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OwlFancier posted:You can't really discuss marxism without getting disagreement about it. If you want to learn about it you're going to have to get used to that because it's probably its most defining feature. The basics are not at all difficult to understand, most of the discussion is concerned with historical attempts and their relative successes, as well as reasoning for and against the positions it proposes. I didn't make this thread to be your inside baseball slapfight arena. If the basics aren't difficult to understand, teach me. If you can't be bothered, leave the thread.
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Feb 9, 2016 19:29
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The basics have been outlined, in fact if you want the best introdution I'd suggest that the communist manifesto still presents it in a very readable and concise format, with a nice little bit of historical context thrown in. Everything else is contested, there are a wide variety of differences in how to respond to the criticism laid out by Marx, as well as the belief that whether or not it's all a bunch of utopian bollocks that inevitably just gets people killed. Some people will suggest that what marx describes isn't really wrong, and that capital correctly correlates with moral authority. And all the different approaches to Marx's work will help give you an idea as to why we haven't had the revolution yet. So very much of Marx's thought and its derivatives (much of modern poltiics, arguably) is tied up in people having big arguments about what the correct response to the problems of capitalism are. If you just want the initial communist pitch you can do that in a few paragraphs, as as been done. But if you want to understand it as it fits in today, you need to understand the unending argument that surrounds it. And a bunch of other historical ideologies as well because Liberalism is very pertinent today too, especially in its opposition to socialism.
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Feb 9, 2016 19:39
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Lyapunov Unstable posted:Yeah that was some consequence of Marx's thoughts but "Marxism" is not the same thing as "Communism." In that sense capitalism or feudalism could be said to be Marxist. Marxism is more of an academic/political framework as far as I understand it, not some system of government. This is probably the most common misunderstanding of Marxism, which drives me nuts. Marx described the transition from capitalism to socialism to communism as an inevitability. He observed that capitalist society, with its mandate for ever-expanding growth and inherent boom-and-bust cycles, was fundamentally unsustainable. He predicted the outcome of this to be a series of incremental, struggles in which the working classes would unite in labor unions, and slowly return the means of production to the labor force at large. A lot of weirdos and communist revolutionaries who defend Lenin and even Stalin like to call themselves Marxists. They are not Marxists. Marx got pretty pissed off when people wanted to skip past incremental reformation.
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Feb 9, 2016 19:53
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If you look at the state socialist world of the cold war from an historical perspective it actually gets pretty interesting. You had Tito in Yugoslavia heading the so-called "non-alignment movement", as well as crazy old Albania isolating itself from the entire world. Even within the Warsaw pact you had Bulgaria and Romania running nationalist policies against the Soviet Union. In short, socialist drama was the best drama.
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Feb 9, 2016 19:55
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Maoism Third-Worldism, specifically, takes the idea of Mao's theories about guerrilla warfare and peasant revolution, and uses them as a framework in which the rich, developed countries are the bourgeois and the poor, underdeveloped countries the peasantry. Supposed proletarians in the First World would be unable to maintain their lifestyle without imperialism and exploitation, so they are essentially bourgeois. MTW is basically a historical footnote, as it was largely linked to a single organization, the Maoist Internationalist Movement, centered in the Midwestern USA and now largely defunct.
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Feb 9, 2016 19:58
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:This is probably the most common misunderstanding of Marxism, which drives me nuts. You are practising Marxism as a dogma. You have the idea that "Marxism" is merely a list of Karl's opinions existing in a vacuum, and cannot be questioned, put to the test, elaborated on, or corrected when proven untrue. This is silly, and actually against the whole point of any of Marx's efforts in anything ever. Dude was a scientist, he developed his theories from evidence. If something disproved an idea of his he would reconcile this and form a new idea - you know, that dialectics thing? Also, your casting of Marxism - even list-of-karl's-opinions-marxism - as the idea that socialism would come about through trade union based reformism is bizarre and wrong. That's labour party poo poo. HorseLord fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Feb 9, 2016 |
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Feb 9, 2016 20:03
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How about instead, you tell me about Marx the man. Who he was and where he came from. How he came into contact with Engels and developed his ideas and how he became such a dominant force in the sphere of socialism. And anything else you think is relevant, of course!
