/lit/ - Literature

>>23639237
refuted by reality

>>23639237
Read Spengler

>>23639259
>>23639263
These aren't arguments

>>23639237
There isn't enough of it. lmao get rekd.

>>23639237
It can't be that history is the conflict over resources and material because there are critical moments in which idealism has played an undeniable role in history. You can't construe the French or especially the American Revolution as solely motivated by material concerns. The Virginia House of Burgesses is a particularly good example of a political elite profoundly offended by actions of the crown taken explicitly politically. Thomas Jefferson and the Jeffersonian tradition, each having played a key part in the development of the US through to the 1830s or '40s, were strictly motivated by ideals to hamper the creation of central banks and other similar institutions. They are very explicitly and genuine in their desire to form agrarian republics. It would be beyond reductive to interpret some sort of true and historical materialist perspective on their actions, in light of their copious writing and actions

>>23639448
Their materialist conditions at those points in time directed them to genuinely believe their ideological prerogatives. Without their slaves, their servants, their riches, and their land, they wouldn't have been in a place to convince themselves of their ideals. It is all materialist conditions, even if the individual does not believe it so.

>>23639237
>People frequently fight over ideas & beliefs, not resources or relations to le means of production

>Labor theory of value is obviously retarded and the subjective theory of value is obviously true

>And how about the social relations of the means of REproduction? Human evolution, sexual market dynamics and status-seeking, strong and weak races, the HBD of hunter-gatherers, settled agriculture, and pastoralism pitted against each other, hyperracism, Albion's Seed, Genealogy of Morals, Selective Breeding & the Birth of Philosophy...

>>23639470
>People frequently fight over ideas & beliefs, not resources or relations to le means of production
And what happens to all those resources after the war? :)
>Labor theory of value is obviously retarded and the subjective theory of value is obviously true
Labor theory of value is based on subjective use value :)
>And how about the social relations of the means of REproduction? Human evolution, sexual market dynamics and status-seeking, strong and weak races, the HBD of hunter-gatherers, settled agriculture, and pastoralism pitted against each other, hyperracism, Albion's Seed, Genealogy of Morals, Selective Breeding & the Birth of Philosophy...
Sneed :)

>>23639491
So we agree that the fascist worldview of malthusian social darwinism & expansionism is a perfected form of the immortal science of dialectical materialism, Leninist- and post-Leninist distortions aside

>>23639463
That's all well and good, but at this point you're understanding historical materialism as a descriptive framework rather than a prescriptive one. It's the same cop-out that lazy or deluded utilitarians use when pressed against a wall, "Actually it WAS in his self-perceived interest to jump on the grenade."

The more quickly you concede what you just did, the more likely it is that you hold whatever theory as dead dogma rather than an interpretive lens with potential predictive power with which you seriously engage. It's unfalsifiable, because anything anybody says can be explained away in the exact same way, with no critical engagement.

TLDR: your gay

>>23639237
Historical materialism is unfalsifiable and thus unscientific. Popper destroyed this shit years ago, get with the times.

>>23639509
I think you listed off 12 different subjects I don't want to take the time to define, discuss, and debunk. Fascism only takes hold when the left is actually a threat. The fact that even the people who currently read books take part in 200+ post shitshows any time someone uploads a picture of marx to a basket weaving forum says enough about the state of current politics to know it's going to be a couple decades before anyone should start giving a shit about what theory to retroactively apply to American fascism, and as such there is no need to engage in a conversation about it. :)

>>23639522
Very good comrade, agreed. Heil Putler.

>>23639518
>why is the historical analysis about history and not predicting the future?????
>>23639519
>Where speculation ends – in real life – there real, positive science begins: the representation of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of men. Empty talk about consciousness ceases, and real knowledge has to take its place. When reality is depicted, philosophy as an independent branch of knowledge loses its medium of existence. At the best its place can only be taken by a summing-up of the most general results, abstractions which arise from the observation of the historical development of men. Viewed apart from real history, these abstractions have in themselves no value whatsoever. They can only serve to facilitate the arrangement of historical material, to indicate the sequence of its separate strata. But they by no means afford a recipe or schema, as does philosophy, for neatly trimming the epochs of history. On the contrary, our difficulties begin only when we set about the observation and the arrangement – the real depiction – of our historical material, whether of a past epoch or of the present. The removal of these difficulties is governed by premises which it is quite impossible to state here, but which only the study of the actual life-process and the activity of the individuals of each epoch will make evident. We shall select here some of these abstractions, which we use in contradistinction to the ideologists, and shall illustrate them by historical examples.

