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.
>The mode of production and class struggle is not the main driving factor of history.
What is, then?
>>2802569Technology is being constantly advanced, so do you see that we are constantly advancing history?
>>2802568It would be true if humans were some kind of scientific animals that acted accordingly to their material and social condidions exactty but we are soemthing much more complex than that.
Race, gender, sexuality, religion, art, culture, philosophy etc. All these things are not the mere result of material conditions and struggle but they have its own independence and can create history.
Human consciouness is not derived entirely from the material world and historical factors as it seems to be quite the opposite.
>>2802576Sure, but would you concede that in regards to our independent human nature - say, "species-being", there is also a disjunction which occurs at the dawn of history? For example, the human species persisted for 100,000 years before farming and agriculture, but afterwards, man becomes bound to it; so there is clearly a "force" (lets say) that compels the reproduction of a certain form of life, rooted in the mode of production. This movement is not uniform in its territory, but is a general trend we see in recorded history.
>>2802576why are you even here you can be a plain jane liberal anywhere on the internet practically
>>2802584>>2802582It is a dialectical process, but not a merely materialistic one.
>>2802588kek, screencap this, he is rediscovering dialectical materialism
>>2802588i think you might be a case of not understanding the reading and interpreting that experience as the reading being wrong
>>2802593I see history as a mix of hegelian dialectics and marx's view of history.
It not entirely material-based but also not idealistic.
I don't get why people don't see this as an obvious answer. Marx's struggle with hegelian dialectics was his biggest mistake.
>>2802598This is the argument losers cling to when they lose everything they had.
"b-but You don't understand the real magic behind this science"
Yss, I do, and that's why I dare contesting it.
>>2802602Materialism vs. idealism is rather a bad idea.
They are both wrong but have legit arguments within it. Let's end this discussiom once and for all.
>>2802603oh dear my mistake, thank you so much for being god's gift to philosophy just cutting the gordian knot for us like this lmao
>>2802621Marx's philosophy had more than 180 years old and people have been testing and discussing this since then.
If you think I can't critique it you are on the religious side of marxism which ends up not being marxism at all.
>>2802621>>2802623I didn't say Marx was wrong in everything, his critiques of capitalism and view on history are true to some extent.
You are either a materialist or an idealist. There is no third option and if you mix materialist and idealist elements your philosophy and shit will be contradictory and inconsistent.
>>2802631Binary mode of thinking detected.
Material conditions and consciousness are in constant interaction and the idea of reducing the world in one defining the other is a bad idea.
Have a nice day.
>>2802631what the fuck is idealism to you guys, anything you don't like? idealism is such a meaningless word anyway, the correct word would be immaterialism
>>2802648Idealism is the concept that ideas define reality.
It is true to some extent.
>>2802562I like how you didnt even try to argue because you dont have any arguments, just stupid statements
retarded moron
>>2802606you're a fucking retard, nobody serious actually claim to be idealist today because its so obviously wrong
>>2802648>>2802657idealism is the concept that ideas affects reality in a non material way (so not because people talk to each other and their ideas get spread and eventually affects people decisions, this is the materialist view of ideas). Like the japanese and nazis believing that if you just were convinced enough of your own superiority, nothing could stop you (turns out it doesnt work like that)
>>2802670>>2802665All religions are idealistic.
God is the supreme immaterial being that defines reality.
>>2802576>Race, gender, sexuality, religion, art, culture, philosophy etc. All these things are not the mere result of material conditions and struggle but they have its own independence and can create history.They can make history, sure (the statement that hey are not 'mere' results of materialism is tendentious, but I digress) but they cannot advance the mode of production in any meaningful capacity. Women's liberation, in the correct socialist-feminist sense, maybe, but this is a theoretical limit.
>Human consciouness is not derived entirely from the material world and historical factors as it seems to be quite the opposite.Engels remarks somewhere that matter and motion are the same thing and that whatever we might think is not matter is just matter in some specific motion. He gives an example, I think, of a fertilized egg, which through heat (movement) qualitatively changes and becomes 'living'; and a same process can and must be extended to consciousness (particular electrical movement + the historical experience of 'consciousness', this is something that is usually forgotten - consciousness in our understanding is a recent idea).
>>2802679You need ideas to identify and verbalize what you know about the material world.
Without ideas there is no marxism, as materialism is just another form of idea.
>>2802569That's a funny disagreement since when people criticized Marx for being determinist they complain he places so much emphasis on technology, e.g.:
>Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02.htm >>2802759Marx was obsessed with two things:
- dialectical thinking, which he learned from hegel
- historical materialism, in which he developed his own thinking
They are true if you consider reality as some sort of scientific, organized thing centered in material stuff and human relations to it.
The question arised is: is that actually true?
My position is: partially.
>>2802772>partially>both sides have a point>you can't just dismiss one, it's binary thinkingVaguepost GOD
>>2802562>labour is important in defining the value of a product but it is also not the main defining factor of its pricelabor theory of value is such a mis-named thing. marx never once uttered the words "labor theory of value." furthermore it was the bourgeois classical economists like Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and even Ben Franklin who had a labor theory of value. the labor theory of value in its most basic formulation goes back to philosophers like Ibn Khaldun, and even has its prototypical form expressed in the economic works of Aristotle. Marx's theory of value furthermore is not a labor theory of value, but a theory of socially necessary labor time determining the value of the commodity, but not its market price. the value is expressed in monetary form as the natural price, which is the price when supply and demand are in equilibrium. Marx does not ignore the effect of supply and demand upon price, but treats them as a disequilibrium phenomenon which occurs after production.
I think the easiest way I can put it is like this: In a typical introductory economics class in a bourgeois society like the USA, we are taught first and foremost that prices are "caused by" or "determined by" supply and demand. They say this very quickly and simply before moving on, with no attention paid to history or theory.
