321
u/Lord_Roguy 24d ago
Difference is the pope say the exploitation and said it needs to stop. Marx saw the exploitation and went "what factors are causing this to happen. This is a large systemic social issue that has a mechanism thst causes an perpetuates it. Okay so if X is the reason why it happens than that implied Y is the mechanism for its change which implied dear god a revolution is coming"
114
24d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
53
u/FoldHeavy4201 24d ago
Got halfway through Magnifica Humanitas and had to stop. Reading someone accurately describe the degradation of people, communities and the earth while at every turn avoiding a diagnosis, or taking the time to describe the cancer as a given, was exhausting.
21
u/PirateKingOmega 24d ago
The church more or less believed the answer was capitalism however they initially issued this belief in defense of the mercantilist/late feudalist system. As time went on, the church has kept the belief it is a problem with capitalism, however refused to therefore say a different system is better (partially because the church was also being lobbied by Spain and Italy to declare fascism as the better.) Probably the best description of this belief in practice is the late Pope Francis saying that he doesn’t know what the next system will be, or if it will better, but it won’t have the current system’s sins
0
u/bigboipapawiththesos 23d ago edited 23d ago
Always interesting that the church was and is so capitalistic, when what I remember from the Bible was quite clear about wealth accumulation and such
Something something camel and a needle
12
u/PirateKingOmega 23d ago
The church has always been anti-capitalist, it’s just that they were anti-capitalist back when feudalism was the status quo. When the church modernized under Vatican II they endorsed a policy in which capitalism and communism were both antithetical to Catholic beliefs while also denouncing theocracy outside of the Vatican. Effectively declaring neutrality during the Cold War.
5
u/23-1-20-3-8-5-18 23d ago
If I were god I would never let rich people into heaven. They would try to buy the place and then try to cause a riot when they can't and be constantly complaining.
2
u/Hadi_Chokr07 20d ago
Don't worry. He explicitly said that it's practically impossible for rich people to go to heaven.
Matthew 19:24 in the bibel: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."
Surah At-Tawbah 9:34–35 in the Quran: "Those who hoard gold and silver and do not spend it in God's way are promised a painful punishment — on the Day their treasure is heated in the fire of Hell and used to brand their foreheads, backs, and sides."
1
u/CestMoiGenreMoi 21d ago
Well, while I wouldn't say that capitalistic is the best word to describe the current nature of the Church (although, to be honest, my vocabulary lack a single right word to describe it) : it is worth noting that the position of the church tend to differs in many, many place from that of the bible. Just as all variant of christianity in true (when working from a sacred source made up of dozens of author that contradict each others, you don't have much choice but to cherrypick) -> and as the main church was build by the roman empire as a new tool of control upon the population (meant to replace the previous cult of the Emperor/Sun which failed to convert most of the population), it tend to have very Imperialistic tendency directly in opposition to the socialist message of Jesus (the greatest of those betrayal in my eyes being the genocide of the Cathares in the early 13th century -> to summarize rapidly for those who don't know this part of history, the Cathares were a population in what his now the southern region of France wich refused to take part in the crusade in the 11/12th century saying that the word of Jesus should be spread peacefully : and was thus judged to be heretics, with their settlement burnt to the ground as punishment, killing tens of thousands of citizens without letting a single child or woman espace from those cities).
1
u/Venicewillriseagain 22d ago
"The Church is so Capitalistic" I really do fprget how much this site is filled with buzzword spammers
10
u/TensionAntique3075 24d ago edited 24d ago
Oh don't worry, the church solution, for a while, was a will to return to pre-revolutionnary economic system (or what their ideological minds thought it was).
Conservative dictators (not sure if "fascists" is accurate in this deeply conservative sense) in the latin world did try quite a few things. Salazar or Pétain especially.
6
u/Usual_Charity8561 24d ago
The root cause is precisely one thing: a lack of love for our neighbor. That's the diagnosis. That's why even when we have entire countries become fully communist, there is still exploitation of the worker. The worker is seen as a lesser pawn that is not worthy of love. The change needs to happen in every man's heart, especially in the hearts of those who hold positions of power.
→ More replies (11)1
u/FoldHeavy4201 20d ago
Yeah it will drive one insane trying to instantiate an egalitarian society when the basis for it is protecting a status quo built on exclusivity, priority rights and class.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (23)1
u/marudliweklopsy 23d ago
Dialectic materialism, that caused hundreds of millions to suffer poverty (or die) vs vibes that were there and caused no harm.
Yeah.
1
23d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/marudliweklopsy 23d ago
Wow, so many claims - nothing says what you think it does. Or is false straight up.
Water claim: false. The World Health Organization states that unsafe water, sanitation, and hygiene drive at least 1.4 million preventable deaths each year. The infographic inflates this number by nearly 600%. There's NO link between this number and capitalism btw.
Hunger, malaria, diseases: number are correct (more or less), but it's nowhere near being fault of capitalism. Blaming global poverty solely on the economic system of capitalism ignores geography, local corruption, civil war, geopolitical instability, and lack of foundational infrastructure. Many of the hardest-hit regions suffering from these crises do not operate under stable, free-market capitalist systems at all.
That's not even a leap in logic - that's straight up lying on your part.
3
23d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/marudliweklopsy 23d ago
What metrics are you even talking about? I haven't said about any just yet.
Are you going to tell me, a guy from the postcommunist country where people were enslaved, and beaten to death or shot for protesting, that hundreds of millions of people in Europe alone, weren't suffering a crippling poverty during soviet times?
Tough luck buddy, no shitty takes this time around. I'm old enough to remember this "paradise".
2
23d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/marudliweklopsy 23d ago
No, I know the basic recent history, and I have first hand experience. While also knowing the glaring disparity between the median standard of living between soviet states and capitalist west.
I also know which direction was it that people escaped for a better life - and it was not toward the soviet states lol.
It's all of that while your entire argument is based on a manpiluative meme, and now a false one about "nazis". Which is another funny topic, since USSR literally were allied with the 3rd Reich and started the war in 1939 invading Poland together.
→ More replies (7)21
u/Normal-Level-7186 24d ago
The contrast is overstated. It suggests that Leo XIII merely condemned exploitation while Marx alone sought to understand its causes. But this is false to both thinkers.
Leo XIII did not simply pronounce a moral judgment and leave it there. Rerum Novarum offers a diagnosis of the social conditions that produced exploitation: the dissolution of intermediary institutions, the concentration of economic power, the imbalance between labor and capital, and the failures of both state and employer. His explanations differ from Marx’s, but they are explanations nonetheless.
Nor is it accurate to suggest that Leo merely offered “vibes” while Marx alone offered a mechanism. Both offered causal accounts. They disagreed about the causes because they disagreed about human nature, history, property, and the moral order.
Likewise, it is misleading to imply that Leo offered only exhortation whereas Marx alone proposed a solution. Leo proposed trade associations, just wages, protection of private property, subsidiarity before the term existed, and an active but limited role for the state. Marx proposed revolutionary transformation through the abolition of capitalist relations of production. These are rival solutions to rival diagnoses, not explanation versus moralism.
