Questions tagged [marxism]
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What is the precise meaning of this sentence in the context of Marxism?
In the following text, what is the highlighted sentence meant to say? Why does the author say that? Clearly put, I don’t understand the conditional here.
If such limits doesn’t exist, then it would be ...
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Would Gramsci's theory of Hegemony also apply outside traditionally capitalist societies for their dominant cultures such as USSR, Cuba etc.?
Wouldn't those societies also define morality and culture in such a way such that it presents their values as natural and already defines the culture in a way so as to render some people Subaltern ...
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What is the difference between Subaltern and any other oppressed group?
This is in the context of deconstructionist Marxist Gayatri Spivak's reply to Foucualt and Deleuze and defense of Marx in her famous work Can The Subaltern Speak ?
Are the subaltern just uneducated ...
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A different kind of ideology somewhat between capitalism and communism
I was wondering in the past couple of days about an idea, and I'd like to know your opinion on it.
From a strictly moral point of view, the ideal communist society is pretty utopic.
Equality, equal ...
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How and who rebuilds the state after a revolution?
How and who rebuilds the state after a revolution?
I frequent "revolutionary" discussion, and am surprised (almost afraid) by how little this comes up. They all want to smash the existing ...
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Help understanding Marxist critique of capitalism
According to the Wikipedia page on Marxist economics, one criticism Marx had of capitalism is that the capitalist model of employment creates a difference between the value the workers create and the ...
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How does concrete labour link to autonomy and understanding of the social whole?
https://mediationsjournal.org/articles/new-dissonance
Aesthetic autonomy, like value, is derived from the artwork’s internalization of abstract labor... As Adorno writes in Aesthetic Theory, “[w]hat ...
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Is the extraction of surplus value sufficient for the necessity of revolution?
Is the extraction of surplus value sufficient for the necessity of revolution?
As I understand it, the extraction of surplus value is: the essential component of the "immiseration" of the ...
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What does Gramsci mean by "leaders of the II and II-~"?
A friend of mine who has been reading Antonio Gramsci's Selection from Prison Notebooks is struggling to find out what II-~ means in the following paragraph:
"If there are still people at the ...
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Fredric Jameson's "Dialectical Sentences"
Fredric Jameson is one of the few hard line Marxists in America today. He writes extensively on topics about capitalism, postmodernity, etc, all through the lens of Hegelian/Marxist dialectics, which ...
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What comes after capitalism?
Many social philosophers have expressed a desire to end capitalism as the dominant mode of production. However, I take it as an unavoidable fact of nature that labor of some form is necessary. Humans, ...
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Is this a point of contact between Marxism and Heidegger?
Is this a point of contact between Marxism and Heidegger?
Marx complains (bitterly) about exploitation by your - class - enemies
Heidegger complains about inauthenticity, which I might gloss as ...
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Does Marx make a metaphysical/ontological argument for Materialism anywhere?
As I understand it currently, I read Marx as more of a historian, economist and sociologist and I am finding it hard to locate any metaphysical argument against Hegel's 'idealism'.
All I know is this ...
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Questions about Marx's second, third, and fourth thesis in ''Theses on Feuerbach''
The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question.
a. What does Marx mean here by ”objective truth,” what is he alluding ...
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What's the importance that Marx gives to the Class Struggle for the devolopment of societies?
I've reading The Communist Manifesto and I could understand that all changes in the human history societies have been because the struggle of class.
but what is his argument? I can't understands his ...
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Question about Marx´s book (German Ideology)
In 'The German Ideology' Marx claims that in his materialist conception of history 'ascends from earth to heaven', unlike the German philosophy of the time that 'descends from heaven to earth'. What ...
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Under what conditions is work alienated?
Why, for Marx, is alienation a condition of work under capitalism? I´ve been reading Marx's texts and I don't understand why.
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Dialectics and Machiavelli
What is the relation between Marxist dialectics and Machiavelli's philosophy? I have read Lefort, and he seems good, but I was unsure if he was an academic playing games.
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Are social crises good for the bourgeoisie, according to Marx?
Are social crises good for the bourgeoisie, according to Marx?
Clearly social crises can be bad for the working class. For example, the world wars were bad and count as 'social crises', but they may ...
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Translation of Lenin's "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism"
What is the best translation of Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-criticism (Материализм и эмпириокритицизм) into English (or perhaps other wide-spread languages)? I would like to have the closest there ...
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Would Marx have seen Socialism as a stage in a historical process towards Communism?
I have the impression from my (limited, autodidactic) reading of Marx that he was antagonistic towards various forms of Socialism, criticizing Socialists for being (among other things) piecemeal ...
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Can anyone explain the meaning of "Hegelian Essence"
I've been reading Terry Eagleton's Marxist critique of the bronte's and Eagleton writes that Catherine "reifies Heathcliff to a Hegelian essence, sublimely untainted by empirical fact".
I can't seem ...
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Does anyone claim that all alienation is fetishism for Marx?
rather than equating alienation and fetishism, fetishism is better
thought of as a particular form that alienation might take. (To be
clear, there looks to be no reason to think that Marx would, ...
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Does Jameson define "narrative" anywhere?
Does Jameson define "narrative" anywhere? I've read the political unconscious, and just ordered a study of him, and I would probably agree that narratives embody social reality, but am unclear what ...
