Non-marxist lefties, why not Marx?

Marx is still useful but seriously outdated by now.

tl;dr: Marxism is bad because history doesn't move in a straight line of progress therefore you should support American and Israeli imperialism.

IT'S LITERALLY HUMANS VS ORCS

A pathetic misreading (likely non-reading in actuality) of Bookchin's works.

Because Marxism can easily become yet another dogmatic totalising ideology. Marx himself said he was not a Marxist. I particularly dislike Leninism for its productivist and authoritarian tendencies. I'm more sympathetic to some branches of left communism, but I identify as an anarchist because I'm ultimately motivated by what Marxists would derisively refer to as 'petty bourgeoisie humanism'.

we got another utopian here who can create markets out of thin air

Marx conflated power with hierarchy - or politics with statecraft - and was thus polluted with the ideology of the era. That doesn't mean that he is useless, but his workerist mode of organization, trying to organize workers as a body politic, was in a certain sense plagued with the same flaws that post-modernism and reactionaries; the fact that they were based on abstract social distinctions rather than concrete political communities.

I'm an Utopianist because I don't believe in production for the sake of production. Why is it that leninists feel compelled to accumulate mountains of commodities for no reason? Even when it meant dissolving workers councils or traditional peasant communes. If people are to be liberated they have to be liberated in their daily lives not in the abstract or at some indeterminate point in the future.

I don't see how a critique of productivism necessarily culminates in wanting markets??

Man I can't wait for America to fuck the Kurds over again so that rojavafags will stop ruining leftist theory with their spooky "totally not nationalist" nationalism.

Because most Marxists are actually Marxist-Leninists.
I live in an industrialised country with good infrastructure and a relatively well educated proletariat. If you want Leninism here, you are literally retarded.

I do read Marx though. People who reject Marx wholesale are red liberals.

The west is dying. In generation the western worker will be back to living 4-6 men to a single shack and suffering through 12 hour work days.

Marx is pretty good but "marxist" means more than "is influenced by Marx". The man himself famously disagreed with self-described marxists.

Most people who are against co-ops seem to think there is a panacea that will fix capitalism. There's a general belief that one particular tendency is right and will bring about communism. Really, it makes a lot more sense to weaken the system from multiple angles. Co-ops are useful because they can show people what it's like to not have class involved in production and to not be alienated from your labor or its product.

Co-ops are like the flip-side of the "not true communism" coin of state capitalism. No, neither one is communism, but they both remove an alternative element of capitalism and show people what a better society could work like. There isn't going to be the True Revolution until enough people have seen the potential for a better society. Co-ops and statist revolutions have that role. They won't satisfy the material conditions for True Revolution, but they'll help develop the ideological conditions that people need to know what they're doing.

all while looking for the 7th roommate and a couple more hours of work using a phone app generously provided by our benefactors.

I completely agree with his critiques of capitalism but his idea path to communism just seems really fucking dumb

Because Sorel is based as fuck and far more influential even if the world doesn't realize it.

Because Marx was the living embodiment of the Bourgeois.

He never had a job in his life and basically sponged off capitalists for his entire existence.

I'm honestly just a communist at this point, like I want to get there but don't know how to, everyone has good theory (aside from anarkiddies)

wew

why even reply, obvious pol baiter

A mixture of "tl;dr", a tendency to impenetrable writing style thanks to age, and most importantly: simple lack of necessity.
I can understand the generalities of socialist and communist thought just by picking it up by osmosis on lefty/pol/, and by reading it at the tangent where British social democracy and socialism intersect.

This lets me focus nearly all my time on bourgeois-political history, post-keynesian economics, and the 1970s, topics of much greater interest.
Fundamentally I take a pretty broad-based approach to the left anyway. Even when I wasn't inclined to support violent revolution and property damage, my outlook was essentially that even if wrong in the precise methods, the left is always correct in general. Or, to put it more bluntly: We have the same enemies list. All I need to know is that Marx was one of the good guys, everything else can be picked up as I go along. (hell, it was a post-keynesian book that explained MCM to me.)

It's not that I "reject" Marx so to speak; quite the contrary, I'd say he's the single largest contributor of theory to the political programs I support. It's more a matter that I don't consider him to be the prime foundation of my ideological tradition, as that would run contradictory to the many aspects I remain critical of in regards to Marx's (and subsequent Marxist theorists') program.

Co-ops are nice, but the idea that they would be any sort of permanent fixture in our economic institutions is antithetical to the pursuit of Communism proper (and indeed even socialism if you go beyond just the most basic definition of "worker ownership of the means of production). Capitalism cannot be abolished until production for exchange and value-form itself are too abolished; co-ops maintain both features. That being said, they work great as a means of alleviating the exploitative conditions under capitalism born from employer-employee relationships and, within the context of a revolutionary society, could theoretically serve as a transitional phase in the expropriation and economic socialization process.

By that same logic I could accuse you of parroting CNN tier talking points.

Bookchinoids, everyone.

