this factory, since it was really a moral philosophy of convincing people to work at all. Adam Smith doesn't give a shit about the workers beyond noting their existence as the basis for why a pin factory can exist at all. The moral problem is entirely for the commander of labor, whatever that commander is. It could be a capitalist, a state planner, or some collective agency of the people working there. The moral problem for Adam Smith is entirely in management and the exchange of these products. Whatever is paid to "negotiate" with workers is just a loss of doing business, even if the boss paid the barest minimum to keep his labor-units functional and owned them as total slaves. Yet, workers are paid in money that would otherwise be capital, and anything you pay to upkeep these troublesome entities is something you're not deploying as useful capital. Marx took the extra step of making the condition of the workers' private life company business, which is a necessary step to explain surplus value and answer the Machine Problem.
I really don't know where the "humans are special" shit comes from, aside from the German ideology which is most insidious and destructive to any independent thought, human or otherwise.

>>23889
And then they complain about the world being corrupted.
Protestantism metaphorises Christianity as a fickle sociopathic girlfriend.

>>23891
I don't think we can really communicate (not surprising since you're a Nazi). I can try on the economic claims you make but I'd be repeating myself.

My writing is at:
https://eugeneseffortposts.royalwebhosting.net

>>23899
Hi Eugene

Aight, listen up, lemme break this down, ‘cause I know you’re probably thinking this is all just some fancy talk, but nah, I’mma hit ya with the real. So, pure math? That’s like the stuff you dream up when you’re sittin’ in your basement, all by yourself, thinkin’ you got it figured out. It's just numbers and equations floatin' around like ghosts, no walls, no limits, no nothing. You feel me? It’s like a chess game but there ain't no pieces to move—just some theoretical, abstract nonsense. But applied math? That’s the real deal, the gritty stuff you use to build somethin’ that actually matters, like a bridge or even a freakin' airplane. Like, take Gorilla Glass, right? That stuff was sittin’ around forever, just waitin’ to be useful. No one cared ‘til we got smartphones, and all of a sudden, BOOM—it's saving your screen from shatterin’ every time you drop your phone. See what I’m sayin’? It’s math that’s been chillin’ in the background, just waitin’ for the world to catch up. That’s real world applied math. That's the kinda stuff that actually fixes problems.

Now, philosophy, man, that's a whole different beast. You can’t apply that stuff the same way, you feel me? Philosophy's like that one friend who wants to talk about deep stuff at 3 a.m. but never actually does anything. You can’t slap philosophy on a machine and expect it to work. Nah, that’s just nonsense. And look, Marx? I get it, the dude's all about revolution, change, the whole shebang. But let me tell you, that's like chasin’ some pipe dream, man. Like, where’s the practicality? Who’s actually gonna do the work? Ain’t no one knockin’ on your door with a manifesto, ready to overthrow capitalism. It’s just talk. The proletariat this, the bourgeoisie that, but where’s the real-world application? Where’s the *Gorilla Glass* moment for Marxism? It’s just a bunch of big ideas with no practical outcome. Ain’t nobody buildin’ anything with that, ya know?

And don’t even get me started on Confucianism, like seriously, we’re gonna base society on what some dude in China said 2,500 years ago? That’s like tryin' to run your life based on your grandpa’s advice. It’s cute, but it's not gonna do anything for ya. It’s like looking at the past and sayin’, “Yeah, that worked, let’s just throw it on top of today and call it a solution.” Nah, that’s nonsense, bro.

Now here’s where I gotta drop some knowledge on ya: Marxism and philosophy are like… they’re like some IT stack, alright? Just slap a bunch of things together and call it a day, even if it’s all just bloat. You got your philosophy up top, your "praxis" down below—just a bunch of idealistic mumbo jumbo you can’t measure. You can talk about all the dialectics you want, but it’s just a way to sound smart on Reddit, man. It’s like those YouTube debates where everyone’s like, "Oh, well you gotta consider the dialectic!" What does that even mean? It’s just a buzzword to make arguing sound intellectual, but when you break it down, it’s just a big pile of nothin’. Marxism? It’s like throwin' a bunch of frameworks together without understanding how they actually work. It’s a bloated system that’s got too many pieces just sittin' there, and you never really get anywhere with it. That’s why it’s just like a stack that doesn’t do anything, ‘cause it’s full of fluff, not function. You just throw a bunch of ideas together and hope it works—spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

So yeah, chase that revolution if you want, but when it doesn’t come and you’re still stuck arguing on YouTube about dialectics, don’t say I didn’t warn ya. Marxism ain’t got no real-world application. It’s like tryin’ to make a meal with just ingredients that don’t belong in the same kitchen. It’s just… it’s just nonsense, you know?

