Read Marx, everyone, especially people that don't think they need to.
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
404 points (91.6% liked)
Memes
45517 readers
1341 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by:
hot
top
controversial
new
old
I would like to add David Graeber to that, and Kropotkin even. I don't mean to start a snowball effect that turns this into a huge list, but I feel like not enough people (especially the average person) know about them; especially Graeber who is a lot more modern.
yeah...23 pages from 1848 surely have all the right answers for the problems of a globalized economy and a society which is so fed up that it is creating its own problems.
23 pages? What are you referring to? Either way, what Marx analyzed is still relevant, even in his day overproduction led to crisis. Lenin took his analysis further once Monopoly Capitalism became the standard, but the same principles apply.
Marx manifest is 23 pages long. And i wouldn't take Lenin as someone to refer to...his "red terror" says enough. Of course one could say that doesn't mean he was wrong about other things, yeah but where does that leave us?
The Communist Manifesto isn't what I'm talking about. The CM is a worker pamphlet, not an explanation of Marxism. The Principles of Communism is a much better introductory work, and for Marx himself, Wage Labor and Capital as well as Value, Price and Profit are excellent texts describing Capitalism. I would also add Socialism: Utopian and Scientific for an introduction to Historical Materialism, and the failures of Utopian Socialists like the Owenites.
Lenin is absolutely worth reading, he was the leader of the first genuine Marxist state, and his contributions to Marxist theory are critical. Specifically, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism furthers Marx's analysis into the modern era of Monopoly Capitalism, aka Imperialism, which Marx was only alive to see the very beginnings of before he passed away.
Do you mind explaining to me how monopoly capitalism is aka imperialism?
The best way is reading the text I linked over it, which includes proof, analysis, and far more information than I can put in a single comment.
However, the extreme shorthand, is that competition results in monopoly, and monopoly seeks new international sources of raw materials and labor that is cheaper, using predatory loans and exporting industrial Capital directly.
The US, for example, has huge influence over the IMF, and makes the bulk of its value by producing in the Global South and lobbying to keep wages low.
That sure is a lot of stuff to read and i bet its dry lecture. To be honest, i won't start looking into them, so thus far you have me. Maybe it's ignorant but Lenin, for me, goes in the same pot as Stalin and Mao and the baddest of them all from Austria. I don't know if there are good ideas in their writings/ methods/ ideologies...what i know is that these are people who abused their power. They ordered people killed or at least restrained who wouldn't comply to them...so i don't know if their works and deeds are a thing to build upon.
I not very educated on the matter but i'd think that "Post-growth" in capitalism maybe is a solution or at least a way to a solution?
Capitalism sucks, yeah. They steal from you, yeah. Thing is that this happens in every system as long as humans are involved. So maybe we as a hole have to go through somekind of capitalistic-cataclysm, which i don't want for me or my kids, but has to happen none the less to come up with something neither Marx & Co. or capitalists envisioned as of yet.
Honestly, if you've got the time and the capability I would recommend reading at least Capital 1, it's incredibly well written.
That sure is a lot of stuff to read and i bet its dry lecture.
It isn't, haha. Pretty easy to read!
To be honest, i won't start looking into them, so thus far you have me. Maybe it's ignorant but Lenin, for me, goes in the same pot as Stalin and Mao and the baddest of them all from Austria.
Bold claims for someone who refuses to even look at the text, let alone read it. Additionally, equating the Communists to the Nazis is in fact Nazi Apologia.
I don't know if there are good ideas in their writings/ methods/ ideologies...what i know is that these are people who abused their power. They ordered people killed or at least restrained who wouldn't comply to them...so i don't know if their works and deeds are a thing to build upon.
Do you know that? You evidently don't read, so where do your ideas come from? Imagination?
I not very educated on the matter but i'd think that "Post-growth" in capitalism maybe is a solution or at least a way to a solution?
What on Earth is "post-growth Capitalism?" Where did you pull that from, and why do you already think it capable of being a solution?
Capitalism sucks, yeah. They steal from you, yeah. Thing is that this happens in every system as long as humans are involved. So maybe we as a hole have to go through somekind of capitalistic-cataclysm, which i don't want for me or my kids, but has to happen none the less to come up with something neither Marx & Co. or capitalists envisioned as of yet.
How, exactly, are people "stolen from" in Socialism? You don't know what you're talking about, but you sure do have strong opinions about it.
Well I compare the extreme left with the extreme right since it is basically the same imho. Different reasoning for the mindset of "what's not with us is against us".
Communists committed the same crimes as the Nazis so of into the same cell and the key is best disposed of.
