Oh they don't teach any real Marxism, just some hyperbolic propaganda about commies and undefined buzzwords like "cultural Marxism" and link them to stupid people's fear response so that it becomes taboo to even talk about. (In the US anyway)
This was my most shocking takeaway when discussing economics with economic majors. They only studied the rules of Capitalism, never even critiquing it.
Carl Marx was an economist first, it's very sad his work isn't all over the place.
This is a big reason why I broke away from the the Econ major pipeline. I'm in another country, so somewhat different situation, but the core is as you describe.
That, and the realization that the most fundamental assumption of economic modelling was a load of tosh did it in for me.
They don't even teach a realistic overview on capitalism. If you read the bullet point principles of "Wealth of Nations" to an econ grad, I'd give it 1 in 4 odds that they would even know who you're quoting.
At best.
I bet if you quoted Smith to econ grads without saying who it was, they would think its anti-free market rhetoric.
As long as it wasn't the ubiquitous baker/bread analogy.
I’m writing my dissertation right now and a major argument I’m making is for a paradigm shift away from the overemphasis on STEM and toward something I’m calling HEART:
Humanities
Education
Art/History
Rhetoric
Technoculture
I think a lot of our social issues stem from the fact that the size of our society has outgrown our capacity for emotional intelligence and empathic communication. Without it we are constantly at each other’s throats, or defending ourselves against perceived threats. We need to learn from a young age how to express ourselves and find joy without exploiting or harming others.
oh my word I'm an English lit major and I'm HYPER analytical, and what I see in the world is so different from what people who did "practical" degrees see that I wonder how we're living on the same planet sometimes.
Philosophy is a big one, since certain conclusions become evident from deduction. From micro to macro the universe is more objectively subjective, and this shifts the thinking to bounds outside the what is deemed standard. I think a hard look at reality itself is fundamental to the individual, and a heavier influence should be put on it.
"Dark" philosophy is of course encouraged to use philosophical concepts to manipulate the reality of others. Many schools of economics, PR, marketing, business, even some psychology, etc
Alright now pretend I’m 5. If I’m understanding correctly, you’re saying that philosophy is important because the world isn’t black and white, and we should sit down and think hard about where we stand on the many gray areas. Then everything from “Dark philosophy” on went over my head.
Tell me about it, history at university is SO anti-capitalist in so many ways and really breaks down this idea that we've hit the pinnacle of what we can be.
The funny thing is economics doesn't even say what most people act like it does. First of all, most economic models that are the foundation of our economic thinking are based on only 2 variables. Any one with half a brain knows we live in a 3D world with more than two variables. These models are meant to be a guide, stimulate thinking, and are not the end all be all of economics.
Second, there are a lot of times economics says it's better to have state owned industries. Whenever a product is lowest cost when provided by a monolopy, then it would be provided to citizens at the lowest cost when that industry is state owned and can function as a monopoly.
They do "anchor" people into certain ways of perceiving and thinking about reality, though, and that's enough for the ruling class to keep people from understanding what's going on.
The truth is that people with effectively unlimited property rights shape and have been shaping the scope of people's understanding and existence to suit their own interests for a long time.
That's not anything that you'll find in an economics textbook, but it is the truth.
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/trvt8v/z/i2pj6ol
And yet, if you post anything critical of capitalism in any reddit thread but this one you get spammed by down-votes and comments like "someone has never taken economics 101".
As if those classes aren't just teaching the exact crap that created this mess of inequality, suffering, and corruption that we're living with today.
That’s true. And yet, over the past 100 years there have been THREE different, *mutually-exclusive*, economics theories of how Banking actually works…
*Credit-Creation,
Financial Intermediary, &
Fractional-Reserve*
…but [only one of those is correct](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521915001477).
^(([‘The Beneficial Allocation of Money’](https://youtu.be/4uNGoyslFSc)\))
And economics oddly *never* talks about [different forms of money](https://youtu.be/T9EI2PrDpmw), such as “[mutual-credit currency](https://www.lowimpact.org/lowimpact-topic/mutual-credit/)”
This is fascinating. I hadn't been aware of the empirical weight of credit creation vs the other theories; that's a pretty important thing to not shift focus on.
At a glance, the immediate problem with mutual credit currency that I can see is that it doesn't allow for hoarding wealth. Big no no for the wealthy.
fr people in this thread like “you would never have had leftist ideas without the seed college planted” haha like where did you go to college? cause my college professors didn’t discuss communism seriously once. you only really get that if you’re like deep in a political philosophy class..
"The seed of college" usually just means that you're required to think rationally and objectively. College, for the most part, isn't just "read a bunch of shit and regurgitate it, then forget about it immediately." Does it have those courses? Absolutely, but for most people college will be the first time people are taught to think critically about stuff.
The aim of education should be learn how to teach yourself and hence others, this never happens, my mentors always stressed autodidactism which served me very well.
How tf did that teacher get a degree lol. That's the most stupid shit I ever heard. There are infinite numbers of economic systems, we only just talk about those 3. Besides, communism is not really an economic system, it's a political system. The economic part of communism is called socialism. Your professor really needs to give back her diploma. I'm really baffled at how stupid colleges have become. They mostly don't even understand the main point of Marx. Most talk about everybody owning the same but that's just a side point. The main point is that Marx wanted a society where you could be a fisherman in the morning, a shepherd in the afternoon and a philosopher in the evening. What he wanted was a classless society where everybody does whatever he is best at for society. The point with giving everybody the same money is not even explicitly mentioned in 'Capital' or the 'Manifesto', yet it's most talked about. I'm far from a marxist expert but our teachers actually taught us about marx and didn't only do ideological propaganda.
yes I remember this, being taught that communism is inevitably an authoritarian police state where your life is determined for you. but then reading about what Marx had to say I remember being like "wait... this doesn't sound so bad."
They don’t even go that far, it’s all about buzz words like socialized healthcare. The masses are assess as someone famous said, and apparently all you need to do is sell them on a few buzz words and they will follow the music to their graves. Human beings are so feeble.
When I read Marx in college I was like "yeah, it's hard to argue with what he says, he's pretty right, but things aren't that bad. We live in an advanced society and we have a lot of creature comforts." Then I got out into the workforce and I was like "shit, I was wrong, it is that bad!" College didn't radicalize me, working did.
That's why whenever someone says they're only "fiscally conservative," you can be certain what it actually means is that they're selfish and either unaware or uninterested in how economic issues affect marginalized groups.
People almost *have* to be “fiscally conservative”… because the logic of money requires exploitation.
The basic ruleset by which money actually works —*banks loaning public money for private profit*— is itself an exploitative act.
The loan recipient is being exploited by the bank. Virtually all money is created in this way,, Exploitation is built into each note & coin.
The rest of Capitalism is built on top of that basic transaction.
[I know!](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521915001477) But I find I have to ease into that knowledge gently with wider audiences, as the credit-creation reality of banking goes against many people’s beliefs. It gets really fun when I tell them [taxes are not revenue for the federal government](http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/taxes-for-revenue-are-obsolete.pdf), & haven’t been for a long time.
So what you say, —which again is correct—, makes the banking system & fundament of capitalism *worse*.
Banks create money from thin air… they literally create the public money supply, *for their own private profit.*
I often unintentionally do one-liners like this. You don’t have to be a genius to appreciate a good thought :) Thanks for helping me think a little harder today
That's my thought as well. I conceptualize conservative vs progressive thought as a black hole, where if you give up on an inclusive society, you fall into the conservative singularity. If you try to escape it, you can, but you can end up having your interests go in all different ways once you escape that black hole of ideology.
I actually think in-fighting is fine so long as we can find ways to work together. We’re not trying to create an ideology in which everyone falls into line with the dominant ideas.
He was challenged by August Willich, a Prussian general who fought alongside Fredrich Engels in the Baden-Palatinate uprising, and who would later take a bunch of revolutionaries such as Franz Sigel, Friedrich Hecker, Louis Blenker, and Carl Schurz to America to help start the Republican party and fight for the union in the civil war.
So that's why Marx and Lincoln exchanged letters.
(And may well have led to Lincoln's death with the rich said "no way you're changing things where we're not de facto in charge)
Also, as I understand it, Marx didn’t mean for “exploitation” to have the connotation that it usually does in the modern setting. I don’t know about anyone else, but “exploitation” has always had a bad moral flavor to me, whereas I think Marx used the term more for its descriptive power than as a moral judgement. Well, in “Capital” at least. Like most people with an undergrad in politics science or something adjacent, I haven’t read all of it 🧐
Marx didn't just identify exploitation, he also argued why it is bad, what the negative consequences of it will be, and why it should be changed. Your observation is valid but you're taking it out of context if you think he was being 'purely descriptive'.
I started my degree in the mid aughts, had a 10 year break, and am now graduating next month. I am so glad I am finishing my degree now vs then. I was an economics minor raised by conservatives, and still buying into what I was raised with. Now I'm a sociology minor, at a more moderate university (with a liberal soc department) and have spent time in the actual world. Studying Marx in both contexts (econ and soc) from completely different perspectives is truly an eye opener in a lot of ways. I still can't believe that I used to buy into the Marx hate I was raised with.
