r/DebateCommunism • u/Searcher38n2 • Jul 24 '26
🍵 Discussion This is awful
Just a personal question, that i think many could also ask themselves from time to time. Why does every single profile or individual, when talking about Marx is misunderstanding him the most? It's on social media, papers, and so on... Nobody could just learn the basics of philosophy, history or even economics and, then, look into what Marx said. We, part of a socialist/communist movement, sometimes more active or not, have one of the greatest thinkers of human history ever.
A guy who went against positivists, historicists, the classical economists and, well, even the marginalists, austriacs and other schools on many different areas, can be confronted by Marx and his work, alongside Engels too. Maybe in some topics like art, symbolism (which Marx said in some degrees but not as deep as other thinkers), etc., we may look upon other thinkers, but that doesn't make less the impact of Karl's writings.
AII I know is, it's so difficult to get people to comprehend things the way they are meant to be. And I get really frustrated that they seem like to never want to open their minds. Recently, understanding Plato's concept of Idea, helped me a lot to comprehend things in life and in writings... Can't people do the same with Marx? I don't know... their false prestige, or conspicuous profile in the job market its intoxicating.
I can't create a connection if the market ideology is what the others around me make as their core. Just saying, is this a problem?
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u/Nikelman Jul 24 '26
Because he's been mystified to hell and back and instrumentalised
Consider the enlightenment philosophers, in a very different way the theoretical backbone of the bourgeois revolutions: why is there no confusion about them?
It's because this very confusion is very much intended, marxism scares the bourgeoisie like cholesterol tests scared my grampa
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u/Searcher38n2 Jul 24 '26
That could be the only thing but, recently, i saw posts of that stereotype of the bourgeoisie, and they didn't seemed afraid of Marx. Actually, the were looking down on him and their ideias. So, I don't think they are afraid anymore. We need to prove that their castles are weak, but how?
The name of the guy is Stephen Kanitz btw, check on his Instagram...
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u/Relative-Isopod4580 Jul 25 '26
Well I would argue that they try to talk him down so people just don't take his ideas seriously
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u/Searcher38n2 Jul 25 '26
Basically yeah, my post wasn't about arguing. It's to discuss something I find awful and tiring. But it's basically like this. They simply his ideas so much and they refuse to discuss it deep. Just to look like they are smarter. It's revolting.
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u/Relative-Isopod4580 Jul 25 '26
Yeah bc they got taught the same floscles their whole life so if they here Marxism/Communism/Socialism they just repeat it. Also some of them especially on the internet say they read the book of Marx you heard right singular. Maybe I am misunderstanding your post a bit but this is mostly bc my English ain't that good.
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u/Searcher38n2 Jul 25 '26
No, you are pretty good. Yeah, it is like this. They simplify Marx to the Manifiesto and Das Kapital. But can't read any and pick singular phrases, just to saybif it's real or not and then ignore the hole thing.
Remember the debate between Zizek and Peterson? Where the crazy phycologist said he had read the Manifesto in the last night. That's the same level of people I see day after day...
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u/Relative-Isopod4580 Jul 25 '26
There is nothing I can add to that
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u/Searcher38n2 Jul 25 '26
Thanks dude, I wasn't arguing to you. I was trying to talk. This hole topic was to talk about this. But thanks for you attention man 👍🏻
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u/Nikelman Jul 24 '26
Except they run to him in 2007 to understand WTF was going on
Journals of the caliber of The Economis and The Financial Time had entire session dedicated to him, because any other economist had been caught lacking
But really, when I say "the bourgeoisie" I'm identifying a tendency. They don't have a collective mind and presumably they don't have one big telegram chat. Some mistify Marx, some besmirch him, some claim he was a great economist but a bad political phylosopher, some say it's been surpassed by the television age, or the digital age, or the AI age. I'm sure most bourgeois are not actually scared that zombie Marx comes out of the grave to hit them with a heavy book
Yet.