>>23901
If you wanna talk about clappin' back and throwin' around “philosophy” talk, let’s first talk about psychology, astronomy, and economics, right? Now, none of these are “pure” sciences like math, but they ain't just some abstract pipe dream unlike dialtones or whatever. At least these “not-sciences,” if we’re gonna call 'em that, got some actual, tangible results. Like, astronomy ain’t just stargazing—it’s predicting how planets move, how black holes behave, what’s out there in space. And economics? We can measure stuff like inflation, unemployment, stock markets—real data, real trends. Psychology, too—ain’t no fluffy “just think better” talk. We got therapy that helps people, brain scans that show how we think and feel. Yeah, it's tough to replicate every single aspect, sometimes downright imposible which is why a lot of People dont cansider em real sciences, but they ain’t just up in the clouds, talkin' philosophy.

Now, philosophy—bro, it's all talk, no action. People just sit there, discussin' the meaning of Materialism when they all bout being trans and their experience not being one of a metaphisical and aesthetic experience of a woman being all bout idealism and not materialismo, but ain’t nobody building bridges with that kinda thing. So when you throw leftist intelectual letter soups in the mix, don’t even try to say it’s got some real-world application. You can talk about dialectics and revolutions all you want, but who’s actually out here doing something? Ain’t no "Gorilla Glass" moment for Marxism, bro. It’s just a bunch of talk with no practical, measurable outcome. Philosphy is just abstract thoughts in a void.

So, when you talk about psychology, astronomy, and economics, even if they’re not perfect sciences, at least they can show progress. They can measure things, adapt to data, and make breakthroughs. They got something real to work with that makes itself evident, like finding a planet. And let’s not forget, you ain’t gotta be sittin’ there deciphering some fancy words from some so-called intellectual. You ain't gonna be using “dialectics” in your everyday life. Trust me, learning about FOSS or helpin’ your mom clean the house is more useful than trying to crack the code on some Marxist manifesto, there is more praxis to that than reading hegel and sucking your own Dick in /lit/.

At the end of the day, what’s useful ain’t that “big-brain” nonsense about the soul or the ethimology of whatever. It’s about what actually gets you somewhere. You don’t need a degree in "intellectualism" to understand that. Just use your head, learn some practical stuff, and leave the abstract fluff behind. Don’t waste time tryin’ to understand Marxism, ‘cause it's just a pseudo-goodreads list made to sound intellectual on Reddit. Just padd through whatever you are having problems understanding the lexicon off through AI. I read all of Espinoza or whatever the fuck that prick was called through GTP chapter by chapter as if it was an AVGN review.

>>23901
>>23902
Both true. It's a tragedy that philosophy is prioritised over technical skills in academia.

>>23900
Hail Eugene

>>23899
FWIW, the person you're responding to isn't 'really' a nazi. The flag is meant provocatively. I know people are allergic to nuanced distinctions, but they're a syncretistic nazbol/red-brown type who incorporates certain features endemic within the philosophy of fascism juxtaposed upon communism.

>>23919
So basically a Nazi but with extra steps. The point is he's caught up on essentialism and in the end they always return "home" to the German ideology.

>>23902
This is retarded as fuck because a lot of we now consider practical knowledge or skills were built out of doing seemingly useless things. You are also making a distinction between philosophy, social sciences, and hard sciences that didn't exist for most of human history. Even to this day all of these things influence and are influenced by each other. Also to say that Marxism has had no practical outcome is insane, did you just skip past 20th century history?
Promoting AI slop as a shortcut to actual learning is especially disgusting.

>>23949
First of all:
L + (You) ratio + can't read capital + no home gym + Protein powder expired + Can't even bench your own Steam Deck + Zero functional programming skills + Unread libgens + Book backlog spanning three genres + No soldiering kit + No powertools + AI romance + acquaintances with anime profile pictures ppl + shit sleep schedule + Unplayed steam games + No sunlight + No Vitamin D + No Maidens + Discord account + virgin

Sexond:
Get that head outta yo ass and this site and get somethin' done like I was with your mom okah son?

>>23949
Actually it may be that it's the other way around. Regardless we are living in an age where technical skills are looked down upon as unnecessary.