But let's interrogate this idea a little bit.
Commodity A, Commodity B, and Commodity C can all have price charts drawn with supply and demand curves, but where those curves meet is called the "natural" or "equilibrium" price. For each of those 3 commodities, the equilibrium price may be different. since supply and demand cancel each other out for an equilibrium price, the price cannot be simply explained by supply and demand but by something else, and that something else is the cost of production. the cost of production is the socially necessary labor time required to produce that commodity, also known as its value. The value of the final commodity contains already acknowledges the values of each of the inputs, including the cost to find, extract, and transport input materials, which are all labor costs.
Cockshott and Cottrell proved in the 90s that the labor inputs correlate 95% with the final price.
>>2802634consciousness is not outside of the material. for example, if you get bonked on the brain, your brain gets damaged, and so does your consciousness.
>>2802940Consciousness is the connection between material with the immaterial. Of course if you damage one side it affects the other, but it does not mean the spiritual realm is not real.
>>2802964the immaterial is not a testable hypothesis, and has zero explanatory power. it is used to fill gaps in people's knowledge, and may as well be synonymous with the unknown, except for the fact that people use it to pretend that they know the unknown, and therefore further investigation isn't needed. A confession that you don't know and further investigation is needed is therefore much more useful than proposing that some phenomenon has its cause or origin in the immaterial.
>>2802964>Consciousness is the connection between material with the immaterial.How does one put this statement to the test scientifically?
>>2802935You are playing with words here.
Marx didn't coin this term but it was there, what you just explained is just Marx's view on labor theory of value and his definition of it.
He agrees with the theory that labor determines price (production = labor).
It is not true in the real world and you cannot make it true just changing the system.
>>2802977>>2802980The spiritual realm is not unknown as it is the basis of knowledge.
It can be explained using reason.
It is actually the basic foundation of science itself.
>>2802986>playing with wordsyou have quoted none of my words to avoid having to be exact, and are handwaving away what I am actually doing which is drawing a distinction between value and price, and showing what Marx did differently than the classical economists like Smith and Ricardo who actually did think that labor determines value with no caveats.
>He agrees with the theory that labor determines priceCan you quote him saying this? Bonus points if it is in a year after 1867. Read Capital.
His theory is a theory that socially necessary labor time determines the value of the commodity, which can be expressed as its natural price, which is its price
without the post-production factors taken into account. A final market price may be above or below the natural price of the commodity. but those are disquilibrium phenomena from outside of the production procses. Marx's focus was on the production process, and he was trying to show how within the production process, the capitalist and the worker have a a struggle over the ratio of profits to wages
>It is not true in the real worldYou are attempting to debunk an idea you don't even understand by stating it in a weaker and incorrect form.
>you cannot make it true just changing the system.marx's goal wasn't to "make [the labor theory of value] true" by changing the system" but to abolish wage labor and capital altogether by establishing a system of common ownership over the means of production.
>>2802989So you aren't going to tell me how to put your statement to the test scientifically?
>>2802964>Consciousness is the connection between material with the immaterial.How does one put this statement to the test scientifically?
>>2802989>The spiritual realm is not unknown as it is the basis of knowledge.How does one put either of these statements to the test scientifically?
>>2802997Reason is not the object of science but the foundation of it.
Science is knowledge and knowledge is reason.
You don't know things in the material real but in the spiritual one.
You are being tautological.
>>2803004>>2803001Science, as I said, is a way of understanding material things, not the reason itself which is the object of philosophy.
To test something scientifically and admit that science matters is to admit reason or the immaterial real is true.
You just did it.
>>2802996His definition was different but the basic idea remains.
Yes, he did want to abolish private property based on his labor theory of value and I am saying it is not scientifically correct.
>>2803011What do you find incorrect in his theory, and do you have an alternative explanation?
>>2803004>>2803008First you propose the "immaterial," then you step boldly forward and propose the "spiritual realm", now you have retreated to "Reason."
Reason is nothing more than the activity of the material brain within material reality. If a person gets brain damaged enough, by drugs, or blunt force trauma, or what have you, they can experience a diminished capacity for reason, or even cease cognition altogether. there is not a shred of proof that the consciousness is an immaterial soul floating around in some immaterial spiritual realm outside of the brain. the closest thing we have is people reporting hallucinations they experience under high stress or near death situations. But we have no observable testable way to interact with the "immaterial." So it has no explanatory value. If there is no way to test it, and all you can do is repeatedly appeal to it as the foundation of everything, without saying why this is useful, then I have no use for the concept. What is the difference between saying that you don't know what the foundation of everything, and declaring that the foundation of everything is an unknowable substrate that we cannot investigate through scientific means? It seems to me the only difference is that the former is an admission of further investigation being needed, and the latter is a declaration of knowledge of the unknown: A contradiction in terms. The appeal to the immaterial can be used to justify any nonsense. Every monotheist believes in an immaterial God at the base of all reality, but they curiously put different words in his mouths, and these words always align with their political, economic, cultural, and social interests and outlook to at least some extent.
>>2802964is consciousness not a direct result of the material? it only exists under specific conditions, conditions that can be stopped with damage
>>2803011i have explained the difference between value and price, between Smith and Ricardo's actual labor theory of value, and Marx's theory of socially necessary labor time and you show no indication of caring, let alone to quote and refute me directly. You are avoiding what i have said and simply restating your original thesis ad nauseum in the hopes that nobody notices.
>>2803013Price is basically defined by the market and the market is not exactly a rational being but a complex entity which envolves needs, emotion, attachment etc. and we should be humble enough to acknowledge that instead of trying to create a whole system of value based on labor because you want it to be the main defining factor to debunk the system.
