/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12169988]

what books to read
to help me understand marxism?

[Anonymous No.12169997]

Try "Working is hard and the government should just give me free shit" By Starchild Progroessocuck

[Anonymous No.12169999]

[Anonymous No.12170010]

Marx's Concept of Man by Erich Fromm

[Anonymous No.12170011]

every day a thread like this crops up

[Anonymous No.12170016]

>How do I understand how 2+2=5?
There's nothing there to understand. Everyone who says they understand it is lying because they know whoever they're talking to doesn't understand it either and can't call them out.

[Anonymous No.12170093]

>>12169997
>>12169999
i knew there was going to be some edgelord replies like this. i didnt say i was pro marxist did i? i just want to understand the concept

[Anonymous No.12170099]

>>12169988
capital

[Anonymous No.12170106]

Hegel

[Anonymous No.12170248]

Engels: Socialism, Utopian and Scientific
Engels: Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy
M&E - The German Ideology
Marx - Capital
Marx - Critique of the Gotha Programme

[Anonymous No.12170254]

Lol he was eating jelly beans now he's gotta hide them because he doesn't want to share

[Anonymous No.12170409]

Read anything by Sorel

[Anonymous No.12170489]

>>12170093
>it's edgy not to support an ideology that has failed in its every incarnation and resulted in the deaths of billions of people
really makes me think

[Anonymous No.12170691]

>>12169988
Karl Marx and the Close of His System, Eugen Bohm von Brawerk

[Anonymous No.12171630]

Is there a similar list for Accelerationism?

[Anonymous No.12171665]

>>12170489
>muh gorillions
Persuasive argument my dear chap

[Anonymous No.12171745]

>>12171630
Just watch Texhnolyze.

[Anonymous No.12173008]

>>12169997
ironic that under communism the freeloaders are forced to labor for their scraps. Meanwhile in capitalism, due to overabundance they enjoy NEETdom under the welfare system.

[Anonymous No.12173490]

Anon read this book if you can find a copy.it outlines all of marx's theories in plain english and categorizes all of the aspects of his thought so you get a full picture. the guy who writes it includes support and criticisms on both sides, and i found that it helped me understand the questions i should be asking when i moved on to marx's firsthand works. The Marx-Engels reader by Tucker is the best compilation of important marx and engels works.

[Anonymous No.12173501]

>>12170489
yeah, I'd rather this thread was about fascism - now that's a based ideology!

[Anonymous No.12173507]

>>12170248
This is a good list OP, but not all are great for beginners. "Socialism, Utopian and Scientific" and "The German Ideology" are the best to start with. Don't bother with the Manifesto honestly, it was a contemporary political pamphlet and lacks a lot of the good nuance and scholarship their other works have.

[Anonymous No.12173593]

>>12173008
If you knew history, you'd understand without that shitty welfare system, and laws about labour and all these socialist ideas. The ruling class just abuses everyone and destroys the county. Happened until unions came. There is balance to everything in life. There is never one system. Balance is key.

[Anonymous No.12173606]

>>12169988
Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago

[Anonymous No.12173707]

>>12173507
>Don't bother with the manifesto
I disagree. Its his sales pitch to the workers of the world, the proletariat, in the most simplistic form telling them to unite. It may be lacking in theory, be a little bit too simplistic, and even have generalizations of the working class unable to hold up, but it is important because it shows how he attempted to convey and connect his theory to the agents of revolution the Proletariat.
It is a useful read because it is intended for even the most basic reader to for the most part grasp, and also how you try to boil your ideas down into the most simple form is a good indicator of how someone actually thought in a larger sense

[Anonymous No.12173715]

This does make me curious?
Anyone know what a Soviet school curriculum looked like in regards to teaching Marxist Leninism?
What was considered required reading?

[Anonymous No.12173725]

>>12173008
I think the consequence of NEETs existing has more to do with comfort being the main selling point of wealth than it does the existence of welfare.

