How to approach Marx's ideas - Politics & Religion

baystateoftheart
Neil Young as a butternut squash

Age: 29
Location: Massachusetts

BARDAMU wrote:

My understanding was that the Russian "troll farms" were largely trying to take advantage of already-extant fissures in American society by signal-boosting populist candidates on both sides (Trump AND Sanders), as well as Black Lives Matter and reactionary gun groups. Knowing that Russia "wanted" a divisive Bernie campaign didn't stop me from going south of the boarder to work on the Bernie campaign myself (Canadian interference, if you will -- call it "Canadagate").

The degree to which Russiagate is manipulated by liberals is frankly worse than Russiagate itself, and has a far more odious effect on democracy. Every last bad thing the Democrats have ever done is considered "Russian propaganda," and they reinforce as much nightly on every news network. A woman coming forward to accuse Biden of sexual assault has been dubbed "Russian interference," ffs. As far as I'm concerned, it's more constructive to throw out the whole concern than entertain it for a second and let these ghouls run with it.

The way in which they were inflaming division is relevant. It was largely by attempts (some fairly successful) at large-scale disinformation, which is corrosive to a democratic society regardless of whom it is in service of. People forget because of how thoroughly it's been co-opted by Trump, but "fake news" originally became a popular phrase in reference to these disinformation campaigns. One of their aims was division, but I don't think we know for sure whether the objective of the pro-Sanders fake news was for Sanders to become the nominee, or for Clinton to become the nominee of a divided and weakened party. I think it's apparent that Russia's oligarchic, hard-right policy preferences only meaningfully aligned with Trump, and they did significantly more to boost his campaign.

If you think a political party putting a political spin on the current event that is Russian disinformation campaigns (like they do on every current event) is worse for democracy than the existence of the disinformation campaign itself, your priorities are misplaced. Nightly on every news network? Cable news sucks but lol no. And 'every last thing' is egregious hyperbole - what are other examples of Democrats blaming a bad thing on Russian propaganda? Your conclusion, advocating dismissing the reality of Russian interference because it's politically inconvenient for you, is breathtakingly bad-faith.

Politically, I care most about defeating the far-right, then the plain old right, then the centrists. What about you?
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mickilennial
The Most Trusted Name in News

Gender: Female
Age: 35
Location: Detroit

If you criticized the democratic party they often on social media and otherwise deferred to you as a "russian asset" even if the claim was easily disproven or discredited. With the combination of other dubious tactics (voter suppression, removing the green party off the ballot in several states, etc) the conversation on "who is less bad" feels awkward and sketchy to me.

baystateoftheart
Neil Young as a butternut squash

Age: 29
Location: Massachusetts

Gowi wrote:

If you criticized the democratic party they often on social media and otherwise deferred to you as a "russian asset" even if the claim was easily disproven or discredited. With the combination of other dubious tactics (voter suppression, removing the green party off the ballot in several states, etc) the conversation on "who is less bad" feels awkward and sketchy to me.

To be clear, I'm asking BARDAMU about elected officials and other institutional party figures, not random people on social media who happen to be registered Democrats. And I'm no fan of Democratic Party leadership, but the party is clearly less dangerous than the contemporary Republican Party on voter suppression and all other issues relating to the preservation of democracy.

I do feel that far too much energy on both sides goes into leftist vs. liberal fights when fascism is on the cusp of consolidating power. I think one lesson of history is that a temporary left-liberal alliance is necessary in these situations.
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BARDAMU

baystateoftheart wrote:

The way in which they were inflaming division is relevant.

I've read the Russian indictment, and I think that the degree to which Russian meddling messed with the election and with division in the United States is overblown. Much of the present division in America is the result of decades of build up, and when we look at the curve of American history I think a Trump was inevitable. The tendency to focus on Russia also pretends that there isn't serious structural problems with the United States that have lead to where they find themselves today. America's chickens, etc.

baystateoftheart wrote:

Politically, I care most about defeating the far-right, then the plain old right, then the centrists. What about you?

Supposing Biden wins and we "defeat the far-right," Biden will just appoint a bunch of Republicans to his cabinet and make a bunch of concessions to Trump's base. The Democratic Party will continue its swing rightward, validated by the outcome of 2020, and the Republican response in 2024 or 2028 will make Trump look quaint by comparison.

Boltzmann
supplier of entropy

Gender: Male
Age: 27

1d410Arthur wrote:

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

Errm... have you read Hegel perhaps?