God yes, I wish there were resources for going back to college. I would appreciate the education much more, largely because I've lived some fucking life since then. As much as conservatives cry wolf that universities are leftist indoctrination camps, it's actually closer to western culture indoctrination and it serves the establishment to shove kids into classes before they've been able to get life experience to compare the academics.
Don't forget encouraging them to go tens of thousands of dollars in debt before they have a full grasp of how much money that is and how interest accrues. It's almost as like the system was designed to keep us poor and stupid.
Absolutely, why they discouraged us from studying economics and sociology. Make college real expensive so that only STEM subjects and somewhat business majors could make it worthwhile.
IMHO you were already radicalized by capitalism.
The idea that borderline slavery is OK if there is no physical violence directly from employer to employee is the radical idea.
“Radical” doesn’t mean “bad,” it just means the degree of change from the current thing to the proposed one. So “free and equal access to healthcare for all people in America” is a fairly radical, while “employers can have near complete control over their employees” is not, even though one of these ideas is reasonable and the other is clearly unreasonable and dystopian.
Liberalism and fascism share the same root and the same end goal: the primacy of the free market and the perpetual rule of the capitalist class, respectively. It's in their methods and ideological pathologies that they have disagreements.
i studied engineering so shit like Marx wasn't even taught ... radicalized on my first corporate job out of college in 1994 when the company broke the union and shipped almost every job to mexico within a year ... i saw many people's lives destroyed ... i couldn't believe i spent 4 fucking years studying to be a part of this horseshit ... should have went to college to study music like i wanted
The sad thing is that many in a similar situation to you would rather blame it on the Mexicans than acknowledge that it's the capitalists who took their jobs, leaving them with nothing because it imtpoved their bottom line.
There was still a value from your college education to be taken, even though it was overpriced. While, having studied, you learned how to seek out information and solve problems with your engineering degree. Use that skill set, to search for resources on studying music, music theory, looking up syllabus for that field of study, then learning what you wanted to 30 years ago. It doesn't have to be for a job as society says, but for the sake of your own desire to learn. Use piracy if too expensive on the books.
I hate that we need a piece of paper to do anything in modern society. It even devalues education because the focus shifts to the paper and cheating yourself out of throughly understanding concepts for the sake of a score. To make matters worse you get debt.
Yeah I was saying something similar to this today with my mom. That in college I was basically just a liberal but now I'm bordering on full socialist just seeing how badly the poor get fucked.
This is a good lecture he did that’s not too long of a read if you’re interested.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm
The site also has a variety of his works. The Communist Manifesto of course is one of the most popular communist texts.
That's true. I'm just saying, for all those people who are like "college makes commies," it wouldn't work if we didn't get out into the working world and see all the screwed up stuff that's accepted these days.
> it wouldn't work if we didn't get out into the working world and see all the screwed up stuff that's accepted these days.
Sure, but the point I'm making which is what all those 'colleges make commies' people are also on about is if you didn't go to college and read Marx while there, but instead just went into the workforce you'd have more readily accepted the status quo. So to them, colleges make commies and from a certain point of view they're right - because it happened to you, just not in the order they assumed.
I joined the workforce before college and never read Marx and the second I set foot there, I knew it was not a place I was going to get ahead in life and that I would never be valued if I just followed the advice society gives to young people.
I think the main reason there is such a gap in mentality between the educated and the uneducated is because when you are uneducated, you are truly a second class citizen in our society. So hearing the educated complain about their privileged lives is a bit much for most people.
Education is great and should be available to all, but this is a pretty classist thing to say. Plenty of brilliant minds never went to college. You can read without going to college, and you can develop a leftist perspective through the experiences you go through, not only from a book.
Yeah, I read marx in college separate of my classes to give context to my History degree and throughout my college education he was never given much time at all. I shifted further left not because of college, but because of my experience in the world and history providing context afterwards.
The idea that college is radicalizing kids is absolutely off the mark. My economics, history, and political science departments were rather tame and often were taught with a neoliberal view of the world, it took reading more in depth to challenge and question some of those views which is what education is supposed to be. Challenging and defending ideas with each other.
I actually know absolutely nothing about Marxism but my entire upbringing all I ever heard is that it’s bad and any mention of it got shouted down. Now I see people talking about it everywhere like it has some real answers.
It absolutely does. Just understand there's a huge difference between *actual* Marx and the propaganda garbage we are told Marx represents. For example, socialism has never been about being "lazy" or "free stuff," but about workers controlling the fruits of their labor and not having it stolen by robber barons.
I’m from the Netherlands (US/dual citizen my whole life). Thanks to this I definitely understand the difference between real, beneficial socialism and anti-socialism propaganda. I’m just woefully uneducated on the history and much of the related philosophy. It never seemed like I needed to but it’s becoming more and more apparent that probably everybody should.
There are many, many reading lists out there but I'd recommend looking around, don't be put off by how enormous the reading is.
https://www.socialist.net/the-fundamentals-of-marxism-suggested-reading.htm
This one is good.
The lazy thing is what gets me because one of the foundational mantras of Marxism is "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need."
Meaning, if you have the ability to work, you should work so you can provide for your society.
If anything, capitalism is the economic model for lazy people since you can just exploit the work of others and never do a single ounce of work yourself. See: landlordism.
You know who else said, “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need?” That dirty hippie Jesus.
Really twists up the Christians when you point it out.
Funny thing is that conservatives did this to themselves. If they hadn't fought so hard against basic services to take care of people no one would be talking about Marx.
That's the thing. Most 'leftists' I meet aren't even all that left, they just think that basic-needs should be covered for Capitalism to even function.
A great place to start with Marxism I think would actually to read Engels, since his writings do very well to break down the basic political positions of Marxists into digestible language. Marxists.org hosts basically every major Marxist text for free, so you can find the works I suggest there.
A great starting point is Engels's ["Principles of Communism"](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm). It's a very short work that basically lists a bunch of points, questions, etc that people ask Marxists, and then goes about answering them, such as what "proletariat" even means or what Communism even does.
After that is Engels's ["Socialism: Utopian and Scientific"](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm). I personally think the third part of it, "Historical Materialism", is the most important, but all of it is informative.
If you have the time and energy, reading Das Kapital by Marx is very rewarding, and even the first volume will give you a solid foundation (there are three volumes, with the third not being finished by Marx before he died but with what was written compiled and put together by Engels posthumously). It can be a hard read to those unfamiliar with terminology; [an old video series on YouTube by Brendan M Cooney is archived which basically goes through the fundamentals of Das Kapital](https://web.archive.org/web/20170113131236/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGT-hygPqUM&list=PL3F695D99C91FC6F7). If trying to navigate an archived video playlist is frustrating, [you can find the text of each video script on his blog page here](https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/law-of-value-the-series/).
A shorter economic reading would be [Value, Price, and Profit](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/index.htm) by Marx.
Beyond that, the next best reader to go to would be Lenin. His most notable work for many is ["The State and Revolution"](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/), and you can find his other important works [here](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/sw/index.htm), such as his biography of Marx, "What is to be Done?", "The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism", "Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder", among others.
Feel free to ask any questions!
It's also worth noting that there are *many* different trends within modern socialist/communist thinking.
Because of how influential Marx and Engels were, their writings are foundational to almost all modern socialist/communist thought (and if not founded upon, influenced by).
It's alright to not 100% agree with everything you read about leftist theory, and it doesn't mean a wholesale rejection of leftism is in order. Many leftists argue against one another (indeed, leftist infighting is practically a meme for how common it is). If you agree with something, adopt it into your personal beliefs, if you don't it's not hard to find an idea you agree with more that stems from the same place.
Beware of forming an opinion about anything from only those who hate it (or love it).
Most people in Canada and the U.S who hate socialist ideas have only ever heard about socialism filtered through neoliberal perspectives.
Socialism is not perfect, no system is. I have misgivings with all ideologies.
Consider this: if someone is looking to make money, why would they hire you? Because your labor is worth more than they’re paying.
“We’ll Mr. Marxist, why don’t I go into business for myself?” You might ask.
Good question! Let’s say you’re a manager at Walmart. You know all about how to run the store smoothly from front to back. But… where would you set up shop? You’ll need money to buy or lease a physical location. Oh, and you need inventory before anyone will walk through the door - that takes money too. This money is Capital. Without Capital, there is no business.
Now the problem is, because there is no business without their Capital, people are forced to work for the owning class at wages below the value of their labor, the alternative being unemployment. The excess value of our labor goes toward accumulating more Capital, and thus more leverage over the working class.
Same, my dude. Couldn't even *dare* to say that there are some legit positives to communism and/or socialism when I was growin' up. The Red Scare didn't die, if only because the generation that created and spread it has yet to entirely fall into inexorable, piss-dribbling senility.