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Feb 9, 2016 20:07
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HorseLord posted:You are practising Marxism as a dogma. You have the idea that "Marxism" is only exactly what Marx said, and cannot be questioned, put to the test, or corrected when proven untrue.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:08
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site posted:How about instead, you tell me about Marx the man. Who he was and where he came from. How he came into contact with Engels and developed his ideas and how he became such a dominant force in the sphere of socialism. And anything else you think is relevant, of course! Such discussions are great to learn about a topic, actually - you usually get to the core of issues when you see what people fight about.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:08
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Cingulate posted:On the other hand, the word Marxism probably has some meaning. It can't mean everything, and not everything can be Marxism. Marxism is a branch of science, like how you have "chemistry" and "biology". It is named after the man who founded it, and who's methodologies it is reliant. "Marxism" is not merely a bearded man's opinions. It is method. Material methods, Historical and Dialectical.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:17
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Marxism is more than just a dead bearded guys opinions but it's also not directly comparable to physical sciences like chemistry or even biology because the situations that Marxism attempts to explain cannot easily be reproduced in a laboratory.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:25
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HorseLord posted:Marxism is a branch of science Next, I'd say your post would be much improved if you replace the term "Marxism" with "Historical Materialism" or "Marxist Historical Materialism". If you're too promiscuous with the term, next thing people are calling Bernie Sanders a socialist, or, like, Obama.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:29
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Helsing posted:Marxism is more than just a dead bearded guys opinions but it's also not directly comparable to physical sciences like chemistry or even biology because the situations that Marxism attempts to explain cannot easily be reproduced in a laboratory. It is a science because it's theory is created to explain what is observed, and whenever evidence contradicts that theory, new theory is created in whole or in part to explain that, tool. If you need to know where the lab is to accept this, then here you go: It is a laboratory without walls. HorseLord fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Feb 9, 2016 |
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Feb 9, 2016 20:30
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HorseLord posted:You are practising Marxism as a dogma. You have the idea that "Marxism" is merely a list of Karl's opinions existing in a vacuum, and cannot be questioned, put to the test, elaborated on, or corrected when proven untrue. My definition of Marxism is Marx's definition. It's part of the etymology of the term, specifically his comments on the Programme of the Parti Ouvrier. Marx was absolutely a revolutionary, but he consistently argued for demands that were attainable within existing capitalist frameworks. When the leaders of the French Workers' Party disagreed with him on this point, he famously said of Paul Lafague "if his views are considered Marxist, I am certainly not a Marxist." Moreover, how could any political scientist defend Lenin, Stalin or even Castro's interpretation of Marx's ideas as successful in creating a stable society? Every time anyone has attempted to short-circuit the revolutionary progression that Marx proposed, it's devolved into totalitarianism.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:31
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HorseLord posted:It is a laboratory without walls. Yeah well that's really different than the sciences like chemistry and biology that do a significant amount of their research in actual laboratories.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:33
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Someone tell me about the relation of Marxism to Hegel's philosophy. Is historical materialism supposed to be a Hegelian Idea/Phenomenon?
