Lessons posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:
Talking about the time for action sounds really nice, but unless you want to just get yourself killed or play pretend revolutionary in the streets throwing rocks at police, you need to understand history and economics at a minimum and pretending you already do is just egoism and hipster, lifestyle politics.

marx nerds are also engaging in lifestyle politics, and it's not so much "we have to do something!!" as much as we just have to face the fact that if we want to accomplish anything politically we need to build organizations. as for the rest of that you're inflating the problem. our enemies don't understand history either, but they won and as such don't have to write up justifications for their failures.

what happens when we win? don't we need to know what actually happened in china and the USSR?

babyhueypnewton posted:

babyfinland posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:
How can we talk about going beyond Marx when we don't even understand it? Can anyone here honestly say they have a proper understanding of what money is, or how rent functions in a capitalist economy, or how the state functions, or the different moments in the creation and distribution of capital that lead to different contradictions. Cause I sure don't. And yeah you can't wait around forever, a proper understanding of political economy can take a lifetime. But people on this forum or on others who say we need to leave Marxism in the dust never seem to actually know what they're proposing we leave behind.

And that's just Marx. How can we talk about the revolutions that succeeded/failed or the failure of communism when our understanding of history is so poor we can't even conceive of these things outside of the propaganda of American scholarship. And I don't mean this forum, scholarship on the USSR and other socialist countries is so poor that there are a only a few scholars in the world who can even be considered worth something and they constantly have to qualify everything they say with anti-communist propaganda.

Talking about the time for action sounds really nice, but unless you want to just get yourself killed or play pretend revolutionary in the streets throwing rocks at police, you need to understand history and economics at a minimum and pretending you already do is just egoism and hipster, lifestyle politics.

if you don't understand marxism then why are you so committed to it?

you're basically arguing what i'm saying, that we should continue to pursue marxism as an instrument to benefit people and take it seriously in that way, but that also means understanding its limits and failures

lol it's clear you don't know a thing about marx. all of the examples I brought up are well known as subjects Marx left unexplored or under explored either in the grundisse or in volumes 2/3 of capital which he was loathe to get into too deeply because they did not fit into what he thought of as his overall scientific vision and were the work of historians.

how can you talk about it's limits and failures when you don't know a thing about it's limits?

it's actually a common misconception that money is an undeveloped aspect of marx's work, this is brought up almost all the time by contemporary marxist scholars

Impper posted:

babyfinland posted:
marxism as concrete political movement represents no threat to capitalism, and doesnt even approach the contradictions in capitalism.

counterpoint: reality

Straight-up G move.

babyfinland posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

babyfinland posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:
How can we talk about going beyond Marx when we don't even understand it? Can anyone here honestly say they have a proper understanding of what money is, or how rent functions in a capitalist economy, or how the state functions, or the different moments in the creation and distribution of capital that lead to different contradictions. Cause I sure don't. And yeah you can't wait around forever, a proper understanding of political economy can take a lifetime. But people on this forum or on others who say we need to leave Marxism in the dust never seem to actually know what they're proposing we leave behind.

And that's just Marx. How can we talk about the revolutions that succeeded/failed or the failure of communism when our understanding of history is so poor we can't even conceive of these things outside of the propaganda of American scholarship. And I don't mean this forum, scholarship on the USSR and other socialist countries is so poor that there are a only a few scholars in the world who can even be considered worth something and they constantly have to qualify everything they say with anti-communist propaganda.

Talking about the time for action sounds really nice, but unless you want to just get yourself killed or play pretend revolutionary in the streets throwing rocks at police, you need to understand history and economics at a minimum and pretending you already do is just egoism and hipster, lifestyle politics.

if you don't understand marxism then why are you so committed to it?

you're basically arguing what i'm saying, that we should continue to pursue marxism as an instrument to benefit people and take it seriously in that way, but that also means understanding its limits and failures

lol it's clear you don't know a thing about marx. all of the examples I brought up are well known as subjects Marx left unexplored or under explored either in the grundisse or in volumes 2/3 of capital which he was loathe to get into too deeply because they did not fit into what he thought of as his overall scientific vision and were the work of historians.

how can you talk about it's limits and failures when you don't know a thing about it's limits?

it's actually a common misconception that money is an undeveloped aspect of marx's work, this is brought up almost all the time by contemporary marxist scholars

I never said it's undeveloped, especially since the third chapter of volume 1 is entirely about money. however it is underdeveloped, as is circulation of capital in general. so is primitive accumulation (which is one of the few areas which has gotten more in depth study since marx's time). also it doesn't really matter how well understood it is as long as you don't understand it (which I have seen no indication that you do) and yet are calling for leaving marxism in the dust.

