Karl Marx (1818-1883)

[HexHammer]

I think you are confused, Marx didn't "advocate struggle between the classes", he said that the driving force in history has been labour and the conflict of classes, a conflict which could be hardly resolved under the previous material conditions of society. But Capitalism revolutionized productive forces and now for the first time there were the means to sustain a society without one class exploiting the other. It was, however, the task of the proletariat class to lead that revolution.

I'm afraid it's a selfcontradiction.

If you will have a revolution in the class system that the lower class shall lead, how well would that go? Do you really think that all the ritch people voulenteerily would give up their wealth?

You live in a dream world.

[uwot]

Then it should be easy to disprove, if I am so wrong about it.

I'm not sure what you think I need to disprove, Mr Hammer. The issue is that you are pretending to know what Karl Marx said, despite it being quite clear that you have no idea what you are talking about. As proof of that, I offer the entire written work of Marx and say to you that the ideas you ascribe to him are not there. There is no other place I can point to, Mr Hammer and say 'There it isn't.' The burden of proof is on you to point to a particular passage and say 'There it is.'

[HexHammer]

Then it should be easy to disprove, if I am so wrong about it.

I'm not sure what you think I need to disprove, Mr Hammer. The issue is that you are pretending to know what Karl Marx said, despite it being quite clear that you have no idea what you are talking about. As proof of that, I offer the entire written work of Marx and say to you that the ideas you ascribe to him are not there. There is no other place I can point to, Mr Hammer and say 'There it isn't.' The burden of proof is on you to point to a particular passage and say 'There it is.'

I have proven my point, it's just you who are in denial.

it being quite clear that you have no idea what you are talking about

You havn't pointed out where or why I don't know what I'm talking about, children would say such thing, but I understand that you are a middleaged man, isn't a bit poor argumentation for one such as you?

[uwot]

I have proven my point, it's just you who are in denial.

Well if you can't manage the entire works of Karl Marx, this thread should be more manageable. Show the point you think you have proved and the proof for it.

You havn't pointed out where or why I don't know what I'm talking about...

Here you go, Mr Hammer:

Anyone reasonbale intelligent, would know that Marx made nothing but naive fairytale statements, that can never exist well in real life.

You have not provided a single instance of any such statement.

[HexHammer]

Here you go, Mr Hammer:

Anyone reasonbale intelligent, would know that Marx made nothing but naive fairytale statements, that can never exist well in real life.

You have not provided a single instance of any such statement.

LOL! Let me try say this as delicate as I can ..you are a fucking retard, I have made specific quotes, linked to articles, yet you are still in denial.

If you look at the soviet regime, the chinese regime, or any other commie regime, how bad did it go? Whyd did they switch to capitalism?

Because Marx failed utterly.

You are so helplessly stupid, I've known you for a long time here, and you have never said anything intelligent, nor understood when I made an intelligent post.

You lack basic cognitive abilities to comprehend very basic things. I'll just put you on ignore, you can never improve.

[uwot]

LOL! Let me try say this as delicate as I can ..you are a fucking retard, I have made specific quotes, linked to articles, yet you are still in denial.

Not really, Mr Hammer, I have acknowledged the article by Ronald R. Cherry. That appears to be the only source you have read; in which case you cannot claim to know what you are talking about..

[Conde Lucanor]

I think you are confused, Marx didn't "advocate struggle between the classes", he said that the driving force in history has been labour and the conflict of classes, a conflict which could be hardly resolved under the previous material conditions of society. But Capitalism revolutionized productive forces and now for the first time there were the means to sustain a society without one class exploiting the other. It was, however, the task of the proletariat class to lead that revolution.

I'm afraid it's a selfcontradiction.

If you will have a revolution in the class system that the lower class shall lead, how well would that go? Do you really think that all the ritch people voulenteerily would give up their wealth?

You have not left your confusion. Struggle between the classes does not mean necessarily a revolution, it just means that the interests of one class collide with the interests of another. If one class exploits the other through the division of labour, as the case has been most of the time, the conditions are set for the desire to end the exploitation and therefore, for a social, political revolution. How well would that go, you ask. Well, how do you think it went for the bourgeois revolutions of the 18th and 19th century? Would you define the role of those revolutionaries as that of people that just "advocate struggle between the classes"? Wouldn't that be missing the point?

You also need to expand your concept of what a revolution is. And in the context of Marxism it is well beyond "rich people giving up their wealth". That's a Robin Hood concept which does not resemble any of the ideas that Marx or Engels produced.

You live in a dream world.

Living in a dream world means not touching base with reality. In the context of this discussion, touching base with reality is to address the issue of what Marx actually proposed. Since you are only making uneducated guesses and false assumptions learned from hearsay and myths spread in mass media (which is the reason why you cannot provide any support to your statements), I think it would be completely fair and safe to say that you're the one living in a dream world.