[Anonymous No.12173802]

>>12173725
NEETs existing are simply a consequence of a certain part of the population not being able to provide useful labor or having the incentive to change their status

[Anonymous No.12173806]

>>12173802
What is the incentive to wealth if you're born into comfort

[Anonymous No.12173820]

>>12169997
>has never read marx and bases entire belief system on memes

[Anonymous No.12173823]

>>12173593
meanwhile the labour laws in the glorious socialist republic democratic nation of peace that is North Korean are so great, they literally WANT to work for free

Those evil capitalist nations with their goddamn unions baka...

[Anonymous No.12173844]

>>12173823
your only recourse to the idea that capitalism exploits labor is to name a despotic shithole. labor conditions in almost every capitalist country are dogshit, but most critique doesn't just play the name game. it engages the systems of capital at scale. i'm guessing though that even if you did ever read any leftist theory you're too dense to respond in kind.

read a book and stop being such a dipshit.

[Anonymous No.12173865]

WELCOME MY SON

WELCOME, TO THE MACHINE

[Anonymous No.12173941]

>>12173820
>gets upset about memes
yikes

[Anonymous No.12173944]

>>12173941
>thinking i'm upset when i'm actually super fucking chill and the most not giving a fuck guy you'd ever meet if you were even man enough to meet me in person, pussy bitch
yikes

[Anonymous No.12174032]

>>12173844
>your only recourse to the idea that capitalism exploits labor is to name a despotic shithole
not my fault every ideal socialist nation that adheres to marxist theories wholeheartedly ends up a despotic shithole

>labor conditions in almost every capitalist country are dogshit
Yet its far superior than any socialist state past or present, this is a well known fact. Unionism has its home in capitalism.

[Anonymous No.12174039]

>>12173944
>this whole cringy af post

[Anonymous No.12174152]

>>12173593
Socialism isn't moderate capitalism with a happy face, you cretin.

[Anonymous No.12174187]

Why do otherwise well-read people turn into total retards whenever someone mentions Marx? It's honestly the most validating experience when you're a commie, literally everyone else spergs out without reading any theory whatsoever. I engaged with classical conservatism for a long time before putting it aside, very fishy how the reverse isn't true...

[Anonymous No.12174246]

>>12169997
based

[Anonymous No.12174250]

>>12174187
yikes...

[An No.12174275]

[Anonymous No.12175748]

[Anonymous No.12175755]

[Anonymous No.12175764]

[Anonymous No.12175792]

https://4chanlit.wikia.com/wiki/File:-lit-_Marx.pdf

[Anonymous No.12175818]

basic economics by Sowell if you want to understand why it doesn't work

[Anonymous No.12175838]

>>12174032
>a socialist nation adheres to marxist theories
check out the big brains on this guy

[Anonymous No.12175843]

>>12169997
Leftism eternally BTFO. How will the left ever recover?

[Anonymous No.12176757]

>>12174187
The white man fears the ashkenazi intellect

[Anonymous No.12176777]

>>12174039
>>12173941

[Anonymous No.12177146]

>>12175764
Hey I made that years ago, needs lots of reworking.

[Anonymous No.12177462]

>>12173707
Fair enough. My worry is only that it's treated as a theoretical work when it really isnt outside of some crude summaries, so if people go in expecting a good solid primer on Marxism theyre going to take away something more simplistic than they should. It is a nice read though.

[Anonymous No.12177481]

>>12169997
libs BTFO

[Anonymous No.12177635]

>>12173865
Hi Dad.

[Anonymous No.12177649]

>>12174275
>killing rich people is bad, but executing kikes and niggers is OK
Nice try, stormdit.

[Anonymous No.12177665]

>>12170691
Only good post so far.

[Anonymous No.12177679]

>>12169988
peter singer's a very short introduction to marx does a nice job

[Anonymous No.12177684]

>>12169997
fpbp

[Anonymous No.12177702]

>>12169988
Capital if you're full force, or just something like the Marx-Engels Reader for an idea. There's also who archives for Socialist writing if you just search for it. Those have Marx and basically everyone else.

[Anonymous No.12177704]

>>12177679
agreed, GA Cohen's book on Marx's theory of history and Allen Wood's book on Marx in general, thereafter

[Anonymous No.12177714]

>>12170011
They want to know what we think about the bad man.

