Fuck Capitalism (that is without having actually read Das Kapital):
and we as the intellectually curious and creative
should prove ourselves better than it.
But let’s look at how it has wound its spindly little fingers into this board:
why do you think someone like Vol-troll can assert the nonsense they do?
It’s because the university system supports it because they are more interested (due to corporate sponsorship) in supplying physiological problems that pharmaceutical companies can supply chemical solutions to. Therefore, Vol-troll can feel like part of an in-crowd that those that disagree with him are not part of.
So don’t I seem like the perfect idiot:
that is since no argument I offer could possibly serve the needs of someone seeking a profit.
Therefore: all arguments I make are invalid.
the issue of Capitalism is way bigger than any of us can discuss on one board.
Capitalism is our world.
the only real question is:
do you want to be a slave to it?
That said, Dan, sorry for wondering from your main point.
It just set something off in me.
:-"
And if Dan said his problem with modern day Marxists is their numb hostility towards profits then I wouldn’t have objected so strongly. But when someone says ‘I haven’t read this book, but based on the stupid things that other people who haven’t read this book say I assume that the problem with the book is such and such’ then I am going to call them out for their stupidity.
No. At no point in this thread have I said that people need to read or understand Marx in order to grasp today’s economic problems. I’m saying they need to read and understand Marx if they want to know what they’re talking about when they talk about Marx.
The hippy achieves nothing more than those talking about it. Hundreds of years of protestors wearing Che t-shirts has done nothing. Besides which, I don’t just talk, I have put my efforts into (for example) investigating mass murders that the government has no interest in or is lying about who was responsible. I’m doing the work they won’t, for free, off my own back, to try to contribute to a better world.
I think Marx was a bourgeois hypocrite and a bit of a dunce, whose ideas only enabled the capitalists to foresee the problems with their system circa 1860 and find methods to adapt (such as the Fed, such as Keynesian economics, such as the infinite growth paradigm and product fetishism). I don’t really care whether you read Marx or not, but if you’re going to talk about something then you should do so from a position of knowledge, not ignorance. The last thing you should do is find the worst representatives of that thing, listen to their bullshit and then make your judgment on that basis.
The distinction between surplus value and profit isn’t really that important.
Surplus value is just the means to the ends of profit.
Why not be a Marxist who is against both? Profit is most simplistically defined as revenues minus expenses, and expenses include everyone’s wages (EVERY expense is someone’s wage, somewhere down the line). If revenues exceed expenses (profit) then some level of surplus value has been achieved by workers, which could be adjusted back to zero if expenses (wages) where just increased.
Obviously profits can go back into the business as an investment to increase future profits, but when they don’t they just go into capitalist pockets.
The ideology can be put down to how good or bad this is. Putting power into the hands of those who have the incentive to improve productivity and innovation isn’t a bad thing in itself, but when it is at the expense of the workers who “ARE” the productivity and innovation then the whole system and everyone in it suffers.
This is due to a fundamental property of money: that it creates a finite limit on permission to produce and innovate. Without a finite limit we risk the attempt to measure contributions, control contributions and instill a fairness check on the whole process. Given the value in these things, the dilemma we are faced with is “how much” permission (money) to give each person, and how “free” can we make this balance feel.
Marx criticised the “Luddites” who smashed the machines that replaced their jobs. So to be against “profit” in itself and “surplus value” in itself, and claim to be Marxist, would be dishonest. Though one can be against profit (and/or surplus value) in the context of Capitalism and still remained honourable to Marxism.
Don’t sweat it, mate. I’m not looking for disciples. I wouldn’t assume you’re so relatively lacking either.
Sorry about that, Silhouette. Got into my zone and stayed in it well past the point I should have.
But you are doing some impressive work here -on an issue that is close to my heart. I worry a lot about being too fawning.
Well, yeah, as is well known, Marx had a deep respect for Capitalism to the extent that it would build the means of production and technology. And according to some critics, the reason Russia and China failed in their Marxist experiment was because they tried to jump from agrarian economies strait into Communist ones. So it would be a little ignorant to destroy the machinery that might make labor a little easier.
This is where I take issue. However, I would first change the terminology to natural and exchange value. As Keynes rightly pointed out: an economy that depends as much on consumption as it does production cannot sustain a differential between the exchange value created by a product and the buying power created by it. Now, of course, the complexity of the economy will offset this to some degree. But the complexity of our economy has reached such a degree that the differential has grown far too big to sustain itself outside of virtual approaches such as credit. But that approach can only work so long.
