Marx flips Hegel... how?

[Anonymous No.23001324]

People say that Marx turns Hegel on his head by reversing the nature of dialectics. However, Hegelian dialectics is like
>being vs. nothing, where the self-identical contradictions of either concept converge on a single point, producing becoming
while Marxist dialectics is like
>social relations cannot handle material circumstances, thus social relations must eventually evolve past a breaking point
If anything, these are two wholly different relationships that are hardly related to each other beyond a superficial level that they deal with contradictions.

So... how exactly are Hegelian and Marxist dialectics related again? Whenever I see it explained, it's always through some trivial Cartesian split like:
>Hegel is concerned about ideas but Marx was concerned about material reality
And Marx often thought something similar, in that he thought that Hegel was wrong for putting "ideas first." But here's the problem: Hegel wasn't quite speaking of "ideas" when he spoke his dialectic, no? Hegel was speaking of the highest principles of reality and their relationship with each other. It wasn't that Hegel was on one metaphysical plane called "ideas" and Marx was on the other metaphysical plane called "matter." Hegel was working at something beyond metaphysical planes, a place closer to "first philosophy" and the principles that undergird reality than an analysis of the objects within reality and its layers.

[Anonymous No.23001330]

Marx and Hegel were both trash. Read Nietzsche instead.

[Anonymous No.23001341]

>>23001330
kys immediately

[Anonymous No.23001351]

Hegel imagined the Weltgeist as incarnate in "Great Men" of history (Napoleon). Marx argued that industrialism made possible mass movements incarnating the Weltgeist. History would no longer move through emperors and conquerors, but through the collective will of anonymous masses.

[Anonymous No.23001361]

>>23001341
>One who considers suicide and actually goes through with it has done society such a service that, for doing so, he almost deserves to live.
no u

[Anonymous No.23001364]

>>23001361
I'll serve crack before I serve society.

[Anonymous No.23001376]

>>23001364
serve this crack *farts*

[Anonymous No.23001393]

>>23001376
ummmm...

allow me to be a Nietzschean for just a moment
*SNIIIIIIIIIFFFFFF*
AHHHHHH ITS SO DELICIOUS!!! CAN I HAVE SOME MORE, SIRE?!!

[Anonymous No.23001545]

Its just a saying, you don't have to take it too seriously or literally

[Anonymous No.23001549]

>>23001393
You don't understand Nietzsche at all.

[Anonymous No.23001624]

>>23001324
Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right

[Anonymous No.23001639]

Marx has very little to do with Hegel's thought. He basically has the "cunning of reason" except it's turned into real historical relations of production, understood along French materialist lines. Which is a fancy way of saying: Marx thinks that basically conventional materialism is correct, that basically we are material biological beings, and that all our culture and our ideas are downstream of basically self-interested arrangements we make in order to provide food, shelter, and enjoyment for ourselves. Labor is not a metaphysical essence or substance, it is simply an abstraction that describes the collective human effort (at any given time) to produce and reproduce the necessities for human life, like food and clothing. This produces culture, as humans create conceptual structures and orders, initially just to make things easier, but these structures quickly "get away from" us and enter into states of equilibria.

Again, "the dialectic" of history is not some real substance or essence, it's just an abstraction describing how the real production relationships between real producers of necessities are mediated through structures, structures which can be atavistic or "resistant" to realities of production, and which thus change over time. One very important way in which this happens is that it becomes self-evident, within some conceptual and cultural order, that certain "classes" (groups that can be described ideal-typically by the historian and sociologist, as they are in a state of social equilibrium) come to administer or otherwise exercise enormous power over production, but then production relations change (due to rational, progressive innovations in organization and/or technology) and the old elite's raison d'etre is outmoded.

At this moment, the elite class still has the old conceptual order in its head as something self-evident: this is how we do things around here. And of course it produces "science," it produces ideal theories and maps of the world (like the bourgeoisie producing what we now call economics, but what was then called political economy), that justify its position. It doesn't do this entirely consciously and cynically most of the time: it simply "sets before itself" what it already finds self-evident due to its own self-interest and habituation. The new or latent productive classes, like the urban proletariat under the system of rationally administered industrialism for example, "struggle to be born" from beneath the older understandings of the supposedly "inherent" nature of production, understandings which are now being propped up all the more intently by the older elites, who feel the need to justify their understanding of the world under the increasing pressure.

[Anonymous No.23001644]

communism is gay, if you like communism you're gay

[Anonymous No.23001646]

>>23001639
(2)
And, again, of course the best way to justify oneself is not through force but by showing everybody what is objectively, scientifically, philosophically true - hence political economists develop perfectly coherent and ever more sophisticated "ideal" systems, just as the material ground beneath their feet (their raison d'etre as a class) is vanishing. That in brief is Marx's outlook.

Thus the new relations of production, and the new, more rational conceptual order they could sustain (given that they reflect objectively more rational relations of production), are smothered beneath the old order, and a class conflict emerges. Two important Marxist terms become easily comprehensible here: reification and alienation. These sound spooky and technical at first, but they are very simple. Reification is simply the reification of those "ideal" (conceptual and cultural) structures, just described. It's the process whereby a conceptual order "hardens up," becomes impenetrable, presents itself as "just self-evident, just the way things are, just the facts."

We are always engaged with reified conceptual structures - again it is the nature of human beings to conceptualize the world to make it easier to navigate. I am "taking for granted" (reifying) innumerable things implicitly just to write this post right now, for example assuming certain stability in language and terms. The term "term" needs to "just be," in order for me to use it efficiently, without thinking. But when things break down, when the term "term" causes ambiguities or is cast in doubt by a huge portion of the population, it's time for it to become labile again, to be self-consciously examined AS a mere concept, as something that can be broken down and re-made, something that doesn't tyrannize over us but that is our tool.

[Anonymous No.23001653]

>>23001646
(3)
Alienation, from the German Entfremdung (meaning more literally estrangement), is the closely related idea that the conceptions we have of the world become "estranged" from us when we become forgetful that they are in principle always OUR conceptions. Again this sounds complicated but the meaning is basically the same as that of reification: when ambiguities in the term "term" start to puzzle me, fundamentally I can either enter into a state of remembering "well, it's just a word - it has a history, it was constituted by men, and I'm a man, so I can break it down and 'reabsorb' it and remake it to suit present realities; perhaps these new ambiguities are simply things the original discourse that generated the word 'term' didn't have to deal with." Conversely if I solve the problem of the term being ambiguous, or ceasing to reflect and represent realities transparently, by "submitting" myself to the "hardness" and "givenness" of the term, I am allowing it to remain "outside me," I am allowing it to remain estranged from me, even though, as a human being, a generator of concepts and conceptual orders, a concept (like term) within a conceptual order (like modern language) is the closest thing to me, it's my property. I don't answer to it, it answers to me.