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Feb 9, 2016 20:35
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icantfindaname posted:Someone tell me about the relation of Marxism to Hegel's philosophy. Is historical materialism supposed to be a Hegelian Idea/Phenomenon? Historical materialism isn't Hegelian because Hegel was an idealist, but dialectical materialism is derived directly from Hegel's ideas.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:37
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:My definition of Marxism is Marx's definition. It's part of the etymology of the term, specifically his comments on the Programme of the Parti Ouvrier. Marx was absolutely a revolutionary, but he consistently argued for demands that were attainable within existing capitalist frameworks. When the leaders of the French Workers' Party disagreed with him on this point, he famously said of Paul Lafague "if his views are considered Marxist, I am certainly not a Marxist." Dr. Fishopolis posted:Moreover, how could any political scientist defend Lenin, Stalin or even Castro's interpretation of Marx's ideas as successful in creating a stable society? Every time anyone has attempted to short-circuit the revolutionary progression that Marx proposed, it's devolved into totalitarianism. That's not actually true, but I'm not willing to have another slapfight with a deliberately ignorant person when I owned all of those already on the first page. I'm too tired, and nobody will gain from 40 pages of circular arguments about why a dictatorship of the proletariat and class struggle are mean. HorseLord fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Feb 9, 2016 |
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Feb 9, 2016 20:37
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HorseLord posted:It is a science because it's theory is created to explain what is observed, and whenever evidence contradicts that theory, new theory is created in whole or in part to explain that, tool.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:39
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Effectronica posted:Historical materialism isn't Hegelian because Hegel was an idealist, but dialectical materialism is derived directly from Hegel's ideas. How does it derive from Hegel's ideas exactly then? The whole point of Hegel is idealism, if Marx isn't an idealist then how is he a Hegelian? icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Feb 9, 2016 |
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Feb 9, 2016 20:41
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Cingulate posted:Much like Scientology, Theology, and conspiracy theories then.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:42
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HorseLord posted:So you say he was a revolutionary, except that you say he didn't want a revolution. Revolution can and does happen without a war or coup. Also, please describe this stable, non-dictatorial communist state you seem to know about.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:43
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icantfindaname posted:How does it derive from Hegel's ideas exactly then? The whole point of Hegel is idealism, if Marx isn't an idealist then how is he a Hegelian? Specifically, Marx took the ideas of Hegel concerning thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, and applied them to a basically materialistic interpretation of history. So the "dialectical" part comes from Hegel, where the "materialism" is something Marx took from outside Hegel, mainly from Epicurus and the earlier political economists. Materialistic understandings of history predate Marx, and Marx's historical materialism has also been adopted as non-Marxian.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:47
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:Revolution can and does happen without a war or coup. No, they don't. "Revolution" doesn't just mean "power changes hands." A revolution is a revolt, and it is as violent as it needs to be to unseat the old power. The powerful tend not to leave so easily, they have an army on their side. Dr. Fishopolis posted:Also, please describe this stable, non-dictatorial communist state you seem to know about. States do not exist under Communism, and Socialist States are plenty dictatorial, which is a good thing. "Totalitarian" is a word that comes out of the mouths of those who're being dictated to - "Cuba is so totalitarian! Castro took my plantation away!" HorseLord fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Feb 9, 2016 |
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Feb 9, 2016 20:47
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Effectronica posted:Specifically, Marx took the ideas of Hegel concerning thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, and applied them to a basically materialistic interpretation of history. So the "dialectical" part comes from Hegel, where the "materialism" is something Marx took from outside Hegel, mainly from Epicurus and the earlier political economists. Here I edited that post after you responded: Historical materialism seems like it makes claims about the physical world that are falsifiable. It seems to me almost like the worst of both worlds, combining Hegelian idealism and Popperian empirical falsification. Did Marx just have a boner for dialectics, and so build his theory around it?
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Feb 9, 2016 20:48
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HorseLord posted:So you say he was a revolutionary, except that you say he didn't want a revolution. I always understood Marx's use of the word revolution to mean a desire for a complete change of social ordering, similar to the accession of the bourgeoisie to power. But not necessarily violent, or indeed immediate, that being the whole bit about socialism as a gateway to communism and the desire for organized political action like strikes and whatnot. Immediately achievable, but steps on the road to revolution.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:49
