Questions about Marx

Things like labour theory of value. You can agree with his description of the competing priorities between capitalists and workers without buying into his theory of prices, for example
I think also giving the everyday person more of an ability to go into business for himself too so he is not as dependent on capitalists to make a living.
Marx sems to characterize all owners as being greedy and nasty. Is this really realistic? Weren't there smaller capitalists who weren't 'robber barons' who valued their employees?
How does communism deal with what I see as an intractable problem around incentives? For example, if you know you are going to get the same 'paycheck', what is the incentive to try harder (unless there's a whip behind you). It seems like people would concentrate more on 'looking busy' than working hard.
what do you mean by dominant mode of production?

I dont know if we could ever have what I would consider a perfect capitalism (no manipulative advertising/media industrial complex/huge corporations brainwashing you to consume consume consume; high competition with no artificially created monopolies so that service is good, prices are low)

Thanks for your replies

This lack of other writers explains why a lot of people use the term 'Marxism' when they are referring to class warfare.
It's hard for me to believe that. There were millions killed and gulag'd under the communists.
I was hoping you could demythologize some of the more common misunderstandings

1844 manuscripts. Do not recommend it tbh, it is theoretically inferior to the economic analysis.

Both.

He did not theorize revolution itself, only that it would be necessary. The main arguments run from the immiseration thesis to the technological thesis.

Yes, but it doesn't matter to the argument against capitalism.

Learn about the man himself and you learn that if anyone was giving orders it would be him. He was poor, but boy was he no one's bitch.

Well you have a poor grasp of human psychology and memory, lad.

Was there much social mobility in his day, i.e. workers moving up or alternatively, bourgeouis going out of business and becoming workers again. Capitalism, at least when people have more individual freedom to become entrepreneurs, can loosen the tension by creating social mobility. Do present-day Marxists see this as a viable relief-valve?
which he saw as socialism? Under socialism, it seems like the proles would be in a better position bc their human needs would be more taken care of. Why assume that they would go forward and not backward again to slavery or feudalism?

Tell me the 1 or 2 most common misunderstandings or myths about communism if you dont' mind

LTV isn't a theory of prices, that's a misunderstanding of mainstream economists who likely never read Marx. LTV is an explanation for how profit is obtained, i.e. the difference between a hunk of steel and a knife that accounts for the difference in value between the two is that the knife has embodied in it human labour which gives it added value. This value is the basis for capitalist profit. Marx understood that market price or exchange value isn't perfectly representative of this value and varies under conditions such as supply and demand, make no mistake.

The problem with capitalism is that it naturally leads to accumulation of capital at the top to the point where such a possibility will be entirely precluded, in addition to the economy imploding upon itself due to the falling rate of profit.

Not the case at all. Engels for one came from a fairly bourgy background, and Marx was on fairly amicable terms with people of money. The thing to take away from Marx isn't that capitalism is bad because business owners are bad (porky memes aside, I don't think anyone around here believes that), it is that regardless of what intentions capitalists might personally have, the structure of capitalism and the material pressures they're put on them necessarily puts them in conflict with the proles.

Most socialists don't believe that everyone should be paid the same. We still believe that people should be incentivized to do better and harder work. However, even if that wasn't the case, it doesn't necessarily follow that having an equal payscale would result in everyone coasting - taking the example of Cuba, where everyone is paid the same, they still managed to produce a great amount of doctors and send them all over the world, despite the fact that being a doctor is ostensibly much harder than being a janitor.

I am obviously none of the people you were replying to, but the dominant mode of production is the dominant set of social relations governing production - the capitalist mode of production being that of the bourgeoisie owning the means of production and buying the labour power, the socialist mode of production being that of collective ownership of the means of production by the proletariat and their using their labour power for their own benefit.

This was a continuation of the czarist's government's work. Both labour camps and secret police preceded the communist government. It's no doubt that the Soviets perpetrated some horrible crimes and that Stalin ruined everything, but make no mistake - Russia has always been an autocratic shithole.

*and buying the proles' labour power

OK I see your point. Before all these laws, the community took care of things using social means. Under communism, you would have the commune(?) members democratically decide on an appropriate punishment?
I was referring more to people who wanted to opt out of a system (that I think) doesn't take account of human incentives in the sense that it doesn't give you the option of being free as an individual. It forces you into a collective, whereas under capitalism, you could choose to be a collective if you wanted to, or to make a living on your own.

1) The human nature bullshit. There is no argument I could make here that could be honestly convincing. All there is to say, however, is that a study of history alone shows that it is a myth that capitalism is natural. It is also, imo, pathetic to appeal to nature to justify something we know is morally wrong. If you are a rational being, appealing to "nature" is the biggest insult to yourself and your fellow humans.

2) That communism is some idea of a la-la land. It's not, it's a romantic vision of humanity being freed from necessity to work just to survive either under compulsion of nature or of other humans. Marx considers this the actual nature of human beings, he considers the human to only emerge once we leave the realm of material necessity. Creativity is free, interaction is free, and thinking is free from compulsion from outside.

You would not be forced to be in a commune under socialism any more than you're forced to sell your labour to a firm under capitalism. Remember that this is primarily an economic, not social, arrangement.

You may still need to join a commune in order to earn your daily bread, but it's already the case under capitalism that you may need to work for a private firm for that same end. At least in socialism you would have a say in the running of the place and an equal share in the profits, something that is not the case with private property.

I should add that communism actually is the natural state of humanity, and this is well documented in terms of surviving hunter gatherer bands and other primitive communities, who are almost all organized on roughly communist, non-hierarchical lines.

I don't really know too much about economics in general, so I can't really comment on Marx's economic baggage. I support socialism for political reasons.

This is just not true. The vast majority of people are and always have been workers. Benefits for petit bourgies don't help them in any real way.

Yes. All bourgies exploit their workers, even if they treat them better than others might. This is an inherent feature of capitalism and wage labour.

Under slavery and serfdom there was literally no way you could get ahead in life, and yet people still worked. Besides, there can still be incentives, just not obscene amounts of money. In the USSR productivity wasn't the issue, areas that received heavy investment (military, aeronotics, infrastructure, natural resources etc) were extremely productive.

The dominant economic system, which currently is capitalism.

The only way to be truly economically mobile in capitalism is by changing one's class, to become bourgeois. Now, the thing to bear in mind is that one can only be bourgeois by having proles produce commondities for you. That means that for every bourgeois there must of necessity be a number of proles (the number fluctuates depending on industry and automation). No amount of mobility will alter the fact that the many must work for the benefit of the few in capitalism.

On top of that reality, the existing bourgeoisie have an economic incentive to maintain both their owns status and that of the proletariat which provides their capital (not money necessarily). As such, they will always limit economic mobility as much as they can, and, as they control property and capital, they have the ability to do so.

having easier access to capital, like with including micro-financing, and being able to start one's own business, do present-day Marxists think that things have improved or are they just as critical of capitalism?

