Karl Marx was namely a great philosopher, justifyingly talking about his philosophy just as we talk about Hegel's or Kant's. Let us just talk about philosophy for it itself cannot and should never owned by anyone, it is for all to use and understand.
This realisation is important, for Marx's philosophy is utterly radical, while in our current time the 2016 when we want to talk about him we mostly associate him with Stalin and Maybe even Tito from the ex Jugoslavia, like they would have something in common. In truth they had absolutely nothing in common, even Tito said to Stalin in harsh tone: "NO!"
Then the so called iron man Josip Visarjonovič tried to take socialism into his own hands and made a mess out of it.
Marxistic philosophy does not exist, and it never shall, but he himself (Marx) is in our days more important than ever was to the philosophers, but let us be honest to our selves, not just them. Let us ask ourselves why is that. The anwser is namely that he was a special kind of philosopher, he represented a beginning, over and over again. Let us not think the Marx was a helpless man for he had to start anew over and over again with the problems he faced. The truth as a matter of fact is the opposite. Marx and Hegel highlighted their entire lives that every human being that lives in this word is rational and thus completely understandable. Thus in this world there is nothing that a man should not be able to understand, meaning that rationality of the world is bound with new beginnings, another name for this beginning is revolution.
Marx was utterly not interested in the rational idea of the revolution such as a new beginning of life in a social environment. Therefore the only rational and real thing of value in this world for him is revolution itself. All other things are less rational and less important. Similarly the proletariat is a universal social class which means that all other classes - historically taken - are far less important for the betterment of this world we all live in. All other classes are also less important because Marx simply believes that the proletarians live more or less with no illusions of this world. Of course Marx was not stupid thus we have to understand his trail of thought carefully: the proletarians can be without illusions, but only if they try only a little bit.
They (the proletarians) have to do only a tiny bit of work, for they live in a world that the material and ideological conditions of their lives are such, that they understand what drives them on and what and how this effects their consciousness. They simply cannot live indifferent and pretend that the world is beautiful and full of appealing events, for them that does simply not exist. And it would be wrong to change that, for we need them more then we think. We need someone to tell us that our thoughts about our own life can be missguided and have their foundation on lies and illusions. One can be amazed at how many illusions we can destroy within ourselves just by listening to the proletarians and in the end come to understand the world in a completely new concept and understanding, thus being able to know what must be done for the improvements of this sad and twisted world that we all love in one way or another.
We are fortunate and saddened that now more than ever we have more proletarians, it is not a coincidence that the people protest on every corner of the world for the rest of the 99% of the human population. Today we can clearly see that capitalism has to produce and accumulate endless lines of illusions, hollow convictions, ambiguous moral and religious hypocrisy, false hopes, etc. for the proletarians have a force to be reckoned with in their hands. Capitalism ironically needs it right there where it is strongest, thus the people must believe it. Profoundly.
What happens when the 99% of the human population is no longer ready to believe any longer? Marx told us what, a revolution which is the only rational thing in this world. If we read Marx with careful thought discipline the effect is immediate, we in the late 2016 spend way too much time with nothing really important, that we live in parallel virtual - cybernetic lives, this is why the capitalism has all the might reigning over us. People namely still believe and sadly even they want to believe him. But not all. Optimism is thus real and tangible alongside productive and practical. Thus revolution still possible.
With this vocabulary we can clearly see that the modern man (and woman, like i said in previous post that i do not want to exclude anyone) is not aware with what the capitalism has its grip on us. Shall we name some things to clarify: uncertainty of jobs, jurisdictional fetishisem, management of human resources, objectification of the trade market, social anemia and complete anonymity of the individual, alienation, exploitation of workers, technological rationality, neutralization of lives and history and society.
But we still cannot shake pessimism. Actually Marx himself took care of it to be implemented into his works and said that realisation and understanding the Truth (in capital for i think it has a bigger meaning) all ready includes the critic of ideological practices and commodity fetishism. Does anyone notice that the children in schools do not even hear anything about such things? But they will still grow up with the idea that they got the picture how the world works in which they presume to live in.
Being blind about these things is not so uncommon and is really profound, but with a school reform we could instill some amazing results in creating a generation of hard working people who are not blinded and mislead.