And the other big problem with pure socialism:
Why hasn't it worked yet? No Utopia as of yet, only repression, human rights violation and death.
It's as if the human factor is the point where there is change needed, not the system itself.
Well I compare the extreme left with the extreme right since it is basically the same imho. Different reasoning for the mindset of "what's not with us is against us".
No offense, but this is a childish view of politics. The extreme left is categorized by trying to care for the entire population, the extreme right is categorized by intense nationalism, xenphobia, and brutal class stratification.
Communists committed the same crimes as the Nazis so of into the same cell and the key is best disposed of.
No, they did not. Read Blackshirts and Reds. The Communists and the Nazis represented entirely different groups, and the Communists dramatically improved the lives of their citizenry while the Nazis brutally crushed them.
And the other big problem with pure socialism:
Why hasn't it worked yet? No Utopia as of yet, only repression, human rights violation and death.
It has worked and continues to work. Read more than US state propaganda. Utopianism is anti-Marxist, Marxists advocate for Scientific Socialism.
It's as if the human factor is the point where there is change needed, not the system itself.
This is Idealism. What's considered Human Nature is expressed and reinforced by the system itself, the Mode of Production.
Read a book sometime.
"It has worked and continues to work. Read more than US state propaganda. Utopianism is anti-Marxist, Marxists advocate for Scientific Socialism."
Yeah...the DDR worked so well they had to build a wall to keep people from leaving the country.
UdssR worked also so well that the ex-member nations would rather burn than return.
North Korea is such an awesome system it also hinders it's people at leaving. Oh and the regular parades to praise the leader... much social yeah.
Uh and China...nice place to live? Yeah, I sincerely believe that but you say something, anything against the system? Ups...bye bye social points. And the internet is totally not censored. Tian'anmen square? Nothing ever happened!
Yeah...the DDR worked so well they had to build a wall to keep people from leaving the country.
Yep, people would get free, high quality education, and then go to the west to make more money.
UdssR worked also so well that the ex-member nations would rather burn than return.
Wrong, actually. The vast majority regret the fall of the USSR and say they lived better under it.
North Korea is such an awesome system it also hinders it's people at leaving. Oh and the regular parades to praise the leader... much social yeah.
None of this is a point other than saying you aren't allowed to emigrate, which isn't even entirely true.
Uh and China...nice place to live? Yeah, I sincerely believe that but you say something, anything against the system? Ups...bye bye social points. And the internet is totally not censored. Tian'anmen square? Nothing ever happened!
-
Social Credit is largely a myth, Capitalist countries have worse systems.
-
Capitalist internet is also censored.
-
Tian'anmen Square in April 1989 was actually peaceful, the conflicts and deaths happened outside the square itself, hence why there's a western myth that the CPC is somehow covering up a mass-Maoist protest against Dengist reforms, when the CPC acknowledges that hundreds of people were killed that day in the areas surrounding the Square.
Please, read. Anything.
Yep, people would get free, high quality education, and then go to the west to make more money.
So you shoot them for leaving the country because they got education in your system? Yeah...very social of you.
Wrong, actually. The vast majority regret the fall of the USSR and say they lived better under it.
Nostalgia: A mood triggered by discomfort with the present and filled with an indefinite longing, which is expressed in a return to a past time that has been transfigured in the imagination and whose fashion, art, music, etc. is revived.
i bet we're far better of than the UdssR was. Again: you don't comply? Ok Gulag for you!
- Social Credit is largely a myth, Capitalist countries have worse systems.
- Capitalist internet is also censored.
- Tian’anmen Square in April 1989 was actually peaceful, the conflicts and deaths happened outside the square itself, hence why there’s a western myth that the CPC is somehow covering up a mass-Maoist protest against Dengist reforms, when the CPC acknowledges that hundreds of people were killed that day in the areas surrounding the Square.
- maybe, ok. I don't see what the benefit is from that being a hoax.
- well you can look up nearly all warcrimes ever committed. Try using chinese Google to look up their warcrimes....whoops nothing there. Uighurs? No....nothing happening.
- Really dude? the Massacre is a myth or at least the covering up of it? C'mon...pray tell me you believe at least the moonlanding was a real thing
So you shoot them for leaving the country because they got education in your system? Yeah...very social of you.
The East was basically funding the West's education for skilled labor, so the West got all of the free advantage from the East's social programs.
Nostalgia: A mood triggered by discomfort with the present and filled with an indefinite longing, which is expressed in a return to a past time that has been transfigured in the imagination and whose fashion, art, music, etc. is revived.
i bet we're far better of than the UdssR was. Again: you don't comply? Ok Gulag for you!