>>2803015>>2803017Spiritual realm is the realm of consciousness and where reasoning takes place.
You are saying that "the only thing that exists is what I can put to test" which is not exactly a valid reasoning.
You can experience reason but you cannot use material tools to test it because it is not material.
As I said, reason is not a material thing such as language and emotions but it is attached to material things, being in the middle of the spiritual and material world, that is the basid definition of being conscious.
Self-consciousness is when matter reaches the immaterial realm or reason.
>>2803019Yet the market accords to supply and demand, and so is based in this arithmetic; between production and consumption. If we wish to consume certain "irrational" things then we may neglect more "rational" things, but this balances out to the further investment into the irrational, since thats where people spend money. So then, what we consume determines what is produced, and the rate of production (i.e. supply) determines the rate of consumption. For example, luxuries are scarce and necessaries are abundant, so we must also see the market as being bound to logistical sums, namely via the medium of money.
The point is that at the bottom of market forces are certain formal structures, which Marxists abstract as the system of social labour, divided into property, classes, etc.
>>2803019man i already addressed this notion and you didn't even read it. you're just repeating very basic bourgeois propaganda.
price is not defined by "the market" but is highly influenced by the production process and scarcity of resources. to say that a resource is scarce is to admit that it requires more active labor time to find, extract, and transport. and the more complex a commodity is, the more active labor time is spent on its creation, and the creation of its constituent parts.
the market price admits scarcity through supply and demand. but supply and demand can cancel each other out. it's called natural price or equilibrium price.
If commodity A has an equilibrium price of 3 dollars
and commodity B has an equilibrium price of 5 dollars
you cannot declare that their price difference is "caused by the market" because supply and demand is canceled out for both commodities. the reason one will cost more than the other is because one took more labor to produce than the other. marx's theory is furthemore not intended to explain random difference from one market price to the next, but to show where profit comes from. The only way the capitalist can profit is by compensating the work force less than it contributes to the commodity. I can tell you have not even read volume 1 but you are approaching marx from a very lazy and unread layman's notion of what he said.
>>2803018You are nauseated by reading Marx and not understanding it like I do.
Feel free to leave the discussion.
>>2803029>>2803031Useless discussion.
I already proved my point: labor is not the main defining factor of the price of some product.
Anything else is just your meltdown and I am not interested in it.
>>2802964>Consciousness is the connection between material with the immaterial.>>2802989>The spiritual realm is not unknown as it is the basis of knowledge.>>2803024>Spiritual realm is the realm of consciousness and where reasoning takes place.You still haven't told me how to test any of this scientifically. You are just repeating your claim and avoiding the question.
are you the brazilian anon that said marxism is satanic because billionares have a divine right over their property?
>>2803035You cannot test reason, but you can use it.
>>2803036I don't believe there is such thing as "divine right" of property but there is legal right and that matters.
>>2803034>Useless discussion.if you say so
>I already proved my pointyou simply repeated it over and over and ignored what I said
> labor is not the main defining factor of the price of some product.this is a different and even bolder thesis. firs you say "the labor theory of value" is not true, then I explained what marx's theory actually was, how it was different from smith and ricardo, who actually did have a labor theory of value. you ignored that. you ignored the very interesting information I provided you about actual capitalists economists agreeing with "labor theory of value" before Marx came along and took that to its natural conclusion of clas struggle.
> labor is not the main defining factor of the price of some product.this is an even bolder formulation than your original formulation, and I it is interesting how you will change your statements from one post to the next. labor determines the EQUILIBRIUM PRICE but not the MARKET PRICE. Market price is the FINAL PRICE. but
natural price is the price when supply and demand are in equilibrium. when supply and demand are in equilibrium, the commodity will still have a variable price. what explains the price when supply and demand are in equilibrium? not the market, but the production process, where labor occurs. This is the formulation you fail to address and you refuse to even acknowledge the diffrence between equilibrium and market price because your entire deliberate misunderstanding rests on not reading what has already been said to you repeatedly.>Anything else is just your meltdown and I am not interested in it.you didn't even read what i said and you're just pretending my explanation is a meltdown. you cannot explain why two commodities will have different equilibrium prices, when supply and demand cancel each other out. Cockshott and Cottrell proved empirically in the 1990s that labor inputs correlate 95% on average with final market price.
>>2803043you have once again retreated form "immaterial" and "spiritual realm" to "reason."
reason is the activity of the brain, and depends on the brain, not on the "immaterial" or "spiritual realm."
what explanatory value does "immaterial" or "spiritual realm" have? It is just a proxy for the unknown that people fill up with dogma instead of admitting they don't know.
>>2803046>property is legalyes and? slavery was once legal too. what's your point?
>>2803047>what explains the price when supply and demand are in equilibrium? not the market, but the production processWhich is the "supply".
>>2803031>price is not defined by "the market" but is highly influenced by the production process "Production" is a market abstraction in this case, since what you are accounting for is the cost of commodities, not production per se.
>to say that a resource is scarce is to admit that it requires more active labor time to find, extract, and transportNot necessariy; scarcity is also a natural effect.
>The only way the capitalist can profit is by compensating the work force less than it contributes to the commodity.Capitalists can also profit by selling commodities higher than their values. Merchants do this all the time.
>>2803052Consciousness and reason are the same thing.
It depends on the brain, and that's the empirical part of reason you can verify scientifically, but it happens in the spiritual real. You are not your brain but yoir brain + your consciousness which is not only your brain but something else.
This something else is a link between the spiritual realm and the material one.
>>2803054Saying it matters doen not mean it is justifiable, it just mean it matters.
I am not against socialization of property.