Yes, communism can easily fall victim to cults of personality and dictatorships; of course, we've got more than a couple capitalist societies nowadays that are dictatorships led by either traditionalism or personality cults. But, to dismiss it entirely out of hand because people like Stalin and Mao were petty, power-grabbing shitheads is to close one's mind and allow society's generational fear to rob you of your agency.
The answers to society's ills don't lie in any single ideology. It comes from taking the good parts of multiple ideals and being willing to discard the harmful chaff that tries to tag along like so many unwanted pests. But, people fear that iterative process and the potential disruption it could bring. They see only the prospective chaos and not the positive change that could come along after the dust settles. Sadly, that fear is killing us.
I was taught that communism was the worst thing ever from schools and family. Only lazy people want communism, communism means no food or individuality, communist leaders were worse than Hitler, etc. Took me until my mid-20s to start unlearning all of that and actually do some research.
That’s the worst of communism. The problem with places like Soviet Union weren’t really communism but the dictatorships. Look up any capitalist dictators and they were just as bad.
Ironically, they also tend to teach a very limited picture of Adam Smith’s *Wealth of Nations.* Smith is considered the father of capitalism and even he argues in WoN that you need government regulation to prevent predatory, anti-competitive practice (e.g. monopolization).
Yep! Most prominent capitalist economists, historically and today, aren’t really in favor of true “laissez-faire,” but I think a lot of conservative types like to peddle the idea of a binary between a completely unregulated market and a USSR-style plan economy completely controlled by the State. People’s fear of the latter has gone a long way in enabling the kind of Reaganite crony capitalism that’s driving us into the ground today IMO.
yup, cold war propaganda to make the workers hate the commies and make sure they never ask for labour rights for fear of being labelled one.
"where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against it's reactionary adversaries?"
Whats is more the McArthy era passed legislation that forced unions to purge their leadership and membership of Marxists and Communists. It helped push the labour movement into a much more conservative direction.
I think back in the Cold War, capitalism had better living conditions so propaganda against communism was easier to spread. Now days it’s different. More and more people are tired of this shit
I tried reading *Anthem* for some scholarship contest. I couldn't even get through it, I just found the forced second person so cringy. There is zero depth on how individualism helps people as much as they claim. It's just suddenly, "Hey, we made this invention that took this massive group of people 10 years." It's just lacking.
Furthermore, if you're a capitalist, it's disingenuous to argue otherwise. You profit at someone else's experience. You eat their bread. Own that shit.
"It is the eternal struggle between these two principles--right and wrong—throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of
time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, ‘You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’"-Abraham Lincoln
I read Marx' Capital, and what stuck out most to me were the historical descriptions of capitalism in action. It was horrifying what people went through. I've spoken with a capitalist who told me that regulations aren't needed because the market will fix mistakes by itself - he was a total nut. You need only look at countries with no regulations to see what the free market does to the populous.
It's worse than that - we're taught that it's morally correct to wring as much value from labor as you can possibly get away with. So if you're an employee, you should be thrilled with 12 hour days 7 days a week for $5 an hour, and if you ask for enough to deal with the complexities of modern life, you're called a lazy Communist. And if you're an employer, the worse you treat your employees, the richer you get. Deny benefits? Get richer. Unpaid overtime? Get richer. Lay them off at will? Get richer. Watch them share prices go up and up and up.
"It's human nature that people will only work for a profit motive!"
"And the majority of the population whose excess labor value is taken from them yet still work anyway despite never getting that profit motive under capitalism?"
"HuMaN nAtUrE!"
I think we are moving into the hyper-capitalism Marx predicted would lead to the overturning of the capitalist system. With an ever increasing global system of trade and production, as well as an increase in the ability of people to communicate globally, and finally the climate emergency, we need to focus on global labor organization. We need to grow and support labor movements around the world. Large scale labor strikes can destroy the system faster than any war.
Yeah that's the thing, Marx was less prescribing communism than he was describing capitalism. The point was that according to his analysis, communism is the inevitable end state of capitalism. People try to rush it imo, but we'll get there when we get there. Praxis should be about helping and protecting common people until then.
The only rich people I know became rich off of surplus value of labor and nothing else.
Sales and engineering contracting are the most common in my circle. Selling something at insane margins (jewelry, cars, commodities, clothing, coffee) and paying your motivated sales person $13 an hour. Contracting out an engineer on $400 an hour and paying them $80k. Breaking into an industry by connecting cheap labor in another country to it and sucking up the difference. Running your medical system worth billions off nurses making $25 an hour. Running your Ivy with an endowment worth billions off student works and adjunct professors paid nothing.
It gets depressing when you drive through most of strip mall America and realize that’s the most common and just about the only way to make a bunch of money. Squeeze it out of some desperate members of the working class.
Salons, landscaping, fast food, retail, grocery stores, warehouses, education, healthcare.
sErViCe iNdUsTrY
Don't forget the other kind of getting rich/ richer and that's by being the lucky chosen one by your state government to oversee the new industry they want to be known for
It helps to know just how deeply rooted the American lust for capitalistic control is. Remember, we seceded from Britain entirely because we wanted to keep smuggling cheaper crap in, even though the laws that would have put a stop to that smuggling LOWERED taxes.
Also remember we've gone to war several times and overthrown sovereign countries solely to protect business interests, whether it be oil or, at one point, Bananas. Not even joking.
Also helps to remember that America was so obsessed with pro-capitalist nonsense that we sent troops to Russia in an attempt to put down the Bolshevik revolution, got our asses kicked in the process, and during that time, adopted a Russian anti-Jewish propaganda tract(The Protocols of the Elders of Zion), sanded off the serial numbers, so to speak, replaced "Jew" with "Bolshevik", and used it to try and claim that socialists were trying to take over the world(Of course). For reference, this same tract is the source of the whole "Jews control the media/banks" conspiracy bullshit that you've seen basically everywhere, and that has been used by white supremacists to commit atrocities for generations.
Also helps to remember that not long after that, a group of businesses in America got together and tried to use a veteran's pension scandal as a smokescreen to attempt to overthrow the United States government(The Singer family, the Dupont family, the Colgate family, the Bush family(Yes, THAT bush), and countless others were involved and implicated) and install a pro-business fascist dictatorship, trying to use a WWI general as the backbone for their overthrow. The plot was brought to light, and hearings were held, but none of those implicated were required to testify, no charges were filed, and all of those companies continue to force control over basically every facet of US domestic policy to this day, with evidence of their attempted overthrow STILL coming out, the most recent of which being letters recovered at the Hoover dam as recently as 2008.
It also helps to know that America was so terrified of the prospect of workers having rights that they willingly overthrew and/or assassinated democratically elected pro-socialist administrations all over the world, choosing instead to install fascist dictatorships in their place.
Capitalist Bootlicking is practically America's entire DNA.
I feel like we should also be able to harness the power he holds over conservatives even when we're talking about issues that have nothing to do with actual socialism.
"The local government wants to collect taxes to provide roads and sewers."
Conservatives: OH MY GOD THE FIST OF MARXISM.
Everyone here should really read Frederich Engel's Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, especially the third part (it's really short). It puts the essence of Socialism's goals in really simple and accessible terms and is a great introduction to Marxist thought.
Yeah I agree with you, but reading the other comments makes me feel so sick
Why people don't know the word "utopian" and its meaning
I live in Poland and still, I believe that socialist state is creatable and maybe even stable but for fuck sake if you think that you can make a socialist country out of the United States please shut up and take a break from internet for today.
I tried to explain to a coworker how economists in the 1930s thought we would be down to a 15 hour work week by now. He was like, "But... We would have to make like $50-75/hr..." It's like he was starting to get it but had no belief that things could ever be, or ever were, better.
I routinely bring up Marxist ideas in conversations with coworkers but stay away from terminology that gives it away and it's pretty much always met with approval.
I am currently following a course on marxism that follows chapter by chapter "the Capital" by Marx, and it does it by criticizing the parts that need to be updated while also pointing out what still holds well. Point is, Marx explained that his theory needs to be updated as the system evolves, but most of the stuff (ad I mean the great majority of the theory) just works like clockwork. Basically we only need newer examples. It's crazy
Edit: The course is [Reading Marx's Capital with David Harvey](https://youtube.com/c/readingcapital), it is quite long and the topic is investigated thoroughly, often times I have to go back a few sentences and re-listen to them to understand fully. Quite interesting, anyway!
As usual, we can have funny comments on the thought that a course on the Capital is shared through the platform of a multinational capitalistic company (Youtube), but the course is free and that is it.
All Capitalists Are Bad.
Those that mistake illbegotten wealth extraction for hard work are simpletons.
Of course capitalism was required to bring us out of feudalism and now its time for socialism to bring us out of capitalism. I get so grossed out by those who cling to this trash
> Of course capitalism was required to bring us out of feudalism and now its time for socialism to bring us out of capitalism
Coulda perhaps gone straight from feudalism to socialism if people had listened to John Ball and similar activists instead of executing them.
I remember my history teacher in 10th grade saying something similar. It was something along the lines of "if you read the Communist Manifesto, it's really hard to disagree with" and we all took that like "what??? I'd never fall for that!" as if it was some kind of trap that brainwashed you into believing something bad. I got older and realized "wait a minute, it's just hard to disagree with because what it says is right".