Notice what is involved in starting a business in capitalism. The entrepreneur first of all requires financing–money from someone else. This he gets from a bank, which in turn takes it from its depositors. The money is not free, of course. Not only does it accumulate interest, it also entitles the bank to the property that the entrepreneur acquires with it. In effect, the entrepreneur does not own the business that he began; the bank does.

The bank will extract a profit from the endeavor thusly. The entrepreneur will hire workers who both build and operate "his" business. They produce commodities that they sell to consumers, and they give the procedes to the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur takes the procedes, pays the workers their wages, pays the bank what is due, and keeps anything that may be left over for himself.

Now, what happens when there is nothing left over for the entrepreneur? He can cut wages but only until it causes a loss of productivity which would only exascerbate the problem. He can increase productivity by doing the work of producing commodities himself, at which point he is no longer bourgeois but proletariat working for the bank. The one thing he can not do is not pay the bank. Once he is unable to pay the bank he loses his business, and the proles all lose their livelihoods. The bank is not greatly put out by this, since the loan was secured against the property, and it had already collected a portion of it from the entrepreneur through earlier payments. The bank takes the property, and sells it to some other poor sucker.

Now, who took all the risk? The entrepreneur and the proles he hired. Who did all the work and made all the commodities? The proles. Who took no risk, did none of the work, and made all the profit? The bank. The bank didn't even have to use its own money. It got that from the depositors, most of whom were proles.

Entrepreneurship in capitalism is a straight-up fucking scam. Compare that to setting up a business in socialism. A group of guys want to start a business. They apply for a claim to an available piece of property. They fix the place up and work there themselves. They divide the procedes amongst themselves. When someone wants to do something else he leaves, and his partners replace him with a new guy who henceforth has an equal stake.

Feel like we'd get along well m8. You follow any particular religion?

Great questions btw.

maybe we need to see if we both are thinking of the same thing when we say capitalism.
To me capitalism is the ability to come up with your own idea (product, service), obtain labour capital and PP&E, put your idea into effect and then reap the rewards. Employees benefit by being able to just show up, do their job and get paid. They don't have to handle the business side of things. If they want to do that, they can obtain their own capital and take the risk on themselves by starting their own business, which is one reason that entrepreneurs keep profits (bc of the risk) and employees just get wages. You are saying that this freedom is not what people want naturally? I can certainly understand objections to the system we have now, which many people refer to as crony capitalism where the rich pricks and their buddies in gov't shut out competition. Globalism, while good for low prices, is very destructive is many ways. I do not know if this is the inevitable result of capitalism. The biggest thing that concerns me is the power that the central banks have. They have essentially unlimited wealth to buy assets, govt's and corporations. I don't know if we should factor in the inevitability of this kind of obscene power into our analysis of capitalism or if we could have a system of capitalism without central banking. I suspect we would always eventually arrive at centralization of money creation. There is no way to prevent greater and greater concentrations of power whether we are talking media, information, entertainment or steel. But is the economic system really that important when we will always have psychopaths rise to the top, whether in capitalism or commmunism, and steer things so that they have absolute control. I think the problem is that 3-4% of humanity not so much capitalism.

Half jew, half Protestant
Pretty much rejected the Jew part and the Protestant half of the family didn't really teach me much.
Lately I've been listening to the orthodox nationalist (Dr Matt Johnson) He is Russian orthodox and favours monarchy and medeval philosophy over enlightenment philosophy

sorry for wall of text

m8 you clearly have a mistaken impression of what capitalism is.

Capitalism is a political and economic system chiefly defined by the institution of private property, which says that the state will defend with violence my right to seize other people's work because they used my tools to make it.

I probably didn't make those tools, I probably didn't design them, but what I was able to do was use the congealed labour-power of others represented in money, to buy the right to use them as a tool of exploitation over labour which is enforced and recognized by the state.

This is definitely not the type of ""freedom"" that people naturally want. It is something that has to be imposed through violence by an outside force. Look at the history of enclosure, for one, to get an idea of what I mean:
thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/short-history-enclosure-britain

No, economic mobility does not address the basic problem that many must necessarily work for the benefit of the few who do not work. Specifically who is a boss and who is a worker is not the issue. The issue is that there are bosses and there are workers.

Transitions between modes of production occur when one mode of production is no longer economically viable. This can happen for a number of reasons eg. plague, the discovery of vast resources, external pressures, etc.. Feudalism gave way to capitalism when the economic power of the bourgeoisie exceeded that of the aristocracy. Feudalism simply can not return without the reemergence of an aristocratic class, which is just not possible because the capitalist mode of production as several magnitudes more productive in real terms than feudalism was. Slave economies are likewise markedly less productive than feudalism, which is ultimately what destroyed the Western Roman Empire.

History can not move backward. Socialism is the successor to capitalism, because it resolves the contradictions built into the system while promising a more productive economic system.

Also a bit of buddhism.
Actually the author that totally made everything about religion clear was Ken Wilber. If you have any doubts about spiritual reality you owe it to yourself to read him.

That's cool. I'm Muslim.

Is Christian nationalism a common thing?

Marx is a great man who cheated on his wife with his maid (he had a maid! even most bourgeois today don't have a maid! beat that!) had an illegitimate child (the maid said he forced himself on aka raped her!) and when his wife questioned him he said the maid was a liar and blamed his best friend Engels like a badass only to admit it was true later on. Marx is 100% ALPHA AS FUCK!!!!!!!

Now stop fucking question him, you little bitch.

ok my head is spinning. Can you put it in concrete terms?
if i understood you correctly, you can look at it another way: if I make TVs, I don't necessarily want to be paid in TVs. I want money bc it avoids the double coincidence of wants (Maybe I want shoes and the guy with shoes doesn't want a TV) So I don't care tht I don't get to keep the TV I made. Is this what you meant?

I guess I see violence as baked into the cake of humanity and it will exist reagrdless. Didn't Steven Pinker show that violence has consistently declined over time?

Actually my Muslim friend was the one who had the biggest effect on my view of religion and how the use of the charge of 'anti-semitism' was non-sensical
Do you ever listen to Kevin Barrett's podcast? He was a US professor who got kicked out for questioing 9/11. He converted to Islam. Smart guy.
noliesradio.org/archives/category/archived-shows/kevin-barrett-show

Yes CHrist

message was cut off
I only know about Christian nationalism from 4chan and 8ch Holla Forums. It's definitely very strong in the alt-right. Lurk there if you want to see it in action, although I have to say they are pretty anti-Muslim so be prepared.

The issue isn't so much getting the direct product of your labour, it's getting the value of your labour. When you produce a TV in a factory, you are paid less than the TV is sold for, so you are being paid for less than the product of your labour. This is why capitalism is exploitative. This is a process that is defended by violence under capitalism.

