When did you read Das Kapital and how did it change your life?

>2010+7
>there are now Marxists that lurk unpunished on Veeky Forums

Engels wrote a synopsis of it: marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/1868-syn/index.htm

No one who spends time on this website goes unpunished

Thanks a lot, user

Marx is the final red pill

>mfw can't come up with a retort

I disagree strongly. Though I've got a feeling that this is bait. But can you explain earnestly why you think this?

Good post

Why do I keep coming here

he's right you know dot meme

I've had it sitting on my shelf for about 4 years. I'm thinking about getting stuck into it now that I have some time for myself. I'm not unfamiliar with Marxist theory, so I doubt I'll have as hard of a time with it as people who don't have that background.

last fall
i started drinking again

Only two acceptable answers.

It's not like we don't have more than 80 years of history with various tries at communism and socialism being attempted that have all, without exception, failed miserably.

I don't read Jewish authors unless they're self-hating.

n-no i'm having fun! i swear!

They weren't real Communism.

What would be the harm in just trying to do it once?

I remember trying to read this when I was 14, couldn't understand shit.

Never understood this argument desu. Communism worked fairly well if you judge it as you would judge capitalism(efficiency of state and market). If you judge communism on quality of life then capitalism sucks just as much. Capitalism is somewhat livable in like 5 capitalist countries that exploit 50 other unlivable capitalist countries. Communism (The way it was implemented) worked the same way, the elite had a good life and the rest of the workers suffered. Except communism had more leeway, but failed because of the never ending cold war arms race that inevitably collapsed the USSR economy.

>They weren't real Communism
The 'utopia' you envision is unattainable. Why do you think it always ends up in fascism?

I don't know what the hell you've been smoking, but you might want to pass that around.

The countries that deviate the most from the free market and free trade are ones with horrible living conditions, while capitalist countries have been able to attain a good (not a decent, but a good) standard of living for the masses. Hell, capitalism has more than halved world poverty the past few decades.There is not a single economic system that has been thought of and tried has come even close to producing the same results.

It'd be interesting to know which capitalist countries you think offer a livable standard, some socialist countries that you think are good and some of the countries that make up the 50 exploited capitalist countries you mentioned.

>while capitalist countries have been able to attain a good (not a decent, but a good) standard of living for the masses
This is just blatantly untrue. Huge chunks of the workforce don't make a living wage, go without medical treatment, eat cheap and unhealthy food because it's the only affordable option, etc. Huge problem of sleep deprivation from working multiple jobs. And that's just in the first world.

Not that guy, but its most certainly a myth that you can't eat healthy if you're poor. I would know, I was poor and did eat healthy. And if you could give me some sources on sleep deprivation I'd be thankful

When I was 14 or 15. Made me reevaluate a lot of the neoliberal brainwashing I was exposed to, though Marx is better at pointing out injustices than offering solutions.

Not the user, and obviously you can eat healthy as a poorfag but it takes a lot more effort and know-how, which is not probable for the majority of people already exhausted by the effects poverty has.

80 years is not nearly a historically large enough span to judge such a system. (and cmon, how many countries actually were communist for 80 years?)

USSR suffered by far the biggest losses in WW2 and still managed to send the first man to space and fight the cold war with the US.

You have zero understanding of economics. Zilch. Stop humiliating yourself. Those I know who preach in favor of capitalism at least understand how it works. Lmao

>eat cheap and unhealthy food because it's the only affordable option
As someone else pointed out, it's completely probable to eat healthy while poor. This is what I hate the most about Marxists: it takes a certain amount of denial and blind idealism of the working class in order to truly believe their ideology. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe the vast majority of people below the poverty line are just fucking stupid, and that they eat McDonald's every day because it tastes good to them, and they don't think or care about the consequences?

>Huge chunks of the workforce don't make a living wage

As compared to what?

Name the socialist/communist countries that have done better. Are you maybe talking about Venezuela? North Korea?

It's tricky to find the time to educate yourself about the consequences and find alternatives, when you're running from a depressing job to another and still need energy to take care of your family; just as it's tricky to care about education and find time for it when you grow up in a family like that.

But hey, it's easier to shit on people than actually consider their situation and hardships coming with it.

