Has anybody read Marx and still stayed a true capitalist?

of-course-when-production-is-hightened-value-of-things-drop-just-how-water-is-free.

the communist manifesto takes like literally ten minutes to read

Dude, if anybody's actually even wread mXrx, then theyll know that mXrx never said that capitalism was evil, and its all entended as a counterpoint against a different opinnion which was prevelent at the time, which was the "laviathan" opinion of john Lock. Therefore mXrx was saying that the "laviathan" opinon was the one to beat, and it was only later that the people who disagread with capitalism, aka "Laviathans" themselves, andopted his booklet and tried to turn it to there own agenda. That's when they were trying to make classes for teaching their different items of agenda, such as the "proliteriot" class and the "bojuiosei" class, which they held for several hours per week. So now you can see why mXrx said things like "Their is a spector haunting Europe, the spector of Commuanism," which is because he knew what they were doing, but he was really oppose to "Laviathan" opinions, which is what it ended up becoming as.

i wonder if he ever had a clue of what would become of his movement?

If-you-have-limitless-of-a-good-trade-and-progress-and-healthy-society-ends-because-it-is-unatural-generally.

>He thinks The labor theory of value was correct

Lenin mostly followed what Marx proposed
in fact Lenin was less extreme because he implemented NEP which had quite some success
Marx was either naive or malicious, probably latter because despite his ''people are divided by class'', he really hated Slavs for example
so did Lenin, ironically

Ryhzknd-pls-leave

>wealth is the result of hard work
>the LTV is incorrect

chose one and only one classcucks

You-can-be-a-material-equaltist-without-being-a-marxist.

...

He actually did make a lot of solid predictions about the future of capitalism.

This. It wasn't Marxism per say, tho. I took a online sociology course and was shocked to discover that they teach simply Marxism as well as how retarded it was.

What-did-he-enlighten?
guilds-and-unions-existed-since-the-dawn-of-time.

I read Wage Labor and Capital. I also plan on reading The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Capital is too big and if I ever look into it I'll be listening to the audiobook.

I dont think anyone in this thread has ever read Capital.

Globalism, centralization of market power, increasing automation of the workforce, and unsustainable welfare states to appease an increasingly unemployed populace.

These have all come true.

The ecological problem.

I recently re-read my old college edition of the gommunist manifesto which has a number of very helpful supplemental items with historical context (feuerbach theses, the commodity fetishism bit form early in capital, bits of hegel etc), I've been mucking about with the "reading capital" stuff slighly on yt. Gregor Mendel, the True Believer and author of Vol. 1's introduction, claimed in one documentary to have read Capital (V1 at least) at age 18 and that it was a big deal for him. So on the one hand this is encouraging, although one is wont to miss lots of things at age 18. Not that anyone cares but that was my Dostoevsky phase, at that point.

In my scant understanding, it still seems quaint to me that Marx apparently insisted on labour, labour-product, the physical and psychological activity of work itself as a central philosophical category which defines the human experience. I instead conceive that categories like the sexual marketplace, which a place like heartiste.wordpress.com it seems to me truthfully harps upon, are foundational of same. I also now have a vague working idea of how the SJW trifecta categories (sex, race, sexual orientation) are largely absent from Marx's work, much to the frustration of later leftists. Actually I have a cynical expectation that reading Capital may be more pleasant for the fact of the absence of these categories, in favor of a more technical discussion by an old dead almost-white guy.

A major meme among my fellow undergrads in the first unserious go-through was that communism can only work on the small scale", or a notion to that effect. I wonder about the history of that idea in young people in the united states. I bet Veeky Forums has some personal experience with same.

...

>Implying I believe neo-liberal memes

Ye...yeah. Fuck communism!

>It really annoys me how Conservatives sperg out whenever they see his picture and his ideas and discount EVERYTHING he says because "lol marx is dum. Ppl died!!!"
Neo-Conservatism ruined everything

Which is funny, because Neo-Conservatives are barely reskinned Trotskyists.

Likely not. He envisioned the proletarians taking power once class stratification bourgeois had rendered the bourgeoisie too small to resist, not revolutionary wars in nations where only a small percentage of the poor are authentically proletarian.

This post suggests you haven't even read the Manifesto, Marx discusses how guilds were borne out of high medieval struggles against nobility and destroyed by the rise of capitalism.

