/lit/ - Literature

>>18419136
Is Marxism just a way to analyze Capitalism?

>>18419136
why do you want to forcefully preserve traditions that people don't care about anymore?

>>18419140
In essence, yes. In practice, no.

>a bourgeoisie

>>18419136
>>18419140
I've seen the term "Marxian" used to describe someone who uses it as a tool rather than one who adopts the ideology. But that was ages ago, and I might be making shit up.

>>18419136
>it's not an ideology it's a set of ideas
Bravo, Alexei

Marx's philosophy itself isn't ideological by his own standards, but Marxism as developed by later thinkers (particularly Engels and Lemons) is 100% an ideology.

>>18419140
>socialism reverses capitalism

>>18419136
No. The current leftist strategy of attracting the right via "based" Marxists (I'm talking about you Justin, we all know who pays you to write your undergrad tier booklets) like Adorno or Deleuze (not a Marxist but left-adjacent) is pathetic. The same thing happened with liberation theology - Marxists would pontificate "if you really care about aborted babies then you should support our struggle for better economic conditions so that every woman can afford having a child" but once in power they invariably didn't give a fuck about the theology which put them in power. Marxism is a tool in the same degree as anything is a tool and nothing is a tool. It's still very far from an objective picture of the social world as this guy wants it to be, it's more of an interpretation that focuses on chosen elements of the picture while discriminating others.

>>18419136
Obvious to anyone with a college degree, but yes

low IQ (conservative): marxism is taking from the rich
midwit (western leftist): marxism is blah blah blah a set of tools blah blah oppression blah blah colonialism
high IQ (marxist): marxism is taking from the rich

>>18419160
it's one of those things that gets tried and fails every once in a while, like when left wing people try to appropriate national flags or the word slut.
What will usually happen is, more center/right academics will try to adapt some of Marx's toolset to their own worldview, will get perpetual shit from the right and some disgruntled acceptance from the left, so they end up becoming essentially criptoleftists (I'm not sure Latour has ever had any interest or allegiance to Marx but he's an academic that went through a similar process).

>>18419219
who is justin

>>18419219
Yes. This is an arbitrary distinction to make. Whether it's a tool or an ideology the distinction is only being made so that it seems less 'pathological' when put forth. Tool implies distance and thus they assume an form of objectivity when referring to it. Nonetheless it's stupid semantic bs meant to avoid the assumptions that the Left is based upon.

I'm reading through Hobsbawm right now, and am curious about his use of the word 'proletariat' - I'm not very familiar with Marx's original outline in works like the Critique of the Gotha Programme, only having a third-hand sort of understanding. At one point, Hobsbawm notes that 'working class' (adjacent to the 'proletariat') is a misnomer for the "aggregate of mostly hired, but non-industrial, wage-earners" during the French Revolution. Is this the case? I know about the lumpen, vaguely, but I'm not sure I understand the distinction implied by the text - is the agrarian/urban dichotomized throughout Marx?

>>18419136
twitter screencap posters must die

>>18419144
because you view history as something that just happens when in reality it is constant struggle. That means that there were people who fought off these traditions and there can be reinstated with fight

>>18419333
have sex

>>18419335
have kids

>>18419335
the board quality immediately plummets whenever there are leftists around

>>18419136
No, he's retarded.

>>18419151
>>18419325
>>18419345
These

>>18419160
>I've seen the term "Marxian" used to describe someone who uses it as a tool rather than one who adopts the ideology.
Somewhat correct. "Marxian" more closely represent the concept of "pertaining to Marx". (You) can write a marxist book, but you can't write a marxian one.

>>18419168
>later thinkers (particularly Engels
What did he mean by this>>18419219
>The same thing happened with liberation theology - Marxists would pontificate "if you really care about aborted babies then you should support our struggle for better economic conditions so that every woman can afford having a child" but once in power they invariably didn't give a fuck about the theology which put them in power.

>>18419333
You can believe that history is constant struggle without adhering to Marxism. Because Marx does believe that such a struggle will eventually stop, which isn't possible.

>>18419219
>The same thing happened with liberation theology - Marxists would pontificate "if you really care about aborted babies then you should support our struggle for better economic conditions so that every woman can afford having a child" but once in power they invariably didn't give a fuck about the theology which put them in power
Sorry, I messed up the post
And when exactly did liberation theology "got in power"?
>inb4 Frank
No, he isn't.

>>18419230
I didn't learn that during my nursing degree to be honest

>>18419494
AHAHAHA A MAN WITH A NURSING DEGREE

>>18419311
Haven't read Hobsbawm but
>is the agrarian/urban dichotomized throughout Marx?
It is, for a variety of reasons: rural work is much less alienated than factory work, urban workers are usually more literate, have less traditional social ties (Church on Sunday? No, the factory has to run 24/7. Living with your family? No, you'll live in some shitty neighborhood composed literally only of male workers), and can witness firsthand how the law of value works, and all these factors (plus others I'm forgetting) help them getting a class conscience that rural workers usually lack (or that they get later). Peasants have historically been conservative and traditionalists, with some dabbling in anarchism (see Ukraine/Russia and Italy in late XIX - early XX century), factory workers in the metallurgical/machinery sector are still fairly left-wing/unionized to this day.

