/theory/ general

Labor vouchers are not money. They don't circulate, there's no point in accumulating it.

I understand that
That would essentially remove the whole (M-C-M^1) process. But Marx still posits that this is, non-the-less, a form of the law of value.

I've seen some Socialists claim this as being a modified form of the law of value, that is nessisary for economic administration.

(more in the comment setion) paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2017/03/05/why-law-of-value-really-applies-in-socialist-economies/

This seems like an interesting quasi ML response, I'd like to see other perspectives on this, especially from members of the Communist Left that contest the law of value being present in socialism.

I don't think you could give any other response. Either you have to account for people's labour time contributed to the collective production when deciding how much they can take out, or you're left with relying on total voluntarism wrt the production side of the equation. Which, as anyone who ever had to deal with any kind of communal living situation will tell you, is a recipe for parasitism. Just stating that under communism, there will no longer be a discrete sphere of production, seems to just be handwaiving the question.
But I would likewise like to hear a substantive argument from the leftcoms.

Is there any texts that suggest praxis within the 21st century, mostly from a lib-soc POV and within the material conditions of the first world?

that comment section is excellent

In socialism there will still need to be accounting of materials (in kind), labor-times, productivity, etc. There will also remain a division of labor. Marx states in both The German Ideology and Critique of the Gotha Programme that the division of labor will be phased out in the later stages of communism but, being realistic, for a complex economy there must also be a complex division of labor - whatever Marx says notwithstanding. I take a realistic view that under socialism we would still operate with an idea of developing economic value, but this value will be more than ever tied directly to the productivity of labor and production of goods measured in-kind rather than in monetary values.

The differences will be: speculation on assets, stocks, commodities - will simply not exist. One will not be able to "create value" by gambling on prices. It will no longer be possible for capitalist firms to cut costs simply by externalizing them onto workers. I.e., forcing workers to pay for their own training rather than providing it to them as part of their job. Long working hours and assembly-line drudgery will be phased out by technology and automation without forcing workers into situations of uncertainty regarding their future employment or welfare. An advance in production will be an advance for society - not simply those who own the machines.

So, even accepting the continued existence of some kind of law of value and division of labor in a socialist society, the most immediate problems would be swept away by socialized ownership.

On a related point, it's relevant to ask why past socialist countries seemed to ruthlessly adopt capitalist techniques such as scientific management, outlawing strikes, controlling the movement of labor, internal passports, etc. It's important to bear in mind that past socialist experiments have all begun in countries that were not developed along the lines of Western capitalism. In addition, their populations were largely illiterate and uneducated, and at the same time they had all gone through tremendous periods of external and internal conflict, i.e. wars and civil wars. In these conditions it was of paramount importance to develop productive forces and accumulate "capital" by whatever means necessary to continue economic development towards socialism. In that case it becomes clear that there could have been no alleviation of working conditions for the simple fact that the necessary surplus did not exist.

user was kind enough to write a summary of his study of Capital here:
>>>/marx/8398

Pic related is an explanation of the difference between the metaphysical way of thinking and the dialectical way of thinking thinking, from Materialism and the Dialectical Method by Maurice Cornforth. The use of the word "metaphysics" within Marxism is very strange in the broader context of philosophy (materialism (dialectical or not) is itself a metaphysical position), and the use of the word "dialectical" would most likely anger many Hegelians, but I thought it was a good summary nonetheless.

Attached: dialectical vs metaphysical thinking.png (438x1213, 916.22K)

Nice find.

Marx's explanation for why capitalism has no choice but to disappear.

taken from Capital volume 1.

Attached: marx_expropriators.png (614x492, 41.39K)

Marx's On the Jewish Question is actually an indictment of identity and identity politics and not le ebin proofs that Marx was an "anti-smite" despite Zig Forums's brainlet quote mining.

No, it's proof Marx was NazBol gang.

Except Marx didn't have brain damage.

bump

Excellent and underrated post.

On a related note to this (and since Cockshott was mentioned):
If I remember correctly in TaNS Cockshott proposes to overcome the federalist unity of republics in favor of a single socialist territory, which would also have huge impact on this as well as introduce new problems I haven't seen tackled or even listed. It's interesting to think about Lenin's "national question" from this perspective as well, putting aside the obvious socio-historic constraints of hist time, e.g. the promise of (relative) autonomy to previously (culturally, economically, politically) totally subjected nations.

