Marxism thread

[Anonymous No.20237664]

Since this is the board that read books, are the are any conclusions by marxists writers about demographic decline and capitalism demise?

Like at some point there wont be enough cheap thirld worlders to exploit for cheap plastic garbage and that means something something for capitalism?

[Anonymous No.20237699]

>>20237664
>demographic decline
Like the labor surplus?
I listen to the guys at Democracy at Work. Wolff and Harvey. They also have books, but have many videos on YT to get chunks of their thoughts.

[Anonymous No.20237703]

>>20237699
You can’t be serious

[Anonymous No.20237724]

>>20237664
Unironically ask on /leftypol/ if you want answers from actual Marxists.

[Anonymous No.20237727]

>>20237703
Asking for contemporary Marxists thoughts on current economic trends. Yeah. These are some guys who talk about this. Who else?
Michael Hudson is also very good.

[Anonymous No.20237733]

>>20237727
Im laughing at you for being a pleb

[Anonymous No.20237747]

>>20237664
Marx himself extensively discusses just this issue.

[Anonymous No.20237755]

>>20237733
And offering no names of contemporary Marxists I notice. Are you trolling or what? Drop some names or shut up.

[Anonymous No.20238014]

>>20237664
no, demographic decline is not important for Marxism. capital can regulate the number of proletarians it produces to fit its needs. advanced countries suffer from low birth rates because they're predominantly middle class and hence a drain on surplus value.
but capitalism going to collapse because it runs out of people. for Marxism the historical tendency of capitalism is actually based on the fact that overall it can't stop producing propertyless proletarians, because it needs them to generate surplus value. but those proletarians are inevitably pushed to constitute themselves as a class, to fight to institute their political class dictatorship and to abolish private property, ultimately succeeding in this. that will be the reason it collapses.
>>20237699
not Marxism. those are superficial "adaptations" of Marxism by petty-bourgeois academics for purposes of leftist reformism and for personal income for the authors
>>20237724
that's the last place on earth I'd look at if I were looking for actual Marxists
>>20237727
what economic trends?

[Anonymous No.20238031]

>>20237755
Reading contemporary marxists is pleb in itself.

[Anonymous No.20238047]

>>20238031
it's not pleb in itself, the problem is people read them instead of Marx and not after Marx, and by "contemporary Marxists" they always understand some retard university professors selling vaguely Marxist snake oil to middle class leftist students who treat socialism like a fashion accessory

[Anonymous No.20238060]

Marxists are the biggest cuck faggots on earth. They always bow down to neo liberal bourgeoisie ideals and never ever stand up for their own ideas on this and when called out always always resort to bringing the conversation into a different direction. Marxists are the biggest fucking pussies on the planet. Lmao keep bowing down to the neo liberals you fucking retards

[Anonymous No.20238075]

>>20238060
called out where about bowing to what ideals?

[Anonymous No.20238086]

>>20237664
Marx always acknowledged capitalism was a limit case of commodity production, it’s from Trotskyism (Ernst Mandel) that we get this idea of capitalism as an all encompassing permanent growth totality - inversion of equally failed idea of permanent revolution, bad Hegelianism of the highest order. Marx rather emphasized not the structural mediation of contradictions but their manifestation in the social world as sites of class warfare. Wars have winners, and the end of capitalism is the victory of one class or the other. Consider that we may be living through the victory of one class in the class war capitalism represented. Consider therefore that growth may now viewed not as a boon, but actually as a fetter, insofar as it enriches the life of the vanquished class enemy. Now the events of the past 3 decades should make more sense.

[Anonymous No.20238104]

>>20238086
permanent revolution aside, it's confirmed that people who study humanities get permanent brain damage that makes them write everything as if they had some bullshit essay due tomorrow

[Anonymous No.20238115]

>>20238104
Bizarre non-sequitur
>>20238014
Read Federici

[Anonymous No.20238150]

>>20238014
>Still no names
You’re acting like a neoliberal sheep herder. Put up or shut up.

>>20238031
You too “pleb”. No scratch that. That’s what Marxism wishes to aid. It’s more of an insult to say bourgeois.

>>20238115
>Federici
I just get a footballer and a restaurant. Who again?