[Conde Lucanor]

Once we did away with the false notion that Marxism had to do with utopias, we might also get rid of some other false notions, such as the idea that Marx had devised closed, rigid systems.

Good point CL. Nevertheless, the movement he sparked became a rigid system. Those who implemented his ideas of communism had to design the system from the ground up since it wasn't something that would evolve naturally, like capitalism. In doing so the designers had to resort to force to implement Marx's Communist Manifesto. That could only be done by deliberately creating a closed and rigid system. A rigid and closed system is what occurs when a governance is engineered from the top down as Marxism/Communism was.

The rigidity of communism was noticed by the Frankfurt School. One of its disciples, Horkheimer, wondered who would replace the proletariat as the agent of the revolution once they grew complacent and old. His colleague Marcuse answered that a coalition of student, blacks feminists homosexuals and other socially marginal elements would. But for that coalition to act as Marcus envisioned you have to have an open system, which communism did not become.

Will grant you that Soviet communism was not a succesful project, largely in part because of its dogmatism and rigidity. The question is, however, whether that was implicit in Marx's theories and it was the unavoidable fate of following his principles. The clear answer is no, it wasn't. You mentioned the Frankfurt School and Marcuse, who was critical of the Soviet project, and so was Gramsci and a lot of people who declared being loyal to Marx's ideas, including, of course, the other communists enemies of Stalin, of whom he got rid of.

The other reason why the fate of the Soviet Union was not implicit in Marx's ideas is a very simple, often forgotten one. The notion that all that Marx said constituted a complete, monolithic theoretical corpus, available for all to just understand and put in practice, is a false assumption. Most of the texts from his youth (the so called Manuscripts, The German Ideology, the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right), as well as others from his older days (Grundrisse and the Theory of Surplus Value), which were of key philosophical importance inside the Marxist theoretical framework, were not recovered for the critics until the third decade of the 20th century, when there was already a form of Marxism legitimising specific situations of power in the Soviet Union and socialist parties all around the world. Surely, there was a scholastic degeneration and dogmatic use of Marx's theories, tainted with positivist postulates. And the practical results of that interpretation do not come directly from those theories (a problem that the intellectual establishment tried to do away with by figuring out the theory of the "two Marx's": one, the younger one, philosophical and sociologically immature, and the other, older one, more mature and aligned with positivists postulates).

Having said that, there are other critical stances of Marx's work, quite interesting indeed, about how the concepts of labour, its alienated form in capitalist societies and social estrangement, acquiring in Marx a level of anthropological essence, lead to a form of determinism. But that's another discussion, different from the simplistic concept of "rigid political system", meaning the bureaucratic Orwellian regimes of the Cold War era.

[HexHammer]

I think you are confused, Marx didn't "advocate struggle between the classes", he said that the driving force in history has been labour and the conflict of classes, a conflict which could be hardly resolved under the previous material conditions of society. But Capitalism revolutionized productive forces and now for the first time there were the means to sustain a society without one class exploiting the other. It was, however, the task of the proletariat class to lead that revolution.

I'm afraid it's a selfcontradiction.

If you will have a revolution in the class system that the lower class shall lead, how well would that go? Do you really think that all the ritch people voulenteerily would give up their wealth?

You have not left your confusion. Struggle between the classes does not mean necessarily a revolution, it just means that the interests of one class collide with the interests of another. If one class exploits the other through the division of labour, as the case has been most of the time, the conditions are set for the desire to end the exploitation and therefore, for a social, political revolution. How well would that go, you ask. Well, how do you think it went for the bourgeois revolutions of the 18th and 19th century? Would you define the role of those revolutionaries as that of people that just "advocate struggle between the classes"? Wouldn't that be missing the point?

You also need to expand your concept of what a revolution is. And in the context of Marxism it is well beyond "rich people giving up their wealth". That's a Robin Hood concept which does not resemble any of the ideas that Marx or Engels produced.

You speak straight out of your ass.

You don't speak of factual knowledge, but merely idyllic fairytale assumptions. Revolution = fast change. All the capitalists have been taken away their wealth, stripped of their big houses etc.
Such thing was very devestating to the motivation of producing goods, when there's not reward.

[Conde Lucanor]

You speak straight out of your ass.

A piece of advice: learn to handle your emotions when facing challenge and disagreement. It will speak well of you.

You don't speak of factual knowledge, but merely idyllic fairytale assumptions.

You still don't get it. The issue here is not whether we agree or not with what Marx said. For that we need first to pass the level where you get a notion of what Marx actually said, but that may take quite some time and effort.