To put the problem in pragmatic terms: a country has a revolution; establishes a cybernetic socialist system. (Hopefully) a neighboring country does the same 5 years after them. Cockshott would merge the two. THEN what? What was previously trade, becomes an internal economy. What was previously two separate political entities becomes one. The development of the economy and culture also shows asymmetry (five years socialism vs. still a capitalist infrastructure). There's the language barrier. The difference in consumption patterns, of taste, of non-essential needs. These bring up myriads of interconnected problems to be solved veeeery meticulously.

we need thunk harder

In terms of economic questions, this one is much less difficult than it seems. Multinational corporations already are able to solve a lot of the problems you bring up. One merely needs to incorporate the currently available information about the other nation's economy into the plan, and it should work. Of course, it is a bit more complex than that, but nothing that I impossible at this stage of development.

I build a business with my own labor and money. People voluntarily sign up for a job where they accept a certain amount of money in exchange for their work (let's say, $50 an hour). The employee's work is priced at $100 to cover expenses such as taxes, maintenance, purchases of raw materials and improving work environment and all of this is stated in the contract they sign. A bunch of fat smug feminist dykes start protesting for higher wages and starts saying that capitalism is oppressive despite me giving them a wage that sustains them and that they agreed to. How can you call us greedy money hoarders when you're literally putting yourself and your salary preferences over all other aforementioned things? How much of a fucking selfish hypocrite do you have to be?

(brainlet detected)
ask on >>>/marx/
They might actually not respond with non answers.

Bringing another discussion here:

Not trying to make a simplistic argument here, but, Marx throughout his works (even later ones) discusses 'the essence' of things as opposed to their appearances which usually dominate popular discourse. Even in this afterword to Capital vol. 1 he mentions the mystical and rational forms of the dialectic as contrasted with it's essence. Pic related.

Throughout his work you can find the same parallels of essence vs. form and appearance. In chapter 19 of Capital vol.1 he hammers again and again at the idea that surface appearances mask the underlying essence of something like wages.

Attached: marx_essence.png (842x498, 124.55K)

Once you subtract for taxes, depreciation, raw materials, etc the owner still accrues a profit. In Marxist theory the profit arises due to the owner receiving what is basically unpaid labor.

Sound crazy?

The value of wages paid to a worker must always be less than the value that worker produces. How is this achieved? By having the worker produce the value of his wages plus some more. The extra value produced, the surplus, must then be used to pay for various costs of production and also the owner's profit. In feudalism the serf worked so many days for the lord and so many days for himself and the division was obvious. In a system of wage-labor it appears that all labor is paid for even though the old division still exists.

So it doesn't matter if workers voluntarily accept this arrangement, or have good working conditions, or are relatively better paid than other workers. Exploitation still occurs and they are still performing unpaid labor for the capitalist.

Aren't you making too much of what is just an idiom, "in essence"? You would have to go to the original German to be sure.

In the case of pic related, he is referring to the dialectical process as the limit of bourgeois revolutionary potential which also recognizes the antinomies of capitalist development. The realization of a dialectical process cannot proceed and be realized and thus abolished with the basic positive assertions of bourgeois society, principally concerned with the nature and organization of production but equally with the general social expression of their wont. In this way, we can recognize that the essence of the dialectic is not some pure theorism on the part of Marx and Engels, which would, for them, constitute the introduction of the most damaging kind of abstraction into reality (abstraction within reality will destroy the understanding of reality, in its last instance), but rather serve as a sort of means to champion dialectical materialism (which is, by essence, revolutionary and critical) as the aleatory forme of the material process of history which is not burdened with ideological function.

For the question of the wages, he is confronting the ideological scruple of wages: their symbolism versus their function. So supposing an essence there is hardly anything to be suspicious of.

My argument for Marx's essentialism is more based on the process he uses throughout Capital rather than his use of the word itself, although he does use it quite frequently when discussing things.

I checked the German just now and the translation is accurate in English. He is always contrasting the essence (wesen) of a thing with its form (form) and appearance (erscheinung). To be an essential doesn't necessarily make one an idealist, though. It's possible to argue that something has an essence but that essence can change or transform itself. Capital itself is basically one giant discussion of "capital" as an essence that is constantly changing forms throughout the process of production, going from its money-form to commodity-form to productive-form all of which are changing shapes of industrial-capital itself.

