/lit/ - Literature

>>20303035
I wanted a book criticizing Marx, but not his political theory. I want a book that criticizes Dialectical Materialism as a whole. Especially the idea that infraestructure dominates superestructure. I always felt it's the opposite.

Western Marxism is a current of Marxist theory that arose from Western and Central Europe in the aftermath of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the ascent of Leninism. The term denotes a loose collection of theorists who advanced an interpretation of Marxism distinct from both classical and Orthodox Marxism and the Marxism-Leninism of the Soviet Union.

Less concerned with economic analysis than earlier schools of Marxist thought, Western Marxism placed greater emphasis on the study of the cultural trends of capitalist society, deploying the more philosophical and subjective aspects of Marxism, and incorporating non-Marxist approaches to investigating culture and historical development. ... Although some early figures such as György Lukács and Antonio Gramsci were prominent in political activities, Western Marxism mainly found its adherents in academia, especially after the Second World War. Prominent figures included Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse.

Oh btw, fuck this gay thread, I have a more interesting question. What do traditional, or I guess 'eastern' marxists think of Western Marxism? Do they see them as sort of like traitors, for abandoning the base and superstructure model? Traditional Marxists view culture as almost entirely dependant on economic conditions, as they are materialists. In pic related, the model describes everything in the superstructure as determined by the means and relations of production. Note that it says that the base is USUALLY dominant, not ALWAYS, which I just found out by actually looking it up. So from my understanding, they typically have not paid as much attention to the factors in superstructure (culture), seeing it as a distraction of the bourgeois. In their minds they imagine that the bourgeois try to get the working class to fight about those, so that they are free to take control of the 'base'. I think there was a fairly dominant current of thought that everything in the superstructure was just beourgois culture war (or other war, like religious war) distraction.

Meanwhile, Western Marxism, tossed this upside down. Instead they chose to focus almost entirely on the superstructure. Is there any literature discussing this? Have these two groups debated, or gone head to head? I have never seen them interact, and I would certainly like to, I am interested.

BASE AND SUPERSTRUCTURE DETERMINE EACH OTHER YOU MIDWITS.


BASE AND SUPERSTRUCTURE DETERMINE EACH OTHER AND NEITHER IS THE SOLE DETERMINER OF THE DIRECTION OF SOCIETY.

READ A FUCKING BOOK

READ A FUCKING BOOK

>>17650062
>Why did Hegel and Marx need to establish metaphysical premises to make claims about society?
First of all, Marx didn't. Marx rejected any explicit metaphysics, and argued that philosophy and the resultant metaphysical theories were fundamentally determined by material conditions. At best you could say Marx's "metaphysical position" was purely negative, in that he rejects all claims which can't be verified in experience some way (what Kant would call transcendent ideas).
>Why does it matter if one is a materialist or idealist to make the claim that it is the material conditions rather than intellectual culture that drives history?
Because it's a matter of determining a historical "first cause." There are actually many academic papers written about Marx just arguing whether he is a historical determinist or not, because it's not clear from the start. He also appears to contradict himself in places with respect to determinism.

Primarily, if one posits material conditions (in the form mainly of economic relations) as the "first cause" of human thought, which then results in the alteration of socio-economics in a historical loop, it allows one to brush off all historical philosophical thought (which flows on to politics, society, etc.) as merely derivative from material conditions, and therefore subordinate to them. If philosophy itself, and therefore politics and general society, is subordinate to material conditions, then it itself becomes a mere game of economic classes in conflict with each other, removing any objective meaning from all of it except where classes are involved. This reduces history to a process of class conflict, rather than a Hegelian development of ideas and the discovery of the Geist through philosophy (which is itself teleological, but with a separate "first cause".) Unfortunately, it's not easy to say whether or not Marx's historical theory is teleological, as one runs into the same debate I just mentioned about determinism. Some will claim it is, others that it's not. I personally think the strongest argument for Marxists is to assert it as teleological, as otherwise it becomes a mere fanciful interpretation without meaningful correspondence to reality (ie, it cannot even be empirically demonstrated as valid without the entire process already being completed).

So, why does it matter what the "first cause", ie the "metaphysical" presupposition, is? Because it allows one to make different predictions, which also tends to support the normative conclusion (although not necessarily) - like Hegel's ethical state, or Marx's communism. This is what it comes down to.

>>16828797
If you mean the average republican is some cola miner in Virginia, assuming that to be the case they don't realize that historical events are caused by changes in the material conditions, most republicans are historical idealists, as in they believe ideas come about and create the conditions of historical events to happen, rather than the material conditions. Picrel.

>>16503505
>Is there any correlation between economic systems and sexual norms?
Yes, basic Base Superstructure stuff.

Why hasn't anyone refuted dialectical materialism yet? Reactionaries have had over 100 years.

>>14203738
yea since children of that age are on average less ideologically conditioned than adults

>>13492573

>everything is a linguistic construction
>a private language is impossible
>social life is founded on the production and reproduction of the means to live
>the production relations inform our way of thinking
kommence with karl marx