Thread 17922333

Given the catastrophic failures of marxism-leninism and other variants of marxism during the 20th century, what possible outcome can there be for marx later on ? Will he be remembered vaguely as this niche hegelian materialist philosopher or will the coming anti-imperialist marxist-maoist revolution usher in a new era of prosperity under his guidings ?

If you're inclined to believe in the former, what part of marxism can't be reconciled with political practice ?
If you believe in socialism, how do you think a new iteration of marxism or socialism as a whole could hold up in the near future ?

>hard mode: you need to at least know the basics of marxism, no "human nature is greedy" or "communism is when sharing"

>>17922333 (OP)
Given the fact that many countries have managed to substantially improve their living standards without cheating via colonialism or slavery etc, and that countries that undergo socialist revolutions always lag terribly even when they do get their shit together and start making the line go up, what is the point of insisting upon revolutionary socialism? I mean there are so many countries that went from poor to meh or rich with greater speed and consistency than any post-revolutionary society, so why not just advocate for sensible macroeconomic policy instead of revolution, if you claim to follow the scientific method?

>>17922353
So social-democracy is the telos of socialism ?

>>17922359
I'm not even reducing it to social democracy. I'm going with a more boring focus on pure stability, central bank independence and transparent institutions that are predictable and don't scare away anyone with both money and sense. If a country has no substantial risk of collapse, doesn't let politicians ratfuck with monetary policy and has predictable institutional behaviors and outcomes, then the line will go up consistently, and if the line goes up consistently, then low-risk investment will nearly always generate positive real returns, which means compound interest makes society as a whole more prosperous in the long run. Whether there are social democrats, religious conservatives, free market liberals, autocratic authoritarians or whatever else in power, if they just don't go too crazy on economics they should in theory at most only change the angle at which the line goes up. This is preferable to the chaos of revolution.

>>17922380
Sure but then what awaits the teachings of marx ? How do you reconcile the "line going up" with alienation, with dialectical materialism etc ?

>>17922396
I don't lol his theories make no sense. I mean he literally believes that the only way you can profit is by extracting surplus value from the wage of your workers, so he actually postulates that, the more efficiently your business runs and the fewer workers you need, the less profit you will make. Like businesses should avoid automation if they want to stay profitable because a robot assembling products in a factory line instead of a human doesn't have his "surplus value" for you to steal, it's nonsense.

>>17922333 (OP)
Marxists are running out of time. If AI gets to the point it replaces labor it refutes the idea of the uniqueness of human labor when compared to animals.

>>17922408
That's not what the theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is. The TRPF

>Like businesses should avoid automation if they want to stay profitable because a robot assembling products in a factory line instead of a human doesn't have his "surplus value" for you to steal
It's more so that if you automate your work, you need to spend less on workers, which implies that you have more room to lower prices to get more customers. But if you do that, other competitors will also do the same and innovate to lower the cost of production.

>>17922417
>you have more room to lower prices to get more customers. But if you do that, other competitors will also do the same and innovate to lower the cost of production.
Or you can just do it like Amazon and perpetually reinvest your profits into expansion and R&D, then your shares rise in value and you sell them as needed or use them as collateral on loans.

I dont get why, and would really love if someone could answer this itch: why does no one ever focus on Materialism and Dialectical Materialism when it comes to Marx? Marx casually subverts idealism saying materialism is better, but then it's never touched upon again by him or his followers.

Did Marx actually intellectually btfo Hegel or not? Why does no one care about this when trying to dismantle communism?

>>17922490
Because it implies taking down their own ideologies

Like we are better because god is with us, or the aryan spirit guides us etc

If they accept material conditions depend of the actions of material individuals and the properties of matter they are screwed cause all they did was abuse nature until it run out

>>17922490
nobody cares about the philosophical side. Ever since industrialization began the only concern has been about what concrete policies help bring about modernization vs those that fail.

>>17922333 (OP)
>, what possible outcome can there be for marx later on ?
Cultural Marxism.
Applying oppression Olympics dialectic "oppressed" (by White straight man) demographics.
Its very effective.

>>17922333 (OP)

Social democracy is a way to go, the only ideology proven by time to be working

>>17922333 (OP)
is it possible that another marx will ever exist? Someone who will come up with some ideas that will inspire people to the point of overthrowing government/revolution just to enforce them?

>>17922501
40 bmi post

>>17922413
AI just makes human labour more efficient

>>17922490
His materialism sucks and is based on assumptions. There are countless other sociologists and economists who don't give a rat's ass about idealism and take an empirical stance on their studies, which are completely incompatible with Marx. He doesn't own materialism.

>>17922582
Tourraine got me talking about subcontracting amd outsourcing, but he was sadly misunderstood in his time

>>17922333 (OP)
Marxists in 2025 are just liberals larping as some fancy other ideology. Idk what the point of being a Marxist is when you can just be a liberal.

>>17922763
what do you mean by that ? Can you expand ?

>>17922333 (OP)
>If you're inclined to believe in the former, what part of marxism can't be reconciled with political practice ?
The problem with it is that it justifies itself as a totalizing and all-encompassing absolute system. I don't really think that's what Karl Marx had in mind, but he contributed to this by calling every socialist who disagreed with him bourgeois because he was feuding with those guys. And things which he didn't think contributed to the working-class movement were uninteresting to him. He was definitely highly intelligent and is an important historical figure, but there were other philosophers in his time as well, and he didn't have anything to say about them.