The worker is compelled to sell their labour for a wage, if they don't then they starve. They have no choice but to participate. They are forced into a position that exploits them by extracting value from them, and giving them back a tiny fraction of the wealth they produce. The state then defends the ownership of private property, so it uses violence to back the bourgies control over the wealth that they have gained through exploitation.

No, I mean that if you make TVs, you should be paid the full value of what you contribute when you turn the raw materials into commodities. What you are actually producing in terms of surplus value doesn't go to you at all, it goes straight to the pockets of the capitalist. What you are selling is your labour power (hours of a person with such and such education's labour) at market price.

Anyway, the whole problem with double coincidence of wants is not actually a problem - again referring to the anthropological record, what would happen is that when one peasant had shoes and another had wheat, when the guy with wheat wanted shoes the other guy would just give him a pair with the understanding that he would reciprocate when he had some surplus that his neighbour wanted. This sort of thing was enforced by shaming, ostracization if he always took and never gave, and (yes) violence when all else failed, but it seldom ever went that far. This whole myth about primitive people swapping commodities in a barter economy is simply that, a myth invented by 19th century political economists. That's not how things actually went down.

Violence will probably always exist, but the point I was making is that capitalism is not a natural state of affairs. It cannot exist without significant coercion, and it is no less exploitative than feudalism.

this is to be expected bc the owner has fixed and variable costs and needs to have some profit margin otherwise why bother? Also the worker doesn't take the risk of going into business. He could lose his shirt if his business fails. The worker still gets paid. He also doesn't have to make too many decisions and forecasts. WIth access to capital, the worker could become an owner himself (I don;t know how realistic this was in Marx's time so I'm speaking about the present day). In third world countries they have microfinancing so it is a small amount of capital but prob enough to start something like food stand or whatever.
Yes I agree that ultimately men with guns enforce all this but if you have labour mobility or access to capital your business will be protected by these same guns/laws. Am I missing someting?Are you just talking about things in Marx's day?

* the owner could lose his shirt, I mean

It's incredible how hypocritical right-wingers are in this respect. Killing an innocent Muslim in an obviously bigoted manner isn't a hate crime, but politely critiquing Israel's treatment of the Palestinians means you're Hitler.

Lol yeah I'm aware. I browsed there for a few months, because I really liked the memes. But it was a really dissonance-causing experience overall.

yes this would obviously require trust and forming relationships. Or small things it would be OK but what about big things that you might not be able to collect on (the guy might double-cross you, refuse to reciprocate or go bankrupt). Money allows you to exchenge the value right away so the debts are settled immediately. imagine this is why gold became popular - bc it acted as immediate settlement

No communism is when the value form in eliminated.

endnotes.org.uk/issues/2/en/endnotes-communisation-and-value-form-theory

Also, since a lot of people seem to get stuck in just the communization theory perspective, just scroll down to "The German Debates" section.

All that the owner is risking is being sunk to the level of his workers - ie, forced to survive by selling his labour. If the business fails, the workers also lose their jobs. There is no reason why the workers could not collectively assume that risk - usually, the only reason one person owns capital when very many others do not is because of past exploitation. If the money used to buy the means of production was made on the backs of others, how can you say that the ownership is legitimate to begin with?

You are operating under the mistaken assumption that every worker so inclined is free to start their own business and have a shot at success. In reality, only a small minority have this chance, and the number is getting smaller and smaller every year as more and more capital is accumulated in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Most individuals in the bourgeoisie did not get where they are by working hard as wage labourers, saving up and buying a factory. This sort of talk is PURE IDEOLOGY.

Private property is a ruinous institution that leads to nothing but societal harm.

Oh no, capitalism is not a vague set of ideals. It is a system by which goods are produced and distributed. As said, it works besed on a system of private property, but I am sure that concept requires some unpacking. It is probably easiest to understand by studying the process itself.

1) A piece of land contains a desired resource. This land is acquired, either through purchase or theft, by an individual (bourgeois). This individual does not live there, nor does he work there. He fences it off from everyone else and claims it and everything produced on it as his own (private property). He hires other, propertyless individuals to extract the desired resource. He then pays those individuals wages which amount to less than the value of their work.

2) The first boss sells the resource to another boss. This boss owns a factory or somesuch industrial building where he neither works nor lives (again, private property). He also owns all of the equipment in it (means of production). Boss #2 hires more workers to turn the resource that he just bought into an industrial product, thus greatly increasing its value both for use and for sale. This boss sells the industrial product that the workers made in his building using his tools to yet another boss.

3) This boss owns a distribution business. He hires drivers/pilots/sailors to transport the industrial product to one of his retail outlets. Of course, these retail outlets are private property which means that they are operated by waged laborers like those above. The workers at the distribution business sell the industrial product to a consumer at a price that covers their salaries, the cost of operations, and a surplus for Boss #3.

4) The consumer consumes the industrial product. It should be noted that the consumer is most likely a worker like one of the many workers involved in the process prior.

Bear in mind that any of the bosses could also be a board of directors instead of simply an individual.

We are talking with a little baby stuck in the ideological morass of capitalism. Don't complicate things needlessly.

Don't lie needlessly lad. It's not that hard to explain, as a matter of fact it takes less words than what you're trying to say.

not as stuck as you think. I have an open mind. I can be persuaded if the argument is properly demonstrated

How is private property defined?

One of the most common arguments against Marx is that the labour theory of value doesn't make sense outside of the commodity production process.

Well, that's kind of the point.

actually all the dissonance is good for you. It makes you question everything you know. The problem with the jewish community is that they are an echo chmaber. If they really wanted to grow, they would regularly expose themselves to all the ideas of the 'anti-semites' and judge them on their own merit rather than reflexively dismissing them as irrational haters. So as a Muslim, it is actually good when you hear people criticize Islam bc if it;s false, it shouldn't affect you and if it's true then you will have learned something

Don't mistake my meaning, I realize you're being receptive to new ideas and I fully appreciate that, which is why I'm trying so hard. I just mean that you've internalized capitalist ideology to such a degree that you're probably not even aware of the political nature of your statements.

Private property is a social relation that takes the role of the state or some other authority defending my right to extract surplus value from you due to the fact that I own the machine or the land you used to produce such and such thing.

Normally, when we talk about property we think of it as an exclusive right to use a thing, like a car or a bed or a lamp or a PC, but private property is not at all like this. You would still have things you have an exclusive right to use under socialism (your underwear or your PC for example), but what you would not have is the right to exploit others by extracting surplus value because of any relations of property.

And this is where the buddhism comes in. The idea of attachment. Being atttached to your position isn't always the best thing. It leads to suffering. You know you aren't attached when you no longer feel attacked when someone criticizes your faith/beliefs. People who are too attached feel personally attacked. This is a weakness and leads to rash action.

