Some academics spend a lifetime pouring over and analyzing Marx yet miss your keen, albeit obvious, summary. I feel for those academics and life wasted - sad.
That is the bit that truly mystifies me. It's not remarkable in any way that a crackpot wrote a manifesto full of his nutty ideas. Crackpots are known for doing that. The bit that boggles my mind is that people look at this and think it somehow makes sense.
Marxism is nonsense from start to finish, from the labor theory of value to the dictatorship of the proletariat to the ongoing revolution to the bit where the state withers away and leaves everyone in a blissful, anarchistic state of "true" communism. No child over the age of seven would reasonably believe these things, yet supposedly learned adults spend their entire lives devoted to a crackpot's ideas that have never even remotely reflected reality in any of the many, many times people have attempted to put those ideas into effect.
If anyone can look at the massive, repressive, totalitarian governmental bureaucracy of the Soviet Union or any other communist state and foresee an end point where government withers away from disuse, well... I must conclude that this person is either insane or is under the influence of some really potent drugs. Marx has been wrong at every step of the way, and the idea that the grim, tragic existence under communism during the socialist stage (which must be imposed and maintained at gunpoint) is going to lead to an anarchistic utopia somehow just does not compute. Why anyone would believe in this in the first place is beyond me, with no other support for the idea that this would happen beyond the words of a madman, but it is even harder to imagine anyone believing it after it has failed so convincingly every time it has been attempted.
There are scores of college professors and college graduates who still convince themselves that communism has never really been attempted, and their sole reason for holding this belief is that the attempts they have seen don't look much like what Marx said they would. It never occurs to them that it doesn't look like they expected because it was all a bunch of nonsense, and that the totalitarian hellscape of any communist country is what you get when you mix Marxist theory and reality.
These young college graduates are convinced that if they were the ones imposing communism, it would work much better than when Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, or Kim tried it. They think they know more about imposing communism (after having never led anything more than a study group) than actual communists who did actually impose communism. You may have thought you knew Marx, Mr. Lenin, but move over... Becky from Berkeley is here now, and she's gonna show you how it's done.
It occurs to me that perhaps many so-called Marxists or communists (large or small C) don't really believe the final bit, where the government withers away, as that's the Galactic Overlord Xenu of Marxism, so to speak, but that would mean accepting that Marx had that rather important bit wrong. If he was wrong about that, why think he would not be wrong about all of it, as any kind of observation of the world would strongly suggest?
Luther fomented Marxist gibberish. Lots of gibberish coming out of Germany that time period, The heralded Green Revolution comes to mind, different influences all using utopian idealism. The whole freaking planet is in the grips of all these subsets of revolution against the natural order - the order that has persisted and is proven since life began on this planet. I call it natural succession (humans have been in the que) (hahahaha!)
The planet will suffer all these idealist subsets to the logical conclusion; failure.
There definitely hasn't been a free market economy since 1913 here in the USA the borrowed funds financing 1917 in Russia. Just something I read a long time ago.
Marxists are always suffering, the ainxt in their faces are animated, doesn't matter what happens, even if they rule for a day or two.
At some point a thinking human being will come to the conclusion communism and socialism are political hammers for the fascists. The fascists are always protected and paid.
I think O'Brien gives old Karl more credit than Karl is due. Marx was a shallow third rate materialist socio-philosopher. His appeal is to similar shallow "thinkers".
I think O'Brien sums it up best when he wrote:
"blind focus on the material world is a binding to disappointment. This fits in well as a contrast to the Biblical idea that “man does not live on bread alone”. Man must reject his self-convinced binding to the material nature ‘of things’, and accept that there are higher ideas that exist both beyond the individual and society. I believe that through the discovery of these ideas comes a clarity that cannot be found in materialistic doctrines such as Marxism".
As to the comparison to gnostics I think that is way off. Gnosticism is not one shared common belief. There was quite a bit of diversity. The concept of god being evil was not that God is evil but rather the false god of the material world (or I should say imagined material world) ...the demiurge was the baddie. And very similar to what O'Brien says .....man must reject his self convinced binding to the demiurge and accept Something Higher.
