I'm in there, although I wouldn't describe myself as "pumped-up." If you don't mind my asking, how old are you?
Atlas Shrugged: what do you think?
- Thread starter Norbert
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I'm in there, although I wouldn't describe myself as "pumped-up." If you don't mind my asking, how old are you?
Well, the difference is that Marx was a good philosopher, communism nonwithstanding. Rand is nothing.
Communism notwithstanding? How do you separate Marx's philosophy from the theory of Communism? That's like saying "Ayn Rand actually IS a good philosopher, Objectivism notwithstanding."
Yuri2356
Test Screening
His Ideas ended up not working so well, but they were still rather well argued and thought out. At least, that's what I've gathered on the subject.
I'd call him a pretty bad philosopher, having read most of his relevant work.
He is only influent because he said what a bunch of people wanted to hear, and said it in a manner that anyone could understand.
Well, I was talking about his influence in academia. Fifty knows more about it than I do, him being a philosophy major and studying the philosophical consensus on various matters, so you should ask him. But looking at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Marx is cited plenty of times there; Rand isn't even mentioned.
Fifty
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Marx had a LOT more to say than just his specific theory of communism! Sure, a lot of what he said was centered around communism, but that certainly doesn't make it necessarily wrong. One can certainly admire a philosophy for the lines of inquiry they open up and/or pursue, even if they got parts wrong. Nobody, for example, believes classical hedonistic utilitarianism anymore, but that doesn't make Mill a bad moral philosopher!
I'm additionally not wholly convinced that anybody has really refuted Marxist communism. At least, the closest things to refutations I hear are "OMG LOOK AT THE USSR AND CHINAAAA" or "IT TOTALLY DOESNT GET HUMAN NATURE!!!!!", neither of which is particularly satisfying.
Luiz said:
My guess is that you've read virtually none of the serious secondary literature on him. As someone uneducated in the relevant areas, it is very difficult for you to make a sound reading of someone like Marx. Also, as an avowed capitalist, I'm sure that you had a pretty harsh bias against him in the first place that hurt your ability to read him thoughtfully. That isn't a strike against you or anything, its just something we humans tend to do.
For a thoughtful examination of the relevance of Marx (and Nietzsche and Freud too!) today, see here.
Interestingly, it looks like a Rand article is being made for the SEP. There are two authors, one who is good and the other who is not so good, so it will be interesting to see the article's quality.
Harbringer
Your A One Flower Garden
This book is next on my list of books to read but this thread has made me reconsider......well...off to beyond god and evil then.
Hum, Critique of the Exploitation Theory? The Poverty of Historicism? Or all the countless debunks of the Labour Theory of Value (which if debunked - and it has been - pretty much makes marxism pointless).
No, I've read plenty of literature on Marx. More than it is healthy, probably.Plus I have read his main works, what is more than enough on itself.
So only Philosophy majors can understand Marx? Not very likely. I think anyone can understand philosphy by themseves, it is just a matter of reading enough.
Um, no. I don't have to agree with a certain philosophy to admire it. I certainly don't agree on most things with Wittgenstein or Bertrand Russel, but I can admire their insights.
Marx OTOH never added anything to my understanding of the world. Despite the verbose manner in which it is written, The Capital is simplistic, overly professoral, and generally just a poor work. You can literally read through 10 straight pages without learning anything new. Marx is like one of those unbearable romantic writers who take 1,000 pages to say what could have been said in 10.
[/QUOTE]
Regardless of whether or not Marx was an intelligent man or a good philosopher, don't you think that if a philosophy totally fails when applied to the real world, it's probably wrong? If it is made to apply to a real world situation, but it fails whenever it is applied, doesn't that show that there must be inherent problems in the philosophy?
I'd say communism fails because it makes basic assumptions about human nature which are simply untrue.
Desmond Hawkins
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This is explained away by Randroids as being a conspiracy of the collectivist philosophy academia... not the foolishness of Rand herself.
Oh, did I mention EVERYONE significant in philosophy is a co-conspirator?
Fifty
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Like I said, I simply haven't read those refutations. In any case, I'm not sure that even debunking the LToV would make Marx a bad philosopher. Remember, Adam Smith believed it too.
luiz said:
Well, I just have to not believe you, because I can't conceive of how anybody who was as familiar with Marx as you claim to be would say he is a bad philosopher, irrespective of whether they disagreed with his major theories. What specific Marx scholarship have you read? My understanding is that the stuff coming out of political science and economics department is notoriously bad.
luiz said:
No, anybody can understand Marx, but they have to know what to read first I don't know specifically what you've read, but for all I know your idea of reading Marx scholarship is reading blog entries by random know-nothings and books by Straussians. You have to understand that I have to be wary of someone who makes such sweeping pronouncements about Marx that are so separate from what actual scholars believe (including scholars who disagree very much with the empirical claims of Marx). And given that you evidently believe that everything Marx said is 1. extremely easy to understand, 2. completely wrong, and 3. bad philosophy, I'm inclined to believe that you have no idea what you're talking about and you've only done a rather superficial survey of Marx. Why don't you read that article I posted? I think it might shed some misconceptions you have with Marxy.
