/philosophy/ - Philosophy

>>3672

tl;dr

btfo collectivism & idealist socialism

>>3672

aristotle said it better.

>>3672

>"I never read Marx, but I like to talk out my ass as if I did" : The post.

You couldn't even argue against Hegelian idealism with that kind of ignorance, son.

>false dichotomy

Not even the arch idealist was this stupid.

>It was easier to defend this false dichotomy in Marx's time

It's easier to defend now if you actually know about world politics and international economics.

>proposed ideal society

Oh, you mean that society Marx never wrote about? Communism isn't anything for Marx other than pure freedom from economic want and by immediate result the submission to other humans for any reason in order to live. Is this unreal? Yes, yes it is, but not for the reason you think.

>There are only men and the things men build.

And there is the history of humans, which is entirely a history of culture and social formations and not Ugg out in the forest all on his own thinking up of how to package wild dog meat to trade with the next erect ape to walk by. You're deluded beyond belief in claiming you're a "realist" when your concept of humans is as stupidly abstract, unscientific, and plain idealistic as one gets. You've never studied child cognitive development and psychology have you?

>>3679

>you're ignorant because I said so

>you're stupid because I said so

>if you only had my opinion then you wouldn't have your opinion god what an idiot

>Marx never wrote about an idealic society, to him, he was writing about an idealic society

>Allow me to totally fail to understand the context of your statement, reference cavemen (???), then call you a deluded idiot because in your post you didn't qualify you're experience with juvenile cognitive development

Wow what a train-wreck. That post was the college-educated version of base name calling. Next time, attack my argument, not me.

When I said "btfo collectivism", it should have solidified to you that what I was attempting to refute was the idea of trying to fit human societies into a class structure. In reality, there are no social classes, and the role of individuals in our society is so much more incredibly diverse than the black and white of proletariat or bourgeoisie. In essence, Marx's world view is narrow-minded and fails to explain the most basic phenomena in human society. If you had actually thought about what I was saying, you would have realized this was what I meant. Instead, you saw that I was disagreeing with Marx, turned off your brain, and started typing. And by the way, I have read TCM. Just because I don't agree with you doesn't mean I haven't seen the same material as you have.

There is an interesting, and I believe relevant, observation to make concerning the societal analysis of TCM and Orwell's 1984. In 1984, which was written after the rise of the middle class, Orwell included a third class. He stated that all human societies have been made up of three classes, those in power (the bourgeoisie), those out of power (the proletariats), and those trying to get into power (the middle class). However, if you look at even more modern analysis of society, they often include an upper lower class, a lower middle class, an upper middle class, a lower upper class, and sometimes even a upper upper class or lower lower class. What these observations imply to me, is that with a modern, industrialized, class-mobile economy, and an increased understanding of sociology and economics, Marx's dichotomy has broken down, blurred into smaller and less defined classes, until the point today where such a viewpoint is essentially useless for any real understanding of society. Again, I must repeat, there are no classes, no "class struggle", only individuals.

Now, about your last paragraph. You really made a stretch in order to take me saying that people always want possessions to degrading the entire population to cavemen dog-meat traders. It's honestly an impressive degree of manipulation. Allow me to elaborate my position, because you seem to have failed in every respect to understand what I was trying to communicate. My position is that possession is a part of individuality. No true Marxist society could ever exist because people will always try to stake their own claim. To illustrate this idea, examine any of the failed socialist states around the world. What is inevitably the downfall of these states is corruption. No matter how much party propaganda is put up and idealistic campaigning blasted over the airwaves, the people in positions of power never fail to abuse said power to accrue personal wealth. Why? Because possession, and to a certain extent, greed, are a part of human nature. No, I don't have an idealistic view of humans. If you want my opinion of humans, I would say that we have immense potential, and much of the time that potential lays unused and undisciplined, people instead turning to more carnal, immediate concerns.

With your reply, I would very much appreciate it if you would maintain some semblance of civil discourse, and examine my ideas for their worth before dismissing them blindly. Thank you.

>>3683

your not going to get anything better out of him, as he believes chans are exclusively for shitposting. see >>3308

>>3683

>Wow what a train-wreck. That post was the college-educated version of base name calling.

Next time, attack my argument, not me.

Next time, make an argument.

I’m sorry, but the post you made doesn’t have anything I consider worth calling an argument. I give a response quality equivalent to what is posted.

>When I said "btfo collectivism", it should have solidified to you that what I was attempting to refute was the idea of trying to fit human societies into a class structure.

Well, Marx never did that. Class does not exhaust the entire range of human experience and life, it’s just the major background for a huge part of it. This is why I say you have no argument, you have no idea what the fuck you’re even arguing against. Why would I bother “arguing” against someone who just attacks strawmen because he’s too lazy to go actually fucking READ the sources instead of relying on shitty second and third hand say.