The analogies with larger-scale conceptual orders, like bourgeois political science and so forth, are obvious: if something has ceased to make sense, but the fancy economists are telling you it makes sense (and trust them, they have PhDs, and the PhDs are granted by the Official Smartest Guy in the State, etc., all of these conceptions being connected in webwork that forms the bourgeois conceptual order or present "moment"), you have every right to deny the supposed self-evidence of the reified conceptions, on the grounds that if they WERE self-evident, they wouldn't have ceased to make sense and you shouldn't need Official Truth-Tellers to tell you that you are too stupid to know the truth. This is a long form way of saying: all human conceptual orders or "moments," being ultimately the product of human producers of the amenities of life (the primal human activity), must reflect and respond to the needs and desires of the community of human producers at any given time. If the proletariat is rankling, and the ownership class is chiding it that its rankling is misguided, the conceptual order is manifestly breaking down.

[Anonymous No.23001660]

>>23001653
(4)
In fact what is happening is that there are NEW "self-evident things" about production that the smothered productive class can see very clearly - by virtue of being the very group of people that actually performs production and thus sees what is immanently rational about it and its relations. A proletarian "sees" directly the otiosity of his bourgeois owner. He sees every day that it "doesn't make sense" (self-evidently) that the owner drops in only to collect his profits, while the worker makes no profits and in fact has his wages continually depressed; he thus "sees" self-evidently that it makes no sense to build an entire society on the basis of this arbitrary, irrational arrangement. This is the source of those ambiguities: when we sees the preponderant influence of the bourgeoisie in politics, and he sees that it's because they have leisure and money, he can SEE that this leisure and money was likely produced by OTHER proletarians just like him. And he begins to see himself as a class, and thus to see the objective reality of the conflict between his class and this other class - and then he wonders where these classes come from, and he SEES that his class' raison d'etre is "We actually produce the things society needs," while the owning class' raison d'etre is "I inherited money and a factory from my dad; my dad inherited it from the feudal period when we were landlords and made some good investments."

And the proletarian then SEES that the arbitrariness and contingency of this enrichment not only doesn't satisfy him, as a proletarian producer, it doesn't even satisfy the philosophical justifications the bourgeois class gives of itself in those fancy economics and philosophy texts - there, the bourgeoisie talks about things the proletarian himself agrees with: free enterprise, free competition leading to true meritocracy, the ultimate equalizing of differences and elimination of such arbitrary contingencies from society as only the best producers and most intelligent and innovative thrive. The bourgeoisie claims to represent the Enlightenment's commitment to the elimination of contingent imbalances in power and prosperity - and it did actually do this, in abolishing the feudal regimes for example - but now the bourgeoisie seems to be standing in the same relation to the collectivity of proletarian producers, viz. as an arbitrarily and contingently empowered and opulent regime, as the feudal elites previously stood in relation to it.

[Anonymous No.23001666]

>>23001639
>>23001646
>>23001653
>>23001660
see >>23001644

[Anonymous No.23001667]

>>23001660
(5)
Thus it becomes self-evident, the proletarian simply SEES, that the bourgeoisie must be "ironed out" just as the bourgeoisie itself ironed out the arbitrariness of feudal rule. The proletarian does not even really need to say anything new: he only needs to hold the bourgeoisie's own promises (what it claims to be doing, in its Ideal abstractions) up in juxtaposition with what it actually does in the realm of real production and civil society. One of Marx's neat moves here is that, again assuming that elite classes only begin justifying themselves ideally (meaning in abstract thought: in philosophy, science, etc.) when they are pressurized (by dissonance between what they say and what they do, and resultant criticism), he describes Hegelian idealism and Hegel's idyllic theory of civil society as ultimate bourgeois picture of the bourgeoisie itself. Hegel is the bourgeoisie's conscience: this is what we are supposed to be and look like in theory. And Marx says, the theory is great - now let's simply apply it. The bourgeoisie was only capable of conceiving the ideal world abstractly, but the proletarian will actually effect that world in reality, because the proletariat doesn't "think" (in the merely abstract sense), it SEES and DOES what the bourgeoisie merely says and claims.

This is as close as Marx gets to Hegelianism. We can see strong traces of the "cunning of reason" in the dialectic of class conflict, and a quasi-Hegelian philosophy of history based on materialism. This is the meaning, if there is one, of the quote "Marx turned Hegel on his head." But we see that Marx also has no metaphysical substances in his system other than real, materialistically and biologically conceived human beings, serving their own interests in relation to one another, and creating cultural systems as a result of their innate conceptualizing capacity. These orders then come into conflict by virtue of their ceasing to correspond to objectively real relations of production, understood perfectly prosaically as ideal-typical abstractions of the actual state of actual producers performing basic economic functions.

[Anonymous No.23001677]

>>23001667
(6)
The two exceptional things to which Marx is committed, aside from his a priori 18th century materialism, are:
(a) the equally 18th century idea that man is fundamentally rational, just "forgetful of it," and that the history of production relations is a fundamentally progressive history of real technological and organizational refinements. This is what prevents his Hegelian coherentist/conceptualist cultural anthropology from lapsing into a total relativism and pluralism. There is a developmental "core" to history: actual production relations. The significance of the modern industrial age for Marx is that modern society is now at the point that production is sophisticated enough to provide for everybody, in a way that oppresses and enslaves nobody, as long as certain arbitrary features of the old system are removed - like the preponderant ownership of the means of production that is simply a legacy of contingent capital accumulation during the pre-industrial period.

(b) his idea that communitarianism and cooperation, not individualism and competition, are the basis of human organization. What this means is: Marx thought that communitarianism and cooperation were self-evidently rational, and "all things being equal" (viz. assuming that reified conceptual orders are deconstructed or "de-alienated" and people can just look clearly at the rational facts of things), people would choose rationally administered cooperative economies and societies. The latter are self-evident in the same way that sitting down when you are tired is self-evident. It's just the least stupid, most sensible thing to do - AT LEAST once industrial post-scarcity is possible, which it manifestly now is. We are simply past the point as a civilization where competition over scarce resources is a necessary driver of conflict and self-sorting into mutually exclusive tribes and power blocs. The bourgeoisie is still running on the old firmware - all of its self-evident notions like the nation state and a political class organized around the need for constant war - are alienated, reified abstractions.

To the proletariat, cooperation and mediation of conflict is (implicitly, unconsciously for now) self-evident, because (and this is where Marx's a priori worldview will either lose you or win you over) all conflict ultimately stems from ostensibly rational competition over scarce resources, or to remedy squalor and penury that themselves result from competition over scarce resources. Because a proletariat "standing back and taking an honest look" at things would simply SEE that there is no need for such competition anymore, that the rational course of action for humanity is now to develop production and distribute resources equitably, all conflicts will seem self-evidently idiotic (at least as a tendency increasing over time). All the old hatreds will gradually dissolve.

[Anonymous No.23001685]

>>23001677
(7)
People will continue to associate voluntarily according to minor psychological preferences, nations will continue to exist residually perhaps for many centuries, but fundamentally mankind is entering, and thus should enter (one of the paradox's of Marx's formulation of the cunning of reason as "this is objectively but latently, true therefore we need to make it EVIDENTLY true to everyone") a fundamentally new era of post-scarcity production that naturally conduces to an equitable, distributionist economy.

