/lit/ - Literature

Nice idealist projection. I guess in your mind all scientific study ever done was out of pursuit for freedom.

Marx's materialism isn't all that materialistic

Marx's whole framework is a weird mixture of Hegelian idealism coming into adequate contact with the real material base underlying the ideal, combined with complete indifference about the actual metaphysical constitution of either the real or ideal themselves. The best way to read it is as pure method, critique in the Horkheimer and Adorno sense: https://criticaltheoryworkshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/horkheimer_traditional-and-critical-theory.pdf

But that still doesn't answer anything, really. It still leaves the door open for all kinds of metaphysics and even alternative historical materialisms and class theories of history like those of Mosca and Pareto.

The only possible proof of Marxian "critical" theories would be their efficacy and the consent they spontaneously generate, this being the Hegelian kernel still within Marxism. Because Marxism can't rely on anything conceptual because the conceptual only exists relative to the material and its only authentic relation is critical self-relation in the service of revealing the true nature of the material, he can't claim any authority over true comprehension of the material OTHER THAN intersubjective consensus.

Nietzsche is very similar and I think anyone who says Nietzsche has a single metaphysics is barking up the wrong tree. Schopenhauer's Will was in the background and periphery of his thinking but never the foreground.

>>19432553
>Any book that approaches this idea?
yeah deleuze and shit i guess

>>19432572
> I guess in your mind all scientific study ever done was out of pursuit for freedom.
This is a discussion beyond the intention of my original post, but it impels me to ask what would the science of marxism pursue if not freedom (communist society)?

>>19432589
>he can't claim any authority over true comprehension of the material OTHER THAN intersubjective consensus
And it only reaffirms the very structure Marxism tries to undermine in both the aim at (or struggle for) freedom and in its intention that is power, from which the assumed reality of universality of historical class conflict confines itself in its means (a true permanent revolution that is only a permanent struggle, a heraclitean reality of conflict and war as the father of all things).

Attempting to do a unified hegelinized Marxist theory is both retarded and outdated. Lukács tried this and you basically replace "Hegel-speak" with Marxist buzzwords.

Freedom from the perspective of Marxist political philosophy isn't some abastract ideal like that of the French revolution. It is influenced by it yes, because the bourgeoisies historical development, but it is not consigned to it metaphysically like you try suggest.

Freedom in the Marxist sense is not being exploited when it comes to formal social relations in within the productive forces of labor. That's it.

>>19432807
But then OP is right and it its an a priori, unscientific presupposition that requires a humanistic philosophy to justify, which also leaves the door open for alternative humanisms that may even conflict with the desirability of Marxist theory and praxis.

>>19432553
>the workers will eventually control the means of production because...because they just will ok? No I wont explain how that will actually work
Astonishing anyone takes this seriously

>>19432812

What? How did you get that?

There is nothing a prioristic about exploitation. Marxist analysis of hsitory looks at the empirical facts and then analyses the social relations and how they influence the productive forces of that economy. Saying is seeing the forrest for the trees, since slaves, serfs, and proles have existed as formal classes throughout history.

>>19432812

Why would he need to explain how it would work and come up with some fancy Platonic utopia, when it was obvious to him that workers and engineers had all the real power in the advanced nations of his time. And to be fair 1917 happened and astonished the world at the rapidity in how they took over the largest country at the time.

He was a man of his 19th century culture, give it a rest.

>>19432839

Saying its humanist*

>>19432807
>>19432839
Social relations are and have always been relations of power. The overthrow of a power relation, be it exploitative or not (here comes a much more profound discussion concerning axiology and epistemology that are presupposed by Marxism), is only the enforcement of another kind of power relation, in the case, an inversion (prole's taking up). How does Marx posit the freedom established after the stage of dictatorship—the realist inverted relation of power—without the appeal to an ideal-universal conception of freedom in social relations that has never been a facticity?

>>19432868

Marx does talk about accualization of the human , of the worker creating unrestained and enjoying the fruits of his labor. But that power isn't consigned to some abstract ideal.

So its not real an inversion of power relations, if you want to read on that and the epistemological foundations of it , go read Foucault. For Marx its an actualization of the workers powers that have always been there and were evident since his labor has always been aploited by classes that produced nothing. Hence why the axiom all of history is class struggle. Marx wasn't as naive to expect a tipping point or a messiah that would invert the foundations of power, the power of the proletariat is evident to him and this why he calls for a revolution by that class.

