Marxist thought

  On 5/12/2021 at 12:12 AM, Stickfigger said:

Where are the WATMM analytics at ? Does this thread have the most sustained activity of any in the last 24 to 36  months ? Even the Collapse thread would drop off the front page but this one is a highly persistent and virulent strain 

please close this thread

https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/

Marx’s “inhuman power” and “capital which is set free” is the same entity that Eric Li has in mind when he speaks of “capital itself” and its “enshrined rights.” This talk, which appealingly (to me) borders on the supernatural, stands in stark contrast with Bernie Sanders-style rhetoric that chalks the problems we are mired in up to mere “corporate greed.” Greed is the vice in question, of course. One to be cursed and curbed. But every serious theorist understands that we face a far more serious challenge than the mere assembly of policy-makers with good moral fiber.

Consider Engels in On Authority:

If mankind, by dint of science and its inventive genius, has bent the forces of nature to its will, the latter avenge themselves by subjecting humanity, insofar as it employs them, to a true despotism independent of all social organisation. ^[24]

Consider Lenin in Imperialism:

The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. ^[25]

It is useful to conceive of two interlocking but different struggles: that of the worker versus the capitalist, and that of humanity versus capital itself. The workers’ triumph over the capitalist (“to each according to their work”) is in a sense a precondition for humanity’s triumph over capital (“to each according to their need”).

(in the Hegelian account of alienation)

1. Humans invented God.
2. Having invented God, humans then assigned to Him their own powers of creation.
3. Having projected thought onto a non-human and invented entity, humans then subordinate themselves to it.

(in Marx’s critique of capitalism)

1. People make capital. Everything that counts as capital is a human creation.
2. Having created capital, people then assign to it the powers of creation.
3. Once the creative powers of work get misassigned to capital, actual workers are made subordinate to it. ^[26]

>This is capital as automatic subject. A technophile may call it something akin to a market-based artificial intelligence arising from game-theoretical instrumental rationality.
>Feudal lords were the masters of Feudalism. Capitalists, however, aren’t the masters of capitalism. They are merely the high priests of capitalism. The master of capitalism is Capital itself. [28]

actually keep it open this thread is great apart from some liberals spamming it

  On 5/12/2021 at 3:24 AM, cyanobacteria said:

https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/

Marx’s “inhuman power” and “capital which is set free” is the same entity that Eric Li has in mind when he speaks of “capital itself” and its “enshrined rights.” This talk, which appealingly (to me) borders on the supernatural, stands in stark contrast with Bernie Sanders-style rhetoric that chalks the problems we are mired in up to mere “corporate greed.” Greed is the vice in question, of course. One to be cursed and curbed. But every serious theorist understands that we face a far more serious challenge than the mere assembly of policy-makers with good moral fiber.

Consider Engels in On Authority:

If mankind, by dint of science and its inventive genius, has bent the forces of nature to its will, the latter avenge themselves by subjecting humanity, insofar as it employs them, to a true despotism independent of all social organisation. ^[24]

Consider Lenin in Imperialism:

The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. ^[25]

It is useful to conceive of two interlocking but different struggles: that of the worker versus the capitalist, and that of humanity versus capital itself. The workers’ triumph over the capitalist (“to each according to their work”) is in a sense a precondition for humanity’s triumph over capital (“to each according to their need”).

 

(in the Hegelian account of alienation)

1. Humans invented God.
2. Having invented God, humans then assigned to Him their own powers of creation.
3. Having projected thought onto a non-human and invented entity, humans then subordinate themselves to it.

(in Marx’s critique of capitalism)

1. People make capital. Everything that counts as capital is a human creation.
2. Having created capital, people then assign to it the powers of creation.
3. Once the creative powers of work get misassigned to capital, actual workers are made subordinate to it. ^[26]

 

>This is capital as automatic subject. A technophile may call it something akin to a market-based artificial intelligence arising from game-theoretical instrumental rationality.
>Feudal lords were the masters of Feudalism. Capitalists, however, aren’t the masters of capitalism. They are merely the high priests of capitalism. The master of capitalism is Capital itself. [28]

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Huh?

  On 5/12/2021 at 3:48 AM, Extralife said:

Huh?

not sure what your question is, huh is pretty vague

Just spreading some bourgeois propaganda here

  On 5/12/2021 at 10:52 AM, zkom said:

 

 

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this one's great bcuz a lot of marxist theory of the last 50 years directly revolves around trying to figure out why previous revolutionary attempts went sideways or failed to spark in the first place

In short: because people aren't ants!

When all manual labour is robotized everyone can communism all day long.

  On 5/12/2021 at 1:32 PM, Silent Member said:

When all manual labour is robotized everyone can communism all day long.

Except no one will. Robotics will make human robots obsolete, therefore becoming an unwanted surplus that will have to die off.

signed, your faithful non-trickle-down economy

the first bourgeois revolution attempts failed, and many involved mass genocide and theft of entire continents, so let's be realistic

http://davidharvey.org/2020/01/reading-marxs-grundrisse/

  On 5/13/2021 at 8:58 AM, iococoi said:

http://davidharvey.org/2020/01/reading-marxs-grundrisse/

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grundrisse is great, i havent read the whole thing, very gigantic, but this is one of my favvorite excerpts:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htm

From another side: is Achilles possible with powder and lead? Or the Iliad with the printing press, not to mention the printing machine? Do not the song and the saga and the muse necessarily come to an end with the printer’s bar, hence do not the necessary conditions of epic poetry vanish?

But the difficulty lies not in understanding that the Greek arts and epic are bound up with certain forms of social development. The difficulty is that they still afford us artistic pleasure and that in a certain respect they count as a norm and as an unattainable model.

A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish. But does he not find joy in the child’s naïvité, and must he himself not strive to reproduce its truth at a higher stage? Does not the true character of each epoch come alive in the nature of its children? Why should not the historic childhood of humanity, its most beautiful unfolding, as a stage never to return, exercise an eternal charm? There are unruly children and precocious children. Many of the old peoples belong in this category. The Greeks were normal children. The charm of their art for us is not in contradiction to the undeveloped stage of society on which it grew. [It] is its result, rather, and is inextricably bound up, rather, with the fact that the unripe social conditions under which it arose, and could alone arise, can never return.

O back in the day...Ancient Greece. When having slaves was the norm. Unruly and precocious indeed. Good old days.

  On 5/13/2021 at 9:13 AM, Satans Little Helper said:

O back in the day...Ancient Greece. When having slaves was the norm. Unruly and precocious indeed. Good old days.

 

i think you missed the point mostly.  yes marx, well known lover of outdated modes of production like slavery

  On 5/12/2021 at 10:52 AM, zkom said:

Just spreading some bourgeois propaganda here

https://local.theonion.com/bourgeois-pig-owns-ostentatious-glass-crafted-specifica-1843182534

  Quote

MILWAUKEE—After he flaunted the opulent receptacle on his front porch and sipped from it in a display of lavish decadence, witnesses confirmed Thursday that local bourgeois pig Kyle Evans, Mr. Moneybags himself, owned a fancy glass designed specifically for drinking wine. “He must think he’s a Rockefeller, buying a special glass with a stem on it because he’s too good to drink wine from any old cup like us regular folks,” neighbor Daniel Clements said of the shameless social climber, adding that Evans was so eager to fit in with his blue-blooded overlords that he also insisted his white wines and rosés be chilled before he drank them, lest their too-warm temperature offend his sensitive palate.

 Mc☭