Marxist thinking

I thought some people might be interested in discussing Marxist ideas and this might help me understand what i have read better. Which is not that much i should say. So i shall provide a famous Marxian quote, perhaps the most famous, and then offer up what one of Marx's commentators, Peter singer, says about it by way of stimulating discussion....

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is, to change it"

"This is generally read as a statement to the effect that philosophy is unimportant; revolutionary activity is what matters. It means nothing of the sort. What Marx is saying is that the problems of philosophy cannot be solved by passive interpretation of the world as it is, but only by remoulding the world to resolve the philosophical contradictions in it. It is to solve philosophical problems that we must change the world.

What are the problems of philosophy that Marx is trying to solve? Why does he think remoulding the world will solve them? What mould does he recommend? Why does he think changing the world will solve any philosophical problems? The Marxist attempts, so far, (Stalinism, Maosism...) don't seem to have worked very well. Is this due to flaws in Marxism, or something else?

i think what is being got at is that philosophy and the world are not in fact separate or this is as Marx apparently conceives it. The contradiction or 'philosophical problem' is the contradiction between labour and capital. Remoulding the world means resolving the contradiction through communism. This way of thinking is very Hegelian but the question arises, would new contradictions arise? In terms of stalin and mao maybe one could talk about a contradiction between state and society. Marx spoke of the state ultimately withering away but he can offer no evidence in support of what seems to me a baseless prophecy. As i understand socialism it is a worker organised society though whether a very powerful and repressive state is inevitable in the pursuit of socialism...but to speak of inevitability in history is to fall into a trap that marx is said to fall into himself...

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Originally Posted by russellb

i think what is being got at is that philosophy and the world are not in fact separate or this is as Marx apparently conceives it.

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So Kant did away with metaphysics, so all we have is the world? Is that the point he is starting from? His PhD thesis was on the atomic theories of Democritus and Epicurus, that's looks like a very materialist, worldly, (and very good!) beginning.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...841/dr-theses/

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The contradiction or 'philosophical problem' is the contradiction between labour and capital. Remoulding the world means resolving the contradiction through communism. This way of thinking is very Hegelian but the question arises, would new contradictions arise?

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Yes, hence the term "dialectical materialism" as the usual description of his philosophy.

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In terms of stalin and mao maybe one could talk about a contradiction between state and society. Marx spoke of the state ultimately withering away but he can offer no evidence in support of what seems to me a baseless prophecy.

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Yes, in many ways it's just another religion, with all kinds of ridiculous ideals and idealisms with no basis in material reality (so much for the materialism in dialectical materialism!) I mean "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" sounds good, but how could he imagine that might happen in the real world.

Hegel had the idea of an "organic community" composed of organic people whose desires, fulfilments, and associated actions, matched the needs of the community. He gave us no practical advice on how to create these organic people, and Marx didn't either. After any revolution you have the same plethora of violent, uncompassionate, silly, selfish sods, not "angels on Earth".

It is ridiculous that Marxism, something that was completely defeated and became obsolete in the last quarter of the 20th century is still around in the present as a proposition. No doubt it is of historical value, but beyond that, it will never make it back. It's gone.

I am astounded. who says philosophy is about changing anything let alone the world?
I thought philosophy was about thinking things outside their natural content ie away from their realistic environment. it is almost fictional to think philosophical.

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Originally Posted by cafolini

It is ridiculous that Marxism, something that was completely defeated and became obsolete in the last quarter of the 20th century is still around in the present as a proposition. No doubt it is of historical value, but beyond that, it will never make it back. It's gone.

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Marxism is really just a vague critique of the capitalist set up, so how can it be gone? Unless capitalism is working perfectly that is...something that even die hard capitalists don't even say.

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Originally Posted by Neely

Marxism is really just a vague critique of the capitalist set up, so how can it be gone? Unless capitalism is working perfectly that is...something that even die hard capitalists don't even say.