Well I have had a major shift regarding realizing the emptiness of materialism and seeing the mportance of always aiming for higher targets (make decisions based on what nourishes the soul and the community rather than what so many do in our society)

In simplistic terms, it is property that is the exclusive domain of a private individual(s) who neither lives nor works there. is more correct but a bit more difficult to follow.

Oh no, I know exactly what you're talking about when you say intellectual growth. But I was talking about more like "Haha these guys are funny! But they're also awful human beings…"

I was lowkey slipping into fascism

Thanks for clarifying! And thanks for the PDF

What do you mean by materialism? It's important to recognize that we live in a material universe governed by physical laws. Memes aside, I would suggest checking Stirner out. I don't think he's perfect, but he does raise some interesting points about abstract concepts that we take for granted and put ahead of our own natural interests.

materialism in both the philosophical and the more common sense

OK I will check this Stirner guy out to see what he has to say. thx.

Those two ideas are spectacularly different. Philosophically, materialism is the recognition that everything is ultimately the result of matter and energy in motion. Commonly, "materialism" is used to describe vapid consumerism.

Yes but I did mean both :)
Are you a materialist (in the philosophic sense)?

Most people here are, given that communism/socialism are explicitly materialist philosophies.

they can be pretty awful but damn funny. I've been incontinent on more than one occasion from the memes

So phenomenology is reduced to a material cause?
Give Ken Wilber a read if you;re looking for someone who is smart enough to possibly change your mind.

Yes.

If Nietzsche, Kant, and Hegel couldn't do it, I doubt Wilber has much of a shot.

Yeah. But the current US election sparked interest in me to look at leftist economics, and see what they have to offer. Before, my thought process was basically "Capitalism is bad, but socialism/communism is probably even worse. Cuba is a meme, so yeah"

But now I'm more open-minded, so that's how I ended up here.

Hmm
I'd still give him a read
I started with 'A Theory of Everything"

I think that I am a bit of an oddity as far as materialists go in that I reject even the existence of qualia and subjective perceptions. My position is that despite the fact that we act as if we have thoughts and make choices, that enough is not sufficient evidence for processes within the human brain being any different from the process of, say, a rock rolling down a hill.

Inasfar as being a person is synonymous with having firsthand knowledge of that person's mental processes, I am not against the idea of there being an infinite substance at the end of time capable of retrospectively knowing all the internal processes of all thinking things that have existed. I would be willing to accept that qualia and subjective perceptions are seated in this form, but not in finite human beings, dogs, fish, etc.

The idea that I have no thoughts or experiences of my own has, surprisingly enough, had no impact on my day to day affairs.

I've been to Cuba three times (in the towns not the resorts)
Literally everyone I met who lives there would like to leave. Despite this they are all exceedingly nice.

WHenever i bring up Marx in a a youtube comment section, I'm told I don't understand him, he didn't say that, etc… SO I started this thread to find out. There's no way in hell I would ever read the primary sources tbh.

Oh yeah, Cuba is definitely poor. Not denying that. But I was listening to something basically "Tbf, Cuba has been under a 50-year trade embargo" And that honestly makes sense to me.

I'll probably get to that at some point, but for now I'm just going to browse this board and watch/read basic analyses.

If you're interested in youtube videos, I'd highly recommend Kapitalism101's series on the labour theory of value. If you have any questions, the guy's really nice and he still replies to posts on his blog (I recently saw him briefly arguing against a user with a pepe avatar and a meninist blog.)

youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3F695D99C91FC6F7

My nigger

I kek'd
Reminds me of this guy Wayne Liquorman on youtube that I listen to. But he's definitely not a materialist.

To summarize Wilber's view, he sees every mental event as having an inside and an outside. The inside is the subjective phenomenological experience that is consciousness and cannot be reduced to a material explanation. It is the 'I' view.
Every mental event can be described in 3rd person though - neurotransmitters, synapses, etc… 'it' view.
You can't reduce I to it or vice-versa without some pretty hard-to-believe conclusions.
Science ignores the reality of the actual experience of a sensation, as felt by the perceiver, and tries to reduce it all to atoms and quarks and electrical impulses, etc..

For example tasting something sweet. There is the reality of the taste receptors, the nerve impulses and all that. But there the actual taste as experienced by the taster. It can be explained anatomically and physiologically but that doesn't acknowledge the actual (phenomenoligcal) experience)
That's the gist of it - he does a better job obviously

Thank you!

It sounds like it presupposes the existence of a cartesian self.

Of course, the owner is in it to benefit himself, that's the problem. In doing this he exploits the workers.

That's true, it doesn't change the fact that all of the wealth he gets is produced by the workers, who get a fraction of what he gets. Even if he does lose his shirt, then he has just become a prole. It should tell you something when the worst fate a capitalist can imagine is being in the same position as his workers.

I'm the present day this isn't really a realistic goal. Some workers may be able to become petit bourgies if they bust their ass long enough, but even if they make it that far they are almost certain to fail. The American Dream is a lie, that's why there are literally mountains of American literature focusing on its death. When American culture is and always has been obsessed with the death of the American dream, then the odds are it was never alive.

Statistically speaking, upward social mobility is something that goes down with more capitalism, and the amount of work you put in has far less to do with where you end up than your starting position does.

Yes, this is the qualia argument against material monism. Like I said, I get around it by rejecting qualia. It's by definition something that we cannot provide material evidence for, so it rests entirely on the individual's willingness to believe. It is thus no great effort to simply disbelieve it - it has no force. If we reject the temptation to assume that it is something we have seen simply because we have a biological tendency to assume this thing about ourselves, we can just as easily make our ways through lives by assuming that it does not exist and using a behaviorist models to explain both our own actions and the actions of others.

This. If you're born poor or a non-middle class minority, you're pretty much screwed.

It was probably very much alive in the early days of American colonialism, when land was so cheap and plentiful that a wage labourer actually could after working for a few years buy his own land and hire his own labourers (or buy slaves) and become a bourgy, since back then there was a huge market for agricultural products like corn, cotton, tobacco and so on.

Nowadays, with industrialization and all the productive land being bought up and the way the market for agricultural products is, obviously this is no longer the case, but the myth persists, and I think it's important to recognize its origins in early American history.

So is automation bad for capitalism?

THe thing with Wilber is that he himself has reached a non-dual state of enlightenment.

Non-material realities cannot be proven, they can only be directly experience by the mind

I was an atheist before I read him and then I wasn't afterwards

He actually uses the scientific method to 'prove' it whereas most other sources just say to have faith

Essentially, different individuals at different times and in different places (who LIKELY were unaware of each other) went through the same series of phenomenological stages in their meditation, prayer, contemplation, yoga, whatever. WIlber puts all these writings side by side and shows how their validity can be corroborated becuase they are describing the same essential experiences in the same order.