Easy one. Under commodity production, capital is used to produce commodities, which are sold, to acquire a (hopefully)higher volume of capital in the end. Accumulation happens through the medium of selling commodities.
Under labour vouchers, production to produce "capital" never passes through the commodification layer, all production to make MoP is done within the MoP directly for the MoP. At no point does it become a commodity.
Similarly, since labour voucher cannot circulate of be accumulated, product are never "sold", as money can not be accumulated. The products are distributed according to their labour value, but the vouchers are destroyed. As such, there can not be an M^1. Likewise, because there cannot be an M^1, there is no M. Production under a labour voucher does not have a stock of money (capital) that is uses in production. It just uses all the labour it needs, and directly distributes labour vouchers, which it creates out of thin air.
There is no money investment into production, which is then turned into commodities, and sold for a transformed amount of money. The vouchers are created anew every cycle, and destroyed at the end. No accumulation of money, no sale of commodities for profit.

Correct me if im wrong.

That should not be an issue, the system should be able to account for local differences easily given enough information. You could even include all the information about the cost of transporting to different stores within the same town (although it would be overkill for little benefit).
But if area A wants thing X at twice the rate as area B, then you could just measure the demand in regional distribution centres, and then linear optimisation should even be able to automatically choose which are to build a factory in to minimize transportation costs. After all, its just aggregate demand (linear) and a linear function for the transportation cost for a certain factory to a certain area per some amount of produced goods.

Also for your other points, you can still have regional languages etc within the same system. You can still have local governments for local issues such as education and linguistic and cultural affairs, while also having a central government.

The language barrier really should not be a huge issue in countries capable of transferring to a cybernetic system, as I assume countries with that level of advanced infrastructure in their enterprises will have at least a manageable bilingual population in whatever the lingua franca might be.

You can also absorb a small subsection of the new territory at a time and work out the kinks in the transferring process, if we are talking about a larger timespan than 5 years (lets be honest, it will take at the very very least 5 years to setup a country wide cybernetic system for a first world nation, possible 10 considering post-revolutionairy chaos, power consolidation, anti-anti-revolutionary measurements and then the design of the system itself. Maybe a barebones super abstract version can be setup earlier, much like how the soviets didnt plan individual kinds of sausage but "meat production" as a whole to make the computation manageble for them. We could do a similar approach to first cover the major industries.

By the way would any cockshott fans be down to making some sort of sandbox/prototype/proofofconcept simulation thing for the linear planning system? If so, what framework/language/features?

I don't see how saying using abstractions to explain reality will distort how reality is perceived is any different than what Marx was saying in that pic, the mysticism of the dialectic in dialectical idealism was precisely why the bourgeois intelligentsia identified with it - it recognized the extant order and rendered it an essential part of a transitory process to realization

Idk about digital planning, but Kantorovich had a series of essays on optimal planning and its applications and I think that linked to Glushkov and his ideas for a horizontal distributed network for economic calculation. I have the former but am looking for the works of the latter, where he details prototype designs, I believe

Anyone have good theory books on the Shining Path or CPP/NPA/NDF?

Yeah yeah, I know, >leddit, but I don't know how else to find Leftcoms to answer me this:
If there is no difference between socialism and communism, and you want to go from capitalism to this system, how are you not an anarchist? Aren't anarchists defined by wanting to skip the transitional socialist state that MLs want? So if you want to skip that mode of production, doesn't that make you an anarchist? I'm really confused here and I already know that I'm an absolute brainlet, no need to tell me.