>>2803046but you think law is ultimately founded on God, right? anyways you are not denying being the anon I'm talking about so I assume you are him lol
dont waste your time with this guy, he doesnt really adress any arguments, he will just repeating what he has already told you endlessly
>>2803047Marx just changes the kind of labor theory but mantains the labor theory, he just adds the "socially needed" part.
The market has its own rules which are not the rules society wants it to be in a scientifical approach but it just happens in a more complex way.
You can quantify things and create a theory but at the end of the day what defines the world is not your theory but the world itself.
>hurr durr, labor doesn't determine price, da market does…
wait until this guy finds out there is a labor market, and labor is the commodity on that market, and the chief thing that determines whether someone buys commodified labor (which marx calls labor-power) is whether they can get away with paying it less money than it will produce. why the fuck would i pay someone x dollars to produce y dollars of commodities when x is greater than y? I'll go out of business. as a porky I only want to pay the worker x dollars to produce y dollars of commodities if y is greater than x. and the bigger y is than x, the better, because that means more profits for me. I can reinvest some of those into buying more means of production and labor power. It is means of production and labor power which determine my profits. If the workers go on strike and demand higher wages, I will get fewer profits, which is why I outsource, or look for desparate people off the street to work for less money. Anyone who tells you that the market determines the price is doing free propaganda work for me.
>>2803074Sure, but the market has its formal limits, right?
If the government banned the printing of money, the market would shrink.
>>2803072God os real but is not exactly him who defines human laws, even when people justify things based on divine right.
>>2803077>>2803075black market exists and it is still market
labor market is also market
>>2803074> he just adds the "socially needed" part.you clearly haven't even read capital. correct me if you have. you don't even know what socially necessary labor time means. "socially necessary labor time" does not mean "required for society to function" it means the labor time required on average for a commodity to be produced in a given soceity.
>>2803083commodities on the "black" market are still produced with labor, just illegally
>>2803075>Anyone who tells you that the market determines the price is doing free propaganda work for me.What determines the price of labour-power? The labour market, surely? So, yes, everything is coordinated by relative prices.
>>2803079
They actually do if you consider that humans are driven by these ideas.
>>2803077 you are confusing this anon even further. neither of you have read marx
>>2803083But I am saying that the market shrinks in proportion to the medium of exchange, since this measures demand. You would agree, right?
>>2802964>Consciousness is the connection between material with the immaterial.>>2802989>The spiritual realm is not unknown as it is the basis of knowledge.>>2803024>Spiritual realm is the realm of consciousness and where reasoning takes place.>>2803062>You are not your brain but yoir brain + your consciousness which is not only your brain but something else.This something else is a link between the spiritual realm and the material one.
You still haven't told me how to test any of this scientifically.
>Consciousness and reason are the same thing.What does this have to do with the "immaterial" and "spiritual realm." all this is explainable by the brain without any appeal being made to something outside of matter, energy, time, spcae.
we are up to four untestable statements, and it is not clear what this "spiritual realm" is supposed to explain if none of it can be observed or tested.
>>2803084>>2803086
>c. labour is important in defining the value of a product but it is also not the main defining factor of its priceThat's what I said. You are talking to me like I am some austrian philosopher or an advocate of the bourgeoisie but I am just assuming market is much more complex than what any "labor theory" could quantify, even the socially needed time theory which is also some kind of labor theory.
Isn't it?
Am I crazy or what.
>>2803087>What determines the price of labour-power?the amount of money required to keep you alive so i can keep exploiting you. the price of labor power is the subsistence of the laborer. the great thing about labor power is it can produce more than it needs to live, but it only needs to be paid what it is required to stay alive.
>>2803097have you read capital or not?
>>2803090If you buy less stuff, less stuff gets made.
If you make too much stuff, you lose money.
>>2803097>or an advocate of the bourgeoisieWould you support a proletarian revolution that abolishes private property?
>>2803097> I am just assuming that's for sure
>>2803094The spiritual realm is not outside time and space.
You are confusing pure reason with reasoning in general.
>>2803102If the commodity of labour-power is oversupplied, its price will fall in proportion to a constant or diminishing demand, you agree?
>>2803106Based on Marx's ideas?
Not sure.
>>2803112>The spiritual realm is not outside time and space.wow… and how did you learn this?
>>2803113the floor is subsistence. if you pay a worker less than they need to stay alive, they will die, and then the commodity labour power will no longer be "over supplied."
but really what happens in practice is when there are more people, you need more people to make society run, so the number of jobs scales with the number of people.
>>2803119So… Yes or no? Supply and demand determines the market price of commodities, so it also determines the rate of wages, correct?
>>2803115You empiricists need to acknowledge some truths are self evident.
Your are a spiritual being talking to me, but for some reason you are denying the own basis of your spiritual reality, but you can't because in order to think and formulate theories you have to acess some immaterial stuff because that's where you are ontologically.
>>2803120> Supply and demand determines the market price of commoditiesWhy do different commodities have different EQUILIBRIUM prices?
>Supply and demand determines the market price of commodities, so it also determines the rate of wages, correct?a wage is negotiated upon hire, but ON AVERAGE, the worker has to be paid less money than his labor makes for the capitalist firm, and this difference determines the rate of profit. revenue minus wages = profit. revenue equals profit plus wages. the capitalist appeals to reveneue as the "shared" prosperity of labor and capital, but labor and capital are in a tug of war. capital wants profits to grow faster than wages, and the worker wants profits to be smaller so more of the revenue can go to wages. But if society already is capable of producing more than everyone needs to survive, you can abolish the wages system. We know we are already at this point because capital destroys surplus commodities in a crisis of overproduction. They will pour milk down the drain if the prices drop too low. Why is society capable today of producing more than everyone needs to survive. because technology, a product of labor, has augmented humanity's production capacity far beyond its own subsistence.
