I'm reading the Communist Manifesto. How the fuck can anyone

>the manifiesto
>not das kapital
lmao kys

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>mfw labor theory of value

>>8575049
The proletariat is exploitet by the bourgeoisie until they literally can't survive anymore, that's when they will start a revolution so they can stay alive. People will always be jealouse and think bad about other people and start wars because of Inequality, and the way Capitalism works is because it creates inequality, it is essential for it's existence.

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>>8575049
>It proves communism is about making everyone poor.
>linguistic platonism

>>8575071
I live in a 3rd world country. Everyone here has access to food, even the homeless and jobless. Most poor people here also have cars, and a good house. And every one of them has the chance of getting a better life. I know 5 guys who were really poor, managed to study and work, and now they have a better life than me.

The proletariat will never reach a state where they won't even have access to food. From now on, their lives will only get better and better.

>>8575087
that's a very uplifting thought.

>>8575049
How do you plan on learning anything when you obviously approach it in bad faith?

>>8575087
It will get worse over time. A time goes by, the rich will become even richer and the rising number of the poor will become even poorer. I've been to Cali, Colombia for a few months, which is definitely 3rd world, people are sturggling to survive down there, the rich live totally seperate from the poor. Also, it's true, everyone has the chance of getting a better live. But not everyone can do it at the same time. It's like the lottery, Everyone can win, but not everyone at once. That's just how it works. The communism and socialism of the USSR, cuba and North korea and all the other stats is doomed to fail in my opinion, because the people were not really free. Communism aims to free the people from opressing Capitalism, but as soon as some bullshit dictator starts to exploit and opress the people, it's all worthless. I'd like to see a communist but TOTALLY democratic state. If it doesn't work out THAT way, they can just vote to return to the old system and try to create a new system that isn't communism or capitalism

>>8575111
I wanted to read it because I wanted to understand communism. I honestly thought that maybe by reading it I would even agree with it. Obviously it didn't happen

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>>8575049
Marx was wrong about a lot of things. The best socialist thinkers were Georges Sorel, Mosley and arguably Mussolini (in terms of ideology)

>>8575087
Since all 3rd world countries are the same I guess that settles the matter.
>their lives will only get better and better
Phew. Before I read this I thought climate change might actually turn out disastrously.

>>8575049
I would suggest to you "The Culture of Critice" by Prof. Kevin Macdonald. I believe this to be a good explanation, of many varieties of communism.

>>8575049
You're failing to read the work in its historical context.

In Marx's time, factory workers could labor for 17 hours a day, 7 days a week, and still not have the means to adequately feed their family. And they could hardly afford to live in their shitty, crowded, disease ridden tenement houses. When Marx says the proletariat is always regressing, he's referring to these urban living conditions which were much worse than the agricultural conditions from the decades before.

Clearly not all of his claims apply to the world today, because his writings are over a century old. The key takeaways from Marx and Engels isn't in the details, it's in the way of thinking about the world in terms of who owns the means of production, and who labors with those means of production, and how the profit should properly be distributed. It's a propaganda piece, like any political manifesto. But if you can withhold your knee-jerk "durrhurr Marx is bad because I'm smart and lots of people say so" reaction and actually think critically, you can at least understand how groundbreaking and influential the work truly is

>>8575133
Climate change is a spook

>>8575118
this is a depressing thought.

>>8575142
t.Trump supporter

>>8575049
it complete shit

>>8575209
It's not, actually.

>>8575216
>>8575209
there is disagreement!

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>ywn go back in time and brutally murder Karl Marx

>>8575049
>Communist Manifesto
It's shit.

t. Marxist

Read some actual books, not pamphlets

>>8575239
Keep dreaming

>>8575245

I'd settle for killing a few modern day communists tbqh

>>8575279
Keep dreaming edgelord : >

t. porky faggot ot retard defending the masters who don't see him as anything more than money

>>8575049
>reading for the plot

>>8575242
>A masterful piece of propaganda

>shit

Wew lad

t.marxist

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>>8575118
>Communism aims to free the people from opressing Capitalism, but as soon as some bullshit dictator starts to exploit and opress the people, it's all worthless.
THISSSS. In the CCCP for example, Lenin was a "man of the people" - he made a point of wearing a worker's cap rather than the expected bowler or top hat, drove a shitty car, didn't live in a palace, and hoped to eventually step down from power so it could be equally distributed. Then Stalin comes along and (partly, it must be said, because of WWII and the need for a strong military leader) sets himself up as a total autocrat. Same shit with Mao ousting Chen and Deng Xiaoping.