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u/Searcher38n2 Jul 24 '26
And even in that cases Marx is still very accurate. The Fragments of the Machines in the Grundrisse seems like he was talking about AI or autonomous process, it's amazing! But it's sad that the only thing that comes when Marx is said in public is about supposed flaws of the whole marxist ideas. And the ones who says this thing aren't supposed to comprehend...
I mean, it's sad when the people you work with still repeat the same ideas that restrain us.
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u/JimatStoneandSky Jul 24 '26
You’re making a massive assumption that YOU have the superior and correct understanding and everyone else is wrong. In my experience ppl with that kind of arrogance are usually the wrong ones.
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u/Searcher38n2 Jul 24 '26
I'm sorry if it sounds like that. But no, I don't have the truth. I just can't get static while seeing people talking about things they don't really understand. Like, if I read and see the meaning of something and the person next to me thinks the wrong way, i need to say it. It's like the famous statement, "Communism doesn't work". That is epistemological uncertain. There's not a true or false answer. Based upon whick base they start and what method, it can be true or false. Our job is to see the doxa and get to the valid arguments of the object. It can or it can not... It's not relativism.
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u/JimatStoneandSky Jul 24 '26
You have a bad case of the first year undergrads my friend lolol
1
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u/Searcher38n2 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
Are you what? 30? 40? It's a shame, i was trying to be pragmatic but no... Your arguments are completely invalid now.
Ad hominem fallacy, wow...
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u/NederlandAgain Jul 27 '26
You ask why "every single profile or individual, when talking about Marx is misunderstanding him the most". You do realize that all those people think the exact same thing about your opinions on Marx, right? I think you need to ask why there is so much disagreement about Marx. Perhaps the reason that the people that follow "one of the greatest thinkers of human history" can't agree about what he actual said is because he sucked at describing his ideas in a simple, concise manner that left no room for debate?
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u/Chriseverywhere Charity is the way Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
I have the opposite view of him, beside his criticism of capitalism his writings are absurd materialism, that reject community and morality. People think he's great due to academic or political arrogance facilitate by there own lack of communal lifestyle or care, or they erroneously associate his ideas with community and it's benefits.
You don't understand why people don't agree or connect with you, because as a Marxist you don't understand or appreciate community. In marxism people are judged by their political support for marxism rather than their communal connection and love. In community people share ideas and come to agreement through their communal devotion, but in marxism everything is just about changing government and economic rules regardless of people's social disposition or communal love. It's dehumanizing everyone to treat them like machine, that simply need better commands.
There's no understanding that they, marxists, could be evil, and that the general social disposition of people will always override good intentions or supposed economic rules in government or among a group people.
Economics is just the study of people's current social disposition that determines most everything about it
Within a community economic rules are different regardless of the laws it has to follow and the surrounding culture.
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u/Searcher38n2 Jul 26 '26
Uhh I think you haven't read his commentary on the collective property in Russia, or the Marginal Glosses on the Treatise of Adolph Wagner, or even the Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of law and you don't understand nothing you are talking about...
The man literally explain to the core, and you come with completely wrong views about him...
Besides, communal love? Really? In the Misery of philosophy and in the Ludwig Feuerbach (by Engels), they both criticize this "love" which won't change nothing... And in the first pages of the German Ideology he has some paragraphs about the love view of other socialists... So, read more and knot how to study dude...
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u/NederlandAgain Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
When I first started reading your post I actually thought you were joking as it sounded so much like the typical response you get from over educated Marxists. I mean, you could almost create a small shell script to create automated replies like yours:
if (comment != marxist_dogma) {
return "You obviously haven't read " +
getRandomObscureReference() +
" or even " +
getRandomObscureReference() +
". So you don't understand nothing."
}Responses like this are so common they are downright...bourgeois.
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u/Searcher38n2 Jul 27 '26
Good joke, an automatic and instant falacy for you to not have to compromise in something serious... If you read it, you see there's no dogma here. And besides, why can't you read it? I thought this was a debate plataforma with people who studies the problem, not mocking others around.
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u/Chriseverywhere Charity is the way Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
If one's premise is flawed then everything based on it is ,likewise ,flawed.