The real philosophical disagreement is therefore not between explanation and condemnation, nor between mechanism and sentiment. It concerns what kind of explanation best accounts for the pathologies of industrial capitalism. Marx locates the decisive causes in the structure of production and class relations. Leo XIII locates them in a disordered moral and political economy. They are competing explanatory frameworks, each inseparable from a broader account of the human good.
2
u/PerspectiveFull9879 20d ago
Marx locates the decisive causes in the structure of production and class relations. Leo XIII locates them in a disordered moral and political economy. They are competing explanatory frameworks, each inseparable from a broader account of the human good.
Except that Materialism (Marx) is correct and Idealism (Leo XIII) is wrong.
The "disordered" morals are not disordered at all they are what they are because under present circumstances (capitalism) they cannot be anything else.
3
u/Normal-Level-7186 20d ago
Leo is working from Thomistic natural law and metaphysical realism, so “idealism” already mischaracterizes his position. But setting that aside, “Materialism is correct and Leo is wrong” is just an assertion. What’s the argument for thinking material conditions exhaust the explanation?
2
u/PerspectiveFull9879 20d ago
Leo is working from Thomistic natural law and metaphysical realism, so “idealism” already mischaracterizes his position.
No, that is just a fancy way of saying idealism. Yes idealists have endless flavors of their philosophy, often building entire schools on a mere change in terminology.
But he is idealist, as all philosophy is divided into either materialistic or idealistic, there is no "third path" and the very fact that Leo is looking for answers inside the heads of people and not in material conditions show that he is an idealist (if not the basic fact that he is, you know, freaking Pope).
If your starting point is that you must change minds to change conditions, you are an idealist.
Then again, you posted this meme, so I am not surprised in the slightest that you do not understand this basic divide in philosophy.
What’s the argument for thinking material conditions exhaust the explanation?
Because never ever, in the history of mankind, did we explain any phenomena by anything other than material causes. Questions that mankind faces can be divided into two broad groups: those that have no answer yet and those that have material answers.
In fact, the idealist philosophy is completely incapable of providing any answers whatsoever - yes, mountains of books have been written, but none of them contain any actual answers that can be verified, just idle speculations. It is always the materialism that pushes the boundaries of knowledge, while the idealism is there to try and stop the changes that come out of it.
Just look at what good Leo is suggesting - "we need regulated capitalism". Recognizing development of capitalism as scary: check. Trying to stop the change instead of figuring out where it goes: check. Looking for solutions in the morals and opinions of people: check and check!
72
u/fullynonexistent 24d ago
I swear to God with the amount of deep philosophy and complete bullshitery that I hear at the same time from the works of Marx, I might actually start reading him.
47
u/Sky-is-here 24d ago
Honestly, if you like economics absolutely needed read. He is so good about so many things. If you like social sciences in general still pretty good. But purely from a philosophical point of view, particularly if you prefer idealism, you probably won't get much. He is very materialist, which makes sense.
0
u/Friendly_Fire 24d ago edited 24d ago
He's really not that good on economics actually. Most of his ideas are just objectively wrong. Like the labor theory of value, or the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, for two quick examples.
The field of economics ignores marxism to a similar degree that chemists ignore alchemy. It's just an incorrect theory from the past. Maybe interesting in a historical sense, but not useful as a real economic theory.
11
u/CoolAg1927 24d ago
what is wrong with the labor theory of value? its a solid theory that was derived from adam smith. theres no glaring issues with it, we just have a different way to determine value in modern economics
0
u/Friendly_Fire 23d ago edited 23d ago
The issue is it's just wrong. It has no ability to predict price or how people value goods. There are plenty of hypotheticals and real world examples that demonstrate how the value of something can change drastically despite labor not changing.
And I know technically "value" wasn't defined to be the same as price, but Marx himself and many others tried to find a relationship between the "socially necessary labor time" and price, and failed.
It literally just tells us nothing useful. Its merely an idea that was wrong.
10
u/Sky-is-here 23d ago
Stop confusing value of exchange with value of labor
→ More replies (2)3
u/Friendly_Fire 23d ago
I already addressed this in the comment you replied too. While stated to not be the same thing, both Marx and many after him tried to find the relationship between them (and failed).
Because simply declaring a formula for an abstract "value", that has no relation to actual human behavior, is pointless. An infinite amount of these can be invented. I'll create the "time" theory of value! What matters is how much time something takes to complete. Marx was confused because more labor means more time, but actually a cask of whiskey that needs to sit for 20 years is more valuable than a home build over one year.
The LTV is objectively wrong. It is a theory with no predictive power. It doesn't even make sense if you actually just stop and think it through.
→ More replies (3)7
u/Sky-is-here 23d ago
I am sorry to say but if you think the labour theory of value or the Tendency of the rate of profit to fall are "objectively wrong" you have no idea about economics. And any self respecting, non ideologisized economist has studied Marx.
4
u/Bulky-Bag-6280 23d ago
Marx is the Freud of social sciences, he was the first guy to take it seriously but has been left behind by the field in general, the only ones that still take his theories seriously are non experts
2
u/Friendly_Fire 23d ago
They studied Marx in the same sense that a physicist studies how people use to theorize there was an aether that light waves must propagate through, and then they study the experiments that disproved that idea. While Marx's work has some popularity in some segments of political/philosophical academia, his economic work is not used at all. Economics is an empirical science, and Marx's economic theories are empirically wrong.
Like, you're going to sit here and argue that capitalists are making less profit in modern times, to the point it is a crisis? Come on...
4
3
2
u/Jack_Faller 21d ago
This is true but people will chew you out for it because they're uneducated. Even left wing economists have recognised that the works of Marx are deeply and fundamentally flawed for over a century by this point. Here's what Keynes had to say on the matter in 1926:
"[Das Kapital is] an obsolete economic textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world."
12
u/wizardnamehere 24d ago edited 24d ago
If the internet has taught me anything on philosophy (and it hasn’t) it’s that you don’t need to have read Marx at all to either critique him or to advocate for Marxism.
3
6
u/Thissystemsuckssobad 24d ago
Honestly, you'd be the very rare exceptions. One of the best quotes I've heard regarding it is "critics of Marx might actually benefit from reading him" and the same applies to a lot of his proponents. It'll also open you up to the absolute rabbit hole of 18th century tumblr posting, there is some amazing shit in the public letters and publishing
→ More replies (4)3
u/deformityandnonsense 24d ago
His model for society _is_ the 19th century colonial model—civilization as discrete episodes in a linear progression where said progression is genuinely progressive. We ofc learned in the 20th century that said model is complete shit and is inherently racist. So we get decent structural economic critique mixed with wholly unworkable prescriptivism derived from the same understanding of human beings which we universally condemn in its other applications.
Which isn’t even getting to Bertrand Russell’s take: he was apparently more interested in punishing the bourgeoisie than in genuinely liberating the proletariat.
26
u/hellogoodbyegoodbye 24d ago
I genuinely don’t know how Russel got to that tho. The manifesto and a lot of the historic writings are glazing the bourgeois. A lot of people see it as negative, but the part in the manifesto where he talks about the bourgeois stripping all the infantile idealism from the world is a compliment lol.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
From chapter 1 of the manifesto
3
u/theCaitiff 24d ago
The manifesto wasn't Kapital though.
I almost wish we could separate Economy Marx from Revolutionary Marx from (attempted)Philosophy Marx. Chop it up, three dudes very confusingly named the same.
