Well, I can’t agree or disagree because I am just started studying Marx. The part I mentioned came from late in this lecture, sorry I don’t know the exact time, it’s twoards the end. The lecture is an hour long but very interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FosfvOdXrrw
The two best sources for a quick introduction to Marx are:
**Communist Manifesto
**https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/
Sparknotes
http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/marx/section2.rhtml
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm
Sparknotes
http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/marx/section1.rhtml
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_and_Philosophic_Manuscripts_of_1844
If you want to read Marx, the section on alienation in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts is a good start, and you might try Wage Labour and Profit, where he sets out his economic ideas in relatively straightforward language. No oral sex references though.:rolleyes: The Manifesto is readable and interesting, but was written as a political pamphlet early in his life, not an explication of his economic ideas. It is very common for people to take an enthusiastic overstatement from the Manifesto and use it as a straw man. Here endeth the sermon!
thanks!!! I am just starting into the topic so thanks for the reccomendation
Do you mean a chapter in Wage Labor and Capital called Wage Labor and Profit or are you referring to the whole book/essay? (Wage Labor and Capital)
My mistake, it’s been a long day:o yes, the whole book (it’s pretty slender) Wage Labor and Capital. Value, Price, and Profit is good too. Both display Marx trying to write for a general audience. Capital often reads like it was written for a PhD committee and he was trying to show off. The section on Primitive Accumulation is a good place to start with that tome.
V.I. Kydor Kropotkin, played by Severn Darden, was a Russian spy in The President’s Analyst, a 1967 movie starring James Coburn and Godfrey Cambridge. Both US & Russian spooks found out their common enemy was TPC, The Phone Company, which had a monopoly in those days. TPC was more controlling, evil, and comical than all governments put together.
I just thought your screen name might be related and you would recognize the reference. Now you do.
Ignorance fought! And a much more interesting source for my screen name than the actual one.
Is there a poster here named Walther Von der Vogelweide?
That’s similiar to how one of my professors put it: Marx identified the problem corrected – that the working class was getting royally screwed. But his solution was basically a load of bullshit.
(BTW,we were assigned The Communist Manifesto in my Political Philosophy course. One of the most boring things I’ve ever had to read.)
^^^ What she said. In both paragraphs.
Also: Marxism does not assume human nature is nonselfish or altruistic or whatever. I myself tend more towards that sunny view of human nature and trust me, Marxism is not at all in that headspace. Marxism assumes that power over other people, as accomplished by possession of the resources, is inherently desirable and, hence, people oppress because they can.
The least comprehensible aspect of Marxism (to me) is the way in which it is oblivious to any form of power-over (and hence its likely incarnation as a form of oppression) other than material inequality. Therefore, as rendered in practice, the People’s Governments were (as recommended) a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, possessing absolute political power, accurately reviled by western capitalist critics as oppressive police states. Marxism had no thought for the possibility that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat would almost immediately become the Dictatorship of the Dictators, wherein the interests of the people governing would be the interest of the governing class. To a Marxist mindset that would be irrelevant unless the governors distributed wealth in a nonequal way. Utterly bewildering.
Does Marx ever address the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution?
I am sure some people really enjoy cleaning public bathrooms.
Italian Communist Party member explaining communism to local farmer:
“If a rich farmer has two horses, the state takes one and gives it to a poorer farmer.”
“OK, I understand.”
“If someone has two cows, the state takes one and gives it to a poorer farmer.”
“I understand.”
“If someone has two goats, the state takes one and gives it to a poorer farmer.”
“I don’t understand that.”
“Why don’t you understand?”
“I have two goats.”
It may be useful to distinguish what Marx said from what some Marxists have said. Marx argued that class divisions evolved because societies were unable to produce enough for all to have rich, fulfilled lives. Equality, in such societies, would mean sharing poverty equally and there would be little human progress. Capitalism was extremely productive and solved the problem of scarcity. That meant that class exploitation was no longer necessary.
As for the dictatorship of the proletariat, Marx wrote very little about it. When he did, he often pointed to the direct democracy of the Paris Commune as an example. He did not argue for a bureaucratic state, gulags, or secret police.
When Marx was asked, “so who’s going to clean shoes after the revolution,” he replied, crabbily, “You will!”
It is clearly interesting to others: it is currently the bestseller among Penguin’s bargain classics reissue series Communist Manifesto sales rise up as Penguin releases bargain classics | Penguin | The Guardian