>Marxism is antithetical to Humanism
>Diamat can be understood in a non-Hegelian way, akshually
>The state, your family, the media, etc. are all APPARATUSES OF CONTROLL
>Machiavelli was actually a progressive pre-materialist thinker, smeared by the Catholic Church, akshually
>Communists should win over scientists ASAP
>Freud and Lacan were genuises akin to Einstein or Bohr
>Realz over Feelz all the time 100%
How was he wrong again? Like, once??? This fucker was on CIA watch-list and had an exhausting lettering b/w him and USSR philosophers.
<inb4 he strangled him wife
1) don't care
2) she was literally asking for it for decades (documented)
3) le attrocity propaganda
>>2417764So many counter-factuals here.
>le prisonHe was never in prison, you retard.
>admitted toHe was clinically depressed and took every opportunity to shit on himself. If you ACTUALLY read Althusser, you'll see a philosopher deeply engaged in Marxist philosophy, qnd if I had to take a bet, he'd read 500 times more Mar, Engelsy and Lenin, than you did.
GG NO RE
>>2417764Too simple, naive
>>2417767The Cock is really like everyone else in this. He is not an intellectual in this branch of science, humanities whatever you wanna call it.
I don't comment on his computer stuff so
it'd be much appreciated if laymen could hold themselves back a bit, just you know, common courtesy
Don't talk shit about shit you don't undastand
super simple stuff
>>2417759Yeah it was more a mercy kill than anything. It's still funny to call him Louis the Strangler and so on.
I can not off the dome think of another (pure, excluding the obvious Stalin, Mao, Lenin) intellectual with a body count. One exception
Would you say Ted K.'s math is invalidated by him going a little nutso?
If I cared about math I'd have an opinion but in principle, no.
Anyway, what I've read, he's good.
That Machiavelli take is a pretty common one. I'd have to rustle up some stuff from my HD.
Heraclitus, Machiavelli are materialist (forerunners)
I call it Heraclitus versus the Three Stooges
Trademark my own
>>2417772k, reddit
let the adults talk now
>>2417775>what I've read, he's good.He's the best.
>That Machiavelli take is a pretty common one.It's not. Every diploma'd idiot says shit like "Machiavellian"…
>>2417780100%
I never truly engaged with Althusser. Everything said in the OP seems reasonable to me, maybe I should read him, what short texts would you recommend as an introduction?
My only problem with him is that Althussercels can be pretty annoying for some reason, or if they aren't, they talk about inscrutable things that I'm not sure has any real relevance to the contemporary political situation.
Like the whole debate about humanism, what's the big deal? I can understand that being an humanist means going back to Feuerbach, substituting God with the idea of "Humanity", an ideal concept of humans that conveniently excludes some less savory parts of the human condition, which in turn give rise to the concept of human rights and so on.
I can understand why some Marxists would feel uncomfortable with that, I can understand how humanism can give rise to barbarism and things like the Iraq War.
But isn't Marxism some kind of twisted humanism in the end? Instead of having The Human and human rights as higher concepts to aspire to, we have instead class struggle, communism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Aufhebung of presently existing society, all these concepts that, while it can be argued in favor of them without resorting to morality, are in the end nothing but other higher concepts we are supposed to hold above our own existence, supposed to take some of our time to advance these goals in a party or communist organizations.
You might say "because it's in your self-interest as a prole" but it doesn't work like that IRL. Once you are part of a communist org, you are pressured to do various activities for the group that doesn't benefit you directly.
Moreover, and I'm going to be controversial on purpose here: If I reject human rights and the idea that humans should be rational and moral, then why should I care about Palestine and Gaza? Why should I care about slave markets in Libya? Why should I care about massacres in Congo? Anti-imperialism? Human trafficking? Preventing someone from committing suicide? Yeah, humans are irrational and do horrible stuff, so what? As long as it doesn't affect me, why should I give a fuck?
I think arguing in favor of antihumanist Marxism is dangerous because Max Stirner and to a lesser extent Nietzsche are much more effective antihumanists than Marxists. If human rights, rationality, etc. are fictions (and they are), then a completely logical conclusion is that there is nothing above My Self.
I think there is something crucial I misunderstand about the whole humanism/antihumanism debate so please enlighten me, and post relevant short texts if you have any in mind.
Oh and I'm dubious of Althusser's advice to start reading Capital with chapter 4. At the same time, the chapter 4 goes right into the heart of the matter of what is capital and is easier to understand than the first three chapters (especially chapter 3), which is more encouraging for someone starting up, but chapter 1 is also crucial to understand the concept of Value, and gives rise to a lot of interesting debates like "has Value always existed in human history, and can we abolish it?" that can change significantly how someone envision a post-capitalist society.