>>19432839
If the theory doesn't itself provide a scientific proof of the nature of exploitation AND the fact that exploitation is bad, then it is presuming both of them as axioms rather than proving them, which means a priori.

>Marxist analysis of hsitory looks at the empirical facts and then analyses the social relations and how they influence the productive forces of that economy
This is a bourgeois definition of political economy, corresponding to the first phase of political economy described by Marx, "classical" political economy. Marx is not just a betterer, more scientificer political economist or else he would be just another bourgeois economist. Lots of bourgeois economists believe in "exploitation" and its amelioration by the state, going all the way back to Sismondi, List, and others.

Marx's theory stands or falls on its ability to reveal the "real" dialectic of class conflict in a way that bourgeois political economy couldn't see, or more accurately couldn't confront without swerving, so had buried, becoming reified and scientistic. But if that dialectic isn't real, then Marx is likewise revealing something false and imaginary.

So what's the proof of the dialectic's reality? Its next phase coming to pass. Marx says as early as the 1840s that his job is to "make these ossified relations dance to their own tune" and reveal them to the proletariat as the insult they already are. The point of critical political economy is to show the inadequacy of bourgeois political economy (current ideology) with regard to the real activity of the material forces underlying. Bourgeois political economy's "unsquared remainder" provides the thread that critical political economy must pull on to unravel the whole garment.

This gave Marx two options for proving his theory's soundness, both of them predictions: he predicted that the proletariat becoming aware of the insult would naturally take issue with the bourgeoisie, and he predicted various things about capitalism, like the contraction of the ownership class and the concentration of capital, the decline of prices, etc.

Neither came true and everybody knew it by 1895. That doesn't mean Marx was wrong overall about class conflict, but it does mean his theory needs additional epicycles (levels of complexity) to account for his mispredictions, which is where cultural Marxism came in and gradually supplanted economic determinism.

But underlying Marx's whole philosophy, and eventually becoming a gaping unpatched hole for cultural Marxism, was the apriorism of Marxist humanism. Marx's answer to "what if you're wrong about class conflict and it's more like a pessimistic, cyclical, circulation of the elites situation?" would be "it isn't; wait and see." The cultural Marxists DID wait and see, and saw the opposite of what Marx predicted on most metrics (unless you adjust Marxist economism to be an extremely long-term affair, which is valid but again impossible to prove except by waiting some more!).

>>19432899
If the workers could run things themselves they would have simply done so and feudalism and capitalism would never have existed

>>19432553
I don’t know of any book that does the meme tier nonsense you are talking about but Marx invested in the London stock exchange so this derails his communist shit and undermines Marxism.

>>19432553
I dont think its too controversial to claim that Marx's end goal was freedom. But even if he talks about by distantiating from idealism and focusing on real, material conditions, it doesnt change the fact, that its an ideal of freedom. Im reality, people have various interests, some people are indifferent to freedom, some even hostile. But Marx and marxists in general tend to present it as a virtuve in itself. And when reality shows that it is not the case, that in some situations people not only accept their subordination, but even affirm it with joy, the marxists try to save their secret and beloved presupposition via recourse to concepts like false consciousness, ideology, symbolic violence etc (or the pathetic topic of voluntary servitude, that is always articualted with this presuppoasition lurking behind in the shadows). But this is just a poor, reductive, idiotic view of human interests. And if humans dont really want freedom, but marxists want to impose it onto the social world anyway, then lets call things as they are: marxism is a theory that wants to impose their ideal on people, it is a case of symbolic violence. In conclusion, will to freedom is neither good description of human interests nor a good political-moral goal (but that is another topic). Marxists arent honest, because they cant be, since they do not know themselves.

>>19432850
>Why would he need to explain how it would work and come up with some fancy Platonic utopia,
>when it was obvious to him that workers and engineers had all the real power in the advanced nations of his time.
These two quotes are a good way to condense and indicate the main problems in Marxism. The first one is a common misconception about Marx (as you are saying yourself here), that he had some kind of pre-planned utopia, and that Marxism is really a grand strategy to impose a certain kind of preconceived society onto humanity. But you and OP are both right here, as Marx had no such preconceptions, he did not have any illusions about predicting the future, he just had faith that the proletariat would create that future, because in the PRESENT he had faith that the proletariat was representative of a production relations / class dialectic (struggle) nearing its final phase, in which the proletariat would "naturally" become its own advocate and realize that it was effectively seceding from and rejecting utterly bourgeois society and its ideological formations.