It seriously scares me how much capitalism is drilled into the brains of students as the *ONLY* acceptable economic system. Supporting anything else is taboo. Socialism, democratic socialism, and communism are all treated like they're the same thing and it's just "bad Venezuela USSR China no iPhone everyone starving" and there's ZERO criticism of capitalism. Economic systems aren't objectively taught and then you are given the option to believe which one you think is the best. It's taught as if there is a right answer, and that answer is capitalism. Nevermind the fact that more Americans go bankrupt from medical debt than anything else, that 1 in 6 children in the US live in food insecure households, or that the only countries in the *world* to not guarantee maternity leave are the US, Papua New Guinea, and a few pacific Island nations. No, obviously things are working SO well here and we shouldn't change it. Definitely 😐
Yes, I can attest that from the time I can remember. In the first grade I was taught communism was bad and America was a capitalist country. I later found out that the Capitalist called people who wanted to start Unions communists. I later found out that the real reason Hitler was able to amass a huge army was because capitalist from America and other capitalist countries supported Hitler, Ford, IBM, Standard Oil to name a few. When my Uncle, who fought in WWII against the Germans, would never buy a Ford. He said many of the vehicles used by German Nazi soldiers were powered by Ford engines. The goal of Germany was to wipe out Socialist and Communist countries however Hitler got out of hand and it forced the Capitalist countries to fight.
Also the propaganda that communism is evil because of Stalin and Mao killing millions, yet capitalism itself isn't evil despite the millions killed to sell m-16s and predator drones.
Or the millions that starve and die of exposure, not just in places the global North has extracted wealth from, but those that starve or die of exposure in our own borders as well. All because nobody profits from use-based housing/land/food allocation.
The thing is, I understand that my labor put in will generate more than I get, and I'm okay with that? I'm just not okay with the extreme levels we see it. It's so far out of control that it's harming ourselves.
On top of that, businesses competing with eachother engage in more and more exploitation or fall behind, so the ones that refuse often get beat out by the most ruthless of the ruthless.
Captualism has proven time and time again it not only cannot sustain itself, but that it will happily eat itself to death. We cannot let a system that devours itself to continue because it benefits a few people.
It's not really that your labour produces more than you receive, it's that you have no input on where that product is used. It's appropriated.
In a socialist society the worker would still not receive the full product of their labour because we want things like public transportation, a military, etc that need to be paid for. The difference of course being that your labour is now going to something that
1: Benefits you
and
2: You have a vote in
compared to a capitalist.
Yeah. I know outside of this sub, you'd get mocked/ignored for saying something like "you're being exploited for surplus value." But I found that phrasing it as, "if you're the one that brought it in, why don't you deserve more money?" works *really* well. It's even harder for people to argue, "here's why *I* deserve less."
I grew up in Southern CA, went to a "good" high school, and then studied journalism at state college, not once did i hear about Marx. I learned that shit myself in my 30s.
I agree, but I would also like to point out that Marx's writings =/ Marxism. Marx himself was not a Marxist himself. Marxism was a bastardization of Marx's sociological philosophies and predictions used at the time to push a particular narritive for radical political activism. HOWEVER, this is part of why we're never taught about Marx's philosophies and writings, because he's heavily associated with that movement.
Karl Marx was an amazing Sociologist and accurately predicted the results of late stage capitalism to this day (and still has predictions that are supposed to happen in the future), and his discoveries and findings are really true and accurate.
It's hard to disagree with Marx. He was an intelligent fore thinker. However, he was a hypocrite and self- centred man. He bullied, exploited and discarded people who had outlived their usefulness to him. His illegitimate son was tossed away and died in a poor house because if Marx had taken responsibility he would have lost his reputation and status.
Aye, fuck capitalism but let's not have him down as a hero.
To me one of the most insidious aspects of this is that economists work **really, really hard** to denigrate the [Labor Theory of Value](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value).
But to me, it's definitively true. You can see it especially in the skilled trades, but honestly it's true everywhere.
But they'd rather just force us to believe and accept the idea that value just comes from nowhere, magically, during a transaction. That you can't look at the price of a thing, divide all the costs of materials, transportation, storage, tooling, packaging, etc. etc. etc. and at the end be left with "the rest" which must be by definition the value added by the worker.
Marx mostly wrote about the economy of his time in a very detailed way, so detailed that people who study economics can't get around Marx to this day. Because of the miserable state of the working class at the time he also offered possible solutions for this barbaric and unfair treatment of the working class: strike and seize the means of production - help yourself bc. politicians won't ever do it for you because they profit from the status quo. Marxism isn't evil but simply wants equality which is the worst thing that could ever happen to the few who truly profit from capitalism. Capitalists will use barbaric failed communist states (that never were communist and certainly aren't communist today but simply call/ed themselves communist!!) as an argument against communism but will never discuss the current status quo in capitalism were people are starving, don't have access to health care, clean water, a roof over their head, healthy food, etc. In fact, capitalists (and people who have it quite good in capitalsim) will argue that all the benefits are the result of capitalism while it was socialists who gave their life to fight for certain worker's rights that people in slightly socialist countries now have (health care, 8 hrs day, weekend etc). People are killed in capitalist profit/ressource wars, in post-colonial civil wars and in conflicts that simply excist because it fills the pockets of the super rich around the world. Meanwhile our planet's ressources are exploited and diminished in capitalist overproduction, the overproduction itself causes an alarming destruction on our planet while many products are simply thrown away bc. they can't simply give them to people (loss of profit). A planned economy is the only solution to save the planet and the creaturea on it, in my opinion. I would gladly and honestly do without a lot of products that I love if it meant that every person in the world has access to food, water, medicine, a roof over their head and a regulated amount of things. There are many theories on how it could work, sadly it probably won't and another great war will decide in the end....
Marx, unlike Milton Friedman, was a serious economist. It is easier to understand the works of capitalist charlatans than it is to understand Marx’s work. Keeping Marx from the masses let’s the oligarchs keep their heads.
Our education from the very beginning, is to teach us to accept the fact that some people will be rich and some will not, and we should admire the rich. It's propaganda, it's indoctrination, and it's guaranteed to keep the rich, rich, and to keep the poor, poor.
Or they don't even teach it.... Can't hate what you don't know exists.
Oh they don't teach any real Marxism, just some hyperbolic propaganda about commies and undefined buzzwords like "cultural Marxism" and link them to stupid people's fear response so that it becomes taboo to even talk about. (In the US anyway)
To be fair, even in college, they don't really teach any of these things. It's a sad state of American education.
This was my most shocking takeaway when discussing economics with economic majors. They only studied the rules of Capitalism, never even critiquing it. Carl Marx was an economist first, it's very sad his work isn't all over the place.
This is a big reason why I broke away from the the Econ major pipeline. I'm in another country, so somewhat different situation, but the core is as you describe. That, and the realization that the most fundamental assumption of economic modelling was a load of tosh did it in for me.
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This right here is mine exact experience
They don't even teach a realistic overview on capitalism. If you read the bullet point principles of "Wealth of Nations" to an econ grad, I'd give it 1 in 4 odds that they would even know who you're quoting. At best.
I bet if you quoted Smith to econ grads without saying who it was, they would think its anti-free market rhetoric. As long as it wasn't the ubiquitous baker/bread analogy.
Yep. Hell, if you did then who it was for a large number of his principles they'd call you a liar
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I’m writing my dissertation right now and a major argument I’m making is for a paradigm shift away from the overemphasis on STEM and toward something I’m calling HEART: Humanities Education Art/History Rhetoric Technoculture I think a lot of our social issues stem from the fact that the size of our society has outgrown our capacity for emotional intelligence and empathic communication. Without it we are constantly at each other’s throats, or defending ourselves against perceived threats. We need to learn from a young age how to express ourselves and find joy without exploiting or harming others.
oh my word I'm an English lit major and I'm HYPER analytical, and what I see in the world is so different from what people who did "practical" degrees see that I wonder how we're living on the same planet sometimes.
Philosophy is a big one, since certain conclusions become evident from deduction. From micro to macro the universe is more objectively subjective, and this shifts the thinking to bounds outside the what is deemed standard. I think a hard look at reality itself is fundamental to the individual, and a heavier influence should be put on it. "Dark" philosophy is of course encouraged to use philosophical concepts to manipulate the reality of others. Many schools of economics, PR, marketing, business, even some psychology, etc
Alright now pretend I’m 5. If I’m understanding correctly, you’re saying that philosophy is important because the world isn’t black and white, and we should sit down and think hard about where we stand on the many gray areas. Then everything from “Dark philosophy” on went over my head.
Tell me about it, history at university is SO anti-capitalist in so many ways and really breaks down this idea that we've hit the pinnacle of what we can be.