Don't you have some ancaps to fraternize with out of irrelevant spite?

this applies to many economists, philosophers, and writers in general

when will this meme response end already

you need to be more subtle, Holla Forums

Now post the one that's a brief biography of Marx and explains just how hard he actually worked.

Marx's basic critique of capitalism is still relevant and the best of it's kind, but a lot of the rest of his writing is falling further and further behind the times.
And his outright hostility towards other socialist philosophers and writers (mainly anarchists) is kind of a turn off.
Marx is great, but the fetishism surrounding his place in socialist pantheon is bordering on the absurd.
He should be one of the jumping-off points, not the be-all-end all that some hold him up to be.

Kropotkin was a royal with lots of serfs, bukanin was born as the son of lesser nobility family that owned 500 serfs. You can exactly pull the "people who devote their life to developing a political ideology should also work full time factory jobs" card.

No, I think he's being serious: I remember there was a screencap of a post that basically explained how Marx devoted himself to research and writing for his theory at the expense of most other aspects of his life. Can't find it on on leftybooru at the moment though.

Not that guy, but if I'm thinking of the same infographic it's a pretty positive one that actually shows how much effort he put into his work and more or less debunks the "marx never did nothing ever" meme.

I mean we could have a great big argument over whether it's better to reply to "Marx was a lazy fgt" with "You're wrong because facts contradict you" or "You're wrong because you're using the genetic fallacy," but there's an actual screencap I was referring to which was really good.

Because most marxists I met were pic related while anarchists were more helpful. I still find Marx useful and haven't read capital, but by and large I find myself agreeing with anarchists.

Oh ok then i misunderstood.
I just have this one.

...

It's almost pointless to actually read Capital tbh. There has been so much written about it that you can get all of its points from other sources that don't require you to have the knowledge needed to understand Capital. If you actually read it you need to either have a good philosophical background or have companion literature. Funnily enough, this is the reason for the situation depicted in the comic you posted. People go places other than Marx for their understanding, and often they go to one interpretation in particular (Lenin being most popular) instead of reading multiple takes or reading Marx himself.

For someone to self-identify so strongly with one word or one man to call themselves "marxists" typically means they're also the kind of people who quickly grab onto ideas and cling to them fiercely. These people usually end up stuck in whatever tendency they first wade into, just because that's what they've been exposed to and it made them "see the light". Instead of realizing that there's a whole world of ideas to explore, they feel "indebted" to the ideas that "freed" them. Then they read for depth at the expense of breadth and sink deeper into it. There's a sort of beautiful harmony to the correlation between this kind of submissive, hierarchical thinking and attraction toward ideas associated with submission, authoritarianism, and hierarchy. Contrast that with anarchists and ultras who are more interested in the ideas and applications than daddy Stalin's cummies.

f-fuck you!!1

Fucking ancoms.

Though I'd respect that choice if the person at least tries to read Capital first and tries other sources after giving up.

second-hand sources are better than the primary sources

If you don't see the problem then you're beyond stupid.

Being a "Marxist" in the strictest sense can be dangerous because the burgers did a decent job of stifling left wing philosophy that isn't postmodern nonsense for most of the Cold War, so attempts to apply his thought to modern politics are sparse.

Read Althusser, fool.

Because defining your self as a "Marxist" is incredibly silly too me. I like a lot of what Marx wrote and his analysis of capitalism is extremely good. Historical materialism is also pretty fucking neat, but I still think treating it like some unquestionable truth is just stupid. Also I think Marxism leads to way to much sectarianism and leftist infighting as so many treat Marxism as some sort of "one true socialism" and everyone who doesn't fallow Marxism (or someones special snowflake version of it) is just a splitter, danger to the revolution, idealist, utopian, etc.
The ideological marketplace of ideas is only fit for looting. Take what is useful and move on.
I should add that Im not an Anarchist, Communalist, or whatever, Im just a non-specific Libertarian Communist.

This really.

The whole point of the post was describing how the biggest problem with only reading secondary sources functions. It's ironic that you're bitching about people not reading things while in this thread you're clearly not reading my posts.

I plan to read capital, but as you pointed out it practically requires knowledge of philosophy before. Right now I'm very busy and don't have the time to read the tome. I'm wary of reading only secondary sources because the reasons you've elaborated on as well.

Why the fuck is this reaction pic an ad for the company that sold computers to the nazis specifically to manage their concentration camps?

Dude the Nazis were just another state. Resisting them has no revolutionary purpose man google Bookchin.

Because while Marx's critique of capitalism was spot on, his idea of socialism was too utopian.

Well imadgun moi shock.

Hostility to empiricism.

What a great idea to get all the dumbest people on this board in one thread OP!

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Nothing has changed. The first world will learn this eventually.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism

MATERIAL CONDITIONS CHANGE

"Ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas marxiste"

Historical materialism can still be defended on a probabilistic basis.
pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7cbf/db00665b3b251abb52ff937be6945aac164a.pdf

Althusser BTFO empiricism back in the 70s