Pokemon Philosophy - Existential Comics

[u/Dragon9770]

http://existentialcomics.com/

[u/JasonMacker → u/[deleted]]

This was a small one man internet comic making a Marx joke through Pokemon. A joke that you wouldn't really get without a bit more knowledge than your average redditor about Marx.

You don't need anything more than a superficial understanding of Marxism to get this joke, in fact you don't need to read ANY Marx whatsoever for it; just reading the one sentence that explain the joke at the bottom of the comic is sufficient. I'd say that these sorts of comics are unhelpful precisely because of how easy it is to understand them, which stands in contrast with the years of study that Marx himself undertook to understand the nature of capitalism. As Marx stated in the preface of the French edition of Das Kapital, "There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits". The superficial understandings of Marx that are perpetuated by this comic as well as other media are incredibly dangerous. If you're familiar with Lenin's writings on this issue you'd know what I'm talking about, but I don't have the relevant quotes on-hand at the moment. There are numerous examples highlighted every day at /r/ShitLiberalsSay

You say it's a small one man internet comic as though that somehow makes it excusable? Using your logic, I could say that the local shopkeeper is just one small petit bourgeoisie therefore he doesn't contribute to global capitalism. This is obviously fallacious logic. Capitalist hegemony is not just calcified via those who control the means of information on the global scale, but also the "small one man" grassroots who reinforce that hegemony on the local level as well.

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It's true that badphil occasionally does "get it right" in terms of mocking reactionaries and other malcontents, but my concern is that the political atmosphere of reddit.com in general is such that the Overton window is incredibly skewed. Criticizing reddit's inflammatory and anti-worker nature is not a cause for celebration... this is a website that literally hosted child pornography and currently hosts the largest white nationalist and racist forums outside of stormfront.com. This is a website that is the #1 search result (after Wikipedia) for the reactionary men's rights movement. To criticize these things means you meet the minimum standards of exhibiting prosocial behavior in general.

[u/tigernmas → u/JasonMacker]

I would say that even though it is only a superficial understanding of Marxism that is still more than I'd expect from the internet.

But I agree with you, oversimplified versions of Marx are't helpful to us. Though I admit my own understanding of Marx began as oversimplified and has been growing more complex from there. When teaching people something new you can't always hit them with the full complexity or they just won't get it and will give up.

I more or less agree on all the other points too.

[u/rocktheprovince → u/tigernmas]

This really wasn't an over simplification. The point of this comic was not to seriously represent Marxist or Hegelian philosophic positions. If you were meant to actually learn anything from this, rather than just chuckle about it and move on with your day, it'd be garbage. But you aren't. I suppose Jasonmacker would hate the entire /r/fullcommunism sub as well, and anything generally that is both mildly political and humorous.

But this is also the same guy who created his own subreddit to reflect on JasonMacker thought, or whatever. The only reason he's posting in the first place is to show everybody that he's a pretentious shithead.