But what will probably come true is that even if i talk about such things, the economy will still talk about its growth and the technological advancement of humanity, only a few will know that Marx was not interested in such advancements, but was interested in something else instead. He was interested in the process which can turn things around for the better, development is not something foreseen in advance or is even defined in some program. We do not live in a world where that is foreseen.
Advancement is possible only if something out of the ordinary happens. What must happen is a revolution said Marx, but that can only happen under one condition, when the social antagonists or real contradictions develop to such obscene measures, that the people will have no other choice but to make a revolution. And how do we do that? With the help of thinking, no doubt about it. Only with thinking of the real nature of antagonists we can imagine a better world that will come forth with a revolution.
Let us be united and think our way out of this mess of a world, be kind and help others to understand what must be done. This is my way of doing this.
Sory for the week long absence, i've been real bussy in real life and didn't have any time. Follow, share and upvote if you like my posts, thank you for your support or creative criticism.*
All photos are Public Domain.
A special thank you for the helpful advice to:
@fubar-bdhr
@lemouth
In the next post every photo will have its link added.
Bakunin and Kropotkin are much more important to escaping the bankster's matrix than the tool they used to foist misery on the planet.
The fact that marx's name continues, and that Bakunin and Kropotkin are unlikely to have been taught to you in school, are clues to his usefulness as a tool to control the masses.
Nothing persists unless it is useful to the banks or dangerous for you to know.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author
No, Bakunin and Kropotkin have not been taught to me in school, sadly. Thank you for the link, thou it will take me a while to read everyhing. but i will in my own time.
It took me a couple years, but now I only wish on some days that I didn't know what I know.
Better to know, I guess, but knowing makes those that don't know near intolerable, or worse, they refuse to tolerate you.
Here is some fiction: http://www.abelard.org/e-f-russell.php and http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/624
Both very informative, if flawed in their own ways.
I'm really enjoyed your topic, agree with you and resteemed it.
Thank you very much, i'm glad. It is an honor to know you enjoed it that much.
hi @darkminded153, just stopped back to let you know that your post was one of my favourite reads yesterday and I've included it in my Steemit Ramble. You can read my comments about your post here.
Helo @shadowspub
I am honored to be mentioned in your food for thought corner of your post. I feel humbled and proud at the same time to be able to do that. Upped your post to show support :)
Thank you @darkminded153, we are just a community helping each other out, eh :)
Interesting position.
The missing link in the discussion is coercion, though it was hinted at errantly in one of the statements.
Marxism - the idea that everything should be fair. In a sense, it's a great idea. But life isn't fair. We can do what we must to help make it so, but it'll never happen because people get sick, accidents happen, some are introverts while others extraverts. This will affect the dynamics of society.
But it comes back to coercion. How will people ever do this? Would it be made law? If it was, then there is no such thing as freedom, only tyranny. The great challenge is to realize that this has never been done successfully on a large scale. When it was tried, it resulted in disaster, largely because it was tried through coercion. Yet, without coercion, the population in general will not embrace these ideals (coercion includes brainwashing).
The errant statement is that
Capitalism, rightly understood, is not a political position. It can only work under certain political conditions, all of them embracing freedom. As soon as the state enters the market as anything but a competitor on a level playing field, it is no longer capitalism.
Capitalism is an economic ideal. It is the absence of coercion. It is free market. It is not perfect, but it is freedom. It is utterly impossible to be "in its grip", because it has no motive, no coercion and no volition, other than freedom.
To tell a person that capitalism is bad is to tell them that their freedom is bad. Today's young generation has attempted to redefine capitalism. But what they decry is another animal altogether, being a form of fascism, neo-socialism, crony-capitalism or corporatism. This needs to be understood in such discussions in order to rightly talk about capitalism itself. If capitalism is misunderstood, as in this article, then it leaves no room for true freedom. If it is rightly understood, then much of this article needs to be rewritten with a proper understanding of economics, in particular laissez-faire capitalism.
I would strongly recommend Ludwig von Mises' Human Action to help in attempting to understand these things.