>In reality, there are no social classes, and the role of individuals in our society is so much more incredibly diverse than the black and white of proletariat or bourgeoisie. In essence, Marx's world view is narrow-minded and fails to explain the most basic phenomena in human society. If you had actually thought about what I was saying, you would have realized this was what I meant.

Look, I get you. I do, I once thought like you, but I have this tick with people like you ignoring the conceptual structure of what you’re arguing against. You know why I admire Marx and Hegel? They could argue from within a scheme and show it to be by concept illogical or wrong. If you just bring some new definition to the table, there is no argument being made against the other position, it’s just another concept that isn’t what was being talked about. Marx’s concept of class is a structural relationship, it’s not class in the feudal, caste, or categorial sense. You an I are, despite what you think, not on the same playing field. Your concept and mine are not up to being debated around some third arbitrator concept or fact, so you argue within Marx's conceptions or you don't bother.

>Instead, you saw that I was disagreeing with Marx, turned off your brain, and started typing. And by the way, I have read TCM. Just because I don't agree with you doesn't mean I haven't seen the same material as you have.

>TCM

TCM is literally a political pamphlet for a moment and not a theoretical piece. I’ve read Capital and quite a bit of secondary reading. I can only tell you the TCM is a joke to any Marxist scholars when it comes to theoretical foundation for Marx’s views. If you can, just read the Critique of The Gotha Program; that has far more relevance than TCM.

>There is an interesting, and I believe relevant, observation to make concerning the societal analysis of TCM and Orwell's 1984. In 1984, which was written after the rise of the middle class, Orwell included a third class. He stated that all human societies have been made up of three classes, those in power (the bourgeoisie), those out of power (the proletariats), and those trying to get into power (the middle class). However, if you look at even more modern analysis of society, they often include an upper lower class, a lower middle class, an upper middle class, a lower upper class, and sometimes even a upper upper class or lower lower class. What these observations imply to me, is that with a modern, industrialized, class-mobile economy, and an increased understanding of sociology and economics, Marx's dichotomy has broken down, blurred into smaller and less defined classes, until the point today where such a viewpoint is essentially useless for any real understanding of society. Again, I must repeat, there are no classes, no "class struggle", only individuals.

Once again, you have no idea of what Marx’s theory was. Marx acknowledged that there are more than the two classes. This is like liberal communist level knowledge, socialist hipsters know this and you don’t. Think about that. Marx’s position was that there were two main classes, the capitalist and the wage worker. There is class warfare, have you ever had a fucking job and lived paycheck to paycheck? Do you really ignore politics this badly?

>Now, about your last paragraph. You really made a stretch in order to take me saying that people always want possessions to degrading the entire population to cavemen dog-meat traders.

No, no I didn’t. It wasn’t about human desires, it was a point about empirical science concerning the development of human psychology. My point was that individualism is not just conceptually untenable, it’s empirically outright false. We KNOW how humans develop and how they are motivated, and your favored myth does not fit what we have discovered. This isn’t some argument for “blank slate” or noble savage, it’s just the fact of human sociality proven by psychology and neurology.

>>3683

>My position is that possession is a part of individuality. No true Marxist society could ever exist because people will always try to stake their own claim. To illustrate this idea, examine any of the failed socialist states around the world. What is inevitably the downfall of these states is corruption. No matter how much party propaganda is put up and idealistic campaigning blasted over the airwaves, the people in positions of power never fail to abuse said power to accrue personal wealth. Why? Because possession, and to a certain extent, greed, are a part of human nature.

Once again, you don’t understand Marx’s positions. Possessions aren’t of interest to Marx, private property is. Possession isn’t a complex thing, animals have possessions. Private property, however, is control of a thing in absence for Marx, and his interest is in socially created and used means in control of private hands. But, ok, let me humor you.

P1 – Possession is part of individuality (P is part of I)

P2 – People try to stake their own claim (I always tries to claim PP—private property)

Conclusion: “Marxist” society (i.e. socialism) cannot exist because it denies possession

So, P1 is just a claim with no backing, but ok that’s normal for philosophy 101. You have a problem with P2 because you just introduce a new conceptual claim that doesn’t have any reason to follow (private property, I know that’s where you’re going because claims are an issue of rights), and it doesn’t follow even from your silly notions of possession if it’s as simple as the claim of “It’s mine”. If that is all P1 is, “It’s mine”, then Marx has nothing to disagree, in fact that’s one of the FUCKING ASPECTS OF THE THEORY OF ALIENATION. I’m alienated from things, society, and myself, because it is all part of me, “mine”, and yet I live in a social arrangement where I have no say about this world which is not only mine, but the condition of my being, and I a condition of it. Your conclusion is false, 1) because it’s just not what Marx’s idea of society is 2) your argument isn’t even valid as a syllogism due to P1 and P2 having no necessary connection, two claims that don’t go together without some other propositions making that link in-between.