[Anonymous No.12177721]

[Anonymous No.12177744]

[Anonymous No.12177752]

>>12170489
but enough about capitalism, this is a Marxism thread

[Anonymous No.12177807]

>>12169988
Marx's three main influences were:
a) Hegel - here's where he got the philosophical foundation for historical materialism. Marx's view of nature is kind of like Hegel's path of the evolution of Spirit towards reason, stripped of all mysticism, mind-body separation, and viewing the Aufhebung as the result of human agents' decisions against one another in the struggle for the working classes' search for freedom
b) classical economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy is mostly just what its title says. It offers very little in terms of constructive economic models, except as a way of claiming that the capitalist economic system will eventually collapse under its own weight.
c) "Utopian" socialists like Charles Fourier, Henri de Saint-Simon, and Pierre Joseph Proudhon.
He also took influence from his former fellow Left-Hegelians (Stirner, Bauer, Feuerbach), whom he greatly criticized for being too close to Hegel, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus (whom he wrote his PhD thesis about), Thomas Malthus, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

I read Marx's Theses on Feuerbach, the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, parts of The German Ideology, and Capital: Volume I during my freshman year in college without getting too deep into any of Marx's influences, except for Stirner and Hegel, and I understood Marx well enough.

I'd suggest you to start with Theses on Feuerbach, continue with The Manifesto of the Communist Party, follow that up with The German Ideology (the original work is 800 pgs. long, but there's a 50-ish page long version on Marxists.org), get a taste for something slightly different with Wage, Labor, and Capital, and finish off with Das Kapital (probably not the whole thing, but at least some of the most important excerpts on LVT, commodity fetishism, and alienation).
Alternatively, get yourself a used copy of The Marx-Engels reader.
If possible, borrow it from the library. If not, steal it from somebody else or download some pdfs of the original texts onto your computer or cellphone, so as to not perpetuate the cycle of endless consumption of goods.

[Anonymous No.12177827]

>>12177752
Agreed. Post more books, guys.

[Anonymous No.12177860]

>>12177744
>starve you entire country
But anon, the biggest increase in life expectancy ever occurred in the USSR after Socialism. Though Russia did suffer the biggest drop off ever, after adopting privatization. Plus the famines that did happen were a cause of rapid industrialization, not just because socialism makes food evaporate. Japan had similar incidents throughout its advancement to the modern era, and even then things weren't really solved until massive support from the USA. Not to mention what happened to the colonies forced to industrialize like India.
>https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5ba6/0d461c6035b54200524bca65b4a8a413ede0.pdf
>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1116380/
>http://pseweb.eu/ydepot/semin/texte0708/BAS2007MAR.pdf
>https://yourstory.com/2014/08/bengal-famine-genocide/

[Anonymous No.12178009]

>>12177860
There's so much doublethink in this post. The improvement in life expectancy during the USSR was seen all over the world and is due to industrialization. The switch to privatization being so painful for Russia had nothing to due with privatization, it has more to do with it being the aftermath of the Soviet house of cards collapsing. No one living in a communist country wanted it anymore. The contradictions inherent to it accumulated to critical mass in the late 80s, early 90s. Japan's "incidents" during industrialization were mostly natural disasters which have nothing to do with ideology like earthquakes.

The sheer absurdity, pointlessness, and damage of the USSR's existence can be made apparent to a kindergartener. It's only people who are lured by Marx's rhetoric, the historical passion of the revolutionaries, and archived communist propaganda who think it can be viable. Even if the current vogue is to harness "woke capital" to subvert western culture, "woke capital" is still capitalism. There's a reason why the modern Marxist movement is led by a literal orgy of gay transvestites. Fascism, which does have future, actually appears to be telling the truth.

[Anonymous No.12178767]

>>12169988
Socialism: an economic and sociological analysis - Ludwig von mises

[Anonymous No.12179776]

>>12169988
Marxism does not work.
I suggest you read Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith and also Capitalism & Freedom by Milon Friedman.

[Anonymous No.12179794]

>>12169997
*Progressostein

[Anonymous No.12179850]

>>12179776
Marx cites Smith all the time https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/capital.htm#1

and Friedman is shit

[Anonymous No.12179855]

>>12169997
Do people really think that marxism is about getting free stuff from the government?