It's not rare at all to encounter people on the internet who claim to have read and understood whole huge areas of inquiry that people many orders of magnitude smarter than them devote years to studying. The best litmus test I can figure out for determining whether such a person is full of it or not is whether their views are extremely dismissive, sweeping and vague, and/or completely incongruous with the scholarly consensus. You failed the test.
I disagree with Marx on a whole range of issues (including the legitimacy of communism), but I'd never say he was a bad philosopher!
In my experience, it is very very rare to find someone who understands a given philosophical thinker without taking classes in it. It is way too easy to misread a primary text and way to hard to figure out which secondary sources are good.
luiz said:
Hmm wow, didn't realize you were a Russell and Wittgenstein scholar too.
In any case, Russell and Witt are qualitatively different than Marx because their names don't carry such a negative and bias-inducing connotation with capitalistas.
elrohir said:
I'd agree
elrohir said:
I'd also agree. However, I'm not entirely sure that communism ever HAS been applied to the real world. I don't know much about history, but my understanding is that not many people in the know believe that the USSR or China or whatever are/were communist in the Marxist sense of the term. What if someone were trying to determine the legitimacy of democracy by looking at North Korea or the Congo. Both have democracy in their name and both suck, so I guess democracy sucks!
I've never really heard a convincing elaboration of that theory. That is, something careful and specific, not just a vague "IT THINKS ALL HUMANS WANT TO COOPERATE PERFECTLY TOGETHER!"
No, it wouldn't make him a bad philosohpher, just wrong in his economical analysis. I mentioned the LTV as a proof that he was indeed proven wrong and not only by people saying "OMG LOOK AT RUSSIA" as you claimed.
If you have not read those critiques, maybe you should before claiming that I'm the ignorant party here, as you do below.
I have read Marx himself, which is the most important, as well as the main re-interpretations of marxism, specially Lukács, Gramsci and Althusser (who tried to deal with the shortcomings of marxist philosophy, BTW).
And why the hell would stuff coming from the economical and pol.sci departments be any worse than that coming out from the philosophy one?
I've read The Capital and The Jewish Question, as well as parts of The German Ideology and some his correspondence. That's enough for me.
Eh, for all I know you're a 15 year old who just read Sophia's World.
This is an internet forum, we don't know anything about each other. We either accept that or simply don't post here.
Karl Popper plainly stated that marxism is a pseudoscience and a dogma. Scholars have made sweeping remarks about Marx before.
In fact, if you want a guy known for sweeping remarks, how about Marx? Have you ever read anything by him? He was the king of sweeping remarks, as anyone who has ever laid eyes on one of his works should know.
You made some pretty sweeping remarks about Rand, too.
Yeah, I doubt your article will teach me more about Marx than Marx did. Why don't you read Marx to form an impression from him?
Karl Marx would also fail your test. BTW, what "scholarly consensus" are you talking about? The people I studied with all agreed that Marx is irrelavant as a philosopher and as an economist, even if they also agreed it is interesting to study him given his vast influence. With which I agree.
In my experience the only people who say that are those who want a job as a philosophy teacher.
Your approach is overly academic and professoral, it is no wonder you like Marx as a philosopher
Jesus, only "scholars" can have an opinion of things? Are you a scholar? Give me a break, dude. I am not ******** and I will have an opinion on anything I read.Hmm wow, didn't realize you were a Russell and Wittgenstein scholar too.
The most annoying of all internet-behaviours is claiming to be a scholar on something and diminishing other opinions on the subject.
No, I am no scholar on Russell or Wittgenstein, I only read a couple of books by either. So what?
I specifically mentioned Russel and Wittgenstein because they were known socialists... Any beef I have with Marx for purely ideological reasons I'd have to extend to them.
But no one seriously tries to have democratic elections in North Korea and the Congo. People were serious about communism in the USSR and early China. I see your point, but I think communism has been given a pretty fair shake, and it fell right off the tree.
Something like that. Basically, in order for communism to work on a large scale, people must either inherently want to work together, and value societies progress over their own, or must be able to learn that and stick with it. This really doesn't work on a large scale.
On a small scale, where it is completely voluntary, communism can work - medieval Christian monasteries are a good example of this. But trying to apply it to something as large as a nation or the world as a whole always ends in disaster because no everyone will be willing to toe the part line, and that is what is required to get communism to work.
That does seem to be Fiftys outlook on things
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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The thing about theories on how society works is that they sometimes become self-fulfilling prophecies. Societies change, and if you're evaluating the Labor Theory of Value you must consider the context on which it was proposed. It was mainstream economics then, not just endorsed in Adam Smith's work (as Fifty pointed out) but also in David Ricardo's work - and just a few days ago you were defending Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage, which depended... on the Labor Theory of Value!