Attached: Screenshot_20180608-190010.jpg (1080x591 397.79 KB, 130.1K)

It sounds like a good idea. Would your goal be to simulate a simple economy using labor tokens and the methods Cockshott adovcates? I don't know anything about programming languages but I'd be willing to work on designing a project and later investigate how to implement it.

everyone here is familiar with the stemlord posting, right?
well i think that stem really is more or less the only socially necessary labor which gives value to everything, and that only stem can meaningfully interact with the means of production
so my vision of marxism is basically reactionary to the core and could be probably even be describe as fascist but i dont care:
few of these technical people produce all the value
everyone else is not needed and exploits them
these few stemlord types that really do produce all the electricity and the food thanks to tractors and so on gotta develop class consciousness and establish dictatorship to wipe out everyone else probably with nuke missiles and gun droids and establish a techno-utopia where productive forces eclipse the needs so hard, any need for money or class or anything is utterly meaningless

'the workers' are outdated farming equipment, and also retarded oh and also organizing that many retarded people is operationally impossible oh oh and also barely anyone works anymore, jobs these days are purely cosmetic welfare tier unessential jobs that have nothing to do with socially necessary labor
capitalists are fucking useless, duh
and finally this techno-proletarian class does all the farming with gps nav tractors and automation factories, so its still sickle and hammer but just not the stone age version

i call this techno-marxism and i dont care who disagrees with me, everyone has his own flavor he prefers and my version doesnt even require 99% of the population so why even waste time with those who disagree and are unessential?

Why do you need labor vouchers when people will work for golden stickers?

Attached: employee-of-the-month.jpg (565x320 291.66 KB, 152.6K)

You're just a genocidal technocrat.

nothing wrong with that
materialistic and historical conditions of scarcity economy demand that capitalist class and whatever the fuck these non-technical quasi workers that are doing these cosmetic/unessential "labor" that is not socially necessary and has nothing to do with means of production class, has to be genocided

cant think of a catchy name for it, capitalists are good enough, techno-proletarians also work, but this obese 'workers' we have these days who are all professional hair dressers or whatever the fuck, who arent performing socially necessary labor from which all value is created, or who are more and more professional welfare class, idk what to call them

Attached: Adversary-Gepetto-Fables-Comics-d.jpg (500x813, 130.52K)

Yeah probably. I was thinking some soft of simulation where you can just plop down some areas, give them available resources (stock material, labour time), be able to specify the cost-benefit of building certain things in certain places, etc.

breaking: Farmers and assembly line workers do not produce anything usefull, according to galaxybrain stemlord. Also marx was wrong, the designers create all the value, employees are just leeches.

You have convinced me, I am leftcom now.

doe normaal

The distinction between anarchists and marxists is not reducible to 'communism now' vs 'communism later', its a question of method, of the praxis intended to get us there as well as the associated theory and historical legacies.
Anarchists aren't defined by wanting to 'skip the transitional socialist state' but rather by opposing states in general and wishing to at any point always abolish the state and all associated things, unjustified hierarchies and the like.
Leftcoms (depending on which of the different strands of marxism that are described as 'left communism' we're talking about) don't necessarily oppose seizing the state, vanguard parties or anything of the sort.
Anarchists, although many of them these days are just incomplete marxists who take his analysis for granted but substitute historical anarchism for its praxis because they're LARPers, are at least nominally not materialist, they do not consider class or modes of production in their analyses.
Rejecting the notion of a 'socialist mode of production' or contesting whether the USSR operated under such a mode of production does not mark one out as an anarchist.

Where does one actually start with Hegel? Everything I've seen so far points to it not being Hegel. I seem to remember a list floating about that started with the Greeks, though that was a while ago. No real prior knowledge of philosophy past the bare basics plus anything I've picked up reading Marx/Lenin/whomever if that helps with recommendations.

I guess the question is: What do you hope to gain from Hegel?

I suppose an understanding of the philosophical background Marx was coming from, though I'm also just sort of interested in Hegel for himself I guess.

So, if you've never read anything about philosophy it would be difficult to jump straight into Hegel.

There a few different concepts which Marx transposes from philosophy into political-economy: essence, appearance, form, contradiction, negation, etc. In Capital, especially when he discusses value and commodities, he is constantly using these concepts to analyze things.

One of Plato's more well-known ideas is the Theory of Forms. In this theory there is an ideal world in which pure forms and concepts exist, of which everything in the "real world" is actually just a reflection or a shadow. Our perception of things as they exist is just an imperfect reflection of a perfect ideal. That ideal is actually "real" and the "real world" is actually fake. So the when Marx discusses forms, essences, appearances, and so on, it's all based on a foundation going back to Plato. Marx would have been well aware of this considering that his doctoral dissertation was written about Greek philosophy.

