How should we interpret Marx?

There is a lot that could be said about the writings of Karl Marx, whether it be The Communist Manifesto or Das Kapital. However, when his ideas are brought up, they're usually bogged down to being nothing more than the ramblings of a crazy old man, with many of his societal theories being placed on the losing side of history, due to their practical applications. Which isn't something that can be disputed.

However, I wish to know how the philosophers of Veeky Forums feel in regards to his critique of modern capitalism and society. Did any of his criticisms ring true? Do you feel that his ideologies are an important lens to view modern society through? Should we interpret Marx at all?

His greatest problem if you ask me is that he was a radical Rousseauean, e.g a radical social constructionist.

I find it hard to believe that humans are tabula rasa, given that we are primate apes. The fact that we have language, seems to me to give us the illusion that we are perfectly malleable because our language is perfectly malleable.

Just read him for yourself and make up your own mind

He was a shitposter, treat him like one

He basically updated Jewish thought/talmudism for the 19th century.

>Did any of his criticisms ring true?
Not really. He has some foundations of good ideas, but his ignorance of economics (and I'm not trying to cast stones at him, economics as a social science has advanced tremendously since Marx's day) makes his primarily economics based analysis full of holes. His prediction in Kapital that wealth will intrinsically concentrate in fewer and fewer hands under free market competition is based on a theory that takes no account for marginal value; things are just worth what they're worth, and every trade has a winner and a loser. That's just wrong.

Plus, his notion of classes and how they develop and interact leaves much to be desired. Machiavelli had a much more robust and predictive class struggle model some centuries earlier.

> Do you feel that his ideologies are an important lens to view modern society through?
Of course. Whatever you want to say about the flaws in his ideas and methodology (and I would certainly join in), he's colossally influential, and still is. The mere fact that millions of people ascribed to his ideology and tried to implement it, or at least their interpretation of Marx's vision, means that you need to at least be casually familiar with him if you want to understand half of the early 20th century, or anything to do with the USSR or Maoist China.

> Should we interpret Marx at all?
Yes. But we also shouldn't treat him as a polar

>HE WAS THE GREATEST THINKER EVAR AND ALL PROBLEMS COME FROM NOT UNDERSTANDING HIS DIVINE MESSAGE

Or

>HE WAS A WORTHLESS BUM THROW IT IN THE TRASH AND BURN ALL COMMIE BASTARDS WHILE WE'RE AT IT.

I think he should be interpreted mostly as a result of the times he lived in. While his ideology ultimately failed and he does a better job of identifying problems rather than ideal solutions he could not have known the terror communism would bring. This should also be brought from the modern context of how people tried to interpret his goal and work.

And given the terrible conditions of the factory worker and the political repression of his age, its perfectly reasonable to expect people to think of ways to change the system to reflect their perceived interests.

>His prediction in Kapital that wealth will intrinsically concentrate in fewer and fewer hands under free market competition
But that's true though. Income inequality is constantly rising worldwide.

Income inequality !=Wealth inequality, and neither are equal to what Marx posits, which is not about relative wealth, but actual, absolute wealth.

Income inequality is rising not because the poor aren't getting richer, but because they're getting richer slower than other strata of society. Marx is predicting the absolute opposite; that the poorer strata of society are actually continually losing wealth, and eventually the revolution will come because there's a stark choice between violence and starvation.

I have. I'm asking to see what opinions Veeky Forums holds for me.

>Yes. But we also shouldn't treat him as a polar
I think this is an excellent compromise.

>he does a better job of identifying problems rather than ideal solutions
>This should also be brought from the modern context of how people tried to interpret his goal and work.

Yes, I agree!

Can you imagine the sheer fucking arrogance of people ITT. They have no idea what a Produktionsweise is, what the LTV is, MCM, and all this other basic shit. Yet they think they can somehow defeat Marxism solely from the knowledge they've gained reading Veeky Forums posts.

We live in a finite world where temporary things are fading away every day. People despise Marx because he reminded them of this.

I'm pretty sure people despise Marx because his followers always turn already shithole societies into worse shitholes.

Also,

>produktionsweise, LTV

Anyone with a minor in economics knows what these things are, but I guess you thought name-dropping labor theory of value on a Indian t-shirt-making forum makes you sound smart.

A guy from /pol/ claimed that he read the capital in a week and "disproved" every argument.

This faggot probably thought capital was a communism101 pamphlet, while in reality it was %95 examination of 19th century economics and maybe %1 on solutions which is fairly vauge.

The public is really really ignorant about marx.

I think this is especially important for modern studies on Marx and his works.

Many people have tried to implement "communism" but had to adapt it to local conditions. If we see what those conditions were, the rationale behind it and how it might have differered from Marx's own views or suggestions we get a good grasp of the impossibility of communism working as a positive modern ideology.

When you concentrated too much power to get the workers paradise, it turns into an inefficient nightmare in the long run. If you don't so asshole eventually turns it into a dictatorship.

I find it incredibly hard to believe that anyone could read The Capital in a week, considering that it's so big that it had to be broken into multiple volumes lol.

>This faggot probably thought capital was a communism101 pamphlet
That's kind of what I was referring to when I mentioned how many of his ideas have been "bogged down to being nothing more than the ramblings of a crazy old man". Which seems to be the general consensus on his writings.

>The public is really really ignorant about Marx.
Which is really quite a shame. I feel that many people don't fully understand what he is criticizing, in some regards.

>Anyone with a minor in economics knows what these things are, but I guess you thought name-dropping labor theory of value on a Indian t-shirt-making forum makes you sound smart.

I don't think I'm one bit smarter than the dumbest man on the planet, not even you. It doesn't take much effort to know that not even Marx's most famous, world-renowned, and highly-educated opponents lacked even basic knowledge of Marxism. Mises used the term Produktionsweise yet consistently failed to accurately define what Marx meant when he spoke of a socialist society, and Böhm-Bawerk is still cited to this day by chumps who conflate market-price with value. You have nothing on Marx, you will never disprove a single theory of his because you'll never bother to research him beyond Veeky Forums and wikipedia.

>Many people have tried to implement "communism" but had to adapt it to local conditions. If we see what those conditions were, the rationale behind it and how it might have differed from Marx's own views or suggestions we get a good grasp of the impossibility of communism working as a positive modern ideology.

I agree. In any situation, it would be ignorant to assume that there is one universal solution to every problem, which is why I also agree with this statement, regarding how exactly the vision of Marx is to be used;

>he does a better job of identifying problems rather than ideal solutions

>Böhm-Bawerk is still cited to this day by chumps who conflate market-price with value

In what way *isn't* market-price value?

Marx himself differentiated between exchange value and use value, but he never said what that "value" was in relation to price or production, he just claimed that production created this immutable value through the labor theory of value and that the property owners stole the surplus value of the labor, without giving any materialist definition, which is quite ironic for someone who claimed his theory was materialistic.

If the surplus value "stolen" doesn't relate in any way to actual price or property in a market, how is the theory materialistic?

yes.