Why do liberal arts departments in universities continue to teach from a Marxist perspective when economists have...

Foucault's ideas are hardly Marxist at all. This guy did more to harm the left than all fascist and right-wing movements ever did.

It's dominated by postmodernist thinking which holds subjectivity above objectivity. Creating theoretical models for understanding society is more about deliberately skewing your viewpoint to try and uncover new truths, or at least that's what it was originally about. They call this using a "lens" to look at things. Marxist theory could help you explain phenomena through the lens of class struggle, and feminist theory through the lens of sex and gender. Each offered their own explanations for behavior and societal formations.

The problem comes from people who never want to take the lenses off, and for whom they become the permanent reality. Essentially, they adopt what should be a mere tool for scholarship as their personal point of view and become emotionally invested in it, removing an ability to think critically about their work.

>The problem comes from people who never want to take the lenses off, and for whom they become the permanent reality. Essentially, they adopt what should be a mere tool for scholarship as their personal point of view
Why should they even put on this tense in the first place if it is not a tool of analyzing reality, but creating your own constructed world? Why would this even be used for scholarship if it is not practical or real in any way?

Why don't you ask these sites instead, OP?

Truth can only be accessed partially.

What would be the alternative?
Related: I am a leftist and it sucks that the radical left mostly consists of anarchists, communists and so on, which ideologies I see as pipe dreams.

Degrowth is one of the few alternatives, even though still heavily influenced by Marxism. I do think that Marx can be valuable, but some of that Marxist thought is very dogmatic not to mention smothered with theory, and of course a lot of it is wrong.

nice quads

Academia is all about creating paradigms and exploring the world within them. Playing the cold rationalist who analyzes the world objectively is not as easy as you would think. People are subjective as fuck and those who focus on the facts don't get listened to.

Because, as I said:
>It's dominated by postmodernist thinking which holds subjectivity above objectivity
Modern literary theory holds that reality is subjective and the only way to really understand it is to view it from as many subjective angles as possible, rather than attempting to affect a phony "objective" stance. In fact using these subjective lenses is how identity politics first got its start since it revealed the race and sex biases inherent in many traditional modes of thinking. Notably in feminism. This is where intersectionality came about, when somebody applied the lens of racial struggle to feminist theory itself, effectively studying critical theory with another competing theory, it showed that feminism was inherently oriented from a white perspective and had been since its inception. This is what caused the feminist movement to implode going into the 90s and start branching and splintering into its modern day sects that deal with identity politics.

So to answer your question more directly, they believe the world as humans live in it is already constructed (familiar with the term "race is a social construct?"), and so he who knows how to alter the human understanding of the world can effectively shape reality.

Often "Marxism" in academia just means looking at something with a focus on the class dynamics involved. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with actual Marxist economics. You don't have to be a socialist or a communist to write an archaeological paper (for example) from a Marxist perspective.

"A Marxist analysis of an Ojibwe fur trade era site in SW Ontario" -- not a real paper, I pulled that out of my ass, but all that title tells you is they're analyzing the data with a focus on class dynamics and class struggles. Which is a perfectly valid avenue for inquiry even if you think Marxism is a bunch of discredited bullshit.

Liberal arts is about giving every single dumb cunt a chance to go to college/uni without any standards, therefore giving academic institutions the chance to get some of that sweet federal money without lowering the standards of important degrees. If liberal arts didnt exist we would have MDs who wouldnt know how to use a stethoscope or what a femur is, or engineers building structures that would go down with a slight wind.

Yes exactly this. Marxist theory is but a tool used by scholars to broaden their understanding of a topic. They call it "excavating" a topic, and just like with a real excavation you need a suite of tools, you can't just do everything with a spade. For some things a Marxist approach may prove the most enlightening, other times a feminist approach, sometimes a structuralist approach, etc. English majors are generally taught a variety of approaches for critical theory, but the main schools of feminist and marxist theory remain popular favorites.

