>pseudNot at all. A pseud is someone who postures knowledge which they don't possess. Your humility is therefore "wise" (e.g. as in the case that Socrates was wise, but ignorant. He knew nothing, yet was still inquisitive). As for the Social Contract, Rousseau's Republic is that which is reminiscent of Plato's description of good and bad regimes. Plato distinguishes between constitutions (e.g. monarchy, oligarchy and democracy), but then further divides them between their lawful nature – the "law" in this case being the founding constitution of a polity. The Rousseauean question is that which concerns the spirit and letter of the law. In Plato's time, the Athenian constitution (like the Roman Twelve Tables) is literally carved into stone, like Moses' tablets (which incidentally, he "breaks"). The letter of the law by the terms of a long parliament (e.g. constant revision) displays an outpacing of the letter over spirit. What I find grounding in Rousseau is an emphasis on the General Will (say, over the written contract, in the Lockean case). How thus may we discern the viability of a social contract? Please let me know what you think. As it is written by Roman jurists, tyranny is the impression of law, over order. Crime becomes legal by statute, etc. Would you therefore say that in the first case, the normalisation of vice and crime, by its legal permission (e.g. lenient sentences) is the precept of a broken social contract? Like Aristotle declared, poverty is the parent of crime and revolution – so he sought to remedy this by wealth equality (Aristotle directly promotes wealth redistribution so as to enlarge the middle class; bourgeois socialism). I see Rousseau also provide concern for wealth inequality. Would you then say that tyranny (e.g. unlawfulness) is constituted by (i) wealth inequality, (ii) crime and (iii) the martyrdom of the lawful? The question is then, is Communism a Republic? According to Dostoevsky, it is a tyranny, since it inverts the law, and we could also say that its Bureaucracy is only an enforcement of wealth inequality. The state becomes the capitalist. We see the permission of crime from early Communist figures like Robert Owen, and even today, where many Communists excuse violent crime but seek to punish Orwellian "thought-crimes".
>I decided to read the Capital and agreed with Marx on his critique. I would also recommend bourgeois political economy like Adam Smith, who is also immanently anti-capitalist by his analysis. I would also suggest Smith is the father of modern socialism, as I relate here:
>>2863918>I don't really see how Marx is a philosopherMarx never thought of himself as a philosopher, and if anything, an anti-philosopher, as seen in his "Theses on Feuerbach" (1845). He sees that the philosopher thinks, rather than acts, so is ineffectual.
>dialecticAs it is related by Diogenes Laertus, Plato is the "inventor" of dialectic, which is a type of logic, described by Aristotle (t. Prior Analytics) as the assortment of affirmative and negative propositions into a final understanding. This differs from "demonstration" which is affirmative only. In contemporary understanding, dialectic is algorithmic (e.g. the procession of yes/no statements into a final operation). Plato also describes the Socratic Method as dialectical in this manner. With Hegel, his critique of Plato is that Plato is too negative. Hegel also uses the syllogism and sees it as the basis of his logic, whereby the Universal relates to a Particular, to an Singular result (U-P-S). The standard logical syllogism Hegel refers to as "external syllogism". Effectively, in Marx's analysis, we can see the syllogism employed in the Introduction to the Grundrisse, where within the chain, each part is self-related to the other (e.g. supply/demand are seen to both have a medium identity and immediate identity in one another). In Capital, Marx thus shows how the different economic terms self-relate into a "procees" rather than a "thing". A becoming, rather than a being. In this logical structure, Marx thus identifies "contradictions" immanent to its structure which then explain the cause of phenomena, like monetary crises or exploitation. Marx's economic critique is an attempt to give a "logic" to the system of capitalism. Dialectic is the logical method.
>dialectical materialismMarx never used this term, since Marx rejected metaphysics (e.g. ontology), but presumed materialism; e.g. where everything is in total flux, or "becoming", rather than "being". The problem for materialists however is that "matter" to be so presupposed is itself a "being". So, materialists believe in the being of non-being, non-empirically; e.g. rationally, like Heraclitus, who in his own fragments, ultimately turned toward the Logos as a stabilising principle, or what becomes Plato's Dyad. Plato saw matter as "becoming", but only by negation of being.
>concept of alienationAlienation to Marx is described as the way in which labour is estranged; e.g. dispossessed, by its objectification. First in private peoperty, where man has identity in a thing outside of himself, then in commodities, whereby the exchange of private property means that even property is estranged from itself; e.g. by self-relation. Marx gives an account of this in Capital Vol. 1, Chapter 1, Section 4, on the Fetiishism of Commodities (1867), which follows earlier work, such as "Comments on James Mill" (1844) and his 1844 Manuscripts. As opposed to private property, Marx conceives of "True" and "Human" property wherein the individuality of its producer is conserved within the thing itself, rather than lost to its objectivity. Marx further describes his utopian society in "Critique of the Gotha Programme" (1875). Marx's project then is the abolition of private property, such as he heralds in his Communist Manifesto (1848).
>Frankfurt SchoolThe Frankfurt School described themselves as Marxists without a party, so were mostly disgruntled intellectuals. The emphasis on the purely theoretical is a perversion of a so-called "Orthodox Marxism" or a Marxism-Leninism. Frankfurt School known as "Western Marxists".