Modern economists, striving to prove economics a "science", have become just as bad as marxists when they claim their theories are the one true interpretation of how humans act and societies should organize. The truth is that there is no perfect explanation, no true theory, because our human societies are continually changing. Nor is there any immutable "optimum" to strive for - the changes brought by technological progress alone invalidate that.
Judging solely from what I've read about 19th century history, the LTV made sense when it was proposed. Where Marx erred was in trying to build a "scientific" theory of human society. That was impossible then, it remains impossible now.
However, there's one conclusion to draw from this: economic theories do change society! Once a theory is widely accepted (which usually has little to do with it's technicalities and more with chance and interests) politicians act to change society to fit that theory.
That's why Rand's deranged ideas are dangerous: their inadequacy to any decent society is obvious, but should most influential people adopt them there's a good change that society will eventually be changed to resemble Rand's cold world. Actually, it's being done already.
True, both Smith and Ricardo believed in the Labour Theory, and they were wrong. But truth be told, they were 18th Century writers, while Marx wrote The Capital in the second half of the 19th Century, when the LTV was already under severe questioning. Marx even tried to deal with those questioning, in some of his correspondence. Just 4 years after Marx wrote his most famous work, Carl Menger formalised what would be known as Marginalist Theory or Subjective Theory, which is accepted until this very day. But Marx could never admit that the LTV was wrong, for without it his whole Exploitation Theory was wrong, and thus marxism as a whole is wrong.
And I don't see why comparative advantage depends on the LTV, even if the guy who originally formulated it believed in that.
I agree, but I'd say no modern economist would present his view as the single correct interpretation of how humans act - no mainstream economist, at least. If we look at the development of mainstream economics we will see that it changed quite a bit over the decades, and thus any claim on a perfect model would be highly questionable.
But that doesn't change the fact that modern models are better than those of the 30's.
Agreed, for sure. My main problem with Marx is not even the LTV, but rather his Theory of History.
Why do you think that we're moving closer to Rand's world?
Anyway, as I said I never read Rand so I can't make an accurate comment, but if her critics in this thread are correct than it seems that she made some of Marx's mistakes, since it looks like Objectivism, much like marxist communism, is a closed system, which claims to represent an universal truth that can explain everything and cure all that is wrong and invalidate all criticism by trying to interpret what the subjective motivation of the critic must be.
Richard Cribb
He does monologues
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Ayn Rand. Again.
Actually I have nothing positive to say, neither about her nor her major opus. And just to make that clear, this is not because of her political views. Of course I find those unsavoury, but I she ever had registered on this board, I doubt there would have been any reason to call her extreme...
However, she is a lousy writer and a pseudo-philosopher. if any of you think that Atlas Shrugged is bad, try investigating her so-called philosophical works. Rarely was the phrase read and weep so apt.
But my reason for popping in was this :
You should study them.
Whatever you have read or not, a biography of the man must surely have been missing among it.
I get the feeling that most things are easy when being looked at through Austrian glasses, but I am quite underwhelmed by this.
I don't have the time right now, but I will return to some of the arguments presented below by the same poster later. I will also post a thread about Marx tomorrow, so stay tuned.
Actually I have nothing positive to say, neither about her nor her major opus. And just to make that clear, this is not because of her political views. Of course I find those unsavoury, but I she ever had registered on this board, I doubt there would have been any reason to call her extreme...
However, she is a lousy writer and a pseudo-philosopher. if any of you think that Atlas Shrugged is bad, try investigating her so-called philosophical works. Rarely was the phrase read and weep so apt.
But my reason for popping in was this :
Which it later turns out that he didn't. And some people's work you shouldn't read.
You should study them.
Sure. That is why he had such an easy life. Marx the public favourite. Marx the popstar. Marx the societal lion.
Whatever you have read or not, a biography of the man must surely have been missing among it.
Hmmm... I am not so sure I understand him so well. I am certainly not sure that you understand him so well. I know for sure that many a student is having a hard time with him. Who is "anyone"?
I get the feeling that most things are easy when being looked at through Austrian glasses, but I am quite underwhelmed by this.
I don't have the time right now, but I will return to some of the arguments presented below by the same poster later. I will also post a thread about Marx tomorrow, so stay tuned.
Murky
Deity
I just started reading it. It's an interesting well written book. I just totally disagree with the ideology. People often use it as an excuse to ignore any environmental or social concerns in their personal pursuit of wealth.
Ecofarm
Deity
You totally disagree with?
individualism?
Creativity outside of groupthink?
The Fallibility of altruism?
A one sided review of the issues present pre-reading. May I ask what you base your expert opinion on? Of course, philosophical authority is derrived from CFC.
There are way more votes than people who have read both the book and diverse reviews of it. I'll get the rest of my reviews from peer reviewed sources (and/or read it myself, after a few other books).
I respect Anthem. I value "I". I value freewill. Power to the people! Boo altruistic rhetoric. Boo big brother.
Boo terrorism (ok, that last boo was borderline OT rhetoric).
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