[Anonymous No.12180026]

>>12169988
Read Marx, dude. His writing isn't that difficult. It's actually fairly easy to understand since his philosophy is already over-simplification. If you keep in mind what he's going for in his writing (history is the story of class struggle, virtually everything is determined by economics) it's easy to follow. The man was very right in some ways (concerning alienation especially) and very wrong in others (basic human nature).

[Anonymous No.12180141]

>>12178009

Of course that transition's painfulness had nothing to do with the formation of the exploitative oligarch class who acquired the means of production with the help of Western lawyers and accountants, no siree.

[Anonymous No.12180156]

>>12179855

Yes. Political and civic education in the US/ west generally is shocking and the media is an all-you-can-eat buffet of misinformation, not just the Murdoch press. The NYT is equally bad but in a more subtle and cultured way, as are UK papers like the Telegraph. Ditto magazines like The Economist and bestsellers like Freakonomics.

[Anonymous No.12180165]

>>12179776
Imagine thinking Adam Smith and Milton Friedman are compatible. Smith introduced the Labor Theory of Value that Marx uses and was arguably a proto-socdem who thought the government should provide certain basic services.

[Anonymous No.12180487]

The trouble w. Marx is that he oversimplifies human interaction, with the result that when humans do not behave the way his innaccurate model suggests they should, the people are held to blame and social engineering is attempted, as we see going on here in the States. The result of using a flawed model of human behaviour as the basis for social engineering is predictable...

[Anonymous No.12180499]

>>12179855
Duh, of course! Gibs!

[Anonymous No.12180541]

>>12169997
Why cant u just stay in pol?

[Anonymous No.12181391]

>>12180487
what model are you referring to? which of Marx's models are prescriptive?

[Anonymous No.12181556]

>>12180541
Antifa confirmed.

[Anonymous No.12181564]

>>12169997
Everyone works under Socialism, that's the point.

[Anonymous No.12181636]

>>12169997
marxists scream in eternal horror as based anon BTFO their "political theory"
FPBP

[Anonymous No.12181641]

>>12177649
>rich people
dont forget to take your medicine as i clearly see your retardeness level is higher than normal

[Anonymous No.12181769]

>>12180487
>The trouble w. Marx is that he oversimplifies human interaction
but anon, marx wasn't the one who came up with the neoclassical theories

[Anonymous No.12181776]

>>12170254
Still the most based post in this thread

[Anonymous No.12181856]

>>12169988
Isn't it funny how there are virtually no non-government funded enterprises, businesses, organizations or even the smallest of producers which use any Marxist system of collective ownership.

If such preposed systems are so efficient and productive for the working class, then you'd expect some of them to pool together to run the most simplest of things, such as a socialist restaurant. If it caught on, you'd expect many more to emerge, just like how job training, human resources, health and safety and management has privately developed to creater better working environments.

But virtually none of this exists, anywhere, that is not reliant on the forced distribution of wealth. It's almost as if Marxism is some kind of parasitical ideology that only survives in the government and academia.

[Anonymous No.12181888]

>>12181856
>ob training, human resources, health and safety and management has privately developed to creater better working environments.
werent those mostly imposed by State Department or whoever else

[Anonymous No.12181937]

>>12181888
Many of these things are pushed by the state to the point of being a hinderence, however largely private effort has worked on corporate management, staff relations, teamwork or customer relations. You don't need the state to push for Christmas parties, team building exercises or how to treat customers.

For health and safety I'd argue further, because having the government responsible for airline safety or restaurant cleanliness prevents a market emerging to privately monitor these things.

[Anonymous No.12181960]

>>12169997
fpbp

[Anonymous No.12181970]

>>12169988
Why not start at the source? I recommend Marx's very own Communist Manifesto.
Skip Das Kaptial; he so long to say so little, and the payoff is hardly worth the commitment.

>>12169997
based

[Anonymous No.12181977]

>>12181856
>hyper-bureacratization of the workforce is somehow a good thing

boy do i love having to fill out a mission statement and have my performance reviewed by an auditor every time i want to leave my wagecage to take a piss

[Anonymous No.12181978]

>>12181970
>he so long to say so little
He takes so long to say so little.

