/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.5215129]

Why are there so little thinkers that still have some form of Marxist thought?

We have Zizek, but he's slowly turning into a joke. The only other I can think of is Kruithof but he's dead now.

How can modern Marxist thought be introduced better? Should it be?

[Anonymous No.5215156]

>>5215129
There are lots of good ones if you know where to look. David Harvey is probably the highest-profile but JW Mason and Doug Henwood are my favorites. David Graeber is one of the most influential academics in the world right now and his main influences are Marx and Mauss.

Or open up an issue of Jacobin and you can find wide range of Marx-inspired writers.

[Anonymous No.5215161]

Marxism is lame and gay

[Anonymous No.5215165]

because we arent pseudo hippies, faggot

the 60s is done and dusted

its not coming back

[Anonymous No.5215166]

>>5215129
Me. I'll be the Marxist philosopher the world needs.

Seriously though, the Comaroffs immediately come to mind. They're pretty legit.

[Anonymous No.5215171]

>>5215161
More like... GAME and LAY
IF U KNO WAT I MEAN ;-)

[Anonymous No.5215173]

>>5215156
>>5215166
thanks guys

[Anonymous No.5215193]

>>5215171
I'm a lame gay who's game for a lay.

[Anonymous No.5215194]

The notion that it's only Zizek working from a Marxist perspective is absurd. It's like claiming that only Laurie Penny is a feminist.

This is a who's who of big names working in or with the Marxist tradition.

There are also numerous Marxist journals published around the world. New Left Review, Rethinking Marxism and Monthly Review being the most prominent English language ones.

[Anonymous No.5215195]

Marxism to me is important due to the fact that it (still, even after the dominant wave of post-modernism taking over both the academic and non-academic world) appreciates science as one of the primary applications to finding truth. It also actually makes aims to end divisions instead of justifying and subconsciously preserving oppression and marginalization like identity politics fanatics and idealists would do with their embrace of sheer empiricism as the only verifiable truth. There are many other reasons... but Zizek is a joke....

[Anonymous No.5215212]

>>5215195
>It also actually makes aims to end divisions instead of justifying and subconsciously preserving oppression and marginalization like identity politics fanatics and idealists would do with their embrace of sheer empiricism as the only verifiable truth.
Wait, are you alluding to social darwinism or am I missing something?

[Anonymous No.5215248]

>>5215212
I didn't write that post but what he means is that Marxist class politics can be more unifying that politics that focuses on ethnic, religious or sexual identities..

[Anonymous No.5215650]

>>5215129
What is Autonomism?
World systems theory?
Praxis school?

[Anonymous No.5215896]

Because Marxism is dum.

[Anonymous No.5215958]

>>5215129
>Zizek, but he's slowly turning into a joke
That is a big problem with Žižek fans and many young marxists in general that I have. They are turning marxism into memes until there's no real discussion anymore.

What does /lit/ think of Deleuze?

[Anonymous No.5215960]

>>5215958
it doesn't. if it tells you it does, it's lying.

[Anonymous No.5216053]

>>5215129
>ut he's slowly turning into a joke.

That's probably because marxism is a joke.

[Anonymous No.5216101]

>>5216053
It is in our postmodern pop-culture, yes. That's the problem.

[Anonymous No.5216110]

>>5216101
nice pointless buzzwords

[Anonymous No.5216154]

>>5216110
Why "pop-culture"? Because there's a difference between academia and non-academia.
Why "postmodern"? Because the way marxism appears in pop-culture is through signifiers that don't really point to anything concrete anymore, like marxist images and quotes.

[Anonymous No.5216196]

>>5215958
I don't know Deleuze well enough to have an opinion, but I think of him more in the Nietzsche/Foucault tradition than in the Marxist tradition. Is that wrong?

[Anonymous No.5216228]

>>5216196
Not really wrong. Deleuze was clearly a big fan of Nietzsche and he was close to Foucault although he turned against him at the end of Foucault's life. But it's no secret that that generation was also very influenced by Marx, especially through Althusser. Although yes, Deleuze version of Marxism is very non-standard.
Here's a short summary I could find right now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze#Values

[Anonymous No.5218547]

>>5215195
This is what I don't understand about Marxism and the ideologies that descended from it. Like third wave feminism with its obsession with identity politics and how they're trying to define everything they can with labels and then going on with the perverting and misunderstanding of science. Said constant discussion of identity and misunderstanding of science is making a huge wedge in society (albeit mostly online) and many of the people who subscribe to this neo-feminist third wave shit are completely unaware of the divide they're creating. Why is this happening Marx-anon?

[Anonymous No.5218558]

>>5218547
Not that anon, but I don't even understand why Identity Politics has developed. Didn't we go against the concept of identity with post-structuralism? Didn't we show how identity is politically problematic?