Really? So Martin Luther King, Ghandi, the 60’s, the American Revolution, the socialist riots that established unions, etc., none of those things have done anything? And how many books written by a philosopher has done anything before people have acted, en masse, upon it?
But let’s back off here, STAIDT, and agree that, yeah, it would be stupid for someone to claim they know the details about Marx without having actually read him. My only point was that it is would not be necessary to read Das Kapital to take a cynical view to Capitalism.
This was mainly a response to someone who had made a rather smug comment concerning a hippy with Che Rivera t-shirt.
Now as far as this point:
First of all, I think your approach a bit of an an ad hominem with your point about Marx. The guy, given his intellect, could have as easily used his intellect to succeed in the economy he was dealing with. And however bourgeois you might think he was, he certainly did not live like one. As I recall, he lost several children due to the impoverished circumstances he and his wife were living in. From the sources I have, he was always complaining about boils which were due to his inability to see a medical professional. And this is not to mention the nobility of Engels who could as easily just enjoyed his wealth.
Granted, towards the end, Marx did enjoy a stipend from Engels that was about 6 to 7 times as much as the average factory worker in one of Engel’s textile mills. But, once again, Marx could have as easily just drank and smoked cigars on that money as sit around going through the grind of writing books he meant to help out the working class.
Now as far as Marx tipping off the bourgeoisie: things like Keynesian did actually make things better for people. And even if it was temporarily, that’s all that matters in the long run. I’m not really sure there is a permanent solution anyway.
Taking your examples 1 by 1:
MLK did more than talk and protest wearing a t-shirt.
Ghandi did more than talk and protest wearing a t-shirt.
The 60s achieved absolutely nothing, except destroying radical movements through LSD and Frank Zappa.
The American Revolution didn’t achieve a huge amount, but what it did achieve was achieved through more than words and t-shirts.
I don’t know which socialist riots you are referring to.
I can think of very few philosophers who have inspired people en masse to do anything. Particularly because most people never read philosophy. To me it seems that in this thread, on a philosophy forum, most of the participants haven’t actually read the political philosophy being discussed.
All that said, Marx is the most widely-read philosopher of all time and therefore, I assume, the most politically influential. But what has his philosophy inspired? In a small number of relatively small countries it has inspired good forms of socialism whereby people are looked after up to a basic standard without the state claiming to be able to solve every problem and without bankrupting the country doing it. This has mostly been successful in countries with natural mineral wealth of some kind. It has also inspired several larger countries to attempt to impose all-seeing, all-knowing, all-doing state systems on their populations, usually with some kind of genocide attached as the means of rapidly bringing about social change. Not Marx’s fault per se, but if we’re talking about achievements then Marx’s philosophy has very few.
I don’t think more people who haven’t read Marx sitting about and talking about Marxism will achieve anything good for humanity.
I wouldn’t call it a cynical view of capitalism. I think Marx analysed the capitalism of his day reasonably accurately.
Who is Che Rivera?
It is ad hominem, but that doesn’t make it a fallacy.
Marx lived a reasonably good life relative to those around him without ever doing anything productive. Engels lived an outstanding life relative to those around him without ever doing anything productive.
Marx did spend most of his time sitting around drinking and smoking cigars.
Keynesian economics is one of the many reasons the capitalists have managed to not just hang on to power, but to extend their power by joining forces with the state. It is a key part of the infinite growth paradigm, which has brought the US to the point of being utterly bankrupt in financial and energetic terms.
Temporarily making things better is all that matters in the long run? I think you should reflect on that logic, because it is moronic.
Siloheutte?
Are you calling me a moron?
Are you calling me a moron?
Now be real careful about how you think here.
Let’s test this and find out who the real moron is.
Dance with me fuckface:
let’s see how it works,
Let’s see what the truth actually is.
STAIDT,
u can rot in hell as far as I’m concerned.
I really don’t care what happens to you after i WALK AWAY FROM THIS.
aLL THAT MATTERS TO ME IS THAT i HAVE A GOOD TIME DOING IT.
tHE PEOPLE THAT NEED WAGES WILL BE THE ONE’S THAT GET THEM!
LOVE:
i THINK OF MYSELF AS SOMETHING.
i think OF YOU AS NOTHING.