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Firstly, it is not a vague critique. It is a very stupid, rigid one. Secondly, who cares what die hard capitalists say? The poor asses can't tell the difference between a hole in the ground and the one they carry. Marx, Hegel (assistant,crazy Marcuse), Foucault, etc. are finished for keeps. They are not coming back. This is the age of the globalization of democracy.

It is a vague critique because he gives the problem but not the solution. Marx was far from rigid, quite the opposite, my goodness, he was aware of the ever changing nature of the system he challenged and the changing face of economic systems from mercantile, agrarian, industrial, monopoly, financial, imperial etc and even suggested the working class as a whole would develop into ever increasing white collar workers, predicting the age of globalization. Doesn't sound very rigid and dead to me. Marx is like the shadow of capitalism, while ever it is there his critique of it remains, whether people agree with it or not.

i agree that marxism is not a vague critique of capitalism. In some ways it is just an expression of classical economics. The labour theory of value was a standard idea of the time. If marxism has in some ways passed from the historical stage (though in terms of the soviet union there are those who would say marxism had ceased to be relevant way before 1989) marx IS still relevant. The 'globalization of democracy' is something marx can be said to have anticipated, he says 'the bourgeoisie will make the world in its own image.' The tendency of capital to be concentrated into fewer and fewer hands is something we can recognise today with mega corporations. Intellectually we often agree with marx and say ideas do not have an independent life of their own but are rooted in the society in which they are produced. This could be said to be true of marxism of course and it could be said that marxism develops in relation to historical change. Actually marcuse with his 'liberation from the affluent society' might illustrate this point, i think foucault denied he was a marxist.

Marx was a materialist, i think actually the phrase 'dialectical materialism' was coined by engels. A metaphysic that focuses on our productive interaction with the world will i guess construe 'ohilosophical problems' in terms of socioeconomic relations. I don't think marx ever thought we could be angels and he did mock utopian socialists, although so called 'scientific socialism' can seem more like a creed. Where we do often go along with marx though is to say that so called 'human nature' must be undersood in a wider social context.

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Originally Posted by russellb

i agree that marxism is not a vague critique of capitalism. In some ways it is just an expression of classical economics. The labour theory of value was a standard idea of the time. If marxism has in some ways passed from the historical stage (though in terms of the soviet union there are those who would say marxism had ceased to be relevant way before 1989) marx IS still relevant. The 'globalization of democracy' is something marx can be said to have anticipated, he says 'the bourgeoisie will make the world in its own image.' The tendency of capital to be concentrated into fewer and fewer hands is something we can recognise today with mega corporations. Intellectually we often agree with marx and say ideas do not have an independent life of their own but are rooted in the society in which they are produced. This could be said to be true of marxism of course and it could be said that marxism develops in relation to historical change. Actually marcuse with his 'liberation from the affluent society' might illustrate this point, i think foucault denied he was a marxist.

Marx was a materialist, i think actually the phrase 'dialectical materialism' was coined by engels. A metaphysic that focuses on our productive interaction with the world will i guess construe 'ohilosophical problems' in terms of socioeconomic relations. I don't think marx ever thought we could be angels and he did mock utopian socialists, although so called 'scientific socialism' can seem more like a creed. Where we do often go along with marx though is to say that so called 'human nature' must be undersood in a wider social context.

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It is true that the rich have become superrich, but it is also true that percentagewise, the lower classes in their own terms have become far richer than the superrich. A person that made 50 cents and now makes 15,000, for example, has become far richer than the one who made 1 billion and now makes 10.

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Originally Posted by cafolini

It is true that the rich have become superrich, but it is also true that percentagewise, the lower classes in their own terms have become far richer than the superrich. A person that made 50 cents and now makes 15,000, for example, has become far richer than the one who made 1 billion and now makes 10.