In that he doesn't predict how that will go exactly, you're right. In that he presumes to know what is "natural" for the proletariat to do, namely liberate itself because any exploited subject seeks its own liberty and self-recognition in its own labour (the reduction of alienation), OP is right. Making Marx fundamentally a Hegelian.

The second quote is also correct: what was obvious to Marx at the time just didn't come true. The greatest failure of Marxism was the failure of the general strike in WW1, followed by the failure of the Bolsheviks to awaken the workers in other countries. The 20th century decisively said "no" to workers' internationalism or international workerism and declared in favor of the national principle. Again if you are a Marxist you can say "no no see this is really just next level bourgeois ideology re-doubling on itself to bamboozle the working class!" but again, that can only be proved by you being RIGHT, and the proletariat at some point winning, which it hasn't yet.

Lenin beautifully duplicated both Marx's brilliance and his wrongness: he was not trying to create an authoritarian LARP state for people with red hats to walk around shaking hands communist-like with eachother, he sincerely truly felt that if he could catalyze the NATURALLY self-liberating workers' revolution by throwing enough fuel onto the fire. He was never trying to impose an abstract utopia on society, he was trying to awaken what was already (according to Marxist theory) latent IN the proletariat. He was only a facilitator. Praxis "works" if the theory is right - you only have to awaken what is already there. Marx and Lenin both tried, and Marx's great failure was WW1, while Lenin's great failure was Stalin.

Not because he created Stalin but because Stalin was inevitable and Marxism was wrong about at least the imminence of the workers' revolution.

>>19432899
>the axiom all of history is class struggle
Yes, that is why it will always be relation of power, both the differentiation of class and struggle will be relative.
It is interesting, the Ancient Greek composition of society was determined by a class differentiation and likewise structured on an ''explotative'', ''abusive'' relation between the nobility and the banausos, that is, a non-productive class above a productive one. So Marxian 'will to power' is the same old utilitarian, moralistic 'will to power' that will always recur in history. Capitalism in this more fundamental sense is nothing new, but we have the bourgeois, philistine profit seeking will to power against the ethical, utilitarian one.
But returning again to the determination of power and freedom which is abstracted in Marx, who holds the ''power''? A class. This abstractive conceptualization eschew the concrete affirmation of power, that is why I said it is not actual power but an inversion of this relation of power (for it is the capitalist who will hold actual, concrete power).

You are still avoiding the crucial idealistic part of Marxism, anon. The revolution and actualization of the power of the proletariat is aimed at something.

>>19432913

>If the theory doesn't itself provide a scientific proof of the nature of exploitation AND the fact that exploitation is bad, then it is presuming both of them as axioms rather than proving them, which means a priori.

It did, read on Marx's theory of labor in Kapital Volume 1.

>This gave Marx two options for proving his theory's soundness, both of them predictions: he predicted that the proletariat becoming aware of the insult would naturally take issue with the bourgeoisie, and he predicted various things about capitalism, like the contraction of the ownership class and the concentration of capital, the decline of prices, etc.

Precicely, Marx did predict a CYCLE within the growth and crisis cycle of capitalism. He didn't say that revolution woud happen after "x number of cycles" that would be a stupid thing to say as political scientist and economist. However Marx sees the trend of the falling rate of profit as a tendency within the economies of his day. He therefore concludes that at some point the squeezing would get so tight that some kind of revolution will happen. This doesn't have any kind of prophetic quality to it, its predicting the economic variables of his time. Scientists don't predict unknown variables so you can't fault Marx for not doing that.

>But underlying Marx's whole philosophy, and eventually becoming a gaping unpatched hole for cultural Marxism, was the apriorism of Marxist humanism. Marx's answer to "what if you're wrong about class conflict and it's more like a pessimistic, cyclical, circulation of the elites situation?"

This is a very confusing paragraph, are we still talking about Marx's economic theory. If you are thinking that Marx whole claim about the communist revolution hinged on some a prioristic humanism , you just haven't read or miscontrue Marx's texts. The writting is on the wall, class relations are power relations. The elites are cyclical and fluxiate but the motor of history is driven and sumplanted by the effectiveness of the productive forces in society. This is Marx's contribution of political economy , the dialectic is basically how these social relations and the forces of production drive change, conflict, revolutions etc. Marx never had an imagined "ideal prole". The Proletariat is the driving force of creation in capitalism, and capitalism as has been shown by history breaks down borders, traditional social relations and modes of production. It is therefore logical to assume according to Marx's line of thought, that the true power wrests in the worker. Thats it.