And I wonder how well an anaylist from a anarchocaptialist perspective would be perceived in any of those fields?

I managed to get a history degree with very few of my professors suggesting this is a good way to do history.

Most of the history I did read like this was nothing more than politically charged tripe

received in any of those fields*

sorry

What use is there to analyze it from a specific perspective if the perspective cannot be proven to be even realistic at its foundations? How can you analyze something from a feminist perspective if the "feminist perspective" doesn't have a foundation to support it?

>white privilege conference

>Marxist and feminist schools remain popular

In literature? Maybe in some places, but I've seen a lot more formalists. In fields like sociology I think Marxism is just considered "popular" because there aren't many other thinkers that are well-known, divisive outside of the field, and have a specific "lens" named after them.

How does one analyze things from an ancap perspective? Marxist analysis is focused on class relations and how they contribute to hierarchies. Would an ancap just look at relations between markets and citizens in a society? Sounds like just plain economics.

please show me on the doll where liberal arts touched you

>Would an ancap just look at relations between markets and citizens in a society?
It would be the relationship between humans and how their actions fulfill their desires to become McWarlords™

>Reply
They don't. Not to say there aren't those who subscribe to those theories, but there are those who don't as well. The idea that education is controlled by some vast anti-white man conspiracy is laughable when looked at objectively. Pointing out that racism/sexism is a problem that exists does not make one a Marxist. Neither does it make one ant-white male.

I'm not even sure what that would mean, to be honest. Again, a Marxist perspective doesn't mean "We are going to write this paper to push Marxist ideology." It means, "We're going to write this paper with an eye to class dynamics."

Similarly, a feminist perspective doesn't mean "We're going to write this paper to address how unfairly women are being treated" (or whatever). It means "We're going to write this paper with an eye to gender relations and the role of women in [subject matter]." It's true that academia is predominantly liberal and that many authors do hold Marxist/feminist sympathies, but that's -- at least in theory -- incidental. The point of a given perspective isn't to push an ideology, it's to highlight a particular aspect of the material in question, often an aspect that the field has historically tended to skim over (most archaeologists, for example, used to be pretty disinterested in the role of women in ancient societies).

Again, that's all in theory -- obviously authors have biases and those biases do creep in.

So I'm not sure what an AnCap perspective would be. What aspect would it highlight? What would its focus be?

You're still unclear on that "feminist perspective" etc means, and that's not an insult. The word is being used in a different sense than you're used to. Again, the point of the feminist perspective is to focus a lens on the gender roles, relations, and so on, of whatever your subject matter is. You don't need to be a feminist to analyze something from a feminist perspective. You can do so even if you think feminism as a movement is a bunch of horsecrap. The only way the feminist perspective could lack a foundation would be if there were no such things as gender roles and gender relations, which there plainly are.

Given that, if you think it's confusing and stupid to call it the feminist perspective etc, then that's fair enough, but that's what it means.

I never implied that there was a vast anti-white conspiracy, and I never would argue that as well. I go to a university and so far have not encountered significant hate against white people or men. However, the fact that modern liberal arts is dominated by professors with at least marginally marxist viewpoints is undeniable.

should say "on WHAT feminist perspective means", obviously.

They are LARPers marching through those institutions

>So I'm not sure what an AnCap perspective would be

It was more a joke to be honest, but lets say objectivist just to up the anti

> It's true that academia is predominantly liberal and that many authors do hold Marxist/feminist sympathies, but that's -- at least in theory -- incidental.

Well that is the thing, it often is not incidental. Ive never read a paper like this that did not include at least implicit value judgments.

My problem is not so much with these perspectives getting heard, though its a style of academics I dont dont like or appreciate. I am just afraid of the increasing echo camber some departments are becoming. and both statistics and antidotes suggest this is increasingly the case.

How are they "Marxist"? Unless they are actively calling for the abolition of all state power and for the workers to forcefully seize the means of production then they are not "Marxists".