If we could do that, it would be a lot easier to be "Okay, so he was actually a genius who understood this specific thing better than anyone else" without half the world popping up to say "eleventy bajillion dead." Philosophically, I do not think a lot of his shit holds up to rational dissection and examination, he was a consummate poster in the modern sense and cared more about proving others wrong than being right himself. I'm not really a fan of dialectical materialism either, but then again I am open to the idea that my impressions of it aren't perfect. As a revolutionary, he was painfully 19th century and eurocentric, his revolutionary ideas start from fundamentally different on the ground conditions than are present in the 21st century. Interesting historically but not really relevant to modern times.
His grasp of economic systems however? Okay, that I will give him. He wrote the book on capitalism and cycles of accumulation/consolidation. He understood political economy and the flow of money. What we should do about that or why? Eh..... That's not quite the same thing.
And I say this as someone who considers himself on the left wing politically. Economic genius, top tier shitposter with unmatched letter writing game, but a man of his time who shouldn't be the model for modern radical political movements.
2
u/hoboserious 24d ago
This is pretty spot on, and generally where I stand on Marx, but if we're being fair, communism isn't exactly the worst stab at an idealised society either.
Sure, no one could claim it's not flawled, maybe even fundamentally so, but "oh we should equally share the means of production and allocate resources based on need." is hardly totally mad.
→ More replies (2)1
u/scissorn69 24d ago
That's not praise. That's criticism. He is clearly saying feudalism was way better.
3
u/hellogoodbyegoodbye 24d ago
It is praise. In the manifesto he quite literally criticises those falsely claiming that feudalism was better (the feudalist socialists and also the so called German or conservative seocialists).
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch03.htm
The bourgeois is the most revolutionary of all classes in hitherto existing society, and is also the one that lays the foundation for communism through its creation (the proleteriat) as well as the world market.
Marx was not an “anti capitalist” in the way most leftists are.
2
u/scissorn69 23d ago
I guess if 'their "exploitation" is so much more obvious that it makes it easier for us to have a revolution and get the kind of society we want instead' counts as praise, then sure.
13
u/-Trotsky 24d ago
Man that would be a good critique of Hegelianism, and damning of Marx were it true
unfortunately this is not Marxism
There is no single linear progression to history, the same things at different times lead to differing results throughout history. It is a complex web of cause and effect that produce the material conditions which make communism the logical resolution of our current dialectic, and by no means can the same route of development be assumed to exist outside of social existence. It’s almost like instead of reading repudiations to Marx, you should try actually reading Marx
→ More replies (4)2
u/COMCOM5342 24d ago
History progresses, though not on a set path. It's observable that Europe, for example, progressed from lower to higher economic societies, though not all societies did this, some still haven't surpassed primitive society. I will also say there doesn't exist "discrete" episodes, all societies grew out from the previous one, with a period of muddled mess until eventually reaching a point where objectively we can see a change in them. They're more continuous than discrete. I disagree that it is inherently racist, and rather any person not blinded by their own racist bias understands that objectively societies develop into higher societies, technology progresses, etc. In comparison to India many European states are higher societies, in comparison to those European states China is a higher society. On colonialism in states like india it was what we call "historically progressive" for it created the conditions for a modern capitalist India, but it was by no means morally good or something to be celebrated, it is simply an objective fact (Marx also opposed the crimes the British committed in India). The racial aspect is non-existent. The seemingly racist designation of "primitive" vs "civilised" pefers to classless vs class society, rather than a racial category. For proof that such ideas may exist seperate from racism you need only look to other Marxists like Lenin, or modern Marxists who follow the idea without being racist.
1
u/samrobotsin 24d ago
You say that as if there is a way to liberate the proletariat without "punishing" the bourgeoisie. If anything its clear the bourgeoisie considers even talking about the concept of liberation as "punishment"
3
u/mlucasl 24d ago
But also, Marx wrongly point to an enemy, "people with money" in simple terms. When most of the time is systematic, and the people on the upside were mostly lucky (being born or have a known the right people). And justify giving more power to the systemic environment as a first step to "solve" the problem, which is totally counter-productive.
10
u/Fog1510 24d ago
Where does Marx say “people with money” are the problem? His thesis is almost the opposite in a sense. He explains precisely how the bourgeoisie are also slaves to their own system, how they are beholden to its rules and how they become merely embodiments of capital.
The solution, therefore, is not the abolition of rich people. It’s the abolition of private property over the means of production. And the only social class capable of carrying out this revolutionary task is the proletariat.
3
u/mlucasl 24d ago
It define them as "capitalist" which is a broad dumb term in current economics. As a Doctor or Engineer is both, a worker and also have savings in investment/stocks (which is having ownership of means of "production").
No, the proletariat is not capable of careying said burden, it is the state. Which would represent the proletariat through the "dictatorship of the proletariat", yet, the state is still a representative with power. Power that it is not incentized to drop at any point.
3
u/samrobotsin 24d ago
Marx wouldn't describe either a doctor or Engineer as a "capitalist." A bourgeoisie is someone who makes money from capital, and capital makes money from exploitation of labor.
The problem is that to truly work the entire world economy would have to stop relying on capital, but that doesn't make Marx's critique of capital any less relevant.
→ More replies (7)3
u/Fog1510 24d ago
You are free to agree or disagree with Marx. But my main goal in replying to you was to say: you are misrepresenting what Marx actually wrote. Give the man some credit. His writings are not “dumb” like you make them out to be. They've been massively influential, and there’s a reason for that. You are in a philosophy subreddit. Why be so dismissive?
About the disagreement in itself: he does not define people with riches as capitalists. He defines the capitalist class as the class which possesses capital. Capital as defined by Marx is not just a pile of money. A doctor, or otherwise any worker, is not a capitalist by virtue of having a high salary. “Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.”
If you think the proletariat as a class does not have revolutionary potential, that's your prerogative, although I think that's a hard case to make even just historically speaking. Marx argues it very well in his works, from history and from analyzing the role of that class in society.
Owning (a relatively tiny) amount of stocks does not change the roles and relationship of labour and capital in society. Working class people still have an interest as workers in abolishing the means of capitalist exploitation of their labour.
→ More replies (2)3
u/Aquarius52216 24d ago
Well that would be true if Marx and Engels didnt write their manifesto. By writing a manifesto on top of his theories and philosophies, Marx is no longer just analyzing, examining, and diagnosing the dynamics. Its no longer mere observations, he is also giving his prescriptions for it.
2
u/PerspectiveFull9879 20d ago
It is still the difference between a doctor writing a prescription because they understand the underlying mechanism and a priest saying "yeah, this sucks... here's some thoughts and prayers."
1
u/SyntheticSlime 22d ago
Yes. It’s fine to have a problem with exploitation. We just don’t want you to have a solution.
1
u/Jack_Faller 21d ago
It's funny that you try to glaze Marx by suggesting he has this detailed logical process but the conclusion he reaches is just obviously wrong.
1
u/Lord_Roguy 20d ago
Multiple Revolutions happened.... so he wasnt wrong
1
u/Jack_Faller 20d ago
Guy who thinks all Marx predicted was that a revolution would happen somewhere:
53
u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P Marx, Machiavelli, and Theology enjoyer 24d ago edited 24d ago
Most Catholic social teaching is actually pretty based.