>>2803123>>2803115Also, your imagination can play an importan role.
If when I say "spiritual" you imagine some kind of white phantom or angels or something in some sort of artistic way you are doing it wrong.
Spiritual realm is just invisible things.
>>2803123> some truths are self evident.any dogmatist can appeal to "self evident" truths to avoid having to provide evidence. i would respect you a lot more if you simply said there are some things we cannot know, but instead you POSIT an "immaterial" "spiritual realm" where "reason" lives
>>2803129>a wage is negotiated upon hireNo it isnt; it is set at a fixed rate by the employer. If you disagree with a wage, you will be replaced.
>not answering the question.Yeah, I get the spiel. But lets stop the distractions.
You say labour-power is a commodity, correct?
It is paid for at its value in wages, correct?
So then, can the supply of labour-power affect its value?
And can you be paid above or below your value?
>>2803138yes to all your questions, therefore marx is wrong and i am right. now back to work, slave!
>>2803138>If you disagree with a wage, you will be replaced.he admits capitalism is coercive. we did it boys!
>>2803138>No it isnt; it is set at a fixed rate by the employer. i don't know, sometimes i pay 10 workers 1 dollar less per hour than I normally would so I can pay my cousin 10 dollars more per hour than he deserves
>>2803135Knowledge is invisible.
Why? Because it doesn't happen in your brain, but it resides in something immaterial.
Your brain is just a link.
>>2803143>yes to all your questions, therefore marx is wrong and i am rightBut you are agreeing with Marx on this question, and so as you write earlier:
>>2803075>Anyone who tells you that the market determines the price is doing free propaganda work for me.Marx must be a capitalist propagandist.
>>2803151>Knowledge is invisible.>Why? Because it doesn't happen in your brain, but it resides in something immaterial.>Your brain is just a link.That claim flips the burden of proof. There’s no evidence knowledge exists outside the physical processes that generate and store it.
Knowledge is a pattern of physical states, primarily in the brain’s neural structure and activity. Decades of work in Neuroscience show that learning corresponds to measurable changes like synaptic strength and synaptic plasticity. Damage the brain, and knowledge degrades or disappears, strong evidence it isn’t stored “elsewhere" (which you fail to specify anything about).
“Invisible” doesn’t imply immaterial. Lots of real things are invisible but physical, like electromagnetic fields. Knowledge is similar: not directly seen, but instantiated in matter as stable structures that can be damaged or lost. This is why if you receive brain damage, you can forget things you once knew, or misremember them.
>>2803162Marx said capitalism was good, but not good enough.
I say Marx was good but not good enough.
>>2803162>Marx must be a capitalist propagandist.he lowkey kinda is ngl
>>2803166>I say Marx was good but not good enough.ok then you should improve upon marx as a foundation rather than rejecting him entirely
>>2803167hahahahahahaha are you a RETVRN to feudalism guy?
>>2803163When I say 1 + 1 = 2 this has some visible material and quantifiable things like the graphic numbers in your screen and also all the technology behind it.
But the logic is not material, it is invisible not because we don't know to to see it but we will never see it because logic is basically an immaterial thing.
>>2803175you can observe neurons firing dude. none of your appeals to non-physical processes has any explanatory value. again. it would be a lot more respectable if you weakened your claim to something like "there are some things we don't know yet."
why i am skeptical of any appeal to non-material forces, is they become a vacuum that can be filled with any amount of bullshit
>>2803170Let's leave the heavy theories behind and face it.
I like Marx but we have some problems concerning marxism in general.
Some of this mistakes come from Marx himself and other are additions people make or misunderstandings.
We should not leave it all behind, but accept he talked about really important things and influenced people and society in really important matters and this can be analysed and criticized.
One of the main criticisms I have is concerning his materialism. I don't reject it entirely, but it makes bold assumptions about the nature of the world as a whole and that had and still had consequences.
I am a softcore materialist, because the world is so complex and putting material condition as the main driving factor is crazy.
>>2803180The neurons actions is the process happening in the material world but the knowledge itself is not material.
It is not that hard to inderstand.
The problem with you "we don't know yet" is because it is a matter of a priori thinking, not a matter of "we don't know yet" We never will, because this is self evident. We already know and we know it is immaterial.
Stop being dumb.
>>2803186>I am a softcore materialist, because the world is so complex and putting material condition as the main driving factor is crazy.wow man like the world is this whole crazy complicated spaghetti thing. i don't get it therefore i'm going to make claims that there are things completely outside of it that i can't prove. people who don't go this far are crazier than me btw.
>>2803192> knowledge itself is not material.i don't have to prove this wrong, you have to prove it right. and to prove it right you have to come up with a way to test it. if it's not testable, that doesn't mean it's "self evident" it means there is zero difference between your hypothesis and admitting you don't know.
>>2803192>The neurons actions is the process happening in the material world but the knowledge itself is not material.information is physical though. this is why you forget things when your brain becomes damaged. it's why your hard drive loses files when it becomes corrupted. it's why a page becomes unreadable if the ink fades. the information is destroyed, it doesn't disappear to some spiritual realm.
>>2803196actually I take this part back. there is a difference. at least a person admitting they don't know something isn't trying to manipulate you. someone appealing to the immaterial or spiritual is. their "explanation" explains nothing. it just becomes a way to smuggle in more bullshit, like religious dogma.
>>2803199>>2803196>>2803202You are scared of sky daddy, I know.
Don't be, he doesn't have gender and he is immaterial.
The process of losing memory or "damaged hd" explains that phisical things interact with immaterial things, but does not prove the immaterial is not real.
Actually, immaterial world is much deeper than material reality and the former was created later.
Material things have access to immaterial things because immaterial things are everywhere, including matter, which exists within an immaterial realm
You cannot test immaterial things because they are not material and only material things can be put into test. The imaterial is only a matter of reasoning.