>Pay to go to college
>Learn to regurgitate dogma that has no practical application in the real world.
>If you know that X author said Y about Z subject you're entitled to believe you're a sage and a god among the unenlightened masses that only worry about building things and making them work.
>Graduate with zero practical skills.
>Wonder why companies dont rush to hire you.

>How do you disconnect Marx from his economic theories?
Don't pop a boner now because it may not what you're expecting, but the Frankfurt school.

They dont scare me, I just take there work about as seriously as I take Ayn Rands

100% guarantee this post was made either by a college dropout or a STEM major who has yet to graduate but is absolutely sure he'll have no trouble finding employment.

t. sociologist

It all seems like overanalyzing things to me. It is like when you recently had in South Africa those students who claimed that western science ignores "traditional African perspectives" as if these hold any validity. This is not to argue that class dynamics and gender dynamics hold no validity, but certain events and ideas are more relevant to these critical perspectives than others.

I recently wrote a history paper where I analyzed the gender relations in the passion of St Perpetua and Felicity, and it was rather interesting to understand how gender might play some subtle roles in events. However, to be completely realistic, these perspectives and interpretations are nothing more than perspectives and interpretations, they have very little basis in factual analysis, it is overwhelmingly assumptions. There is no doubt that gender relations played a large role in the politics of the early 1900s in the United States, but for me to argue in my paper that Perpetua was killed by a cow instead of a bull because they were making fun of her womanhood lacks evidence and is mostly just interpretation of past events. The concept was interesting to entertain, but at the end of the day, I was handing it in knowing that the main reason I wrote it was to get a good mark, not because I thought it held any validity.

That is what I mean by these perspectives lacking foundation. In the humanities and liberal arts, these "perspectives" and "lenses" are more often used in order to create a subjective interpretation of an event than they are used to contribute to the realm of factual human knowledge. It gets even worse when people try to translate this over to sciences and other fact-based realms of study. When you start analyzing science from a feminist perspective and hold the idea that science itself is a social construct, as if that actually helps contribute to human knowledge and wellbeing in any way, you end up with ideas such as "e=mc^2 is a 'sexed equation.'"

This, I appreciate continental perspectives but history should be an analytical pursuit.

The one thing worse than a raging marxist is a raging anti marxist who thinks marx only wrote about economics

historical materialism is about as popular among historians as Marxist economics is among economists

The continetal analytic divide is incredibly arbitrary at times and plenty of history is always going to struggle to be 'analytic'.

Overanalysing is a tired criticism. Theres bad analysis and good analysis, if it doesn't hold up then it should be disregarded whatever it's trying to say.

As for feminist analysis or marxist or whatever, often the best use or outcome translates into the political or philosophical rather than directly historical, or literary or whatever. So it can be worthwhile, but a mixture of disciplines.

>often the best use or outcome translates into the political or philosophical rather than directly historical

Great that get it out of my history department and into some nebulous "studies" program.

I have dozens of history books by professors that do not struggle to be analytical. They are mostly dry descriptions of events as the author understands them, the arguments center around how to interpret available data to form an amoral picture of events

And? Who is actually promoting historical materialism? Not I. As has been said plenty of times in this topic. Marx is often just a byword for class perspective.

There are plenty of things incredibly wrong about marx, that economics and historical analysis leave him largely discredited doesn't mean there aren't worthwhile uses of his writings. Keynes has been discredited by economics if you go into a lot of the details but plenty of his broad understanding of economics are still useful and influence the current mainstream.

Note: marx is definitely not useful for economics really, but many of his so called economic analyses branch into sociology and politics with some actual use.

Marx would be useful if he was treated like every other economist in the history of economics where you take ideas that are useful and discard the ones that are not. Marx gets shit on for LTV and people claims this disproves Marx, but few people claim LTV disproves the concepts developed by classical economists who were the ones that actually developed LTV.