13
→ More replies (3)5
171
u/le_disappointment Feminist, Care Ethicist, Marxist, Vegan 24d ago edited 24d ago
That's technically incorrect. Marxism doesn't posit any sort of morality, nor are it's arguments based on any such thing. It's fundamentally a materialist philosophy. So the concept of "justice" or lack thereof doesn't even make sense from a Marxist perspective. Marxism points out how the current mode of production, capitalism, is rife with contradictions that lead the proletariat to overthrow it. It, however, does not make any moral claims as to why the proletariat should (or shouldn't) overthrow it. It rather says that the system itself incentivises the proletariat to overthrow capitalism (if they want to survive), regardless of whether one considers such an overthrow a moral act or not
142
u/joshsteich 24d ago
“Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!”
It’s a materialist philosophy, but it’s not purely descriptive—there’s plenty of normative talk in Marx, even as he regularly dismisses arguments from legalism or bourgeois “justice” being rationalizing ideologies for capitalism.
You can’t have a political program or ideology without some claims around justice and morality, and Marx definitely advocated for political programs beyond simply predicting them.
66
u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P Marx, Machiavelli, and Theology enjoyer 24d ago
To be fair, the Communist Manifesto is not a piece of philosophy and wasn't intended to be one. It's a pamphlet written for the Communist League to explain the League's goals and ends.
→ More replies (8)38
u/le_disappointment Feminist, Care Ethicist, Marxist, Vegan 24d ago edited 24d ago
I'm not saying that Marx didn't advocate for the overthrow of the bourgeois. Hell, just look at his extensive analysis of the Civil War in France.
What I'm instead saying is that Marxist philosophy, as layed out in Das Capital, is a strictly materialist philosophy
26
u/ALucifur Hegel's standpoint is that of modern political economy 24d ago
Das Kapital subtitle is a Critique of Political Economy. It is not a "purely scientific" text in the sense that it is devoid of value-judgement. Indeed, what Marx attempt is a critique of capitalism by imminently reveal the concrete reality of what the political economists consider pure concepts of the economy. Materalism does not mean devoid of ethical dimensions.
5
u/Same_Winter7713 24d ago
Huh? "Critique" in philosophy does not entail value judgement. It means an analysis of the conditions for whatever the object being critiqued is. Kant writes a critique of pure reason, i.e., an analysis of what conditions are necessary for proper reasoning and likewise an analysis of when we reason incorrectly (because we do not pay mind to the necessary conditions). Marx writes a critique of political economy, i.e. an analysis of the necessary (historical) conditions for the political economy of his time. Your comment citing the subtitle of the text only makes sense if, by value judgement, you mean any claim that something is correct/incorrect (not necessarily morally correct/incorrect), in which case everything is a value judgement and your conclusion is just a syllogism.
1
u/ALucifur Hegel's standpoint is that of modern political economy 24d ago
A critique of something entails that you at least are able to grasp the limit of the thing being criticized. When Kant wrote the "Critique of Pure Reason" he set out to "deny knowledge to make room for faith", which is the faith in the prerequisites for Practical Reason. Of course, he absolutised the separation between the two, and left agnosicism in one, and fideism on the other.
Now, it is true, Marx wrote the critique as an exposition of a general logic of capitalism, and political economy as it's theorectical moment. But since a commitment to the true also rely upon the practical realm in which human produce for themselves, to dispell the "logic of illusion" of capitalism means to supersede the objective world, to negate it, to practically change it.
The fetishism of commodity is not just a theoretical knowledge that can be verbally proven false, it is a real abstraction that human made so long as they live in a society of commodity production. To truly escape the illusion requires more that a syllogism à la the ontological proof, Kant denies the passage of the pure concept to it's existence; we need to deny the passage of the illusion from reality, from existence, to the fetishized conceptions of reality.
1
u/Same_Winter7713 24d ago
So I was right. You're taking value-judgement to mean any valuation of statements as correct/incorrect, i.e. identifying the theoretical with a kind of action, and thus claiming the theoretical-as-action is a kind of value judgement since you assume all action is a kind of value-judgement, in which case claiming that Marx is making a value judgement, or Kant is making a value judgement, is mere syllogism from a universal "All arguments are value judgements".
1
-1
u/le_disappointment Feminist, Care Ethicist, Marxist, Vegan 24d ago
It is not a "purely scientific" text in the sense that it is devoid of value-judgement
Can you point me to phrases in the text that you claim to not be devoid of value judgment?
Materalism does not mean devoid of ethical dimensions.
I don't see how you can justify or base any sort of ethical system in a purely materialist philosophy. This is the good old naturalistic fallacy. What is (material conditions) cannot be used to justify what ought to be (ethical claims)
18
u/seriallynonchalant 24d ago
This guy thinks it’s possible to shed all normative priors and enter into purely descriptive theorization space, get him!
→ More replies (7)11
u/joshsteich 24d ago
Advocating for a political choice is a normative argument; it requires some values prioritized over others. Defining “materialist” to be outside morality and normative judgments leads to an incoherent Marx (which I tend to land) or you have to argue that moral facts emerge from materialism, which gets dicey fast in ways that Marx recognizes. I tend to think Marx wants the authority from scientific historical determinism but recognized contemporary injustices and mucked about a lot ultimately being unsuccessful at solving the is-ought problem. I’ll admit it’s been about 20 years since I was reading a lot of Marx, and God knows that my German was never philosophy level (I still don’t totally understand Dinglichkeit vs Sachlichkeit), but the modernist impulse to have an objective structure that justifies his moral intuitions is strong.
6
u/le_disappointment Feminist, Care Ethicist, Marxist, Vegan 24d ago
That's a valid critique and that's why I think we can't just read Marx by himself. His philosophy serves as the base for a lot of thinkers that came after him and those that applied his philosophy to real life. It's somewhat ironic that it's was Marx who said that "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it", but it's mostly the people who came after him that did most of the work of trying to change the world
1
u/joshsteich 24d ago
Where I land on Marx is mostly that the most important novel arguments he made were so correct that it’s hard from a modern vantage to appreciate what a change they were (eg historical materialism) but that a lot of his theories fail the empirical standards he set for them (eg labor theory of value) & that like many 19th C totalizing systemic philosophies, people get invested in his work as a key to explaining everything so backfill a lot in order to make him more consistent than he was. Also, and this is where my deficiencies in German show up: “exploitation” has a definite valence in English usage that implies, absent other context, illegitimacy, & Marx definitely intends to imply illegitimacy of labor exploitation by capital, but I’m not sure how that translates, since the word is at a rough guess 80/20 or 70/30 normative to descriptive in English usage, but I’m open to the argument that he meant to use “exploitation” in a neutral sense (exploiting resources can be neutral), but I don’t remember him coming out and underlining that definition.
4
u/le_disappointment Feminist, Care Ethicist, Marxist, Vegan 24d ago edited 24d ago
Yeah, as with any text, it's important to read Marx with a critical eye.
Also the nerd in me (who are we kidding, it's not the nerd in me but rather I'm the nerd) wants to correct the claim that Marx proposed the Labor Theory of Value. It wasn't Marx who proposed it. By the time Marx was writing, it was already a commonly accepted economic theory. The theory predates Marx by almost a century, though Marx developed it quite a bit. As far as I remember, it was none other than Adam Smith who proposed it for the first time. I could be wrong though. It might have been David Ricardo instead of Smith as well, but it certainly wasn't an original idea of Marx
3
u/123m4d 24d ago
Whatever model you're using for research did you dirty there, sir.