Most of our academic skills are underutilized for everyday tasks

>>23952
these are all so specific bruh theres no way you arent projecting

>I need to read irrelevant philosopher to understand other IP to understand another IP to understand the guy who correctly rubbished and critiqued them all
Come on.

if we look at etymology, we can see that the word originally comes from the greek "dialektikē" (διαλεκτική), which refers to the art of discussion. this meaning is similar to dialog (διάλογος); dia-log(os). if we take sources from plato, we can see that he employs "dialectic" in this way:
<"And what would you call someone who knows how to ask and answer questions? Wouldn’t you call him a dialectician?" [cratylus, 390c]
yet, dialectic to plato is not merely a mode of communication, but the process of gaining knowledge by its mode of inquiry,
<"What mechanism could possibly turn any agreement into knowledge when it begins with something unknown and puts together the conclusion and the steps in between from what is unknown? None. Therefore, dialectic is the only inquiry that travels this road, doing away with hypotheses and proceeding to the first principle itself, so as to be secure." [republic 533c-d]
to plato, then, knowledge itself becomes a condition of dialectic:
<"he reaches the end of the intelligible, just as the other reached the end of the visible. [.] And what about this journey? Don’t you call it dialectic?" [republic, 532b]
<"Then, do you call someone who is able to give an account of the being of each thing dialectical?" [republic, 534b]
in plainer terms, this is the socratic method:
<"Now my art of midwifery is just like theirs in most respects. The difference is that I attend men and not women, and that I watch over the labor of their souls, not of their bodies. And the most important thing about my art is the ability to apply all possible tests to the offspring, to determine whether the young mind is being delivered of a phantom, that is, an error, or a fertile truth [.] The common reproach against me is that I am always asking questions of other people but never express my own views about anything, because there is no wisdom in me; and that is true enough." [theaetetus, 150c-d]
or alternatively,
<"The dialectician chooses a proper soul and plants and sows within it discourse accompanied by knowledge—discourse capable of helping itself as well as the man who planted it, which is not barren but produces a seed from which more discourse grows in the character of others. Such discourse makes the seed forever immortal and renders the man who has it as happy as any human being can be." [phaedrus, 277a]
so then, dialectic in the platonic sense, is the critical framework of investigating claims by inquiry. in a previous thread, i once compared the socratic method to the inquiry of children. the child will always ask "why?" and exhaust the adult, who finds that their assumptions are baseless (such as the paradox of justice which we may read in the dialogue "euthyphro"). this is also what makes socrates a christian figure, in the vein of Christ's teaching:
<"Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." [matthew 18:3 KJV]
<"I have a divine or spiritual sign [.] This began when I was a child." [apology, 31d]

next is aristotle's treatment of dialectic,
for which he agrees with plato:
<"dialectic is a process of criticism wherein lies the path to the principles of all inquiries" [topics, book 1]
he elsewise qualifies this by proposition, between demonstration and dialectic:
<"A demonstrative proposition differs from a dialectical one, because a demonstrative proposition is the assumption of one of two contradictory statements [.] whereas a dialectical proposition choice between two contradictories [.] both the demonstrator and the dialectician argue deductively after assuming that something does or does not belong to something [.] it will be demonstrative, if it is true and assumed on the basis of the first principles of its science; it will be dialectical if it asks for a choice between two contradictories" [prior analytics, book 1]
dialectic thus proposes "contradiction" (affirmative and negative opposites), to give resolution via deduction (the deriving of the internal necessity of terms). he situates this as such:
<"a dialectical question demands as answer either the statement proposed or one side of a contradiction [.] the question must give one the choice of stating whichever side of the contradiction one wishes." [de interpretatione, 11]
or more simply:
<"a dialectical proposition must be of a form to which it is possible to reply ‘Yes’ or ‘No'" [topics, book 8]
dialectic then resolves contradiction, by a process of criticism, or negation.