Follow up:

Comparing anything to perfection or to any arbitrary standard solves nothing. Thus far, there is not a single economic system that has worked so well as capitalism has. In less than 50 years it took a backward, floating rock called Singapore and turned it into one of the worlds biggest economies. Hong Kong developed so powerful China tried to take it over. What happened instead was that Hong Kong took over China.

The period of the largest growth of wealth in the human history was during the rise of capitalism in the West, before we started letting the government step in and start 'planning'.

>Singapore and turned it into one of the worlds biggest economies
With rising suicide rate and 15h workdays. So the majority doesn't profit too much from it.

>Hong Kong developed so powerful China tried to take it over.
The deal to take it back from Brits existed long before it became relevant. Besides, it's silly to understate Chinas role in HKs rise.

If you want to fetishise the free market, at least name examples where life isn't shitty like Switzerland, NZ or Finland. (Or Estonia/Chile for second world countries)

>fetishize
not him but you sound like an extremely biased fuck.

>points out how examples given are bad to make the point the poster makes
>provides better examples to support the same point
>biased
I don't even.

Another thread where literaly NO ONE read or understands Marx.

MARXISM IS ABOUT OWNERSHIP OF LABOUR. and a million other things too. But if you think ownership of your labour is bad then respect yourself a little bit more, slave.

I do respect my ownership of my labor. That's why I'm a capitalist

The soon to be leading economy in the world will be the PRC and those are 'real communists' according to your definition.

Again, as compared to what?

I'd rather work 15 hours a day and have the possibility of making a life for me and my family instead of starving like in Venezuela, thanks to government intervention. And whereas Singapore and Hong Kong who adopted a liberal market have, since the 50's, risen dramatically the countries that never really adopted capitalist policies are as poor as they were back then.

The reason that I mention Hong Kong and Singapore is because they are perhaps the best examples of free markets with free trade, and in less then 50 years they have, because of that, managed to lift millions upon millions out of poverty - something no country has ever done before capitalism. It is the single greatest engine of wealth we have ever known.

Unless YOU paid for it, YOU don't own it.

That's something you stupid Marxists just don't get, loser.

India will overtake China in a couple decades.

>there are people for whom the reading of das kapital was a life-changing experience

it's literally Rand-tier economic thought lmao

This is someone who has never read Marx.

This is a troll.

>I have to read Marx to associate my own labor and wealth
People get mad when I compare Marxism to a religion, yet here we are

I'm not even that other guy, nor am I a Marxist, but it's fairly apparent from the comments you're making that you haven't read him. Ignorance, even of personally antithetical thoughts, is not something to be proud of.

But to imply that I don't appreciate my ownership of my own labor, just because I haven't read Marx is foolish, and borderline religious behavior. It's a foolish notion.

But you don't own your labor in a capitalist system, according to Marx. The exchange value given it by an employer must always be lesser than its use value, otherwise your employer would not derive a profit from your labor. You are not responding to this criticism by repeatedly and tediously stating that Marxism, like pretty much every other idea, has been taken to a religious extreme.

the problem you and Marx are making is you are equating ownership with value. How Marxists make that logical leap is beyond me but the two are unrelated.

You also assume I have an employer. I'm self employed.

I did not mean to assume you had an employer, I should have said, "the employer would not derive a profit from the labor of his employees."

I am not a Marxist. Now, that you would say "ownership is not the same thing as value" proves precisely his point: that your labor may be "drained," so to speak, of its value. I would like to see what you think "ownership" means, because in my estimation, the problem with both capitalists and Marxists is that you all have a faulty conception of property.

Not actually what Marx said. He said you don't own the products of your labor, but you own your labor in the sense you can choose who you want to sell it to. The problem is that the only way for the proletariat to survive is to sell your labor, thus alienating yourself from it's productions--hence the reason for exploitation.

I wish you "Marxists" would actually pick up a book he's written once and a while.

There's some really classic commie logical fallacies ITT.

That's a pedantic distinction. The consequence is the same in both of our cases.

No, it's one of the distinctions between the capitalist mode of production and the feudal. It's actually very important if you actually want to talk about Marxist theory (not that anyone does these days, and that goes twice for Marxists sad to say).