So, it was partly him being rather intolerant, and then political movements later on needed that version of Marx to impose their ideology, which created Marxism. But it's not actually the case that Marxism can explain everything or that you can alter society with it in the same way that you'd do with Darwin's theories. Or you could try, but it wouldn't work very well, because people are not livestock or inanimate objects. Also the Marxists added a fatalistic, deterministic, teleological, religious-like aspect to their ideology. But people just ~do things~ and following their own aims, it's just people doing stuff, and there's not a particular direction to it like the coming-to-self-consciousness of God or "God's plan" or "history."

>>17922493
>>17922499
>>17922647
thanks for the replies. and I thought about it more, but it still confuses me.

Marx was essentially a fanboy of Hegel, no? Yet when writing about communism, he wants to get through German Idealism out of the way off the bat, saying its unimportant. But if industrialization never happened, Marx would still be a fan of Hegel anyway.

My autism just cant accept the cognitive dissonance here.

>>17922333 (OP)
it will stay in its current grave of academia wankery.

In my opinion the big edge marxsist had in the early 20th century was their rigid organizational structure,devotion,discipline,knack for conspiracy and political timing.
Most of these qualities have been neutralized and just dont exist in people generally let alone a entire group.

>>17922991
so he will stay a big influence and he will be read however there will never again be "the party".

>>17922948
>>17922490
It's not that it's unimportant, but that the dialectic operates through material means, not necessarily through ideals like rights and obligations like Hegel envisionned.
In essence, for marx, the means of production aswell as material conditions determined the culture and political motivations of people. Thus, if you consider the dialectic as a descriptive process of society being "rational" and moving towards its own fulfillment, it becomes apparent that you can trace this historical logic through the evolution of the means of production. The changes which come from it like an evolution of rights or freedom is only derived from an evolution of the material world.

>>17922991
in that case what do you think of the ccp, of european social democrats, of the power that academia yields ?

>>17922582
It'll take some time imo. Marx benefitted from Hegel being relatively new in philosophy while simultaneously being one of the most important philosophers. His notion of the dialectic extended the lens of analysis that one could view society through. He also benefitted from being able to decipher certain economical logic before capitalism being properly systematized everywhere in Europe. He's smart, but not as unique as people paint him out to be.
If Kant had systemized more his ethic, and had Rawls expanded his work into economy too, maybe he could've had the same extent.

>>17922948
Is not that complicated Hegel invented the wheel of history

The dualistic principle that history is a wheel and sometimes people are down or up, the ones up are the upper class the ones down are the lower class

While Hegel has a complex explanation that includes metaphysics and the human spirit, Marx blamed material conditions

Personally I prefer Hegel's version of class warfare were it depends on people's psychology more than on people's material goods

>>17922333 (OP)
As long there are jews marxism will always have a future.

>>17923016
>>17923084
So if Marx and Hegel were looking at the difference between how people react to ai/robots today vs how robots were perceived as cool as hell in the 1950s, Hegel would look at the dialectics/Geist in people's attitudes and opinions towards things in the past 60 years, while Marx would be more interested in how technology has affected work life in the past 60 years? Im assuming Hegel is more like "people are the same as monkey man. it comes in cycle" while Marx thinks people keep evolving with technology.

Only for Marx to say
>lets agree to disagree, now lets discuss exploitation of the worker

>>17923241
yet jews are 40% of russian oligarchs, curious

>>17922582
>is it possible that another marx will ever exist?
That's like having another Charles Darwin. The ideas are evergold. You can't really reinvent them with a new person because they'll just quickly find out that what they're saying has been discovered and discussed before.

All that remains is if society still refuses to engage with taboo thought. In a hypothetical world where the Darwinists lost the grand biology vs orthodox religion debate and got suppressed who knows how long a society could go on pretending evolution isn't a thing and replacing biology with a more political safe "naturalism." Who knows how long our society can go on ignoring basic economic truths.

>>17923248
Probably

Is a complex debate, most philosophers found Nietzche weird for claiming horses are concious and have souls

I think the debate on artificial intelligence was to much for them

>>17923297
Why did he spend his life saying being a master morality machiavellian sociopath like the Borgias and dominating slave morality cucks is the best way to live then freak out over a man dominating a horse? In his final moments did he realize this is actually demonic sadism and a horrifying aspect of our reality?

>>17923315
You really don't get him

He wanted you to live your life like it mattered if you didn't you were a slave

Is the only thing you can say to a slave that free them

>>17922333 (OP)
>will the coming anti-imperialist marxist-maoist revolution usher in a new era of prosperity under his guidings?
This is my hope.

>>17923016
>the ccp
i am still conflicted on them and i dont know enough,but i will go to china soon.

>european social democrats
In order for social democracy to work in lets say a big country the size of poland it needs atleast 5 countries the size of bulgaria to use as fuel to depopulate,buy cheap resources from,sell garbage to and give loans to.
That being said if the upcoming war tips in the wests favor we will at some point after have a wave of socdems take power with the losers of the war as the fuel.

>>17922353
Did colonialism even help any of the imperialist powers long term? It seems like the winning move was permanent conquest (US expansion) rather than babysitting colonies only to eventually lose them (British Empire).

Marxism couldn't win on the economy so it went the cultural route

>>17923775
And it starting to lose on that now too lmao!

>>17922490
Same reason no one talks about Gentiles form of Dialectics when in regards to Fascism.

>>17922333 (OP)
Marxian socialism will eventually be regarded as little more than a progenitor to whatever form of Socialism does supplant capitalism
In the short term the future of Marxism depends entirely on China and the coming European crisis