[Kasu]

Marxist economics, like every other Marxist field, is more advanced than it's bourgeois predecessors. Bourgeois economics fails at where Marxism succeeds. Just like bourgeois science fails compared to Marxist science, (Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky all made scientific predictions that are still valid today, even as modern scientists are just starting to get the picture) because Marxists use the dialectical method, which is a much more advanced method than the scientific method. Just as Marxism is born out of the working class, the most advanced class that was created after the bourgeoisie, and thus, will inherit society. That's why the Soviet Union, being a workers state, although wasn't the most technologically advanced, was the most advanced country in the 20th Century, because workers' states come after bourgeois states. Marxist economics come after bourgeois economics, and thus take off where bourgeois economics failed to finish. Marxism is superior in every field.

[Eauz]

Marxist economics, like every other Marxist field, is more advanced than it's bourgeois predecessors. Bourgeois economics fails at where Marxism succeeds. Just like bourgeois science fails compared to Marxist science, (Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky all made scientific predictions that are still valid today, even as modern scientists are just starting to get the picture) because Marxists use the dialectical method, which is a much more advanced method than the scientific method. Just as Marxism is born out of the working class, the most advanced class that was created after the bourgeoisie, and thus, will inherit society. That's why the Soviet Union, being a workers state, although wasn't the most technologically advanced, was the most advanced country in the 20th Century, because workers' states come after bourgeois states. Marxist economics come after bourgeois economics, and thus take off where bourgeois economics failed to finish. Marxism is superior in every field.

Whoa, I can understand where you're coming from but cool it with the utopian ideals and concepts. It's one thing to say these things, you're going to have to actually explain in more detail if we're to take what you said with anything more than a grain of sand.

[Vera Politica]

Kasu, how exactly is the dialectical method far superior that the scientific method? What metric are you using to qualify this opinion? Moreover, does this distinction hold that Marxism is not a science because its use of the dialectical method instead of the scientific method? (the dialectical method is a very old method that dates back to ancient philosophy) Sorry for the burgeoning questions, it just seems that you throw a lot of things out there without clarification - and I tend to side with Eauz on this.

[Kasu]

It's not at all surprising that a Stalinist and agnostic would object to what I just said.

[grassroots1]

Come on though, Kasu, Vera's questions are legitimate and I'd like to see them answered as well. I don't actually think they have answers, but I want to see your response nonetheless.

[Kasu]

Perhaps some of these questions can be answered in Leon Trotsky- Culture and Socialism

Matters are more complicated and worse when it comes to the social sciences and the so-called "humanities". Even here, of course, the desire to know what is was fundamentally at work. Due to this we have had, by the way, the brilliant school of classical bourgeois economists. But class interest, which is felt in the social sciences much more directly and imperatively than in natural science, soon brought to a halt the development of economic thought in bourgeois society. In this field we communists are better armed, however, than in any other. Basing themselves on bourgeois science and criticizing it, the socialist theoreticians who were awakened by the class struggle of the proletariat created, in the works of Marx and Engels, the powerful method of historical materialism and its unsurpassed application in Capital. This does not mean, of course, that we are insured against the influence of bourgeois ideas in the fields of economics and sociology as a whole. No, at every step the most vulgar professorial-socialistic and philistine-populist tendencies burst into our everyday practice from the old "treasure-houses" of knowledge, seeking nourishment for themselves in the amorphous and contradictory relations of the transitional period. But even in this realm we have the irreplaceable criteria of Marxism which have been verified and enriched in Lenin's works. And the less we restrict ourselves to the experience of today, the more widely we embrace world-wide economic development as a whole, separating its basic tendencies from conjunctural changes, the more decisive will be our victory over vulgar economists and sociologists.

[Eauz]

Kasu, please come to the table and answer the questions. You haven't really explained yourself and now you're just linking to Trotsky with a random quote that doesn't actually do anything other than what you originally posted.

In addition, there is no use for labels such as Stalinists and Agnostic in this sub-forum. All it does is spread idiocy and is seen more as a one-liner than of any value to the discussion. Please explain yourself and stop hiding behind Trotsky's literature.

[Vera Politica]

It is quite clear, Kasu (as Eauz noted as well), that the quotation in question doesn't address any of my questions (not even vaguely or cryptically). Do you know what you're talking about? Do you have any substantial matter in your opinion behind mere rhetoric?

