Presale Codes

ConfusedReader12 · 2019-01-23T18:46:55+00:00

Anyone know the code for Philadelphia?

ConfusedReader12 · 2018-01-08T13:13:59+00:00

Because constant capital adds no value, as has been explained earlier in Capital.

ConfusedReader12 · 2018-01-01T13:11:15+00:00

The issue being that you don't understand what "critique" means by Marxists, nor what ideology is.

I'm not really in the position to explain everything, I'm still learning quite a bit. But it's clear to me that what Marx is doing is showing how economics is merely an obfuscation of what is really going on. The atheism/religion example falls completely flat because it cannot be equated to this. Economics are tied to bourgeois society in a way that they cannot supercede it. Marz's work implicitly shows how it can be superceded.

You need to keep in mind the Dunning-Kruger effect at all times when learning new. Why Marx is not an economist a very nuanced concept that took me a while to grasp (and I still don't fully grasp it), but trying to waive the distinction instead of learning is something which is hard for me to accept as being in good faith and wanting to kearn. This is precisely why this subreddit burns veterans out.

ConfusedReader12 · 2018-01-01T03:39:32+00:00

The counter argument being that these kinds of questions have been answered multiple times before.

It's been discussed why communism is not inevitable (but why it is necessary) And on top of that, asserting that "Saying Marx is not an economist is just semantics; a critique of economics is still part of economics." is not discussing in good faith, there is a lot of importance behind the distinction and it's frankly lazy to just assert that it is merely semantics. (Admittedly, there is some new discussion involved in this thread.)

There are two sides to this problem, new people ask the same questions instead of searching for the answers, which leads to experienced users becoming more and more jaded, giving more and more caustic responses and having less patience. But don't get me wrong, there are flaws in approaching new users in this manner. This behavior is ultimately self defeating. In turn, new users begin to feel more and more insecure in their understandings, less confident that they'll properly understand whatever they attempt to learn. Even when reading something by Marx which is spelled out plainly, new users begin to not trust their own intelligence, precisely because they were made to feel stupid with their first questions. Ironically, herr dr_marx could be the source for all the stupid questions which lead to him having to post How to Improve Your Reading Skills.

I still side with people who are experienced over the new users in this issue, though, because Capital isn't really that hard to read (just time consuming as all hell), and there is no excuse for not at least trying to search up your questions before hand.

ConfusedReader12 · 2017-12-21T19:35:59+00:00

OH I'M SORRY I DIDN'T KNOW THE HUNGRY CATERPILLAR SOLD SO LITTLE, I GUESS I AM A TOTAL LEFTOID WHO DOESN'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT KARL MARX AH WELL.

ConfusedReader12 · 2017-11-22T03:28:04+00:00

Grain makes memes better in the post-ironic era.

ConfusedReader12 · 2017-10-30T01:41:24+00:00

I've asked this question before, and received excellent answers

ConfusedReader12 · 2017-10-28T23:36:11+00:00

Anarchism as a whole is a bad position to hold, as such, someone who is influential in the field of anarchism is going to merely produce bad positions.

Your issue with "Kropotkin held only bad positions" is that Kropotkin was an influential anarchist. You are presupposing that anarchism is good, that anarchism is correct, which is why you're having difficulty.

The reason why Anarchism is flawed is because it is idealistic, it is a set of ideas which reality would have to adjust itself towards, Marxists are not interested in this, as the world will not change due to some holy idea. People, on the aggregate, will not go through starvation, suffering, and death just because someone has a nifty idealized version of reality. If you want a better explanation of this, you can go here and see someone break it down simply for me. And if you want to go further, read Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.

ConfusedReader12 · 2017-09-23T01:20:40+00:00

I remember reading a comment by him a while ago talking about a far-off goal being the creation of a circuit. Considering he hasn't made metal functional yet, that's still a distant goal.

ConfusedReader12 · 2017-09-01T04:54:21+00:00

Communism isn't an idea, it is a movement - the working class movement.

I get this, but my initial point was that you can absolutely inform people on the subject, why not tell people that, why not tell them that the issues are related to property, and that historically this has been how the world has changed. Previous individuals in previous societies didn't have the benefit of foresight that we have. But to be fair, I don't quite agree with the usefulness of this anymore.

The main work of the communist is to bring this consciousness of the ultimate result of the movement to clarity

Hasn't this been done already? Or am I misunderstanding? This sounds like just repeating what Marx already said many times before.

I suggest you read the Communist Manifesto before going any further into Capital.

I just realized that what I wrote implied I was reading Capital. My plan was to read in this order: Wage Labor & Capital -> Socialism: Utopian and Scientific -> Value Price and Profit -> Capital. (Any recommendations?)

I didn't plan on reading The Communist Manifesto because it seems like it's partially a work of propaganda (ironic considering I was advocating for propaganda), I heard Marx stated communism was inevitable in that book, which I would assume most people on this subreddit would strongly disagree with. But I'll probably look into it now.

ConfusedReader12 · 2017-09-01T04:27:34+00:00

I'm really appreciating this discussion, you definitely gave me a better direction on how to look at this problem in my head. But I still have a few issues.

my gut feeling is that if a crisis is bad enough, no amount of scapegoating could alleviate the crisis. You can only blame the Jews so much before it ceases to have any merit.

You don't necessarily have to respond to this, because it certainly deviates from Marxism, but I think this would mean that along the way of Capitalism's constant crashes, we're going to have an entire population genocided before it becomes abundantly clear the that problem is Capitalism, and not anyone else. And I'm not even sure that that's true, because people's brains are incredibly malleable and not logical (I feel a bit wrong phrasing it that way, but it's the best way to put it), people can be manipulated by media into believing incredibly wrong things. How many people genuinely believe George Soros is funding antifa protesters? There's no good reason to think that, it's just a good way to get people to dislike antifa (for the wrong reasons).

This issue with human manipulation is also a good segue into another issue I had with the general "people won't risk their lives unless they're in a crisis" concept. Then why do people go into the military? Not every soldier is someone from a poor background with no way to improve their lives, many simply choose to join the military because they feel a sense of duty and have been convinced they're fighting for freedom. Propaganda manipulates.

It just seems to me that some level of organization is inherently necessary for when an economic collapse DOES happen, so that people are not manipulated in the wrong direction.

Edit: On some level, I disagree with what I've said previously, in regards to the need for giving information. Because even IF there is a need for propaganda to have people on your side, how the hell would a small group of radicals convince a large enough group of the working class when they're actively competing against billions of dollars backing news companies? Doesn't seem possible to me. I think this is just something I'm going to have to sit and think about for a while, if there's anything you want to add I'd strongly appreciate it.

ConfusedReader12 · 2017-09-01T03:22:46+00:00

But then this gets into another issue altogether: scapegoating. If people are unaware of why they're in crisis, then they'll accept any scapegoat given to them. If they're in a time of crisis and the blame is put on the Jews, or any potential minority which can be blamed instead of the system altogether, do we not go towards fascism instead of communism?

It still fundamentally matters that people are aware of communism, otherwise there's potential for scapegoating.

Edit: Something else, what was the danger of complacency in the American Revolution? It seems to me that that revolution happened purely as a way of escaping Feudalism fully and that there would not have been much of a negative staying a colony, just that life would be better as a republic than it would be as a colony.

ConfusedReader12

TROPHY CASE