He uses a slightly expanded definiton of science, namely one that accept data that is phenomenological as opposed to the usual data that can be measured objectively. This requires a community of people who have felt the same thing to cooroborate. This is something different from the usual scientific method but he says that is presupposing that subjective data is not valid

It's really worth it to read but I am too tired to type it all out.

Depends on what you mean by bad for capitalism. It's certainly shooting yourself in the foot, as when you automate, you're increasing productivity, but you're also reducing labour costs and investing in dead capital. As more and more people do this, what ends up happening is that there are less workers able to buy things and profits naturally fall, which leads to a contraction of the economy and bigger competition for the remaining market share, which leads to more cutting labour costs and investment in dead capital and productivity, which leads to less people able to buy things, and so on.

The end game of capitalism is essentially a handful of rich people living inside a walled community where everything is automated and hordes of starving unemployed people outside, and probably hired guys with guns between them meant to keep the two from ever meeting. That's also roughly the RPG setting I'm working on atm.

Aren't those rather describing a particular effect on thoses techniques on the brain than a proof for the existence of a higher being? I mean people all around the world getting high or drunk will experiment similar symptoms…

The STV is way to myopic.

Even if value is subjective "value" as set in market relations under a capitalist mode of production is very much correlated with labor and SNLT.

If I sell my labor for X amount of money then that capitalist must have me produce a great value than X plus what he has invested in the means of production.

Otherwise he will not make a return and effectively have no capital accumulation.
He simply will not turn a profit if the amount of value I produce in the product of my labor is less than or equal to X.
This will inevitably effect the way the prices of the commodity are set and regulated by the capitalist class.

Marx called this the rate of surplus value.

C (Constant capital [Means of production] ) + V (Variable capital [ Labor power] )+ S (Surplus) = W (Worth)

You really should read Capital and Marx's works.

One more point - examples of experiences include experiences of luminosity, of the void, of the ultimate witness and of nondual reality

While these sound foreign and bizarre to us, apparently they are the bread and butter of meditators - they discuss these things with each other the way we discuss baseball. There are well-defined cookbook approaches to navigating these stages and experiences (which is essentially what Tibetan Buddhism, or Christian mysticism or sufiism is all about). One can accidentally experience these higher stages but usually one must go through a training.
It's impossible to explain or prove to someone but once someone experiences it (apparently) they just know and when they can confirm it with their colleagues then it is corroborative.

That isn't necessarily because God did it, it could very well be some yet-to-be-understood thing in the brain that happens to certain people under certain circumstances. (It's speculated that Mohammed had temporal lobe epilepsy, for example.) This kind of stuff can be attributed entirely to material causes, no new class of thing required.

I'm personally a theist myself, but I don't think that's a particularly good argument for theism.

How do you get around the interaction problem, anyway?

I think this is where the idea of faith comes from. You have all these people in history who have these transformative experiences trying to impart what they have felt. Their claim is that when you experience it you will know. How do we know they aren't deceiving themselves? There are many people who have experienced it and can corroborate it. This is the basis for the religions - this direct experience. This is where the idea of faith comes from. THey're saying - I can't prove it to you - I can only describe it or give a series of pointers , or make an analogy but you have to experience it yourself and when you do, you will know. At least Wilber compared the writings of these great mystics side by side and found that they corroborated each other. That's the best I can do.

I know what you mean because I've experienced that, and I definitely think that there's some neurological peculiarity that is behind religious experiences, but I do not think that this is anything approaching an adequate proof for God, nor that it makes any difference whatsoever whether people believe or disbelieve in God.

The claim of the nondual traditions (Tibetan Buddhism, Advaita and some others) is that God or infinite consciousness cannot be an object in your awareness because it is pure awareness itself. Just like you can't taste your own tongue because the tongue is the thing doing the tasting, you cannot hold God in consciousness bc God is consciousness itself. Apparently through prayer or meditation you can come to this realization. Apparently when you experience it you will 'just know'. I know it is inadequate bc we can always be hallucinating, deluded or dreaming but this is the great truth of the wisdom traditions

It applies a system that analyzes objective phenomena to subjective experiences? Gotta be honest; that sounds like fundamentally flawed logic.

Anthropologists would call that an ethnographic parallel.

I'll try one more time
It has to do with the concept of emergence:
Things you couldn't predict from your present knowledge and paradigm until you 'ascend up a level' at which point apparent paradoxes dissolve and new properties emerge - like how individual atoms combine to form molecules that have properties you never could have predicted a priori.
He's saying that the 'proof of God' problem will always exist as a logical paradox at our present level of consciousness until we ascend from our present vista. He's saying it as someone who gained the knowledge from direct experience.
OK nice chatting with you

it's not easy to describe subjective phenomena and even harder to communicate that to others and get agreement but it's not impossible

'You just know when you feel it' isn't a proof of anything. I could say that cupping my balls in your hand allows you to contact the Eternal God and say that the things I feel when you do it are proof of this. You are essentially saying that your claims can't be proven within any human system of logic and have to be taken entirely on faith. Just because other people throughout history have said the same thing doesn't mean that they weren't thoroughly spooked themselves, or that we should accept out of hand a claim made entirely on faith.

It's impossible to prove that subjective phenomena even exist, much less to communicate them. All that we are capable of understanding is that which objectively exists, which is to say the material world.

Sidebar: what are you guys' thoughts on the objective-subjective dichotomy?

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Okay, then. Prove you exist. I'll just wait here.

Or better yet, prove I exist.

you just had to use that example

what about abstract thinking of any kind? Take the concept of the number 3, not an example of three objects but the concept of 3. Or the concept of the happiness you would have if an anonymous channer cupped your balls in his hand

If I didn't exist I couldn't doubt my own existence.

I bet you also believe in simulation, multiverse, and vat theory

o shit

I never said I could prove anything outside of myself exists.

We accept that reality as we know it outside of our subjective mind on a totally pragmatic assumption.

mind exists**

It's a false dichotomy and Holla Forums should read more hegel, tbh.

Apparently the subject-object dichotomy exists until yo have nondual realization that reality is not two.
"When I heard the bell, the was no me and no bell, just the ringing"

*there was no me and no bell, just the ringing

We are talking about subjective existence, not objective existence. It is without a doubt the case that you exist objectively, for my own pragmatic purposes.

I don't know about believing in it, but I do think that the possibility of a Cartesian demon precludes the possibility of certain knowledge.

Your argument of there being a subjective mind rests entirely on the presumption that the person you are speaking to also has a subjective mind. I do not. Prove to me that such things exist.

Of course, I agree with you that our belief in the real world is a pragmatic assumption, but I say that so is our belief in our own subjective experiences. The two are no different.

Why

NICE ONE BOSS

and the cartesian demon is actually not as farfetched as some people think. Think of false flags, hoaxes, how many filters our 'news' goes through, brainwashing us into various ideologies while our leaders keep a straight face

I can prove it exists to myself. That is all that matter to me, tbh.