Professor SJW isn't wrong though. Rabbi Mammon's Wild Ride aka capitalism does make cultural co-optation the norm. Can you really refute that? Meme as a word and concept comes from Richard Dawkin's book "The Selfish Gene." Veeky Forums's oblique use of the word transformed its meaning into "funny picture I found on the Internet." Clever entrepreneurs found a way to capitalize on that for profit. Remember when le rage face XDDDD shirts began appearing in Hot Topic and the subsequent butthurt that engendered on this cluster of the Internet? Now meme as a word means absolutely nothing, like hipster, ironically and literally before it. That's cultural co-optation in action right there.

What fucking reality are you aut-rightists living in where marxist perspectives are the norm? Also, how can I enter said reality?

I'm not alt-right, not even close. I didn't say they are the norm in reality, I said they were the norm in liberal arts departments.

But over analysis is bad analysis. If the analyzing doesn't actually make sense, and has no practical applications to anyone, what use is it?

Liberal arts and economics both reject marxism in favor of (you guessed it) liberalism.

Very few economics courses, or liberal arts courses are going to address the conflict between use and exchange value as the root of societal antagonisms.

Hell, here in burgerland you'd have a hard time convincing people that class even exists.

Mises.org has a good article on Marxist vs Libertarian style class analysis.

An Ancap would basically look at voluntarism, who seeks to benefit through mutually beneficial interactions and who seeks to benefit at the expense of others through violence & coercion.

Ie. governments, corporations, socialists etc

Hey look, another anti-intellectual thread that calls everyeducated person a brainwashed marxist shill. I hate that we have come to a point where the uneducated are so devoid of reason that they call the educated stupid. Yes, there is a degree of circle jerk in universities but if you have ever been then you know that it is an arena of discussion. Yes that is where you will find the most SJWs but where the fuck else would you find them? The steel mill? People need to go to uni to learn, because it is painfully obvious that a high school education leaves you just above retarded. Im not saying uni helps you get skills necessary for the workforce, but it does help you become intelligent and more well-rounded. Any skills you need for a job you get at a technical or professional school, or you learn it on the job.

Side note: A liberal arts degree is SUPPOSED to make sure you become educated about subjects not directly in your field, for example: If you are an engineer you could potenially get away with only taking math and physics courses, while in a liberal arts program they would force you to take history, art appreciation, english, literature, politcal science, etc. Its meant to give you exposure and make more well rounded. Some people do this on their own, but a lot of people go to college with preconceptions of other subjects being inferior. This is true but I would still rather leave uni with a good understanding of physics, art and history. Then just plain physics.

Just because SJWs use it to only learn about feminism and race relations, doesnt mean it cant be useful.

>price discrimination is allowed under volunteerism

So you just want a dry recounting of the details we know about? How much of a narrative will you accept with that? What do you think of a historian like hobsbawn? Since this is all stemming from marx lol. What about hayden whites writings on history? The divide is analytic vs narrative, not really continental it might not have been you that said continental in fairness. I am genuinely asking btw, certainly for simply going over events it has to be atomised and dryly factual to some extent, but I think comparing this to more political and philosophical uses misses the point a little, I think they can sit with one another separately. Whereas the analytic vs narrative is the more wortwhile debate, if it really exists, analytic seems to have won in academia.

To me it seems obvious that the use of history to analyse or explore the understanding of the world will certainly have a fair amount of contact within and around the history department. If you don't want to pursue thst style which is fsir enough, im hardly a huge fan of it either, you are free to go down other routes.

Well, I am not an economist so I could easily be chatting shit, but from my undrstanding of marx and the field of economics aside from discredited things like ltv there isn't much overlap, hence him being found much more within sociology. Whereas people like ricardo or adam smith have far more relevance to the field of economics. Ricardo with stuff like comparative advantage and smith on tariffs and so on.

I have a degree in history and while your right that it isn't everywhere it is way to popular and often goes unchallenged.

That's because capitalists have been able to use Ricardo's and Smith's ideas to their own advantage.

I just think saying over analysis is lazy and often used by people who aren't willing to even try to understand something even mildly challenging to their priors.