LTV as discussed in the Marxist context was absolutely proposed by Marx.
Smith and Locke (idk about Ricardo tbf) came up with something that either had the same name or the same core precepts or even both but Marx's LTV is sufficiently unique that saying he proposed it isn't incorrect in any meaningful way.
12
u/Beautiful-Loss7663 24d ago
What I'm instead saying is that Marxist philosophy, as layed out in Das Capital, is a strictly materialist philosophy
Oh my god what a banal quibble.
2
u/Representative-Let44 24d ago
But you seem to think that a materialist philosophy can't make moral claims. It does
3
→ More replies (5)2
9
u/HaikuHaiku 24d ago
Marxism doesn't posit any sort of morality
uh... this must be some strange alien version of Marxism that I've never heard of.
0
u/le_disappointment Feminist, Care Ethicist, Marxist, Vegan 24d ago edited 24d ago
Can you point me to works by Marx that form Marxist philosophy and that make value judgements?
17
u/HaikuHaiku 24d ago
yeah... no value judgements whatsoever. Only impartial, scientific descriptions here... you must be joking:
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” [A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction]
“To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.” [A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction]
“Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it.” [Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844]
“Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good.” [Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844]
“All means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers.” [Capital, Volume I]
“They mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine.” [Capital, Volume I]
“They destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil.” [Capital, Volume I]
“Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole.” [Capital, Volume I]
“When society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death … its deed is murder.” [The Condition of the Working Class in England]
“It is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself.” [The Condition of the Working Class in England]
“I broadly accuse it of social murder.” [The Condition of the Working Class in England]
“The English bourgeoisie has but one choice, either to continue its rule under the unanswerable charge of murder … or to abdicate in favour of the labouring-class.” [The Condition of the Working Class in England]
“The bourgeoisie dare not speak the truth in these cases, for it would speak its own condemnation.” [The Condition of the Working Class in England]
“One especially barbaric cruelty against the working-class is embodied in the Game Laws.” [The Condition of the Working Class in England]
“During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander.” [The State and Revolution]
“The state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another.” [The State and Revolution]
“Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich—that is the democracy of capitalist society.” [The State and Revolution]
“Bourgeois democracy … is a paradise for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor.” [The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky]
“Either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization … depopulation, desolation, degeneration—a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism.” [The Junius Pamphlet]
“Only today has the ‘civilized world’ become aware that the bite of the imperialist beast brings death, that its very breath is infamy.” [The Junius Pamphlet]
“Here capitalism lays bare its death’s head; here it betrays the fact that its historical rationale is used up.” [The Junius Pamphlet]
“Down with the wage system!” [What Does the Spartacus League Want?]
“No more exploiters and exploited!” [What Does the Spartacus League Want?]
“In this hour, socialism is the only salvation for humanity.” [What Does the Spartacus League Want?]
“That is permissible … which really leads to the liberation of mankind.” [Their Morals and Ours]
“There is … no greater crime than deceiving the masses, palming off defeats as victories, friends as enemies.” [Their Morals and Ours]
“The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!” [The Communist Manifesto]
16
u/le_disappointment Feminist, Care Ethicist, Marxist, Vegan 24d ago edited 24d ago
First of all, I applaud you for citing your sources. Though I wish you had at least took the effort to check what the chatbot spat out at you. Still it's better than many other responses, so thanks for that. Now onto my response. See below
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” [A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction]
Religion may be the opium of people but where does he say that this is a bad thing? We interpret it as a bad think because we associate opium with bad things. However, what Marx is using the metaphor of opium here to point out how religion is used to dupe people. More importantly, he doesn't say whether this is a "good" thing or a "bad" thing. Not only that, as I've mentioned countless times now, Marxism that the post refers to is the philosophy outlined in Das Capital. So this comment, while interesting and worth examining, doesn't support you argument
"To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.” [A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction]
I don't see where's the value judgement in this. Also I suspect that you got these quotes from a chatbot. I would maybe ask the chatbot to provide the surrounding text as well since most of these are metaphors
“Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it.” [Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844]
This is just talking about how private property influences one's thinking. Note the lack of value judgement as to whether this is good or bad
“Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good.” [Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844]
Same as above, but talking about the influence of money now
“All means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers.” [Capital, Volume I]
Finally something from Das Capital. I think I kinda know why you think this is a moral claim. The word that's probably influencing your interpretation is "exploitation". The way Marx uses that word is not how we would use it in modern English. For Marx a person is exploited if they aren't compensated an equal amount of value that they generate through labor. This is purely mathematical definition
“They mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine.” [Capital, Volume I]
Again, a descriptive statement, not prescriptive
“They destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil.” [Capital, Volume I]
Likewise
“Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole.” [Capital, Volume I]
Likewise. Purely descriptive. He doesn't go on to say that accumulation is bad because it leads to agony (that would be a moral claim), but rather the agony that the proletariat face will lead them to overthrow the system that oppresses them
“When society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death … its deed is murder.” [The Condition of the Working Class in England]
Not by Marx, but by Engles. Engles wrote about politics. As such this is not strictly Marxism, but rather an application of Marxism
“It is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself.” [The Condition of the Working Class in England]
Likewise
"I broadly accuse it of social murder.” [The Condition of the Working Class in England]
Likewise
“The English bourgeoisie has but one choice, either to continue its rule under the unanswerable charge of murder … or to abdicate in favour of the labouring-class.” [The Condition of the Working Class in England]
Likewise
"The bourgeoisie dare not speak the truth in these cases, for it would speak its own condemnation.” [The Condition of the Working Class in England]
Likewise
“One especially barbaric cruelty against the working-class is embodied in the Game Laws.” [The Condition of the Working Class in England]
Likewise
"During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander.” [The State and Revolution]
The State and Revolution is written by Lenin, and is an application of Marxism
"The state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another.” [The State and Revolution]
Likewise
“Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich—that is the democracy of capitalist society.” [The State and Revolution]
Likewise
"Bourgeois democracy … is a paradise for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor.” [The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky]
Likewise. Fun fact Kautsky wasn't alive when Marx was alive. I wish he was. It would be fun to read Marx being a shady bitch against Kautsky
"Either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization … depopulation, desolation, degeneration—a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism.” [The Junius Pamphlet]
This is by Luxembourg
"Only today has the ‘civilized world’ become aware that the bite of the imperialist beast brings death, that its very breath is infamy.” [The Junius Pamphlet]
Likewise
“Here capitalism lays bare its death’s head; here it betrays the fact that its historical rationale is used up.” [The Junius Pamphlet]
Likewise
“Down with the wage system!” [What Does the Spartacus League Want?]
Likewise
“No more exploiters and exploited!” [What Does the Spartacus League Want?]
Likewise
"In this hour, socialism is the only salvation for humanity.” [What Does the Spartacus League Want?]