Lessons posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:
also it's not clear to me that we need to "organize" without understanding what makes a good organization. this sounds like a simple practical question but it is not. just getting the left to agree to a basic vanguard model of a party is impossible, the left still makes the same mistakes with poorly thought out organizations like consensus and blac blocs because they have a poor understanding of power and it's functions (something imo which was underexplored until the late 70s) and a non-scientific view of organization.

this lashing out against knowledge and experience is just lifestylism and laziness, it is no where to be found in Mao or whomever you people think it comes from.

lenin and mao make a huge deal of theory but arguably they weren't the best theorists. you can find much more developed, informed and trenchant analyses in a marxist vein elsewhere, including by some who led movements that were violently crushed. when it comes down to it those movements were successful because they had great leaders and dedicated cadres of veteran activists, not because they discovered some elusive organizational secret. that's not at all to say we shouldn't study them, but that we should also start following their example, right now.

thats because the bolsheviks robbed banks for money and became criminals to spend all day studying theory and agitating for revolution. other revolutionary groups either killed people and took their land while they went in the hills to fight the state. are you willing to do that? even that's not enough, the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Weather underground etc did that and had poor theoretical understanding of the world and so failed and all ended up dead or in jail. this is serious business, are you willing to throw your life away without a proper understanding of what will happen and how the forces against you work (and what ther weaknesses are)? these are all historical, economic, and philosophical questions which are not so easily thrown away unless you're a fool or a pretender.

Impper posted:

Lessons posted:
lenin and mao make a huge deal of theory but arguably they weren't the best theorists. you can find much more developed, informed and trenchant analyses in a marxist vein elsewhere, including by some who led movements that were violently crushed. when it comes down to it those movements were successful because they had great leaders and dedicated cadres of veteran activists, not because they discovered some elusive organizational secret. that's not at all to say we shouldn't study them, but that we should also start following their example, right now.

limonov makes this exact argument in his book

limonov is a cult leader

babyhueypnewton posted:
thats because the bolsheviks robbed banks for money and became criminals to spend all day studying theory and agitating for revolution. other revolutionary groups either killed people and took their land while they went in the hills to fight the state. are you willing to do that? even that's not enough, the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Weather underground etc did that and had poor theoretical understanding of the world and so failed and all ended up dead or in jail. this is serious business, are you willing to throw your life away without a proper understanding of what will happen and how the forces against you work (and what ther weaknesses are)? these are all historical, economic, and philosophical questions which are not so easily thrown away unless you're a fool or a pretender.

those groups didn't fail because they didn't understand radical theory, they failed because they were showboating clowns

babyfinland posted:
this is a lot of big talk from little children

wow trolling. not cool.

Lessons posted:

babyfinland posted:
this is a lot of big talk from little children

wow trolling. not cool.

what is the point of all this posturing? nobody here does any organizing, has any influence or engages in any political participation except maybe attend rallies and meetings with their marxist book club at best. people don't need people like us to save them lol

Impper posted:
limonov makes this exact argument in his book

the way you explained it to me last time it was like, the bolsheviks could have been any ideology and been successful because they were just super people. which i think kinda glosses over the history a whole lot, even if lenin really was a Great Man.

babyhueypnewton posted:

babyfinland posted:

Lessons posted:

babyfinland posted:
this is a lot of big talk from little children

wow trolling. not cool.

what is the point of all this posturing? nobody here does any organizing, has any influence or engages in any political participation except maybe attend rallies and meetings with their marxist book club at best. people don't need people like us to save them lol

as if anyone would post about their political activity on a public forum. the last sentence is also meaningless, i guess it's supposed to sound important or something.

oh so you're like a maoist secret agent, sorry i didn't realize who i was speaking to

babyfinland posted:

Lessons posted:

babyfinland posted:
this is a lot of big talk from little children

wow trolling. not cool.

what is the point of all this posturing? nobody here does any organizing, has any influence or engages in any political participation except maybe attend rallies and meetings with their marxist book club at best. people don't need people like us to save them lol

it's fun, that's the point. but yeah, anyone who's approaching this as "how can the left save the world" has it backwards, me and tinky have been talking about this some.

Lessons posted:

Impper posted:
limonov makes this exact argument in his book

the way you explained it to me last time it was like, the bolsheviks could have been any ideology and been successful because they were just super people. which i think kinda glosses over the history a whole lot, even if lenin really was a Great Man.

well part of the point was that the bolsheviks were so extraordinary that they might have succeeded in anything they did, which doesn't deny at all how great of an influence marxism had on their goals, tactics, the government they organized, and so on

jools posted:
hey bhpn idiot turds with a facile understanding of history and justice destroyed everything that was good in the 20th century. how does that make you feel

feels good man

babyfinland posted:
marxism as concrete political movement represents no threat to capitalism, and doesnt even approach the contradictions in capitalism. just saying. running around declaring heresy on people for believing in god or not being of this or that specific political nomination is so funny especially when the dogma you are defending is such a non-starter

im not sure what 'marxism as concrete political movement' is, please provide me with a selection of google-friendly key words that i can use to edumacate mein self