You ought to read the Manifesto. It's only around 20 pages, and lays out the principles and motivations of communism. Even if you think communism is a bad thing, it's important to know what communism is and isn't.

t. cuck

It actually made me more capitalistic.

Marxism raises some decent points, but it's proposed solutions are fucking bonkers. Also, the rise of social democracy kind of puts a giant hole in his key arguments. There was never going to be a revolution, just a general improvement of conditions until jobs are exported overseas. Sure, hindsight might be 20/20, but Marx just isn't relevant anymore, except as a historical document (in which case, it's invaluable towards understanding the 19th and 20th centuries).

The problems he lays are very real and his vision of history is interesting at the very least, that is undeniable unless you're a braindead /pol/cuck. His solutions, on the other hand, are terrible and rely on nigh magical altruism and goodwill.

Capitalism probably looks a lot better from the top.

Marx was self-contradictory in his assertions of the human mind being both observably dynamic while somehow having a static, singular core of thought that was supposedly to be discovered through social experimentation in one economically sensible but silly way. The reason he isn't right about everything is because that's literally his entire basis for his assertions.

If Karl Marx was correct about "human nature", whatever the fuck that is, humans would act the way he wanted them to. Sure, animistic human cultures will depict essentialist attitudes, but thinking that is somehow inherently the "core" way for a human to live is contradicted by observable reality. Obviously humans are interested in increasing their sphere of influence for selfish desires, or else they wouldn't fucking do it. Why contradict observable reality as a basis for your argument? Saying "but no that's a social mechanism blinding us from our true nature" is like wtf dude we invented this social mechanism ourselves and you're trying to invent another one, it's a simple hypocritical argument that he weaves into a MASSIVE amount of complicated language. Gonna stop ranting about this.

tl;dr Marx invents his own bases like 99% of other philosophers

>Marxism raises some decent points, but it's proposed solutions are fucking bonkers.
Marx doesn't really do much in the way of proposing solutions.

>If Karl Marx was correct about "human nature", whatever the fuck that is, humans would act the way he wanted them to.
Why? Karl Marx's argument was that humans act in accordance with their Material Conditions, I.E. what any philosopher 'wants' is irrelevant.

Him arguing that humans act in accordance with their material conditions, which is obviously true, becomes baseless fallacy the moment he decides that humans are behaving incorrectly in accordance with their material conditions in observable reality. How could he come to this conclusion? Through observing reality? Reality is giving him a different answer than what he is putting on the table, which automatically makes him wrong as fuck. Regardless of any oughts being pulled out of an is's ass, humans are not interested in collective essentialism, and they demonstrate it in their behavior. Even North Korea, the best example we have of this today on a national scale, has a weighted benefit system for those that reinforce the socio-political system, and is also a fucking capitalistic, asymmetrically wealthy oligarchy at it's head. Humans demonstrate very clearly what they want in reality, and reality contradicts Marx's "oughts".

I have. Marx uses logical fallacies, pushes cognitive biases, don't offer reasons (only unreasoned expectations and demands), and his moral "reasoning" was centered on a quasi-religious entitlement to resources ("but he was an atheist!"... doesn't matter, entitlement without reason is cult bullshit).

Here is what "glimpsing followers" BELIEVE:
- Elimination of Classism
- Workers own the Means of Production

Here is what Marx had written:
- "The State is not necessary. It is necessary for a State to exist in order for Justice and Order to exist. Power imbalances are required to ensure the freedom of weak, which can only be taken from the strong."
~ Communist Manifesto
- "The Means are metaphorical. The Workers, as a class, would spiritually be in control of the Means of Production, not legally in control. For Production cannot exist without Order, and Order cannot exist without the threat of Force."
~ Communist Manifesto

He was a either for a rich aristocracy or anarchy.
He saw both as ways for himself and his supporters to gain wealth via imposing themselves into leadership roles.
He used propaganda to do this.
People believed the propaganda without reading the Manifesto.

Capitalism is when free people exchange goods, time, skill, labor, transport, space and talent for intermediary transactions.

Marxism is double edged sword of either corrupt anarchy or corrupt oligarchies preaching that they are the opposite in taglines while underlining text explains it's all wordplay and that his buddies basically get to tell others what to do and steal from any free thinkers.