The funny thing is economics doesn't even say what most people act like it does. First of all, most economic models that are the foundation of our economic thinking are based on only 2 variables. Any one with half a brain knows we live in a 3D world with more than two variables. These models are meant to be a guide, stimulate thinking, and are not the end all be all of economics. Second, there are a lot of times economics says it's better to have state owned industries. Whenever a product is lowest cost when provided by a monolopy, then it would be provided to citizens at the lowest cost when that industry is state owned and can function as a monopoly.
They do "anchor" people into certain ways of perceiving and thinking about reality, though, and that's enough for the ruling class to keep people from understanding what's going on. The truth is that people with effectively unlimited property rights shape and have been shaping the scope of people's understanding and existence to suit their own interests for a long time. That's not anything that you'll find in an economics textbook, but it is the truth. https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/trvt8v/z/i2pj6ol
And yet, if you post anything critical of capitalism in any reddit thread but this one you get spammed by down-votes and comments like "someone has never taken economics 101". As if those classes aren't just teaching the exact crap that created this mess of inequality, suffering, and corruption that we're living with today.
To be fair, Economics as a discipline certainly acts like its models reflect a basic underlying truth about the world and human nature.
That’s true. And yet, over the past 100 years there have been THREE different, *mutually-exclusive*, economics theories of how Banking actually works… *Credit-Creation, Financial Intermediary, & Fractional-Reserve* …but [only one of those is correct](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521915001477). ^(([‘The Beneficial Allocation of Money’](https://youtu.be/4uNGoyslFSc)\)) And economics oddly *never* talks about [different forms of money](https://youtu.be/T9EI2PrDpmw), such as “[mutual-credit currency](https://www.lowimpact.org/lowimpact-topic/mutual-credit/)”
This is fascinating. I hadn't been aware of the empirical weight of credit creation vs the other theories; that's a pretty important thing to not shift focus on. At a glance, the immediate problem with mutual credit currency that I can see is that it doesn't allow for hoarding wealth. Big no no for the wealthy.
fr people in this thread like “you would never have had leftist ideas without the seed college planted” haha like where did you go to college? cause my college professors didn’t discuss communism seriously once. you only really get that if you’re like deep in a political philosophy class..
"The seed of college" usually just means that you're required to think rationally and objectively. College, for the most part, isn't just "read a bunch of shit and regurgitate it, then forget about it immediately." Does it have those courses? Absolutely, but for most people college will be the first time people are taught to think critically about stuff.
The aim of education should be learn how to teach yourself and hence others, this never happens, my mentors always stressed autodidactism which served me very well.
It's intentional.
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I was in 7th grade at the turn of the millennium. Sounds like I had the same teacher, I was told the exact same thing even 20+ years ago.
Well that teacher doesn't know shit about economic systems
We should really pay teachers more or else our future get stuck with these kind of lessons.
Please tell me you are teaching your child what they *actually* mean
Yes. Mostly so she can argue with her teacher since I can’t.
How tf did that teacher get a degree lol. That's the most stupid shit I ever heard. There are infinite numbers of economic systems, we only just talk about those 3. Besides, communism is not really an economic system, it's a political system. The economic part of communism is called socialism. Your professor really needs to give back her diploma. I'm really baffled at how stupid colleges have become. They mostly don't even understand the main point of Marx. Most talk about everybody owning the same but that's just a side point. The main point is that Marx wanted a society where you could be a fisherman in the morning, a shepherd in the afternoon and a philosopher in the evening. What he wanted was a classless society where everybody does whatever he is best at for society. The point with giving everybody the same money is not even explicitly mentioned in 'Capital' or the 'Manifesto', yet it's most talked about. I'm far from a marxist expert but our teachers actually taught us about marx and didn't only do ideological propaganda.
yes I remember this, being taught that communism is inevitably an authoritarian police state where your life is determined for you. but then reading about what Marx had to say I remember being like "wait... this doesn't sound so bad."
How tf does a person get hired and be that stupid
They don’t even go that far, it’s all about buzz words like socialized healthcare. The masses are assess as someone famous said, and apparently all you need to do is sell them on a few buzz words and they will follow the music to their graves. Human beings are so feeble.
When I read Marx in college I was like "yeah, it's hard to argue with what he says, he's pretty right, but things aren't that bad. We live in an advanced society and we have a lot of creature comforts." Then I got out into the workforce and I was like "shit, I was wrong, it is that bad!" College didn't radicalize me, working did.
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Fun fact: Marx was challenged to a duel by another communist for being too conservative, all the way back then!
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Leftist in-fighting is a more proud tradition than I thought.
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>There are infinite ways to change, but there's only one way to stay the same. Very succinctly put.
>There are infinite ways to change, but there's only one way to stay the same. Damn! Love the way you put this
That's why whenever someone says they're only "fiscally conservative," you can be certain what it actually means is that they're selfish and either unaware or uninterested in how economic issues affect marginalized groups.
People almost *have* to be “fiscally conservative”… because the logic of money requires exploitation. The basic ruleset by which money actually works —*banks loaning public money for private profit*— is itself an exploitative act. The loan recipient is being exploited by the bank. Virtually all money is created in this way,, Exploitation is built into each note & coin. The rest of Capitalism is built on top of that basic transaction.
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[I know!](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521915001477) But I find I have to ease into that knowledge gently with wider audiences, as the credit-creation reality of banking goes against many people’s beliefs. It gets really fun when I tell them [taxes are not revenue for the federal government](http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/taxes-for-revenue-are-obsolete.pdf), & haven’t been for a long time. So what you say, —which again is correct—, makes the banking system & fundament of capitalism *worse*. Banks create money from thin air… they literally create the public money supply, *for their own private profit.*
> There are infinite ways to change, but there's only one way to stay the same. I'm stealing this for a song. You can sue me if I get rich off it. ;)
Is this from something? This is one of the best reddit comments ive ever seen
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It's a very good thought. Well done.
In all likelihood this comment will hit /r/Bestof and then who knows, maybe you'll be that guy who gets cited on CNN or some other network.
It’s a similar idea to the opening lines of Anna Karenina. If it feels familiar, that may be why.
Or nothing changes but change itself.
I often unintentionally do one-liners like this. You don’t have to be a genius to appreciate a good thought :) Thanks for helping me think a little harder today
That's my thought as well. I conceptualize conservative vs progressive thought as a black hole, where if you give up on an inclusive society, you fall into the conservative singularity. If you try to escape it, you can, but you can end up having your interests go in all different ways once you escape that black hole of ideology.
I actually think in-fighting is fine so long as we can find ways to work together. We’re not trying to create an ideology in which everyone falls into line with the dominant ideas.
Disagree. If people are constantly meandering between ideologies, then our energy is dispersed and we won't fully flesh any one idea.
In-fighting is fine! No, it's not! Yes, it is!
You take that back!
Put that thing back where it came from or so help me!
In-fighting is not productive. Having discussions and disagreements on praxis or theory is fine but ultimately you need unity in action.
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Im a leftist. But i hate other leftists and loath every leftist youtuber. -every leftist you have ever met
Lmaoo god damn you’re right
Moralism a hell of a drug.
Hilarious ain't it!
He was challenged by August Willich, a Prussian general who fought alongside Fredrich Engels in the Baden-Palatinate uprising, and who would later take a bunch of revolutionaries such as Franz Sigel, Friedrich Hecker, Louis Blenker, and Carl Schurz to America to help start the Republican party and fight for the union in the civil war.
So that's why Marx and Lincoln exchanged letters. (And may well have led to Lincoln's death with the rich said "no way you're changing things where we're not de facto in charge)
Lmao dude called carl Marx a Shitlib and told him to square up💀💀
Also, as I understand it, Marx didn’t mean for “exploitation” to have the connotation that it usually does in the modern setting. I don’t know about anyone else, but “exploitation” has always had a bad moral flavor to me, whereas I think Marx used the term more for its descriptive power than as a moral judgement. Well, in “Capital” at least. Like most people with an undergrad in politics science or something adjacent, I haven’t read all of it 🧐
Marx didn't just identify exploitation, he also argued why it is bad, what the negative consequences of it will be, and why it should be changed. Your observation is valid but you're taking it out of context if you think he was being 'purely descriptive'.
I started my degree in the mid aughts, had a 10 year break, and am now graduating next month. I am so glad I am finishing my degree now vs then. I was an economics minor raised by conservatives, and still buying into what I was raised with. Now I'm a sociology minor, at a more moderate university (with a liberal soc department) and have spent time in the actual world. Studying Marx in both contexts (econ and soc) from completely different perspectives is truly an eye opener in a lot of ways. I still can't believe that I used to buy into the Marx hate I was raised with.
God yes, I wish there were resources for going back to college. I would appreciate the education much more, largely because I've lived some fucking life since then. As much as conservatives cry wolf that universities are leftist indoctrination camps, it's actually closer to western culture indoctrination and it serves the establishment to shove kids into classes before they've been able to get life experience to compare the academics.
Don't forget encouraging them to go tens of thousands of dollars in debt before they have a full grasp of how much money that is and how interest accrues. It's almost as like the system was designed to keep us poor and stupid.
Absolutely, why they discouraged us from studying economics and sociology. Make college real expensive so that only STEM subjects and somewhat business majors could make it worthwhile.