[Anonymous No.20238645]

>>20238150
>Still no names
Marxists strive to be anonymous as much as possible.
if you have bourgeois big man fetish then go to a university library and read some random bullshit there and you'll be satisfied.
if you have actual questions about communism and capital then you could try asking them.

[Anonymous No.20238705]

>>20238645
Hahaha. No, you have them mixed up with anarchists.
Okay, so your suggestion is an anonymous database of modern Marxists. Do you have a link for OP or are you ready to admit you’re a troll?

[Anonymous No.20238709]

be marxian Not marxist

[Anonymous No.20238757]

>>20238705
>No, you have them mixed up with anarchists.
no I don't. Marx:
>such was my aversion to the personality cult that at the time of the International, when plagued by numerous moves — originating from various countries — to accord me public honour, I never allowed one of these to enter the domain of publicity, nor did I ever reply to them, save with an occasional snub. When Engels and I first joined the secret communist society, we did so only on condition that anything conducive to a superstitious belief in authority be eliminated from the Rules. (Lassalle subsequently operated in the reverse direction.)

>so your suggestion is an anonymous database of modern Marxists
no. my suggestion for what problem?
>Do you have a link for OP
I don't because it doesn't exist: Marxists don't hold that capitalism's finitude has to do with demographic decline, so there are no Marxist texts with this conclusion. this was already explained 2 hours ago

[Anonymous No.20238772]

>>20238047
Marx was like the fifth best sociologist of his generation. Nothing beginners should be starting with

[Anonymous No.20238789]

>>20238757
>Marx quote
Who in the socialist movement had a personality at the time? Now we have nothing but personality cults on the statist side, while all the libertarian-socialists just use an ideal’s name.

>No. I have no counter to Hudson, Harvey and Wolff
Well shut up then

[Anonymous No.20238790]

>>20238772
Marx wasn't a sociologist

[Anonymous No.20238825]

Marxism is an entire cultural diaspora that touches every continent on earth and with such a rich history the majority of Marxists prefer to live in the past. Most organizers from Wobblies to socialist democrats live in the past and even think praxis is something like a boycott during the time of globalized economics (lol) and there are very few modern Marxist thinkers that engage technology or social change like demographics. The old IWW and unionists were against immigration for obvious reasons (Bernie Sanders famously changed his talking points on this during his last presidential run and shifted from class to nigger worship -he deserved to lose). Most reactionary thinkers and libertarians have a lot more to say about modernity and technology if for no other reason than they were the ones that ushered in This change in Silicon Valley. Academia is a containment zone for leftists and their ideas stay there, all the most influential thinkers are reactionaries now working on Urbit or Crypto Currency. They write blogs and self publish with the same technology they put into the world and their writing isn’t kept behind a paywall and considered university property. This is why Peter Theil has read Nick Land and not Mark Fisher. Leftists more generally seeing that their revolutionary heroes have no culture power end up confused and cowering to neoliberal policy and talking points. Furthermore art and humor is now reactionary between right wing mystics and spiritualists reviving the ghosts of modernity (religion) or comedians understanding laughter is a threat to the bourgeoisie which is the same as progressive elites dictating what’s “allowed” to be funny. When Kanye West drops out of Coachella ticket prices also drop. The future belongs to the right, obviously. For better or worse.

[Anonymous No.20238886]

>>20238789
>Who in the socialist movement had a personality at the time?
Proudhon? Lassalle was building one until he got wrecked by Engels? I don't know how this is relevant. I'm talking about Marxists preferring anonymity and not treating facts about proletariat's class position like personal inventions of individual thinkers. I don't give a shit about anarchists or whatever.
>Now we have nothing but personality cults on the statist side
I don't know how this is relevant either. yes, leftists are going to behave like bourgeois retards, what's new
>while all the libertarian-socialists just use an ideal’s name
is the ideal's name Wolff or Harvey?
>No. I have no counter to Hudson, Harvey and Wolff
why would I need a counter? they don't threaten communism because they're only interested in selling their garbage to middle-class leftists. so I made it clear earlier what they are, but beyond that I have no reason to deal with them in any special way.