Reason is superior to empirical knowledge, because it precedes it.
>>2803216>i know the immaterial exists>i know that it has existed longer than the materia>i know that god is real>but i cannot prove it, and it cannot be tested>this has no explanatory value except insfoar as i can use it as a mechanism for smuggling in more opinions>you just have to trust me on this OKno.
>>2803216i'm not scared of the "sky daddy", i'm not even scared of the unknown, i'm just annoyed with the way people weaponize the unknown to posit the immaterial, and then weaponize the immaterial to posit other bullshit they have no proof for. and then they say they don't need proof because it's "self evident" and then have the audacity to appeal to "reason" even though they used zero reasoning and simply declared their untestable hypothesis "self evident"
>>2803223>>2803220You have to trust in something.
Scientists have to trust in something.
Everyone has to trust in something.
Put your trust in something valuable.
The idea that immaterial things exists is not a scientific idea but a philosophical one.
You can have philosophy without science but you cannot have science without some sort of philosophy to back it up.
>>2803226and your belief in immaterial beings comes from what, that you think so?
>>2803230It comes from the idea that material things are usable and immaterial things are fixed.
May the 5th be with you, Karl Marx fans 😉
>>2803226i put my trust in the notion that potentially useful hypotheses have to be testable, and explain something besides themselves, and yours meets neither criteria
>>2803244You put your trust in things of the low world, which are changeable while the real world stands in front of you.
>>2803234> immaterial things are fixed.yeah. the immaterial is fixed, because nothing is immateria, nothing lasts forever, and nothing is the only immaterial thing. so when you believe in the immaterial, you believe in nothing. nothing is the only thing outside of the material. that's the paradox. and nothing is a blank canvas you can paint god or the spiritual realm onto.
>>2803248ok. you've convinced me. the immaterial world is real and self evident and higher than the material world. now what? how do I utilize this idea. what does it give me that I didn't already have?
>>2803251>>2803250God and the immaterial is not a void but a real presence.
As it creates the material world, nothing is outside of it.
>>2803256>God and the immaterial is not a void but a real presence.and let me guess, God is not only real, but agrees with you about everything?
Happy birthday
>>2803258God is real but I am not bold enough to say I understand all of it.
>>2803262so it's just a stand in for things you don't know
>>2803268Don't we all?
What do YOU know that I don't about the fundamental source of reality?
>>2803272I admit I don't know, rather than making a positive claim like "it's immaterial" or "it's spiritual" or "it's god."
>>2803279But I know some things.
>>2802772Do you have any examples of ideas shaping reality and not reality shaping ideas? You keep saying that the world isnt a scientificly order place but I see no evidence of the contrary. Life itself behaves very rationally and works towards optimizing for resource extraction. Art, philosophy, and culture are just ways help is abstract, communicate, and understand our material reality.
>>2803283You certainly claim to, but you can't provide proof. You can only claim "self evidence." Can you at least come up with a criteria to discern when something is "self evident" and when it requires proof?
>>2803286Self-evidence is when something is the basis of all possible evidence.
Reason is not a natural thing but it requires something immaterial in order to take place.
This immaterial is the basis of our knowledge and we can understand it through reasoning but we cannot verify it empirically.
>>2803285Marxism is an idea that shaped the 20th century as a whole.
>>2803299Yeah and that idea came about due to industrial capitalism. Karl Marx didn't come up with his ideas in a vacuum and class struggle was occurring before Marx came along. Even if Marx was never born someone would have documented and described the mechanics of capitalsim. I'll even take that a step further and say even if nobody came up with some equivalent of Marxism, historical materialsim and class struggle would still occur. Your basically saying Issac Newton made gravity a reality with his ideas and not that he was describing an already existing reality. Thats a really terrible example, I thought you were going to say something like the Civil rights movement or women's rights. Which can also be explained by historical materialsim, and class struggle.
>>2803306Ideas are powerful because, as I said, humans are rational and spiritual beings and we make things hapoen based on concepts and ideas.
>>2803306>>2803307Lenin would not lead the bolsheviks and create the URSS if it was not by marx's ideas.
Yeah, ideas pretty much shape reality and material conditions.
>>2802562Did Marx like to party?
>>2803307You have yet to give an example of any idea shaping reality and not reality shaping ideas.
>>2803310Again marxs ideas didn't occur in a vacuum. Many people during marxs time were documenting, theorizing about industrial capitalism. Again if not marx didn't exist it would've just been someone else.
>>2803316Saying it could be someone else just proves you need someone to elaborate an idea so it can be used later.
>>2803316Its not one or the other but both with reality and ideas shaping them , they exist as a dialetic
>>2803316>>2803317You see, the problem with you empiricists (and I say empiricists, because this is not even materialism in Marx's sense, but an anglo-american type of materialism which is just the dumbest possible and is based in a perverted kind of idealism like berkeley) is that you consider ideas a "void" or a senseless thing and not a dialectical process in which history contitutes itself.
Marx said ideas were the superstructure of the material conditions of a society, but ideas are not separate from the matter. You see as two separate things, that's animal.
>>2803319>you consider ideas a "void" or a senseless thingliterally nobody said that.
>>2803327You just said that.
The thing is, ideas interfere in the material world throgh human action in the same way material conditions define ideas. It is a, repeat with me, D I A L E C T I C A L process.
>>2803332>>2803327My idea is that marxism gives too much importance to the material side of history. It is valid if you are focusing in transforming the material world through material means, but quite insane to believe reality will act accordingly just because your science says so.
Let's pretend he was right tho, it's his birthday.