As far as I know, Hegel never had contact with Marx and died when Marx was only 13. But for some reason his school of thought was very popular in Germany. (Despite contemporaries like Schopenhauer calling him a fraud and swindler.) It's clear that Hegel's thought had a great influence on Marx because the latter makes references to both Hegel and Hegel's Logic repeatedly throughout his work. I'm not familiar with Hegel's Logic so I can't explain it myself. I tried reading it years ago and it made little sense. But, nonetheless, you can see Marx's references to Hegel in the Grundrisse as well as phrases he borrows such as "negation of the negation" in Capital.

Two of the most prominent ideas which seem to run through Marx's work (to me, at least) are the concepts of duality and change.

Change. In contrast with Plato or other idealist thinkers, Marx always begins with the assumption of change and not permanence. (There are no 'permanent forms.') For this reason he discusses value and capital as being things which constantly change form. If you look at the production of commodities, for instance, he describes how exchange-value becomes use-value and then back to exchange-value. (M-C-M) This is in Capital volume 1. In Capital volume 2 he discusses how capital changes form. Industrial capital becomes money-capital, commodity-capital, production-capital, and so on. For Marx, the nature of reality is change. But there is unity throughout these changes. Something is tying all of them together.

Duality. Marx analyzes concepts by breaking them in two parts. It happens again and again in his work. A commodity breaks into use-value and exchange-value. Capitalism breaks into labor and capital. He often uses this idea of concepts containing opposite parts as the basis for their change and development.

and so on

Attached: capital2_processes.png (578x445, 11.16K)

Thanks. Running into "negation of the negation" was actually one of the things that made me think about reading into Hegel to understand Marx and co. better - the economic side I grasp well enough, but the philosophy tends to go a little over my head at times. Would you say Science of Logic would be a workable starting point, or is there anything else I should read beforehand?

Try this:

1. Read Hegel's Logic, but do it quickly
2. Write notes & questions for every page.
3. Once you finish, see if any of your questions can be answered.
4. Look at secondary sources for explanations of Hegel's Logic.
5. Skim through your notes again and see if the explanations offered make sense based on the text.

This is probably the most time-effective way to approach the problem but it might still leave you with questions.

a passage from capital volume 2.

Attached: marx_surplus_hoarding.png (778x294, 71.27K)

Will do, thanks.

still relevant 141 years later.

Attached: engels_crisis.png (526x600, 196.7K)

Is social equality even worthwhile?

What do you mean?

yes?

What does this mean? Equality before the law, the abolition of castes, non sectarianism, something else still?

"Online university of the left"
ouleft.sp-mesolite.tilted.net/

Found this site yesterday while looking for info on China's economy. I don't like the layout but an "online university" with a Marxist/left orientation sounds like a good concept.

Reposting this from another thread:

David Harvey is not to be recommended. He somehow managed to become a pre-eminent "Marxist" without even understanding Marx. He has written that Marx didn't even have a labor theory of value. Both Michael Roberts and Paul Cockshott have written responses to him.

Michael Hudson is good but I don't think he's a "Marxist" economist but rather an economist who understands Marx.

Andrew Kliman has challenged the entire narrative of neoliberalism and financialization of the economy, which seems clearly wrong, but I won't pass judgment on him yet since I haven't finished his book on the financial crisis.

My recommendations are:
Steve Keen (not Marxist)
Michael Hudson (not Marxist)
Andrew Kliman (Marxist)
Michael Roberts (Marxist)

IMO there is a real lack of any kind of theoretical struggle or development among Marxists these days and there hasn't been any significant development of theory since the Lenin period. I would argue the main cause was the USSR's transformation of Marxism into a rigid dogma based instead of an evolving scientific outlook. After the Lenin period the Marxists basically split into dogmatists and revisionists, either taking a non-scientific approach to Marxism or simply dropping it entirely. This is the ideological threat from idpol: it takes random categories and applies Marxist "logic" to them.

Does Althusser's commentary make Capital v1 any easier? I'm having a hard time with the difference between Value(tm) and Use Value

Haven't read Althusser.

I can say that whenever Marx writes "value" without specifying one kind or another he almost always means exchange-value, which is the exchange rate between different commodities which itself depends upon the amount of living labor it costs to produce them. When talking about use-value Marx doesn't mean subjective utility. He means the physical properties of a commodity which make it useful for whatever reason.