This whole spiel about Marx being a 19th century moralistic humanist is nonsense. Jesus, at least read the Theses on Feuerbach.

>>19433016
>It did, read on Marx's theory of labor in Kapital Volume 1.
Does he say why exploitation is bad there (without, obviously, appealing to axiological presuppositions)? Why and how it would be possible to establish a non-exploitative society based on empirical, historical facticity?

>>19433016
> He therefore concludes that at some point the squeezing would get so tight that some kind of revolution will happen
There is absolutely no reason to think that revolution would have an emancipatory character. All of history implies that a new system of hierarchical exploitation will simply replace the old one.

>>19433016
I've read nearly everything Marx ever wrote including the dissertation and his letters to his father, in German. I also read Feuerbach in German as preparation for reading Marx, and Marx's letters to Feuerbach.

I don't think you quite get what I'm talking about here, so I'm gonna stop responding but if anyone is reading along and interested in these debates about whether Marxism is scientific or whether Marxism requires a humanistic/Hegelian "engine" to justify itself, there's a large literature on this and it's fun to get into. My position in the above posts is roughly the consensus on Marx since the '60s.

No offense meant, it's just that I did effortpost, and I can tell you skimmed so hard you didn't even get my central point well enough to figure out where we disagree. You just restated yours as axioms (now that's apriorism) and arrogantly told me to read the first text everyone reads on Marx. Also, if you were reasonably well-versed in Marx you'd be able to guess at my positions and at least tell I'm at least decently well read in Marx. There are more effective and well-established ways to dismiss my position, and you not knowing them is suspect.

>>19432943

Yeah ok so you need Marx to prove or disprove to you if your boss can over work you or use some capitalist child labor? Should we ban the very concept and use of the word freedom, because it offends your realist sensibilities?

Like no fucking shit the capitalist will attempt to do that, and its in your interest to fight against this tendency. At the end of the day you will find that all revolutions have less to do with som high mind idealism or even petty interests and more with pure self preservation.

https://youtu.be/pkNhVF3JmCM
plus
Kant
plus
Nietzsche
=
Marx absolutely BTFO

>>19433059
>there's a large literature on this and it's fun to get into
Drop some titles

>>19432807
>Freedom in the Marxist sense is not being exploited when it comes to formal social relations in within the productive forces of labor. That's it.
But how can this fit with Marx's determinism?

>>19433064
>if your boss can over work you or use some capitalist child labor?
If that's all exploitation is then I guess we don't have exploitation, at least in the west. Wouldn't your boss also want to preserve his position by not insulting your dignity?

>>19433064
Not saying freedom is bad in itself, but if you want something more from society, for example, exellence - or, power - then freedom might be an obstacle to it and social stratification, explotation might be more suitable.

Essentially there cannot be a Nietzschean attack on capitalism because there is no power in it. At most it is the herd instincts of the valueless, the nihilism which reverts to the domestic sphere because of technology. Which is of the same problem as the luddites, although strangely to a lesser degree. A Nietzschean attack on capitalism would look like Chaplin cooking with dynamite. This is why socialist organising is reduced to a feminine managerialism - the fool on the corner selling his rags was always a babushka street capitalist, selling domestic wares that are unwanted even by industry. Forever one with the deepest crisis.

This was already hinted at by Plato, blind wealth is a sort of 'herd instinct' of metaphysical laws.

>>19433133
I mean that there is neither power in capitalism nor the attack against it. Capitalism is only the domestic aspect of an era with much greater purpose than selling food in cans. At most it is only ever a means of power, its sustenance.

The question cannot be one of efficiency, great organisations of economy only arise because of the vast military operations of the modern era - they are like field kitchens in one moment, but must resort to desperate plunder in another. Efficiency is a bourgeois concern of security, and is seen as foolishness where there is immeasurable wealth. What is the wasting of a can of food, or even entire container ships, in the face of continents which are not yet turned to deserts?

The slightest waste is everything to the field cook, but also the starving soldier - only for each in their own way. Economics cannot answer such questions, nor can anything material answer what lies behind it. There can only be the outward appearance of forces, but never that which resides within. This contributes to the elemental destruction, the world-weakening.