>>18419274
There's a whole lurch right now in the institutional / establishment conservative ecosystem to create "Marxist" looking stuff now with New Deal-era aesthetics. But if you look at the people hired to do it, they're former American Enterprise Institute interns for Mitt Romney. It's really bizarre.

>>18419466
I'm not sure how many Marxists believe in that "end of history" stuff nowadays. I'm sure some do, but it seems like a leftover teleological end-stage notion from Christianity.

>>18419136
Capitalism doesnt exist, marx made it up and it just not accurate. Yes, it's an ideology, it isn't just a method, it has it own theories, axioms, ethics etc.

>>18419540

>>18419540
>I'm not sure how many Marxists believe in that "end of history" stuff nowadays. I'm sure some do, but it seems like a leftover teleological end-stage notion from Christianity.
Communism is a process, not a goal. You can't "reach" communism and call it a day. That "end of history" rhetoric is more of a direction, a North star, so to say.

Well, if you're a Marxist, yes, because Marxists have their own definition for what constitutes an "ideology".

>>18419561
Yeah, or like an intuitive ideal.

>>18419140
Well, no. It's also a historical narrative that claims capitalism must necessarily fall into a new epoch of communism. The historical narrative derives from the analysis.

>>18419561
A utopia, if you will.

>>18419494
>>18419514
Nurses are the petit-bourgeois of the medical discipline, the CNA is truly the wageslave, lacking both the cultural capital (Nurse) and the cloak of competence (MD). Nurses (and the upstart NPs/PAs) should be diminished at all times, they're overpaid for doing essentially nothing.

>>18419140
he is completely and utterly incorrect here in the sense that marx himself was completely incorrect that communism would be a progression of capitalism

>>18419561
But Marxism claims that all history is the history of class struggle, which means that the resolution of all classes should therefore be an end of history. And communists, including Marx, did make predictions on what a post-revolution society would look like (an ideal).
The idea that communism is a process, not an end, is just a carrot on a stick to push more and more when the revolution eventually grinds to a halt and its promises and predictions wont come true.

>>18419275
Not this anon but he's probably referring to Justin Murphy.

The idea that it's not an ideology is also strange when you look at the CCP, which is emphasizing with both barrels that they're communists and ideology is important here -- and losing belief in the ideology is really the biggest source of vulnerability drawing on the lessons of the USSR. It was the U.S. that neglected the importance of ideology, the U.S. leaders were like "oh, they stopped believing in it, so things will go out way eventually." And that's just not true.

https://youtu.be/snItPkBxgSM?t=225

>>18419136
>trads got so broken by capital that they are pretending to be marxists to be taken seriously in their criticism

>>18419580
Maybe. It's a good word after all. I mean, whatever your political stance is, can you actually imagine a situation in which you can sit down and say "Well, all is perfect and solved forever now" ?

>>18419597
>The idea that communism is a process, not an end, is just a carrot on a stick to push more and more when the revolution eventually grinds to a halt and its promises and predictions wont come true.
Think of it as you wish: everybody needs a carrot on a stick in life.
Humanity will always face new problems and try to find new solutions for them.

>Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.
German Ideology

"The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence." --->In this sense you can see how marxism is a tool in itself.
When you look at what anarchists call "Anarchy" and what communists call "Communism" you will see that they are exactly the same: a stateless classless moneyless society. The big difference is on how to "achieve" it (nobody knows for sure, of course). One of the main reasons the 1st International split is because of the differences between Marx and Bakunin: one thought we needed a transition period, the other one wanted to achieve "equality and freedom" overnight. BOOM, tomorrow there are no more oppressors. It would be cool, but sadly reality does not work like that.

>promises and predictions won't come true
Marxism does not make "promises" nor "predictions". It says instead that you have to work fucking hard to "reach" communism. In my country we have a saying "You wanted the bike? Now ride it". Nobody will "give you" "communism" as a "gift", you have to build it from scratch. You think capitalists in mid 1700s in England were just "given" global capitalism? No, they exploited workers for that.

>>18419160
that is the correct use of the word marxian

>>18419727
>Marxism does not make "promises" nor "predictions". It says instead that you have to work fucking hard to "reach" communism. In my country we have a saying "You wanted the bike? Now ride it". Nobody will "give you" "communism" as a "gift", you have to build it from scratch. You think capitalists in mid 1700s in England were just "given" global capitalism? No, they exploited workers for that.
You sure about that? Let's see what a famous Marxist had to say about it:
>When Marx undertook his critique of the capitalistic mode of production, this mode was in its infancy. Marx directed his efforts in such a way as to give them prognostic value. He went back to the basic conditions underlying capitalistic production and through his presentation showed what could be expected of capitalism in the future. The result was that one could expect it not only to exploit the proletariat with increasing intensity, but ultimately to create conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself.