Just For Grampa, the Karl Marx thread

[Uncensored2008]

You know we cannot really have an intellectually rewarding discussion about somebody's IMPRESSION of what Marx said.


If one is serious about discussing Marxism, we must discuss what Marx actually wrote.

I know, I know, that isn't how discussions are typically structured in this place.

Here intellectualy cowards really only like to wrestle with strawmen of their own design.

The links to his most pertinent writings are in the OP.

I cite the works of Marx in virtually every post I offer in this thread.

{The sum of money [1] which the labourer receives for his daily or weekly labour, forms the amount of his nominal wages, or of his wages estimated in value. But it is clear that according to the length of the working-day, that is, according to the amount of actual labour daily supplied, the same daily or weekly wage may represent very different prices of labour, i.e., very different sums of money for the same quantity of labour. [2] We must, therefore, in considering time-wages, again distinguish between the sum-total of the daily or weekly wages, &c., and the price of labour. How then, to find this price, i.e., the money-value of a given quantity of labour? The average price of labour is found, when the average daily value of the labour-power is divided by the average number of hours in the working-day.}

 

[Steelplate]

Ahh... the typical response of someone who has no answers, only complaints... Congratulations... your just another pussy who thinks in AM Radio-ese.

You were bested in actual debate and responded with a temper tantrum.

If you call a debate one where your opposition states his point of view and you retort with bullshit. I however, do not call that a debate... that's just you pissing in the wind.

 

[Uncensored2008]

If you call a debate one where your opposition states his point of view and you retort with bullshit. I however, do not call that a debate... that's just you pissing in the wind.

If the debate is Marx, it is pretty ignorant to call citations of the works of Marx "bullshit."

You want to bash Republicans and chant mantras you got from the hate sites; I understand this. What you are not capable of doing is discussing the ideas and philosophy of Marx. As is the case with most leftists, you are one-dimensional and shallow.

 

[Steelplate]

If you call a debate one where your opposition states his point of view and you retort with bullshit. I however, do not call that a debate... that's just you pissing in the wind.

If the debate is Marx, it is pretty ignorant to call citations of the works of Marx "bullshit."

You want to bash Republicans and chant mantras you got from the hate sites; I understand this. What you are not capable of doing is discussing the ideas and philosophy of Marx. As is the case with most leftists, you are one-dimensional and shallow.

It's not your cites... it's your interpretation. Furthermore... your BIGGEST problem is to think that American Progressives want Marxist Communism to be the system that America adopts.

It's your blanket assumption that anyone to the left of your personal and Party ideology is a fucking Marxist. You're a fool who has been brainwashed by right wing media outlets... Fox News, AM radio and Right Wing Websites are just as petty, stupid and partisan as MSNBC HuffPo, and all those other ones your side hates so much.

I find it amusing that someone who professes to be "So Intelligent" and insightful cannot figure out the the right engages in the exact same tactics that you accuse the left of, and that those tactics cannot be trusted no matter which side is employing them.

 

[ilia25]

The difference is between Marx saying that in a capitalist society the worker wages always remain at its minimum, and Krugman and other Keynesians who acknowledge that the worker wages do rise, often faster than GDP growth.

Except, of course, that Marx does NOT make that claim. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Then what is his reason for class warfare and for the dictatorship of the proletariat?

They don't choose anything, they just look at the data -- like the stagnating middle class incomes.

The data does not support your claims.

How can you tell -- after all you are a moron! In 1973 the median household income adjusted for inflation was 46,109. In 2010 it was 49,445.
Median Household Income History in the United States

His phrase is that of a Marxian. Krugman is making the claim that inheritance is the basis of wealth, which is demonstrably false. But Krugman isn't know for making factual claims.

Reading comprehension. Krugman says that in US, as a matter of fact, more than in other developed countries, there is a strong correlation between your success and your parents wealth.

You're lack of education does not make me an idiot. Lenin's USSR was the most democratic country the world has ever seen. If you had the votes in the local soviet, you could literally have your neighbor shot.

You have no idea what you are talking about. The soviets were controlled by the Bolsheviks from the start. It was a brutal dictatorship from the moment they came to power.

 

[JoeB131]

ooooh, COrky, you are soooo cute when you are angry....

I don't think you "Noam Chomsky Republicans" really make anyone angry.

Other than you, Chucklehead?

Come on, guy, of course you get angry when people say out loud, "You know, the destuction of the middle class so rich folks can have more Polo Ponies was probably not a good idea."

