Questions tagged [marxism]
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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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1answer
51 views
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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1answer
59 views
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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1answer
50 views
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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43 views
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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3answers
76 views
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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0answers
37 views
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 ...
2
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1answer
101 views
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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1answer
207 views
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 ...
2
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1answer
131 views
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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1answer
106 views
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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1answer
90 views
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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3answers
83 views
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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61 views
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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0answers
75 views
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, which ...
3
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1answer
188 views
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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52 views
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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88 views
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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0answers
63 views
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 ...
2
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1answer
93 views
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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1answer
345 views
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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1answer
613 views
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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2answers
239 views
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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1answer
443 views
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 ...
2
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1answer
58 views
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 ...
2
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3answers
269 views
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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9answers
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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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2answers
154 views
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 ...
2
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1answer
180 views
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 ...
29
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4answers
8k views
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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2answers
141 views
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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2answers
104 views
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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3answers
238 views
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 ...
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1answer
655 views
Who Are the Most Prominent Modern Socialist Thinkers?
Who Are The Ten Most Prominent Modern Socialist Thinkers? (Big Tent: Social Democrats, Socialists, Communists, etc. are all acceptable).
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4answers
603 views
How can land and natural resources become “private property”?
I’ve been trying to understand how an anarchic society would be initiated, but the two main ideas- anarcho-communism and anarcho-capitalism- not only contradict each other, but seem to be riddled with ...
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1answer
770 views
Why is Slavoj Zizek considered a Marxist?
Not that I have read any of his books but I've watched the documentary and several of his magazine articles and he totally seems like a centrist. On some subjects (like Islam/immigration) maybe even ...
2
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1answer
107 views
Do we need principles about every ethical decision / dilemma we have?
Do we need principles about every ethical decision / dilemma we have? I'm interested in an answer from any of the major ethical standpoint.
And even ones inclusive to Marxism, either Marx's wish to ...
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5answers
503 views
Is there a philosophical basis for the conflation of the cultural left and the economic/fiscal left?
In the U.S and most of the West, the cultural left (used loosely to include movements like feminism, secularism, being pro-diversity and pro minority-rights, the LGBTQ movement, being pro-immigration, ...
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5answers
1k views
Would an universal basic income eliminate exploitation (a la Marx) in capitalism?
Marx's argument in the theory of exploitation is that capitalists do not need to sell their labour power in the market in order to live, whereas workers need to do so. As such, workers are not really "...
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1answer
423 views
Adorno and identity politics
People on the political right like to throw around the phrase "cultural Marxism" as a label for identity politics, feminism, intersectionality etc. Evidently its a reference to the Frankfurt school, ...
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3answers
225 views
Was Communism meant to be a telos, for Marx, or for Lenin etc.?
Was Communism meant to be a telos, for Marx, or for Lenin etc.? By that, I mean to ask whether Communism is already contained in anything that creates Communism? My apologies if my jargon is off, I ...
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0answers
195 views
Can the capitalist class realise they are alienated?
I was taught that even the most self interested bourgeois is alienated, I think due to having to continually invest capital in competition with other capitalists. As so called state capitalism seems ...
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2answers
876 views
Do Deleuze and Baudrillard really advocate extracting capitalism's “subversive energy”?
I'm reading Forget Foucault by Baudrillard, or starting to, anyway. Still in Sylvere Lotringer's introduction. He claims that, after the failure of the '68 revolution in France, thinkers like Deleuze ...
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3answers
318 views
Do any Marxists write about Ulysses' “nightmare of history”
History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake
Usually, it seems, associated with the artistic career of Joyce. But yes, it does sound like rich pickings for an aestheticising Marxist.
Do ...
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3answers
135 views
Could a Marxist claim that interpreting the world is all that a Marxist vanguard can do (but that the working class can still change it)? [closed]
Could a Marxist claim that interpreting the world is all that a Marxist vanguard can do, but that the working class can still change it? Marx, quite famously, said that
philosophers have only ...
2
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2answers
321 views
What did Karl Marx mean by “revolutionary combination due to association”?
In "The Communist Manifesto", it is said that:
"The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by the ...
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2answers
117 views
Could Zen have a chance to “transform” ( aka outbreak ) the Western logos oriented thoughts?
This Saturday I will have a chance to meet someone whose father is a Zen Buddhist.
Personal things aside, along with learning Zen, I have found out the similarity that Zen, one of whose main methods, ...
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4answers
2k views
What is the value of the individual in Marx's writing?
Very obviously, Marx put emphasis on changes to, and the value of, society. But in his writing is he doing away with the value of the individual? Or does it simply go without saying, that individuals ...
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1answer
578 views
What is Benjamin saying in thesis VI in On the Concept of History?
What is Benjamin saying in thesis VI in On the Concept of History?
I quote it in full from here, having annotated the key points I'm struggling with in bold
To articulate what is past does not ...
2
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1answer
240 views
Can the communist revolution be blamed for the violence of the USSR? [closed]
Can the communist revolution be blamed for the violence of the USSR?
Obviously communists claim that there was a "counter-revolution", so for the sake of the question, let's assume that Communism is ...