>poo in loos overtaking the han hive

never

I make 10 per hour and bank 500 at the end of the month. I would still have money left over if I made minimum wage. The problem is that people make terrible choices and blame it on anyone but themselves. There's 0 self reflection. Everyone I know who struggles with money does so because they can't manage money and contain their materialistic desires. How do you get to the point where you're working minimum wage with 3 children?

I'm saying you're being pedantic because, according even to you, my assessment of use and exchange values as they regard labor is fundamentally correct, you only have a problem with the way I phrased "But you don't own your labor" etc. If I had said, "you don't own the products of your labor," we wouldn't be having this conversation.

>something no country has ever done before capitalism
China and Russia massively improved the living standards of hundreds of millions, after the worst war in human history starting as feudal societies ravished by famines. Without external help.

>I'd rather work 15 hours a day and have the possibility of making a life for me and my family
Not much time left for actually living, and this if the ridiculous pressure doesn't drive you or someone you love into suicide.

Venezuela and most other examples are skewed by outside interventions, but let's even pick Cuba, a place with not too much wealth and silly ruling elite but solid living standards for an isolated island and higher life expectations than capitalist hellholes like Murica.

Either way, it's a silly as shit discussions since "real" free market or communism never were tried and most succesful examples of capitalism in the West were held together by a strong state.

>India will overtake China in a couple decades.
Based on what? China is already five times richer (which nearly the same growth) and pretty good plans for the future while India is still battling famines, corruption and is ruled by religious idiots. Besides, they have massive brain drain despite being a quasi democracy with some half assed freedoms.

More important is muh research and China is second after EU, given automation, there is no reason to assume India will be able to jump on the manufacturing train either.

>bank 500 at the end of the month.
And how the hell do you live on that in the first world? Also 50h a month is nothing, most poorfags work as much per week.

>Everyone I know who struggles with money does so because they can't manage money and contain their materialistic desires.
Sure, but WHY haven't they learned how to manage money? Why do they fall for muh materialism? "Lol they are stupid" is a juvenile answer ignoring all other factors.

>How do you get to the point where you're working minimum wage with 3 children?
Same as above: Stupid decisions. Just there is more to stupid decisions than being stupid. If you grew up in a family of rednecks who sheltered you from sex ed, screamed around and fucked their cousin while you tried to study for school, and ridiculed you for trying to get an education, it's not too likely that you'll grow into an adult who can make intelligent decisions. So you're going to buy a stupid truck to feel a bit better about your miserable existence, waste the money on alcohol and fuck your wife after coming home in the night from some crappy minimum wage job.

Obviously there are exceptions, people who managed to overcome all that shit and teach themselves all the important life skills, just it's not a very realistically outcome. Put 10 potentially bright kids into shitty households, and at least half of them will grow into fuck ups like their parents. (And that before we even touched the single parent memes)

>And how the hell do you live on that in the first world?

By not being a materialistic and consumerist child. He literally said that in his post, you mongoloid.

What do you mean how do I live with that? I don't make just 500, that's what is leftover after everything. It just accumulates until I need or want something. I already got 1k in emergency funds and I'm investing everything else. I work 4 10 hour shifts as a cnc operator.

It's no one's job to educate stupid people. There's a wealth of knowledge in the library, friends, family, coworkers, internet. There's honestly no excuse. If you're not willing to make the effort and sacrifices to rectify your mistakes then that's on you.

I grew up in the textbook shitty house. No father, terrible mother, living in ghetto and I came out okay. My mother now makes 90k and is so far in debt she's about to lose the house she's been paying for for the last 8 years.

If someone has the ability to educate themselves and refuses to it's their own fault. Any ignorance today can be attributed to laziness or poor management. I get the vibe that you want to live in a nanny state where the government becomes responsible for everything and personal responsibility isn't a thing.

If you're responsible then poverty is a temporary state but it turns out most poor people are poor for a reason.

If you actually cared about the poor you'd just events in their community to teach them proper skills like cooking, budgeting, and time management, but you won't. You'll bitch on the internet about how the government and society failed them and how we should increase government power or change our economic model for the retarded masses.

i read it in middle school, left me quite confused.

here's a good summary of the books:
futurecasts.com/Marx, Capital (Das Kapital) Vol 1 (I).htm

I read it for a political philosophy course. It made me realize just how repulsive and ignorant communists are, particularly given how all my peers fawned over his ideas while purporting to be liberals. Marx is a an absolute dunderhead who has no sense of nuance in his theories and his follows are without any grasp on reality.

