How to approach Marx's ideas

[1d410Arthur]

I've read some of Marx's texts and the writing was so poor I always thought they were a bunch of gibberish people interpereted randomly but I got my social media classified and was promoted because of a contact who says there is actually information in his texts (at all ). i am obviously not allowed to discuss this on my social media as it is now classified, but I think the forum is an appropriate place to help me with my new job which I know will require understanding these poorly written gibberish manuals (that i only now understand has content as I was promoted unexpectedly and got classified). Does anyone know how I should approach these books. I am good at research but it is mostly developing electronic technology like 80s music so the poorly written papers are mathematical treatises.

[baystateoftheart]

Can you elaborate? What did you find to be gibberish about The Communist Manifesto? It's not super well-written, but I found it readable.

Also, when I first read it I was surprised by how moderate some of his policy proposals seemed - we have adopted many of them in the United States! I was expecting something far more radical.
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[1d410Arthur]

Thanks I will just read it again if you don't think it's gibberish I will get back. It's good to say which text I need to read. Right now I am just pleased I don't need the stimulus and if I get it I will repay a bunch of minor student debt I regard as trivial as I am confident I am very financially stable and this new classification will help

[RoundTheBend]

I did a bit of research in college about some political/philosophical ideas and one of the things you gotta keep in mind is most of these ideas, as opposite as they may seem in regards to methodology/ideology, actually were all rooted in giving people more power and taking it from the monarchs as their end goals.

America was founded on this idea to free themselves from Monarchs - all men equal. Abraham Lincoln solidified it.

Marx had a different approach, but simply put, he wished the common worker could have more power over their "pursuit of happiness" if you will and believed if you made the "game fair" then more people would be happy. Basically Marxism in literary theory is mostly about class struggle, recognizing it (even in the least assuming circumstances), and then of course the concept is to do something about it.

As much as I dislike fascism, it's roots often garnered similar attention - give power to the people.

I don't know - maybe they all had the right intentions, but all of those systems became corrupt and I think most systems today still feel like the people lost the power/never had it. To what extent I suppose is in the eye of the beholder... well and facts/interpretation of facts/availability of facts and good educations to interpret them.

I took an East German literature class and it was quite eye opening. If you can get your hands on a copy of Nikolaikirche, it showed the pros and cons of East German living or what was real and not real about it. It's not always easy to know what's real or not real about the United States, to be honest. I mean the number one thing Americans like to tout when talking about communist countries is they had a terrible economy, yet East Germany touted the 10th greatest economy in the world in 1985, just years before the fall. For 1/4 of modern day Germany to tout that, is impressive (this was supposedly a British claim, something I have yet to find again, so maybe it's false). https://www.amazon.com/Nikolaikirche/dp/3861520044
Hmmm - maybe I should see if I can hunt this down, looks like they made a movie from it too: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113985/

The methodologies or ideologies were not the same, so please don't mistake what I'm stating. Just their end goals supposedly all started out the same.

[mickilennial]

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[RoundTheBend]

[manurock]

Nice analysis @Roundthebend.

America has used the fear of communism as the excuse to avoid properly addressing their inequality and social justice problems which appear all over again every time there is a crisis such as this pandemic or the 2008 financial breakout. Of course I think that communism isn't the best system at all, but their philosophy is interesting and we should learn from it.

[baystateoftheart]

[BARDAMU]

[RoundTheBend]