Jokes aside, I really don't think Marx is exceptionally difficult to read. He was a philosopher though, and of course the writing will not be too easy either. On the other hand, his texts were just as much works of economy as works of philosophy. From this economics perspective his theory can be explained in the simplest way - I think - as follows. He solved Adam Smith's proposed mystery of profit always seeming to go down. He showed with an incredibly simple maths problem that the reduction of profit was simply a result of capital investment going up as a result of technological (or other types of) advancements. He then extrapolated this result to predict that if this would go on, capitalists (which then just meant "capital owners") will have to resort to a couple of tactics to keep profit up; one of which was exploiting workers more. As might be familiar to a lot of people, inequality has gone up in all capitalist countries and keeps going up (as well as homelessness), and profit indeed seems to keep going down. Therefore it seems that he was right, which is not strange, from the fact that the mathematics he used was very simple, and the trend had already been established centuries before him (let's not idolize him as a genius prophet or so).

As you're a bit of an exact studies guy (like me) I thought this approach would probably be more suitable for you. In Das Kapital volume 3, chapters 13 and 14 you can read all about this, and see for yourself how easy it really is.

Of course there is much more to it, but I hope this can help you to get more into the theory.

Boltzmann
supplier of entropy

Gender: Male
Age: 27

BARDAMU wrote:

1. Orwell is English.
2. The donkey in Animal Farm is supposed to be the good guy, the pigs are the bad guys.
3. Animal Farm is an allegory criticizing Stalin and the USSR, it doesn't have anything to do with explaining Marxism.
4. Animal Farm is terrible.
5. Orwell is terrible.

based.

Apparantly - however - Animal Farm was also a metaphor for the British press in which he felt certain voices were being silenced, including socialist ones. But apparantly he also reported socialists to a secret intelligence agency, so he seems to be somewhat of a walking contradiction. I don't know if any of these facts are completely correct or selectively interpreted by the people that fed me this info, but I also don't really care, we're talking about a fiction writer here.

Let's make one thing clear: His books certainly can't be used to learn anything about Marxism.

Boltzmann
supplier of entropy

Gender: Male
Age: 27

BARDAMU wrote:

Yes. I'm aware that Orwell was a "democratic socialist." Democratic socialism =/= Marxism. Orwell was not a Marxist.

This is some heavy gatekeeping though. This is why the left keeps being divided. We're not talking about a social democrat here, but democratic socialism, which is - in fact - socialism, and therefore based on Marxist theory.

As Orwell himself is also a great agitator of leftist infighting, I can excuse you though. Western leftists' arrogance when criticizing countries who actually tried to put Marx' theory into practice is very annoying.

Boltzmann
supplier of entropy

Gender: Male
Age: 27

LedZep wrote:

Maybe a bit off topic, but why do communism and Marx’s theories in general have such a bad reputation in the US? Is it the Cold War, bad education on the topic or something else?

The first time I realized "socialist" was basically a slur in the US I was equally confused.

I think the cold war and the citizens' judgment of communism are symptoms of the same mistake the US government has made: to equate the USSR with nazi-Germany just because they were both totalitarian, and to equate every socialist nation to the USSR. Which resulted into fear mongering, anti-communist propaganda, which would ease the population's nerves when they invaded these countries for profit, because they were actually "liberating" them.

Regarding education on the topic, I'd say there was none. It was simply a taboo subject in the US.

Skinny
birdman_handrub.gif

I self-describe as a Marxist - but that doesn’t (in my mind, anyway) entirely equate with being a socialist or communist. My personal definition stems from the fact that I view almost all things through the lens of “class”. In my mind, the issues with oppressed peoples throughout history have almost universally stemmed from the fact that they are held back by those who, in Marx’s terms, “own the means of production”.

Whenever I take those political alignment tests, I end up far bottom left, next to anarchists like Kropotkin and Goldman. My cynicism borders on nihilism. And yet I still believe entirely in democracy. I still enjoy the trappings of capitalism. My centrist friends think I’m radical, and my leftist friends think I’m a centrist. But first and foremost, I always say that I am a Marxist.

I think equating Marxism with socialism/communism is overly simplistic, removing all nuance. My belief that the system is rigged does not mean I endorse violent revolution.
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RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

Funny how Russia actually is a major factor to a lot of issues right now in the US, but everyone wanted to focus on 5th grade facts they learned on tiktok. Oversimplified facts and no interest in real discussion. Just wanting to show "the internet is right". Can't wait to see how people are thinking (or not thinking for that matter) in 50 years.

Carry on.

On the other hand, Skinny - thanks for your intelligent response which had more than a sentence and a fart joke.