Libertarian values are just extensions of egoism? Lmao, what a fucking retard. If money isn't what should be valued, what's the problem with financial inequality? Dumb commies trip up on the first step.

Name one

You mean besides the one in his image?

>If money isn't what should be valued, what's the problem with financial inequality?

Not a marxist but you never read marx, this is beyond retarded.

It's clear you haven't, actually.

Why should people work in a communist society? For values other than money. It's an extremely inescapable conclusion that Marx views the dominant value system as incorrect. Just look at the way he tears into the declaration of the rights of man, he calls it nothing more than egoistic fulfillment. You don't need resources to value what resources can't give.

You know, this has convinced me to not discuss Marx unless someone mentions detailed content from the texts.

Mate. You've not read capital 1, and you're confusing it with manifesto. A document written for committee. As a manifesto. Not as the critique of Political economy.

So you've gone from this person hasn't read Marx to he has but not this particular bit of Marx? Either user contradicts himself or Marx does.

I read (most of) it at university for my economics course. Before that I was kind of brainwashed into thinking anything related to Marxism was cancer. But it really did open my mind, I'm not a marxist/socalist by any stretch but it was an interesting take and he raised some good points, especially compared to studying neoclassical economics for so long.

>Why should people work in a communist society?
They would labor in order to fulfill their needs, with technology assisting in the more onerous parts of production. The driving force behind production in communist society would be necessity.

Obvious bait.

>. The exchange value given it by an employer must always be lesser than its use value, otherwise your employer would not
And he's wrong.

Because you're not using your own machines and equipment to produce your work, you are using someone else's equipment. If you think you could earn more on your own, you are free to quit your job any time you want.

It's amazing how you idiots think that you should be able to use other peoples items for free, when it is their capital that is at risk, not yours.

The whole point is that he wants to redefine "ownership," and here you are clinging to the very idea he wants to do away with, like an idiot.

In any event, your statement has absolutely nothing to do with my point. Whether or not the machines are formally owned (i.e. legally possessed) by the persons who invested capital in them (which, again, they couldn't possess without the violence monopoly), your labor is still treated for the exchange value, and not the use value, if you are an employee.

We'll see about that.

America is far more wealthy than Russia, so obviously they've done better. Unless you're a ruski, given the choice, anyone would choose to live in America over Russia, and the reason is simple. Like you say, there hasn't been a 100% capitalist/communist country, and Russia is no exception. Are you really sure that the wealth they've managed to scrape up isn't actually thanks to capitalism, and had they not tried to plan the economy they would've done much better? All the evidence points to that. And where do you think China got the money to help those millions upon millions of people from? Hong Kong perhaps? For crying out loud... I really can't believe you'd use China as an example. Because it means that you've looked at China who is leeching off of Hong Kong that can afford to vastly improve their living standar and even help China along the way, and then say 'Hey! China's economic system is better! We should opt for that one!'. It don't make much sense to me, no much at all.

The same goes with claiming that Cuba has a solid living standard while ignoring the fact that the living standard in America is in a completely different league. It isn't for nothing that the dear leader didn't use his own hospitals when he got sick, but went to America...

And it isn't a shit discussion, you're just ignorant. You're right in that there has never existed a country that was either 100% capitalist or communist, they're all mixed economies to varying degrees. But when you actually look at the data, you will see a clear and obvious pattern: the countries with the most political and economical freedom are the countries that have had the most success, whereas the countries that deviate from free markets and free trade are doing worse off.

We don't even have to look at the West. Like I mentioned earlier, Hong Kong and Singapore are the best examples in the East off the success of capitalism, for they have had extremely unregulated markets and in a short time turned from backwater holes to modern, wealthy nations.

>Just there is more to stupid decisions than being stupid
Nothing that actually matters. Unless someone held a gun to their head, forcing them to either get someone pregnant or get pregnant against their will, it's on them.

