Marx 2.0 - Prospects for Capitalism

Traitorfish said:
Honestly, the way Marx conceives of capital is positively Lovecraftian: a blind, mindless "vampire" (his word!) that devours human livelihood for the sole purpose of its own reproduction. Marx's capital isn't just an irrational organiastion of wealth, it's a sort of living nightmare, created by the human imagination yet seemingly beyond our control.

Amadeo Bordiga captured the spirit of it quite well, saying "The place of the worst barbarism is that modern forest that makes use of us, this forest of chimneys and bayonets, machines and weapons, of strange inanimate beasts that feed on human flesh."

If that doesn't qualify as an observation of capitalism's basic nihilism, it's hard to know what would.
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Poetically put. If you consider your statement, you can see why his conclusions don't work. Capital is not evil any more than weapons are evil. It is always a person, individual or corporate, that deserves the value judgement.

J
 
onejayhawk said:
Poetically put. If you consider your statement, you can see why his conclusions don't work. Capital is not evil any more than weapons are evil. It is always a person, individual or corporate, that deserves the value judgement.
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You must not be very familiar with the workings of language to stake your argument on an instance of anthropomorphism.
 
onejayhawk said:
Poetically put. If you consider your statement, you can see why his conclusions don't work. Capital is not evil any more than weapons are evil. It is always a person, individual or corporate, that deserves the value judgement.

J
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This reminds me of the debate about technological optimism v. pessimism, I suppose it is the sort of organizational optimism v. pessimism I posted on awhile ago. Assuming from the start one of the two positions either does not exist or is automatically disqualified is a bit presumptuous.
 
Antilogic said:
This reminds me of the debate about technological optimism v. pessimism, I suppose it is the sort of organizational optimism v. pessimism I posted on awhile ago. Assuming from the start one of the two positions either does not exist or is automatically disqualified is a bit presumptuous.
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I am not sure where you are going with this. Marx was sort of the anti-Comte before Weber and Simmel formed the anti-positivist movement. Origins get a bit murky, because formal schools were not established yet, though the founding arguments were being debated. Hegel himself had a voice, in addition to Marx and others using the dialectic.

My comment on Traitorfish had to do with his statement calling capital a Lovecraftian monster. The thing to recall there is that Lovecraft wrote fiction. Marx as a pioneer of sociological thinking is worth reading. Marx as an economist is an important dead end.

aelf said:
You must not be very familiar with the workings of language to stake your argument on an instance of anthropomorphism.
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I am familiar enough to know that I did not, "stake [my] argument on an instance of anthropomorphism."

J
 
onejayhawk said:
II am familiar enough to know that I did not, "stake [my] argument on an instance of anthropomorphism."
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onejayhawk said:
Poetically put. If you consider your statement, you can see why his conclusions don't work. Capital is not evil any more than weapons are evil. It is always a person, individual or corporate, that deserves the value judgement.
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I suspect you don't know what the word anthropomorphism really means.
 
onejayhawk said:
I am not sure where you are going with this. Marx was sort of the anti-Comte before Weber and Simmel formed the anti-positivist movement. Origins get a bit murky, because formal schools were not established yet, though the founding arguments were being debated. Hegel himself had a voice, in addition to Marx and others using the dialectic.

My comment on Traitorfish had to do with his statement calling capital a Lovecraftian monster. The thing to recall there is that Lovecraft wrote fiction. Marx as a pioneer of sociological thinking is worth reading. Marx as an economist is an important dead end.
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I'm not concerned so much with when the philosophical movements were founded but rather our modern interpretations as posted on this forum. Hence my response to your comment.

In a prior thread (it was probably 1-2 years ago, not sure if you participated in it), I posted on an idea that the distinction between technological optimism and pessimism could also be extended to organizations, forming a sort of organizational optimism and pessimism. In your comment, you directly expressed an analogy between technological optimism (i.e. guns don't kill people, people kill people) and organizational optimism (people/corporate people deserve value judgments, not the things they use like capital). Moreover, you took for granted that your position is automatically "correct" which is what really bugged me.
 
While Capitalism is in its "moribund" stage, it will not simply wither away -- it must be destroyed. But in regards to the correctness of Marx:

According to Oxfam, International, 85 individuals possess more wealth than the bottom 3-1/2 Billion people on Earth.
800 Million Indians live on $2 or less a day.
US has 447 Billionaires, and the 1% in America control about 38% of American wealth,

Sounds like the concentration and capital into fewer hands and the law of absolute impoverishment to me...
But, then, I am biased, since I work with an increasingly restratified American workforce who has seen their pensions dry up, their jobs dry up and their savings disappear, educational opportunities and access to health care effectively disappear, utility rates skyrocket as the very government institutions mandated to protect them continue to side with the ruling class.