>>8575544
>Lenin was a "man of the people''
Bourgeoisie were people too, that didn't stop him hanging thousands of them

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Communism is a murderous, pathological ideology.

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>>8575562
>Bourgeoisie were people too

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>>8575562
>pigs
>people

>>8575568
>>8575573
Both of you are bourgeois

>>8575562
People directly responsible for the poverty, suffering and deaths of millions of other people. Basically the Martin Shkrelis of 1917.

>>8575134
This plus anything by Arthur Kemp, Vox Day or Jared Taylor

>>8575577
>implying that wouldn't ecamplify my point

>>8575580
You're right, those dreadful shopkeepers and dentists killed millions. How could I forget?

>>8575580

>Implying the only people suffering thanks to Martin Shkreli's """"dick move"""" aren't the greedy insurance companies

>>8575565
>there was no wealth to be redistributed in 1917
>That's why Russia just couldn't industrialize, right?

>>8575586
Complacency is guilt anon.

>>8575565
This is based on a false premise, that marxist = wealthy hipster. I personally am poor as shit.

>>8575582
>Vox Day
>A faggot whose claim to fame is failing to rig a sci-fi award

>>8575600

well cheer up you'll be the one vandalizing and murdering people richer than you in the revolution then

>>8575600

>This is based on a false premise

The premise is mostly true, actually. You're an exception.

Marxism is the opium of the pseuds.

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>>8575118
Caleño here.

eat shit son of a bitch.
we hate comunism here and I wish you painful death.

capitalism is awesome faggot.

>>8575635
>capitalism is awesome
>implies that the economic system that destroyed culture is good
>uses the word 'awesome'
You're on the wrong board.

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>>8575619
There's actually fewer, richer people than ever before (the whole 1% idea the Americans were rioting about a few years back), you could redistribute a solid majority of the wealth by taking maybe 250 of them into custody. It would be virtually bloodless.

>>8575627
Well, maybe so, I know "campus radicals" are a thing. Still, it seems like a system that directly threatens hipster-type lifestyles.

>>8575643
come mierda zurdo hijueputa.
eat shit leftists son of a bitch.

>>8575644

Oh yeah, you know better and won't fuck up everything and cause a famine. They'll just sit there and let you take their wealth too. Not like they're storing their wealth in other countries.They'll just flee at the first sight of trouble leaving you penniless and with a bunch of hungry niggers. Then everybody will want things to be like they were before and you'll need secret police to silence enemies of the revolution and so on.

Communists are resentful, unintelligent people.

I try to make a public face of taking Marxism seriously because I know a lot of 'intellectuals' are into it, and I don't want to seem like one of those frothing right-wingers who freaks out about 'cultural marxism' and just looks anti-intellectual.

But frankly, from what I've read about it, Marxism strikes me as one of the silliest, least sober, most divisive, pseudo-religious ideologies ever. Almost every single idea in it completely lacks nuance, starting from the labor theory of value proceeding all the way to the recommendations of the manifesto.

For one thing, the labor theory of value completely ignores the role of organizational labor in the production of goods. Capital allocation isn't some purely passive profit sucking preying upon some pre-existing labor apparatus that's already making society's goods and services. The capitalists get where they are by organizing the means of production so as to make production possible, and the profit ("surplus value") they extract is a reward for their mission-critical efforts. The idea that conceiving of a business, product or industry and raising the money to see it come to fruition isn't "labor" is the most fucking autistic shit I can imagine. It's like Marx thinks it's not really work unless it's some kind of mindless manual labor, which incidentally means that anyone publishing Marx's books (and Marx himself if he ever profited off them) is a capitalist themselves!