You can also see how Marx is perfectly capable of being a racist and antisemite within this framework. Nothing stops someone of his beliefs from believing that other races are simply biologically inferior to white Europeans. He also doesn't give half a shit about Jews, he is perfectly fine describing them as simply auxiliary functions of the bourgeois moment. To understand what Marx saw you need to understand that he was "zoomed all the way out" and looking at the world as the totality of these subterranean structural shifts which he took to be objectively real. His answer to EVERY question was "How will this serve / express the ironing-out of the class conflict between proletariat and bourgeoisie, even if it takes centuries?" World wars, apparently contradictory and paradoxical developments can all make sense in such a system because they can simply be "reflux" mechanisms or "gross" movements in one direction that don't affect the net change in the other, and Marx was actually ingenious at showing how apparently gross changes in the direction of reaction were manifestations and spurs of net change in the direction of proletarian revolution. That is why his worldview is so intoxicating to many people. It's a synoptic perspective. In this respect it does come close to the effect Hegel had on many people, including Marx and his friends in university.

>>23001666
I'm not a communist.

[Anonymous No.23001756]

>>23001324
>Hegel was working at something beyond metaphysical planes, a place closer to "first philosophy" and the principles that undergird reality than an analysis of the objects within reality and its layers.
Well, Marx’s charge against Hegel is with analyzing objective reality through self-deceiving means. That is, positing the existence of “thought-entities” to substitute that of beings. His prime example is how Hegel isolates the political community from the family and civil society, and attempts to justify “the state” from his own abstraction and, ultimately, ends up conjoining the conservative view of political economy Germans shared at the time with his own dialectics. Another example with the same strain is how Hegel selectively treats self-consciousness as being qua being, and vice-versa with consciousness proper and essence, instead of as they are intended in the Phenomenology. Marx’s problems are not with proper metaphysics so much as they are with “caste-consciousness” and Hegel’s reading of Plato.

[Anonymous No.23002079]

>>23001667
>>23001677
>>23001639
>>23001660

Marx doesn't employ the standard 18th century european rationalism. He instead employs Hegelian rationality, which is dynamic and emergent from phenomenal consciousness. When "labour" is described here as an "abstraction", it is not a standard european rational abstraction - it necessarily follows the Hegelian line. The ability for a group of proletarians to observe their production as self evidently value-creating requires the kind of phenomenological rationality that Hegel employs. They are not working from top down concepts of "goodness" or "the essence of work" (18th century european rationality), but rather as mentioned, they see the work they do, and abstract away from that to see their labour (Hegelian rationality). Communitarianism and cooperation are also, not rational concepts passed on from up high. They are instead emergent from groups of people (labourers) working together and communicating. These social elements emerge for Marx because in Hegel, when you get groups of people together, their ideas reflect off of each other, creating concepts and links between people that are not specific to any one person. You cannot find "the family" in any one person, and yet, families exist and belong to each other in a network of relations.

>>23001324
The "flip" that marx employs is effectively switching out the engine of history from self-reflection consciousness, to social relations. Hegel employs self reflective consciousness because he tries to start from the most basic ground up (literally being and nothing), but Marx "flips" Hegel on his head by taking one the latter Hegelian conclusions about social relations and using them as the groundwork that drives history.

[Anonymous No.23002409]

bump

[Anonymous No.23002567]

Well, I read it all. I always discounted Marx because >>23001644, and because the college professors that have a picture of marx in their office are usually the same ones that collect funko pops and modern star wars garbage. When someone chooses the most popular thing, it tells me they have no agency, they don't know what to think so they think whatever other people are thinking because safety in numbers. I do understand Marx a bit better now, so thanks to the bookposter. I just wish people would disbelieve college professors more. I make it a rule not to trust anyone who talks for a living.

[Anonymous No.23002575]

>>23002567
Solid, if unrefined, principles to live by.

[Anonymous No.23002672]

The particular quote is from Engels regarding hegel. To be fair marx and Engels weren't so much a fan of hegelianism. Marx says somewhere something along that he had never really been so infatuated with something he hated so much. He also says somewhere reading hegel would give him headaches and he had a hard time understanding it. Hegel was an extraordinarily popular thinker for his time but his influence on Marx is relatively overstated. As Engels says, it is Hegels who is upside now and needs to be turned on his head. It could be said Marxs massive volumes of Capital are very systemic and logical breakdowns not unlike hegels very rigorous philosophical systems, yet rather these centered around economy than abstract notions.

[Anonymous No.23002671]

>>23001324
Hegel is inheriting a project from Fichte and Schelling. Fichte begins with an entirely mental construction, the transcendental-I posits the empirical-I, an in doing so also posits the not-I of the external world and others. Schelling, and later with Hegel as accomplice, tries to include the not-I of others and nature, which is prior to the I and productive of the I, into a complete system that can explain nature as well as mind, as two sides of the same coin.

The dispute between Marx and Hegel lies in the particular field of history, who is the subject of history, and what side of the coin determines and produces historical progression. Marx's project is more limited, but much like Hegel inherited Fichte and Schelling's projects, it doesn't mean his views are invalid within that field of dispute he inherits from Hegel: history. Hegel elevates the not-I from Fichte's system, Marx elevates the material in Hegel's system.

[Anonymous No.23002674]

>>23002672
>reading hegel would give him headaches and he had a hard time understanding it
That's because Karl Marx was a fucking brainlet.

[Anonymous No.23002908]

>>23001653
>Alienation, from the German Entfremdung (meaning more literally estrangement), is the closely related idea that the conceptions we have of the world become "estranged" from us when we become forgetful that they are in principle always OUR conceptions.
Tyler Durden basically. Let's say I'm a psychopath who creates an imaginary friend. That friend and me (or at least my psycho self) are the same person but the imaginary person has become split off / alienated from me.

>>23001677
>>23001685
>We are simply past the point as a civilization where competition over scarce resources is a necessary driver of conflict and self-sorting into mutually exclusive tribes and power blocs. The bourgeoisie is still running on the old firmware - all of its self-evident notions like the nation state and a political class organized around the need for constant war - are alienated, reified abstractions ... (one of the paradox's of Marx's formulation of the cunning of reason as "this is objectively but latently, true therefore we need to make it EVIDENTLY true to everyone")
The way it reads to me, it's not necessarily the case that advanced social productivity leads to advanced relations of production because it's alienated from the more advanced firmware, however, workers in capitalism can do the socialism if they realize the contradictions of capitalism and take action against it. Whereas the mechanical version goes: your physical body (brain, nerve cells) determines your mind literally, and social productivity determines the relations of production, so therefore, economic substructure determines political superstructure absolutely. When you have feudal productivity, you have feudalism, and when you have slave-ist productivity, you have slavery. Everything is absolute. I think some self-described communists think like that (Stalin version), and Marx is also charged with determinism, but that doesn't seem to get to the dialectic in his reasoning.