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For those who have no clue what HorseLord is talking about he's advancing a traditional "Marxist-Leninist" analysis of the USSR, or what most people would colloquially refer to as a "Stalinist" perspective. After the Russian Revolution concluded in the early 1920s the victorious Bolshevik faction began to split into different camps. When the primary leader of the Bolshevik party, Lenin, died in 1924 it triggered a series of power struggles that culminated in Stalin assuming leadership. One of Stalin's main rivals, Trotsky, ended up feeling the USSR and developing a highly critical analysis of the USSR that claimed it was not a truly socialist society but rather a "degenerated workers state". This become a running theme in any leftist commentators on the USSR that were penned in the West, basically arguing that the original good intentions of the revolution had been corrupted by Stalin and his supporters. HorseLord is dismissing these groups as "ultra-leftist", i.e. those who are so opposed to any organization that they'd rather debate utopia theories rather than actually confront the necessary steps to taking power. Basically he thinks that any real Marxist would recognize the Soviet Union under Stalin as either a true socialist state or as the closest thing we've ever gotten to one, and would presumably suggest that modelling future socialist efforts on the Russian revolution and the USSR would be the logical course of action for a revolutionary to take. Trotskyists, anarchists and various other left wing groups will tend to respond that the end result of the USSR was simply to create an unaccountable dictatorship that eventually reverted back to capitalism. Of course why they think that varies: anarchists will say that Lenin's refusal to immediately try and abolish the state was the root cause of the problems. Trotskyists will tend to say that the real problem wasn't anything about the political structure of the Soviet Union in it's early days but rather the fact that the revolution was confined to a single backward country when it should have been spread to the rest of the globe. As per the theme of my first post, you'll note that almost all these disagreements come down to how you view key historical events or junctures. In my experience (and I'm simplifying here a bit to make a point, so don't take this 100% literally) conservative philosophies tend to be based around essentialist principles: human nature, the need for order and restraint, the dangers of rapid change. Leftist politics often hinge more on specific historical questions about how one should react to this or that event in history. There are many exceptions to this rule but it may be a helpful guide if you're just starting to read a lot of political theory.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:50
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icantfindaname posted:Here I edited that post after you responded: Historical materialism, as Marx and Engels conceived of it, was an interpretative framework rather than a theory of history. Various people have attempted to develop it into a predictive force or general theory of history since, but Marx viewed it as a means through which to direct historical research and understanding.
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Feb 9, 2016 20:52
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I'm probably a liberal (ie., not a socialist or communist), but I'd say people are way too hard on Cuba. Looking at some objective standards, it has a life expectancy a bit higher than the US, it has a much better ecological footprint, and it's probably a net positive member of the global community. And that is even long after the breakdown of Soviet assistance, and after half a century of economic blockade by the US. It's not a liberal utopia, but it's an example showing that if you somehow avoid being flooded with US weaponry, you can run a decent country on socialism-at-least-in-name, centralist, anti-capitalist policies.Lyapunov Unstable posted:Or, as we've agreed, natural selection.
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Feb 9, 2016 21:01
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Helsing posted:For those who have no clue what HorseLord is talking about he's advancing a traditional "Marxist-Leninist" analysis of the USSR, or what most people would colloquially refer to as a "Stalinist" perspective. It must be stressed what this means - nobody is suggesting a re-enactment. Whatever our countries will look like in revolutionary times, we know they'll be different in a lot of ways to the mostly-feudal, mostly illiterate Russian empire. But we must remember the body of knowledge gained from previous revolutions, and apply our science to determine our actions should there be a new one. Revolutions are mostly done flying on the seat of your pants so it helps to know how others have managed similar situations. Helsing posted:Trotskyists, anarchists and various other left wing groups will tend to respond that the end result of the USSR was simply to create an unaccountable dictatorship that eventually reverted back to capitalism. Of course why they think that varies: anarchists will say that Lenin's refusal to immediately try and abolish the state was the root cause of the problems. Trotskyists will tend to say that the real problem wasn't anything about the political structure of the Soviet Union in it's early days but rather the fact that the revolution was confined to a single backward country when it should have been spread to the rest of the globe. My personal belief is it was a cocktail of revisionism, particularly the abandonment of class struggle. Once you do that then the class character of everything starts to change. And of course, external pressure from the imperialist countries, leading to the long term adoption of measures which were harmful to soviet political life. OwlFancier posted:I always understood Marx's use of the word revolution to mean a desire for a complete change of social ordering, similar to the accession of the bourgeoisie to power. But not necessarily violent, or indeed immediate, that being the whole bit about socialism as a gateway to communism and the desire for organized political action like strikes and whatnot. Immediately achievable, but steps on the road to revolution. That doesn't really fit in with what his sidekick said: Engels, On Authority, 1872 posted:Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough? No record of them squabbling on this, I could probably find an excerpt of Marx himself saying similar but this was what first came to mind. HorseLord fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Feb 9, 2016 |
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Feb 9, 2016 21:10
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Communism as an ideology conceives "communism" as an utopian end point. That's why you had communist parties insisting that their states were socialists. In their own understanding, they were building communism. In this sense, saying "communism has never been tried" isn't incorrect, since communism is either; what the different socialist states failed to achieve, something which can't actually happen through the means for example the Soviet Union or China tried, an unachievable utopian fever dream, or w/e. The point is that "communism" hasn't been tried, much in the same way that post-scarcity hasn't been tried. [edit] Marxism as theory and methodology is not the same as communism, tho Nosfereefer fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Feb 9, 2016 |
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Feb 9, 2016 21:15
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Cingulate posted:This is a terrible fight that you'll lose in more ways than you're even thinking about right now.
