/lit/ - Literature

>>23381733
Read pic.

>>23370349
Have you read Main Currents of Marxism yet? Marxism is a strong interpretation of how to implement the Englightenment vision of recreating, as they imagined, the full human flourishing of Ancient Greecian republicanism, premised on an understanding of what determines and conditions our full humanity: that is our economic relations within the republic. The French Revolution failed to restore Ancient Greece and Roman republicanism because it didn't consider the economic nature and differences between the ancient and modern world. With proper consideration of economics and how master-slave relations that exist between classes alienate both the master and the slave from realising their full humanity, a modern technological Arcadia can be acheived, or so the attractive premise goes.

>>23344298
Because it's used as a polemic epithet to stifle understanding of the issues, rather than to enlighten and give insight and deepen understanding. Take as example your OP, labelling Derrida a Marxist doens't increase your understanding of Marx, Derrida, Marxism, or deconstructionism and post-structuralism. Marx is a figure in the history of ideas, everyone that follows Marx will consider him in some way. That doesn't mean they are in the Marxist school even when the legacy is great: the modern historian who considers economics as powerful mover of events is heavily in debt to Marx, yet they need not be a Marxist or hold positions anywhere near close to Marx.

By cultural Marxism people typically mean a soft-Marcusean liberalism. Marcuse and others may have their origins in Marxism, but to understand them as they actually are requires more than polemic epithets. They have moved a long way from Marx and are in large debt to other sources from both before and after Marx that Marx would not have agreed are compatible with his system as he understood and constructed it.

You do yourself a disservice by staying within the surface level talking points of political screamers. To understand Marxism, and its philosophical history up to and including Marcuse, read 'Main Currents of Marxism' by Kolakowski.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Currents_of_Marxism

>>23023847
Just read Main Currents of Marxism. No one should post about Marx or Marxism on /lit/ until they've first read it. If you have any Marx or Marxism question the first answer is read Kolakowski.

>>22980180
She was a naive fanatic. She had an absolute confidence in historical materialism as a law of history, and all that was needed was to rise up and implement what was inevitable and achieve communism. The workers, as dictated by the laws of history, would automatically join the revolution once sparked, and all it would take to achieve this obvious and inevitable happening was to not doubt or be cowardly, but to simply do, and it would simply happen. Marx had discovered an iron law of history, history simply would happen.

See Main Currents of Marxism by Kolakowski. She was equally naive fanatic on ecomomics, she believed she had discovered a basic mathematical error in capitalism that would mean it would automatically and inevitably collapse in the very near future. Like her naive and premature launching of a doomed revolt, no one could talk her out of it, an iron law of economics had been discovered.

>>22591156
De Sade is very important as libertine, Rousseauean, and republican thinker. But really OP should simply read Kolakowski.

>>21582477

>Mill, Berlin, etc.
>obviously, true liberals. but the former distinguished between higher and lower ends, and the latter distinguished between negative liberty and positive liberty
>Marx
>was a true liberal. criticized the bourgeoisie for pursuing only limited emancipation. Marx wanted true freedom: naturally, economically, and socially.
>Gentile
>was a true liberal. criticized Western democracies for not promoting positive liberty. sought to unite all elements of the community through the state.
So, what is liberty, then? What are we supposed to direct our freedom towards? Is all expression of freedom good? What if I become too free, i.e. too powerful?

Is this the open secret of secular political philosophy, that it seeks to make life meaningless (Marxism), has an unstable end (fascism), or that it tries to take the best of both worlds but it only works if we lower our expectations and soften our horizons (liberalism)?