So, use-value means physical property, value means labor-value, exchange-value, "market value", and so on.

Attached: marx_usevalue.png (774x220, 50.09K)

thanks, this makes the text a lot easier

cheers comr8

Just read Critique of the Gotha Program and I need help understanding this passage

It sounds like he's saying first that laborers don't exchange the product of their labor, but what does the second part of the sentence mean?
Is he saying that commodities no longer hold value or don't appear to hold value, but still do? What is the phrase "just as little" in relation too? What does he mean by "individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor." Is total labor the total labor of society or of a commodity? Does he mean that since all of the means of production are owned by the workers that the labor of and individual laborer isn't indirectly part of total labor because society already owns the total labor of society?

My interpretation is that he's saying: since property is now held in common, there is no market in which goods are exchanged and so neither do goods have exchange-value. The next bit sounds like it refers to Marx's idea that under socialism labor becomes directly social-labor. That is, in capitalism everyone is forced to cooperate and provide for one another but their work is done separately and for individual gain. Under socialism all individual work becomes social and contributes directly to society as a whole.

In the next paragraph he talks about how the early phases of socialism would function using labor certificates. This helps shed some light on the above. Since labor is now social-labor, it means you can measure it directly and use it to provide people with their share of goods based on how much they work. There's no need for buying or selling, you simply take your certificate and use it to withdraw your share of what you want/need.

So, what is the alternative to commodity production and trading? Besides the hopeful, but naive sounding, anarchist vision of DIY and voluntary gifting, all I see is variations of either "we gonna have SO MANY commodities" and "everyone is gonna have at least one".

Capitalism has only existed for 400 out of the 6000 years of human history, and yet it seems that no one is able to even think of something beyond trading or state bureaucracy.

Is there anyone that thought of this? What are some writings on a new possible path for humanity?

You don't know a single thing about anarchism, do you

I don't think you know what a commodity is.

Imagine all the businesses are part of the same corporation. Everyone has access to everyone else's data. You can easily check availability of goods and raw materials. You can also check things like man-hours worked. In this system there is no money. All accounting is done in-kind, meaning that you don't say you have $900 worth of steel, you say you have 1 ton of steel.

When you go to work you won't be paid money. If you work 40 hours a week you'll get credited with 80 hours every paycheck. This would be probably deposited like money onto a debit card, or you might get some type of token or certificate. So you work 80 hours and you're given credit for it. There is going to be a significant amount deducted from these 80 hours representing taxes. The remainder is yours to spend on consumer goods like food and clothing.

So you can "buy" things with your tokens but it isn't money. And these things are for your own personal consumption. Investment in business and industry would be handled by a planning system using the accounting I talked about above. It would be similar to, but not the same as, a company assigning budgets for different departments.

Attached: cockshott_consumer_goods.png (660x474, 139.98K)

How do people get the huge swinging balls to write philosophy like this? Marx wrote in a simple and clear fashion, so simple that millions of workers were able to read and study his works by candlelight after a day of labour. Meanwhile, this chump manages to take Marx, twist him through a nonsensical metaphorical non-understanding of """physics""", and produce something twice as murky as either physics or Marx. This sounds fancy but it is not in any sense useful philosophy.

I'd like to think I'm not a brainlet at reading, I've read Marx and Kant and Hegel (both logics and PoS) and more-or-less understood them. But reading this shit gives me a headache. I know WHY you'd write it - for pats on the back and intellectual acclaim - but I don't know how anyone gets the temerity to write this stuff, to think someone else wants to read it, without feeling that they are committing a public obscenity.

Pic related is Cockshott's idea of how a modern democracy could/should work.

There's probably a host of reasons why academics write in a deliberately esoteric/obscure style. Marx is difficult to read because he uses technical language and older words, but he also repeats himself frequently trying to ensure his point is understood by the reader.

Attached: cockshott_democracy.png (646x510, 147.59K)

Also, it's important to note that Cockshott's idea of democracy is based on the system used in Classical Greece - not representative democracies of today or democratic centralist models tried by 20th century Leninists.

...

Leftist Theory:

Appeal to minorities, get cucked, fucked, and killed by them, and then go extinct.

I've noticed he also takes a lot from Council Communists

bump.

It's afraid.