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when a person earned 50p a year in britain(?) i suspect its entire GDP was less than a billion, considerably. Marx did talk about 'relative' and 'absolute' immiseration. I have heard it said he was right about about the former but not the latter. Well these days in the uk many peoples' pay is going down in real terms (for the lower classes that is) which means they have less stuff in absolute terms. i think some would say the spirit of the witch lives on...

i am posting again to clarify something i took 15000 as dollars which i interpreted as a yearly wage. If you mean 15000cents is this daily? i apologise if i have misinterpreted wrote you wrote

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Originally Posted by russellb

i am posting again to clarify something i took 15000 as dollars which i interpreted as a yearly wage. If you mean 15000cents is this daily? i apologise if i have misinterpreted wrote you wrote

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Yes, that's what I meant.
Now, the witch. She actually was the spirit of Alfred the Great. Anglican for sure. This inflation cycles are typical. I would worry if the pound fell too much before the Euro. But I think it will never happen unless there is a new cycle where the dollar goes up and brothers and sisters help each other as they always did.
Now, the kick is in purchasing power. From 50 cents to 15000 dollars could be compared with 100000 to 1000000000. If you take the ratio 1000000000/15000, you get 200,000. But the purchasing power of 1000000000 is many many times more than what a simple ratio like that could be connected to. The purchasing power from 50 cents to 15000 dollars didn't go up much. But from 100000 to 1000000000, well, you figure.

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Now, the witch. She actually was the spirit of Alfred the Great. Anglican for sure.

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witch? which witch?

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"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is, to change it"

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interesting.
the way to do it to spend time interpreting the human race in many ways; the point is, to make him and him and her for that matter change for the better not worse. the world would never otherwise'

figures are not necessarily my strong point though now we we have clarified what you meant i have to wonder how many us citizens were earning a billion dollars a day when a poor prole was earning 50cents Was any one even earning a billion pounds a year or is that what you in fact mean? you are comparing a day's wage with a day's wage i assume. And who is earning ten billion dollars a day now? you obviously have a head for big numbers...i did write more than this but things always seem to disappear when i try to post, i m not going to rewrite it all i ll obviously just have to try and be a bit like nietzsche in future and just say it all in a sentence...

i m still misunderstanding you you mean a billion CENTS. but i am led to believe that alfred was in fact non conformist; methodist to be sure

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Originally Posted by russellb

i m still misunderstanding you you mean a billion CENTS. but i am led to believe that alfred was in fact non conformist; methodist to be sure

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However you wish to interpret it, the point is that the purchasing power increases exponentially. Regarding Alfred the Great, his meritorious psychology was, together with Luther's teachings, the foundation of the Anglican church. Not a Methodist.
Now we have to contend with another witch, who never lived in England, and has demonstrated that again and again. The ill one was probably there for a vacation. LOL

To make it a little more precise, although it's beside the point, 50 cents a day comes to around 180 dollars a year. The increase in revenue comes to 15000/180 or about 83. Just an example. The increase in revenue for the rich comes to 1000000000/100000 or about 10000. That's about 10000/83 or about 120 times the other increase. However, that's immaterial, because the increase in purchasing power for the rich is many many times greater than 120.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

So Kant did away with metaphysics, so all we have is the world? Is that the point he is starting from? His PhD thesis was on the atomic theories of Democritus and Epicurus, that's looks like a very materialist, worldly, (and very good!) beginning.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...841/dr-theses/

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I read the referred-to thesis in which the Epicurean and Democritian views are discussed. There was also reference to Aristotelian physics...

I guess that this is a more-or-less accurate rendition of KM's thesis... If so, it is full of statements that I would have to say are scientifically flawed and ignorant of the real physical science that was being done in the first half of the 19th Century.

I like Marxism for their unflinching feelings and urges for the destitution of society not for his political ideologies. He was a philosopher and had a great passion for literature and to read Marx is to educate oneself and to evolve and look at the world from a different, scientific and historical lenses. We can understand the world better and come home with new thoughts out of the box

I think that you are confusing Marxism or Marxist Theory with poorly enacted Communism (i.e. China, the USSR, Cuba, etc). Marxist theory is, indeed, alive and well. The works of theorists, such as Frederic Jameson, Terry Eagleton, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Gyorgy Lukacs, Herbert Marcuse, and David Harvey have been working the field for well over seven decades. In fact, by its very definition, Marxism will and must exist as long as Capitalism exists...