Because you've convinced yourself going along with it was a good idea, even though you are probably not doing as well as your father or grandfather did.

 

[Dr Grump]

So what nations have in fact practiced Marxian communism?

The Soviet Union.

After the revolution, Lenin established true dictatorship of the proletariat in St. Petersburg (funny how he didn't choose Moscow, where the elite were.)

What many don't grasp is the meaning of "Soviet." A soviet is a congress or committee. The structure of Lenin's USSR was a series of soviets, from the neighborhood level all the way to the supreme soviet. Lenin's USSR was in fact the most democratic nation in history.

Josef Stalin was a fascist thug, but Lenin was a true believer. Lenin was a stupid man, as well, fanaticism and stupidity often go hand in hand, with Lenin this was very much the case.

In 1921, Lenin outlined the "grand experiment" for St. Petersburg. Neighborhoods elected a soviet to determine the needs and abilities of those within their domain. Uparvdoms were dispatched from the NKVD to enforce the will of the soviets. Those who defied the soviets were summarily shot.

So imagine a group of your neighbors, all voting on where you would sleep - all private property was outlawed as was currency, the soviet in your area assigned quarters. The soviet assigned work duties. Leftism in general is at war against the middle class, Marxism takes this to an extreme. All through the writings of Marx, you will rarely see hatred of the Aristocracy - the left is fine with the rich and the elite, it is the middle class, the bourgeoisie, which the left hates and seeks to destroy. So it was in St. Petersburg - doctors were assigned to dig ditches and factory workers to run hospitals. The word of the soviet was law. The corruption is obvious, people would do anything to sway the soviets to make their lives better. Sexual favors, criminal acts.

As I said, Lenin was a stupid man. All of this defied what Marx had outlined. Lenin tried to force communism on an uneducated and bitter populace. That so many died and it was such a disaster is really not a surprise. Democracy is mob rule, communism is inherently unjust, combine the two, backed by men with guns, and hell on earth is created, as it was in St. Petersburg.

It was real communism in every respect, and with the exception of another real communist regime, the Khmer Rouge, it was perhaps the most wretched chapter in human history.

Ayn Rand wrote of the experience as "the true evil was not that the communists killed so many, but that they denied life to we, the living."

You know, the more I read of your shit, I begin to realise how ridiculous those who call Obama a Marxist or Socialist sound. Thanks...

 

[editec]

Uncensored2008.

You said that nobody takes Krugman seriously?

I think you've been misinformed:

Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University,

Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics,
and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times.[7][8]

In 2008, Krugman won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences (informally the Nobel Prize in Economics) for his contributions to New Trade Theory and New Economic Geography. According to the Nobel Prize Committee, the prize was given for Krugman's work explaining the patterns of international trade and the geographic concentration of wealth, by examining the impact of economies of scale and of consumer preferences for diverse goods and services.[9]

Krugman is known in academia for his work on international economics (including trade theory, economic geography, and international finance),[10][11] liquidity traps and currency crises.

He is the 18th most widely cited economist in the world today.[12]

In a 2011 survey, US economics professors ranked Krugman as their favorite living economic thinker under the age of 60.[13]

As of 2008[update], Krugman has written 20 books and has published over 200 scholarly articles in professional journals and edited volumes.[14] He has also written more than 750 columns dealing with current economic and political issues for The New York Times.

Looks like somebody takes him as serious as a heart attack, amigo.

Would you like to rephrse your POV regarding Krugman?

Did you mean YOU don't take him seriously?

That sentiment might actually make sense, despite his fame and influence in the world of macroeconomics.

 

[JoeB131]

Apparently, Romney takes Krugman seriously..


http://loyalopposition.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/is-romney-reading-krugman/

 

[Uncensored2008]

You know, the more I read of your shit, I begin to realise how ridiculous those who call Obama a Marxist or Socialist sound. Thanks...

Do you have any thoughts you would like to share on the writings of Marx or why Lenin ushered in the NEP immediately after the events outlined above? The NEP, new economic program basically returned to capitalism. Was this an admission by Lenin that Marxism was a failure and could not work?

If so, then what should we think of Obama's openly Marxist Osawatomie speech?

Do you have any thoughts?

 

[Uncensored2008]

Looks like somebody takes him as serious as a heart attack, amigo.

Would you like to rephrse your POV regarding Krugman?

Did you mean YOU don't take him seriously?

That sentiment might actually make sense, despite his fame and influence in the world of macroeconomics.

Barack Obama, Algore, and Yassar Arafat have won Nobel prizes. These prizes are given for forwarding the leftist agenda.

Krugman is an extremist left pundit. As an economist, he is no more valuable than his polar opposite, Rush Limbaugh.

 

[Uncensored2008]

Apparently, Romney takes Krugman seriously..


Mitt Romney Said Cutting Spending Slows the Economy - NYTimes.com

Rosenthal makes an illogical leap that Romney is reading Krugman. Since virtually every leftists extremist from Obama down to you is reciting the same script, Rosenthal is postulating absurdity.

Since Rosenthal is a radical leftist pundit of the NY Times, as is Krugman, it isn't terribly surprising that he stupidly attributed Romney's idiocy to Krugman.

In reality, Romney is listening to his political strategists who are urging him to move sharply left, in the belief that this will appeal to the mythical middle. Romney is convinced that he has the nomination locked up and is now in general campaign mode, apparently with a strategy of echoing Obama's leftism.

 

[editec]

Looks like somebody takes him as serious as a heart attack, amigo.

Would you like to rephrse your POV regarding Krugman?

Did you mean YOU don't take him seriously?

That sentiment might actually make sense, despite his fame and influence in the world of macroeconomics.

Barack Obama, Algore, and Yassar Arafat have won Nobel prizes. These prizes are given for forwarding the leftist agenda.

Krugman is an extremist left pundit. As an economist, he is no more valuable than his polar opposite, Rush Limbaugh.

Well...I tried to have a serious discussion with you.


But based on the above quote, its clear that you don't know what a pundit is, and you apparently don't know what an economist is, either.

Now I have no problem accepting that you think Krugman is worthless.

But to tell us that the world of economics shares your POV is sort of nonsense.

 

[Toro]

Economists take Krugman very seriously when he is discussing economics, even if they disagree with him.

 

[Uncensored2008]

Well...I tried to have a serious discussion with you.


But based on the above quote, its clear that you don't know what a pundit is, and you apparently don't know what an economist is, either.

Now I have no problem accepting that you think Krugman is worthless.

But to tell us that the world of economics shares your POV is sort of nonsense.

{A marvelous thing happened over on Paul Krugman's blog at the New York Times last week. Krugman effectively conceded defeat on a range of economic debates. Who defeated him? People who posted comments on his New York Times blog. Mere commenters.

For those who do not know, Paul Krugman is one of the few who still claim that Keynesian progressivism is the answer to America's (and Europe's) problems, not their cause. He repeats that claim many times each month. Amid these repeated expressions of his "progressive" faith, he now also repeatedly expresses grim despair because his progressive policy prescriptions are being accepted less and less in the public square, even by the Obama administration.

Krugman is an academic. He has never run a company. He has never created a job. The closest contact he evidently ever had to "business" was as an adviser to Enron, where (in his own words) he was paid $50,000 to help build Enron's "image."

This, perhaps, explains the dozen or so points that Krugman makes over and over. Here are a few: Obama's stimulus was too small. Debt is good. Austerity is bad. Deflation is coming. Ken Rogoff, Greg Mankiw, Alberto Alesina (all at Harvard), and other serious economic scientists do not understand economics as well as he does. Those who do not agree with him are "mass delusional." And perhaps Krugman's favorite line: "I was right, of course."

Befitting his ideology, Krugman has only one policy to propose, regardless of topic: Transfer more resources from the discipline and dynamism of markets to the inefficiency and cronyism of government. }

Archived-Articles: Paul Krugman Gives Up

I disagree.

Krugman was humiliated is not taken seriously.

 

[daveman]

How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

-- Ronald Reagan

Almost. That's really how you tell an EX-Communist -- like me.

I guess I'll weigh in here. Karl Marx was a brilliant idiot. I mean both sides of that. His critique of capitalism and identification of the importance of class struggle were brilliant. His grasp of human psychology was idiotic. And he had a few ideas, like the labor theory of value, which were neither particularly brilliant nor particularly idiotic but simply wrong.

He failed to grasp the implications of one of his own core ideas, dialectical materialism, in terms of predicting the course of the class struggle. The dialectic is a type of reasoning that opposes one force or principle (the "thesis") to another (the "antithesis") and generates a compromise or fusion of the two (the "synthesis"), which then opposes the antithesis of itself, and so on. Marx borrowed this idea from Hegel, but gave it a twist that was non-religious in contrast to Hegel, hence dialectical materialism.

In Marx' view, there was the feudal class (thesis) opposed by the rising capitalist class or bouregoisie (antithesis), generating the capitalist economy (synthesis) in which the capitalists became the equivalent of feudal lords but operating on a different principle. Then they were in turn opposed by the proletariat or working class (antithesis) generating a socialist economy (synthesis) in which there were no classes -- and there lay his error, because the true fusion between the bourgeoisie and proletariat, the true synthesis, as it turned out, was not a full-on socialist economy but a mixed or social-democratic economy dominated by strong labor unions, and that in turn generated an antithesis of its own. If the dialectic is valid at all (and I am somewhat of a skeptic on the point), it is not subject to arbitrarily cease working when things reach a point that you like.

Marx also supposed that class struggle was the only type of struggle that human beings engage in, and that the state, whose purpose is to mediate and resolve human struggles within a society, would have no function once classes were abolished and would wither away, leaving an anarchistic communist utopia. Which is why I say that his understanding of human nature was idiotic. Only a German romantic could believe such drivel as that.

The labor theory of value, on which a lot of his economic ideas were based, also runs into problems. The value of something is not a static quality dependent on objective properties of the item itself, but a fluctuating quality dependent on prospective buyer's perception of the item and on what they have to trade for it and on its scarcity and the bargaining power of the seller. It's also a fact that greater efficiency of production reduces the amount of labor required to produce a given item, without (necessarily) reducing its value.

Long story short is that Karl Marx was a seminal and important thinker of the 19th century who should be read by everyone who wants to understand history and economics -- but not believed as if he were a prophet. One must approach his ideas with an open but critical mind.

Which is why neither a Communist NOR an anti-Communist can understand him. A Communist lacks a critical mind, and an anti-Communist lacks an open one.

I'm sure that comforts you.

Any student of history will tell you that no matter how brilliant Marx' ideas were, the end result is that following them created an ocean of spilled blood. Well, any student of real history.

Theory is fine. I prefer to look at results.

 

[Unkotare]

How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

-- Ronald Reagan

Almost. That's really how you tell an EX-Communist -- like me.

I guess I'll weigh in here. Karl Marx was a brilliant idiot. I mean both sides of that. His critique of capitalism and identification of the importance of class struggle were brilliant. His grasp of human psychology was idiotic. And he had a few ideas, like the labor theory of value, which were neither particularly brilliant nor particularly idiotic but simply wrong.

He failed to grasp the implications of one of his own core ideas, dialectical materialism, in terms of predicting the course of the class struggle. The dialectic is a type of reasoning that opposes one force or principle (the "thesis") to another (the "antithesis") and generates a compromise or fusion of the two (the "synthesis"), which then opposes the antithesis of itself, and so on. Marx borrowed this idea from Hegel, but gave it a twist that was non-religious in contrast to Hegel, hence dialectical materialism.

In Marx' view, there was the feudal class (thesis) opposed by the rising capitalist class or bouregoisie (antithesis), generating the capitalist economy (synthesis) in which the capitalists became the equivalent of feudal lords but operating on a different principle. Then they were in turn opposed by the proletariat or working class (antithesis) generating a socialist economy (synthesis) in which there were no classes -- and there lay his error, because the true fusion between the bourgeoisie and proletariat, the true synthesis, as it turned out, was not a full-on socialist economy but a mixed or social-democratic economy dominated by strong labor unions, and that in turn generated an antithesis of its own. If the dialectic is valid at all (and I am somewhat of a skeptic on the point), it is not subject to arbitrarily cease working when things reach a point that you like.

Marx also supposed that class struggle was the only type of struggle that human beings engage in, and that the state, whose purpose is to mediate and resolve human struggles within a society, would have no function once classes were abolished and would wither away, leaving an anarchistic communist utopia. Which is why I say that his understanding of human nature was idiotic. Only a German romantic could believe such drivel as that.

The labor theory of value, on which a lot of his economic ideas were based, also runs into problems. The value of something is not a static quality dependent on objective properties of the item itself, but a fluctuating quality dependent on prospective buyer's perception of the item and on what they have to trade for it and on its scarcity and the bargaining power of the seller. It's also a fact that greater efficiency of production reduces the amount of labor required to produce a given item, without (necessarily) reducing its value.

Long story short is that Karl Marx was a seminal and important thinker of the 19th century who should be read by everyone who wants to understand history and economics -- but not believed as if he were a prophet. One must approach his ideas with an open but critical mind.

Which is why neither a Communist NOR an anti-Communist can understand him. A Communist lacks a critical mind, and an anti-Communist lacks an open one.

I'm sure that comforts you.

Any student of history will tell you that no matter how brilliant Marx' ideas were, the end result is that following them created an ocean of spilled blood. Well, any student of real history.

Theory is fine. I prefer to look at results.

His ideas were NOT brilliant, of course. His analysis of history was insightful, but when he ventured to predict future trends he went right off the rails and as a result led hundreds of millions to servitude, death, and dehumanization.

 

[daveman]

Almost. That's really how you tell an EX-Communist -- like me.

I guess I'll weigh in here. Karl Marx was a brilliant idiot. I mean both sides of that. His critique of capitalism and identification of the importance of class struggle were brilliant. His grasp of human psychology was idiotic. And he had a few ideas, like the labor theory of value, which were neither particularly brilliant nor particularly idiotic but simply wrong.

He failed to grasp the implications of one of his own core ideas, dialectical materialism, in terms of predicting the course of the class struggle. The dialectic is a type of reasoning that opposes one force or principle (the "thesis") to another (the "antithesis") and generates a compromise or fusion of the two (the "synthesis"), which then opposes the antithesis of itself, and so on. Marx borrowed this idea from Hegel, but gave it a twist that was non-religious in contrast to Hegel, hence dialectical materialism.

In Marx' view, there was the feudal class (thesis) opposed by the rising capitalist class or bouregoisie (antithesis), generating the capitalist economy (synthesis) in which the capitalists became the equivalent of feudal lords but operating on a different principle. Then they were in turn opposed by the proletariat or working class (antithesis) generating a socialist economy (synthesis) in which there were no classes -- and there lay his error, because the true fusion between the bourgeoisie and proletariat, the true synthesis, as it turned out, was not a full-on socialist economy but a mixed or social-democratic economy dominated by strong labor unions, and that in turn generated an antithesis of its own. If the dialectic is valid at all (and I am somewhat of a skeptic on the point), it is not subject to arbitrarily cease working when things reach a point that you like.

Marx also supposed that class struggle was the only type of struggle that human beings engage in, and that the state, whose purpose is to mediate and resolve human struggles within a society, would have no function once classes were abolished and would wither away, leaving an anarchistic communist utopia. Which is why I say that his understanding of human nature was idiotic. Only a German romantic could believe such drivel as that.

The labor theory of value, on which a lot of his economic ideas were based, also runs into problems. The value of something is not a static quality dependent on objective properties of the item itself, but a fluctuating quality dependent on prospective buyer's perception of the item and on what they have to trade for it and on its scarcity and the bargaining power of the seller. It's also a fact that greater efficiency of production reduces the amount of labor required to produce a given item, without (necessarily) reducing its value.

Long story short is that Karl Marx was a seminal and important thinker of the 19th century who should be read by everyone who wants to understand history and economics -- but not believed as if he were a prophet. One must approach his ideas with an open but critical mind.

Which is why neither a Communist NOR an anti-Communist can understand him. A Communist lacks a critical mind, and an anti-Communist lacks an open one.

I'm sure that comforts you.

Any student of history will tell you that no matter how brilliant Marx' ideas were, the end result is that following them created an ocean of spilled blood. Well, any student of real history.

Theory is fine. I prefer to look at results.

His ideas were NOT brilliant, of course. His analysis of history was insightful, but when he ventured to predict future trends he went right off the rails and as a result led hundreds of millions to servitude, death, and dehumanization.

Many on the left don't have a problem with that.

 

[Dragon]

I'm sure that comforts you.

Any student of history will tell you that no matter how brilliant Marx' ideas were, the end result is that following them created an ocean of spilled blood. Well, any student of real history.

Theory is fine. I prefer to look at results.

I knew it was a waste of time to try to have a serious discussion with someone whose wisdom is expressed in bumper-sticker bites, but what the hell, it was a good try.

For those capable of serious thought, Marx was dead before the Russian Revolution occurred, and there is plenty of evidence in his writings that he wouldn't have approved of it. There are plenty of flaws in Marxism, but the outcome in so-called (but misnamed) "Communist" states isn't one of them. That's more bumper-sticker logic.

 

[mmmjvpssm]

My views aren't based on Marx, they based on my love of America