Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Is Reading Marx Necessary?

Absolutely. But it is not necessary(outside of academia) to read Jung to understand the concepts now, and the concepts themselves have changed through different schools of thought since Jung first popularised them.
 
But that is what the thread is about. I would not touch twitter or facebook through 20 self installed proxies when it comes to debating politics. I would advise others to do the same.
 
To sum up my perspective on this I would say that Marx (although a very clever chap and highly influential) changed nothing in socialism essentially apart from articulating commonly held believes into academia.
 
To sum up my perspective on this I would say that Marx (although a very clever chap and highly influential) changed nothing in socialism essentially apart from articulating commonly held believes into academia.
so you didn't notice the division from prior-existing notions of utopian socialist thought to what marx and engels described as scientific socialism :facepalm:

you didn't notice the russian socialists' adoption of marx :facepalm:

you're not very observant.
 
so you didn't notice the division from prior-existing notions of utopian socialist thought to what marx and engels described as scientific socialism :facepalm:

you didn't notice the russian socialists' adoption of marx :facepalm:

you're not very observant.

Maybe I am just being stupid but I am pretty fucking sure that most forms of socialism before Marx were just as 'scientific' in that they changed according to their enviroment and used history to predict future... it all seems like academic pretence to me. These techniques already existed ... they just articulated them into acedimia.
 
Maybe I am just being stupid but I am pretty fucking sure that most forms of socialism before Marx were just as 'scientific' in that they changed according to their enviroment and used history to predict future... it all seems like academic pretence to me. These techniques already existed ... they just articulated them into acedimia.
yeh. your opinion might be better informed if you read e.g. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Engels_Socialism_Utopian_and_Scientific.pdf
 
Maybe I am just being stupid but I am pretty fucking sure that most forms of socialism before Marx were just as 'scientific' in that they changed according to their enviroment and used history to predict future... it all seems like academic pretence to me. These techniques already existed ... they just articulated them into acedimia.
You've posted three times what anyone else on this thread has, but it boils down to this: you think reading Marx is pretentious. Despite championing Chomsky, who is literally an academic, your criticism of Marx is that he:

changed nothing in socialism essentially apart from articulating commonly held believes into academia.

I would go into the fact that his insights into commodity relationships, into alienation, into the material conditions for change, and so on, were not "commonly held beliefs", but were novel syntheses (based on existing work, but moved forward and popularised by him), that were a valuable contribution to revolutionary analysis, but since you'll just bluff and bluster*, I'll not bother. (*Like when you pretended you knew what the First International was, but, amazingly, given your verbosity on this thread, didn't).

As Butchers implies, there are criticisms that can be made. But not on the basis of, at best scant, understandings of secondary sources. And there's a great deal to criticize in the way Marx's work was later interpreted, resembling his actual work less as we progress along the line from Engels to Lenin to Trotsky and on. But your focus has been on completely dismissing him, without having even read him. (I know you say you have, but nothing you've said convinces me that you have, or if you have that you've understood it).

And until you actually do any reading, that's an end to it.
 
Maybe I am just being stupid but I am pretty fucking sure that most forms of socialism before Marx were just as 'scientific' in that they changed according to their enviroment and used history to predict future... it all seems like academic pretence to me. These techniques already existed ... they just articulated them into acedimia.

You're not stupid. You're struggling like so many of us do. So don't give up, there are those who are able to digest and fully comprehend and those of us it takes a bit longer to get to grips/appreciate.

From what I can remember over 30 years ago, Marx was highly influential and even his detractors (from various on the left spectrum) would quote/reccommend/acknowledge his output and bearing on modern socialism.
 
So, to summarise my understanding of what Marx says of capitalism, based on what I've read and heard.

1. Capitalism is a necessary part of social evolution that should be temporary. Necessary in the sense it helps societies grow the requisite industrial basis for the next stage.
2. Socialism, as a stage prior to communism, requires a vanguard part or 'dictatorship of the proletariat' (not dictatorship in the sense we'd term it) to protect that burgeoning society/revolution.
3. Profit tends to fall over time and the LTV explains why: increased constant capital reduces variable capital which leads to a lower amount of surplus value. Less profit. Lower wages - and less income for people to buy things with. Marx makes a bunch of novel predictions to support claims that the LTV is true. I won't repeat them here because I can't remember them.
4. That's as far as I got.
 
You've posted three times what anyone else on this thread has, but it boils down to this: you think reading Marx is pretentious. Despite championing Chomsky, who is literally an academic, your criticism of Marx is that he:



I would go into the fact that his insights into commodity relationships, into alienation, into the material conditions for change, and so on, were not "commonly held beliefs", but were novel syntheses (based on existing work, but moved forward and popularised by him), that were a valuable contribution to revolutionary analysis, but since you'll just bluff and bluster*, I'll not bother. (*Like when you pretended you knew what the First International was, but, amazingly, given your verbosity on this thread, didn't).



Ok, your right I have acted like a child on this thread. I have actually been quite snotty about it. Sorry. And your right I did have to google first international :oops: My actual intention got caught up in the thread title and I only ever truly intended to say that reading Marx is not essential for say ... direct action.

To be honest (your going to hate me) ... I had this 95% proof speed and this Anarco-Communist lad in my squat waffling on about Marx so I listened to it all on audiobook whizzing my tits off whilst sitting in-front of a search engine and discussing it with him over the course of a day or so. Sounds stupid but speed is really good for the uptake of information (I once taught somebody to use air-crack against wep/wpa networks in 3/4 of an hour who had never used a terminal before) .


Anyway , you have convince me i must have missed something. So this evening I will start reading it and pay more attention then I did when I was a 28 year old punk off my tits on speed. Sorry for being a nob-end. :)
 
I know, i know... :oops: ... thanks for the pity like. Just having a tea break . I am really enjoying this !
 
2. Socialism, as a stage prior to communism, requires a vanguard part or 'dictatorship of the proletariat' (not dictatorship in the sense we'd term it) to protect that burgeoning society/revolution.
I'm not well today, but remind me to come back to this. It looks to me like Leninism. There's ways to read what Marx meant by certain passages in the Manifesto. But I'm not well enough to be coherent today.
 
Sorry for being a pain again Danny ... and very sincerely ... get well soon.
I am enjoying reading Capital immensely BTW so thank you again.
 
feudalism_then_now_2.png

Surely the right hand side is "capitalism"?
 
Sorry, it is the emotion i am feeling when reading this. And yes I did start at the beginning... it is a very good place to start.
Industrial feudalism is a scientific way of analysing capitalism keeping within the traditions of Marx`s method.
To put it another way Capitalism is the ideal. Industrial feudalism is the reality.
 
Last edited:
We don't live under industrial feudalism. Otherwise I would have a miniature factory and would have to give a portion of its output to a local lord.
 
Back
Top Bottom