>>2417859Humanism, especially in its liberal guise, often functions as a depoliticized moral ideology. Althusser critiques this kind of humanism, not just as a naive or vague moralism, but as something that historically neuters class struggle. His target is the "ideology of Man" that became central to postwar European Marxism (e.g. Sartre), which emphasized personal alienation and ethics over structural analysis and political revolution. Althusser’s move is this: we cannot base Marxism on "Man" because Man is not a transhistorical essence. Man is a product of historical conditions, not their cause. The idea of a universal human nature mystifies the concrete conditions that shape people (and that can be transformed). That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care about human beings. It means we shouldn’t smuggle in a pre-political idea of "humanity" or "rationality" as a kind of hidden god-term. You’re right that this raises the question: So if we abandon moralism, why do anything at all? Why care about Gaza, or Congo, or capitalism, or suicide prevention? Althusser would say you don’t need a moral foundation to act politically. You only need to understand how ideology interpellates subjects, how structures produce outcomes, and how class struggle offers a materialist path to transformation. But this answer is deeply unsatisfying for many, and that’s why Althusserians can come across as robotic or "inscrutable," as you said.
>But isn't Marxism some kind of twisted humanism in the end?Yes, and no.
You’re right that there’s an aspirational element in Marxism: classless society, communism, etc. But Althusser would say that Marxism doesn't depend on positing a moral ideal external to history. It doesn’t say "we should abolish capitalism because it’s unjust in a moral sense," it says "capitalism produces contradictions that will necessarily give rise to its own transformation."You’re also right to point out that, in practice, commitment to Marxist organizing often does require forms of sacrifice and idealism that feel very close to ethical or humanist imperatives. This is a genuine tension. And here's the hard part: Althusser doesn’t fully resolve this tension. His antihumanism is more epistemological than existential. He tells you how to think Marxist theory rigorously, not how to live or act as a Marxist in a world filled with suffering. That’s part of why Stirner or Nietzsche can feel more powerful on the personal level, because they do tell you what it means to live without illusions. Althusser tells you how not to think in illusions, but not necessarily how to live. Your question, why should I care about human suffering if I reject humanism?, is the Stirnerite death blow to a lot of antihumanist Marxism. Althusser never quite answers this, because his work assumes that you're already oriented toward political struggle. His goal is to clear away ideological obstacles to doing Marxist theory correctly. If you want an antihumanist answer that does speak to the existential level, you might actually prefer thinkers like Antonio Negri who reclaims the power of labor without appealing to fixed essences.
You’re right to be skeptical about skipping chapters 1-3, especially if you’re interested in the Value debate. Althusser’s advice to begin with Ch. 4 is not because Ch. 1 is unimportant, it’s because he thinks most people misread Ch. 1 as a philosophical anthropology about "Man and labor." He thinks Marx only fully articulates capital as a social relation in Ch. 4 onward.
>>2419394Wrong thread?!
I'm gonna report you soon for off topic spam DoTP is when we get to kill you and your family during the glorious revolutionary terror.
Lower stage socialism is when we don't have to suffer you or your family.
Any questions?
>>2419399>Marxism is actually liberalism'no'
You were beaten intellectually and physically. History proved you wrong. Enjoy your falling world order. Time_to_die.jpeg
>>2419401read the introduction to the grundrisse:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htmand marx on the fetishism of commodities:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S4to understand his position. man has become a means to an end rather than an end in himself. that is the process of alienation, whereby we are mediated by the "other", which in turn becomes the social subject. marx wants to return man to himself by cutting out the medium, and thus for man to become a subject, as opposed to an object, which he is in the anti-humanist view (such as marx seeing how man becomes an instrument of production, and so a mere assemblage).
>>2419399>marxism is literally about man reclaiming his subjectivity from the inhuman device of capitalMarxism is literally about developing the productive forces to the point that no human labor is necessary anymore. Marxism is literally about workers instituting terror against you and your family and your ilk.
We "literally" aim to kill you, anon. You should join the political camp aimed at defending you, ASAP.
>>2419404>marx wants to return manYou are a charlatan and the enemy of the proletariat.