>No, I don't have an idealistic view of humans. If you want my opinion of humans, I would say that we have immense potential, and much of the time that potential lays unused and undisciplined, people instead turning to more carnal, immediate concerns.

Idealism is abstraction. You do have an abstract view of humans, that’s what individualism is. The claim that there are only individuals and society is their happenstance product by interaction which is just accidental to the individuals involved, there is no necessary relation to others. You’re de facto idealistic. Read Hegel’s short satirical essay “Who Thinks Abstractly?”

>With your reply, I would very much appreciate it if you would maintain some semblance of civil discourse, and examine my ideas for their worth before dismissing them blindly. Thank you.

You need to really read Hegel.

>>3685

You need to lighten up, bucko.

>>3683

So, in conclusion:

READ MARX BEFORE CRITICIZING MARX

Your argument isn't against Marx, or Marxism, it's against literally nobody because nobody stands by what you described. There is no "Marxist" social model, want to know why? Because Marx thought, with very good reason, that society, politics, and economics, were ALL FICTIONS of humanity's ignorance of itself, and the state of affairs that isn't any of those is what communism is.

You also have a highly weak conception of individuality (what you mean is self, and that is a highly debated issue concerning subjectivity).

Luckily, the world is much richer in detail and context than your conceptions of it.

>>3716

What are you now, and what made you change?

>>3519

https://mises.org/library/economics-and-revolt-against-reason

>>3722

I had guessed as much. You were just an edgy gommunist who never actually looked into it and just went with the next intellectual fad.

Once you understand Marx's logic and argument, you can't possibly go back to something as garbage as Mises' shitty theory and worse philosophy.

Karl Marx had a sense of humor:

"If there is to be talk about philosophy, there should be less trifling with the label “atheism” (which reminds one of children, assuring everyone who is ready to listen to them that they are not afraid of the bogey man.)

>>3726

learn how ID's work

>>3910

Learn to sage. You know my name and can see me across threads, and that's how I like it.

>>3915

holy shit you're literally retarded

>>3917

What an argument!

>I know! I'll call him a retard, that will show them! :DDD

It takes a special kind of stupid to be worse than retarded.

>>3917

actually he thinks imageboards are exclusively for shitposting because no one responded to his shitty reddit postings.

>>3924

Even while I shitpost I philosophize better than you. Think about that, m8.

>>3947

whats your point?

>>3947

Is this a Rand thread? No. Goddam Randroids are so desperate to get any attention for their hack thinker that they have to go into other threads and go

>But what about MY ideology?!?!

I wouldn't post in a Rand thread since I 1) never read any of her writings 2) don't give a shit about anything she wrote about. It'd be nice if you did the same.

>>3947

And yet I am a leftist who read enough of her to know she is shit. Marx made more valid points without resorting to a science fiction narrative.

>>3955

prove it.

>>3947

>>3953

>>3703

Who cares? Both are Jews. Both belong in the trash.

>>3951

"The Capital" has three fucking volumes, each of them has, what, 800 pages? Even Marx hated the damn book, because it was full of fucking padding. If not even the author of a fucking book would've read the piece of shit, then why should I?

Ask any libertarian to sum up his philosophy and he will gladly do it. Not just them, but also fedoras, despite being complete shitbags. Marxists refer you to ten volumes of secondary literature about hegelian dialectics before they even consider you worthy of being argued with, then they'll say fuck it and just act like unintelligible smartasses again, hoping that their use of big words will intimidate you. See here:

>>3701

>Look, I get you. I do, I once thought like you, but I have this tick with people like you ignoring the conceptual structure of what you’re arguing against. You know why I admire Marx and Hegel? They could argue from within a scheme and show it to be by concept illogical or wrong. If you just bring some new definition to the table, there is no argument being made against the other position, it’s just another concept that isn’t what was being talked about. Marx’s concept of class is a structural relationship, it’s not class in the feudal, caste, or categorial sense. You an I are, despite what you think, not on the same playing field. Your concept and mine are not up to being debated around some third arbitrator concept or fact, so you argue within Marx's conceptions or you don't bother.

This nigger is essentially saying:

>You just don't get it!

And he needs like twenty sentences or what for this shit.

Not only that, but he's also mentally retarded:

>You know why I admire Marx and Hegel? They could argue from within a scheme and show it to be by concept illogical or wrong.

Too bad the class-theory is a description of reality, so nope, you don't have to fucking prove that the underlying theory is illogical to debunk it. The claim "all swans are white" is entirely logically coherent, and it's still wrong, because it doesn't describe reality. Likewise, the class-theory may be logically sound, but still, it's fucking wrong because it doesn't describe reality, no matter what definitions you use.