>>2803298>Self-evidence is when something is the basis of all possible evidence.Our shared material reality is the basis of all possible evidence. Material reality is the only thing that is self-evident, which is only complicated by the fact that is necessarily filtered through our cognitive machinery, which is capable of hallucination. If you don't want to lapse into solipsism or a God complex, you have to accept that material reality came first, and your private conscious experience of material reality is what emerged from that reality, rather than the other way around. This makes sense since life the thing which evolves and gets more complex as it iterates itself through reproduction in an evolutionary process, while static structures like buildings tend to become more disordered, life has the ability to reproduce itself and become more ordered.
>Reason is not a natural thing but it requires something immaterial in order to take place.You insist, but I don't see any evidence of this. I see consciousness as emerging from material reality rather than underlying it.
>This immaterial is the basis of our knowledge and we can understand it through reasoning but we cannot verify it empirically.Why does knowledge need an immaterial basis that can't be verified? Why can't knowledge simply be a self aware entity observing material reality and noticing patterns?
>>2803332>You just said that.where
>>2803335>to believe reality will act accordingly just because your science says so.it sure is fun arguing with someone who thinks his ideas are "self evident" and makes up shit I didn't say
notice how this weirdo oscillates
"reason"
"immaterial"
"spiritual"
"god"
he uses one to smuggle in the next, and he claims it's all "self evident" which is just a fancy way of saying "I don't need to prove what I say, it proves itself." this is how theism works. it starts with claims of "self evidence" then escalates up to a conscious entity called "god" who is omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, and curiously hungry for donations and has all the same opinions as whoever believes in him
>>2803338>>2803337You implied my notion of idea was a "vacuum", as if i think marx's ideas were some sort of vacuum not derived from material conditions.
>>2803336The material world changes but the basic things that constitutes reasoning an conscience are not evolving.
Evolution of consciousness is a dialectical process between the material process and this immaterial rrality, which is all pervading and is always here.
>>2803311Guys this is important.
Did Karl Marx like to PARTY or not? I want to imagine how he celebrated his birthdays.
>>2803343Example: 1 + 1 will always be 2.
It doesn't matter how much we evolve.
It was always 2, before humans were conscious.
I will stop here, because this is something so basic that it gets me frustrated to see many people just don't get it naturally and need me to explain them some basic stuff.
>>2803343>You implied my notion of idea was a "vacuum"the notion of the immaterial is a vacuum, not ideas in general. ideas are real. they exist as an emergent phenomenon within material reality. ideas are your neurons firing. information and thought is physical. that's why it can be lost and damaged. if you weren't a naval gazing philosopher and spent a day with brain damaged children or drug addicted homeless people or old people in nursing homes you'd realize this.
>>2803347yes, mathematical laws exist, but they don't precede from material reality, they are a description of material reality. symbols invented by entities reflecting upon the universe they emerged from.
>>2803344>Did Karl Marx like to PARTY or not?yeah, he liked his wine and cigars
>>2803353>don't precede from material reality, *precede material reality
>>2803353>>2803350Jesus Christ guys, stop being dense.
Neurons exploding, natural selection, laws of nature etc… these things exist but they are the result of something else.
They move all the time, but there is something that never moves.
Guess what it is…
It's Marx's birthday, I will give you guys a prize if you guess correctly.
>>2803358> these things exist but they are the result of something else.and you should just admit you do not know what that is rather than insisting that it's "reason" or "the immaterial" or "the spiritual realm" or "god" which you keep substituting for one another in rapid succession. the unknown exists, and the whole point is you can say nothing about it. stop trying to say you know the unknown. it's pretentious, and it's used to smuggle in further assumptions and dogmas.
>>2803341I told you not to waste your time with him
>>2803358>ye olde unmoved mover argumentNTAs but lol
Are you a child?
>>2803364they make kids in catholic school treat unmoved mover as like the most epic unbeatable gotcha of all time. the irreversible uno reverse card.
>>2803362>>2803341>>2803363>>2803362god, immaterial, reason, spiritual realm
these are ways of referring to something alse that is not material or verifiable by science but that os here and affects our libes and thoughts all the time
you are dumb anglos and I think you should be put in prison for being so dense.
>>2803365>>2803364It is not the unmoved mover but the unmoved being
it doesn't need to "move" something in order to exist
>>2803367> i can't prove it's real but it's real trust me and it affects everything in ways i cannot specify or measure or verify through experiment…. does reason also have a son that i have to accept into my heart as lord and savior? or does reason have a messenger called muhammad? a prophet named moses? what other things about the unknown do you know, oh wise one?
>>2803369the quantum field is real but you don't have to pretend it's "reason" or "immaterial."
>>2803358GEE DAVEY, YA THINK IT COULD HAVE BEEN…GAAAAAWD?
I assume that's what you expect us to say and that's your justification for believing in a higher power?
>>2803365Yeah people treat the way Scientology trickles out knowledge to its followers based on rank to be ridiculous but theology is basically the same shit. You have the surface level arguments for normal people, then the """deeper""" arguments pushed by theologians to the most knowledgeable followers, that are just as ludicrous but they're old and vague and treated like Very Smart arguments. Suckmycockus of Areolathia came up with it in 1069 and people still use it so surely it's a perfect argument.
>>2803364>>2803365>>2803369and this was aquinas biggest mistake and modern philosophy in general just used that framework as in deist philosophy in general
freemasons also use this kind of shit
it was not actually aquinas fault, but people just interpreted it in that way, just like the dumb anglos you are
god can be viewed as the unmoved mover, but seeing god in that way is kinda herectical
because it is just a way he found to explain god in a scientificial way of seeing the world, as a responde to polemists, but that was pretty bad because, again, it puts god as something you can understand by analysing the material world and it is true, but if you stick to that definition you end up being a low thinker
>>2803375>herecticalso you aren't even a deist or pantheist, but you have a notion of the heretical too. it gets worse with each post.
piling untestable assumptions on top of untestable assumptions
>>2803370>>2803371>>2803372>>2803375Also, as this is Marx's birthday I will tell you a secret.
