Today is Karl Marx's birthday and I wanna make a statement about his theory of society and capitalism.
Marx's theory on history and the development of capitalism is based on these three core ideas:
- historical and dialectical materialism
- class struggle under capitalism is inevitable
- labour theory of value and surplus value theory
a. Historical materialism is a good theory but reductionist.
The mode of production and class struggle is not the main driving factor of history.
b. capitalism adapts itself better than Marx's predicted
c. labour is important in defining the value of a product but it is also not the main defining factor of its price
These ideas are upon which Marx defined capitalism, its development and the basis for its own overcoming which would result in socialism and communism.
If my critiques are true, socialism loses its scientific appeal and communism ends up being more of an utopian ideal rather than a scientific theory of history.
>>2803452>marx theory of value was fake because marx believed work is what defines humans as worthHave you read Capital?
>>2803431Yes you moron, he is here, you read him on your screen, the word God
>>2803444>analysing the material dimension of reality is not the same thing as analysing reality as a wholeyou haven't proved there is a non material dimension of reality though. you just insist there is one, insist that it is self evident, etc
>>2803458>>2803459>>2803460when you don't understand spiritual things you end up creating theories like these
bad, bad mistake
>>2803460marx doesn't invoke species-being after his youth in the 1840s. I am asking if you have read Capital, 1867. i didn't ask for your chatgpt summary and link to a document that isn't capital. answer the question. you have a vibes based understanding of marx's theory of value.
>>2803463have you read capital
>>2803461proof is what idiots want when they don't understand reality
>>2803466claims require evidence, lack of evidence means claims can be disregarded
>>2803467then why are you invoking alienation and species-being which is absence from his mature work?
>>2803464I can feel you literally shaking right now trying to see if there is something hidden in all of marxs works that can relativize what I just said
no, it was his view. he did viewed labor as human essence and it is not true
the dignity of life does not reside in labor but in life itself
end of discussion. I am not an academicist, I am a real life human being and I am tired of dumbsacks like you that read marx but can't understand basic stuff
>>2803468you can disregard as much as you want, god will never disappear
>>2803471>the dignity of life does not reside in labor but in life itselfblah blah blah i'm not talking about the dignity of life i'm talking about exploitation of labor by capital which is provable because the equilibrium price of a commodity is its socially necessary labor time, while the equilibrium price of labor power is its subsistence. labor power is able to produce more than its own subsistence in a working day, and the capitalist pockets that as surplus value, so he can buy more means of production and more labor power. read capital.
>>2803473you lost in the great scheme and is trying to win in the minor one
but when you lose in the great scheme, the minor is already lost
capital is just an analysis of capitalism based on the notion that capitalism is a way of vampirizing human labor
it is partially true, but partially true is not enough
>>2803474ok then go write a book about why you think capital is wrong. you have to read it first though. you have to actually be able to quote it and deconstruct it, instead of just making up what you think it says.
i respect idealists and theists who paved the way for materialism like Giordano Bruno and Baruch Spinzoa btw but we are so far past that now.
>>2803475simple answer: capitalism exploits people not because it vampirizes human labor, but because it vampirizes human souls
>>2803479that would be retarded even if souls were real. souls are supposed to be indestructible. it's supposed to be the one thing material reality can't take from you. the capitalist can work you to death, but your soul will dwell forever in heaven. going by your own theistic logic here. when marx says capital is a vampire, he is being metaphorical (something engels was more careful not to be in volume 2 and 3), and specifically was pointing out how means of production, like machinery, are products of labor that already occured in the past, and that "dead labor" embodied in machinery, sucks "living labor" like a vampire. Basically rather than getting freed by machines, the person becomes enslaved by the machine, and has their body used up by the machine. the capitalist doesn't shorten the working day when new tech is invented, instead he forces the worker to work for the same amount of time, but more intensely, and with more supervision, and with more performance evaluations.
God-anon is not wrong about life, just wrong about marx. Marxism is not an answer for the totality of reality, god-anon. That aside, you are mistaken in assuming there is any immaterial behind the material or that material and immaterial are two seperate things. There is no thing, this god you speak of is also empty. All the things you experience, reason, matter, society and gravity are all self-propelled by their self-suchness. They are the vast, interconnected, irreducible real. God is a signal of void, a stand-in for void, merely a name with nothing behind it. Let go of your attachment to distinction and you will realize sunyata.
>>2803480souls are real and they can be alienated
actually, it is dumb to believe in aloenation if you don't believe in souls
>>2803482brahman is not void
>>2803485only souls can be alienated.
you cannot alienate a chair
if humans are just complex material stuff, it does not differentiate it from chairs.
actually, communist regimes killed a lot of people, maybe there is something you should investigate concerning this matters
>>2803483how many souls did god make?
do they just chill forever before he puts them in a body?
do they eventually merge back into each other?
are there an infinite number of them?
does one soul live multiple lives?
do multiple bodies have the same soul?
what about conjoined twins who share parts of their brain and can hear each other's thoughts? are they two bodies with one soul, or two bodies with two souls that overlap?
do animals have souls? even dumb animals like fish? what about bugs? single celled organisms? fungi?
this is why I don't find hypotheses of the immaterial useful, they create more questions than answers, and provide no mechanism to go about answering those questions. they are just substitutes for "I don't know", and what's worse is they posit more unknowable things. so they just multiply the unknowns rather than admitting to it.
