Cartertonian wrote:
It seems to me that in most cases – of which Marxist writings are the most striking exemplar – it is simply not possible to follow the logic therein unless you have already accepted, uncritically and unquestioningly, a particular set of core tenets. Hence the association with ‘religion’.
Cartertonian wrote:
This leaves me with the impression that unless I uncritically and unquestioningly accept the need for revolution, blood, war and tyranny, there can never be any prospect of a more equitable world, where individuals are free from the malign influence of others. In even more lay terms, it reads like a philosophy of, ‘jam tomorrow’…but in a tomorrow few if any will live to see, rather like the Christian belief in suffering in life for the promise of ascending into Heaven.
There's a *qualitative* difference, that you're overlooking -- the *subject matter* of Marxism is with political economy, while the subject matter of religion is with the individual.
Cartertonian wrote:
Marxism is no different. It’s just another system of thought, constructed to further rather than counter, ‘man’s inhumanity to man’, but for a notionally noble cause. Visiting misfortune, misery and death on other human beings becomes something that is seen as, ‘regrettable but necessary’ on our way to the utopian goal and some are so besotted in their beliefs that such inhumanity is not regrettable at all.
Means-and-ends.
Means and Ends CHART
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Potemkin wrote:
Any system of thought, any system of belief, can be used to retrospectively rationalise whatever somebody wants to believe. For example, Christianity is used by Calvinists to rationalise their own material prosperity as 'proving' their good standing in the eyes of God, and other people's poverty as 'proving' their sinfulness in the eyes of God. Likewise, Darwinian evolutionary theory can be used to retrospectively rationalise entire races of human beings as being 'inferior' to the 'superior' races, or even 'unfit' to exist. This does not invalidate Christianity, or invalidate Darwin's theory of evolution. This is just human nature at work.
I'd characterize these examples as typical ideology-driven *politicizations* of various worldviews (religions), and scientific paradigms (Darwinism).
Cartertonian wrote:
The point of my thread, though, was to observe that my impression of Marxist theory is that to even suggest, let alone question, that the assumptions upon which it is based might be incorrect or incomplete is seen as the height of blasphemy by the zealots of the Church of Marx. I further see that as an unhelpful impediment to philosophical progress.
Nice abstract attack from afar, but what's your objection to the labor theory of value, for instance?
Cartertonian wrote:
As I intimated in the OP - perhaps too softly - there is much about Marxist philosophy that I like and admire, but then they go and spoil it all by insisting that there has to be violence and bloody revolution to achieve their goals.
Self-appointed political consultant from the opposing camp -- ? Does it pay well?
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Heisenberg wrote:
This isn't out of some inherent love for "violence and bloody revolution". It's out of a recognition that the current ruling class will not accept changes of the magnitude advocated by Marxists without violent resistance. And I'd say history has proven them absolutely correct on this front.
Cartertonian wrote:
As I said in the OP, it's seen by some as 'regrettable but necessary', but by others as 'necessary and desirable'.
In Colombia, 17 Dead in Pandemic-Related Protests
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/worl ... tests.html---
Heisenberg wrote:
the main changes to the concept of how the "revolution" will work are tactical (think Mao's "mass line", "protracted people's war", etc) and are the result of learning from real-world experience.
Much of the left around the world had enthused at the Cultural Revolution. In many countries opponents of the US war in Vietnam carried portraits of Mao Zedong as well as the Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh. The trite sayings in the Little Red Book of ‘Mao’s thoughts’ were presented as a guide to socialist activity. Yet in 1972, as more US bombers hit targets in Vietnam than ever before, Mao greeted US president Nixon in Beijing, and by 1977, under Deng, China was beginning to embrace the market more furiously than Russia under Stalin’s successors.
The Western media saw such twists and turns as a result of wild irrationality. By the late 1970s many of those on the left who had identified with Maoism in the 1960s agreed, and turned their backs on socialism. A whole school of ex-Maoist ‘New Philosophers’ emerged in France, who taught that revolution automatically leads to tyranny and that the revolutionary left are as bad as the fascist right. Yet there is a simple, rational explanation for the apparently irrational course of Chinese history over a quarter of a century. China simply did not have the internal resources to pursue the Stalinist path of forced industrialisation successfully, however much its rulers starved the peasants and squeezed the workers. But there were no other easy options after a century of imperialist plundering. Unable to find rational solutions, the country’s rulers were tempted by irrational ones.
Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 576
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B0ycey wrote:
Marxism has been influenced by the Frankfurt School of thought that has basically used his ideas and thought process
No need for the workers to *seize* the means of mass industrial production, apparently -- it'll just be 'donated', and *purchased* with workers' wages, so as to become the new-kids-on-the-block in the pre-existing capitalist game.
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Rich: Your hyper-individualist vision and ideology isn't working out. The world has larger problems than your idealized society of atomized individuals can feasibly address at the individual scale -- like global warming -- and the world doesn't look like that anyway, and never has. There are *group* dynamics like institutions and, ultimately, *class* interests, that prevail over your imagined bureaucratic-segmented worldview.
History, Macro-Micro -- politics-logistics-lifestyle
[1] History, Macro Micro -- Precision
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wat0n wrote:
If Marxian economic concepts can be seen as a special case of a neoclassical model, then why not just use the latter?
You're mistaken -- ever hear of the labor theory of value?
[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends
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Wellsy wrote:
the material forms of production also hide the social relations.
Hence the need to make the distinction between *use* values, and *exchange* values.
Wellsy wrote:
Marx's theory of historical materialism and his economic theory revolve around one and the same basic problem: the relationship between productive forces and production relations.
Roughly approximated and indicated as 'cooperation / competition', or social history, for 'productive relations', while 'productive forces' is basically *technology*:
Humanities-Technology Chart 2.0
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Lee Smolin - How Can Space and Time be the Same Thing?
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inductive vs. deductive reasoning
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wat0n wrote:
Okishio's Theorem
His theorem is only good for a brief snapshot of time, when a given industrial innovation gives one market participant an 'edge' over its competition -- nominally benefitting the entire industry, briefly, apparently, according to the theory -- but soon the novel improved technology or technique diffuses out, with runaway market competition prevailing, causing capitalist *overproduction* and plunging rates of profitability. (Consider the internal combustion engine, for example.)