The real question, from a nietzschean perspective, is where is the power? Without knowing this it can be neither supported nor attacked. Where one retreats into economic questions he has resigned himself against this, and stands for domesticity, the reordering of the smallest affairs. He abandons even the order of questioning. To attempt to force a civil war of this, which is what revolution really is (only unconsciously), is doomed from the start. To force the money changers out during the transitional phase is only to make a temple of their act.

If the failed revolutions of the communists (and I mean this in the sense that they fail even in their clownish attempts at organising for the revolution) have taught us anything it is that the will of the modern era is not economic in nature. For Nietzsche, the power of the modern era lies in the creation of a new species. Economics has never possessed this formative level of power, and never will. It cannot enter into the blood of man, and certainly not his essence, what gives new life. The economy is merely a mark of this essence, and is always limited to its era. The owl on the face of the coin speaks to athena, but also Hermes.

It is the life-giving power which is the question, and economics are always a step away from this - hence fasting in the Abrahamic religions, the fall into a nihilism of the guts was foreseen, perhaps due to their proximity to the transitional forces. Marx's economic contradictionism says less than the old Christian fables, the Carmina Burana, the Flemish Proverbs. Economy is domestic concern reduced to its technical aspects, or in other words, the sustenanceof law where it can only sense survival at its most austere - pain reduced to impoverishment.

https://youtu.be/RIq5FSPtPjM

>>19433059

I don't see where you find the a prioristic humanism to me this discution is going in circles because you focus on a pretty obvious element in Marxism , namely,that Marx was influenced by Hegel , but the way you understand that influence seems to me wrong headed.

I have not read all of Marx nor all of Hegel nor am I interested in reading them to satisfy my intellectual curisioty. My understanding of Marx's on a meta-philosophical and epistemological level starts with Marx's dialectics positing that history is revealed dialectically through conflicts. We understand these conflicts as being the drive of history because elements in society are sublated, re-arranged etc. This is the Hegelian aspect of Marx. In Marxist epistemology there is no "deeper reality", "true human core of creativity" or none of that shit. Whatever we can know about the dialectic unfolding can only be through the lens of history and political economy. How can we do this? By looking at what is left or unssaid out in the obvious unequal exchange of power in social relations. This element that is left out, (which is class struggle), is not however obvious to our epistemic reality because dialectically it has not become real and actual. We miss it either because of the hegemonic ideological aparatus or innaction due to commodity fetishism. It becomes real and actual pieces set in history and move.

In this sense there is no class struggle asa general supposition of human nature or some Hobesian shit like that. You have to look at history and political economy to see and understand it.

>>19433131

This is a classic false dillema that Marx would label as false consciousness. You want your cake and to it eat too, but it doesn't work that way , espeically in late capitalism , because what >>19433133 says is true and to the point.

>>19433160
>In this sense there is no class struggle asa general supposition of human nature or some Hobesian shit like that
What is it an accident lol? It has to relate to the general nature of humans on some level

>>19433064
>ok so you need Marx to prove or disprove to you if your boss can over work you or use some capitalist child labor? Should we ban the very concept and use of the word freedom, because it offends your realist sensibilities?
You don't have to be a Marxist to be against those things though. The radical Marxist argues the much more difficult claim that wage labor is inherently exploitative in all circumstances. Everyone can agree exploitative jobs are bad, and should be made better, what the Marxist has to prove is that all jobs, which are wage labor, are inherently exploitative, so not just the coal miner but even a decently paid tradesmen or professional. Moreover, the Marxist even more absurdly often in the concrete argues against the betterment of workers, when it suits their ideology. For example, Marx opposed increasing wages as only a means of making workers complacent to capital. Marxists always do this shit; they hide the more difficult claims they're making underneath obvious and accepted claims like "exploitation is bad" without mentioning that their definition of "exploitation" is fucking insane.

>>19433180
careful now, he might call you a social democrat.
Or just fascist.

>>19433170
Why is it a dilema? No I dont want my cake and to eat it too. I want a stratified society, built on explotation of lower caste that is aimed at producing greater people. Exploitation is good and Marxists are moralists about it.