Revolution = fast change. All the capitalists have been taken away their wealth, stripped of their big houses etc. Such thing was very devestating to the motivation of producing goods, when there's not reward.

If taking away things is devastating to motivation for producing goods, you will then agree with Marx that taking away the surplus value out of the workers hand is a good reason for the proletariat and society in general to overthrow its exploiters.

[HexHammer]

You don't speak of factual knowledge, but merely idyllic fairytale assumptions.

You still don't get it. The issue here is not whether we agree or not with what Marx said. For that we need first to pass the level where you get a notion of what Marx actually said, but that may take quite some time and effort.

But I do get it, you are indeed rambling.
The written word is what he said, everything else is hallusinations that allows it to be interpeted by madmen in all kinds of weird ways, which is very dangerous, and you still denies the devestating results. You are in sever denial of the tragic consequenses.

Revolution = fast change. All the capitalists have been taken away their wealth, stripped of their big houses etc. Such thing was very devestating to the motivation of producing goods, when there's not reward.

If taking away things is devastating to motivation for producing goods, you will then agree with Marx that taking away the surplus value out of the workers hand is a good reason for the proletariat and society in general to overthrow its exploiters.[/quote]Why did China and Soviet change back to capitalism? Because capitalists provides jobs, techonology, invenstments, etc. All that which Marxistic planeconomy doesn't provide, mixed with class equality.

You can't even relate to what you are saying youself, that constitues a "rain man".

[uwot]

The written word is what he said, everything else is hallusinations that allows it to be interpeted by madmen in all kinds of weird ways, which is very dangerous, and you still denies the devestating results. You are in sever denial of the tragic consequenses.

People are like that, Mr Hammer. Madmen will interpret the written word in all sorts of weird and dangerous ways; look at how some people interpret the bible or the Koran. It is not the fault of the authors that nutters start telling people who haven't read the actual words that theirs hallucinatory interpretation is the right one. Words don't make lunatics; lunatics sometimes reinterpret words. You have fallen foul of what other people, the lunatic Ronald R. Cherry for example, have said Marx said.

[Conde Lucanor]

But I do get it, you are indeed rambling.
The written word is what he said, everything else is hallusinations that allows it to be interpeted by madmen in all kinds of weird ways...

Is there something in this world not being interpreted? Adam Smith is interpreted, Hayek is interpreted, all texts and manuals about capitalism, free market, social theory in general, etc., whether critical or favorable, are interpretations. The task of good philosophical inquiry would be to separate the weird from the judicious men and the first step towards that goal would be to read the theories from the authors themselves, not resorting to dull, witless, prosaic third-hand resources. But it seems pretty obvious now that you are only aware of the common myths and popular catchlines about Marxism widespread in mass media, while completely ignoring the main sources, so it's very unlikely that you can achieve what good philosophical inquiry asks for.

which is very dangerous, and you still denies the devestating results. You are in sever denial of the tragic consequenses.

I've stated my case about the cronological problems in the interpretation of Marx's texts and given the supporting arguments, for which I haven't seen any counterresponse. But I see what's happening here: you're running away to hide in the safe common places of stereotyped political discussions, where you think you may have a shot at making your arguments look sound. So I might guess that you will go with things like "see what Stalin did" or "how about the iron curtain", which is the kind of simpleminded, man on the street argument that has been dismantled thousands of times in forums, with different versions of this counterargument: if everything made in the name of some concept is implicitly contained within that concept (in other words, if the link between subject and predicate conforms an analytic proposition, instead of a synthetic one), then concepts like democracy, justice, freedom, peace, etc., implicitly contain the results of genocide, crime and oppression linked to the political actions of capitalist superpowers. The proposition is, of course, false, so we can still achieve what those concepts denote, despite their rhetorical use.

Why did China and Soviet change back to capitalism? Because capitalists provides jobs, techonology, invenstments, etc. All that which Marxistic planeconomy doesn't provide, mixed with class equality.

Two mistakes here. First, the expression "Communism going back to capitalism" is what they call a contradictio in adjecto, since Communism, by definition, implies the progression from one stage to another, the same way that in nature a butterfly implies the evolution from the pupa stage. You don't ask if the butterfly can go back to its cocoon. In Marx's Hegelian view of historical movement, the internal contradictions of Capitalism would be resolved by its own social drives; a new society would develop from the existing one, with gradual changes, a transitional phase of Socialism (the rule of the proletariat) and a final stage of Communism, in which there wouldn't even be a state. So, what the expression mentioned above actually denotes is that Communism has not actually been achieved. That is consistent with what Marx actually said about Communism not developing in isolated countries (and he was thinking of England, France, Germany and USA) and Wallerstein's approach to social analysis through the concept of Capitalism as world-system. Still while there where so called Communist countries, the system itself continued to be Capitalism, and the political and economical dynamics of those countries were to be understood as part of Capitalism itself.