[Anonymous No.5218569]

why is marx a nigger lol

[Anonymous No.5218601]

>>5218569
kek'd

well, I got my money on Hardt <3_<3

[Anonymous No.5218643]

>>5218601
Have you read this article?
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/articles/have-michael-hardt-and-antonio-negri-rewritten-the-communist-manifesto-for-the-twenty-first-century/

>Nevertheless, one immediately gets a sense of the boundaries to Hardt and Negri's analysis. In their social-economic analysis, the lack of concrete insight is concealed in the Deleuzian jargon of multitude, deterritorialization, and so forth. No wonder that the three "practical proposals with which the book ends appear anticlimactic. The authors propose to focus our political struggle on three global rights: the rights to global citizenship, a minimal income, and the reappropriation of the new means of production (i.e. access to and control over education, information and communication). It is a paradox that Hardt and Negri, the poets of mobility, variety, hybridization, and so on, call for three demands formulated in the terminology of universal human rights.

I'm not a fan of Žižek and neither have I read Empire myself yet, so I'm not sure what to think of it.

[Anonymous No.5219108]

>>5218643
>Zizek
>accusing other people's books of being anticlimactic

Everything he has written just meanders around cut & pasting segments from previous books and lectures and then sort of stops.
>It is a pretty good idea to study--I think--or maybe just not do anything?

[The Knight of Mirrors !!s2lmlI8P60f No.5219151]

Zizek is not a philosopher, he is an entertainer and an analyst, and he accomplishes his job well enough: he makes complex ideas accessible to the amateur and he provokes further inquiry. That is good enough for me.

Have you read Foster or Merrifield? Foster's writings on the 2008 economic crisis were fascinating, and Merrifield's publications in The Nation always win at least a glance from me (which is an award in and of itself)

Keep searching, Original Poster, you shall find somebody to consider if you dig far enough (assuming your shovel is not limited in its length)

[Anonymous No.5219155]

>>5218558
>Didn't we go against the concept of identity with post-structuralism?
>post-structuralism

70% of /lit/ are still "starting with the Greeks", and 29% haven't made it past Stirner. I doubt there is ever more than one poster a month who has actually read Derrida, Korzybski and Foucault.

[Anonymous No.5219159]

>>5219108
While I agree completely, that shouldn't be relevant to what he's saying.

The point I'm concerned with is that Empire calls for - according to Žižek's reading of course - something that is similar to universal human rights. Which is very disappointing. Can anyone conform this Žižek's interpretation is valid? He has a history of misinterpreting others.

[Anonymous No.5219164]

Zizek has always been a joke.
A pop-philosopher at best.

Marx was both a philosopher and a real economist with genuine technical skills in the field. Even then he was limited and while his analysis and critic of capitalism was great both philosophical and technical grounds, his views on how a communistic society could work were ethereal with hardly any technical groundwork to describe how it could work.

Nowadays most Marxist pretenders are just philosophers with little technical knowledge in economy. When you have one with technical skills, like Piketty, he sticks to a modernized critic of capitalism with still nothing well-defined on how communism could work.

So Marxism is stuck in a stasis for now.

[Anonymous No.5219183]

>>5215165
>the 60s is done and dusted
the 1860s or the 1960s, because i still do tonnes of LSD and fight for a unified germany

[Anonymous No.5219291]

>>5218547
>albeit mostly online
Here's your problem. Don't let a comparatively tiny group of highly agitated young men and their hatred of the straw "person" of feminism they circulate online frame your understanding of feminism.

[Anonymous No.5219314]

>>5218558
What ended up being labelled identity politics by the right developed in the 60s when women, blacks and gays felt that progressive politics wasn't representing their interests. The organized left was focused on raising the wages and conditions of working class men, the idea being a "living wage" so a nuclear family could live comfortably on the father's salary. That focus was too narrow and too traditional for some people.

[Anonymous No.5219342]

>>5219164
Piketty isn't a Marxist and never claimed to be. He's a social democrat.

[Anonymous No.5219460]

>>5219314
What bothers me is that we have supposedly gone past that. Identity politics was meant more as a reaction to a more specific problem and I don't think that it was that good of a reaction either in the long run because it only ended up reproducing those categories as natural and fixed. Instead of fighting for a representation of groups we should fight the mechanisms that turn or codify certain people into such groups in the first place

[Anonymous No.5219617]

>>5219164
>Marx was both a philosopher and a real economist with genuine technical skills in the field.

>When you have one with technical skills, like Piketty,

[Anonymous No.5219648]

>>5219617
>le marks sux x^D

Back to the kiddy table.

[Anonymous No.5219695]

Because Marxism is a joke. No one in academia takes it seriously, and those who do are ridiculed. Rightfully so.

[Anonymous No.5219732]

>>5219460
>Instead of fighting for a representation of groups we should fight the mechanisms that turn or codify certain people into such groups in the first place
Pretty much.
SJW's refuse to understand this though. And it pains my heart to say that /pol/ is right that most universities are teaching watered down left thinking to breed these creatures.

The problem firstly lies in education.

[Anonymous No.5219744]

>>5219648
>implying Marx didn't get everything wrong from LTV to his own bourgeois hypocrisy

[Anonymous No.5219772]

>>5219155
Or perhaps people read some of them, like Stirner, Korzybski, and Derrida, and find nothing but intellectual charlatanism.