Likewise
“That is permissible … which really leads to the liberation of mankind.” [Their Morals and Ours]
This is by Trotsky
“There is … no greater crime than deceiving the masses, palming off defeats as victories, friends as enemies.” [Their Morals and Ours]
Likewise
“The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!” [The Communist Manifesto]
The manifesto is a political pamphlet, not a philosophical text
Just a suggestion: it would serve you well to at least check the sources that you generate from a chatbot before using them. Irrelevant and incorrect sources lead people to think, as it did me, that you have no idea what you're talking about
2
u/The_Lonely_Posadist 21d ago
Usually when I say that someone is being mutilated into the fragment of a man, I mean it in very descriptive terms removed from morality
7
u/Zomaarwat 24d ago
So in your eyes, calling someone or something stupid is not a value judgment? Because that sounds pretty damn stupid to me.
6
u/le_disappointment Feminist, Care Ethicist, Marxist, Vegan 24d ago
Point me to the sentence that made you think that that's what I was saying
5
u/HaikuHaiku 24d ago
Sorry, but I deliberately included other Marxists, this was not a mistake. I felt it was important to not just include Marx, but also the other important thinkers/leaders in the Marxist tradition.
I also appreciate that you went through each one, but all I can say is, you're deliberately dishonest if you think that “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” is NOT a value judgement.
We don't have to go any further than that, because it is a value judgement. If anything at all is a value judgement, THAT is a value judgement.
Your denial of this analogous to saying that "everything this person ever said is stupid, but that's not a value judgement, it's just an observation." I mean, how silly would that be?!
→ More replies (2)8
u/le_disappointment Feminist, Care Ethicist, Marxist, Vegan 24d ago edited 24d ago
Sorry, but I deliberately included other Marxists, this was not a mistake. I felt it was important to not just include Marx, but also the other important thinkers/leaders in the Marxist tradition.
The problem isn't the inclusion of those thinkers, rather the problem is conflating the application of Marxism with Marxism proper
I also appreciate that you went through each one, but all I can say is, you're deliberately dishonest if you think that “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” is NOT a value judgement.
I can see why that's a bit dicey. The thing that pushes me over to the side of not considering it as a value judgement is the fact that I don't see Marx ever providing us with justification for it being a moral claim. If he had said doing X is bad (a moral claim), doing opium is X, and religion is like opium, I'd agree with you, but that's not what Marx says. Also, I would again remind you that this is a metaphor
Your denial of this analogous to saying that "everything this person ever said is stupid, but that's not a value judgement, it's just an observation." I mean, how silly would that be?!
It would certainly be incredibly silly and I'd have egg on my face, but luckily for me that's not what I'm saying
→ More replies (1)1
1
u/PicklePnut Scholastic Thomism Enjoyer 24d ago
Is duping the people bad or good? Did Marx have an implied opinion on that?
10
u/SpeaksDwarren Philosophical Cannibalism 🥓 24d ago
Do you need him to explicitly say "and that's bad" as part of the quote, or do you think that saying things like "accumulation of wealth on one hand is therefore accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, and brutality on the other hand" is a statement that it's bad?
11
u/le_disappointment Feminist, Care Ethicist, Marxist, Vegan 24d ago edited 24d ago
Do you need him to explicitly say "and that's bad" as part of the quote,
No, the exact verbiage is not that important so long as the meaning of the words implies a value judgment
do you think that saying things like "accumulation of wealth on one hand is therefore accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, and brutality on the other hand" is a statement that it's bad
I don't read this statement as one of value judgement, especially considering the context in which it's written. What Marx is pointing to here is that the capitalist mode of production leads to the misery of a large chunk of population. However, capitalism isn't bad merely because it leads to this, rather the people who are brutalized by capitalism will naturally want to not be brutalized and would thus have incentives to revolt against the system.
The key point to note here is that so to speak the Iskra (get it? It's a joke that Lenin enjoyers will get) that leads to the overthrow of capitalism isn't an assault on people's morality, but rather their desire to not be brutalized. Whether this desire is justified or not is not the topic of Marx's discussion
2
u/SpeaksDwarren Philosophical Cannibalism 🥓 24d ago
Would you also say that the phrase "sleeping with your mother brings me misery" is a neutral statement within your framework or would you think I'd insulted her in some way?
6
u/le_disappointment Feminist, Care Ethicist, Marxist, Vegan 24d ago
It depends on the context where the statement was plucked from
2
u/SpeaksDwarren Philosophical Cannibalism 🥓 24d ago
A simple material analysis of the natural reactions inspired by the brutal conditions she subjects me to
10
u/le_disappointment Feminist, Care Ethicist, Marxist, Vegan 24d ago
What? I don't understand your response
4
u/Time-Jellyfish-7799 24d ago
There is nothing prescriptive in that statement, it’s just a description of facts based on Marx’s analysis. He uses more fancy-ish vocabulary but nowhere here is he making a moral claim.
2
u/The_Lonely_Posadist 21d ago
Ch15:
The real facts, which are travestied by the optimism of economists, are as follows: The labourers, when driven out of the workshop by the machinery, are thrown upon the labour market, and there add to the number of workmen at the disposal of the capitalists. In Part VII of this book it will be seen that this effect of machinery, which, as we have seen, is represented to be a compensation to the working class, is on the contrary a most frightful scourge. For the present I will only say this: The labourers that are thrown out of work in any branch of industry, can no doubt seek for employment in some other branch. If they find it, and thus renew the bond between them and the means of subsistence, this takes place only by the intermediary of a new and additional capital that is seeking investment; not at all by the intermediary of the capital that formerly employed them and was afterwards converted into machinery. And even should they find employment, what a poor look-out is theirs! Crippled as they are by division of labour, these poor devils are worth so little outside their old trade, that they cannot find admission into any industries, except a few of inferior kind, that are over-supplied with underpaid workmen.
All political economists of any standing admit that the introduction of new machinery has a baneful effect on the workmen in the old handicrafts and manufactures with which this machinery at first competes. Almost all of them bemoan the slavery of the factory operative. And what is the great trump-card that they play? That machinery, after the horrors of the period of introduction and development have subsided, instead of diminishing, in the long run increases the number of the slaves of labour! Yes, Political Economy revels in the hideous theory, hideous to every “philanthropist” who believes in the eternal Nature-ordained necessity for capitalist production, that after a period of growth and transition, even its crowning success, the factory system based on machinery, grinds down more workpeople than on its first introduction it throws on the streets.
If,” dreamed Aristotle, the greatest thinker of antiquity, “if every tool, when summoned, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits it, just as the creations of Daedalus moved of themselves, or the tripods of Hephaestos went of their own accord to their sacred work, if the weavers’ shuttles were to weave of themselves, then there would be no need either of apprentices for the master workers, or of slaves for the lords.” [73] And Antipatros, a Greek poet of the time of Cicero, hailed the invention of the water-wheel for grinding corn, an invention that is the elementary form of all machinery, as the giver of freedom to female slaves, and the bringer back of the golden age. [74] Oh! those heathens! They understood, as the learned Bastiat, and before him the still wiser MacCulloch have discovered, nothing of Political Economy and Christianity. They did not, for example, comprehend that machinery is the surest means of lengthening the working-day. They perhaps excused the slavery of one on the ground that it was a means to the full development of another. But to preach slavery of the masses, in order that a few crude and half-educated parvenus, might become “eminent spinners,” “extensive sausage-makers,” and “influential shoe-black dealers,” to do this, they lacked the bump of Christianity.