Read Marx's fragments on machinery, you westoid retard
>>2419412>fragment on machinesyes, another part of the grundrisse that makes my point:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch13.htm#p690<"In a broader sense the entire production process and each of its moments, such as circulation – as regards its material side – is only a means of production for capital, for which value alone is the end in itself […] In this form, the material elements – material of labour, means of labour and living labour – appeared merely as the essential moments of the labour process itself, which capital appropriates."marx establishes that production is for the sake of capital, not man's desires. he further sees how man becomes a component of the enslaving machine:
<"once adopted into the production process of capital, the means of labour passes through different metamorphoses, whose culmination is the machine, or rather, an automatic system of machinery [.] this automaton consisting of numerous mechanical and intellectual organs, so that the workers themselves are cast merely as its conscious linkages [.] In no way does the machine appear as the individual worker's means of labour [.] it merely transmits the machine’s work, the machine’s action, on to the raw material – supervises it and guards against interruptions.."marx speaks on this historical character:
<"Not as with the instrument, which the worker animates and makes into his organ with his skill and strength, and whose handling therefore depends on his virtuosity. Rather, it is the machine which possesses skill and strength in place of the worker, is itself the virtuoso, with a soul of its own in the mechanical laws acting through it; and it consumes coal, oil etc [.] The appropriation of living labour by objectified labour – of the power or activity which creates value by value existing for-itself – which lies in the concept of capital […] In machinery, objectified labour confronts living labour within the labour process itself as the power which rules it; a power which, as the appropriation of living labour, is the form of capital."capitalism means man's objectification in service of an inhuman subject, as i said. marx wants man to work for his own ends instead.
>>2419452>marx wants man to workNO.Marx "wants" man to be free of work.
U get to be shot
>>2419466>>2419467>>2419468illiterate trolls.
weird how when you forfeit any loyalty to humanity, you become an apologist for capital. 🤔🙄
>>2419473>humanity vs. capitalFalse dichotomy…
Next??
>>2419507>freeing man from his objectification then means transcending this relation, which means man asserting himself over the realm of productionSo basically 100% of what the USSR did? I'm all for that!!!!
We have so much in common!!
>by equating man and the machineThis
never happened ITT.
>>2420008Foucault was very rationalistic, even too rationalistic. He was seeking to show how our taboos, our ideas of what is good and what isn't, our behaviors, regarding punishment, sex, madness, are shaped by history and societal narratives. He read a shitload of 17th century books and historical accounts, and his books are the summary of all the juicy bits. That's why Foucault is still "problematic", especially to American puritans who smear him by repeating right-wing lies, because he was a fucking real motherfucker. They are shocked when he describes vivaciously the source of their taboos, they can't handle it so they want to forget all about it, then they jerk off to some fetishistic porn videos as if nothing happened, "ignorance is bliss" as we say.
Judith Butler, I have no idea what she is blabbering about, but Foucault was a genius. I don't expect /leftypol/ to be knowledgeable about anything beyond the Marxist tradition and video games though.
>>2420187This is an hoax invented by a right-wing conspiracy theorist called Guy Sorman. You are literally repeating fascist lies as if they were truth. It was deboonked a while ago, but you Americans are so triggered by Foucault you can't handle the truth.
>En 2020, [Guy Sorman] affirme dans France-Amérique que le philosophe Michel Foucault aurait eu des relations sexuelles avec des enfants en Tunisie contre de l'argent et décrit l'œuvre et l'engagement politique de Foucault comme « l'alibi de ses turpitudes »[22]. Un an plus tard, il réaffirme cela dans Mon dictionnaire du bullshit[23], sur le plateau de C ce soir[24] et dans le journal conservateur The Sunday Times[25], tout en ajoutant que Foucault aurait eu ces relations avec des enfants de huit à dix ans sur des pierres tombales dans un village proche de Tunis aux vacances de Pâques 1969. Ces assertions, massivement relayées par des médias du monde entier (Angleterre, Allemagne, Argentine, etc.)[26] ne sont cependant pas étayées par d'autres sources et vont à l'encontre de plusieurs éléments de la vie de Foucault en Tunisie (les menaces dont il faisait l'objet en Tunisie, et le fait qu'il n'enseignait plus à l'université de Tunis mais à celle de Vincennes, qui rendent peu probable un retour en 1969). Dans une enquête de Jeune Afrique, des habitants de Sidi Bou Saïd (village où Michel Foucault résidait) contestent alors les propos de Guy Sorman, et l'une des personnes interviewées, affirme que les partenaires de Foucault étaient « des gars de 17 ou 18 ans qu’il retrouvait brièvement dans les bosquets sous le phare voisin du cimetière. »[27] Dans un entretien au journal Die Zeit publié le 7 avril, Guy Sorman admet n'avoir pas vu Michel Foucault dans ce cimetière et dit s'être basé sur une rumeur entendue dans l'entourage de Jean Daniel[28]. Deux jours plus tard, Philippe Chevallier souligne dans L'Express le peu de consistance de ces accusations et fait remarquer que Guy Sorman a tenu des propos variables. Interrogé, Sorman affirme dorénavant que Michel Foucault ne l'intéresse pas particulièrement, admet n'avoir aucune preuve de ce qu'il affirmeIf you have sex with underaged boys in the cemetery of a Tunisian village, the whole village will know it and fucking kill your ass you fucking dumbass puritan.