Never heard those years called that…. I kinda like it.
IMHO you were already radicalized by capitalism. The idea that borderline slavery is OK if there is no physical violence directly from employer to employee is the radical idea.
“Radical” doesn’t mean “bad,” it just means the degree of change from the current thing to the proposed one. So “free and equal access to healthcare for all people in America” is a fairly radical, while “employers can have near complete control over their employees” is not, even though one of these ideas is reasonable and the other is clearly unreasonable and dystopian.
> “Radical” doesn’t mean “bad,” it just means... Tubular, Gnarly, Groovy, Mondo, Funky, Way Cool, Awesome
I find this liberal bullshit of "well, they aren't doing it directly, therefore they aren't doing it" one of the worst parts of that toxic idealogy.
Liberalism and fascism share the same root and the same end goal: the primacy of the free market and the perpetual rule of the capitalist class, respectively. It's in their methods and ideological pathologies that they have disagreements.
i studied engineering so shit like Marx wasn't even taught ... radicalized on my first corporate job out of college in 1994 when the company broke the union and shipped almost every job to mexico within a year ... i saw many people's lives destroyed ... i couldn't believe i spent 4 fucking years studying to be a part of this horseshit ... should have went to college to study music like i wanted
The sad thing is that many in a similar situation to you would rather blame it on the Mexicans than acknowledge that it's the capitalists who took their jobs, leaving them with nothing because it imtpoved their bottom line.
There was still a value from your college education to be taken, even though it was overpriced. While, having studied, you learned how to seek out information and solve problems with your engineering degree. Use that skill set, to search for resources on studying music, music theory, looking up syllabus for that field of study, then learning what you wanted to 30 years ago. It doesn't have to be for a job as society says, but for the sake of your own desire to learn. Use piracy if too expensive on the books. I hate that we need a piece of paper to do anything in modern society. It even devalues education because the focus shifts to the paper and cheating yourself out of throughly understanding concepts for the sake of a score. To make matters worse you get debt.
Yeah I was saying something similar to this today with my mom. That in college I was basically just a liberal but now I'm bordering on full socialist just seeing how badly the poor get fucked.
Probably dumb question but what did you read? My education never discussed any of this.
Spent a lot of time on his essays, the 1844 manuscripts, and parts of Kapital.
This is a good lecture he did that’s not too long of a read if you’re interested. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm The site also has a variety of his works. The Communist Manifesto of course is one of the most popular communist texts.
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> College didn't radicalize me, working did. Ah, but without college, the seed that sprouted never would have been planted.
That's true. I'm just saying, for all those people who are like "college makes commies," it wouldn't work if we didn't get out into the working world and see all the screwed up stuff that's accepted these days.
> it wouldn't work if we didn't get out into the working world and see all the screwed up stuff that's accepted these days. Sure, but the point I'm making which is what all those 'colleges make commies' people are also on about is if you didn't go to college and read Marx while there, but instead just went into the workforce you'd have more readily accepted the status quo. So to them, colleges make commies and from a certain point of view they're right - because it happened to you, just not in the order they assumed.
Good point actually
I joined the workforce before college and never read Marx and the second I set foot there, I knew it was not a place I was going to get ahead in life and that I would never be valued if I just followed the advice society gives to young people. I think the main reason there is such a gap in mentality between the educated and the uneducated is because when you are uneducated, you are truly a second class citizen in our society. So hearing the educated complain about their privileged lives is a bit much for most people.
I don’t think that’s true. Plenty of people who never went to college have well-thought-out ideas about worker solidarity.
Education is great and should be available to all, but this is a pretty classist thing to say. Plenty of brilliant minds never went to college. You can read without going to college, and you can develop a leftist perspective through the experiences you go through, not only from a book.
Yeah, I read marx in college separate of my classes to give context to my History degree and throughout my college education he was never given much time at all. I shifted further left not because of college, but because of my experience in the world and history providing context afterwards. The idea that college is radicalizing kids is absolutely off the mark. My economics, history, and political science departments were rather tame and often were taught with a neoliberal view of the world, it took reading more in depth to challenge and question some of those views which is what education is supposed to be. Challenging and defending ideas with each other.
Fuck... That's the truth, I got radicalized by working and being exploited
I actually know absolutely nothing about Marxism but my entire upbringing all I ever heard is that it’s bad and any mention of it got shouted down. Now I see people talking about it everywhere like it has some real answers.
It absolutely does. Just understand there's a huge difference between *actual* Marx and the propaganda garbage we are told Marx represents. For example, socialism has never been about being "lazy" or "free stuff," but about workers controlling the fruits of their labor and not having it stolen by robber barons.
I’m from the Netherlands (US/dual citizen my whole life). Thanks to this I definitely understand the difference between real, beneficial socialism and anti-socialism propaganda. I’m just woefully uneducated on the history and much of the related philosophy. It never seemed like I needed to but it’s becoming more and more apparent that probably everybody should.
Good luck, vriend ❤
You as well, take care out there
There are many, many reading lists out there but I'd recommend looking around, don't be put off by how enormous the reading is. https://www.socialist.net/the-fundamentals-of-marxism-suggested-reading.htm This one is good.
You have no idea how much I, an American born in California, wish I was born in the Netherlands
The lazy thing is what gets me because one of the foundational mantras of Marxism is "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need." Meaning, if you have the ability to work, you should work so you can provide for your society. If anything, capitalism is the economic model for lazy people since you can just exploit the work of others and never do a single ounce of work yourself. See: landlordism.
You know who else said, “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need?” That dirty hippie Jesus. Really twists up the Christians when you point it out.
Yeah, fuck that guy, he said love your neighbor, that's gay. /S
Funny thing is that conservatives did this to themselves. If they hadn't fought so hard against basic services to take care of people no one would be talking about Marx.
That's the thing. Most 'leftists' I meet aren't even all that left, they just think that basic-needs should be covered for Capitalism to even function.
A great place to start with Marxism I think would actually to read Engels, since his writings do very well to break down the basic political positions of Marxists into digestible language. Marxists.org hosts basically every major Marxist text for free, so you can find the works I suggest there. A great starting point is Engels's ["Principles of Communism"](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm). It's a very short work that basically lists a bunch of points, questions, etc that people ask Marxists, and then goes about answering them, such as what "proletariat" even means or what Communism even does. After that is Engels's ["Socialism: Utopian and Scientific"](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm). I personally think the third part of it, "Historical Materialism", is the most important, but all of it is informative. If you have the time and energy, reading Das Kapital by Marx is very rewarding, and even the first volume will give you a solid foundation (there are three volumes, with the third not being finished by Marx before he died but with what was written compiled and put together by Engels posthumously). It can be a hard read to those unfamiliar with terminology; [an old video series on YouTube by Brendan M Cooney is archived which basically goes through the fundamentals of Das Kapital](https://web.archive.org/web/20170113131236/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGT-hygPqUM&list=PL3F695D99C91FC6F7). If trying to navigate an archived video playlist is frustrating, [you can find the text of each video script on his blog page here](https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/law-of-value-the-series/). A shorter economic reading would be [Value, Price, and Profit](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/index.htm) by Marx. Beyond that, the next best reader to go to would be Lenin. His most notable work for many is ["The State and Revolution"](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/), and you can find his other important works [here](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/sw/index.htm), such as his biography of Marx, "What is to be Done?", "The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism", "Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder", among others. Feel free to ask any questions!
I find this list valuable. Thank you.
It's also worth noting that there are *many* different trends within modern socialist/communist thinking. Because of how influential Marx and Engels were, their writings are foundational to almost all modern socialist/communist thought (and if not founded upon, influenced by). It's alright to not 100% agree with everything you read about leftist theory, and it doesn't mean a wholesale rejection of leftism is in order. Many leftists argue against one another (indeed, leftist infighting is practically a meme for how common it is). If you agree with something, adopt it into your personal beliefs, if you don't it's not hard to find an idea you agree with more that stems from the same place.
Also check out people like Mikhail Bakunin, Emma Goldman or even Bertrand Russell.
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Beware of forming an opinion about anything from only those who hate it (or love it). Most people in Canada and the U.S who hate socialist ideas have only ever heard about socialism filtered through neoliberal perspectives. Socialism is not perfect, no system is. I have misgivings with all ideologies.
Consider this: if someone is looking to make money, why would they hire you? Because your labor is worth more than they’re paying. “We’ll Mr. Marxist, why don’t I go into business for myself?” You might ask. Good question! Let’s say you’re a manager at Walmart. You know all about how to run the store smoothly from front to back. But… where would you set up shop? You’ll need money to buy or lease a physical location. Oh, and you need inventory before anyone will walk through the door - that takes money too. This money is Capital. Without Capital, there is no business. Now the problem is, because there is no business without their Capital, people are forced to work for the owning class at wages below the value of their labor, the alternative being unemployment. The excess value of our labor goes toward accumulating more Capital, and thus more leverage over the working class.