>World wars, apparently contradictory and paradoxical developments can all make sense in such a system because they can simply be "reflux" mechanisms or "gross" movements in one direction that don't affect the net change in the other, and Marx was actually ingenious at showing how apparently gross changes in the direction of reaction were manifestations and spurs of net change in the direction of proletarian revolution. That is why his worldview is so intoxicating to many people.
It's like the intensity of reaction is seen as a reciprocal force. So, what's interesting about that, is that the Marxist might be disturbed to see fascists marching around or something like that, but it doesn't necessarily shake him in his Weltanschauung, while a liberal-minded rationalist can be lost or confused at this sudden outburst of these bizarre manifestations of irrationality in human affairs. The Marxist who has really absorbed it would perhaps be enlivened by the "struggle" that's now playing out.
https://youtu.be/zZqVOFSYRWI

[Anonymous No.23002916]

>>23002908
>Tyler Durden basically
thank you for putting it into terms that I can understand

[Anonymous No.23003395]

>>23001639
>>23001646
>>23001653
>>23001660
>>23001667
>>23001677
>>23001685
OP here. Thank you for the effortposts. I'll read them in the morning after my coffee. I was able to read the first post though. If you're still kicking around, what do you think of Marx's dislike of "vulgar materialism"? Because I would have thought he was merely a "vulgar materialist" himself, but apparently he thought they were worse than idealists. So there's some nuance to Marx's materialism, no?

[Anonymous No.23003718]

>>23001324
Schopenhauer is to Kant as Marx is to Hegel. As in a spurious and wilfull misreading elaborated extravagantly beyond justification. The incestuous lout married to a Rothschilde scion isn't what he's taken to be, or he wouldn't have decamped to London.

[Anonymous No.23003723]

>>23002567
This is what Nietzsche meant in cautioning against a "European Buddhism" and "White Mandarins".

[Anonymous No.23004213]

>>23001324
He doesn't, Marx was a brainlet who ruined communism. And he got (rightfully) totally and completelly obliterated by Stirner.

[Anonymous No.23004607]

>>23003395
>If you're still kicking around, what do you think of Marx's dislike of "vulgar materialism"?
NTA, but in short Marx and Engels were in disagreement with many proponents of different materialism of their time due to the those materialists applying their materialism more directly and disregarding human labor in the process.

Consider Malthusians, who saw human history as an process of ecological population dynamics, determined by exponential growth. Or Social Darwinists like Galton who applied the natural selection to the human society in the same way.

These methods are common in that they consider fundamental biological processes to be not just fundamental, but unambiguous, meaning that they directly determine the course of history and cannot have have varying and contradictory effects in different circumstances determined by their interactions with each other and phenomena they produce. "Vulgar materialists" considered such entities to be superficial. Marx considered production relations to be the deciding factor of historical process as we understand it here - meaning development of societies, while it can also mean a history of a single individual, but Marx believed that while a history of a single individual can only be somewhat caused by the effects of social production, and much more by personal affairs and circumstances, in the context of history of human societies these affairs and causes are superficial. "Vulgar materialists" believed that social production is similarly superficial to human history. The disagreement arises from Marx's view of social production as a factor that makes fundamental biological phenomena ambiguous in their effect due to social production being a transformative process applied to nature - labor is a practical process of changing nature, so nature and it's effects cannot be considered as something unchanged and unchangeable by human hands, and those changes were a part of the self-evident practical proletarian reality that had the most immediate social effect according to Marx. They cannot be considered superficial - "vulgar materialists" stated fundamental biological phenomena such as ecological demographics or sexual competition to be undeniable, while Marx considered social production to be a force that can alter and redirect them within the course of human social practice without denying them. Economical booms and recessions had more effect on human migration than fertility of soil in a region, even if that fertility had connection to said recessions - but through the practice of social production, good harvests in India can cause an economic boom in England without much improvement of conditions in India.

So the social practice cannot be considered superficial to the historical process - Malthusians effectively said that in the context of human civilization, trade, fertilizer and contraception are not real. To Marx it goes way beyond throwing the baby out with bathwater.

[Anonymous No.23005550]

>>23004607
In other words, Marx is mostly a "nominalist" in the same vein as the vulgar materialists, but he admits of at least one "non-material" layer, some kind of emergent social relations that drive change. It's not all random.

[Anonymous No.23005701]

>>23002567
I will speak such that what I am saying is entirely outside of Marxism and is not meant to be interpreted as being a representation of it.
1. A healthy skepticism is perfectly acceptable. I have met maybe a dozen college professors that I would say actually have a good working knowledge of Marx. Most are either products of their own education, or are products of secondary and tertiary flavors of either early or late Marx, the rest may have been formidable at one time but lost their edge and moved on to something else within the Marxist framework.
2. There is only one way to actually understand Marxism in what you may refer to as a "totality" and that is to read Marx and all of the subsidiary practitioners of Dialectical Materialism. The process is such that upon doing so you will likely become Marxist, and you will be committing yourself to reading a vast amount of material. I mean this literally, a vast amount of material.
3. You cannot refute Marxism. No one can. It will only be superceded or supplanted, assuming either is possible.
4. You may be reading up to this point and thinking I am an idiot, I do not care. If you want to hack Marxism in such a way as to understand it then I will tell you how to do this, I am also going to tell you that once you complete the process you will likely be a Marxist by some measure. You may appear alien to actual Marxists but you will possess the sufficient makeup so as to be considered one, and this is not something that you can abuse for your own purposes, the nature of the method already makes this impossible, you may end up finding a new form of respect for those who do call themselves Marxists though so be aware that if this is not your intention then you can stop reading here.
5. To perform something of a min/max of Dialectical Materialism you will have to fully understand all of what Aristotle has to say on the purpose of, and limits of what Dialectic can actually achieve. If you have already read Aristotle you will likely need to reread this part.
6. You can skip to Hegel at this point and read PoS and Philosophy of Right, that is probably the minimum, but additional Hegel cannot hurt.
7. Read Marx, the more the better, but if you wanted to try and get by with the minimum then I would say his works from 1839 - whenever Socialism Utopian and Scientific was published.
8. Read Kapital.
9. At this point you will have an understanding that is sufficient enough to critique Marxism in such a way that Marxists will actually care about anything you are actually saying, but be aware that your attempts to do so will really only result in strengthening the method and make you more Marxist as a result.

[Anonymous No.23005793]

>>23005701
>we built our own system of thought in such a way that is worse than a fucking religious cult

[Anonymous No.23006001]

>>23005793
Leave your gods and religions behind comrade.

[Anonymous No.23006939]

>>23005550
is this true? Marx is *a little bit* idealist, in accepting these abstract relations?