>How many people here thought Marx was against capitalism? Marx was against capitalism? Almost nobody? Max wasn't against capitalism? How many think he wasn't against capitalism? One? Why do you think he wasn't against capitalism? Just get to a mic.

>Student: He wasn't against capitalism because Marx thought capitalism was a necessary step in getting to socialism.

>Professor: You're exactly right. So what Marx thought about capitalism was, and we're going to understand the reasons for this in detail in the next couple of lectures, that for a certain phase of history it was essential. He thought capitalism was the most innovative, dynamic, productive mode of production that had ever been dreamed up, and there was no way you could even think abut a socialist or a communist society developing unless you had capitalism first. And Marx would have had absolutely no sympathy for the Russian Revolution which was done in a peasant society, or the Chinese communist system either. He would have said they were completely premature because in the end it's going to be capitalism which is necessary to generate the wherewithal to make socialism possible. So he wouldn't have had any sympathy with the Leninist or Stalinist projects, which we'll talk about later.
oyc.yale.edu/transcript/808/plsc-118

I can't, for the life of me, understand why would any "marxist" describe himself as an anti-capitalist.

It's the best possible system at the moment, a historical inevitability, and Marx knew this.

Marx never criticized the social democracy we experience today.

"I believe it's total freedom"

THERE IS NO PRIVATE PROPERTY UNDER MARXISM.

-

"I believe it's just"

STEALING BECAUSE YOU DON'T WANT TO WORK ISN'T JUSTICE

-

"workers deserve to own the means of productions"

WE HAVE THAT IT'S CALLED A SELF-OWNED BUSINESS. YOU DON'T GET TO SIGN TO WORK FOR SOMEONE ELSE AND THEN RANDOMLY DEMAND TO BE THE CEO AND A SHAREHOLDER.

I'm not sure I hear there is a lot to read for Marx in Das Capital.

I feel like spending that amount of time reading something I will feel like my investment in time has to be worth reading it, and therefore feel like I have to agree with it.

That's probably how most Uni kids get into it, its the first long form thing they read and feel like just cos it took a lot of time it's worth something.

...

Capitalist pig!

Workers of the world unite!

((Haha, just kidding. I agree with you.))

>I feel like spending that amount of time reading something I will feel like my investment in time has to be worth reading it, and therefore feel like I have to agree with it.
This is the worst way to approach reading books.If you agree with it already, you're getting nothing out of a book.

Read Marx because he's an essential part of the western canon at this point. Even if you disagree with him, you have to understand his positions and understand why you disagree with him to follow intellectual developments in the 20th century.

He's probably the single most influential Philosopher of History, period. You cannot into historiagraphy without understanding Marx. You will always, always be pleb tier. You literally will not be able to read between the lines and engage in meta-history. Also, hilariously, I think, there's a good chance you'll start spouting Marxian interpretations without even realizing it.

Pretty much all 20th century political philosophy riffs off of Marx in some degree, and people have made their claims to fame off of trying to rebut part of Marx's works.

If you don't want to read Das Kapital, find a good (Academic) introductory text. But whatever you do, don't avoid Marx because you don't think you'll agree with him. Understand Marx because you're not going to get anywhere without that.

The assumption being that capitalism is a voluntary exchange of goods and services doesn't exactly hold up when the members of society who don't own capital or property are forced to work in fear of starvation, and when companies deliberately lie about their products to make people purchase them.

No one will argue these intrinsic flaws off the capitalist systems, the question becomes if there is an economic model that more adequately provides an environment that allows the greatest number of people to successfully raise their personal standard of living according to their own determination of that standard? As of now, probably not.

meant for

>members of society who don't own capital or property are forced to work in fear of starvation
People being forced to work to survive? The horror!

>companies deliberately lie about their products to make people purchase them.

If you live in a time where the sum of human knowledge is always at your fingertips and you still get tricked maybe you deserve it

it made me self aware that as a bougeouis, i need to to oppress and shit on the plebs

Everything-Marxist-must-be-burned.
If-you-want-equal-materials-we-can-attempt-to-equalize-it-we-could-just-legalize-theft-and-we-have-communism.

Marxism-isn't-academia-it-is-Marxism.

Yes, as a store owner and boss of 200 employees, I can safely say that I oppress and shit on them when I give them hourly wages to work at my shop.

