Opinions on his writings?

Opinions on his writings?

I don't know how someone as smart as him could take the idea of a universal class seriously.

It's very hard to have an opinion on his writings that is actually based on his writings, because he spent decades locked in churning out essays. With that said, his economics have to be updated but he presents a very interesting picture of society [in what little I have read of Das Kapital]. I wish he didn't write the Manifesto though because it really became a scapegoat for people on the other side of Hegel to shit on him without reason (I'd go as far as saying that many "Right" folks would genuinely agree with much of his criticism of capital).

A singular genius, whom the Western tradition still can't handle and has to either soften or demonise in order to escape from the mental distress caused by engaging with his analysis.
One of the tricks I noticed that academics will do is focus exclusively on the "early Marx", creating a picture of a thinker still basicaly in line with the liberal tradition, somebody who was concerned with abstract human freedom.
Of course this is absolute rubbish, Marx digested, spat out and overcame the Enlightenment during his life, it's the late Marx who is the true genius. He was not in any way a moralist, a liberal or a utopian, these labels are for tiny minds.

he was certainly a utopian

>He thinks the labor theory of value and his theories on how to overcome the monetary system took genius
Absolutely not

>Rightists would agree with many of his critiques of liberalism by virtue of them being critiques of liberalism
No, his critiques of liberalism come from a purely materialistic viewpoint

too jewy

In pertinence to modern economics his works don't hold much ground. His analysis was made at a time when the structure of the economy was steel and textile mills, and isn't very applicable anymore. In general Marxism seems to be on its last leg in academia.

There's not too much functional difference between a 19th century textile mill and a Chinese t-shirt factory desu. We've just moved the child labour, unsafe conditions and 12-hour workdays offshore where we don't have to look at them.

Everyone gets up in arms about the economic/political concepts but it's the use of imagery and prose that's exceptional imho

Father of sociology. He's the reason we explain things socio-economically. He rekt idealism, and put forth a materialism that is productive. And a p amazing journalist too

What's a good starting point for his journalist's output, the Penguin volume of "Dispatches for the New York Tribune"?

Yes, but you don't have to be a materialist to recognize that a lot of things he has written are true.

Would have been better if he hadn't been tainted by Hegelianism.

massive pseud
one of the weakest critiques of idealism, horrible journalist senpai desu faggot bug

Uhm he rekt both Hegel & feuerbach. You prolly didn't understand what he was talking about, and in what way the arguments went.

No! Start with Rheinische Zeitung.
Interesting anecdote: There were rumours of an acceleration of thieves that stole trees from the forests. So people were complaining about amoral laborers that did this. Marx found out, that this was not the case, the same amount of trees got chopped by the same people. the difference was that formerly a baron held the land, and didn't care for these random trees. But now a capitalist bought the land from the baron, and produced wood from the trees. So suddenly the chopping of trees became a problem. this was to be become part of Marx's mirror thesis. The morality is determined by the economic relations of a time and place. A normal practice became criminalized, when the economic productivity changed it's function.

True, but those jobs are significantly better than the conditions they would otherwise face. In fact, as their economies develop, the need for long arduous manufacturing will be phased out entirely. Generally most economies have a shrinking percentage of people working in the primary sector as services become dominant.

>There's not too much functional difference between a 19th century textile mill and a Chinese t-shirt factory desu
That's just completely false. Workplace fatality rates in the US in the 19th century were around 300 per 100,000. In modern China it's 11 per 100,000. That's still five times higher than modern US, but to claim that China is anywhere near as bad as the Industrial Revolution is completely disingenuous.

>dat ideology speaking
Well services are instable as fuck, and not generating wealth like proper industry does. It'sj just a type of luxury.

tfw capital reading group died

>tfw working on my synthesis of Marxism and contemporary Aristotelianism as a true praxis for the 21st century
Surprised nobody else did this tbhfam

You're much better off reading Keynes general theory anyways

>signed up for class on marx
>knew we would read capital
>first day of class
>read syllabus
>entire second half of class is reading queer/feminist/disabled/black interpretations of marx
>dropped

Somehow making basic human needs easier to satisfy makes the economy less stable.