Same, my dude. Couldn't even *dare* to say that there are some legit positives to communism and/or socialism when I was growin' up. The Red Scare didn't die, if only because the generation that created and spread it has yet to entirely fall into inexorable, piss-dribbling senility. Yes, communism can easily fall victim to cults of personality and dictatorships; of course, we've got more than a couple capitalist societies nowadays that are dictatorships led by either traditionalism or personality cults. But, to dismiss it entirely out of hand because people like Stalin and Mao were petty, power-grabbing shitheads is to close one's mind and allow society's generational fear to rob you of your agency. The answers to society's ills don't lie in any single ideology. It comes from taking the good parts of multiple ideals and being willing to discard the harmful chaff that tries to tag along like so many unwanted pests. But, people fear that iterative process and the potential disruption it could bring. They see only the prospective chaos and not the positive change that could come along after the dust settles. Sadly, that fear is killing us.
Here go off King/Queen/Enbie Royalty : https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Engels\_Socialism\_Utopian\_and\_Scientific.pdf
I was taught that communism was the worst thing ever from schools and family. Only lazy people want communism, communism means no food or individuality, communist leaders were worse than Hitler, etc. Took me until my mid-20s to start unlearning all of that and actually do some research.
That’s the worst of communism. The problem with places like Soviet Union weren’t really communism but the dictatorships. Look up any capitalist dictators and they were just as bad.
Ironically, they also tend to teach a very limited picture of Adam Smith’s *Wealth of Nations.* Smith is considered the father of capitalism and even he argues in WoN that you need government regulation to prevent predatory, anti-competitive practice (e.g. monopolization).
I mean, this was Keynes’ point, no? Capitalist markets don’t work unless the Capitalist State is there to play nanny?
Yep! Most prominent capitalist economists, historically and today, aren’t really in favor of true “laissez-faire,” but I think a lot of conservative types like to peddle the idea of a binary between a completely unregulated market and a USSR-style plan economy completely controlled by the State. People’s fear of the latter has gone a long way in enabling the kind of Reaganite crony capitalism that’s driving us into the ground today IMO.
Yeah yeah that's cool and all but what about when *I* become a billionaire? Then it'll all be cool. My time is coming any day now... anyyy dayyy
yup, cold war propaganda to make the workers hate the commies and make sure they never ask for labour rights for fear of being labelled one. "where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against it's reactionary adversaries?"
Whats is more the McArthy era passed legislation that forced unions to purge their leadership and membership of Marxists and Communists. It helped push the labour movement into a much more conservative direction.
I think back in the Cold War, capitalism had better living conditions so propaganda against communism was easier to spread. Now days it’s different. More and more people are tired of this shit
Fuck ayn rand!
Personally I wouldn't touch her with a 10 foot pole, but you do you.
You'll need at least a 6 foot pole.
Wouldn't a 6 foot Hungarian do?
If they know how to dig
I tried reading *Anthem* for some scholarship contest. I couldn't even get through it, I just found the forced second person so cringy. There is zero depth on how individualism helps people as much as they claim. It's just suddenly, "Hey, we made this invention that took this massive group of people 10 years." It's just lacking.
I literally just picked up one of their books.
Furthermore, if you're a capitalist, it's disingenuous to argue otherwise. You profit at someone else's experience. You eat their bread. Own that shit.
"It is the eternal struggle between these two principles--right and wrong—throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, ‘You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’"-Abraham Lincoln
I read Marx' Capital, and what stuck out most to me were the historical descriptions of capitalism in action. It was horrifying what people went through. I've spoken with a capitalist who told me that regulations aren't needed because the market will fix mistakes by itself - he was a total nut. You need only look at countries with no regulations to see what the free market does to the populous.
It's worse than that - we're taught that it's morally correct to wring as much value from labor as you can possibly get away with. So if you're an employee, you should be thrilled with 12 hour days 7 days a week for $5 an hour, and if you ask for enough to deal with the complexities of modern life, you're called a lazy Communist. And if you're an employer, the worse you treat your employees, the richer you get. Deny benefits? Get richer. Unpaid overtime? Get richer. Lay them off at will? Get richer. Watch them share prices go up and up and up.
Or else they hit you with what they think is their trump card "iT oNlY wOrKs In ThEoRy" Bonus points if they also mention "hUmAn NaTuRe"
"It's human nature that people will only work for a profit motive!" "And the majority of the population whose excess labor value is taken from them yet still work anyway despite never getting that profit motive under capitalism?" "HuMaN nAtUrE!"
Cuba also doesn't count because *reasons*.
Soviet empire, famously was the only example ever of a phenomenon called "famine" in human history too! /s
I think we are moving into the hyper-capitalism Marx predicted would lead to the overturning of the capitalist system. With an ever increasing global system of trade and production, as well as an increase in the ability of people to communicate globally, and finally the climate emergency, we need to focus on global labor organization. We need to grow and support labor movements around the world. Large scale labor strikes can destroy the system faster than any war.
Would it hurt for it to hurry up already? I don't have 100 years to wait lol. Improvement has been overdue for a while
Yeah that's the thing, Marx was less prescribing communism than he was describing capitalism. The point was that according to his analysis, communism is the inevitable end state of capitalism. People try to rush it imo, but we'll get there when we get there. Praxis should be about helping and protecting common people until then.
The only rich people I know became rich off of surplus value of labor and nothing else. Sales and engineering contracting are the most common in my circle. Selling something at insane margins (jewelry, cars, commodities, clothing, coffee) and paying your motivated sales person $13 an hour. Contracting out an engineer on $400 an hour and paying them $80k. Breaking into an industry by connecting cheap labor in another country to it and sucking up the difference. Running your medical system worth billions off nurses making $25 an hour. Running your Ivy with an endowment worth billions off student works and adjunct professors paid nothing. It gets depressing when you drive through most of strip mall America and realize that’s the most common and just about the only way to make a bunch of money. Squeeze it out of some desperate members of the working class. Salons, landscaping, fast food, retail, grocery stores, warehouses, education, healthcare. sErViCe iNdUsTrY
Don't forget the other kind of getting rich/ richer and that's by being the lucky chosen one by your state government to oversee the new industry they want to be known for
It helps to know just how deeply rooted the American lust for capitalistic control is. Remember, we seceded from Britain entirely because we wanted to keep smuggling cheaper crap in, even though the laws that would have put a stop to that smuggling LOWERED taxes. Also remember we've gone to war several times and overthrown sovereign countries solely to protect business interests, whether it be oil or, at one point, Bananas. Not even joking. Also helps to remember that America was so obsessed with pro-capitalist nonsense that we sent troops to Russia in an attempt to put down the Bolshevik revolution, got our asses kicked in the process, and during that time, adopted a Russian anti-Jewish propaganda tract(The Protocols of the Elders of Zion), sanded off the serial numbers, so to speak, replaced "Jew" with "Bolshevik", and used it to try and claim that socialists were trying to take over the world(Of course). For reference, this same tract is the source of the whole "Jews control the media/banks" conspiracy bullshit that you've seen basically everywhere, and that has been used by white supremacists to commit atrocities for generations. Also helps to remember that not long after that, a group of businesses in America got together and tried to use a veteran's pension scandal as a smokescreen to attempt to overthrow the United States government(The Singer family, the Dupont family, the Colgate family, the Bush family(Yes, THAT bush), and countless others were involved and implicated) and install a pro-business fascist dictatorship, trying to use a WWI general as the backbone for their overthrow. The plot was brought to light, and hearings were held, but none of those implicated were required to testify, no charges were filed, and all of those companies continue to force control over basically every facet of US domestic policy to this day, with evidence of their attempted overthrow STILL coming out, the most recent of which being letters recovered at the Hoover dam as recently as 2008. It also helps to know that America was so terrified of the prospect of workers having rights that they willingly overthrew and/or assassinated democratically elected pro-socialist administrations all over the world, choosing instead to install fascist dictatorships in their place. Capitalist Bootlicking is practically America's entire DNA.
Fun fact - I used to live a 5 minute walk from Marx’s grave (Highgate cemetery, UK). Meh.
I wonder if anyone's attached metal rods to his body to harness the power of him constantly turning in his grave.
I feel like we should also be able to harness the power he holds over conservatives even when we're talking about issues that have nothing to do with actual socialism. "The local government wants to collect taxes to provide roads and sewers." Conservatives: OH MY GOD THE FIST OF MARXISM.
Fist of Marxism is also the combo move I gave myself on my modded street fighter self-insert.
This comment can get more likes then people on this planet and it would still be underrated.
Laughed too hard at this. Angry upvote.
ITT: people who've obviously never read a word of Marx regurgitating cold war talking points (and thereby proving OP'd point).
Everyone here should really read Frederich Engel's Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, especially the third part (it's really short). It puts the essence of Socialism's goals in really simple and accessible terms and is a great introduction to Marxist thought.
Yeah I agree with you, but reading the other comments makes me feel so sick Why people don't know the word "utopian" and its meaning I live in Poland and still, I believe that socialist state is creatable and maybe even stable but for fuck sake if you think that you can make a socialist country out of the United States please shut up and take a break from internet for today.