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Feb 9, 2016 21:25
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HorseLord posted:That doesn't really fit in with what his sidekick said: Then what's the point in things like unions and organized striking? If the road to revolution is military force then why bother with the political side of it? If guns and guillotines are what's needed then why advocate for anything else? I was given to understand that the best force to apply against Capital is to starve it by withdrawing the labour it needs to function, because it has a monopoly on force of arms, and without delegitimizing the basis by which it wields them you will lose any armed conflict, and if you can delegitimize capital, why do you need to impose a military dictatorship to keep it that way? Unless you're counting on a benevolent dictatorship it would seem more sensible to, er, capitalize, for want of a better word, on the revolutionary basis for your proposed military dictatorship, and use it to foster the inherently democratic power of Labour to hamstring Capital by telling it to gently caress off.
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Feb 9, 2016 21:27
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Whether the theory of natural selection counts as a Popper-style scientific theory was a serious question in the philosophy of science for a while and any discussion of it will involve a near-endless stream of  . Run while you can.
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Feb 9, 2016 21:29
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Helsing posted:anarchists will say that Lenin's refusal to immediately try and abolish the state was the root cause of the problems. Well, not exactly. Contemporary anarchists were initially on-board with the Bolshevik program. "All Power to the Soviets!" after all. Lenin himself actually had a fairly significant libertarian streak in his earlier writings. It was specifically things like the invasion of the Free Territory, dismantling the Factory Committees, and quashing the Kronstadt uprising that saw most anarchist and left communist support for the revolution fade away.
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Feb 9, 2016 21:32
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Nolanar posted:Whether the theory of natural selection counts as a Popper-style scientific theory was a serious question in the philosophy of science for a while and any discussion of it will involve a near-endless stream of dialectic evolution of species. mixed-species hybrids will rule the red communist future
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Feb 9, 2016 21:33
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Nolanar posted:Whether the theory of natural selection counts as a Popper-style scientific theory was a serious question in the philosophy of science for a while and any discussion of it will involve a near-endless stream of The main point is still: being able to explain stuff does not make a framework scientific, and adding the tendency to adapt the theory to new evidence makes it, if at all, even less scientific.
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Feb 9, 2016 21:34
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I've unleashed the endless stream of words haven't I
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Feb 9, 2016 21:36
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Lyapunov Unstable posted:I've unleashed the endless stream of words haven't I 
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Feb 9, 2016 21:38
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Marxism is a theory of relationships among phenomena. It is not ceteris paribus testable, but a lot of theory about human beings isn't. OP, the subtitle of Marx's Capital is "A Critique of Political Economy." It does not lay out a political plan. It is an inquiry into how Europe got from what it was in the medieval period to the way it was in Marx's time. Economists of the industrial revolution had taken the economic order as a given, e.g. Adam Smith claimed in that selling at market and working for a wage were "propensities in human nature." Marx's purpose was to determine why these writers believed such things, and then to approach a more realistic interpretation. Personally I haven't read Capital. What I know of Marxism comes from online conversations in LF and elsewhere, reading western Marxist writers, and referring to the marxists.org lexicon as needed. Maybe I'll read it at some point, but I believe one can do pretty well without relying on any M-L "canon." If Marx and Lenin were the only people capable of explaining Marx's ideas they would have been forgotten long ago.
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Feb 9, 2016 21:40
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