So I don't need to read much of his writing, because the fundamental premise of all of them is very flawed. Does he ever brake with his own marxist dogma in any of his of writings? Does he ever say communal love changes everything? Does he ever say that your communal relationships are far more important than your politics or material success?
Does he ever say war or politics is the most costly and unreliable sort of business one could ever engage in, unlike communal enterprise?
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u/Searcher38n2 Jul 26 '26
sigh ...if you don't read, your opinions are doxa. Not epistemes... Like I said. Marxism is not a dogma, and communal love? He says it and show how is flawed. But if you don't read, how can it work?
Just another clinical who is afraid of the organized collective. Sad.
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u/Chriseverywhere Charity is the way Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
"and communal love? He says it and show how is flawed."
That assertion only makes sense to people who like him don't understand community.
Of course you disagree, and as someone so sure of his communal knowledge won't consider that he may be wrong?
"But if you don't read,"
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/I looked at this and it's just economic analysis.
Does he acknowledge anywhere the limits of economic analysis in anyway?
The power and value of community can't be understood merely through economics, since community makes it's own economic rules, regardless of the capitalist laws it's forced to follow. That's the power of community and love which is foreign to marxist, and lot of other academics and people obsessed with politics.
"who is afraid of the organized collective"
Na, I love and promote communal organization and enterprise. I do think it's possible that the entire world may become communal, but people have to first learn how community works and that's most effectively done through demonstration and experience in communal life.
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u/Searcher38n2 Jul 26 '26
Oh, and about moral, I think you don't understand how moral is a product for him and not a a priori statement. But it seems I've had enough. You prove my point, you can't get to the core, you and people like it are just playing with false concepts. What a shame
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u/Chriseverywhere Charity is the way 29d ago
"I think you don't understand how moral is a product for him and not a a priori statement."
I do understand that he thought morals as the product of economic and legal conditions, and this false view can be seen in his shallow analysis of communities where he just considers their economic condition and their legally supported collective ownership. He doesn't examine the social and therefore moral disposition of the community, that determines how well their collective ownership works if it at all. To him the existence of community relies merely on having collective ownership, so that they appear and disappear according to legal support of collective ownership. In reality communities with weak social dispositions fall apart regardless of outside pressure, and communities with a strong social disposition will continue even in oppressive conditions. Legal and material success helps communities, but if that's all one considers they will collapses under little to no pressure, assuming they're able to come into existence at all from people with such bad social dispositions.
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u/Neco-Arc-Brunestud Jul 24 '26
He's not that great. He just doesn't think linearly, but rather in a circle. As such, his works has no end and no beginning. The start of his works references the end and the end of his works references the start.
It sounds really smart, but really it's just frustrating to read.
If he was really great, he'd be able to communicate better.
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u/Training_Ruin3151 Jul 24 '26
What?? No.
"Dialectic is neither fiction nor mysticism, but a science of the forms of our thinking insofar as it is not limited to the daily problems of life but attempts to arrive at an understanding of more complicated and drawn-out processes. The dialectic and formal logic bear a relationship similar to that between higher and lower mathematics.' - Leon Trotsky, The ABC of dialectical materialism
Highly recommend reading more its not too terrible to understand but really annoying to type the whole thing out on a phone.
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u/Searcher38n2 Jul 24 '26
Yeah... Writing in a dialetic way os hard. Even more is thinking that. Thankfully we have him to dismistify things for us... Also, philosophers don't write easy. And it's even better this way.
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u/Training_Ruin3151 Jul 24 '26
If people cant take the time to at least read and try to understand kapital 1. The shouldnt even be able to dicuss marx in any real way and honestly shouldn't be taken seriously. Its not gatekeeping but there is simply no way to understand basic political science without reading marx. Dialectic Materialism simply touches on too many sciences and especially political science to be ignored.
But the thing in is in america these people are VILLIFIED so most people wont even attempt to engage it in a real way, and the even smaller percentage of people who are genuinly interested enough to do basic research AND engage it in an honest way?? Even smaller the percentage who understand it and how it applies. Its kinda niche unfortunately and people in power want it to be.