Eff this effing capitalist system.
 
onejayhawk said:
Poetically put. If you consider your statement, you can see why his conclusions don't work. Capital is not evil any more than weapons are evil. It is always a person, individual or corporate, that deserves the value judgement.

J
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I don't you've understood my comments at all. Marx may not have argued that capital was malicious, but he certainly argued that it was malevolent.

Smallpox is not, properly speaking, evil, but very few of us feel the need to reverse judgement against it.
 
ReindeerThistle said:
While Capitalism is in its "moribund" stage, it will not simply wither away -- it must be destroyed. But in regards to the correctness of Marx:

According to Oxfam, International, 85 individuals possess more wealth than the bottom 3-1/2 Billion people on Earth.
800 Million Indians live on $2 or less a day.
US has 447 Billionaires, and the 1% in America control about 38% of American wealth,

Sounds like the concentration and capital into fewer hands and the law of absolute impoverishment to me...
But, then, I am biased, since I work with an increasingly restratified American workforce who has seen their pensions dry up, their jobs dry up and their savings disappear, educational opportunities and access to health care effectively disappear, utility rates skyrocket as the very government institutions mandated to protect them continue to side with the ruling class.

Eff this effing capitalist system.
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Globally speaking inequality has been going down comrade. I'll reply to the other points about Marx next week.
 
Traitorfish said:
I don't think you've understood my comments at all. Marx may not have argued that capital was malicious, but he certainly argued that it was malevolent.

Smallpox is not, properly speaking, evil, but very few of us feel the need to reverse judgement against it.
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Small pox has also made rich people richer and poor people poorer, but at least capital can be more forgivable than smallpox. Would it have not been closer to use vaccine as a necessary evil? I am all for equality and fairness, but until you can convince me that no one in town is going to take advantage of the system, they both look like necessary "evil" economic systems with their equal set of abuses.

@ Thread

I hope that everyone realizes that whenever there is a means of keeping track of transactions even if used as a means of fairness, there will always be an unavoidable way to exploit the system. If you want to get rid of inequality you will have to figure out how to humanely get rid of every human who is just out for themselves and has no regard for their fellow men. I am sure that quality is buried within most every human, but getting them to acknowledge it may be a stiff task. In this information age, I doubt too many people would feel safe without a governing authority that guarantees their safety. A government that can keep accurate records is needed for valid proof that such responsibility is being metered out in an equitable manner.
 
I don't really see what that has to do with anything I've said...?
 
I did not meant to channel it all at you either.
 
Traitorfish said:
I don't you've understood my comments at all. Marx may not have argued that capital was malicious, but he certainly argued that it was malevolent.

Smallpox is not, properly speaking, evil, but very few of us feel the need to reverse judgement against it.
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Capital is not malevolent. It is a fundamental flaw in his reasoning. His methodology has merit, but his assumptions, not so much.

While we may consider smallpox malevolent, we also recognize that it is an irrational feeling.

J
 
luiz said:
Globally speaking inequality has been going down comrade.
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Liar.

Stop calling me comrade.
And...


I'll reply to the other points about Marx next week.
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Don't bother. On Sunday, my girlfriend is in town for five days, I have 27 new organizer training programs to coordinate, 3 Canadians to host this weekend, weekly meetings with the BRV and Cuban UN missions, 2 Chinese events in Oregon at end of month (I won't be attending), 40th Anniversary Celebration at the end of June, 70,000 disaster victims from 2012 still to help and now disaster relief in SoCal.

Your time would be better spent in the other pastimes. And, yes, I DO get to tell you what is best... DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?

We have a policy that I have broken by engaging with people like luiz and Jeelen, et al: Don't talk to non-buyers.

In a week I will begin a less rhetorical, more poignant series of discussion points on the realities of daily life as we record them in our publications in the US and the Americas.

I will invite questions, disagreements and intelligent]/I] discussion.

Call me "Comrade" and I will get all Micky Ward on you.
 
onejayhawk said:
Capital is not malevolent. It is a fundamental flaw in his reasoning. His methodology has merit, but his assumptions, not so much.

While we may consider smallpox malevolent, we also recognize that it is an irrational feeling.
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Again, this is such a shallow argument, amounting to calling out Marx for using a bit of anthropomorphism in his language. Saying that Marx was wrong simply because in places he described capitalism as evil when only persons can be evil is to ignore his extensive critique of capitalism and seriously places doubt on how much you know about Marx's writings.
 
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