Call it bad or good and give a sound argument as to why you think their analysis is invalid. This is a better approach imo.

>co-optation

What reality do you live in where Marxists haven't infiltrated, academia, media, politics, environmentalism & feminism?

Now I'm really curious because I've heard a lot of leftists talk about "neoliberalism" being the norm for the last few decades.

> "allowed"

Everyone should know by know that Libertarianism is a basis that doesn't claim to decide morality in all cases, similar to how atheism doesn't claim anything other than a null-hypothesis?

That's up to the people involved, subjectively.

>but it does help you become intelligent and more well-rounded.
> what.jpg

Well-rounded sounds like it implies emotional maturity, intelligence seems to imply either a higher IQ or some ability to think more critically than before.....I.....what?

Not that guy but a good college education should probably do both of those things.

>Hey look, another anti-intellectual thread that calls everyeducated person a brainwashed marxist shill.
If you actually read the thread you would realize that it isn't like this at all.

Marxists =/= liberals
Liberals =/= leftists

Neoliberalism is the economic policy inspired by people like Milton Friedman. It is in favor of capitalism, it encourages the privatization of nearly every industry, union busting, and government and military intervention on behalf of the capitalist powers.

Marxism is about analyzing the conflicts between economic classes, about the contradictions in capitalism, and dialectic that these conflicts and contradictions are a part of.

Liberals will be in favor of capitalism and maintaining the interest of capitalists.

Marxists are in favor of the working class and about replacing capitalism.

Very few colleges in the U.S. actually confront economic and other issues from a marxist perspective.

I used Continental a bit weirdly as I see things like Marxist historical analysis and the Frankfort school to be a legacy of the Continental sytle. Excuse me if I used this incorrectly.

History is always arguing something, but is the nature of the argument an attempt to arrive at truth, like say a criminal investigator, or an attempt to understand the past through the lens of modern issues?

Most of my readings were on classical, Japanese and western military history. I purposely avoided areas where my modern libertarian views might not have been appreciated. So I am not very familiar with the names you mentioned.

My only experience with what you might call Marxist or narrative history in my later work the post grad was really into feminism as were the other post grads we worked with. Their papers were dripping with hatred of capitalism, imperialism, and love of revolutionary movements and minority communities. After reading the other kinds of history I mentioned their work and its blatant and unhidden biases disgusted me. They were not on a serious quest for truth but looking to grind political axes. And if it were up to me they would never get a serious position as a professor or lecturer until they start publishing serious work and save their rants for blogs.

you realize that in American vernacular

liberal=democrat and further left
Marxist is a type of liberal

If you have a problem with that your problem is with the language not us

No it's not, you're just retarded.

T. American.

Well it is, to 90% of the population. Its common sense to use the that definition in normal conversation

> Marxists =/= liberals
> Liberals =/= leftist
> Very few colleges in the U.S. actually confront economic and other issues from a marxist perspective.

There are technical differences but the reason why they don't talk economics is because they lost the fucking debate that spanned over many decades.

It's easier to push Marxism through social issues since it bleeds into economic policy & this has been the plan for quite a while.

Just look at the Fabian society in the UK & Australia & their offshoot institutions, they were ridiculed by Trotsky for their gradualism but it worked. You can tell the Marxists control these institutions because they've been saying so for decades & they've been going in the same direction for the same goals for over 130 years.

I'm not a Marxist but I've read a chunk of these tracts, their propaganda pamphlets, their education seminars to indoctrinate, Union heavies, submissions to policy makers from Union, Feminist & environmentalist groups which parallel perfectly the Marxist writings of the 19th/20th centuries.

These people know all of the vast economic arguments that have been leveled against their predecessors, they've addressed them in their own circles but they don't use it in their activism, they've found the perfect way to distort capitalism down the road they want it to go & if you look at their stated end goals you'll end up with the destruction of capitalism at their hands.

They may be technically different in many areas but make no mistake they're Marxists pushing Marxism or at least parts of it.