Second mistake (assuming that by "planeconomy" you mean "planned economy") is to completely ignore the increased centralized nature of capitalist economies, where the role of the state becomes ever more crucial by way of central banks and other institutions instrumental to controlling employment, inflation, prices, etc. The free competition stage of 19th century Capitalism is now gone forever. Let's not be fooled by rhetoric, the fact is that states exercise a lot of control over their economies to deal with the effects of the economic cycle by means of the so called macroeconomic policies. And what are military interventions if not the expression of the economic interests of the whole capitalist class at the global level, disguised as national interests, through the centralized action of the state?

[HexHammer]

Is there something in this world not being interpreted?

Problem is that you make a very poor interpetation. It is totally without any real life scenarios.

Problem is also that it HAS been interpeted and the results were horrorfying, but you live in a fairytale world where you totally disregard communism and all it's horrorfying things.

But I see what's happening here: you're running away to hide in the safe common places of stereotyped political discussions, where you think you may have a shot at making your arguments look sound. So I might guess that you will go with things like "see what Stalin did" or "how about the iron curtain", which is the kind of simpleminded, man on the street argument that has been dismantled thousands of times in forums, with different versions of this counterargument: if everything made in the name of some concept is implicitly contained within that concept (in other words, if the link between subject and predicate conforms an analytic proposition, instead of a synthetic one), then concepts like democracy, justice, freedom, peace, etc., implicitly contain the results of genocide, crime and oppression linked to the political actions of capitalist superpowers. The proposition is, of course, false, so we can still achieve what those concepts denote, despite their rhetorical use.

You are like a religious person devoid of reality, how the holy scribtures has been interpeted, and you selectivly interpet the scribtures in the most idyllic way possible.

Then you accuse everybody else of being misinformed, misunderstanding everything about your interpetation and you live in the delusion that you are the only one around to have the ultimate truth about the scribture.

Why did China and Soviet change back to capitalism? Because capitalists provides jobs, techonology, invenstments, etc. All that which Marxistic planeconomy doesn't provide, mixed with class equality.

Two mistakes here. First, the expression "Communism going back to capitalism" is what they call a contradictio in adjecto, since Communism, by definition, implies the progression from one stage to another, the same way that in nature a butterfly implies the evolution from the pupa stage. You don't ask if the butterfly can go back to its cocoon. In Marx's Hegelian view of historical movement, the internal contradictions of Capitalism would be resolved by its own social drives; a new society would develop from the existing one, with gradual changes, a transitional phase of Socialism (the rule of the proletariat) and a final stage of Communism, in which there wouldn't even be a state. So, what the expression mentioned above actually denotes is that Communism has not actually been achieved. That is consistent with what Marx actually said about Communism not developing in isolated countries (and he was thinking of England, France, Germany and USA) and Wallerstein's approach to social analysis through the concept of Capitalism as world-system. Still while there where so called Communist countries, the system itself continued to be Capitalism, and the political and economical dynamics of those countries were to be understood as part of Capitalism itself.

This is blatant ramblings, you are making up your own reality, what's that fairytale world called you live in? Maybe you'll find my adoptive father there.

Second mistake (assuming that by "planeconomy" you mean "planned economy") is to completely ignore the increased centralized nature of capitalist economies, where the role of the state becomes ever more crucial by way of central banks and other institutions instrumental to controlling employment, inflation, prices, etc. The free competition stage of 19th century Capitalism is now gone forever. Let's not be fooled by rhetoric, the fact is that states exercise a lot of control over their economies to deal with the effects of the economic cycle by means of the so called macroeconomic policies. And what are military interventions if not the expression of the economic interests of the whole capitalist class at the global level, disguised as national interests, through the centralized action of the state?

It's obvious you don't know how economy works, you bridge the gaps with your usual pure fantasy.

[uwot]

You are like a religious person devoid of reality, how the holy scribtures has been interpeted, and you selectivly interpet the scribtures in the most idyllic way possible.

Then you accuse everybody else of being misinformed, misunderstanding everything about your interpetation and you live in the delusion that you are the only one around to have the ultimate truth about the scribture.

Mr Hammer, Conde Lucanor has evidently read a lot of Marx and is hence in a position to offer an opinion on what Marx actually said. Your position is equivalent to critiquing the bible based only on a poor understanding of the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem Witch trials.
Did you even read the article this thread is linked to?
Is there even one thing you know Karl Marx to have actually written and can discuss in a way befitting a creature with opposable thumbs?