/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6913164]

How do I into Marxism? The Marxism people talk about when they're not talking about economics

[Anonymous No.6913178]

I dunno, maybe by reading Marx?

[Anonymous No.6913186]

Mao, with Althusser and Badiou for auxillary vocab.

[Anonymous No.6913187]

>>6913164
>The Marxism people talk about when they're not talking about economics
Read some of Marxs political analysis:

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/

The Civil War in France
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/

[Anonymous No.6913189]

pic related all you need to know.

[Anonymous No.6913197]

>>6913189
>Thomas Sowell

[Anonymous No.6913224]

>>6913189
He can't tell Marx from Bookchin and neither can the WSJ.

[Anonymous No.6913234]

>>6913186
>>6913187
>>6913189

Thank you kind anons

[Anonymous No.6913265]

>>6913164
>The Marxism people talk about when they're not talking about economics
Are you joshing with me?

Read the Wealth of Nations first so you know what Marx and Engels are talking about, and then pick up the Marx-Engels Reader. If you don't get it from the source then you're no better than any other mindless prol that gloms onto anything their peers say is "cool".

[Anonymous No.6913550]

>>6913265
Not OP but I'm currently reading the Wealth of Nations and I'm interested in learning more about Marxism. Please could you recommend what books I should read after the Wealth of Nations. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

[Anonymous No.6913588]

>>6913550

Hegel, is by far the most important. If you like Smith, Hegel was heavily influenced by him, so you might find interesting to read Hegel in his own right.

Ricardo's economics, possibly, if you're really dedicated.

Marx was also a fan of Spinoza, so you could check out his Ethics. I also found Aristotle (particularly his Politics) interesting to compare. You wouldn't need to read these to understand him, but its interesting to see how he took up themes latent in their work.

[Anonymous No.6913614]

>>6913164

Obviously there really isn't marxism separate from economics, but if you're interested in the more historical aspects his thought, you should read the German Ideology; it's a pretty straightforward book.

[Anonymous No.6913625]

>>6913588
Thanks so much for the response, I will make a note of those authors and read one of their books once I finish Wealth of Nations.

[Anonymous No.6913666]

>>6913625

No problem. Also, if your interested in the relationship between Smith and Marx, you should pay attention to the latter part of the book where Smith moves from what we would think of as economics to sociology and politics, as Marx's social theory is very similar. Sometimes that part is omitted from abridged editions because economists don't find it interested, but its worth reading.

[Anonymous No.6913690]

>>6913666
Thanks for the tip, I will make sure to check whether the version i'm reading is the abridged one. I'm not an economics student and I enjoy reading about sociology and politics so it's not too much of an issue for me. Whether I fully understand it is a different matter though, haha.

[Anonymous No.6914842]

>>6913164
>How do I into Marxism? The Marxism people talk about when they're not talking about economics

Engels. Condition of the Working Class in England 1844.
Thompson. Making of the English Working Class.
Engels. Family, Private Property and the State.
Marx. 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
Engels. Anti-Duhring.
Braverman. Labor and Monopoly Capital.

[Anonymous No.6914880]

>>6913164
Jefferson never said that, OP.

[Anonymous No.6914890]

>>6914880
Who are you quoting?

[Anonymous No.6915463]

>>6913690
Get into Darwin eventually as well, as his ideas maturated in a similar environment as Marx's.

[Anonymous No.6915478]

>>6913614
This.

Also, I can't believed no one's mentioned it, but the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right.

[Anonymous No.6916730]

>>6913164
How to be a first world "revolutionary" Marxist.

Step 1:
Call yourself a "revolutionary" socialist fighting for the overthrow of capital and call anyone that believes in pragmatism or actually doing anything in reality that isn't just circlejerking over obscure theory in meetings with three or four other people, 1 of which just wished to derail the entire thing into identity politics and the other an undercover FBI agent, a "reactionary liberal". "reactionary liberal" is the most dangerous weapon in your socialist arsenal, so make sure to use it on literally anyone who disagrees with any of your points, especially if they question the idea that the USSR and DPRK was anything but utopia on earth.

Step 2:
Find comrades online in such great communities such as /r/socialism and Revleft. Here you take the Revolution to the next level, but yelling at Bernie Sanders supporters and then calling for the ban of anyone that doesn't agree with you or your Tankie clique, here you prove that Socialism doesn't always result in an authoritarian clique by forming an authoritarian clique to get into modding and admin positions and ban literally everyone who you simply don't like. Make sure to make the quip "Off to the Gulag" for you 100 upvotes from your sychophantic shills.

Step 3:
Don't actually read a word Marx. If most Socialists actually read Marx, they would realize that he actually praised Capitalism quite a fucking lot and thus would cause paradox in the mind of the "first world Revolutionary" and cause his head to implode from the need to call Marx as "Reactionary Liberal". If you need to read anyone, Read Lenin, even if what Lenin says of State Capitalism and Vangardism is the complete fucking opposite of Engels wrote.

Step 5:
Remember that Bernie Sanders is the worst thing on earth, while you defend Putin, Khamenei and Assad (literal ethnocentric fascist) because Socialism? Do everything you can to undermine the Sanders campaign even though that helps noone but Clinton and Republicans.

Now go out Comrade, go fight the Revolution! If you feel the need to do anything in the real world, throw bricks through windows and act like a general jackass because mindlessness aggressiveness and vandalism = "revolutionary vigor"

[Anonymous No.6916751]

>>6916730
>someone actually took the time to write this
embarrassing, especially considering it's obvious you aren't even familiar with the marxist stereotype

[Anonymous No.6916769]

>>6916730
This so much.

[Anonymous No.6916772]

>>6916730
>If most Socialists actually read Marx, they would realize that he actually praised Capitalism quite a fucking lot and thus would cause paradox in the mind of the "first world Revolutionary" and cause his head to implode from the need to call Marx as "Reactionary Liberal".
Are you fucking off your mind?

[Anonymous No.6916777]

>>6916751
What? stereotype is that? Long haired hippy on university campuses yelling on a soapbox?

That's completely unrealistic. Socialists actually doing anything in real life that isn't making asses of themselves by trying to hijack other peoples activist events/protests and throwing bricks through windows?

Also I'm a Marxist, I've been part of Marxist groups, I've very familiar with Socialist communities online (/r/socialism, Libcom, Revleft, Revforum) and I can tell you right now, Libcom is the only actually decent place that hasn't descended into Tankies circlejerking eachother and denying genocide while attacking Bernie Sanders supporters.

If you are OP, PLEASE read Marx, but please don't become a fucking tankie zealot who throws pragmatism out the window for ideological purity.

>>6916772
Marx criticizes Capitalism, he still praises it numerous times for it's productive capability, the wealth it brings and "dragging people out barbarism" is I'm to paraphrase his own words.

[Anonymous No.6916791]

>>6916777
>he still praises it numerous times for it's productive capability, the wealth it brings and "dragging people out barbarism" is I'm to paraphrase his own words.
He praises it in comparison to it's predecessor, feudalism. The only form of socioeconomic organization that Marx actually praised was the one immune to antithesis due to abolition of class struggle, and thus the necessity of it - communism.

[Anonymous No.6916817]

>The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigor in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former exoduses of nations and crusades.

>...The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

>The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralized the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralization. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class interest, one frontier, and one customs tariff.

>The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization or rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground -- what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor?

[Anonymous No.6916823]

>>6913164
ask on /r/criticaltheory
anonymous boards are beset with paid shills since PR folks realised 4chan matters. braindead hipsters will repost les funny memes on tumblR and facebook.