[Kasu]

I don't have time nor do I care. I know what I'm talking about, anyone who has read capital would understand what I'm talking about, how Marxism goes a step farther than its bourgeois predecessors, how socialism is the next historical stage of society that follows after bourgeois society, how capitalism, along with the bourgeois intelligentsia, are incapable of finishing the tasks that they started, the industrialization of agriculture being one of them. As Trotsky noted, those tasks are passed on entirely over to socialism.

Am I the only Marxist on this board? It would appear so. Why isn't anyone else stepping up to the plate to defend it? Again, it's unsurprising coming from the petty-bourgeois ex-left.

[Vera Politica]

I know what I'm talking about

From your comments, sadly, quite doubtful.

[Okonkwo]

Am I the only Marxist on this board?

Has it ever occurred to you that you might be the one with the lack of philosophical perspective? Your comments are quite bold and confident but you do not seem to have any justification for making them, as you cannot back a single one of them.
Your continued claim of being the only Marxist (whatever that is supposed to mean) on this forum appears rather ridiculous when it becomes apparent that you do not have the theoretical means of explaining your oh so very enlightened position. Your arrogance is entirely misplaced, especially in the face of such truly knowledgeable and intelligent Marxist like Potemkin and Vera Politica. It is rather startling how you can place yourself above them without even the hint of any substantial justification for your aloofness.
Now, if I am wrong, please do step down from your high horse in order to enlighten us mere human beings and lead us out of our ignorance into the light of your superiority.

[Kasu]

Potemkin, maybe. But I haven't seen these few marxists post in quite some time. Vera Politica, on the other hand, rejects the philosophical and theoretical foundations of Marxism.

[Vera Politica]

Vera Politica, on the other hand, rejects the philosophical and theoretical foundations of Marxism.

quite the opposite. On the other hand, I have yet to see you show any actual knowledge of the philosophical and theoretical foundations of Marxism, only a rehashing of rhetorical statements, as if you picked up a manual and started shouting from it word for word. In fact, your naive empiricism (which you've qualified in other posts) is a complete misunderstanding of both Marxism and its development in continental Europe thereafter. It stems from a complete lack of critical engagement with German idealism (without which no complete understanding of Marx is even possible).

I asked you some very simple questions on this board (which, for some reason, you took as my opposition to your statements). My inquiry was only into the implication of your statement, which seemed to suggest that Marxism was not a science - that its method was wholly separate from the scientific method (a peculiar statement I did not agree with, but simply wanted a clarification of what you meant, since I may have implied things which were not there).

But by the very fact that you qualified Potemkin's credentials with a 'maybe' shows contemptible arrogance on your part - Potemkin is definitely the most knowledgeable Marxist on PoFo.

[Kasu]

http://www.wsws.org/IML/materialism/ind ... r1section3

http://www.wsws.org/IML/materialism/index.shtml

http://www.wsws.org/IML/materialism/ind ... r4section1

http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/ ... p/ch02.htm

http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/ ... /index.htm

http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/ ... h/ch02.htm

http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works ... ar/x01.htm

http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/ ... /index.htm


Maybe you should read through these before you talk about the philosophy of Marxism. No where does a Marxist ever use "naive empiricism" to describe someone, that is a term used by the idealists. Lenin and Engels both explicitly reject Kantianism, you're thouroughly deluding yourself thinking your philosophy is in accordance to Marxism. And then calling dialectics an outdated method of thought going back to the greek philosophers? Have you no knowledge of Hegel, and how Marx turned Hegel's philosophy on its feet, and how that was the foundation for marxist reasoning? Clearly you don't.

[ingliz]

dialectics... going back to the greek philosophers

Plato's Socratic dialogues.

[Vera Politica]

Maybe you should read through these before you talk about the philosophy of Marxism. No where does a Marxist ever use "naive empiricism" to describe someone, that is a term used by the idealists. Lenin and Engels both explicitly reject Kantianism, you're thouroughly deluding yourself thinking your philosophy is in accordance to Marxism. And then calling dialectics an outdated method of thought going back to the greek philosophers? Have you no knowledge of Hegel, and how Marx turned Hegel's philosophy on its feet, and how that was the foundation for marxist reasoning? Clearly you don't

Kasu, now you are simply being foolish.