It makes perfect sense, I should kill myself because I "exploit" these poor workers!

There-is-0-truths-to-marxism-and-zero-purposes-to-its-existance-it-is-a-cult-created-to-harm-and-destroy-a-group.

The-workers-have-power-and-rights-this-is-not-marxism-this-is-nonslavery-mercantalism.

Why do you write like this? Are you trying to be eccentric and weird like rei?

Well you guys are actually furthering the Marxist cause, because the Marxists believe capitalism need to get as shitty as possible so it reaches a tipping point of revolution.

No wonder that commies and lolbertarians tend to be both Jews, they're the same fucking people.

Well-turns-out-people-and-society-works-with-people-owning-their-production-well-time-to-burn-all-this-non-sense-that-caused-millions-of-deaths-for-materials.

Delenda-Est-Marxismus!

This,-the-base-for-my-state-of-being-is-tribal-and-socialist-in-nature-I-care-more-about-the-life-of-my-people-than-materials.

Intellectualized-theft-barbarity-warmongering-slaving-and-lowering-the-peoples-standard-of-living-for-abstract-invented-goals-and-commandments-interpreted-by-the-interests-of-the-Marxists.

Who's rei?

Kill-these-people-for-extra-gold-they-are-said-arbituary-group-(X)-get-mercenary-work-done-for-free-and-power-concentrated-in-yourselves-collecting-more-power-over-the-masses-than-anything-that-has-existed-in-history.
Communism-is-a-masterpiece-in-its-design-to-enslave-the-entire-world.

>why-am-I-not-a-Communist?
Probably-because-I-value-my-own-thoughts-indepence-and-sovreignty-over-some-nonsense-spewed-by-a-rationalist.

This dash writing shit in every reply is some sort of cancer i tell ya

Ill try read more into Marx but I can't say I'll read the whole lot. I read books with skepticism not optimism, thats why I come to the conclusion that if a book isn't work my time I will not read it.

That said you sound like the typical soapbox, elitist if you do not read this you are some sort of lesser person type. Which, as far as I know, doesn't align with anti-class marxism.

Marx is about labor exploitation because capital. The rest is either to support this idea or a tangent. His next step is socialism, which is socially owned capital, and all his comments show even though he is in favor of utopia, things like inequality and wage-labor are acceptable in socialism. Socialism eventually will give way to gommie paradise. He pins the primary problem as being the private ownership of capital. He wasn't a fan of markets as he felt markets were the method by which capitalists exploited people, but people confuse this for thinking socialism means centrally planned marketless economy, when the focus is really about the social ownership of capital. Marketless, moneyless post-scarcity utopia is a later step, and people get too obsessed with this idea, and many Marxists are anti-capitalists, so they don't want capitalism-lite market-socialism, they want to jump straight to commie utopia with 5 year plans.

Marx thought equality was a silly goal, not possible in the short run, and only possible in a theoretical gommie utipia. What was important was to end exploitation.

Why can't I find either of those quotes using google? Did you make them up?

Free trade of commodities, which is a good thing, takes advantage of trading blocs and competitive advantage.

But prevent multinationals. Once a multinational can threaten to move assets out of your country, they control your country's economic policy through economic blackmail. Your country must be nice to job creators, or they'll create jobs somewhere else. Wealth concentration to the current level is likely harmful to the economy. It would arguably be better for the economy if the top 10% owned 50% of the wealth instead of the top 1%.

Mild forms of socialism can arguably provide more capital to entrepreneurs and start ups which are what drive economic growth. You can cut out the parasitic capitalist middle man that demands a cut for capital, and channel capital more directly to entrepreneurs, and use profits for infrastructure, educating new generations of entrepreneurs, and opening doors for potential entrepreneurs. But this is only if a nation and the citizen majority has control of the capital.

This is why China is building up state owned corporations. The nation controls them, so they can't betray the nation. China doesn't give a shit about equality. Unfortunately they seem not to give a shit about human rights or democratic government either.

>People who think they have "read" Marx because they spent 10 minutes reading the Manifesto

Unless you have read Capital your opinion is rubbish

VERY strange post. Those quotes are not in the CM

Granted that eventuality, couldn't even corporatism on that scale be offset in a country with less barriers to entry into markets? Lower corporate taxes and regulations for new industry to replace the lost employment. I'm just not sure the multinationals hold all the bargaining chips given a properly incentivized public.