O'brien should know that REAL Marxism has never been tried before. My queer studies professor told me so. When we do it after the coming revolution, we'll do it right this time. (raises fist. pretends to be handcuffed.)
Yes that’s right - those damn unreal attempts at Marxism during the 20th Century! If only they did it for real we wouldn’t have had all that death and destruction … right?
Exactly. And so what if a few hundred million bourgeoisie are sacrificed for a righteous cause. We're like literally fighting for justice and equity and like all the right stuff man. 👊
Side note: Heinrich Marx did not frequently clash with the police, quite the opposite. He had to change his surname from Levy to Marx under French occupation but could otherwise practice freely as a lawyer. When Trier become Prussian in 1816 he had to convert to Christianity to continue in his occupation. This does not appear to have been an issue for him because he saw himself firmly in the Enlightenment tradition, hence his veneration for Kant. He later headed the lawyer’s guild in Trier and got bestowed upon him the fairly senior title of Justizrat. Heinrich Marx was as establishment as they come.
I try to spread the word every time this comes up, Marx's adoption of the labor theory of value can be directly traced from Adam Smith and Ricardo. This perversion of reality is the rule in what you dub pseudoeconomics. My position is that any study of economics not based on praxeology can be roundly criticized as pseudoeconomics. The fixation on models is informative. An ever present LHB dominant attempt to elevate map over terrain.
Yeah I don’t know if there’s anything in that - ancient Greeks started the “polite” not-using-your-hands speaking thingy and it seemed to remain a stylish thing to do in portraits (Napoleon being a famous example). But if you want to overlay any number of conspiracy theories to it, go for it - hidden hand or not, I don’t think it has much an impact on what has been done with old Marx’s crazy ideas.
Some academics spend a lifetime pouring over and analyzing Marx yet miss your keen, albeit obvious, summary. I feel for those academics and life wasted - sad.
That is the bit that truly mystifies me. It's not remarkable in any way that a crackpot wrote a manifesto full of his nutty ideas. Crackpots are known for doing that. The bit that boggles my mind is that people look at this and think it somehow makes sense.
Marxism is nonsense from start to finish, from the labor theory of value to the dictatorship of the proletariat to the ongoing revolution to the bit where the state withers away and leaves everyone in a blissful, anarchistic state of "true" communism. No child over the age of seven would reasonably believe these things, yet supposedly learned adults spend their entire lives devoted to a crackpot's ideas that have never even remotely reflected reality in any of the many, many times people have attempted to put those ideas into effect.
If anyone can look at the massive, repressive, totalitarian governmental bureaucracy of the Soviet Union or any other communist state and foresee an end point where government withers away from disuse, well... I must conclude that this person is either insane or is under the influence of some really potent drugs. Marx has been wrong at every step of the way, and the idea that the grim, tragic existence under communism during the socialist stage (which must be imposed and maintained at gunpoint) is going to lead to an anarchistic utopia somehow just does not compute. Why anyone would believe in this in the first place is beyond me, with no other support for the idea that this would happen beyond the words of a madman, but it is even harder to imagine anyone believing it after it has failed so convincingly every time it has been attempted.
There are scores of college professors and college graduates who still convince themselves that communism has never really been attempted, and their sole reason for holding this belief is that the attempts they have seen don't look much like what Marx said they would. It never occurs to them that it doesn't look like they expected because it was all a bunch of nonsense, and that the totalitarian hellscape of any communist country is what you get when you mix Marxist theory and reality.
These young college graduates are convinced that if they were the ones imposing communism, it would work much better than when Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, or Kim tried it. They think they know more about imposing communism (after having never led anything more than a study group) than actual communists who did actually impose communism. You may have thought you knew Marx, Mr. Lenin, but move over... Becky from Berkeley is here now, and she's gonna show you how it's done.
It occurs to me that perhaps many so-called Marxists or communists (large or small C) don't really believe the final bit, where the government withers away, as that's the Galactic Overlord Xenu of Marxism, so to speak, but that would mean accepting that Marx had that rather important bit wrong. If he was wrong about that, why think he would not be wrong about all of it, as any kind of observation of the world would strongly suggest?