[Anonymous No.20238961]

>>20238886
I know a lot of the alt right has stolen thinkers like Foucault and Derrida. Recently there has been a wave of fascists embracing Proudhon. There’s a great interview with the singer of peste Noire about this as he’s partly anarchist (which is how most people classify Proudhon) and partly fascist. All intellectuals now belong to the right, you don’t get to support essentializing things like gender theory and censorship and still think you have the rights to thinkers like Foucault.the right is becoming more broad and inclusive in thought, a giant has awoken and for the first time even middle class rightists are engaging with theory and what it means to be a person in modernity. All art is hard right by definition: history is certainly right wing but that means the future must be as well. To feel or think or be reflective, to have a NEW thought rather than what’s acceptable is right wing. Only the present is progressive or left wing, and they want to keep things this way; how they are forever, electing the same statesmen who’ve been in power their whole lives, writing boring TV propaganda through machine learning and playing endless ideological bubble word games all trapped in academia and terminally online and all working to support the never ending NOW. Marvel movies till we’re buried in the ground, Yassss queen can you feel it? Beyoncé’s face on every Amazon package till your hands and fingers are spotted and veined and they’ll use Ai and computer technology to replicate actors that have been dead for 20 years in your remake movies. Imagine President Lizzo telling the Incel Chuds she’s decided to make it illegal to be a virgin and the punishment is sex with her on national TV. You WILL love black girls. YOU WILL EAT THE TOFU TILL YOURE DEAD. THERE CAN BE NO FUTURE BECAUSE THE PRESENT IS SO GOOD YOU CAN SIMPLY TWEET A NEW BOYFRIEND INTO EXISTENCE WUEEN YES. THE PRESENT IS GOOD BECAUSE WE DONT HAVE TO COMPETE FOR RESOURCES IN THE MARKET—WE CAN ALL BE DIVERSITY HIRES AND GO TO COLLEGE ON FUNDS SET ASIDE FOR US. WE ARE CHOSEN BY GOD HIMSELF AND NOBODY CAN SAY OTHERWISE.

[Anonymous No.20238970]

Demographic decline is only happening in a few countries, in africa women usually have 5 kids and are going to have that for a long time. And capitalism is dealing with this alright, just look at the millions of third worlders these countries with shit birth rates are importing. And the rich in those countries are having many kids still, it’s the middle class which is not having kids.

[Anonymous No.20238982]

>>20238970
Capitalism can easily ah for demography change, but t all the things that stop us from putting a gun in our mouth and pulling the trigger that are going away. The United States can fill the ranks of its military with the 3rd world and Muslims in Lebanon will be wearing Monster Energy Drink headscarves in ten years. Nothing will stop capitalism. But what will change is that everything you’ve ever love will turn to shit.

[Anonymous No.20239260]

>>20237664

>Since this is the board that read books, are the are any conclusions by marxists writers about demographic decline and capitalism demise

Name a Marxist writer that had a background both educationally and career-wise in economics.
If you can't, please explain why you would care about any of their thoughts on the subject.

[Anonymous No.20239298]

>>20238886
>Today known for the adherents parading their images on banners and effigies
>The Prudonhists, The Lassallists, and the other dozen such cults that await the return of their prophets.
>New cults include Wolffists, Harvyites and Hudsonians

Why would you need to ever be of any use ITT? Stupid crank.

[Anonymous No.20239340]

>>20239260
So you require a school curriculum with a masters in Marxism and a career made specifically for the employment of Marxists. Heh. Funny.

[Anonymous No.20239354]

>>20237664
>Since this is the board that read books
I'm afraid I must break some terrible news

[Anonymous No.20239369]

Not specifically Marxist, but the fear of a population decline is at the forefront for the consumerist. It incites an existential dread for the system. There should have been a realization that infinite growth is impossible and untenable; however, the consumerist is able to agree that it is both those things and also promotes the ideology of the infinite.

[Anonymous No.20239405]

>>20239340

No, I require an education in economics.

[Anonymous No.20239478]

Marxism is two things:

1) the idea that everything that exists is material (aka Materialism: an idea shared by every school of economic thought).
2) a theory describing how the capitalist version of materialism functions in practice.

That's it.

[Anonymous No.20239532]

I'm not a commie but I really like Althusser's theories of how the state and the private spheres of society intersect to form a larger power structure. Is there anything to read on this beyond just his initial essay Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses?