[Anonymous No.5219779]

Marxists are everywhere. Have you ever been to a university?

[Anonymous No.5219785]

>>5219779
But they're all stupid teenagers who never wash and have only read the Manifesto.

I'd like to meet someone who actually read The German Ideology for once at my Uni.

[Anonymous No.5219817]

>>5219785
I was actually talking about faculty. They are all late 30s+ and usually have excellent hygiene and are well-read. I've met at least four Marxist faculty and I don't even know a lot of faculty at my school. There are of course students everywhere too, but given I'm from the American South, not as many people pretend to have read Marx to be edgy. They can just claim to be a liberal to do that. Most of the students that I know who claim to be socialists are also fairly well-read.

[Anonymous No.5219860]

>>5219772
Derrida had some very good points, he was just very careful and creative with language. Some of his works are poetry.
It's easy to misunderstand him outside of context. If you look at the most of criticism of his Of Gramatology you see how extremely he was almost intentionally misquoted and misread because he went against many of the established theories. Searle's responses to him are just laughable.
The serious problem with Derrida might be that he wasn't that creative when it come to providing alternative politics. This is where Deleuze is more interesting.
As with regards to Foucault, his social analyses and histories are brilliant and still highly relevant.

[Anonymous No.5219878]

>>5219860
but le filthy continentals

[Anonymous No.5219974]

>>5219695
are you kidding me?
Marx-inspired thought dominates american academia

[Anonymous No.5219985]

>>5215129
When your philosophy becomes the center piece of most conversations held in high class capitalist resorts, it might be time to find a new philosophy.

[Anonymous No.5219986]

>>5219974
Mostly in "left" fields though
Even here in yurop right fields like economy and law are fairly neoliberal

[Anonymous No.5219994]

>>5219986
Marxism never dominated law or economics. Because of the goals of the discipline.

That's like asking why atheists don't dominate theology

[Anonymous No.5220000]

>>5219974
>american academia
I'd say European academia is generally more close to Marx. American academia seems to prefer softer and simplified versions.

[Anonymous No.5220003]

>>5219974
>Marx-inspired thought dominates american academia
Not really. Maybe in sociology, but that's about it.

[Anonymous No.5220006]

Marxism will never happen

[Anonymous No.5220012]

>>5220006
Are you thinking of communism? Because there was plenty of marxism in the past.

[Anonymous No.5220017]

>>5220000
lel you mean more rigorous, data-based and evidential actual economics vs simplified out-dated marxist theories?

[Anonymous No.5220018]

>>5220006
That's kind of stupid since Marxism is descriptive and not equal to communism

[Anonymous No.5220041]

>>5220017
Well that depends on the Uni.
Quite a few unis are very supportive of austrian economics and yu can't really call that stupid shit data-based or empirical

[Anonymous No.5220048]

>>5220017
Actually my post was pretty stupidly worded, what a waste of quads. I meant the humanities of course. Most academics in this field are marxist here, at least from what I've seen. When I compare American and our lectures I see a kind of simplification and too exaggerated systematization of marxist thinkers there.

[Anonymous No.5220341]

>>5220048
Americans, being simple, SAY IT ISN'T SO.

[Anonymous No.5220372]

>>5220341
I guess that's why American academia dominates every world university ranking, right? Because simplicity is beauty?

[Anonymous No.5220481]

>>5220372
>university ranking
Are you trying to prove my point?

[Anonymous No.5220489]

>>5220372
Because those 'rankings' rank universities by the number of citations they have in....English language journals. So Ohio State ends up being better than the Sorbonne.

[Anonymous No.5220499]

>>5220041
>Quite a few unis are very supportive of austrian economics

I think you're suffering from selection bias due to austrian supporters being a very vocal minority. I fucking guarantee austrian economists (as in praxeologists, gold bugs etc.) are very rare in academia.

[Anonymous No.5220525]

pre 1900 marxism
>equivalent of today's airport nonfiction trash, nobody takes it seriously

early 20th century marxism
>jews recognize it as a vehicle to become rich and they choose eastern europe for their adventures

middle and late 20th century marxism
>cargo cult with retromania, a fashion choice

[Anonymous No.5220527]

>>5220372
>Because simplicity is beauty?
Actually I'll pay this part of your inane comment.

Marxism is not simple. It is about interpenetrating active social and cultural behaviours, being rewritten by a constant process of economic (ie: material) reproduction.

When you force Marxism into "simplicity" you get schematism and dogmatism. These are respectively people suggesting that "schemas" or hesitant conjectures are reality, and people suggesting that texts precede reality.

So while there is a certain beauty in the aspect of American simplicity, one not universally shared in America, there are points and times where American simplicity is inappropriate.

Teaching Marxism to undergraduates is one point where simplicity is not desirable: the complexity of social reality requires nuance, subtlety and careful analysis. EO Wright can eat dog shit in hell.