>>23639519
Karl Popper is not a serious person

>>23639590
he's more serious than marx

>>23639536
Eh, you really can't give me any analysis of those materialist conditions that led to those people believing their ideological prerogatives, just like you can't do it any time ideology seems to be the obvious motivating factor. You can't give me any sort of general rule of thumb or even separate the events into categories most likely. It's dogma for you

>>23639593
Popper is a Jew

>>23639593
I think most people were more serious than Marx, but that's kinda his charm, isn't it?

>>23639593
I don't really think so. Marx makes an interesting and elaborate case, which is well argued (even if its wrong). Popper just engages in the same sorts of failures of critical thinking in his analyses that Sam Harris did when he claimed to bridge the is-ought gap by taking the example of burning your hand on a stove.

>>23639599
Simple example and a intuitive one: the kind of family you are raised in has significant influence on your political beliefs.
I grew up with a childhood friend from a bourgeois family, while mine is proletarian. She ended up becoming a very liberal (capitalist) person actively supporting capitalism, while I grew up to be an anti-capitalist socialist.
Our different experiences with simply abundance of goods, quality of life formed us into the people we are today.

>>23639599
Karl literally lays out your issues in the first chapter of the german ideology. And if that isn't satisfactory, what historical framework satisfies these requirements for you? Or is history just bound to be the idealist zeitgest?

>>23639237
Doesn't pass the smell test

>>23639619
That's not a very good or intuitive example, unless you already take historical materialism as a given, because it's not only different experiences with abundance of and type of goods that you see, it's different experiences with different religions, parental situations (occupation and makeup), ethnic ties, languages, friend groups, neighborhoods, clans, tribes, social class, other inter-class social groups, etc. If your gut reaction to reading this is, "yeah, but it's clear that the quantity and quality of goods you are raised with is the primary difference," then you've already drank the kool-aid. That's something you need to argue.

>>23639634
Does it smell like hundhoch?

Perhaps alternatives are empiricism and idealism.

>>23639619
that's not even realistic because working class people are generally pro-capitalism because it gives them class mobility to improve their and their children's lives, while the bourgeois are already comfortable and so hope to ossify the classes in the guise magnanimity before they experience downward mobility. so basically your story is fake as hell.

>>23639637
Sure, it's more complex. Given we both were of the same ethnic and religious backgrounds, there is no point to talking about them.
Would you not say that friend groups are likely different ones for wealthy and poor people?
Parental situations I already mentioned and that was economic class. Everything else though has a material (economic) basis. Yes, even religion. The point of religion is to keep the ruling class in charge. No wonder the bourgeoisie marches hand in hand with papists.

>>23639649
Lol you don't believe my parents were wage-laborers? I got to see the conditions imposed on people by capitalism (I would rarely see both my parents at home, vacations were rare) that were inherent to the system directly.

>>23639640
Lmao, Marx started shitposting in the Theses On Feuerbach and the German Ideology explicitly to rail against empiricism and idealism.
>>23639637
>yeah, but it's clear that the quantity and quality of goods you are raised with is the primary difference
The poor child does not grow physically and subsequently mentally. The poor child does not have access to the same resources, cultures, attentive care, or facilities as the wealthy parallel. Is none of this obvious? Do we think that poverty and exploitation will make all things equal if the child has the power of god and anime on their side? Do the fundamental material conditions to raise a human, the same things that fuel an economy and society, not drive the vast majority of experiences with the few exceptions you would list off if you bothered to do anything but nag?

>>23639661
i don't believe your parents were anti-capitalist. they had hoped you would do well in school and go on to have a successful middle class career. sadly you failed and retreated into marxism to give yourself an ideological justification for your failure. your parents are disappointed in you.

>>23639670
>i don't believe your parents were anti-capitalist. they had hoped you would do well in school and go on to have a successful middle class career. sadly you failed and retreated into marxism to give yourself an ideological justification for your failure. your parents are disappointed in you.
Look who's projecting ideological presuppositions now! I will annihilate you!

>>23639670
My parents were always left leaning and had sympathies for the left, especially my mother. I am from eastern Europe and the shift from a planned economy to wild capitalism affected them negatively. Gangs and oligarchs appeared out of this process.
Also, in my initial example I compared myself with my friend, not my parents.

>>23639678
you leave in a formerly communist country and think marx is anything but bullshit? truly clowned out

>>23639627
Are you talking about the whole base-superstructure thing? I haven't read nearly as much of Marx himself as I have about him, mostly just what's in the Norton Marx-Engels Reader. But again, it's a very interesting framework to apply to different situations and see what shows up, and that's where its value is imo.

But to take it as the golden rule of history? Bullshit. And if you believe it anyway, in the way that you told me in response to my first post, then it becomes much less interesting. "Oh, Jefferson wanted an idealist agrarian republic because his economic situation was such that he actually believed he wanted an agrarian republic?" That's not very interesting.