>>2803484Yes it is.
>>2803488>if humans are just complex material stuff, it does not differentiate it from chairs.There is no differentiation regardless of materiality.
>>2803488>if humans are just complex material stuff, it does not differentiate it from chairs.well we have feelings and can feel pain and are self aware. that's a pretty big difference. it just comes from our brain instead of our souls. it's not that big of a deal.
>>2803452>explaining to you some esoteric knowledgeYou have Schizophrenia
>marx believed work is what defines humans as worthThis is so confused I don't know where to start. The "value" Marx is concerned with is very specifically the common social substance of commodities that allows them to be equated and thus, exchanged. You seem to be operating on some definition of "worth" that is outside even the bourgeois conflation of use-value and value and is completely orthogonal to Marx's theory. I don't think Marx would believe work somehow essentially "defines humans as worth" because humans can and have existed outside the realm of commodity exchange, to which his notion of value is confined. His belief that labor as he defines it is unique to humans doesn't necessarily imply that humans have a "worth" that is defined by this labor.
>our existence is not defined by action or workLabor is nothing more or less than the metabolizing of nature to meet human wants and needs, and in this sense our existence is, in a real way, defined by labor. If you stop the metabolism, you stop the organism, and any organism is defined by its ability to continue being itself. An animal that dies and is decomposed loses its definition.
>>2803494he's confused because he didn't even read capital. he wouldn't answer when i asked him if he read it. instead he gave me a chatgpt screenshot and a link to the 1844 manuscripts
>>2803496> a link to the 1844 manuscriptssorry, not even that. a link to some guy in 1961 discussing alienation and species being, which marx basically doesn't use after the 1840s.
I am going to sleep now because I am tired
I am here talking to you for a long time and I think we could spend hours talking about the same stuff
I will just make it clear.
- I don't hate marx and I don't pretend to know everything about his economics or whatever but I know his core ideas and they are based on materialism and class struggle and I have some points against it, I don't think he is completely wrong but I think it should be viewed through a critical lens
- I don't personally considerate labor a value. some people do, I don't.
- love is real
>>2803499yeah love is real. i love my wife and my kid. I just don't think souls are real. I've watched people die before their bodies died because their brain died. I've watched people who used to be smart beocome dumb because of substance addiction. people i've loved. i loved them. souls don't have to be real for me to love other people.
> I don't personally considerate labor a value. some people do, I don't.neither does marx. for marx, labor does not have inherent value, commodified labor does. he calls commodified labor labor-power, and it only has value equalling its own subsistence. he is trying to demonstrate how the working class is exploited by capital, not talking about any kind of non-economic "worth". you seem very confused on all this.
>>2803504marx pretty much talks about human nature and you cannot talk about important stuff without talkong about humam nature in general
you seem like a limited kind of person, but that's ok
we all have our limitations
>>2803509so called "human nature" keeps changing because life evolves
>>2803509try to read capital, ok?
>>2803512evolution is not the only cosmic process there is
there is also degeneration amd these are all connected to our souls somehow
maybe the problem is that you have a silly idea of what a soul is and is fighting against this idea
>>2803516I don't know all the answers but I am just going with it.
Having a soul is not a bad idea, I don't see how people can believe the universe is only material.
I have experienced mystical stuff in my life.
I could describe it to you but we would spend hours talking about supernatural stuff.
I bealieve in souls and I believe they go to heaven or some mystical place after we die.
This is not based on science but human experience.
>>2803521hmm, I used to think like that but I think this reasoning is missing something
there is a mystery you should accept in order to understand immaterial stuff
the physical universe is mystical in its own way
>>2803521>>2803524now I noticed you said that
yes, the material world is mystical and so does the immaterial
you should pay attention
good night
Permaban weed guys
>>2802562>a. Historical materialism is a good theoryNope, it's teleological bullshit.
>but reductionist.Any theory is a reduction of one thing to another thing. Your claim is meaningless.
> the main driving factor of history.It has no driving factor. History just is what it is. The line of events, you know.
please actually read marx and never listen to online marxists, none of them have read marx
KARL MARX WAS A russian saboteur
>>2802576As if race, gender and other identities exist on an island, each one of these variables are contingent and access to material and specific mode of production determined their identity
suppose africa developed the steam engine before england, they would have colonized a vast amount of land, despite whatever thirdworldists say.
>>2803524>hmm, I used to think likeAnd I used to think like you, so I guess we yin-yanged, as people often do
>>2803525>you should pay attentionI certainly try!
>good nightgood morning!
>>2803709Mods permaban this man for idpol
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