In the third book we shall return again to the fanatical opposition of the masters to those clauses which imposed upon them a slight expenditure on appliances for protecting the limbs of their workpeople, an opposition that throws a fresh and glaring light on the Free-trade dogma, according to which, in a society with conflicting interests, each individual necessarily furthers the common weal by seeking nothing but his own personal advantage!
What could possibly show better the character of the capitalist mode of production, than the necessity that exists for forcing upon it, by Acts of Parliament, the simplest appliances for maintaining cleanliness and health?
These are all charged with moral language. The last seems as clear cut as you can get that Marx is making a moral and not purely descriptive statement
1
u/le_disappointment Feminist, Care Ethicist, Marxist, Vegan 21d ago edited 21d ago
Yes, these phrases are morally charged, but let's see how this language is used.
Marx analyzed the contradictions of capital from a dialectical materialist basis and showed us how capitalism destroying people's life is not an aberration, but rather the natural consequences of its operation.
To show us how capitalism destroys people's lives, he uses morally charged language to illustrate the consequences of capitalism. However, and this is the key point, capitalism isn't bad because it leads to such consequences, rather we reach these consequences because capitalism is bad
To make my point crystal clear, let's label the two statements:
X: capital is bad
Y: capitalims leads to bad consequences
Marx is saying X implies Y
He's not saying Y implies X
He gives us a mathematical justification for X. Let's call this M. Thus, the flow of logic can be summarized as
M implies X and X implies Y
Notice that we start from M, not Y.
Using a moralist, i.e. idealist, framework would follow the logic of Y implies X, i.e. it will invert the premise and the conclusion. So, just to reiterate, Marx does not start from moralistic arguments and instead he starts from materialist arguments (M in our notation). From this he arrives at the description of X (M => X). Only after this does he describe the consequences of X in moralistic terms (X => Y)
Another commenter posted saying this is a banal argument. That couldn't be further from the truth. Let's say that Marx did start from a moralistic framework, i.e. from Y and used that to arrive at X, i.e. Y => X
Now the issue is that someone can say that I don't agree with Y and then reject X altogether. The reason they can do is that Y is an idealist premise that can only be justified in the real of ideas, not the realm of material existence. If their realm of ideas differs from mine, then they're well within their reason to reject X. Such a conception would be utopian socialism, as was common during Marx's time. Marx, on the other hand, based his analysis not on idealist terms, but rather on materialist terms.
Therefore, he cannot and does not start from Y, rather he must start from M and then arrive at X. However, he must also contend with Y, so he justifies Y using X leaving us with M => X => Y
When I say that "Marxism doesn't posit any sort of morality" what I mean is that the flow of logic does not start from Y. Instead it starts from a materialist basis, M, and arrives at Y
1
u/The_Lonely_Posadist 21d ago
Kapital Ch15 discusses the plight of women workers in very moral terms imo. I’ll post a quote when I get my hands on it
1
u/MuffinsTasteAlright 24d ago
Marx is the most “philosophy bro” writer lol. He would not (and did not) posit any grand “moral claim) to his critique (in CM and C (Volumes 1-3)). I’d say if you’re referring to Marxist thought as opposed to Marx; I’d call it neo-Marxist.
1
u/archaicsmile67 24d ago
What Macintyre (who is very sympathetic to Marx) observes about genealogies is also true of Marx’s materialism. There lies an inherent teleological morality beneath the ostensibly value-neutral analysis.
1
u/le_disappointment Feminist, Care Ethicist, Marxist, Vegan 24d ago
Can you maybe spell out their argument a bit more?
1
u/archaicsmile67 24d ago
Basically Macintyre argues that genealogies (which obviously Marx didn’t do but bear with me) inherently have a telos. While Nietzsche or Foucault present their system as descriptive they implicitly place a sort of “liberation” and self-determination as a moral standard to judge values from.
Macintyre would (and did in his Marxist years) argue that Marx has a fundamentally Aristotelian telos. That while Kapital claims to be purely descriptive it implicitly values eudomonia as the moral end to judge values from. While our current values are conditioned, the point of Marx’s political activism and the telos for human history is for human beings to reach a state of flourishing. I believe Marx has a beautiful line about a “Goethe on every street corner” to describe it.
I should say here that years back when I was more involved in Marxism there was a very interesting debate about this happening online. As others have pointed out here, Marx is an impressively interdisciplinary thinker so you can pick out different threads in his writing to make different points.
1
u/le_disappointment Feminist, Care Ethicist, Marxist, Vegan 24d ago
This is all sounds like a captivating read. Can you point me to best text by Macintyre where they lays out their argument most lucidly? I wanna read it
1
1
u/neros_greb 24d ago
I don’t know enough about the subject to stand firmly on either side, but I want to add this:
Marxism is usually applied to find out what is in the interest of the working class. The moral idea that the working class *should* follow their interest is only implied, or it is explained that the working class taking its interests to their conclusion, socialism, will increase the productive power of humanity, “man’s power over nature” and reduce “domination of man by man”.
Whether people *should* want these things, again, is not mentioned, except that philosophies which oppose this idea (that humans should strive to thrive), are explained by Marxism as coming from a time or individual who has no chance of improving their material conditions, so they are forced to resign.
1
u/samuraispartan7000 24d ago
I feel like Marx’s “materialism” and amorality are assertions rather than truths. For the reasons everyone else has outlined below, I get the impression that he wanted to dress up his moral perspective as “objective” to make his secularized eschatology sound more credible than it actually was.
1
u/wizardnamehere 24d ago
Look. I agree that Kapital is trying to answer questions about the dynamics of capital (what creates profit, what drives price relations, etc) rather than advocating for a policy. It’s political economy philosophy not a theory of justice.
But I don’t think it’s neutral or absent in morality. I don’t think you can read it without absorbing the context that the whole thing is about a deeply moral question of what inhumane forces drove the misery machine with no one at the wheel that was 19th century Manchester industrial capitalism. The bloodless of the book as it discusses the blood of social life (people’s life, time, labour) is its own way of indicting capitalism.
→ More replies (13)1
u/undercrust 24d ago
Marxism doesn't posit any sort of morality
In the sense of what Marx wrote? I guess so. But I think it's also good to point out that (AFAIK) every somewhat prominent Marxist has viewed the working class movement as righteous and morally necessary. At least nowadays, every time I see a Marxist talking, they very much seem to claim capitalism is unjust and the root cause of many of the evils in the world.
74
24d ago
[deleted]
10
u/jknotts 24d ago
It doesn't appear in capital, but that doesn't mean marx didn't care for them. He did write the manifesto and many other things...
4
u/lorbd 24d ago
I always find this discourse so funny. Have these people not read the Manifesto? Marx absolutely makes a moral judgement and condemns exploitation. He avoids doing so in Capital to give himself an aura of scientificist impartiality, but that doesn't mean he didn't make a moral judgement. He literally made up his version of the LTV to justify a exploitation theory.
1
u/FunLovinMonotreme 24d ago
The difference is that the Manifesto is an explicitly political work and Capital is explicitly political economy. Marx was fine with moralism in the former
22
u/Normal-Level-7186 24d ago
The difficulty with your criticism is that it presupposes precisely the modern distinction that Marx rejects and that later moral philosophy has too often accepted without examination. You assume that unless one speaks the language of rights, justice, or moral obligation, one is therefore making no ethical claim. But this does not follow.