[Anonymous No.12182008]

>>12181970
this is just about the worst advice you could possibly give.

[Anonymous No.12182014]

>>12182008
Hardly. Go ahead and read Das Kapital then, because it's clear that you haven't if you believe that it holds any value over Communist Manifesto.
You fall for the trap of "more words = better, me smart"

[Anonymous No.12182022]

>>12182008
nah this is good advice. I will never get back that time I wasted on that pile of trash

[Anonymous No.12182043]

>>12182008
>that is like totally, like the worst advice ever

[Anonymous No.12182044]

>>12182014
even putting aside the fact that the Manifesto was written by a young Marx and that its proposals are directly at odds with his later analyses, the two works aren't even about the same thing; how could one be superfluous because of the existence of another?

[Anonymous No.12182052]

>>12182022
yeah and I'm sure you've actually read all three volumes and aren't just posturing on the internet for no reason.

[Anonymous No.12182074]

>>12182052
do you have a small penis buried in pubic hair

[Anonymous No.12182083]

>>12182074
yes but i don't see the relevance of that

[Anonymous No.12182122]

>>12181856
The grand majority of businesses today are corporations which are collectively owned by their shareholders, not an individual proprietor, which wasn't the case yet in Marxs day. Collective ownership essiently already won the battle by the end of the 19th century in most branches of the economy... so I presume you mean why haven't worker owned cooperatives overtaken corporations as the dominate form of enterprise which you would probably insist demonstrates proof of an "efficiency" or "productivity" failure? The truth is there's many institutional barriers coming from financial conservatism to the role of government and others having various reasons to actively promote the corporate form but the issue is hardly related to productivity e.g. why are corporate CEO's paid so much? The conventional explanation is tautologically because they're so productive but a better explanation, even though conspiratorial, would be power elites are conspiring to create and maintain a market for their hundred million dollar "services" and in fact they are more of a mere overhead expense on the system. The entire mainstream theory is premised on the notion that workers actually determine their own work hours and any unemployment is merely a preference for leisure over work so any conceptualisation of "productivity" from such absurd fictions isn't worth taking serious.

[Anonymous No.12182134]

>>12182122
>The grand majority of businesses today are corporations which are collectively owned by their shareholders
turning the government into this is quite literally the Moldbug plan

[Anonymous No.12182155]

>>12182044
>its proposals are directly at odds with his later analyses
Which ones?

[Anonymous No.12182161]

>>12182074
>>12182083
Is that a bad thing? Asking for a friend

[Anonymous No.12182163]

>>12182044
>>12182155
Das Kapital is nothing more than the ramblings of the ultimate pseud. He even contradicts himself at times in the three volumes.

[Anonymous No.12182164]

>>12182052
>no reason
You don't know my life

[Anonymous No.12182167]

>>12182052
No one has really read ALL three volumes

[Anonymous No.12182180]

[Anonymous No.12182186]

>>12182180
These colours are ironic, it would be like if Marx dressed like a bumblebee haha

[Anonymous No.12182191]

>>12173806
more wealth you anti-capitalist fucktoilet
youlll never make it in the business world

[Anonymous No.12182194]

>>12182155
nearly all of the ten planks outlined in Chapter 2, for starters. most are better seen as regulatory policies that (if enacted) would be enacted within the framework of a capitalist economy.

[Anonymous No.12182200]

>>12182163
where does he contradict himself?

[Anonymous No.12182214]

>>12182200
He's probably referring to the transformation problem which has been dealt with from pretty much every angle by now
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformation_problem

[Anonymous No.12182269]

>>12182214
the transformation problem arises from a simultaneist misreading of the theory of surplus value, as far as I know. Marx recognizes that outputs don't equal the sum of the inputs.

[Anonymous No.12182280]

>>12173806
There is an incentive to keep wealth, and there is also an incentive to more wealth as a buffer against hardship that might cause you to lose prior wealth

[Anonymous No.12182282]

>>12182214
>dealt with
Ah, I love all the jumping through hoops that Marx apologists go through.

