Can anyone recommend a book that critique's Marx's economic theory and hegelian nonsense in a fair way that doesn't...

Can anyone recommend a book that critique's Marx's economic theory and hegelian nonsense in a fair way that doesn't rely on attacking his character or the atrocities inspired by them?

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Currents_of_Marxism
newcriterion.com/blogs/dispatch/kolakowski-v-thompson
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>recommend me a book to reaffirm something I'll take as a truism regardless

Go start with the Greeks brainlet

Nah, I'll read the criticism critically

I'm reading through his work now and I want to know what he apparently got so wrong
>Inb4 human nature
I'm talking about his theory of production and his dialectical materialism

The problem with attacking economic theories is that you have to do it from the standpoint of another economic theory, and trust me, mainstream non-Marxian economic theories are just as cultlike as ca. 1900 Second International Marxism ever was. Modern economists are

There are some very good critiques of Marxism and its millenarian tendencies. Look into Kolakowski:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Currents_of_Marxism

And maybe even Arthur Koestler and Solzhenitsyn for general critiques.

Kolakowski's debates with Anderson and Thompson are also fun to read:
newcriterion.com/blogs/dispatch/kolakowski-v-thompson
because Kolakowski is bitterly acerbic and critical of British Marxism, which flirted (like French postwar Marxism) with Stalinism and with utopian naivete about the Russian Revolution. The same utopian naivete that typified the Second International era and the red scares it generated.

But for a critique of Marx's economism, or for the economism of early Marxism, oddly enough you should look into post-economist Marxists like Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, who were very critical of the Hegelian and "scientific" aspects of Marxism, while also trying to preserve and clarify its best aspects.

This, OP. There's no simplistic "everything Hegel and Marx got wrong" text.

You're going to have to put the work in... Otherwise, you could always do what the other brainlets do, and just parrot the "hoomannaturehoomannaturehoomannature" line.

Or worse pick up some Lolbertarian Holybook

Excellent, tyvm, I'll look into all of these with an open mind

I'm definitely not interested in naive arguments about human nature or commie atrocities being enough to rebut Marxism, as my first post suggests. I just want to know what line of argumentation to go down in understanding where Marx supposedly goes wrong - whether Veeky Forums thinks I should be reading Hayek, Popper or the Frankfurt school next.

I'm mostly interested in what can be salvaged from his thinking that isn't so much a product of his time as to be irrelevant; such as his relying on Hegel and Orthodox economic principles.

I see him as a very innovative thinker, regardless.

Excellent post.

Easy
>Open book
>First sentence
>The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
That's false. The very nature of society is one of class alliance. What is perceived as class conflict is simply reclassification, which is not then a conflict between classes, but within classes and between systems of classification. Done. What's next?

Lazy thinking. You might want to read what you have just written over again.

the main problem with Marx's theory of history is that he did/could not predict the welfare state, which prevents the increasing immiseration of the proletariat, without which the revolution ceases to be inevitable, and capitalism thus ceases to contain the seeds of its own overthrowing

Society is literally people who say they belong to different classes saying there is at least one super ordinate class they all belong to which leads them to cooperate. Conflict arises out of at least on person perceiving different class hierarchies. But those that engage in conflict need not be of different classes, or even see each other as of different classes. If you want to say that by the nature of conflict, each side could be recognized as its own class defined by its opposition to the other(s), but this doesn't actually help. To say that there is class struggle is not to say that class struggle is all there is. Furthermore, to read Marx's initial proposition in this way would be ridiculous, because he is clearly arguing about conflict between perceived classes. So we see that either the basis of Marx's philosophy is wrong, or its expression is wrong and whatever truth it holds is tautological.

der einzige und sein eigentum

The important word that you're not paying attention to in the one sentence taken out of context that you think topples the entire 10 volume ouvre of his thought is "history".

It's a diachronic analysis, not synchronic, he's talking about how societies develop

Are you badly describing a substantiated critique of Marx, or are you an avid YouTube video debater?

What you fail to understand is that the clear meaning (as clarified by the totality of Marx's writings) is that these qualities are intrinsic, that class struggle is intrinsic to human existence. If this is shown to not be intrinsic, then it is not true. If society is by nature the alliance of class, then class struggle cannot be intrinsic. Marx was fundamentally wrong.

Your second phrase negates your first. All of Marx negates your first as well.

Neither. Rather I'm going into more detail than anyone should have to to demonstrate that Marx's fundamental suppositions are obviously and categorically false. Given that I'm already spending more time than should be needed, I'm not breaking down the argument stepwise, rather providing summary.

What the fuck are "perceived classes"? Class for Marx is a material and economic phenomenon. If you depend on selling your labour-power to survive, you're a prole. If you get income from capital, i.e. investments you're a capitalist. There are various categories between but they tend to move towards either end. The existence of class conflict doesn't depend on perception, because it constantly reproduces itself through labour bargaining, protests, strikes. Don't think of class struggle as a specific event of a violent revolution, think of it as structurally part of the system.

Okay, fine, but then what are labor, power, and capital? What is money? What is value? None of these things are material, though they are perceived to be derived from material things. The existence of all classes depends on definition. And definition invites subjectivity. If it was so objective, how do you explain the purges? My argument works off your last sentence exactly--these way of seeing inter-class relationships is inherently flawed, and so anything that maintains even the slightest bit of it is also inherently flawed.

Uhh, all of those things are material though. Do you even understand the materialist conception of history, the fundamental philosophy of Marx which informs his whole analysis? Seems to me you took a sentence from the Manifesto and attempted to be smart about it, without any understanding of his thought. The Communist Manifesto was a pamphlet they wrote in their 20s, it's not exactly a highpoint of Marxist theory. Saying that history consists of class struggles is a bombastic simplification for a fucking pamphlet intended for workers. A more accurate statement for Marx would be that history begins with humans producing their means of subsistence, and in the process of reproducing their life they enter into necessary and mostly stable relations of production. These relactions themselves structure the fundamental social relations in a community, and shift and change according to technological progress. Really, just read the first chapter of the German Ideology if you want the basic philosophical underpinnings of Marxism.

>Money is material
Boy, you askin' for a whoopin?

this is what you are looking for

economics in one lesson

This. Read The Managerial Revolution by James Burnham

PURE

>posts the same tripe in all Marx threads

Just read this guy's review.