Marx is very naive also when he affirms that it was the social and economic structure of a society that produced religious belief. This is empirically and comparatively false. All communities were and can only be established on the presupposition of a determined organization. Social organization is the outcome of a unity—hence community—enforced by institutions. How will individuals converge into unity, that is, how there will be an agreement concerning the institutions? By reason alone? If so, then the rationalization of a religion would be absolutely unreasonable, superfluous, since they would agree on the values to be instituted and which determine the community before the symbolic religious ''garment''. Here is the classic humanistic inversion, the illusion of social contract, that assumes a purely reflective and ideal social unity before the constitution of such a social unity itself, the inversion of an illusory conception of belief being derived from reason instead of a reason itself being derived from a belief. Reason = language: this the product of the primordial symbolic belief, that is always religious. The religious belief is the fundamental power that binds human consciousness into its fixed unity both individually and collectively. The necessary evolution of the numinous consciousness in man begins with its own reflective consciousness of Power, Majesty, Awe, Fear, Terrible, hence δέος, dwey, express univocally all of it. The institution of human consciousness upon which any agreement (again, stressing the ''normative'' spontaneity of its synthetic power of unity) is presupposed, has its reflection theologically and politically, superstitiously and socially: God and the King/Ruler: σέβομαι and σεβᾰστός.
Marx's another idealist inclination is this assumption of his that the rational precedes the symbolical, when the fact is the very opposite.

>>19433180

But Marx doesn't say that actually. You think a CEO who is paid a wage is actually a working class member? Who is and who isn't exploited isn't written in stone, since the capitalist will sqeeze one portion of the proletariat and elevate the other, hence as you and Marx pointed out the existence of labor aristocracy that has no interest to go with the general majority of the working class.

This is compounded in todays world economy since whole areas of economic life have been taken over by financilization. Its not even capitalist that are doing the exploitation any more , but usurers through the banks and other financial insututions. In most cases cushy wage labor job apart from back breaking labor and delivery boy is seen as a privilege compared to millions of unenployed or precariat.

>>19433174

You don't think labor relations are human nature? Prececely because they are determined and predicated by inevitable conlfict they become actual and real for human experience and consciousness. Thats what Marx talks about actually.

If you don't think thats important you can safely retreat to the conservative veil of ignorance that sees history as a pointless cycle with no differentiating elements or evolutions.

>>19433133
>there is no power in it
Will to power, anon. Herd instinct is a form of will to power because there is nothing but will to power. Nihilism is a form of will to power, a total life denying form. Taking a spinozist understanding of it is easy to know how even the most depressed person who kills himself, commits an act of will to power, for one's potency is lowered from external causes and death can surmount this weakening of potency.

>>19433267
I'll take a veil of ignorance over comical utopian delusions of class hierarchy somehow disappearing

>>19433214

The Marxist answer to you claim is that resistance is inevitable when the productive forces have been liberated. Capitalist liberalism already tore a hole through the old order with unmitigated sucess. Marx looks at the sucess of capitalism in that regard and posits that communism is next because of this evolution in the laborers power.

>>19433064
>At the end of the day you will find that all revolutions have less to do with som high mind idealism or even petty interests and more with pure self preservation.
Wow, spoken like a true moralist. Congratulations to prove people arguing for it here right.

>>19433282
Read the other posts here
>>19433046
>>19433040
>>19432996
>>19432945
It's pure social idealism with axiological/metaphysical assumptions.

>>19433309
>>19433282
In other words: will to power. Weak will to power (resentment, moralism, social utopia, all playing decisive roles in its constitution).

>>19433282
Revolution didnt happen and currently, there are a lot of societies that harmonize capitalist mode of production with a tight control over people (China, Russia etc). The concept of revolution is outdated when it comes to developed capitalist societies. Resistance, discontent is well controlled. All talk about resistance and revolutions is just a sublimation of the wishes of those who are oppressed. But we shouldnt mix up wishes and reality.

>>19433245
Yes I'm aware of inequality but class hierarchies are an inevitable feature of civilized society. You can define people that have somewhat nicer jobs as "labor aristocrats" or label them however you please, but I see nothing wrong with someone providing a highly specialized skill getting paid more for their knowledge. Total equality, a classless society, is a fantastic pipe dream no matter how much Marxists rave about how the contradictions of capitalism will inevitably lead to it. Moreover I think it's completely possible to raise more people out of poverty and increase living standards within liberal capitalism. Once again the burden is on you to prove that proletarian revolution will lead to true equality in practice in real socities.

>>19433279
But this is something other than capitalism. It is what lies behind it. Capitalism is really just a superfluous barrier blocking what it really represents. And this is why the more one focuses on capital he becomes powerless, whereas the position of someone like Jünger or Schmitt get to the essence, the real power which lies behind capitalism.