Unless you want everyone to live in the gutter, you don't set up a system that punishes people for making good choices, while benefitting people who make bad choices. Whatever you subsidize, you will get more of.

I;ve gotten 2/3 of the way through it. Its kind of hard going in an odd way.

Marx ususally goes over a subject again and again, but occasionally giving a new insight. Its maddening. The footnotes often are more interesting than the text. Also fuck Bushels and linen

The belief that there is such a thing as a free lunch, that the economy is a zero-sum-game, that communism hasn't been tried etc.

>The driving force behind production in communist society would be necessity
Here's another idiotic idea for the guy who asked.

Do you really think any government is capable of knowing what is 'necessary' in the market? For all the people? Better than they themselves know what they want?

You be trippin' balls, man.

Haven't got around to it yet senpai, it's just so damn big

What does Capital cover that isn't described in Wage Labor and Capital or Critique of the Gotha Program?

>communism wasnt successful enough to even last for 80 years
LOL! why do people follow this broken system?

Because it's a stupid definition he argues for.

If you didn't pay for it, it isn't yours, you stupid communist.

And if monopoly is what you're worried about, it's big government you should be scared of since they're behind pretty much all the monopolies out there. There are extremely few natural monopolies. It is by getting special privileges by the government that most monopolies are formed, and kept afloat.

This whole Marxist myth of bransch concentration is just that, a myth. A recent study (Gutierrez & Philippino, 2017) shows, yet again, that more regulation = more monopoly.

And your point is just stupid. If you think you could earn more elsewhere, on your own, quit your job. Claiming that the guy who makes it possible for you to make a living and survive is doing you harm is just retared beyond belief.

marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1939/capital.htm

Ruhle is really good

and who made the capital user?
.

pretty much the reverse of what im saying. The people will individually and collectively decide what to produce. There wont be some government dictating everybody else

Nothing important, it's about as relevant to understanding economics as Harry Potter is.

Other people who have engaged in voluntary transactions in the free market.

Or are you implying that Bill Gates robbed people of their capital and then made them work for him for a lousy pay? Did he hold a gun against their heads and force them to buy his products?

>The people will individually and collectively decide what to produce
Carry on.

All right fuckers I don't want to be wrong any more.

I understand communism as an almost post-scarcity utopia where automation and efficiency have improved production so much that necessary goods are virtually free and work is only done out of craftsman's joy.

Socialism is where the means of production are cooperatively owned by the workforce that provides the labour.

>Socialism is where the means of production are owned by the state.
In practice.

Okay, but as long as the surplus is distributed primarily to the workforce and not to the state (after taxes obviously), owning the means of production is a figurehead role as the workforce is running, maintaining, and profiting from it.

If the surplus goes to the state, then from the perspective of the workforce it is still capitalism, as they are still renting their labour to the owners and get no direct share of the profit.

My first thought: Communism didn't work because it was draining resources from smaller states to sustain livable conditions in Soviet Russia you ignorant fuck

Your point: Capitalism is doing the exact same thing right now

Fuck man did an argument on the internet just change my mind about something? What the hell?

>I understand communism as an almost post-scarcity utopia where automation and efficiency have improved production so much that necessary goods are virtually free and work is only done out of craftsman's joy.

That's from Stalin and it's indeed utopian. There's finite resources hence post-scarcity will never happen. Communism is the real movement that abolishes the current state of things; private property, commodity production, currency, wage labor and so on. What arises out of this movement is a society were producers freely associates with each other, producing whatever they see fit

If it did, you've been duped, considering his point is wrong.

Capitalism is what creates the pie that then gets shared. Communism just takes the pie and distributes it, without ever asking how the pie got there in the first place.

>a society were producers freely associates with each other, producing whatever they see fit
You mean capitalism?

Of course you can eat healthy, but the working poor of America don't.

This dude's right, it's a systemic issue. My health teacher in high school used to get McDonald's breakfast on his way to school, he'd have a 32 oz McCoke cup on his desk while teaching.

>Marx is better at pointing out injustices than offering solutions
that's really well put

No, I mean communism. I'm not free to partake in production of the goods I need due to private property rights. In order to fulfill my needs I must exchange my labor power

On my to read list, don't plan on it changing anything.