Thank you for the great comment @anotherjoe
Coercion as you said in my opinion is of no use whatsoever. Like i said, i would rather do it another way. I would raise my children in a way that helping others would become their mission in life, alongside understanding themselves and others, and of course why must we do what we do in order to help each other. A nation or system based on coercion has no future. You are right about that. Let us not be foced to help each other, but rather let us decide for ourselves with our freedom to do this. Let us put the shacles of goodnes and empathy be placed on us with our own concent. I do not see capitalism as a political position. Rather i see it as a means to transefer goods from one place to another. Sadly all this focuses on one point, like the pyramid. Where in the end, only 0.00001% of the mankind will rule all the rest.
Capitalism has its coercion. It forces companies to produce more and more, the workers must work more and more. And when the time comes when the machines will replace the humans? What will we say to them then? This is one way of forcing people to achieve the utmost extreme productivity in exchange for their health. But after they lose their health what happnes? Most workers simply do not have the money to pay for the healthcare expenses then they die. Where is the freedom in this? Please tell me, for i do not see it.
I will gladly read your book, but it will take me some time. Real life is kinda busy :)
We are agreed that helping one another should be the goal of all mankind. I don't see a need to try to make things equal, but a pursuit of good health for all should be at the forefront of everyone's mind.
And we agree that coercion is evil.
You are misunderstanding capitalism though. If there is coercion, capitalism cannot exist. It is freedom in the marketplace, pure and simple.
In capitalism, a person has the choice as to whether they'll work for the company. If they agree to, then they also agree to the terms. They have no room for complaining, because they freely agreed to the terms offered. They can work or they can leave. They can try to renegotiate at any time. But the employer has no obligation to do any more than is initially agreed. That's freedom.
The business owner's responsibility is to profit. This should be done with integrity, but it still should be the pursuit. If robots will make the business more profitable, then the owner must decide whether he wants to keep paying employees to work or reduce his workforce in favor of robots (which would still require some higher paid workers to maintain).
How could this not be freedom? How could anything else be freedom?
The book is a classic in Austrian economics. You will be in the mind of a genius, but his writing can be difficult at times. He writes as if everyone else understands everything he knows. :) Rothbard is easier to understand, if you care to follow that direction of learning. This school of thought is antithetical to the cronyism you decry and the banking cartel that holds so many modern economies in its grip.
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Socialism ”. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A…. (substituting grades for dollars – something closer to home and more readily understood by all).
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.
The second test average was a D! No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
It could not be any simpler than that.
There are five morals to this story:
Source: posted on many sites
You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. Why is there even a need for the poor to exist?
What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. This was the way in the ex Yugoslavia, i understand this, but we as humans must have the discipline embedded into us as children not do do this.
The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. Why must the government take anything at all?
You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it! What do we need to mutiply? More iphones that look exactly the same as the previous version? (just an example)
When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation. You are aboslutley right, but it is upon us to do our very best. One of the most poisonus things in the world is by my opinon: LAZYNESS. So let us be an example to everyone else, and work as hard as we can, and meanwhile teach our kids what it means and for what reason must we work so hard.
I can tell you from a personal experience this whole hog-wash sound good on paper, but in reality is a complete disaster. I lived in a communist country until I was around 20 years old. People are too selfish to make them share this utopia...
I'm sory you had to grow up in such circumstances but i do believe that if it was truly communitic that would not happen. Yougoslavia was no diffrent. Everyone said it is communistic, but Marx was turning himself in his grave.
You should consider including a source for your images. Including a source not only gives credit to who made the images but shows you put time and effort into making your post. This may make people more likely to vote on it.
If images are Public Domain or CC0 you could just indicate that at the end of your post. All photos are Public Domain for example.
Finding the original source isn't necessary. A link to where you found it will do.
Thank you for the helpful advice. I usually just focus on the content of the post, and just add photos that are in Public Domain - found with google. It takes me some time and effort to put my post together, for i have to make sure it is understandable and clear.
Updated my post, and will include in future posts every link that was used for photos.
Thank you again.
Marx was one of the best critic of the Capitalist system, but on the other side, I think its solution to the Capitalist problem is maybe too old for the current historical moment.
Great read! Followed
I enjoyed reading your post, informative and clear opinions. It has also sparked some interesting discussion in this comments section.
Thank you very much, its an honor.
I was hoping it would, put some work into making it.
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