>>19433339
Well, capitalism is an economic system that establishes specific relations of power. Of course it is not a metaphysical entity imposing itself on the world but represents the economic system that was product of prior social relations (power relations).
I don't understand, then, why you say it blocks what it really represents. It represents power, specific power relations. The capitalist focuses on capital because he is in a social organization in which it has value and power. In the end it is all will to power, as Nietzsche himself affirmed.

>the position of someone like Jünger or Schmitt get to the essence, the real power which lies behind capitalism.
Can you explain this part? I don't get it.

>>19432932
You make it sound like there was not an aggressive active attempt to make sure workers didnt get to achieve that

>>19433470
There is nothing stopping workers from making a worker owned company even in the most capitalist places

>>19433470
Wait, so they had a more essential and definitive power other than that which the ''oppressed'' class held?

>>19432553
Bump

>>19432553
>Any book that approaches this idea?
Almost every praxis marxist.

As a working class man, I seek my own liberation through the tools ideologically, and praxically, available to me. However, this desire for freedom isn't bourgeois liberal in intent (there is no "diversity" of class for example); but, rather violent fucking self interest.

I want to belt sand the face of your president.
I want to keep Bill Gates alive for as long as possible *despite* what will be done to him.

There is nothing idealistic about me seeking my freedom collectively, knowing full well the uselessness of the tools available to me now, including the very concept of "freedom," except for the one thing: the abolition of property abolishes my freedom as the subjudgation of others.

For fuck sake bother reading the Structuralist critique of the Humanists (like Althusser versus Nagy), then the historicist critique of Structuralism (Thompson versus Althusser's cunt boi), then the praxic critique of ideological marxism in struggle.

How fucken dumb are you cunt:
GET A JOB
JOIN YOUR UNION
SHOOT YOUR BOSS

>>19432553
Karl Marx looks like a gorilla.

>>19434794
Literally didn't address anything in the OP and resorted to sentimentalism fueled by resentment. Typical marxist praxis.

>>19434800
He looks like any dude with a big bushy beard
Your brain seems to be that of an ape’s

>>19432553
idk why people care so much about freedom considering it is inevitable

>>19434915
seethe lol

>>19434800
affen sind auch menschen

>>19434794
I got a job and due to my superior intellect was promoted into a managerial role within 3 months. Why should I shoot myself for being biologically superior to the menial chaff of mankind who can barely accomplish basic activities?

>>19432553

You're not smart for typing "élan" with the accent, "residue", etc. Please cut that shit out.

>>19434800
>Karl Marx looks like a gorilla.

>>19434885
I responded explicitly to ideological idealism, anti-humanism, self-interest as a trans-moral category, and the limits of self-interest given epochal limits of consciousness.

Your reading practice is Order of Things, Kuhn/Lakatos, and Poulantzas.

>>19432553
>élan
this is where you've lost me completely

>>19432936
That's irrelevant. Communism was supposed to build off capitalism like capitalism built off feudalism. You don't nuke everything and start over.

>>19434794
Even if you say its about natural self interest and not some idealistic notion of freedom, it is still idealistic in the sense of supposing and universalizing certain interests. Most of proles do not even have those interests, my father works in a factory, both him and his cooworkers are conservative. Its mostly theorycels graduates who hold this self-interest driven will to revolution(which is really just hidden ressenment mostly, because they feel like they deserve better). Idealism is also when you universalize your petty interests.

Transgenderism is pure commodity, a commodification so thorough that the man, not the male but the human, is retroactively erased. The burlesque prefigures Twitter: a purely mercantile medium in which perception itself is commodified, man appears as woman by pure advertisement, by effectively putting himself for sale, others' refusal to buy it is so painful not because it is affront to what he truly is, but because it withholds the return on his total investment, or transvestment, into what he is not, a commodity. Indeed, perhaps this is why transgender individuals are so hysteric about "Capitalism", they themselves are the embodiment of its purest form, the totality of man totally commodified, the fire of Moloch melted the idol thereof and the molten metal seeps into the charred bones of its victims.

Leftism does not work.

>>19435422
In other words, quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes. But the path is tortuous with zigs and zags. Only when capitalism is totally overthrown and replaced by socialism completely with no possibility to reverse, there will be a change of quality. When that happens, society is "upgraded" to a new level which is socialism.