The point I am trying to demonstrate is that subjectivity is, ultimantly, what we are dealing with. An immaterial existence not a material one.

Our material one is just a comfortable assumption and for all intents and purposes is good for examining the world around us and the under lying social relations.

I was saying earlier that the subjective (consciousness) and objective (material) are the inside and outside respectively of every mental event and that trying to reduce all subjectivity to objectivity or vice-versa ends in contradictions (as explained by Ken Wilber)

I think you've proven that banking is a scam not entrepreneurship in capitalism

I don't mean to say that I can prove it, just that pragmatically I do not doubt it, because constantly doubting whether other people exist objectively would only hinder me in my daily life.

Well now that's the exact same as not being able to prove it, now isn't it? So long as we presume that our senses convey mostly-accurate information about the external world, there is no need to invent a new class of non-material substance in order to understand the world. All that we perceive are material substances; anything else cannot be perceived. All that I perceive is outside of myself - there is no way for the subjective self to be perceived. We are making the arrogant mistake of defining everything that we see in opposition to something that does not exist and mistakenly identifying ourselves with this nothing without realizing that, by definition, it does not exist.

All that you perceive is all that exists. There is no reason to believe that there is something doing the perceiving.

You realize proof is not synonymous with evidence, correct? The fact I exist is deductively true from my perspective and from your own.

Prove it, then.

Lmao, I couldn't doubt my existence if I did not exist. It's simple.

Logically, from your perspective the same would be true.

...

I mean, you CAN, but it's totally futile, lol.

...

Sure you could - it is your body, going through the motions of typing these fragments out. You - the subjective self you're arguing for, is nothing more than a figment, a bothersome spook. It's true, you indeed cannot doubt your own existence because you - that is, your personal experience of your subjective inner life - indeed does not exist.

You fools have really hit sophist bedrock

Your inability to grasp what I am trying to explain you is worrisome.

I exist, I can prove it to myself.

If I where I your shoes the same could be said for you.

This is irrelevant to whether either one of us exists to the other.

Materially reality has never been demonstrated or shown to exist objectively, though.

In order for the scientific method to be accurate you would have to prove minds other than your own exist.

Which, as far as we can tell, is not possible.

I grasp perfectly well what you're arguing, I'm telling you that you're spooked. You cannot prove to anyone that you exist, you are only deluding yourself. Even in my shoes, you would not be able to do this because it is fundamentally impossible. You cannot prove anything to yourself. Proving is an act of communication, communication takes place between human beings. You cannot prove that you exist (subjectively) to others, thus you can't prove that you exist. Without a doubt, your body exists inasfar as my senses can detect it, but anything else, like you said, is up in the air.

And whether the scientific method is accurate or not is irrelevant, I value it for its predictive ability, not for how perfectly it corresponds to some ungraspable ideal of truth that lies beyond the human senses.

I'm not trying to prove to any one I exist you retard, lmao.

Do you know you exist and also accept that reality outside of yourself cannot be proven to exist?

I just thank you again for linking this. I'm on the second video now and going through the suggested reading stuff, and it's really helpful. Taking me a long time to grasp the concepts, but I think I'm getting the hang of it.

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lol classic philosowanks try to understand the scientific method but fail miserably

go tell your mom she's spooked

...

Inasfar as anything can be proven, reality is the first thing that one must be able to prove in order to prove anything else. Proving being a perlocutionary act taking place between two or more human beings, reality must exist as conduit for the communicative act.

The existence of the subjective self, being a thing that cannot be perceived, is a thing that can never be proved unless we lower our standards to saying that 'some guy telling us that X is the case is sufficient for X being the case.' Simply because every other person you've spoken to has been deluded into thinking that the self is something doesn't mean that I have to accept this cockamamie notion without some proofs.

What is an internal monologue? Have you ever seen one out there? I certainly haven't. Also I'll have you know I've only ever taken one undergraduate philosophy course and that's only because it was required for my major. I have better things to spend my time on than philosophy.

Well, maybe that's why it's called the creative nothing and not the creative something.

You're welcome. It's pretty neat stuff once you get past some of the initial counterintuitiveness. I find that getting into Marx is really magical because once you start grasping the first principles everything else just starts falling into place and the world starts making sense.

Then the drinking starts.

In order to be sefl serving you need an ego which needs to have form and thus existence.

ITT: Another misrepresentation of Stirner who was, in fact, a solipsism

You don't need anything outside of yourself to prove you exist to yourself. There's no reason to assume you need an a priori reality to be able to prove something.

I don't drink. But I do have a good desk to bang my head on.

I am self serving simply because my body follows its biological imperatives without exhibiting behaviour for the sake of things that do not exist, like the subjective self. No subjective self needed.

Alright, let's try this again:

Do you believe you exist and if so do you believe that the material reality outside of yourself is only *assumed* to exist and cannot be *proven* to exist?

And you said I was spooked. . .

No, I keep telling you, I only believe that the material world exists. Proof, being an act of communication, can only take place in a universe wherein the material universe exists. If that cannot be proven to exist, nothing can, as it would then become impossible to communicate.

I think your mistake is assuming that Descartes' cogito is true just because you hear it a lot when it is in fact a load of shit. Descartes' body committed a whole lot of shit to paper, but nowhere in there was there a trace of a thought from Descartes' non-material mind, he just assumed (like you) that everyone would agree because they were just as spooked as he. Sort of how his argument for God works too.

Do you also walk around with shit in your drawers because defecation is a social construct?

How do you know that?

You are aware that the construction of through happens before we communicate, correct? I could think even if I could not communicate.

Not to mention that you could just be any number of things or other possibilities I could come up with. You could just be a figment of my own imagination communicating at me right now.

You are making a leap of faith to assume that if the material world cannot be be proven to exist then nothing else can.

It is the people who posit the material world that holds the burden of proof, which, you are trying to pass,right now.

I think that "cognito ergo sum"is true because I can reason it to be true. Regardless of how you feel about it or how spooked you think Descartes was.

Materialism takes just as much of a leap of faith as believing in the existence of god.

No, I don't walk around like that because it is uncomfortable to me.

Do you not walk around with shit in your draws because it is a social construct?

The construction of thought happens in the brain, not inside the immaterial subjective self. The brain is a material thing, theoretically one could hook electrodes up to it and read thoughts as they are happening. That does not mean that you subjectively know these thoughts simply because you behave as if this were the case.

Because communication takes place through material means. We use words or images, ideas do not mass through non-material substance on the way to non-material minds, unless of course you mean to posit Berkeley's pure idealism here.

Not so, all I need to do is presume that my senses provide a mostly accurate representation of the world. Given that I can perceive the material world, it only stands to reason that the material world exists. Were I unable to perceive God using my senses, I would be forced to conclude that I don't know whether God exists.

And guess what, if I don't exist as a physical body, then there's no communication going on. Communication involves the inter-personal conveyance of ideas and information. There is no such thing as intra-personal conveyance of ideas and information because frankly that's retarded.