[Anonymous No.20240093]

>>20239405
Already mentioned above though.
Wolff, Harvey, Hudson, and I’ll add Cockshott

[Anonymous No.20240415]

Petty materialists deserve to be oppressed. You cannot refute this.

[Anonymous No.20240422]

>>20239532
He is a retard and you fell for it LMAO

[Anonymous No.20240424]

>>20240415
*pop pop pop pop pop pop pop*

[Anonymous No.20240477]

>>20238086
I understand the individual words but I have zero clue what you just said.

[Anonymous No.20240499]

>>20238014
>advanced countries suffer from low birth rates because they're predominantly middle class and hence a drain on surplus value.
Can you explain this for dummies? Are you saying the middle class are a drain on surplus value because it's harder to undermine their labor with fixed wages like the proletariat? How does that affect birth rates?

[Anonymous No.20241072]

>>20240093

Hudson's a good example. I would love to see his justification of centrally planmed economies considering theor horrendous track record, and practical obsolescence since the birth of the NASDAQ.

[Anonymous No.20241311]

>>20240499
the middle class is a drain on surplus value because:
1) its main function is consumption of overproduced commodities, and since regular wages are below the level necessary for that, because they only correspond to (roughly) what's necessary for reproduction, this must be helped along by throwing a fraction of surplus value at them; and
2) the middle and upper sections of the class consist of people especially vital for the functioning and survival of the capitalist mode of production (managers, highly skilled specialists, politicians, esteemed journalists, academic ideology mongers, etc.), who, in virtue of their special position, are either able to plug into the profits tap for a significant premium over reproduction wages or simply don't produce any value at all due to the nature of their work (e.g. upper-level state bureaucrats).
as for the mechanism, I could still be missing important aspects since I haven't investigated the in detail, but the basics seem to be pretty much according to the stereotype:
I) the lifestyle based on constantly increasing consumption as you age and accumulate savings simply makes having children especially prohibitive, because of what you need to give up and because of how extra expensive it is to raise a child in accordance with this lifestyle.
II) those premium jobs they do tend to be especially competitive and select for/produce workaholics. and this often start very early, with studying diligently at some prestigious university instead of living a regular life in your 20s. all this has a self-explanatory impact on having children.
III) those people tend to make enough savings for a comfortable retirement and don't need the additional security of children that can look after you them in old age

[Anonymous No.20241835]

Let me interject for a second here.
The dichotomy leftwing-rightwing is inherently atheist, humanistic, hence nihilist (ie meaning nothing substantial), ie purely symbolic, ie purely for appearance, since it is what the judeo christian bourgeois created in the Parliament of their republics. They put the monarchists on the right & the secular humanists on the left. Left & right refer to where people seat.

you see thus that being right wing in a the republic just means monarchist, but now that the humanists killed any political power of the theists, the right is still socialist but dubbed ''right'' & the left is still socialism but dubbed ''left''
the only thing that does not change is exactly the fake symbols made up by the bourgeois about their political dichotomy.

There is no difference between left & right in a humanistic republic.The only difference is the fake symbols tied to each group.
The underlying basis does not change. The underlying basis of the republic is the constitution about the Human rights. These rights are the jewel of the judeo Christians turned atheist, ie the bourgeois class.

Now the subtle point is that leftists & rightists are okay with that. All what matters for the ex-judeo christian bourgeois is that the theists do not take power again. & this happens exactly by giving the illusion to the midwits like you that left & right are separate doctrinally.
So the plebs can vote one time for the left, then they see that the bourgeois ruling class does XYZ, then the plebs whine that the ruling class is not doing what they promised during the campaign, then the next election the plebs swing to the rightists, which is exactly the same people doing the same thing.

Thus there is no ''capitalism'' or anticapitalism.
What there is the Humanist Republic, the dogma of their Human Rights .This is what capitalism is in its entirety.

Second capitalism cannot be destroyed without destroying the republic & its dogmas. This is what american liberals hate to hear.