Yep, the Soviet system had better metrics than the Capitalist systems.
- maybe, ok. I don't see what the benefit is from that being a hoax.
Red scare propaganda, the US is preparing for war with the PRC.
- well you can look up nearly all warcrimes ever committed. Try using chinese Google to look up their warcrimes....whoops nothing there. Uighurs? No....nothing happening.
You can search and even visit Xinjiang
- Really dude? the Massacre is a myth or at least the covering up of it? C'mon...pray tell me you believe at least the moonlanding was a real thing
There was no massacre on the square. There was lots of fighting and killing in the surrounding areas, between a few hundred and couple thousand people died that day when adding up PLA and rioter deaths, but the fighting didn't happen on the square. The west uses the fact that on Chinese sites there's no mention of a massacre on the square to pretend the CPC is saying it didn't happen anywhere.
The insomnia is really getting to me, so you're getting it.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa fucking read what cowbee gave you.
I not very educated on the matter
Aaaaaaaaaaa. Maybe educate yourself, for example by reading, maybe what cowbee linked.
They ordered people killed or at least restrained who wouldn’t comply to them
This is what states do, they are tools of repression. You've basically limited yourself to reading from a subset of anarchists and no one else with this statement alone.
I don't see many central European states killing people for the reason of having different ideologies these days. And if they did their leaders wouldn't be celebrated for the books they wrote.
Without any kind of repressive system you'll have anarchy.
I don’t see many central European states killing people for the reason of having different ideologies these days.
Of course not, they are nestled comfortably within the imperial core, they can better-afford to export their killing (see Germany's devotion to Israel). Most imperial core states are not like America, where protest leaders get lynched and then it gets called a suicide, because they rely on vassal states to be attack dogs.
As their position in the core becomes less and less firm, you will find that their liberalism decays into something much harsher. This has already begun with growing fascist movements in Germany, France, Italy, and so on.
Without any kind of repressive system you’ll have anarchy.
Agreed, though this is not necessarily a bad thing, depending on the particular structure of the society. However, in the meantime, it is also the socialist position that the state is repressive and, in the circumstances we currently find ourselves in, repression is necessary, it's just a matter of who is doing the repressing and who is being repressed.
Hm I'd say, as a central European, that our continent had centuries of war and destruction and we finally left that behind. And I have no fucking clue what the Imperial core is.
Considering the Anarchy: I believe that people need to be governed over. No order, no civilization...
Hm I’d say, as a central European, that our continent had centuries of war and destruction and we finally left that behind.
A lot of people throughout history have liked to believe that when they don't have war, it's because they are more enlightened than other countries. This is idealist and self-flattering nonsense. Central Europe, being all in multiple levels of alliance with each other and having buffer states to their east and south (some in those alliances, some just as lackeys to those alliances, notably Ukraine), they are in a very convenient position to declare themselves more civilized than those war-like brutes who live in the global south, etc.
You'd think if merely having a history of going to war was all that was needed to become peaceful, Germany would surely be the most solid among you as being an enlightened nation (and I kind of wonder if you're talking about Central Europe^tm because your German or Austrian), but Germany was glad to join the US for years in its blatantly imperialist war in Afghanistan, meanwhile the Germans could keep swilling their beer in their "peace" because they were invading from much further away than Afghanistan could hope to retaliate. Then again, I assume you'll say that the higher level of development is because of Central European enlightenment too.
And I have no fucking clue what the Imperial core is.
Here you are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_countries
Considering the Anarchy: I believe that people need to be governed over. No order, no civilization…
We must consider why conflict emerges. Obviously in our current conditions, if you just removed government, things would immediately regress to feudalism, but why is that? Could it have something to do with individuals already having dictatorial power over others? Since surely they would be the new warlords. Could it have something to do with the development of production? Since surely the petty fighting would be, in part, due to resources already being too scarce for there to be enough to go around. Just some things to think about. Of course, you could say the socialist and even the anarchist don't believe we should ever be lawless, but rather that the ultimate issue is being governed "over" rather than having people as a collective keep each other in line.
I don't think I'll actually move the needle on this one though, whereas perhaps I could help you learn about what modern imperialism is, so I'm fine if we drop it.
😂 The three volumes of Capital alone are about 2,000 pages, then there are Marx’s other works, and Engel’s works, and Lenin’s works, and onward. Hundreds of thousands of pages.
Das Kapital is the most cited book in the social sciences published before 1950
Marx is one of the most quoted thinkers ever, and this comes even from the newspapers which are hostile to him lol.