Was Marx's god his father?
Possibly - and finding himself rejected by his god became the Joker who just wanted to watch the world burn.
Luther fomented Marxist gibberish. Lots of gibberish coming out of Germany that time period, The heralded Green Revolution comes to mind, different influences all using utopian idealism. The whole freaking planet is in the grips of all these subsets of revolution against the natural order - the order that has persisted and is proven since life began on this planet. I call it natural succession (humans have been in the que) (hahahaha!)
The planet will suffer all these idealist subsets to the logical conclusion; failure.
There definitely hasn't been a free market economy since 1913 here in the USA the borrowed funds financing 1917 in Russia. Just something I read a long time ago.
Marxists are always suffering, the ainxt in their faces are animated, doesn't matter what happens, even if they rule for a day or two.
Seems that Soviet communism was funded by Western capitalism.
*GASP*
At some point a thinking human being will come to the conclusion communism and socialism are political hammers for the fascists. The fascists are always protected and paid.
I think O'Brien gives old Karl more credit than Karl is due. Marx was a shallow third rate materialist socio-philosopher. His appeal is to similar shallow "thinkers".
I think O'Brien sums it up best when he wrote:
"blind focus on the material world is a binding to disappointment. This fits in well as a contrast to the Biblical idea that “man does not live on bread alone”. Man must reject his self-convinced binding to the material nature ‘of things’, and accept that there are higher ideas that exist both beyond the individual and society. I believe that through the discovery of these ideas comes a clarity that cannot be found in materialistic doctrines such as Marxism".
As to the comparison to gnostics I think that is way off. Gnosticism is not one shared common belief. There was quite a bit of diversity. The concept of god being evil was not that God is evil but rather the false god of the material world (or I should say imagined material world) ...the demiurge was the baddie. And very similar to what O'Brien says .....man must reject his self convinced binding to the demiurge and accept Something Higher.
O'brien should know that REAL Marxism has never been tried before. My queer studies professor told me so. When we do it after the coming revolution, we'll do it right this time. (raises fist. pretends to be handcuffed.)
Yes that’s right - those damn unreal attempts at Marxism during the 20th Century! If only they did it for real we wouldn’t have had all that death and destruction … right?
Exactly. And so what if a few hundred million bourgeoisie are sacrificed for a righteous cause. We're like literally fighting for justice and equity and like all the right stuff man. 👊
🤜🤛🏻
That’s like, you know, like totally like justice warrior man.
Side note: Heinrich Marx did not frequently clash with the police, quite the opposite. He had to change his surname from Levy to Marx under French occupation but could otherwise practice freely as a lawyer. When Trier become Prussian in 1816 he had to convert to Christianity to continue in his occupation. This does not appear to have been an issue for him because he saw himself firmly in the Enlightenment tradition, hence his veneration for Kant. He later headed the lawyer’s guild in Trier and got bestowed upon him the fairly senior title of Justizrat. Heinrich Marx was as establishment as they come.
OK that’s interesting- I’ll let O’Brien know.
I try to spread the word every time this comes up, Marx's adoption of the labor theory of value can be directly traced from Adam Smith and Ricardo. This perversion of reality is the rule in what you dub pseudoeconomics. My position is that any study of economics not based on praxeology can be roundly criticized as pseudoeconomics. The fixation on models is informative. An ever present LHB dominant attempt to elevate map over terrain.
Nothing in the essay about the depicted hidden hand?
Yeah I don’t know if there’s anything in that - ancient Greeks started the “polite” not-using-your-hands speaking thingy and it seemed to remain a stylish thing to do in portraits (Napoleon being a famous example). But if you want to overlay any number of conspiracy theories to it, go for it - hidden hand or not, I don’t think it has much an impact on what has been done with old Marx’s crazy ideas.
My guess as to the person that influenced Engels with planets as living beings would be Swedenborg in his work "Other Planets."
Not familiar with it but will take your word on this point.