Third capitalism cannot be destroyed because by the dogma of the Human Rights, any doctrine is turned into a bulk of opinions, which are always turned into entertainment by being ridiculed and shat on in their media if the humanists see it as anti Human rights. The doctrines which manage to resist this barrier are then commodified (like t-shirts) & capitalism remains unaltered.
The most important thing for the bourgeois is that the plebs really believe that the ruling class will stop the bourgeoisie after any election, which is done by making the plebs believe that there is a ''left'' and a ''right''.
This is why btw all the motto & slogans in the humanist elections are always about ''''''''''''change'''''''''

[Anonymous No.20241841]

>>20241835

This is part of the fantasy of the humanist of the '''''''''perpetual revolution''''. Those people live on their fantasy of doing revolution over & over, fighting the cops in the streets as part of the atheist ritualistic baptism, because killing theist Christians is the only thing they did in their entire history & they only live for this.
but now that theists are destroyed, they have nothing left to do & get bored, so they try to find new topics to ''''''revolutionize'''', & they turn inwards, IE PURE NARCISSISM, ie they revolutionize the republic, peak Marxism here, which is made from the revolution on the christian society, & they just end up sayin on FB that their own atheist civil servants like the cops are evil.

[Anonymous No.20242337]

>>20237664
Not actually a "pro-China" book in the sense of boosting their model, more seeing the rise/development of China as spelling the end of the line for capitalism giving rising labor costs and resource depletion:

>In recent years, China has become a major actor in the global economy, making a remarkable switch from a planned and egalitarian socialism to a simultaneously wide-open and tightly controlled market economy. Against the establishment wisdom, Minqi Li argues in this provocative and startling book that far from strengthening capitalism, China’s full integration into the world capitalist system will, in fact and in the not too distant future, bring about its demise. The author tells us that historically the spread and growth of capitalist economies has required low wages, taxation, and environmental costs, as well as a hegemonic nation to prevent international competition from eroding these requirements. With the decline of the economic power of the United States, its current hegemonic role will deteriorate and the unprecedented growth of China will so erode the foundations of capital accumulation—by pushing wages and environmental costs up, for example—that the entire capitalist system will be shaken to its core. This is essential reading for those who still believe that there is no alternative.

[Anonymous No.20242381]

>>20239260
>Name a Marxist writer that had a background both educationally and career-wise in economics.
Michael Hudson. He's retired now but he's a Marxist and was professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City which is one of the only economics departments in the U.S. which wasn't purged of classical economists during the neoliberal era.

[Anonymous No.20242443]

>>20242337
Also Minqi Li is part of the Chinese "New Left" (which has different connotations to "New Left" in the West) and teaches economics at the University of Utah, of all places.

Monthly Review has published him. I'd recommend MR if you're interested in a good Marxist magazine:

>As the global ecological crisis deepens, some among the upper middle class recognize or sense that the existing capitalist “life style” is in serious trouble and cannot be sustained indefinitely. Yet, they are unable or unwilling to imagine anything beyond the capitalist system, on which their relatively privileged material life depends. They are not yet ready to give up their implicit political support for the capitalist class. Their living conditions and experiences are very much detached from those of the working class. It is therefore difficult for them to see that only with a massive mobilization and organization of the working class could there be any hope for the social transformation required for ecological sustainability to be accomplished. The upper-middle-class environmentalists, as a result, have to put their desperate hope (or faith) in technological miracles on the one hand and the power of moral persuasion on the other hand (which they hope would convince the capitalist class to behave morally and rationally).

>However, the laws of motion of capitalism will keep operating so long as the capitalist system remains intact, independent of the individual wills and against the best wishes of the upper-middle-class environmentalists. Sooner or later, those truly conscientious environmentalists will have to choose between the commitment to ecological sustainability and the commitment to an exploitative and oppressive social system. Furthermore, with the deepening of the global ecological crisis and the crisis of global capitalism in general, it may soon become increasingly difficult for the capitalist system to accommodate the material privileges of the upper middle class while simultaneously meeting the requirements of production for profit and accumulation.
https://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/climate-change-limits-to-growth-and-the-imperative-for-socialism/

[Anonymous No.20242451]

>>20238825
>Furthermore art and humor is now reactionary between right wing mystics and spiritualists reviving the ghosts of modernity (religion) or comedians understanding laughter is a threat to the bourgeoisie which is the same as progressive elites dictating what’s “allowed” to be funny. When Kanye West drops out of Coachella ticket prices also drop. The future belongs to the right, obviously. For better or worse.
All countercultures are doomed to be immersed, co-opted and commodified by the ruling ideology. It's no different for the right.