Guess what, avoiding discomfort is a biological imperative. But for my part, I don't walk around like that because I'm not a pants-shitter like you to begin with.

What is a brain? I have never seen a "brain" I have only seen forms of what people call brains and none of them have been actualized and proven to exist to me. You have the cart before the horse.

How do you know that communication takes place through material means?

Have you ever done drugs? Have you ever seen or heard an auditory or physical hallucination?

youtube.com/watch?v=u9VMfdG873E

This notion that your senses provide an even close to accurate representation of reality is patently false.

Just because you *seem* to be perceiving something does not make it so. You need to actually be able to prove with certainty. The closest we can ever get is approximate proof and that is, in and of itself, based on an assumption that a material reality exists outside of us.

So there's simply no forms of communication what so ever that do not exist outside of the material means? You have never seen animals interacting?

I still again ask you how you know for a fact that communication cannot happen with out a physical body or that it is happening through material means.

Or how you don't know that it's only in your head?

If "Frankly it's retarded" is the best answer you have to give, then, frankly == You == are retarded.

Entreprenuership in capitalism is impossible without banking.

Because words and images exist in physical space, and the way that I interact with them is by perceiving them using my senses. They cannot reach me otherwise.

Of course I have, hence why I said mostly reliable. Given that I brought up the Cartesian demon earlier, I can't see why you'd bring this line of argument up now. I can always tell when I'm on drugs and I can usually tell when I'm dreaming. Even when I dream, however, I dream of the same material sort of world that I wake up to. My senses of the dream do not perceive a different type of substance.

Animals only ever interact with each other materially. Their animal spirits do not rub up against each other and transmit information through the impalpable realm of ideas. They use bodily actions to convey information to each other's senses.

The same way I know that a cat is not a dog. Because the word 'cat' refers to one thing and the word 'dog' refers to another, just as the word communication refers to intercourse between persons.

I will reiterate here my belief that certain knowledge is impossible, but as far as the things that I pragmatically believe go, I have more reason to believe that a strictly material world exists than I have to believe that non-material substances exist.

As for a brain, it is the organ in your head that lets you think and feel.

Forgot my shitposting flag.

Son, read this

academia.edu/9989816/Matter_and_Consciousness

It's short and sweet. By Andy Blunden, one of the Marxists I really respect because he clearly thinks.

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I have. They are apparent and available to study.

Oh god, more Nietzsche. It sounds clever until you actually see how thought and all the subjectivity that comes with it is changed and even obliterated by simple chemistry.

That is proof of the material origins of thought, not vice versa.

Wat.

Im pretty in the same position as you friend as I haven't read much theory. But here's what I know so far.

1. Its hard to say. Like most right wing ideologies it would be hard to separate Marx from the economic because, as far as I can tell, he's looking at how society impacts upon the individual and vice versa. That's hard to do without looking at how people feed and cloth themselves because as Marx pointed out it has a massive impact on how people relate to their environment, the fruits of their labor and each other. Classical liberals emphasis people as "rational actors" and that seems to underpin everything from historical development theories, to psychology and criminology.

2. Not sure about this one. The Communist Manifesto suggests that he had a prolteriate audience or at the very least a socialist organizer audience. As for violence he didn't really emphasis it, all he wanted was the workers to seize the means of production.

3. Well as we see now small businesses barely matter in the grand scheme of things as wealth has become so centralized that only a handful of companies run the world at this point. In an ideal situation where you pick between the "mom and pop" stores or the wall-marts, both are still caught up in the profit cycle and the workers are still not getting the full amount their labor produces.

4. Lol, what? The elite hated socialism and depending on which conspiracy theories you subscribe to they have been working against communism from the start. Although it doesn't take a paranoid mind to see how the government tried to screw over the early socialist unions and provided support for the White Army. During the idealogical conflict known as the Cold War of course every capitalist commentator is going to come up with "theories" about why communism is against the hard working American individualist who acts and behaves like everyone else, buying products and working for factories in order to generate a profit for the elite.

5. Why? Every revolution in existence was sparked because people were into new ideas. I mean, what brainwashing did the capitalists use in order to get farmers and street urchins into the factories for 16 hours a day and work their asses of for pennies? What brainwashing are they employing in Asian countries to do the same thing?

It comes down to survival. They have money and the workers need money. In a communist society people need food and so will work to have food. But if you were to do some brainwashing I don't see how it would be of a level greater than what we have now in Western capitalist countries. Actually go and learn how people lived in the USSR, its defiantly not North Korea levels of hero worship its actually comparable to the kind of shit we have were the schools and television programs and news broadcasts encourage a certain type of behavior and thinking.

It's a bit complicated. I believe that God is a material substance of a heretofore unidentified class. I also believe that it is nearly entirely pointless to worship it, that its concern for humans is minimal and that the world religions are generally bullshit and that the idea of an anthropomorphic God is the most bullshit idea of all.

I don't have any proof that it exists, naturally, but I'm working on a little more than feeling.

Why call it a "god" if it neither behaves like a god (demanding worship) nor hypothetically exists in the way that a god would?

I don't think that demanding worship is God's defining characteristic. I thought that being an omnipotent and omniscient force capable of exercising agency was sufficient for being God.

I think most people believe in God because they need the idea of a kind and loving creator with a purpose in mind for everything in order to reconcile themselves with our fucked-up reality. I, personally, believe that we have a fucked-up God to match our fucked-up reality. I derive no comfort from my beliefs. I view it as a natural disaster you can try and prepare against but do basically nothing against once it gets rolling. Once it's going, though, it's an awesome, terrible spectacle that leaves behind nothing but a series of beautiful atrocities. Being in its presence is to behold a grace so transcendental that in the moment you step before it you become keenly and permanently aware that will be able to do nothing to match even a fraction of that glory. God is a living tragedy, like putting a real living human being into the flat and stereotyped world of a Saturday-morning cartoon where every other character is comic relief. It is a ravenous self-devouring force that meets no opposition and yet drives continuously forward, powered by its everburning infinite glory. For one of us to consider being that, it must be Hell. It's like Zizek says, about dreams becoming real. I think that it definitely exists, but it is alive and it is powerful and its power renders it beyond human comprehension, which is what precisely makes it so frightening - it is an unpredictable force. Nothing is more frightening than a living God, one that is truly omnipotent and thus constrained by law such that it becomes impossible to determine the principles by which it behaves and thus predict its actions, to say that it likes this or it hates that so we have to do so and so to stay in its good graces. That's why worshipping it is pointless. So I've decided to simply live in accordance with my nature and not worry about that.

So you are basically a Gnostic? Because what your describing sounds an awful lot like the demiurge the only Christian sect to make any sense tbh

Pretty much. Although I never studied Gnosticism to begin with, and just sort of reached the same conclusions regarding divinity.