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Meaning of a diagram by Althusser
A diagram by Althusser captioned “The future lasts a long time” (the title of his memoirs) appears on several of his book covers. Below is my own reproduction, based on a sketched version found here.
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Henry George vs. Karl Marx
I recently came across some of Marx's critique of Georgism, and was wondering where else the theories of these two thinkers conflict. Georgism to me certainly seems to have a slight materialist bent ...
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Is there any new concept in Marxism that didn't exist in classical economics?
Surplus value is just economic profit. The organic composition of capital is just the investment rate. Capitalist mode of production is just a verbose way of saying capitalism. Exchange value is price....
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What does object oriented philosophy say about commodity fetishism?
What does object oriented philosophy say about commodity fetishism?
I thought the essence of fetishism was how, in his alienation from the means of production, what we are and make seems to become ...
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What do Marxists make of contemporary technophobia?
What would Marxists make of contemporary luddism, technophobia, etc.?
In 1867, Karl Marx wrote that it would be some time before workers
were able to distinguish between the machines and "the ...
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Is the internet a commodity in the Marxist sense?
Is the internet a commodity in the Marxist sense?
It may help to know if it's made, bought and sold. Can people own more or less of the internet, and in what ways?
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Should Bergson be described as an individualist?
It's claimed that Bergson's "intuition of pure duration" is the "highest and most valuable form of human experience": is this an individualist or collectivist good?
I'm asking because I'm interested ...
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The Effects of Marx's Moral Character on Communism
I recently read Paul Johnson's "Intellectuals" which includes a scourging critique of Karl Marx and his work. Surprisingly, it focused on Marx's own personality along with his many vices, ...
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Was Marx a Marxist?
In his writings, did Marx only seek to explain the social and economic transformation precipitated by the rise of capitalism as well as offer some forecast for the future or did he actively also ...
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Might Marx's argument in Das Kapital be less about justice and exploitation than it is about disenfranchisment?
Might Marx's argument in Das Kapital be less about justice and exploitation than it is about disenfranchisment? I specifically mean his analysis of work, the falling rate of profit, and movement of '...
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Are Marx's crises of capitalism essentially crises for the working class?
Are Marx's crises of capitalism essentially crises for the working class?
It is well known that Marx predicted increased immiseration of the working class relative to the bourgeoisie, and that crises,...
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What is the strongest link made in the philosophical literature between privacy and civil liberties?
What is the strongest link made in the philosophical literature between privacy and civil liberties? In particular, an analysis which eschews 'democracy', or separates out democracy from 'civil ...
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What does Marx mean by "the real will of the cooperative"?
This is an extract from A Darwinian Left by Peter Singer:
Marx: Under collective property, the so-called will of
the people disappears in order to make way for the real
will of the cooperative.
...
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Would a "Classless society" be better than the present society? [closed]
In today's era many countries have 'Marxist' political parties, and their purpose is a "classless society".
Can a classless society be possible, can it run successfully run?
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What does Machiavelli say about friends of my enemies?
What does Machiavelli say about friends of my enemies? I read the Prince, and some continental stuff relating it to Marxism, such as Specters of Marx. The former mostly seemed like practical, in some ...
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Marxism - primary contradiction of capitalism
After writing a long post, i decided to keep only the summary :
I understand that in the marxist framework a mode of production is constituted by :
the relations of production
the productive forces
...
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What does Marx mean in the quote from the bible?
The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot take its poetry
from the past but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself
before it has stripped away all superstition about the ...
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How does commodity fetishism appear to individuals?
It is nothing but the definite social relation between men themselves
which assumes here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between
things
Das Kapital.
I remember that fetishism ...
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Marx and teleology : what has happened, what will happen, or what could happen?
In Marxism the idea of history being a process with determinable characteristics is raised. History here being the relations of economic life and social reproduction, and the cultures they give rise ...
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How are workers exploited when they have a choice in working for a boss?
Under Marxist theory, workers are being exploited for their labor and not receiving the full value of their labor. Workers however have a choice in who they work for and how much they earn so how can ...
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Are there philosophers working with the idea of language being ideological?
Are there philosophers working with the idea of language being ideological? If so, who, what specifically are their research interests, and what studies into it are available?
By 'ideology' I suppose ...
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Did 20th-century Marxists acknowledge that the "social science" predictions of Marxism were wrong?
In this video, starting at 5:36, Stephen Hicks claims that there are three central "social science" Marxist predictions, which I would sum up as follows:
Over time, in any capitalist society,
The ...
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Does the no true Scotsman fallacy apply to anti Stalinist etc. communism?
The internet is awash with claims that anyone arguing that Stalinist Russia / Maoism wasn't communist is committing the no true Scotsman / ad hoc rescue fallacy. However, I suspect that few of its ...
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Is Marxism akin to science fiction or soothsaying prophecy? [closed]
Reading a bit about Marxism (from second hand sources) and it is saying in any society A will happen then B will happen and so on.
So was Marx a futurist much like Asimov. Asimov wrote a lot about ...
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Is the folliowing tu quoque a reasonable argument?
Is the following tu quo que a reasonable argument?
Don't be a communist, you saw what happened in Russia
Reply:
And the slave trade was run by capitalists.
I'm not even sure if the reply is true, ...
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Was early Christianity the Communism of its day? [closed]
I have been watching a lot of documentaries on Vietnam, Russia and Marxism, and Religion debates here and there. I've come to a conclusion but I am not sure if it is true.
It seems to me that ...