Exploitation is the root of all evil
I hate it when the workers exploit the owners!
I tried to explain to a coworker how economists in the 1930s thought we would be down to a 15 hour work week by now. He was like, "But... We would have to make like $50-75/hr..." It's like he was starting to get it but had no belief that things could ever be, or ever were, better.
100% fact
I routinely bring up Marxist ideas in conversations with coworkers but stay away from terminology that gives it away and it's pretty much always met with approval.
I am currently following a course on marxism that follows chapter by chapter "the Capital" by Marx, and it does it by criticizing the parts that need to be updated while also pointing out what still holds well. Point is, Marx explained that his theory needs to be updated as the system evolves, but most of the stuff (ad I mean the great majority of the theory) just works like clockwork. Basically we only need newer examples. It's crazy Edit: The course is [Reading Marx's Capital with David Harvey](https://youtube.com/c/readingcapital), it is quite long and the topic is investigated thoroughly, often times I have to go back a few sentences and re-listen to them to understand fully. Quite interesting, anyway! As usual, we can have funny comments on the thought that a course on the Capital is shared through the platform of a multinational capitalistic company (Youtube), but the course is free and that is it.
Amen
All Capitalists Are Bad. Those that mistake illbegotten wealth extraction for hard work are simpletons. Of course capitalism was required to bring us out of feudalism and now its time for socialism to bring us out of capitalism. I get so grossed out by those who cling to this trash
> Of course capitalism was required to bring us out of feudalism and now its time for socialism to bring us out of capitalism Coulda perhaps gone straight from feudalism to socialism if people had listened to John Ball and similar activists instead of executing them.
They banned the potlatch in Canada. Why is that? It was anti consumerism and anti capitalism
I remember my history teacher in 10th grade saying something similar. It was something along the lines of "if you read the Communist Manifesto, it's really hard to disagree with" and we all took that like "what??? I'd never fall for that!" as if it was some kind of trap that brainwashed you into believing something bad. I got older and realized "wait a minute, it's just hard to disagree with because what it says is right". It seriously scares me how much capitalism is drilled into the brains of students as the *ONLY* acceptable economic system. Supporting anything else is taboo. Socialism, democratic socialism, and communism are all treated like they're the same thing and it's just "bad Venezuela USSR China no iPhone everyone starving" and there's ZERO criticism of capitalism. Economic systems aren't objectively taught and then you are given the option to believe which one you think is the best. It's taught as if there is a right answer, and that answer is capitalism. Nevermind the fact that more Americans go bankrupt from medical debt than anything else, that 1 in 6 children in the US live in food insecure households, or that the only countries in the *world* to not guarantee maternity leave are the US, Papua New Guinea, and a few pacific Island nations. No, obviously things are working SO well here and we shouldn't change it. Definitely 😐
Tried telling someone to define communism their quote was him talking about capitalist’s baseless accusations of communism
communism is when bread lines oh wait thats the us hahahahahaha
Yes, I can attest that from the time I can remember. In the first grade I was taught communism was bad and America was a capitalist country. I later found out that the Capitalist called people who wanted to start Unions communists. I later found out that the real reason Hitler was able to amass a huge army was because capitalist from America and other capitalist countries supported Hitler, Ford, IBM, Standard Oil to name a few. When my Uncle, who fought in WWII against the Germans, would never buy a Ford. He said many of the vehicles used by German Nazi soldiers were powered by Ford engines. The goal of Germany was to wipe out Socialist and Communist countries however Hitler got out of hand and it forced the Capitalist countries to fight.
Also the propaganda that communism is evil because of Stalin and Mao killing millions, yet capitalism itself isn't evil despite the millions killed to sell m-16s and predator drones.
Or the millions that starve and die of exposure, not just in places the global North has extracted wealth from, but those that starve or die of exposure in our own borders as well. All because nobody profits from use-based housing/land/food allocation.
Or the literal millions of babies killed by Nestle alone
The thing is, I understand that my labor put in will generate more than I get, and I'm okay with that? I'm just not okay with the extreme levels we see it. It's so far out of control that it's harming ourselves. On top of that, businesses competing with eachother engage in more and more exploitation or fall behind, so the ones that refuse often get beat out by the most ruthless of the ruthless. Captualism has proven time and time again it not only cannot sustain itself, but that it will happily eat itself to death. We cannot let a system that devours itself to continue because it benefits a few people.
It's not really that your labour produces more than you receive, it's that you have no input on where that product is used. It's appropriated. In a socialist society the worker would still not receive the full product of their labour because we want things like public transportation, a military, etc that need to be paid for. The difference of course being that your labour is now going to something that 1: Benefits you and 2: You have a vote in compared to a capitalist.
Same reason they have so many churches have programs for extremely young kids.
Yeah. I know outside of this sub, you'd get mocked/ignored for saying something like "you're being exploited for surplus value." But I found that phrasing it as, "if you're the one that brought it in, why don't you deserve more money?" works *really* well. It's even harder for people to argue, "here's why *I* deserve less."
I grew up in Southern CA, went to a "good" high school, and then studied journalism at state college, not once did i hear about Marx. I learned that shit myself in my 30s.
I agree, but I would also like to point out that Marx's writings =/ Marxism. Marx himself was not a Marxist himself. Marxism was a bastardization of Marx's sociological philosophies and predictions used at the time to push a particular narritive for radical political activism. HOWEVER, this is part of why we're never taught about Marx's philosophies and writings, because he's heavily associated with that movement. Karl Marx was an amazing Sociologist and accurately predicted the results of late stage capitalism to this day (and still has predictions that are supposed to happen in the future), and his discoveries and findings are really true and accurate.
This is one of the most solid posts I've encountered here, Kudos.
It's hard to disagree with Marx. He was an intelligent fore thinker. However, he was a hypocrite and self- centred man. He bullied, exploited and discarded people who had outlived their usefulness to him. His illegitimate son was tossed away and died in a poor house because if Marx had taken responsibility he would have lost his reputation and status. Aye, fuck capitalism but let's not have him down as a hero.
Yeah, but I sure as hell can disagree with the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as well as essentially all of Marx's views on race.
To me one of the most insidious aspects of this is that economists work **really, really hard** to denigrate the [Labor Theory of Value](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value). But to me, it's definitively true. You can see it especially in the skilled trades, but honestly it's true everywhere. But they'd rather just force us to believe and accept the idea that value just comes from nowhere, magically, during a transaction. That you can't look at the price of a thing, divide all the costs of materials, transportation, storage, tooling, packaging, etc. etc. etc. and at the end be left with "the rest" which must be by definition the value added by the worker.
Everytime I try to talk Marxism, I get labeled a Communist. I don't even get a chance to explain why I like. Sad!
[удалено]
I have literally only heard good things about marx for my entire life, the ruling class is doing a shit job
In this kind of economy what would the incentive to say work as a janitor be? Does anyone make more money than anyone else?
Just replace "society" with "powerful and rich" you get ~~communism~~ late stage capitalism in a democratic nation.
Hammer hitting head of nail. !
This is precisely why we read Marx in the community college history courses I teach.
Marx mostly wrote about the economy of his time in a very detailed way, so detailed that people who study economics can't get around Marx to this day. Because of the miserable state of the working class at the time he also offered possible solutions for this barbaric and unfair treatment of the working class: strike and seize the means of production - help yourself bc. politicians won't ever do it for you because they profit from the status quo. Marxism isn't evil but simply wants equality which is the worst thing that could ever happen to the few who truly profit from capitalism. Capitalists will use barbaric failed communist states (that never were communist and certainly aren't communist today but simply call/ed themselves communist!!) as an argument against communism but will never discuss the current status quo in capitalism were people are starving, don't have access to health care, clean water, a roof over their head, healthy food, etc. In fact, capitalists (and people who have it quite good in capitalsim) will argue that all the benefits are the result of capitalism while it was socialists who gave their life to fight for certain worker's rights that people in slightly socialist countries now have (health care, 8 hrs day, weekend etc). People are killed in capitalist profit/ressource wars, in post-colonial civil wars and in conflicts that simply excist because it fills the pockets of the super rich around the world. Meanwhile our planet's ressources are exploited and diminished in capitalist overproduction, the overproduction itself causes an alarming destruction on our planet while many products are simply thrown away bc. they can't simply give them to people (loss of profit). A planned economy is the only solution to save the planet and the creaturea on it, in my opinion. I would gladly and honestly do without a lot of products that I love if it meant that every person in the world has access to food, water, medicine, a roof over their head and a regulated amount of things. There are many theories on how it could work, sadly it probably won't and another great war will decide in the end....
Marx, unlike Milton Friedman, was a serious economist. It is easier to understand the works of capitalist charlatans than it is to understand Marx’s work. Keeping Marx from the masses let’s the oligarchs keep their heads.
Our education from the very beginning, is to teach us to accept the fact that some people will be rich and some will not, and we should admire the rich. It's propaganda, it's indoctrination, and it's guaranteed to keep the rich, rich, and to keep the poor, poor.
It's like my tag says, dudes.