1) the fact that you cannot synthesize any information into your own thoughts and explain anything shows that you lack any critical engagement with the material in question. I ask you simple questions and you cannot even fathom an inkling of what an answer would even look like

2) I qualified YOUR view as naive empiricism which is, in fact, what it was. For some reason you believe that the views you qualified concerning the senses and external things was something new and in line with Marxism. This a profound confusion since they are nothing new and they are views that stem far before the Marxist critique of German idealism. In fact, the view you qualified and seem to hold is one of mechanical materialism. Dialectical material could or could not be qualified in sync with mechanical materialism (although making them compatible is a questionable pursuit, I think).

3) Marx and Engels rejected neo-Kantianism or German idealism in particular. But then again, so did Kant. Of course one needs to 'reject' Kant in light of Einstein's relativity and non-Euclidean geometry - however Kant's criticism of metaphysics is not only compatible with Marxism it is, in fact, complementary in many ways. Kant is a major influence to ALL continental Marxists, and for good reason. Being influenced by Kant, as I am, and being a Kantian in the sense qualified in post-Kant Germany are two radically different things. Kant was also a major influence in the radical empiricism of early 20th century philosophy.

4) The insinuation that I know 'nothing' about the so called 'inversion' of the Hegelian dialectic is laughable coming from you. I think the only sense you have of Hegelian philosophy is the tid bits you received from Lenin and other Marxist commentators. I have actually critically engaged with Hegel's texts and being mature enough to know this: I do not completely understand Hegel's dialectics. To presume you understand it is only arrogance. Of course, not understanding Hegel's dialectic precludes a complete understanding of what is meant by its inversion - there has been so much dispute on this topic it is not even worth going into. Althusser treated this topic quite nicely in For Marx. I admit that after reading Hegel's Philosophy of Right, sections from the Phenomenology of Spirit and his lectures on Reason in History and The Philosophy of History, Hegel is quite illusive without a thorough understanding of Kant. Since you don't know anything about Kant it is safe to say you know nothing about Hegel from which follows your own incomplete knowledge of what the implications of the inversion of Hegel's logic really means. A true understanding of Marx and continental Marxism BEGINS with Kant. Saying that 'Marx turned Hegel on his feet' doesn't explain a damn thing.

5) The fact that you question the roots of dialectics to Greek philosophy is enough to tell me that I am wasting my time even speaking to you. Moreover I never once stated that dialectics was outdated mode of thought.

[Celtic Communism]

The funny thing here, i.e. the Kant and Hegel debate, is that Marx's fabrication of Hegel, viz. the "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" idea, falsely attributed to Hegel chiefly by Marx, came from a Kantian professor who had Marx as a student which is where Marx must have first heard of it. Furtherly, Sergei Bulgakov claimed that Marx barely understood Hegel and his dialectical method and classical German philosophy in general, which would explain Marx's legend of the "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" idea. I will humbly add I personally know very little about philosophy.

P.S. Kasu is quite clearly in a cult, the Socialist Equality Party, and simply can not be reasoned with on the internet. I have long noticed this in a previous debate I have had with him.

[Vera Politica]

Sergei Bulgakov claimed that Marx barely understood Hegel and his dialectical method and classical German philosophy in general,

The difficulty with this, of course, is that post-Kantian German philosophy is so difficult and there are so many different interpretations of what constituted, for example, Hegel's dialectic method that one could claim this about nearly everyone. Given Bulgakov's religious conviction, I wouldn't be surprised if he sided with the 'right Hegelian' interpretation and, from this, argued that Marx misunderstood Hegel. But I don't know anythin about Bulgakov.

I cannot say that I understand Hegel's dialectical method, so I cannot say either way in regards to Marx. An overwhelming majority of Marxists, sadly, never engage with German philosophy and we're left with the intellectual degeneration of the radical left, typified by dogmatic, void ravings like that of Kasu.

[Eauz]

[Eauz Edit: Ok, let's calm down now. This thread isn't about attacking Kasu. If you don't like his response, then leave it at that. We're not here to bash other users. Celtic Communism, the same comments you made towards Kasu can be said about yourself, along with a large number of people on the left.

You're all warned, please stay civil in this thread.]

[PredatorOC]

This thread seems to have derailed and I was kind of interested in the original topic.

So: someone explain to me in non-gibberish terms what exactly is "socially necessary labour time" and how one determines the social necessity of the work before actually doing the work.