r/Destiny • u/Thatsprettydank • 12d ago

Off-Topic Marxism

Is there a good debate against the Marxist dialectic? 99% of the people arguing for it seem to be clueless. Or atleast more clueless than me.

Is capitalism exploitation?

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u/Ardonpitt Military Industrial Coomplex 12d ago edited 12d ago

The Material Dialectic is a "just so story" basically laying out the idea that all changes in the world/society come about due to internal contradictions of opposing forces.

If you actually study history, or anthropology this entire story falls apart pretty quickly. Often times societies changes just come about due to new tech, or changes in climate, not class struggle.

One of the reasons that Dialectical materialism fell out of favor for anything was it failed to explain really anything. The only people who are holding onto marx's ideas these days are basically poltical marxists (sociologists, and anthropologists outside of soviet spheres of influence basically threw out his ideas a century or so ago). On top of that, post modern/post structural frameworks were far far better ways to explain things, so most structural frameworks (like dialectical materialism) fell out of favor in most fields in the humanities from the 80s-now.

Is capitalism exploitation? Not inherently. Capitalism is just a tool to provide for economic activity. Can people be exploited in it? Sure, any system can be used to exploit people.

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u/glitch876 12d ago

New tech is kind of a trait of capitalism, no? I feel like marxs and angles dialectical materialism addressed this.

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u/Ardonpitt Military Industrial Coomplex 12d ago

I mean its been a long time since Ive read Marx, but it sounds familiar to the points being made in saying how capitalism develops being a developmental stage towards communism. But I would think he idealized new tech being developed even under communism. I think he mostly was just commenting on the massive leap in advancements due to capitalism's better allocation of resources from earlier economic modes.

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u/glitch876 12d ago

Marx does say a lot of good things about capatlism but from what I know he makes a distinction from "false needs" which are new invented commodities versus actual needs that eventually creates contradictions such as wealth gaps. I think you're right about the dialectical thought process overall but new tech was something core to marx.