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Happy Birthday, Karl Marx! (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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On May 5th, 1818, Karl Marx, hero of the international proletatiat, was born. His revolution of Socialist theory reverberates throughout the world carries on to this day, in increasing magnitude. Every passing day, he is vindicated. His analysis of Capitalism, development of the theory of Scientific Socialism, and advancements on dialectics to become Dialectical Materialism, have all played a key role in the past century, and have remained ever-more relevant throughout.

He didn't always rock his famous beard, when he was younger he was clean shaven!

Some significant works:

Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

The Civil War in France

Wage Labor & Capital

Wages, Price, and Profit

Critique of the Gotha Programme

Manifesto of the Communist Party (along with Engels)

The Poverty of Philosophy

And, of course, Capital Vol I-III

Interested in Marxism-Leninism, but don't know where to start? Check out my "Read Theory, Darn it!" introductory reading list!

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

And they say that marxism is outdated lol

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Communism is actually human nature. Think about before the human era when everyone was hunter gatherers working together and sharing was what kept everyone alive. There was no currency or concept of ownership.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I recommend this thread, though maybe don't bother going down the chain that far as it becomes a stalemate.

Essentially, you're correct in that tribal societies were very communistic, but not Communist. Marxists call this "primitive communism," as a distinguishing factor from Communism, a highly industrialized and global society emerging from Socialism.

The truth is, all modes of production are "human nature." Human nature, after all, is malleable, and is largely determined by which mode of production humanity finds itself in. Each mode of production turns into another due to human nature, Capitalism is merely also human nature, just like feudalism, tribal societies, as is Socialism and eventually Communism.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

But is human nature not more acutely observed within the view of coercion, control and oppression? Marx says himself that the human history is defined by class wars between the haves and the have nots, with or without capitalism we will have a system that expresses control and oppression.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Marx states that all hitherto existing history is the history of Class Struggles. In analyzing tribal societies, he did so as they did indeed lack class, money, and a state, but were distinctly not "Communist" as production was low, and life relatively harsh and brutal. Communism as a mode of production is the classless society of the future, the end of class struggle. There will be new contradictions and new changes, most likely, but class as a concept is abolished through a global, publicly owned and planned industrial economy, in Marx's analysis.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

This is where i struggle agreeing with Marx, i find him to be selectively pragmatic and idealistic whenever the former or latter is convenient.

He acknowledges human nature is to oppress or be oppressed, as even in prehistoric human groups leaders would have formed and social rules enforced, we can assume this from our experiences in social groups. Yet does not believe that communism would lead to centralised oppression despite his historical studies, to me its either he chooses to ignore this factor or people misinterpret his writing and they cannot be applied in a post industrial capitalism society.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Marx doesn't acknowledge "human nature is to oppress or be oppressed," though. Marx builds the economic analysis of class society and charts how it will eventually erase its own foundations. Primitive communistic societies did not usually have classes, as they didn't have an economic basis for it.