[Anonymous No.20242601]

>>20242381
you're delirious if you think the bourgeoisie would pay Marxists to do communist work

[Anonymous No.20244485]

>>20242381

Doesn't this guy teach Marxist economic theory in a country that abandoned it in order to increase their quality of life?

[Anonymous No.20245664]

>>20244485
I think he's most well known in China for this book as they're trying to set up an alternative global system. Hudson:

>They realize that they cannot set up any system in which the United States is a member because the United States will insist on veto power. If it has veto power, then they can’t do the kind of economic system that I described. Bretton Woods was designed one-sidedly to give all the benefit to the United States, and to make other countries dependent on the U.S. economy, on U.S. exports – largely of agriculture, but also industry – and also on the U.S. dollar. Obviously, that’s not going to be done. The agreement that is being developed on an ad hocs pontaneous basis between China, Russia and neighboring countries is their own system of international payments that will be based on mutual benefit, of holding of each other’s currencies, of preventing any payment surplus country–and it could be China–any payment surplus country ending up with so much credit in a creditor position vis-a-vis debtors. The new system will not impoverish the debtors.

>The IMF system was designed to impoverish debtors. The purpose of the IMF was to make other countries so poor and dependent on the United States so they could never be militarily independent. In the discussion of the British loan for instance, in the 1930s the discussion in the London Economic Conference was, “Yes, we’re bankrupting Europe, but if we give Europe enough money to avoid austerity, they’re just going to spend the money on the military.” That was said by the Americans in the State Department and the White House again and again, especially by Raymond Moley who was basically in charge of President Roosevelt’s foreign policy towards Europe.

>The question is: how do you create an international financial system designed to promote prosperity, not austerity? The Bretton Woods is for austerity for everybody except the United States, which will have a free ride forever. The question that I’m involved with in the work I’m doing in China and with other countries is how to create a system based on prosperity instead of austerity, with mutual support between creditors and debtors, without the kind of financial antagonism that has been built in to the international financial system ever since World War I. Financial reform involves tax reform as well: how do we end up taxing economic rent instead of letting the rentier stake over society. That is what classical economics is all about: how do we revive it?

[Anonymous No.20245667]

>>20242601
Yeah but they probably should because Marxists actually understand how capitalism works.

[Anonymous No.20245676]

>>20245664
More and a link:

>So the question is what kind of financial system are you going to have to back up a central banking system and credit creation? Is credit going to be a public infrastructure enterprise as it is in China, where the banks of China are able to decide who is going to get the loans. A public bank is not going to make corporate takeover loans or loans to corporate raiders. It’s going to make loans to actually increase the tangible economy, not to take it over and turn public infrastructure – the education system, healthcare, transportation and communications – into rent extraction.

>We’re having today finally a revival of the kind of debate that classical economics was all about in the 19th century – Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, down through Marx and Alfred Marshall. At issue was how to minimize unearned income as economic rent. At that time, the main form of economic rent they were trying to minimize was land rent. The idea was to get rid of the hereditary landlord class, which was treated as a form of overhead. In today’s economy the main rentiers are financial. There’s not a landlord class anymore, because two-thirds of Americans own their own home (on credit, to be sure). Home ownership rates are higher in continental Europe and England. You don’t have a hereditary landlord class living off land rent. What you do have is a financial class that’s emerged after World War I in a way that they have become the new central planners. It’s a new concentration of wealth, engaging in a new kind of economic war, not only against labor but against government as well, to appropriate the public domain by financializing it. This is done by getting governments into debt and having them sell off the public infrastructure. That’s happening in America at the state and local level, for indebted cities and states like New York.

>How do China and Russia avoid their economies becoming financialized? How do they avoid a financialized economy from becoming a high-cost economy and losing their international trade advantage? What’s at stake in de-dollarization is how to create an alternative to a financialized, dollarized economy, one that is going to try to minimize the cost of living and minimize the cost of doing business, instead of a high-cost economy as is occurring in the United States.
https://mronline.org/2021/02/09/michael-hudson-changes-in-super-imperialism/

[Anonymous No.20246180]

>>20245667
understanding how capitalism works leads to conclusions that are harmful to the interests of the bourgeoisie. so the only "Marxists" they're paying in their universities are people doing damage control, whose job is to distort and falsify Marx, salvaging from him what can be useful for defending capitalism and throwing away all that's threatening it.
like this fucktard, who either believes, completely against Marx, that capitalism can bring prosperity to the proletariat, or who doesn't give a slightest shit about the entire point of Marxism, proletariat's liberation, and theorizes how to modify capitalism for it to give more prosperity to the bourgeoisie. >>20245664

[Anonymous No.20246195]

I like Terry Eagleton.