>>2420205its here:
>Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method? Of course the method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connexion. Only after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described. If this is done successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror, then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction. My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of “the Idea,” he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of “the Idea.” With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought. The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at the first volume of Das Kapital, it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre Ἐπίγονοι [Epigones — Büchner, Dühring and others] who now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing’s time treated Spinoza, i.e., as a “dead dog.” I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. 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.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htmmarx began writing his economic manuscripts around 1858, so thats a conservative estimate. reading the young marx, it s clear to see his anti-hegelianism, but later in life, comes back to him.
>>2420174I generally agree, anon, but FwooCoh became a neolib in his later life. I think that a Marxist should be able to detect exactly a theoretician's underlying problematic (in his theory) that was always going to led him astray.
In this sense I'm an Althusserian.
Good pics on Sartre, btw. I've personally committed the grave sin of only reading Sarte' novels (not his philo books) and coming to love Camus over him.
Forgib me
>>2419275She literally wanted to die and said it on several (recorded) occasions. My personal interpretation is that she was a true revolutionary who saw that the West had no revolutionary potential and she off'd herself by proxy.
See the suicide note of Marx's daughter.
>>2420205The epistemic break is empirically provabley fyi. I just used "pdfgrep" and searched the entire MECW archive based on Althussy's criterions and all of it was there.
Fucking Engels calls humanists "anti-revolutionists" in his later letters. It's all there, dude. You just need to be blind not to see the qualitative progress in their works.
Marxism is anti-humanism, deal w it.
>>2420242Read Althusser's book on Machiavelli. It will blow your mind.
Or, should I say, it will trvthnuke your mind?
>>2420548It's a statement of fact, fyi
t. read all of 'em
>admits he didn't even read Marx>whole theory relies on trusting him that there was some big, epistemological break and Marx didn't just refocus the mechanism of his critique later in his life>the whole term "structuralist Marxism" is a red herring because the "humanist" Marxism doesn't ignore the structure but escapes vulgar economism by recognizing the dialectic with ideology as Engels literally put in this letter at the very beginning. Neither does "humanist" Marxism in any way defend enlightenment, bourgeois fake-humanism https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htm<According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure — political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas — also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. There is an interaction of all these elements in which, amid all the endless host of accidents (that is, of things and events whose inner interconnection is so remote or so impossible of proof that we can regard it as non-existent, as negligible), the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary. Otherwise the application of the theory to any period of history would be easier than the solution of a simple equation of the first degree.>all of his defenders basically pretend that he has sole claim to critique on ideology because he's all they've read >>2425522And why would I want that?
I am serious here, give me something like a summary or a line.
I stay out of his field and I don't need him in mine. I think it's like that supposed Einstein quote: Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
I respect him as a fellow socialist (which I can't say for most supposed communists/alleged leftists etc.) but he is an old computer scientist.
What little I read of him does not give the impression of someone philosophically inclined more on the level of common sense, the enemy of "real" philosophy.
>>2427740No, no, strangling old people
We been over this
>>2427737Marxism is a field, you two are in the same field unless you aren't a Marxist
Forgive the curtness, typing is extremely painful for me
>>2427743I can have even identical politics to someone but be philosophically far removed from the same person.
Like, ideology is easy to me. Because I invested a lot of time in getting a grip on it, simple. Otoh if you ask me to organize so much as a birthday party, I am liable to get lost. Prioritizing, workflow, even getting people in line and acting in concert. I'd need practice to acquire "leadership qualities".
Which is to say, on one hand, yes, however I feel my point still stands.
Forgot to attach pic 2 earlier
like this is just bollocks
That is just what I mean
>>2425214>admitsnot really how it works
>he has sole claim to critique on ideology I critique pretty hard myself (which is to say, a self-defeating point, such as it is, the whole idea is to have a tool set to engage critically with the ruling ideas, very important now especially that we are in wartime)
Really, whoever made a claim as ridiculous as this.
I also don't have a need to defend anyone here, as an aside.
>>2427797Not OP but sounds like you are mixing up prescriptive and descriptive.
It is what it is.
>>2430183Like this and that.
I can't remember now, can I?
The blog he blogs on, I read some of that.
What makes his way here, very occasionally I'll take a look. Can't remember if I ever listened to a video of his in full.
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