The American Revolution is a good counterexample in a lot of ways. The thirteen colonies were relatively diverse in economy and political structure. Why was revolution most eagerly seized upon by the planter Virginians rather than the other planting colonies, which were generally much less built up by an established elite class? There's no doubt that, in the first order, the other colonies had much more to lose by the acts that the crown passed down through the decades before the Revolution. To force that framework down on it is to get yourself tangled in dumb questions you don't wanna look for answers for

>>23639655
>Parental situations I already mentioned and that was economic class. Everything else though has a material (economic) basis. Yes, even religion. The point of religion is to keep the ruling class in charge. No wonder the bourgeoisie marches hand in hand with papists.
Again, you're just stating your position. Argue it. Show me that this or that has an economic basis, and not vice-versa. You're taking your position as a given. I could just as easily say, and probably prove, the reality of historical intellectualism. History is the story of high IQ people that do things and fight with each other, while the low IQ underclass lives under whatever superstructure the high IQ elite construct.

>>23639679
this is the worst, most retarded argument i've ever heard in my life. you are a faggot. do you think that the United States would've survived even into the 1800s, had it not been for Washington, who was pretty much a one-of-a-kind warrior-philosopher? Who would build up a nation and then willingly give up all his power rather than try and collect more? Very few people like that have existed and gotten into positions of power throughout history. The American Revolution through to the early Constitutional period could just as easily have ended up in another French Revolution Reign of Terror in the wrong hands.

>>23639680
>Are you talking about the whole base-superstructure thing?
No, I'm saying the first chapter of his third most famous book is explicitly laying out his version of historical materialism. Your reader may have titled it "I. Feuerbach: Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlooks" instead of Chapter 1 of the German Ideology.
>That's not very interesting.
CORRECT. IT ISN'T. I HATE IT. IM TRAPPED. BUT NOTHING ELSE WORKS. NOTHING ELSE EXPLAINS IT ALL SO ASTUTELY.
>The American Revolution is a good counterexample in a lot of ways. The thirteen colonies were relatively diverse in economy and political structure. Why was revolution most eagerly seized upon by the planter Virginians rather than the other planting colonies, which were generally much less built up by an established elite class? There's no doubt that, in the first order, the other colonies had much more to lose by the acts that the crown passed down through the decades before the Revolution. To force that framework down on it is to get yourself tangled in dumb questions you don't wanna look for answers for
The American revolution was a merchant class revolution squarely during the capitalist transition from feudalism. Taxation, private property in the face of the crown, geographic positioning of immobile factory and plantation work, etc. Capitalists were the majority make up of those who went to the new world (other than the slaves, criminals, or contract debtors)

>>23639700
>Again, you're just stating your position. Argue it. Show me that this or that has an economic basis, and not vice-versa.
No, we are squarely in the realm of historical materialism. If this thread gets derailed with /pol/-sees-a-capital-thread slop, our discussion will be over and it will be a sea of monkeys posting about mudpies and shouting LTV SYUX.
>You're taking your position as a given. I could just as easily say, and probably prove, the reality of historical intellectualism. History is the story of high IQ people that do things and fight with each other, while the low IQ underclass lives under whatever superstructure the high IQ elite construct.
Right, but those great men with ideas still need to eat and sleep every day. Thoughts don't. The actual physical actions and the processes behind those rituals would determine more than any one of their particular thoughts. Thoughts themselves, alone, cannot do anything. The thoughts must be willed into being by action in the physical world.

>>23639721
>The thoughts must be willed into being by action in the physical world.
So, the founding fathers' genetics, being those of 130+ IQ Anglo men, is an important causal variable in your Marxist worldview (in addition to the fact that they owned black slaves, etc), is what you're saying. I see.

>>23639731
They had their ideas and they owned slaves to get it done and the money to fund it. None of this is interesting or new.

>>23639736
Right, and because they were from a population that had specifically undergone ages of genetic selection pressures for higher intelligence (created by surviving winters and navigating societies with property rights and literacy), as well as selection pressures for discipline and impulse control (created by organized warfare and a justice system which vigorously executed criminals), they were easily able to conquer other populations with different breedings. Because of the material reality of their genes. Nothing interesting or new about that either.

>>23639759
Sounds like you're conflating race with gunpowder. Which, actually, IS interesting.

>>23639772
Sure, exactly, it's just one more part of the material superstructure created by the social relations of the means of reproduction. But all separate races will be abolished, there will only be one race, the Ubermenschen, in a true communist society

>>23639237
It’s not historical and it’s not material

>>23639237
Picrel exists for absolutely no benefit

>>23639666
>Do the fundamental material conditions to raise a human, the same things that fuel an economy and society, not drive the vast majority of experiences with the few exceptions...
If there are exceptions, especially some as large as history can reveal, then maybe the theory isn't right.