He's not talking about the communist manifesto, he's talking about Das Kapital. If you don't care to read it there are YouTube summaries such as this one . If you want to get straight into the meat of the subject you can start from chapter 4 and if you think it's all stupid take the 5-6 minutes to listen to chapter 7 so you'd at least know where socialists are coming from when they say capitalists are stealing your money.
Communism A system of government where the country's wealth is concentrated into a small, ruling class of billionaires, who use the news media they own to keep the lower classes fighting with each other while they . . . the rich . . . run off with all the farking money.
Oh wait. that's capitalism. I don't know how I got those two systems confused.
I disagree, I think socialism can and will beat capitalism eventually.
This meme isn't saying Socialism will not prevail. Rather, it's saying that even though Socialists can't individually beat Capitalism right now, as Capitalism decays Socialists increase in number and Capitalists weaken in strength, making Socialist victory more probable over time.
And a strongman dictator usually beats socialism
Beat or being able to flourish once the Goth Galadriel is gone?
Because historically the revolutionary forces (the one toppling the bourgeoisie) are extremely shitty governors (just continuing mass murdering & plundering which kinda makes sense if you think how & what they have been through).
In very few historical instances of regime changes all the previous actors as well as anyone involved in the revolution were prohibited in forming the new structure. This helps a lot to actually change the system.
You wouldn't want to move from a czar to a dictator, thats long term the same bullshit, only makes things better in short term.
Same with any oligarchy, if it exists and has power than it matters little what kind of regime it technically is.
Edit: I might have chosen poor words but I didn't mean that the ideologies behind revolutions make for poor government, just literally the force of a few 100 or 1000 people directly involved in the forceful part of the revolution. The fighty-fighty people.
Because historically the revolutionary forces (the one toppling the bourgeoisie) are extremely shitty governors (just continuing mass murdering & plundering which kinda makes sense if you think how & what they have been through).
Historically this is false 👍
No, I meant the immediate people involved in the revolution, those often don't fair well & don't last long (eg people in a party, not necessarily main headline names). Iirc Russia changed almost everyone in charge in the 20s & 30s to a more stable structure afterwards.
In such system changes the country often goes through another (lesser) system revolution a few years after the first one (when the focus is to just keep shit running) & it's better that people involved change at that point too.
Like what happened with Robespierre (~Jacobins), the early two or three years under Lenin, and I think Slovakia or Poland when they transitionv away from communism they forbid running for office to anyone that held any official power under the previous regime (the same people that formally facilitated the end of communism since it as that kind of revolution).
What you showed is what happened after after that, so the point of revolution. And I couldn't agree more with that. My point was not in that. It's that you need admins and regular politicians to run any system smoothly, and the few 1000s of people revolutioning arent usually the best at tirelessly debating a monetary policy or what road laws to use.
(Oh, the "plundering" part - yes, perhaps the wrong word to use, I meant that fairly literally, irl taking things, not doing it in an organised legal manner which is how "the 1% gets to exist" – and you can se that clearly in the Russia chart too, 90s capitalism was the framework for that, so "paper" not raiding rich houses)
Yes, the socialists have definitely been winning this epic fight.
The point of the meme is that as Capitalism deteriorates, and it must deteriorate, more Workers become aligned with Leftists and at some point there will be a shift from quantitative to qualitative, ie at some level there will be a dramatic change, like the boiling point of water.
You guys have been predicting the collapse of capitalism for like 150 years. At some point you have to admit that your theory was wrong and go back to the drawing board. This is just sad.
Capitalism has been struggling with the problem of collapse, and in fact it did from pretty early on in that history you mention, with Italy, Germany, Japan, Spain, and so on. The problem isn't just going to go away, because a system that needs infinite expansion in a finite world necessarily will collapse. It can sometimes "innovate" its way into having more time, and modern imperialism is just such an example of that innovation, pushing much of the poverty capitalism demands into the third world, but that just changes the specific circumstances of the problem rather than eliminating it. The US as we speak is continuously losing its grip on its hegemony as the imperial periphery and semi-periphery develop sovereignty. History will not end.
The fall of Rome took over two and a half centuries.
Sometimes you need to accept things are broken and move toward fixing them, not blindly stumble forward expecting everything to right itself.
Capitalism is less than 400 years old, and feudalism took probably triple that to fully die out. These are world-historic processes taking a long time, involving new energy sources, technological developments, and declining surpluses.
Capitalism has had many crackups already, and is now in its late stage in most of the world. Even most of the populations of capitalist countries, when polled, are pessimistic about their future.
You're not wrong, capitalism has a million failings, but the people running the show always find new ways to keep the status quo. They can buy the system whenever needed, while the masses can, at best, get a free beating from the cops