[Anonymous No.12184011]

Just read "Anti-Tech Revolution" By Theodore Kaczynski, especially the first two chapters.

Basically, Marxism is just another utopian cult like those that have appeared countless times throughout history especially in periods of great crisis. It preaches a technological utopia--a perfectly seductive mythology for our industrial age.

[Anonymous No.12184022]

>>12170254
where were you when /lit/ was finally beanpilled

[Anonymous No.12184030]

>>12173593
we just need to mix capitalism and communism

[Anonymous No.12184037]

>>12184030
yeah! like China!

[Anonymous No.12184051]

>>12179776
How can Marxism not work when it's just a name for the unimpeachable and constant class dynamic that clearly exists to be observed in every market economy ever?

[Anonymous No.12184052]

test post ignore desu,,

[Anonymous No.12184089]

>>12177721
that picture is so succinct but captures the current political atmosphere perfectly

[Anonymous No.12184882]

>>12169997

[Anonymous No.12185138]

>>12184882
Off to fucking camp with (((you))) sclomo schlekenberg. Fuckin' hate commies. I had one guy in job who was openly leninist. I fucking made a complaint to boss and he fired him. God i was so fuckin happy. Hope he wont find any job besides favourite comminist job - whining about rich people XDD.

[Anonymous No.12186901]

>>12182180
People always meme this as a response but I started reading it recently and it makes one of the best laid out cases against a government run economy I've ever read. Should be required reading for schools.

[Anonymous No.12186940]

>>12185138
I don't understand why you'd call a Commie name-(((berg)))
Jews love money. Commies hate money.

[Anonymous No.12187240]

>>12169988

Marx.

[Anonymous No.12187322]

>>12186940
you replied to a bait post

[Anonymous No.12188140]

>>12173944

[Anonymous No.12188145]

>>12175748
who the fuck threw discipline and punish onto this marxism reading list lol wtf

[Anonymous No.12188160]

>>12175818
are you like 14 years old or what? good god this is a pathetic response

[Anonymous No.12188176]

>>12186901
>Should be required reading for schools.
I thought conservatives were against ideological indoctrination.

[Anonymous No.12188628]

>>12177721
>>12184089
that picture is so succinct but captures the deranged mind of the average /pol/yp perfectly

[Anonymous No.12188631]

>>12188176
>I thought conservatives were against ideological indoctrination.
since when?

[Anonymous No.12188673]

>>12169997
Based

[Anonymous No.12188713]

>>12188631
Everyone is against ideological indoctrination unless it's their ideology.

[Anonymous No.12188893]

>>12188713
this

[Anonymous No.12188910]

>>12169988

"The development of the technoindustrial system cannot be controlled, restrained, or guided, nor can its effects be moderated to any substantial degree. This, again, is not an eccentric opinion. Many writers, beginning with Karl Marx, have noted the fundamental importance of technology in determining the course of society’s development. In effect, they have recognized that it is technology that rules society, not the other way around. Ellul especially has emphasized the autonomy of technology, i.e., the fact that modern technology has taken on a life of its own and is not subject to human control. Ellul, moreover, was not the first to formulate this conclusion. Already in 1934 the Mexican thinker Samuel Ramos clearly stated the principle of technological autonomy, and this insight was adumbrated as early as the 1860s by Samuel Butler. Of course, no one questions the obvious fact that human individuals or groups can control technology in the sense that at a given point in time they can decide what to do with a particular item of technology. What the principle of technological autonomy asserts is that the overall development of technology, and its long-term consequences for society, are not subject to human control. Hence, as long as modern technology continues to exist, there is little we
can do to moderate its effects.
A corollary is that nothing short of the collapse of technological society can avert a greater disaster. Thus, if we want to defend ourselves against technology, the only action we can take that might prove effective is an effort to precipitate the collapse of technological society. Though this conclusion is an obvious consequence of the principle of technological autonomy, and though it possibly is implied by certain statements of Ellul, I know of no conventionally published writer who has explicitly recognized that our only way out is through the collapse of technological society. This seeming blindness to the obvious can only be explained as the result of timidity."

--Theodore Kaczynski, "Technological Slavery (2010), Preface