>>23639237
Historical materialism was never really formulated as a theory by Marx or Engels. But I will try my best. TL;DR: It's outdated.

Firstly, that people are to an extent controled by their environmental conditions is basically a truism, to what extent is a different matter. It is also reductive, as it simultaneously seems to subordinate the superstructure to the mode of production and then ignore the mode of production's subordination to geographic and climatological phenomena.

Secondly, I believe the notion of class struggle being a main historical driver of history is myopic. As it has seldom been demonstrated to occur (much less succeed), has only lead to a transition between modes of production once.

Thirdly, it fails to adequately explain societies outside the historical purview of Euro-mediterranian civilization, which in my view undermines any explanatory it may have.

>>23640426
>Thirdly, it fails to adequately explain societies outside the historical purview of Euro-mediterranian civilization,
This is a criticism I heard very often but I don't understand it at all, other civilizations don't have economies?

>>23640450
They do, but the thrust of the development of their civilization is
>be backwater tribal or caste shithole
>get colonized

>>23640450
>This is a criticism I heard very often but I don't understand it at all, other civilizations don't have economies?
Those economies do not really conform to the historical materialist schema is the problem. The mode of production does not actually follow what the model says it should.

>>23639237
Pretty basic criticisms
>Its just a Darwinian socialist version of the Whig theory of history
>Class struggle fails to explain everything whereas Marxoids see it as behind literally everything
>Too telological with a rigid economic determinism that lends credit to Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism e.g. people have no agency and its all just class struggle and structural forces etc
>Marx's stages (like feudalism, primitive etc) probably never existed, feudalism is a myth that was backprojected onto the past
>The stages of history are too rigid anyway
>Base/superstructure makes no sense, chicken and the egg problem
>Marx claims surplus leads to the development of property, class systems, inequality, art, culture, religion etc. but ethnographic evidence from existing forager societies contradicts this
>Marx's Darwinism leads to the idea that certain soceities and cultures are inherently superior to others based on their mode of production and superstructural elements i.e. Marxism is borderline racist while claiming not to be
>Just reproduces several themes deeply rooted in modern Western thought despite trying pass itself off as a critical and radical when its just the same old bullshit

>>23640493
To be fair, Marx warned Vera Zasulich that his historical analysis was of Western Europe only and shouldn't be generalized beyond that. Marxists of course ignored this.

>>23639237
Has no utility. Its merely trivia.
What real world problem does historical materialism solve?
Its mental masturbation and conjecture.

>>23639237
YWNBAW

>>23640426
Only good criticism of it in this thread.

Exceptional Medals of Retardation go to anyone who utters these single digit IQ vomit chunks:
>subjective theory of value is obviously true
>Popper destroyed this shit years ago
>feudalism is a myth that was backprojected onto the past

>>23642396
>>subjective theory of value is obviously true
Well this is true but isn’t directly relevant to the topic lol

>>23642396
Only pseuds think communism is hard to refute and criticize.
An idealogy that produces only Pol Pots, Berias, Jonestown and Shining Path isn't even worth giving the time of day.

>>23639237
Marxists all look like this.

>>23642544
>self identifying as a pseud
Why did you do this?

>>23639237
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-cyril/works/articles/cyril_01.htm#39

>History has never been made by puppets controlled by ‘laws’. Living men and women have always struggled to tackle the problems of their time. But, constrained by social forms which were both their own handiwork and alien to them, they were unable to see how these problems could be overcome. This is how Marx describes the resulting appearance of historical necessity:

>This process of inversion is merely an historical necessity, merely a necessity for the development of the productive forces from a definite historical point of departure, or basis. In no way is it an absolute necessity of production; it is rather a transitory (verschwindene) one, and the result and (immanent) aim of this process is to transcend this basis itself and this form of the process.

>>23642575
Its only faggots who live in Brookyln, New York that dwell Starbucks that like Marxism.
People who live under it tend to regret it.
Everyone knows you're pedophiles and crooks.

>>23642703
>>This process of inversion is merely an historical necessity, merely a necessity for the development of the productive forces from a definite historical point of departure, or basis. In no way is it an absolute necessity of production; it is rather a transitory (verschwindene) one, and the result and (immanent) aim of this process is to transcend this basis itself and this form of the process.
In other words, men organize themselves in imperfect ways (call it the relations of production), and in their attempts to fix those imperfections (but not the entire organization/relations of production), necessarily transcend that organization (relations of production)?

>>23642848
>Venezuela
>Marxism
Is Commiefornia Marxist too?

>>23642968
"Yes"

Lmao who knew
>people do stuff and it effects the world
was so radical.

>>23639269
You will never be a woman

Bakunin ended up being right and Marx had him expelled from the First International for "having no theory" and other concocted reasons which I'm sure made sense to him