[Anonymous No.20246196]

>>20237664
There will always be someone or something to exploit. This has been going on longer than capitalism has been around.

[Anonymous No.20246390]

>>20246196
you're ten times less clever than you think you are

[Anonymous No.20246484]

>>20245664

Hilarious, considering China is using predatory loans that make the IMF look like a charity in comparison to take over key ports and infrastructure in Africa.

[Anonymous No.20246494]

>>20246180

>understanding how capitalism works leads to conclusions that are harmful to the interests of the bourgeoisie

And yet dropping centrally planned economics and state run production has had the largest quality of life gains for the working class. It's as if Marxism is a theory that fails over and over in practice.

see: 84-85 Soviet grain shortage

[Anonymous No.20246586]

>>20246494
state-managed capitalism is still capitalism

[Anonymous No.20247167]

>>20242451
There are substantial ascetic and anti-consumer streams within the right. How are these supposed to be commodified and subverted by a system of mass consumption?

[Anonymous No.20247350]

>>20246494
do you realize you're just proving Marxism correct? what you said shows that capitalism can't escape its contradictions by centralizing production or by reforms replacing entrepreneurs with state bureaucrats. yet centralization of production is its historical tendency. Marx:
>This expropriation is accomplished through the action of the immanent laws of capitalist production itself, through the centralization of capitals. One capitalist always strikes down many others.... Along with the constant decrease in the number of capitalist magnates, who usurp and monopolize all the advantages of this process of transformation, the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation and exploitation grows; but with this there also grows the revolt of the working class, a class constantly increasing in numbers, and trained, united and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist process of production. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production which has flourished alongside and under it. The centralization of the means of production and the socialization of labour reach a point at which they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.

[Anonymous No.20247426]

>>20246484
Chinese loans seem to come with low interest rates, no demands for privatization or deregulation, and are easily refinanced. Defaults are often forgiven, which is... not like the IMF. The BBC has even gotten caught having experts on for interviews and they cut the part where the expert says it's better than the IMF.

Either way, if it wasn't a better alternative to the IMF for poor countries, Western countries wouldn't have anything to worry about.

>>20247167
Look at yoga. I think lot of consumerism today packages the anti-consumerism into it -- so there's good karma that comes with the consumerist act, or you're not just buying a cup of Starbucks coffee but are buying into an ethic that helps save the organic farmers in Guatemala or whatever. It's like what Zizek says about "capitalism with a human face."

Personally, I think the belief that you can't be commodified or subverted is peak ideology. I take some stuff from Althusser here about "interpellation" in how people come to internalize ideology as if it was their own ideas rather than something that came about through interactions with various apparatuses and institutions. Likewise, even if you were at odds with a larger cluster of apparatuses in an important respect, that dissonance will make you feel bad which creates powerful incentives to either fall in line or pack up your shit and go live inna woods.

Capitalism is like the Borg. Everything will be assimilated into it. I think I've mentioned Laibach before in threads but I think they have a better take because they present themselves as the Borg of ideology. It's more interesting to me to make art that's not "we're against consumerism," but saying "we are consumerism." Bring out its inner logic in an absurd but also unironic way:

https://youtu.be/GwQyOPOeQHA?t=292

[Anonymous No.20247475]

>>20247426
I was also thinking of Jack Murphy. Yeah, he's a grifter who's in disrepute now because his nudes were leaked. But this strikes me as commodified right-wing faux-rebellion against consumerism. He talks about how humans are "communal" and "consumer corporations" are the enemy -- but he's selling these "jacked brunches" where you can join his "order" and meet up for mimosas which is indistinguishable from urban hipster liberals.

And there's a lot of stuff you hear among BAP types about recovering masculinity and yada yada. But it's not *really* a break from things. They can't really actualize the demands that this old-style patrimonialism demanded of men.