Marx believed in God.
>>2803379>Marx believed in God.“The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.”
>>2803383notice he said abolition of religion, not God
marx kept god secret for a good reason
>>2803385you have to prove he said he believed in God since you are asserting he did. or is that another one of those "self evident" things you don't need to provide proof for?
>>2803386anglo thinking: please daddy, prove me daddy
no. I will not and we end this conversation here.
>>2803388make sure you call this a strategic retreat in hindsight. it will do wonders for your self esteem.
>>2803390>>2803389god is real and it will not stop existing whatever we say or discuss here
>>2803389>>2803390>>2803404god = the source of all reality (cosmic order), both material and immaterial
>>2803404God is real, its a man-made concept, it exists as a real word.
>>2803407>>2803408there is the social construction of god which encompasses philosophy and religion and there is the reality of god
you can never escape it
surrender to it
>>2803416i'm just glad you came out as theist after an hour or two of bandying about with phrases like "reason" or "immaterial" or "spirit realm".
>>2803416>>2803407>>2803408you ask for proof, but proof of what?
it is already here
we are existing because it is here right now and there is nothing to add
we can fight our entire lives aginst it and it will never go away
you guys should stop seeing god as a social construct or a sky daddy figure if that does not fit for you, but disproving concepts of god does not disproves god
>>2803423only 5 year old babies have problems with the word reason, spirit or immaterial
I am sorry, but you are a spiritual baby.
Reason is an spiritual act and it is immaterial, they are different dimentions of the same realm.
>>2803426these are just different ways of seeing god
I don't care about it, I just care about god
>>2803424I'm not asking for proof I'm telling you how it is
>>2803407 >>2803429 >>2803423>there is the social construction of god which encompasses philosophy and religion and there is the reality of godThat's literally what I wrote here
>>2803407 >>2803407>>2803430>>2803429all concepts are man made
this does not disproves god
because god cannot be disproven
he is here
>>2803431>>2803430your guys will literally fight your entire lives against concepts instead of just assuming "uh oh, maybe it really is" and move on to something more interesting
>>2803427>Reason is an spiritual act and it is immaterialif i bonk you on the head enough times you stop reasoning.
>>2803151>Knowledge is invisible.>Why? Because it doesn't happen in your brain, but it resides in something immaterial.>Your brain is just a link.The brain is not merely a link, it is the thing doing the reasoning. That is why your consciousness and personality develops alongside your brain, and why your personality changes with brain damage. If your personality was a characteristic of your eternal SOVL in the immaterial spirit realm or whatever, it would stand to reason that your brain is just "Broadcasting" a static unfixed unchanging personality that exists outside of material reality, and it would stand to reason that you could configure another device to broadcast that same personality, so that two bodies broadcast one soul. But we see that things aren't like that at all. In fact, conjoined twins who are conjoined at the brain have reported experiencing a curious mixture of privacy and publicity with each others thoughts. Almost as if they are only partly separate people, but also partly the same person… because they biologically linked at the brain.
>>2803431> he doesn't have gender and he is immaterial.>>2803431>he is herewhy are you giving him pronouns if he has no gender
>>2803428it's really sad how this thread devolved from you at least trying and failing to understand marx's theory of value, to babbling about theism.
>>2803435it's not the concept that's the problem. if people just said "god is real i believe in god" and it were purely a personal thing, that would be the end of it. but what they're really doing is using this concept to lend infinite authority to their other dogshit opinions. "God is real and he wants me to evangelize to you, and also he has a son, and also you have to except him into your heart as your lord and savior, and also he wants you to support israel in the middle east so we can bring about his return faster."
it never fucking ends. it starts with positing some untestable hypothesis and ends with entire manipullative institutions that indoctrinate children propped up by unprovable dogshit.
>>2803438>>2803441analysing the material dimension of reality is not the same thing as analysing reality as a whole
god is real, what people talk about it is different, but he is real.
marx thought god was a social construct, but he believed in a cosmic order so he believed in god
you will never escape this. you can hide behind concepts bug god is always there
>>2803440you are sad because I had to explain to you simple things as you werr all 5 yo babies
leave me alone
>>2803444if you have a pantheist definition of god you are just stretching the definition out to fit everything, rendering the word meaningless
>>2803448>leave me aloneyou never answered whether you've actually read capital. you seemed to have an understanding of marx that came from chatgpt, wikipedia, or youtube.
>>2802996>Can you quote him saying this? Bonus points if it is in a year after 1867. Read Capital. (he can't do it)
>>2803448>>2803444>>2803441>>2803440>>2803439>>2803438also, I am a very good person because I am wasting a lot of time and effort explaining to you some esoteric knowledge I know that not many people are aware of but I try to explain to dense people anyway because I tend to learn something new as it goes
marx theory of value was fake because marx believed work is what defines humans as worth so for him work was this noble humam value that was enslaved by evil capitalists, it is a way of seeing the cosmic order and it is not exactly true, because there are things that precedes work
our existence is not defined by action or work but something else, our being itself is already worth and you don't need to put this valie in work or some human activity
marx was influenced by heraclitus, which viewed god as the constant motion in the universe
but this is a one sided view
god is the sustainer of the cosmic order, so motion is only a shadow of his true nature, which is motionless
>>2803452and where did he get this idea?
of course it was from hegel, this huge charlatan that viewed hisory as this linear and organized process in which god develops himself throught time, but this is not true
hegel was wrong and marx used this wrong idea to analyse material stuff
you can cry how much you want, but this is true
>>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.
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