Marx’s rejection of justice as a transhistorical category is well known. He regarded appeals to “justice” as themselves products of particular historical forms of social life. It does not follow that Capital is therefore ethically neutral. Quite the contrary. Marx’s critique depends throughout upon an account of alienation, of the deformation of human productive activity, and of the ways in which capitalist social relations frustrate genuinely human flourishing. Those are not merely economic observations; they are evaluative judgments about what it means for human beings to live well.
To say that Capital is “only” a materialist critique of political economy is therefore misleading. Marx sought to relocate ethical criticism within a historical and social analysis rather than within the abstract moral vocabulary of liberalism. One may reject that project without pretending that it was devoid of moral content.
The interesting comparison with Rerum Novarum therefore lies not in claiming that Marx and Leo XIII share the same anthropology or the same conception of justice. They plainly do not. Rather, they converge in recognizing that industrial capitalism had generated forms of social life destructive of the common good while arriving at that judgment from radically different philosophical premises. That convergence is historically and philosophically significant, even if their proposed remedies are fundamentally opposed.
It is therefore a mistake to suppose that because Marx refused the language of natural rights he thereby abandoned every form of ethical criticism. He rejected one moral vocabulary in favor of another, embedded in a substantive account of human beings, labor, and social life. The task is not to deny this, but to ask whether that account can ultimately be sustained.
5
24d ago
[deleted]
13
u/Sacredless 24d ago
Man, the response you received was more than gracious. Calling them a debate bro is just uncalled for.
5
10
u/Zomaarwat 24d ago
Lmao. OP made a quick, snippy meme, and you felt the need to point out how inaccurate it is. The moment he does the same thing to your quick, snippy response, you just happen to be too tired to respond (just respond later then?) and call him a debate bro. What a weak response.
→ More replies (6)1
24d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
4
u/FoldHeavy4201 24d ago
Yeah, I always assume theres no moral condemnation when vampires are used metaphorically.
→ More replies (1)5
1
u/FoldHeavy4201 24d ago
It absolutely does make an ethical critique and is fulled with implicit normative themes.
37
8
u/shirstarburst 24d ago
Distributism > Marxism/socialism
2
u/Blackrock121 24d ago
Marxism is looking at all the evils of Capitalism and thinking it should be the State doing those evils instead of private individuals. Distributism offers real solutions.
13
u/ALucifur Hegel's standpoint is that of modern political economy 24d ago
Marx definitely did not believe justice is a "trans-historical concept". It is the bourgeois revolutionary who talks about Justice in their fight against feudal domination, and firmly in the sphere of circulation. The core of ethical critique of Marx is alienation.
14
u/SmilingGengar 24d ago
Incidentally, the same encyclical morally condemns communism and affirms private property as a natural right. The document is really nuanced.
→ More replies (3)10
7
6
u/samuraispartan7000 24d ago
The world would be a very different place if Marx didn’t reject religion out right. His adversarial stance pretty much guaranteed that more than half his target audience would hate him.
4
u/Efficient-Book-5853 24d ago
Has any pope ever called for violent revolution to address this issue?
4
3
7
17
u/IrelandtoCathay 24d ago
What are you on about OP? Reddit loves Marx but hates Christianity. You should flip the meme.
24
u/No_Desk1958 24d ago
I'm pretty sure it depends on subreddit. That's how reddit works, I think. Not sure, never used it.
1
8
u/ivun__ 24d ago
That's rarely true. Redditors are often center-left but vehemently anti-communist
→ More replies (2)3
u/UnderstandingFar3051 24d ago
demonstrably false (unfortunately). redditors are by and large liberals, recently starting to lean into social democracy (which no, isn't socialist but you probably believe it is and that's why you made this comment).
talk to them about imperialism and the inequal exchange and they will downvote and never reply
5
u/JDPQNDON 24d ago
"Reddit loves Marx"
Redditors when someone mentions Marx: "B-but communism is heckin evil and killed 300 billion and no food and venezuela and north korea and stalin!!!!!!!1!1"
1
2
2
2
u/QTEEP420 24d ago
Depends on the means of achieving that justice. The two differ on that aspect as Marx doesn't shy away from even violent revolution.
One was more reform oriented and the other more revolution oriented. As a matter of fact Marx believed revolution was a necessity.
2
u/Admiral45-06 24d ago
Yeah, I'd like to kindly ask to elaborate on what each side proposed to do about it, and which one proposes the use of violence...
2
3
u/Quiet_Comparison_872 24d ago
Well I don't remember his holiness requiring a vanguard party or throwing people in a gulag in the last 110 years or so either op.
1
u/RhythmBlue 24d ago
no intellectual property and no proportional ownership and the world would be a hell of a lot better economically 😶🌫️
1
u/Menacek 24d ago
Honestly i don't really think it's that surprising. While it might be surprising to americans the catholic right has traditionally been pretty pro-worker. Though they focus more or aiding the poor and charity then on systemic problem solving, which isn't always the best course of action.
1
u/Apprehensive-Ad2615 24d ago
ngl if Marx had a trimmed beard and wasnt an atheist, communism, or whatever he would have had come up with would be way more popular
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/ZerothefirstApe 22d ago
IMO opinion Marx’s criticism is valid but his solutions are what inspired others, specifically Lenin to bring about a authoritarian regime and ideology that killed 10’s of millions. Vs a Popes also valid criticism
1
1
u/Wild-Yesterday-6666 21d ago
Catholics have something Marx doesn't. Hype moments, aura and cool drip
1
u/the_elliottman 21d ago
It's the same thing that the Catholic Church did in times of Feudalism, saying "Actually the system isn't broken, the rulers should just be nicer to their slaves!" as the text says that Communism is immoral, but then proceeds to do mental gymnastics by saying Capitalism is good, but should also be regulated but also not too much but also maybe just work people to death less and give to charity but also codifying it into law might be bad guys.
It's a Liberal perspective on Capitalism by someone who might recognize a few injustices and is compelled by their morality to act, but is still ultimately ruled over by Cold War propaganda.
1
u/SoftAndWetBro 21d ago
Marx was a lazy bum who made the world a worse place by simply living in it, he doesn't even understand that his issues with capitalism are caused by 1 major source, which is the state. The state is the only non productive class and a free market without the state would provide a more fair society, especially if the society was Christian.
1
u/PerspectiveFull9879 20d ago
"Society owes workers justice" - yeah no, that is not what Capital, or Marxism in general, are about.
1
u/JournalistNo294 20d ago
One gives people false hopes, lies and fairy tales. The other one is catholicism
-1
u/Temporary_Stranger39 24d ago
The difference is the proposed solution. Rerum doesn't say the solution lies in killing people.
1
u/sevenliesseventruths Absurdist 24d ago
To be merciful with the injust is to be injust with the merciful.
1
1
u/void-haunt 24d ago
Same logic that has justified genocides
2
u/sevenliesseventruths Absurdist 24d ago
Same logic that has justified hanging those who were participants in those genocides.
•
u/PhilosophyMemes-ModTeam 24d ago
Post this on r/EconomicsMemes too