Most interesting to me is this: in which Engels already clarifies that any mode of production that would fancy itself post-capitalist would necessarily have to have done away with value production and commodities or it would merely represent an alternatively socialized capitalism, and thus a dictatorship of the proletariat at best (again on the condition that the proletariat is actually dictatng and effectuating change and isn't merely represented by a body separate of it). Too bad that I had no idea this even existed until now because even though it's already obviously implied in Utopian and Scientifics third chapter that Engels sees it just like Marx did, here he says it outright, and in the very first fucking paragraph'.
Anyways, this might actually be yet another one of the few worthwhile intro texts to Capital along with Heinrich's, Postone's and the GermanId1/Paris Manuscripts/WLaC combo.
I'm new to the armchair game though (wasn't really anything concrete before that), but yeah this is a pretty cool and useful text to recommend to the unitiated who want to understand Marx's understanding of capital and his critique of the political economy.
And yes damn is it rare, or at least rarely mentioned or known about (did some searches on RevLeft, LibCom forums, RedMarx and other communist forums for this text and found almost no mentions of it).
Isaac Hall
I knew about OPs text and I haven't even been a leftist for a year
Zachary Gonzalez
that's quite cool OP. another one i don't see mentioned frequently is marx's appendix to the first edition of capital (marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/appendix.htm) that goes really in-depth on what value is, even moreso than section 3 of capital chp. 1.
haven't seen this yet either and i've been a communist for almost three years.
Gabriel Wright
It doesn't matter if it is rare or not. It isn't mentioned enough that production for exchange needs to be removed. It isn't enough to let workers own the means of production. The workers need to own the means of production to create use-value only.
Ethan Turner
don't tell the mutualists or market socialists, they'll throw a hissy fit
Dominic Clark
Wait, you guys didn't know about this already? It's literally in this fucking chart.
Thomas Scott
Wow, people here don't really care about this shit and instead just save those reading lists in some "To Read" folder that remains untouched for years? Color me shocked
Wyatt Bell
I agree with you, but coming to that conclusion from that small sentence seems like a stretch. To me it sounds like Engels is just talking about past societies and not ones to come.
Elijah Bailey
Engels' quote in OP's pic implies otherwise.
Christian Richardson
No. It is because commodity (items which will be sold for money and not used by the creator) production will automatically lead the problems mentioned (wage-labor, unemployment, competition, crisis). You can't have a market, and not have the subsequent consequences of said market forces. Opposed to that production for use-value is nothing more than, we need certain items, so we create those items. This way you avoid wasting precious resources, decrease overproduction, and you help other people without having to consider profitability. This also means that work days will be adjusted to the needs of people, instead of always maintaining the maximum output of commodities. While putting working conditions and user satisfaction as the main goals (without it being because of profits).
Don't you like your dialectics applied directly to history :^) Seriously, they should have made it a list of Hegelian dialectics, with a text explaining Marx's materialist change to it.
Kevin Nguyen
Isn't that basically all explained in The German Ideology anyways? Engels Anti-Duhring also does a good job too on explaining the philosophical thought of Marxism.
Nolan Anderson
Anyone who disagrees with this is not a communist
Joshua Jackson
whad aboud worger goops :DDD
Adrian Miller
We is not I. People can't individually produce everything they individually consume. Society will have to measure productivity and will have to ration things.
Brandon Fisher
Nice find.
It's likely the very best intro, considering Engels fully corresponded with Marx as he was writing Capital.
Anyone know whmbt?
Blake Lee
Internet tells me it's a psychological phenomenon that was coined in the '60s, and Marx and Engels wrote in the late 19th century. I'm going to guess it simply meant the use of one's intelligence.
Xavier Morgan
Uh, I mean, take "fag" to mean something like bundle/kindling/straw, and then the context clearly gives a usage similar to the modern "two brain cells to rub together." It makes sense, too, since the brain is kind of pulpy, and made of bundles of things, and all.
Matthew Phillips
I have worse suggestions for material on dialectics: 1) anything by Hegel 2) Tom Rockmore's book, in which he argues that Marx was a good boy Hegelian idealist whose life's work was stolen and perverted by Engels the treacherous material positivist 3) the fucking manifesto
I've never heard of Tom Rockmore, but I have heard of that thesis before. I think there's probably some truth to it.
Lincoln Long
Sorry but Friedrich "SJW" Engels is not my theorist.
Chase Rivera
Yeah almost as much truth as there is to "the freer the market, the freer the people."
Xavier Rodriguez
anti-engelsists BTFO
Jason Richardson
Who can you even trust anymore?
Jeremiah Cook
What? How could anyone get that impression? I'll admit I'm not the most well read comrade but everything i read made me think Engels was the one who was friendlier to idealism. Heck reading "State and Revolution" and hearing lenin talk about Engels so damn much and barely about Marx i get the impression Engels was the inspiration for Stalin.
Cooper Powell
You'd be amazed at what ideas you can come up with when you're a professional anti-Marxist academic. Hell, someday they might even float the idea that all exploitation in society is caused by an intersecting mesh of societal attitudes and preferences!
Lucas Johnson
Engels is a godfather of retards calling constantly talking about dialectics without even knowing what the fuck is this. >atoms are moving, pure DIALECTICS