[Anonymous No.23007171]

>>23003395
>apparently he thought they were worse than idealists
This is one of the tricky "moves" of Marx's thought you get used to after a while, and it is actually one of the authentically Hegelian aspects of his thinking. The reason he objects to reductionist, metaphysical materialism or really thoroughgoing "vulgar" materialism is that is itself it's a form of metaphysics and thus a form of idealism. Ideal for Marx means abstract, viz. lacking contact with the concrete origins of thought, so the sin of this kind of materialism is that it reifies an abstract picture of the world and tries to "finish" thought about the world thereby. Because it's "finally," really true, it can be used to deduce all other truths forever - meaning there is no more need for dialectic, no more need for recursion back to the concrete - which for Marx, confusingly, is "the material" in the sense of "the real actual world with real people making conceptual orders (for the purposes of making their lives better and easier), because that's what people do."

The other anon is right, he's basically a nominalist, or a coherentist. This is very problematic if you want to be a Marxist and have a metaphysics as it basically commits you to a permanent quasi-Kantian pragmatism, at least if you want to be epistemologically consistent. ANYTHING posited as a "final" theory of the real is a reified abstraction by necessity. But then Marx himself doesn't seem to have been very epistemologically consistent. It seems pretty clear from his writings that he basically thinks that the material sciences are done doing their thing. He might be a vulgar materialist in this, other sense - the kind of materialist (still familiar today) who just fundamentally doesn't care why or how the world exists. It just does, and we can master it with technology to a greater or lesser extent.

In short, Marx is hard to read as anything but fundamentally indifferent to metaphysics in the proper sense. Once you rip out the Hegelian core, the proletarian cunning of reason driving a progressive history that culminates in post-scarcity communism, you basically inevitably end up with Adorno's quasi-Kantian quasi-pragmatist meliorism. There's just not enough else IN Marx to justify anything else, even if you're as powerful a thinker as Adorno. He's basically reduced to taking the "negation of the negation" "mechanism" out of Marx's Left Hegelian (i.e. secular and non-metaphysical) interpretation of Hegel and saying "we should use this to 'do criticism' all the time."

[Anonymous No.23007200]

>>23007171
>The reason he objects to reductionist, metaphysical materialism or really thoroughgoing "vulgar" materialism is that is itself it's a form of metaphysics and thus a form of idealism
This is a brilliant point.
>Ideal for Marx means abstract, viz. lacking contact with the concrete origins of thought, so the sin of this kind of materialism is that it reifies an abstract picture of the world and tries to "finish" thought about the world thereby.
But isn't Marx ultimately arguing about what is the "right" amount of idealism to argue for, then? You can't say that there's no relationships, because that picture of absence is still an abstraction. You can't say that realm of ideas is the most important relationship, since that is the pinnacle of abstraction. So I guess Marx is settling for "the relations of material things" and "the emergent world of social relations" as the "sweet spot" regarding idealism?

By the way, I get a sense that you're interpreting Marx as having a Heideggerian lens for detecting and critiquing metaphysics.

[Anonymous No.23007665]

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[Anonymous No.23009280]

>>23005701
Based beyond belief

[Anonymous No.23009913]

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[Anonymous No.23009941]

>>23005701
not sure if this is intended to be a parody of the Marxist mindset, but but it sure works very well as one and manages to illustrate the process of how cult-like beliefs take hold of a person.

[Anonymous No.23009949]

>>23001324
Marx never existed, he was made up by hegels as a literary piece, the picture of Marx is just a random hobo

[Anonymous No.23009961]

>>23005701
>There is only one way to actually understand Marxism in what you may refer to as a "totality" and that is to read Marx and all of the subsidiary practitioners of Dialectical Materialism. The process is such that upon doing so you will likely become Marxist, and you will be committing yourself to reading a vast amount of material. I mean this literally, a vast amount of material.
This, like how there is no way to deny christianity unless you have read all of christianity and if you embark on the process you will become a christian because it is irrefutable

[Anonymous No.23010383]

>>23007171
If I can hazard an explanation... I think Hegelian dialectics stands on its own, and Marxist dialectics also stand on its own, and they're not really in the same "philosophical space." If anything, it seems as if Marx isn't standing from as high as a vantage point as Hegel, nor is he seeking to (except on rare occasions when he feels the need to answer these questions as Marx the philosopher, to fill the needs of Marx the sociologist and Marx the political economist). And what is normally taken to be "Hegelian dialectics" as a driver of history is really Hegel's philosophy of history, and that is what Marx is rebutting with his own philosophy of history, historical materialism. And these two do seem to be on an equal footing, similar in structure yet in total opposition

[Anonymous No.23010711]

>>23001324
Althusser is "For Marx" dedicates an entire chapter to the question of how this "flipping of Hegel" might be understood or, more generally, what the Marxist dialectic could be.
I won't say I'd agree with that or that it's a question of much importance but it's a good starting point.

[Anonymous No.23011679]

>>23010711
it's a big ask to say that I should read some mid 20th century French obscurantist grifter

[Anonymous No.23011692]

>>23011679
Althusser is not an obscurantist at all.
And you asked about this specific question he deals with at length.
Do what you will though.

[Anonymous No.23011695]

>>23011679
but some mid 19th century grifter is ok?

[Anonymous No.23011720]

>>23011695
well, I'm trying to understand the mid 19th century grifter in the first place, and that's a big doozy in itself. why make it even harder?
>>23011692
Althusser was infamous for making up new terms, writing extravagantly, and otherwise indulging himself in the obscurantism practiced by French intellectual culture at the time. stfu

[Anonymous No.23012638]

not okay in letting this thread die until a few more loose ends get tied up

[Anonymous No.23012644]

>>23001324
Hegel was a monarchist. Hegel's philosophy was to the right of Pat Robertson. Marx used Feuerbach's misinterpretation of part of Hegel's ideas to justify the upending of monarchy and of Hegel's ideas.

[Anonymous No.23012652]

>>23001324
I'm think it's just that Hegel is Idealist and romantic, Marx is scientific and dour. Hegel thinks man is primary, Marx thinks man is a downstream tool of economics.

[Anonymous No.23013022]

>>23001324
I see you going wrong on seemingly trying to critique the "materialists" view of Hegel's "idealism", but mainly because Marx's materialism didn't so greatly diverge from Hegel's idealism. Marx is very Hegelian, he just started calling his concepts "real shit" and called Hegel's concepts made up. Marx read the political economists and the accounts of the capitalists (by which I mean their actual financial statements, the way they accounted for their capital), and he applied Hegelian methods to it to try to tease out whatever the "real" logic was, as opposed to upside down Hegelian woo-woo. The problem is that Marx's categories are still not anymore real than Hegelian ones. Hegel talks about things like "masters" and "slaves", Marx says the logic of these concepts aren't the operative mechanism, rather the people who make them are. But then he both "critiques political economy" by teasing out the necessary logical movements of their concepts, and he supposes this means there will be an actual necessity that results, as though the concepts are still steering the ship rather than the people making them. In reality, when liquidity crises and shit like that happen, the state just gets all the banks together at figurative gunpoint and tells them to wipe out debts and shuffle around money until everything is moving again. The system really is made up in the sense that the circulation of capital is an artificial constraint on production, but it serves a purpose of maintaining class society. When it breaks down the people in power just get together and make some deals on how the numbers are going to be shuffled around to restart the game. Meanwhile, many Marxists just wait for the world to end because of the "necessity" of the "logic" of Marx's categories.

[Anonymous No.23013028]

>>23012652
The opposite, Marx claims Hegel sees man as the bearer of the historical unfolding of ideas, whereas Marx claims he is unveiling the truth that there is only man. But then he just goes off the rails on what is basically his rendition of Hegel because he DOES promote a general model of mankind being beholden to the logic of concepts, they're just concepts he calls "scientific".

[Anonymous No.23013671]

>>23011720
>Althusser was infamous for making up new terms, writing extravagantly, and otherwise indulging himself in the obscurantism practiced by French intellectual culture at the time.
Where did you pick that up?
I've read most of his works and it was not that complicated.

[Anonymous No.23013863]

>>23001653
>>23001646
Reification and alienation sound like great concepts.
Are they talked about much in das capital?
Or what lit would you recommend to learn about these ideas?
Thank you anon!

[Anonymous No.23014262]

>>23001324
>by reversing the nature of dialectics
No-one says that.

He flips it by making it materialist instead of idealist. The only dialectic in particular that he "flips" you can say would be is the "subject - object" one and that is just to say the determined being, or being to focus on would that be of the object instead of the subject

The innovation of Marx was that the ideal is a reflection of the essence of the material and their path moves in accordance.

[Anonymous No.23014293]

>>23014262
>No-one says that.
Wdym? Everybody says that, including you literally one sentence later:
>He flips it by making it materialist instead of idealist.
Anyway, the point I was making is that Marx doesn't seem to address Hegel's dialectics at all. And I think we are in agreement but are just quibbling with terminology.

[Anonymous No.23014300]

>>23014293
That’s because Hegel isn’t all about this dialectic. It’s in Hegel but it’s not the central thing. Ironically, Hegel comes the closest to overcoming dialectic of any Western philosopher since Christ. You’d know that if you read Hegel’s book.

[Anonymous No.23014311]

He doesn’t flip it on its head. You know how people talk about cultural Marxism as though they’re doing what Marxism did but applying it to ethnic-cultural dynamics (BIPOC, LGBT, etc.) rather than just socio-economic ones (Bourgeoisie, proletariat, etc.)? Marx did something similar with Hegel in the sense that Hegel saw an unfolding of God through history in the civilization-state. Marx just came along and said basically “actually, it’s all just relativistic, animalistic, materialistic socio-economic dynamics and what’s unfolding is just machine capitalism”. Hegel is fundamentally an idealist, or maybe more aptly a proto-idealist, while Marx is a hard materialist. For Marx, history quite literally is just a time series of one group imposing its subjective and self-interested materialistic will on others. Hence why Marxism prescribes not rights for workers or anything like that but total political power and power over economics itself by the Proletariat as the only way of preserving proletariat interests. Marx sidesteps metaphysics entirely.

[Anonymous No.23014501]

>>23014300
It sounds like dialectic is the highest summit of Hegel's philosophy. It's the foundation of Science of Logic. What exactly is your point?

[Anonymous No.23015484]

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[Anonymous No.23015946]

bumpy

[Anonymous No.23015975]

I don’t see how any of what you posted could actually elaborate on supposed relationships between “being” and “nothing.” If you actually take any of what you’re saying seriously, read Boole’s Investigation of the Laws of Thought to see what studying “being” and “nothing” looks like.

[Anonymous No.23016023]

>>23013863
NTAs but you might be more interested in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.

[Anonymous No.23016671]

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[Anonymous No.23017721]

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[Anonymous No.23017872]

>>23016023
Thanks anon, I'll give that a look.

[Anonymous No.23017909]

>>23003723
I don't understand what you mean with this

[Anonymous No.23017913]

>>23001324
I find Marx more interesting when he talks about history than his economics which are dross.

[Anonymous No.23017914]

>>23002567
Mob psychology

[Anonymous No.23018736]

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[Anonymous No.23019891]

>>23005550
>>23006939
>>23007171
>>23007200
was hoping to a conclusion to this conversation before I let this thread slide

[Anonymous No.23020030]

>>23019891
Read The German Ideology, Theses on Feuererbach, and most of his other early era writings.

[Anonymous No.23020033]

>>23020030
I already did. That's why I asked all these questions.

[Anonymous No.23020056]

>>23020033
Then how are you using the term metaphysics?

[Anonymous No.23020131]

>>23020033
Without trying to intentionally double post I suppose I could rephrase my question and ask, are you trying to understand something of a Marxist 'ontology' or are you trying to ask what he thought of unanswerable questions?

[Anonymous No.23020173]

>>23020131
Both. Because in any case Marx is giving answers on ontology, even if he doesn't think too highly of them.

[Anonymous No.23020190]

>>23005701
You're right, and this is why I hate Marx: He synthesized something organic and esoteric and in doing so robbed it of its vital essence - those who drink from this poisoned chalice are doomed to know, but never understand.

[Anonymous No.23021079]

>>23020173
The Chinese are still contributing to what we could refer to as Marxist 'ontology' so technically it is still something that is evolving even if it is evolving elsewhere beside the west. A fair chunk of the material I have seen from their efforts is quite good work. As for the other aspect then you are probably looking for something only where there is a light convenient. Early Marx still pulled some metaphysical notions from Hegel and his other Hegelian contemporaries when it was convenient for Marx to do this. Later Marx adopted a more hardline stance and an argument could be made that he viewed metaphysics to be in opposition to his dialectical method, or an argument that it qualifies as some sort of idealistic tool of oppression may be more appropriate depending on the text. If I had to provide a suitable synthesis of his stance on this and incorporate early and later Marx I would also be inclined to agree with and likely repeat what the other anons have said in that he did not care and would likely recommend Theses on Feuerbach and The German Ideology which I suppose I have already done in this case.

[Anonymous No.23021356]

>>23021079
>If I had to provide a suitable synthesis of his stance on this and incorporate early and later Marx I would also be inclined to agree with and likely repeat what the other anons have said in that he did not care and would likely recommend Theses on Feuerbach and The German Ideology which I suppose I have already done in this case.
My conclusion after reading TGI, TOF, and other works is that Marx was a realist when it came to social and productive relations and a nominalist when it came to everything else. I only sought a second opinion in case there were anons more knowledgeable than me who could either flip this idea on its head or give a stronger basis for it.

[Anonymous No.23021504]

>>23021356
Well, I am inclined to agree with the emphasis on realism, and I would add that Marxism, while it may find itself in other disciplines or aspects of philosophy is still primarily best viewed as a political philosophy when viewing it from a holistic perspective and as such there is what we may say amounts to a different intent. This statement is not made in any attempt to shift the goalposts or change the argument or with any intent to change these aspects for that matter. I personally tend to view Marxism as more of a political method, and if you delve into some of the post Marx dialectical materialists you can find ample examples of this sort of highly political shift so to speak. As for his method I will also emphasize that to fully understand it you do need to understand all of what Aristotle had to say on the purpose of and nature of Dialectic, the best dialectical materialists rarely if ever actually stray from this method, and if they do and are making more conventional ontological statements it is likely done so with the backing of the political aspects of the philosophy. This is largely why it is not really possible to 'refute' Marxism such as it is and why it will either be superceded or supplanted, assuming that either is possible. I make this qualification based on some of Marx's speculations about the future of society. This ultimately puts Marxism more into a position of something you accept or perhaps agree with or you do not accept, or perhaps disagree with, and that ultimately is the context for my statement that we are looking for something we felt we lost only where there is light convenient, only to then realize the keys were in our pocket the whole time so to speak. Until Marxism stops evolving and acquires what we may call a sort of 'historical permanence' it is possible to view it from a number of different perspectives and seemingly reach valid conclusions, there are also Marxist arguments to be had that this evolution is not meant to 'stop' at any given point and is inevitable regardless. This can be extrapolated such that while one dialectical materialist practioner may make an error and be proven wrong there may be any number of others who learn from this mistake and present a better version and the effort to refute them individually becomes something akin to trying to cut all the heads off a hydra that is seemingly capable spawning an infinite number of heads, you are far more likely to wind up as a Marxist for your efforts. My last statement is made with no intent to insult and no attempt to be pejorative, but merely what I have observed over time and what I have come to realize through my own efforts.

[Anonymous No.23021631]

>>23021504
>As for his method I will also emphasize that to fully understand it you do need to understand all of what Aristotle had to say on the purpose of and nature of Dialectic, the best dialectical materialists rarely if ever actually stray from this method, and if they do and are making more conventional ontological statements it is likely done so with the backing of the political aspects of the philosophy.
Wait, what? I was under the impression that Greek dialectic and Hegelian dialectic were completely separate things with different structures.

[Anonymous No.23021656]

>>23021631
You're not about to say something about how Hegel's dialectic goes something like "thesis, antithesis, synthesis," are you?

[Anonymous No.23021697]

>>23021656
No. That's Fichte's work. Didn't you read my OP? I'll recapitulate it for you.

People say that Marx turns Hegel on his head by reversing the nature of dialectics. However, Hegelian dialectics is like
>being vs. nothing, where the self-identical contradictions of either concept converge on a single point, producing becoming
while Marxist dialectics is like
>social relations cannot handle material circumstances, thus social relations must eventually evolve past a breaking point
If anything, these are two wholly different relationships that are hardly related to each other beyond a superficial level that they deal with contradictions.

While I never heard of an "Aristotelian dialectic", I imagine it would be something similar to Plato's dialectic, which is essentially the evolution of a conversation as hypotheses are given, contradicted, and refined (as demonstrated in his dialogues). If anything, the whole "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" schema applies more to Plato than to anybody else, lol, with the exception that sometimes aporia instead of synthesis happens.

[Anonymous No.23021944]

>>23021631
Less about the essence, more about the method. Aristotle asserts that dialectic cannot establish its own propositions, unless you are accepting a proposition in which the sole purpose is to show other propositions possess inconsistencies. In Topics he makes reference to a procedure wherein the students assume roles and one is said to represent a philosophy and the other is then meant to ask questions the first has to answer, if the second can find an inconsistency in the first then it can be said the first did not possess knowledge of the philosophy. This process is known as refutation. The point of dialectic is to solicit a refutation or to demonstrate knowledge of something. This does assume that one can only be said to possess knowledge of something if they possess it in such a way as it can be expressed without inconsistencies. The more one is subjected to this process the more accurately one can discern true and false. This is really just a light treatment of the topic in all fairness and Aristotle does have more to say on this but what I have said is said in such a way as to highlight the dialectical materialist method. The method is less about asserting any sort of idealist philosophical system but rather refuting those based on the notion their adherents can no longer claim to possess knowledge on the matter since inconsistencies were solicited. By keeping arguments limited to political, more 'scientific' aspects, and for lack of better words a materialist based progression system of history the dialectical materialist does not have to make the same type of argument and can stick to a method of refuting other arguments and providing evidence for their assertions. If the practitioner messes up so to speak and is refuted then the other dialectical materialist practitioners can then learn from this mistake and present a better version. The most hardened practitioners of dialectical materialism I have encountered are anything but trivial and are exceptional at this process to the extent that if there is an audience you may believe you are making a good argument but they are positioning their position in such a way so that the audience is still apt to believe the dialectical materialist is still telling the truth. They quite frankly do not make mistakes, and the very few times they do are rarely if ever repeated. The more you attempt to attack the better the defense in depth becomes and at some point the attacker will realize they either cannot sustain this sort of maneuvering or realize that in order to continue they must accept Marxist positions, and thus they become more Marxist as they reach higher levels of sophistication.

[Anonymous No.23022707]

>>23001685
What are you ideologically?

[Anonymous No.23022733]

....marx is the one who said that's what his intentions were before outlining how he and hegel view history differently
if you'd just sourced whatever quote tweeter you're quoting you would have got a book to read and the answer you wanted and not done this internet wankery. try reading a book sometime

[Anonymous No.23022740]

>>23021944
>he method is less about asserting any sort of idealist philosophical system but rather refuting those based on the notion their adherents can no longer claim to possess knowledge on the matter since inconsistencies were solicited. By keeping arguments limited to political, more 'scientific' aspects, and for lack of better words a materialist based progression system of history the dialectical materialist does not have to make the same type of argument and can stick to a method of refuting other arguments and providing evidence for their assertions. If the practitioner messes up so to speak and is refuted then the other dialectical materialist practitioners can then learn from this mistake and present a better version. The most hardened practitioners of dialectical materialism I have encountered are anything but trivial and are exceptional at this process to the extent that if there is an audience you may believe you are making a good argument but they are positioning their position in such a way so that the audience is still apt to believe the dialectical materialist is still telling the truth. They quite frankly do not make mistakes, and the very few times they do are rarely if ever repeated. The more you attempt to attack the better the defense in depth becomes and at some point the attacker will realize they either cannot sustain this sort of maneuvering or realize that in order to continue they must accept Marxist positions, and thus they become more Marxist as they reach higher levels of sophistication.
I don't understand. Isn't this just playing "offense" all the time and being a sophist? That's not dialectics even in the Aristotelian sense of the word, since it's not complete. And that's not what dialectics is when it comes to the engine behind Marxist historical materialism. Seems like a bait and switch game.

[Anonymous No.23022746]

>>23022733
I read almost the entirety of the Marx-Engels Reader and other works by Marx before making this post. I swear to God, some of the most annoying posters are the:
>read ___ and it will have all the answers
as if reading philosophy doesn't end up leaving you with more questions than answers. Must be low IQ (can't see the problem, so it doesn't exist).

[Anonymous No.23022777]

I'll take the opportunity to shill Zizek again, namely picrel. It seems vastly underrated, yet I find it one of his most accessible works. OP would be interested as it tackles the exact questions he seems to be interested in.

[Anonymous No.23022789]

>>23022746
>>23001324
>People say that Marx turns Hegel on his head by
Who are these "[p]eople"? Would that person be Marx who you apparently read so you would know what >>23022733
>marx is the one who said that's what his intentions were before outlining how he and hegel view history differently
Anon meant by that. Anon was right to call you out but you're trying to cover your ass by saying you read it in Marx not those supposed people of your OP. Bullshit.