Unless you haven't read all of von Mises' works you can't say anything about Austrian school. This is how you sound.

>Granted that eventuality, couldn't even corporatism on that scale be offset in a country with less barriers to entry into markets? Lower corporate taxes and regulations for new industry to replace the lost employment.
You'd have to develop capital, which is what China is doing. But this really only works if you're already undeveloped.

>I'm just not sure the multinationals hold all the bargaining chips given a properly incentivized public.
But multinationals have the ability to improperly incentivize the public

Private property refers to individual ownership of the means of production -- factories, mines, movie studios

>lot of good points I had never thought of before

Such as?

Wage degradation, concentration of wealth in fewer hands, and the necessary widening of the wealth gap

What axioms about individual human behavior does Marx assume in capital?

a mom and pop shop, a mechanic's garage, a private farm, a small diner, a grocer's shop, a taxi driver's multiple cars, etc.

>Middle term history for a few super-industrialized countries over a period of 30 or so years means more than literally everywhere else in the world at the same time as well as the 70 years before that.

You aren't too bright, are you? Wealth has never been more decentralized, and there is no "necessary widening of the wealth gap", the aggregate wealth gap of the richest 1% and the poorest 1% is narrowing, not widening.

What you are seeing is a squeeze of the middle/ upper-middle classes either into pure upper class or lower class in a few industrialized countries, which is in no way what Marx was talking about.

>Has anybody read Marx and still stayed a true capitalist?
Yes, here I am.
No one has read Hayek and remained a Marxist.
Also Marx was philosophy, not economy.
If you think Marx was an economist over a philosopher then you're dangerously stupid.

Is this:
what you're looking for, perhaps?

Well, Kapital was a ground breaking critique of political economy

The Manifesto was a pamphlet mostly written by Engels

So yes, you should read Kapital to understand what Marx was talking about.

Marx did not adopt any axioms, and did not need to adopt any axioms given that his study was based on observation.

The Austrian School assumes that people act in their rational self-interest and works off of that, when in reality there is no reason to believe that humans are rational actors. Marxism looks at history and creates a framework that would seem to describe human behavior quite well.

Nope.

I disliked his positivist view on history. Anyone claiming to predict the direction of history doesnt have the right to speak about history.

I read Hayek and am still a Marxist*. I like pre-Marxist socialist theories too like Ricardan Socialism.

I agree a centrally planned economy is stupid, but I don't really see how that contradicts Marx. It contradicts Stalinism, which I don't like.

But Marx didn't think that the future was predictable but rather there were certain trends and patterns that were likely to repeat.

I read the Communist Manifesto, before I studies mainstream economics. Honestly, you can only support communism if you are literally clueless about how Capitalism works, and why it works.

You have to have a good understanding of capitalism to be communist desu

Marx never had a "plan" for the communist future. According to his own theory it will only come about when the capitalist mode of production makes itself redundant and the proles then take action. He did believe that there would be some revolutionary change or else he wouldn't have been involved in radical politics like he was

Marx did believe capitalism was "progressive" to the extent it accelerated the productive forces (i.e. technology to make things) of society to unprecedented heights. However, he wouldn't have critiqued capitalism if he didn't think that there was something severely dysfunctional about it, that there was some evil in it, especially with regards to the way capitalism led to the deepening exploitation of workers.

Because imperfection>>>>>complete failure

>he fell for the post-scarcity meme
Jesus christ do you wear Pepe shirts in real life too?

Most people think Marx invented Marxism-Leninism even though Lenin was 13 when Marx died.

Did the big nice capitalism man teach you that socialism means no markets?

>There was never going to be a revolution, just a general improvement of conditions until jobs are exported overseas.
You might be right ultimately, but can't you think about the implications of this? What happens when the whole world becomes industrialized? China is already being priced out of the labor market and producers are moving to Vietnam and Bangladesh. Maybe China can shift to a service economy somehow, but down the road that is a deadend; if everyone in the world lives on nonstop consumption the possiblity of supporting human life on the scale we are now will not be possible within a century or two.

I choose the second option, as it is quite obvious that wealth isnt simply the result of hard work

>You literally will not be able to read between the lines and engage in meta-history
Bullshit

>Marx did not adopt any axioms