we may then read hegel continuously:
<"Reason is negative and dialectical, since it dissolves the determinations of the understanding into nothing; it is positive, since it generates the universal, and comprehends the particular therein […] It is the negative, that which constitutes the quality of both the dialectical reason and the understanding: it negates the simple, thereby posits the determinate difference of the understanding; but it equally dissolves this difference, and so it is dialectical" [science of logic, bk. 1, 21.8]
from this, we may assume three things:
- reason is negative and dialectical
- negation posits difference
- negation dissolves that same difference
we may say then that in the movement of negativity, it likewise negates itself. this self-relating negativity, hegel calls "dialectical", and so serves as his basis. a formal example is given, for which it may serve as a means of comprehension:
<"In its positive formulation, A = A, this proposition is at first no more than the expression of empty tautology […] They do not see that in saying, “Identity is different from difference,” they have thereby already said that identity is something different [.] to be different belongs to identity not externally, but within it, in its nature […] what transpires from these two contradictory claims is only the failure to reconcile these two thoughts." [science of logic, bk. 2, 11.262-3]
what hegel sees then is that the principle of "identity" [A] finds contradiction with the concept of "difference" [not-A]. yet, to hegel, identity must partake in difference for it to be an identity as such. as hegel also sees, this contradiction is not "external", but "internal" of its own nature:
<"[A is… A] makes moves in the direction of saying something, of adducing a further determination. But since only the same is repeated, the opposite has happened instead, nothing has occurred. Such talk of identity, therefore, contradicts itself [.] it surpasses itself into the dissolution of itself […] The other expression of the principle of identity, 'A cannot be A and not-A at the same time,' is in a negative form; it is called the “principle of contradiction.” [science of logic, bk. 2, 11.264-5]
here, hegel is not simply identifying the immanent contradiction between identity and difference, but seeing the contradiction of identity itself; it becomes untenable to hold to such positivity, for in its self-relation [A is… A], it must assume determination toward something else. in this self-movement, it is thus mediated by negativity [difference]. finally,
<"A is enunciated, and a not-A which is the pure other of A; but this not-A only shows itself in order to disappear. In this proposition, therefore, identity is expressed as a negation of negation [.] 'A is . . . A': the difference is only a disappearing and the movement goes back into itself." [science of logic, bk. 2, 11.265]
we find hegel's meaning then, that the "principle of identity" [A = A] is grounded by an internal and self-relating negativity, in the "principle of contradiction" [A ≠ not-A] this negativity mediates positivity, and allows identity to "return" to itself. a more complete formula then is: [A = A ≠ not-A]. we have a repetition of terms, but one which still enunciates its negativity, and thus embraces its totality. we find a similar meaning of this "returning" expressed here:
<"The proposition should express what the True is; but essentially the True is Subject. As such it is merely the dialectical movement, this course that generates itself, going forth from, and returning to, itself." [phenomenology, §65]
here, the "truth" is associated less with an isolated variable, and more with a process;
<"The truth is the whole. The whole, however, is merely the essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development. Of the Absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result" [phenomenology, §20]
truth, to hegel, is a process, which totalises its elements. this process is dialectic, which like in plato's understanding, is a "journey" to the universal; what hegel sees reason preserving in its negativity. thus, hegel's exposition reminds us of aristotle:
<"dialectic is a process of criticism wherein lies the path to the principles of all inquiries" [topics, book 1]

from hegel comes marx, who describes his materialist reversal of hegel as such,
<"The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell. In its mystified form, dialectic became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things. In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary. The contradictions inherent in the movement of capitalist society impress themselves upon the practical bourgeois most strikingly in the changes of the periodic cycle, through which modern industry runs, and whose crowning point is the universal crisis. That crisis is once again approaching, although as yet but in its preliminary stage; and by the universality of its theatre and the intensity of its action it will drum dialectics even into the heads of the mushroom-upstarts of the new, holy Prusso-German empire." [capital vol. 1, 1873 afterword]
marx then presents a "mystified" and "rational" form of dialectic. the mystified form justifies the status quo, while the rational form sees the transience of things. contradictions are still being worked out.

essentially then, dialectics refers to a mode of inquiry, whereby contradictions are resolved by refinement. this is the "journey" reason takes to the absolute.

>>24360
Wow that painting is pretty fuckin' beautiful

>>24362
The funny part about that Jacobin trash is that all the quotetweets are absolutely clueless too. Of course what Chibber says isn't materialism he's just peddling naive realism under the label. But he's not entirely wrong: communists do understand class actions as driven by material (i.e., economic) interests.

The key is that communists don't just assume people act out of class interest, they expose those interests, make them conscious, which is what actually reform of consciousness. It's not that everyone always knows or follows their class interest, class society hides those interests behind moral justifications, even morality talks against those interests. Also, I'm not sold on Chibber's democratic idealism. There's no mention of the middle class and how their democratic demands actually obstruct the class interests of the proletariat.