Why do we have to do this everyday? Don’t people get tired of doing this. Obviously it’s people who hate Marx that start these threads, and it’s always the same conversation, which inevitable ends in the thread being flooded by enraged neo-Nazis posting about how we are all brainwashed by Jews and then that’s it.
Marx’s biggest contradiction is to show us the problems of liberalism. He said I too believe in enlightenment value, but these are in tension with, not supported by liberal democratic capitalist society. The basic fact is as true today as it ever was. All around us we are seeing bourgeois democracy fail to produce policy in line with the public will.

Marx’s materialist conception of history is also profound and still relevant today.


Marxism is making a comeback in academic history. There was an explosion of Marxist history analysis in the 50s on Britian which contained many of the centuries greatest historians. Once postmodernism hit everybody started writing ‘micro-history’ or ‘sensory history” or other random bullshit like that. People are sick of it and now returning to good hardnose materialist analysis.

Couldn't they just... find female, disabled and black people within Marx's actual works? He wrote plenty about the capitalist economy relying on women's unpaid domestic labour, the Euro-American slave trade, workers who lost limbs in the machinery, etc. Maybe not so much queer stuff since very few were "out" at the time.

>which inevitable ends in the thread being flooded by enraged neo-Nazis posting about how we are all brainwashed by Jews
This one's actually been surprisingly comfy so far, hopefully all the retards are busy spamming "read The Bell Curve" elsewhere.

>People are sick of it and now returning to good hardnose materialist analysis.
Fuck, I hope so.

that wouldnt be very woke now would it

I mean, union membership has been naturally declining for decades, same with membership in radical-left workers parties. The only places where revolutions actually occured were backwards agrarian nations. As far as I'm concerned there's no reputable way to prove the falling rate of profit, as it appears now Marx was wrong in his analysis

>workers who lost limbs in the machinery
this is a kino theme.

Marxists are still a minority in academia. Most former Marxist influence has shifted into the social democrat sphere

>the public will
How many levels of spooks do you even have to be to say something like this, holy hell. Everything Rousseau did was a mistake.

*to be on
fix'd

>union membership has been naturally declining for decades
the word "naturally" is doing the work of a whole sweatshop here
>As far as I'm concerned there's no reputable way to prove the falling rate of profit
isn't it enough to just look at a graph of the rate of profit in the last 150 years or so?

Those graphs aren't really taken seriously. I'm no expert, but from what I know, they don't account for many different variables

also the general way unions structure themselves has pretty much led to their demise

Hmm. Can you elaborate on that a bit or point me to some source?

what has lead to their demise is a succesful propaganda campaign by the rich & powerful

>propaganda
Jesus. Organizations can easily survive propaganda, but it is only structural factors that can really kill them - one of the things that really did unions in were right-to-work laws.

the reason they were able to put those right-to-work laws into place is exactly the propaganda.
think about it, do you think someone campaigning on ending medicare would ever win an election? but if you package it in the right way and have the media blare that packaging all over the country you're good to go.

to be fair, a vital part is also the democrats' disawoval of the working class (in act if not in words, they still like to present themselves as the party of the little guy) and ditching unions for middle-class white-collar suburban voters, upper-class techies and similar groups.

He doesn't on his later works, at least not literally

No, it's the organization and goals/ aims of the unions which discourage younger workers from joining

I really dont have any specific sources speaking about this, I know it from reading several different articles a while back. Google "why union membership is dropping" or something. Just know it really has nothing to do with "bourgeoise opression" and more to do with unions being generally stubborn and old-fashioned

yeah, younger workers don't like better pay and better working conditions, that stuff is passé

Or because they dislike the poor management/ narrow-minded goals of the unions that usually end up making things worse. There's a reason why only one in ten non-union workers want to join a union. Also the majority of US workers believe that their boss generally respects them

>the poor management/ narrow-minded goals of the unions that usually end up making things worse
narrow minded goals like not being willing to work for pennies while the CEO is snorting coke off a high-end hooker's ass
>There's a reason why only one in ten non-union workers want to join a union. Also the majority of US workers believe that their boss generally respects them
like I said, propaganda
mind you, I'm not saying unions are perfect, but there is no perfection, every organization has its problems

reals > feels
piketty > marx

actually feels are the only actual reals that exist.