And I should also note that I don't believe in the gnostics' spiritual world or the perfect God, just the material world and the demiurge (or the living God.)

there's always an elite. It's not a problem with economic systems, it's just baked into the cake of humanity. Some people just want more power and wealth than others. THe more decentralized the political and economic system, the more power each individual retains.

Without a system to give them material power over others, though, that's kind of irrelevant. Somebody could be an elite because they're hot shit and everyone wants to do what they say, but if they can't actually force someone that disagrees to do as they say, it doesn't make a difference.

Of course, there's the possibility that someone with that kind of influence could inspire their followers to kill and intimidate, but that's not really you can do anything about with a political system, and it's not like capitalism or anything else have any defense against that.

Wow I never thought I'd live to see the day.

there can (and will) always be deception - people stealing and hiding wealth, bandng together to conspire to take power

i disagree fundamentally that everyone would cooperate and play ball. Competition is a reality among humans.

how do you propose we would get rid of psychopaths?

well let's hear your rebuttal then

Why not? It characterizes pretty much every other god that mankind has worshiped in history.

Epicurus raised a point about perfect beings, namely that they would have absolutely no interest in minkind. Such beings would have no needs, and certainly none that man would be able to provide them with.

Only currently. That is not by any measure a historical constant.

Again, saying that 'people will try to overturn it' is not an argument against socialism, it is not an argument against anything, this has been true of every political system in the history of humanity including capitalism.

Also
Earlier human societies were overwhelmingly cooperative. Competition was generally between groups, not within them, and groups have only gotten bigger and more cooperative as time went on.

Every other god that mankind has worshipped has been a figment. And this is some circular-ass reasoning. Of course every god mankind has worshipped has also demanded worship. Why the fuck would the worship it otherwise? The gods that didn't demand worship were (surprise surprise) not worshipped.

do you know of any cases where competition did not exist? or are you saying that we might in the future figure out a way to abolish competitive feelings?

Of course. Every pre-agrarian society operated with a gift economy. Even in agrarian societies, the peasants pooled their resources within their own communities.

Even sedentary agrarian communities relied overwhelmingly on expectation of reciprocation before states imposed markets. Markets are not a natural development that humans create when left alone, that notion is pure ideology.

How do you know this?
History is replete with wars, sabotage, conspiracies. What if 2 men want the same woman or 2 women want the same man in a tribe. There will be jealousy, anger, sabotage, deception.

If we assume that there will always be people who will fight to rise to the top (which has been a constant throughout human history), which system would you rather live under? One where you have more decentralization (smaller government) or bigger government? The small govt system allows you to have more personal freedom and power.

OK, now I know you're either trolling or ignorant.

There is a whole scientific discipline dedicated to it called anthropology. It uses data collected by history and archeology as well as drawing ethnographic parallels between similar societies to analyze how they function.

Not trolling-
Possibly ignorant - that's why I come here to learn from people who know a lot more about the left than I do.

Socialism IS big gov't. WHen you establish all kinds of social programs, you need a lot of peole to design them, improve them, run them. THen all those people need tot be trained, supervised, etc. There is a huge bureaucracy.

It must be big gov't bc in capitalism all those social programs are provided by the private sector

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First off, socialism isn't necessarily when you have a whole bunch of social programs. The main thing that differentiates socialism from capitalism is the absence of private property, which is just one change to the property rights regime.

Secondly, liberal capitalist states are HUGELY bureaucratic. Bureaucracy is one of the most distinctive features of the modern capitalist state and is inherent not only to to the instruments of state but also capitalist firms themselves, which are run and organized on a bureaucratic basis.

Here's a primer on socialism that should clear up any major misconceptions you might have.

You're making a mistake drawing such a big distinction between private firms and state institutions. Functionally they're not all that different.

And have two more as a bonus, that talk about bureaucracy and the history of human economic organization, respectively.

Hell, they are even run by the self same individuals.

I was implying that these programs were gov't-provided. My understanding is that these gov't provided services are the sine qua non of Socialism bc the latter is all about improving the plight of the proles
in a capitalist system, the program , say healthcare, would be provided by a capitalist who owned the hospital. In socialism, it would owned by the govt so it has everything to do with private vs public property.

thx for the pdfs btw

Your understanding of socialism is literally meme-tier, and I say this in the least condescending way possible. Please read the Jacobin book at least. Or at least read this thread from the top if you're not feeling up to a book.

the more you have to pay in taxes, the further away from private property rights you go and the more socialist you become. It's on a spectrum

ok i will start there. thx

Your "understanding" is based off right-wing propaganda and has no basis in what socialists actually stand for.

By helping them help themselves, not by giving them free shit. If workers own the means of production they will be helped by benefiting directly from everything their own labor creates.

You have no idea what the fuck you're talking about

"Class" is way more complex than how bleeding-heart progressives describe it.

Marx was the first to describe class tensions specifically as the root of ALL social strife, in a way that Freud described childhood sexuality as the root of all mental disorders. All theorists who derive from Marx are de facto economic theorists. Writers before Marx such as Robespierre did not carry this baggage.

He said that revolution would result after "capitalism" implodes on itself and the shit hits the fan.

No. He said that the workers must "seize" the means of production. His tone was softer than those of other writers who exhorted that the workers "throw their bodies on the wheels."

Marxists don't want platitudes or "reforms." They want to decisively "dismantle" capitalism.

No. A merchant who repairs shoes by himself is still a capitalist—still a whipping boy.

He wasn't purposefully working for the elites. He was just a theorist. Throughout history there are muh privileged people who feel an urge to step outside of their sheltered lives and improve the whole of society.

It starts with brainwashing people to ignore the supernatural, which is complete bullshit. Elites always believe in the supernatural and believe that they are blessed in ways that others aren't. Every indigenous culture has stories about ghosts, ESP, synchronicity, etc.

no he's not a capitalist if hes doing it by himself, as he's he's not exploiting workers by extracting surplus value.

This is what I'm talking about. The word "capitalist" always carries a negative connotation, even though Marx himself used the word "capital" to describe the functioning of the state.

why was marx such a faggot

This. An artisan working in his own shop is not a proletariat but neither is he bourgeois.

It has nothing to do with connotations. A capitalist is an individual who accumulates capital.

You can't accumulate capital by repairing shoes?

Bear in mind that capital is not the same thing as money. An artisan may make some money to improve the productivity of his business, but until he hires workers he will not accumulate capital in any significant sum.

Why not? If he has social, etc. capital he can charge enormously high prices without increasing his material output.

THe labour theory is the main concept of economical liberalism (John Lock → Ricardo)

Marx only fix it, with the concept of abstract work (socially useful work).

Only retards from the Chicago schools deny it, so they don't have to accept that Marxist theories is the right conclusion of economical liberalism.

By the way: you'd rather read Schumpeter than the chicago shit.