TL;DR I don't read "The Capital" because I've seen what it does to the people who have read it.

>>3959

Have you even read Adam Smith? All economic philosophers from that era are dense reads. Libertarians are simple to understand because they don't have anything original to say.

>>3959

ahh, i gotcha now. so youre saying that marxists are a bunch of sophists, who fortify their statements behind a mountian of tl;dr that is so large even the author didnt care to climb it? i get that, i am just of the mindset that you must read a piece in order to be able to critique it, but only because i havent found a suitable argument to replace it.

there is a lot to be said about intelligibility though, which a lot of post-medieval philosophers have seem to forgotten, or just dont care about, and i suspect that some of them take/took immense pride in how difficult their concepts are to understand (think about the sterotypical asshole college teacher who brags about how few students pass their class.)

as to your reference from within this thread, he is a known r/philosophy mod who just likes taking big, steaming, wall-of-text shits on this site for whatever reason.

>>3961

everyone from the enlightenment on is a dense read.

>>3363

His ideas were fundamentally flawed as he looked only at European History before deducing that capitalism would lead to world revolution, if he looked at China throughout History he would have found that the Chinese had multiple revolutions over their thousands of years and none of them really succeeded. Also, anyone who says that Karl Marx is a Jew Jewing, you do understand that giving everything to the poor from the rich wasn't something that he invented, right?

>>3966

China didn't have an industrial revolution and does not apply.

>>3961

If you think Adam Smith is dense either you're a fucking idiot or you haven't actually read him yourself.

http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/small/Qu-Sm/Quality-Control.html

Hey does anyone think Denning sounds like a Marxist when he says poor quality is a failure of management, not the workers, who would naturally strive for quality in the right working environment and with the right tools?

>>3979

Adam Smith was boring and long-winded to read. But he isn't cryptic like pseudo-intellectuals and if that's what you're driving at I agree.

I think he's interesting but frustrating to talk about. Everybody seems to have an opinion of Marx like "HERE'S ONE POTENTIAL PROBLEM WITH MARX ERGO EVERYTHING HE SAID WAS RUBBISH AND HE'S NO GOOD AT ALL"

People read him extremely uncharitably and often have an ideological bias against him. I do not find any actual Marxists ever, yet somehow every ideological anti-Marxist has debated dozens of Marxists and finds them all to be "unscientific dogmatists" or whatever.

It's just annoying because he's so politicized. Like nobody can talk about Marx like they do Kant, it's always some extreme over the top bullshit.

>>3966

One potential problem with his work doesn't make it fundamentally flawed. That's not fundamental to his historical method. You only used the world fundamental because it's a nice buzzword you can use to advance an ideology

>>3959

In other words, you don't read it because you're a fucking baby who has to make up shit about people in order to seem them inferior and ignorable

God anti-Marxists are always the most dogmatic fucking idiots around, never add anything useful to any conversations, you just flail around wildly frothing mad because someone suggested Marx may be okay to read and then make up excuses to not actually argue

>>3947

I'm a leftist who has read Ayn Rand, and after laughing put down the book and never considered it much ever again

>>4040

It's not based on empirical claim. Whitey, like, fucking READ Capital and you'll see that the whole thing is developed in the same way Hegel's Science of Logic is developed, which is completely unempirical.

If capitalism is an intelligible concept, Marx thinks his theory of its logical structure is the only one that gets at what that concept actually is. If we indeed do have capitalism, it's automatically true.

It's a form of transcendental argument: what are the conditions for the possibility of generalized commodity production and exchange?

>>4047

>Whitey

Typical.

>>4007 Ayn Rand thinks a priori that taxes are baaaad. But ask Oklahoma how no taxes on fracking has worked for them. (Hint: no government savings, no improvements to social services, and a jump in bad homeschooling while the millionaires pull out.)

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-oklahoma-bust/

>>4053

And you didn't prove that you aren't white. You mad?

>>4060

you are starting to sound like an SJW please stop

>>4063

>oh no he called me whitey

I didn't say you're wrong because you're white, it's not a fallacy nor is it illogical. You're just like the Jew who cringes to be called out and put in the open.

>>4065

>>4060

Are you Jewish?

As Marx himself basically admitted, he is not correct buy we wouldn't be able to discern real truthes in our capitalist world anyway. We need to evolve socially and that means changing our economy

>>4047

>If we indeed do have capitalism, it's automatically true.

Well we do have capitalism according to Marx, is there something we are missing before we can have capitalism?

>>4096

>what are the conditions for the possibility of generalized commodity exchange

Gee, I'm looking at a world of commodities right now. I wonder...?