During the increase in the quantity, "Rome was not built in a day." The way I look at it, socialism (which later on fails) first negates capitalism. The revived and reformed capitalism then negates that failed socialism. Successful socialism is the negation of that negation. Successful socialism is the unity of reformed capitalism and failed socialism (that is not an absolute negation though but dialectically negating the bad elements while absorbing the good elements into the next stage of the thing). This also means that the tortuosity and the progression are the unity of opposites. It is reflected as either a spiral escalation or a wave forward or both toward replacing capitalism with socialism.

However, new contradictions will emerge and hence a new unity of opposites will emerge based on the new economic substructure and political superstructure regarding their dialectical unity. So a new form of social class struggle and oppression will still exist until reaching the final stage of communism.

Another way of illustrating this:

https://youtu.be/bVPRJeRruVs

>>19435422
Deflect more. This is some next level rationalization. Guess Bezos also is actually communist.

>>19437758
This reminds me. WALL E is actually a movie where capitalism has done its purpose and humans have reached not only communism, but fully-automated SPACE communism lol. Of course, history ends up repeating itself and they return to mother earth.

>>19432572
>marxism
>scientific study

Good one.

>>19432553
>It seems to me that despite rejecting profoundly any metaphysical principle, Marx and marxists still cling on the concept of freedom as the élan behind their own motivation.
Your impression is wrong. Next question.

>>19433059
I'm an uneducated pleb from a third world shithole, so take my praise with a grain of salt anon. I am ambivalent to the validity of Marxist theory due to my severe lack in education; which is to say, any vested interest I have for or against Marx is nonexistent, I simply am curious to learn. You are clearly a very educated man, and for the most part, you have made a dissection of Marx, his influences, and what he used around him in his time to come up with whatever arguments he had posited.

>Marx' philosophy is flawed, as it takes a moral assumption that is presupposed as fundamental.
>Marx' had a headcannon of what precisely would occur as an inevitability, as opposed to what occurs throughout all of history: Namely, that a form of oppression is always replaced with a more superior form (see, western society having the greatest, most complex form of a slave labor pool that is international, and built on absolute trust, incentivized by capitalism, the greatest economic force that guarantees such loyalties without needing to have all that much of a physical presence (China's dependence on the USA, India's economic and democratic(?) independence stemming from complete exploitation (in the negative sense, and other factories all around the globe).

You should consider writing a book anon. I'm sure there is alot that I have left out due to ignorance, and perhaps counterarguments that vastly usurp my juvenile ones, but I appreciate your writings on the subject.

>>19437930
So they don't strive for freedom, but actually inversion of power relations? Read the whole thread before posting.

>>19438377
Suck his dick more why don't you

>>19439026
what is the problem with sucking dicks? fuck off

>>19432553
no
>>19436462
true, that's why we're communists and not leftists
>>19438494
>Read the whole thread before posting.
why would anyone waste time reading worthless garbage by undergraduate philosophy student posers though

>>19439352
>true, that's why we're communists and not leftists
That's why you're just trannies and not women.
>why would anyone waste time reading worthless garbage by undergraduate philosophy student posers though
Why would anyone waste their time reading worthless garbage from the 1860s from a guy who's own father pointed out he was full of shit and a greedy bum? Stuff that has been proven to be non-sense by history?

>>19435018
You're a psued, and we don't need to hear about all those books. We already know you're just an angry kid mad at the world.

>>19432839
>There is nothing a prioristic about exploitation
This is just not true. The claim of "exploitation" is a sophistic trick, a negative connotation of egotistic utility. You are denouncing man for using his fellow man for his own advantage and not yours. You simply speak for the underclasses who utilize this "moral wrong" as a way to exploit indignation for their own selfish ends political and economic ends. You denounce "exploitation" because you want to exploit others under the guise of altruism, under a humanistic apriori assumption of a common good, of a type of humanistic progress, that is purely morally speculative for those who conform to your views - much like the Hegelian, idealistic dialectic that Marx uses here. You are Marxists are cunning, self-serving rhetorician seeking power for yourselves; not scientists in search of practical truth.
Labor is simply a means of existence, energy over time. Life, like labor, has no value but value we appropriate to it through own conscious thinking. Your sociological theories are a mere phantasmagoria of human vanity that is a solution search of a problem that does not exist. Men live, create their lives and die. How you preconceive and deal with that is ultimately your call - not the call of God, the philosophers before us, or even the world at large today.

>>19439352
I'll repeat:
Communists don't strive for freedom and ''just'' (understand this as whatever you want, whether meaning actual power or in the moralistic sense) position for workers?