[Anonymous No.23022885]

>>23022789
>Who are these "[p]eople"? Would that person be Marx who you apparently read
I mean Marx says that in the beginning of Part 1 of The German Ideology, but the implications of what he means by this is hard to discern, especially since Marx has a habit of "accidentally" doing metaphysics. So I'm referring to the community of inquirers here who have pored through Marx's work in detail, not just Marx.
>Anon meant by that. Anon was right to call you out but you're trying to cover your ass by saying you read it in Marx not those supposed people of your OP. Bullshit.
It's a post on 4chan, not an academic essay or a formal conference. We have different ways of trying to introduce topics and different standards of saying we understand a subject. Relax.

[Anonymous No.23022968]

>>23001324
holy shit no wonder whites can't reproduce to save their lives
get out of your own heads

[Anonymous No.23022974]

>>23022968
kys genetic trash

[Anonymous No.23022983]

>>23001324
read Anti-Dühring, it's the best intro to historical materialism

[Anonymous No.23023046]

>>23022740
The counterpart would be rhetoric, but in Aristotelian terms a sophistical argument is just one in which the argument only appears to produce a result, and they do generally tend to appear dialectical in nature. I would agree with the statement that the Aristotelian method elucidated is not the primary driver behind what he wrote in The German Ideology 100%. Marx did however correctly surmise that by returning the point of contention to the physical the process would be intentionally devoid of the sort of idealistic system building and dependency on abstract sentience that idealists have to use and then get into logic matches over. By making this critical distinction the nature of the argument can be made with significantly better scientific precision, something he himself even comments on in Kapital. Thus as it relates to my comments on Aristotle, an idealist that is trying to understand Marx is want to try to view it from the perspective that there is some sort of Logic first system that everything else stems from so that a refutation of this system leads to a refutation of the theory as a whole since this is what they are used to encountering with other idealist system structures. The historical materialist postion does not possess one, which means that a dialectical materialist practioner does not have to make this type of argument, and thus can still perform refutations of idealist systems presented in opposition without having to expose themselves to the same risk, they can also use more sound epistemological evidence for their assertions. Thus from the perspective of who can demonstrate knowledge the dialectical materialist is in a considerably more advantageous position with considerably less risk. Especially if this is viewed from a political lens in which the goal is to propagate the political philosophy.

[Anonymous No.23023075]

>>23023046
>The historical materialist postion does not possess one, which means that a dialectical materialist practioner does not have to make this type of argument, and thus can still perform refutations of idealist systems presented in opposition without having to expose themselves to the same risk, they can also use more sound epistemological evidence for their assertions.
Yet they're still idealists of some stripe. They just assert the reality of one kind of idealism and the nominalism of other kinds of idealisms. It is ultimately arbitrary, and a good metaphysician should be able to chop right through the smoke and mirrors of a Marxist rhetorician.

[Anonymous No.23023187]

>>23023075
Based on what I have seen here that does not appear to be true, unless that is to say there are no good 'metaphysicians' here. To your point if Marxism is viewed politically then sure there will always be an element of one side vs the other, and I can definitively tell you that as time has carried on the Marxists have been winning more than they have been losing.

[Anonymous No.23023202]

>>23023187
>To your point if Marxism is viewed politically then sure there will always be an element of one side vs the other, and I can definitively tell you that as time has carried on the Marxists have been winning more than they have been losing.
this nigga for real?

[Anonymous No.23023209]

>>23023202
You are always welcome to step up to the plate and deliver a 'refutation' of Marxism if you care to try and write a check you can cash.

[Anonymous No.23023223]

>>23023209
how about "world history since 1918"?

[Anonymous No.23023238]

>>23023223
How about it?

[Anonymous No.23023375]

>>23023238
communism has been losing

[Anonymous No.23023438]

>>23023375
Which nation achieved advanced communism between 1918 and now?

[Anonymous No.23023492]

>>23023438
>its not communism, its ADVANCED communism
damn, I guess they suck so hard they can't even get past the beginner stages

[Anonymous No.23023499]

>>23023492
The onus IS on you to perform the refutation. You have demonstrated that you do not possess knowledge of Marxism to begin with.

[Anonymous No.23023538]

>>23023499
>nobody ever did Marxism except for me
okay I guess you win then. enjoy being the king of a pile of ashes. oh wait, you disavowed the ashes. so you're really just a king of a pile of nothing. you're worse than a smoldering ruin.

[Anonymous No.23023565]

>>23023538
My days of hardened dialectic are behind me in all honesty. I actually enjoy the diversity of thought I see here if anything. I accept your concession but I will note as a caveat that it is a hollow concession not for any of the points you made but rather that this largely goes back to the nature of Marxism being something that cannot be refuted. I have been on your end of the exchange more times than you might believe so.

[Anonymous No.23023618]

>>23023565
>the nature of Marxism being something that cannot be refuted.
(nta) For the same reason that 2+2=hemorrhoids cannot be "refuted", it's alogical. Or rather, it subsumes all thought within its cultic schema, so you either assent or betray false consciousness by any attempted criticism.

[Anonymous No.23023654]

>>23023565
>this retard that based his ideas on shitty adam smith and ricardo economics whose justification for revolution is based on a disproved concept that all capitalists unfairly acquired capital below market value at some origin point who also didn’t understand time preferences because he was basing everything on said shitty confused early economists can’t be refuted

[Anonymous No.23023691]

>>23023618
>>23023654
Everyone is entitled to their opinions gentlemen.

[Anonymous No.23023774]

>>23023565
>Marxism being something that cannot be refuted
It's more like you can't refute a framework within that same framework since it a priori precludes any refutation. Marxists always want a marxist refutation of marxism, because marxism grips the totality of one's faculties when it takes hold. Everything has to be viewed through the marxist lens. All analysis becomes marxist. The great irony is it promises to emancipate the people from the pan, but all it does is throw them into the fire; it's a technique (Ellul) that promises to free people from technique.
Marx is an absolute nigger for creating this demonic abortion. Motherfucker made a totalitarian religion where one of the tenets is 'thou shalt have no religion' meaning the devout followers will never be convinced that they are religious because it would go against their religion. What a fucking nigger.

[Anonymous No.23023850]

>you see you cannot refute marxism because [wall of text]
Don't care, still going to participate in the dialectic of the Absolute's becoming instead of this silly shit.

[Anonymous No.23024020]

>>23021631
>>23021697
I don't know where this idea came from that Hegel's dialectic has nothing to do with what the greeks called dialectic. He didn't choose that term by chance.
The crucial characteristic of a dialectical argument (as Plato practiced in his dialogues) is that you develop a concept by pointing out contradictions within this concept itself (instead of using external arguments), accept the contradiction as part of the essence of the concept and thus reveal the richer concept that was always already implied in the initial, more "naive" statement.
And that is exactly what Hegel does.