Attached: starship-troopers-1997-movie-review-carl-jenkins-brain-bug-its-afraid-review.jpg (600x339, 151.28K)

Damn why?
Did Marx get interrupted by some liberal and the rest is just him arguing with some fucking idiot while we don't get necessary information needed?
I'd like to think Marx spent a lot of his time arguing with his detractors and owning da liburals

get your fetish fantasies back to Zig Forums
and just stop pretending that you're not into that shit, faggot, everyone already knows and the harder you sperg about it the more obvious it is

tell your retarded friends that if they really want to we can do the whole forced feminization and sucking black dick in the gulag thing for you, it can be arranged, and you can even pretend to fight back, so calm your tits

but you're not putting anyone in the gulag, you're just some loser who fantasizes about forced feminization gulags. if there is a hell, it's where stalin is forced to look at his legacy.

Attached: 4e6d1b199b89f4b8e3fa2ef8450fc203e69d4613c0f677f81a2a2d6f6627bcdb.jpg (500x273, 21.29K)

Is there a reason this is what came to your mind? out of the great myriad of possibilities?

i don't believe in that shit, it's just an offer to you to make you more comfortable with the idea
i know, retarded people like you have problems with reading comprehension and getting most simple context like a direct reply, but this i was posted in response to your depraved fetishes you confuse with political ideology
personally i'd much rather just shoot you in the face

...

Sorry if this isn't the right spot for this but I didn't know where else to ask.

What is the theoretical term/phrase for the proletariat's role as the historical agent of change?

Are you referring to "revolutionary subject" ?

That's it! Thanks. I was listening to something that reminded me of it and I couldn't recall it for the life of me.

I would say yes, but probably not for the reasons a first reading would be interesting. What Althusser does is make you aware of the method and ontology Marx is producing when examining capitalism. If you want to grasp Marxist concepts like abstract value and so on, then reading Althusser is useless. If you,, however, want to systemize the reading and really understand how Marx differs from the classical political economists in method, then Althusser will give you a lot. His re-thinking of historical materialism is something that is completely lost on even some modern thinkers, so i would say that his contributions are really valuable to Marxism.

anyway i thought this article was pretty good: versobooks.com/blogs/3713-a-new-practice-of-politics-althusser-and-marxist-philosophy

Anyone read this lately?

Attached: nihilist communism.jpg (400x547, 50.37K)

Today Jacobin published an interview with David Harvey.

I want to issue a warning that David Harvey has been repeatedly shown to not even understand Marx. Harvey has been criticized by people like Michael Roberts, Andrew Kliman, Paul Cockshott, and others. Harvey confuses basic concepts like value, abstract labor, and commodity fetish. He has gone so far as to claim that Marx didn't have a labor theory of value, ffs.

Criticisms of David Harvey:
critisticuffs.org/texts/david-harvey/

paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2018/04/05/did-marx-have-a-labour-theory-of-value/

kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/the-enigma-of-the-enigma-my-critique-of-david-harvey-for-the-left-forum/

thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2018/04/02/marxs-law-of-value-a-debate-between-david-harvey-and-michael-roberts/

thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/david-harvey-on-monocauses-multicauses-and-metaphors/

newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/harvey_versus_marx_on_capitalisms_crises_part_1_getting_marx_wrong

newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/harvey_versus_marx_on_capitalisms_crises_part_2_getting_profitability_wrong

newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/harvey_versus_marx_on_capitalisms_crises_part_3_a_rejoinder

looks like some depressive bullshit.
saying that everything is bad = ok
saying that thinking about the future feels bad = ok
saying that the future will be bad = false
the future is abstract from us. badness is the universal descriptor of concrete subjectivity. you can't have subjective experience of the future unless it exists in the present, and in that case write about the future AS a construction and not from within that construction of narration.
If the book is bad, and I don't know if it is, it would be because the author put horror, doom and barbs down onto paper adding up to nothing but the purpose of the personal satisfaction of one-upping the world, like all profuse authors of misanthropy, while in the mean time passing the depression onto us.

can anyone convince e+me that nick land, scott bakker and co aren't just full of shit? i've tried reading them but it seems to me the'yre really going for that "deleuze of the 21st century" title – this is incomprehensible and from what i can gather it's thesaurus abuse covering up really naive theory of history.

have you actually read the book? your post makes me think no.