The dialectical materialist prophecy is even worse. I'll concede that the labor theory of value has SOME limited application; to the extent that a mature businesses is being traded around on the stock market by people not involved in running it, Marx's analysis does make sense (though even here he ignores the possibility of redirecting shares toward social ends through pension funds). The Hegelian dialectical shit on the other hand is just pretty much un-scientific mystical mumbo-jumbo from top to bottom. I just see no reason to believe in a linear progression of history according to evolving modes of production. If the slave state comes before the feudal state, what do we make about places where slavery existed AFTER the destruction of feudalism, such as the United States? Or places where capitalism came AFTER socialism, like Russia or China? To salvage his empirically-challenged theory, Marx needs to re-cast it not as a linear historical progression but as some other type of 'development,' under which conditions it might become more viable, but at any rate he never gives us this so his prophecy as such is just bunk.

As for the manifesto that's all just polemics and not really meant to be an 'intellectual' work in any way. But obviously the idea that the poor keep getting poorer until they revolt is bullshit. A combination of capitalism and welfare-state intervention has raised life expectancies around the world, to the point where Sub-Saharan Africans now live longer than people in advanced Western democracies 100 years ago.

>>8575643
Destruction of culture is something Leftists don't touch on enough; it's super easy to find examples of it (endless film remakes, every song on the radio sounding the same, fine art and theater as the exclusive preserves of wealthy patrons). Capitalism gives us shit like The Emoji Movie.

>>8575656
>disliking capitalism means you're leftist

>>8575665
>They'll just sit there and let you take their wealth too. Not like they're storing their wealth in other countries.
In this case "you" would be a broad section of the working class - including the limo drivers, the security guards, the bank clerks, etc - and it would be a global October, internet-driven like the Arab Spring or Anonymous movements. There'd be no capitalist-friendly zone to flee to.

>>8575671
>hey this guy didn't predict exactly how the 20th century would turn out and the fact that idioits take his word as gospel is somehow his fault

>>8575679
capitalism is the only system where you gain what you reap.

hard work is rewarded in capitalism, lazyness is rewarded in anything else.

capitalism is the only moral system where a poor nigglet can work in NASA.

poor people rather steal money from rich than work hard.

>>8575119
Work on your understanding first. If this isn't jusy bait, then you have low reading comprehension.

>>8575685

Yeah, wake me up when that makes sense. Nobody gives a fuck about your dumbass ideology bro.

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>>8575696
>hard work is rewarded in capitalism
No, being born wealthy and playing irl Monopoly is rewarded. Hard work just gets you enough to keep you in food and shelter so you can keep working, and if the bosses fuck up and cause a market collapse you won't even get that.

>>8575717
>le I was born in wealth meme
majority of fortunes are first generation.

70% of fortunes are wasted in one generation, 90% in two.

nice try commie.

>>8575696
Yeah all those low paid nurse's aids shouldn't be so lazy and instead go into hardworking professions like advertizing.

>>8575721
I'd love for you to find a source on those numbers you got straight from your poopoo hole.

>>8575696
>hard work is rewarded in capitalism
Sure thing, bucko.

>>8575697
This

How the fuck you could understand the opposite of what the manifesto says.

>>8575717
Hard work rewards you in capitalism only if you work for yourself, but how many people do that?

Is funny when i see liberal intelectuals praising hard work here in spain when they never had a manual work in their lives.

>>8575643
>destroyed culture
Communism wants to destroy culture, you fuck. Marx said it many times. He said that it was the bourgeoise that developed culture, and that it was "just a way to turn the proletariat into machines"

>>8575748

>>8575679

>>8575699
>Nobody gives a fuck
Well 26 people cared enough to post ITT, so that sounds like wishful thinking really

>>8575728
impossible, it's drivel

>>8575728
http://time.com/money/3925308/rich-families-lose-wealth/

>>8575732
>physical labour is equal to social gains made by capitalists
kys commie

>>8575727
you realize the more people learn a trade it's wages are low?

if they want money they should become engineers, but most women are stupid anyway.

>>8575760
>capitalist wealth hoarding reliably correlates to social improvement
I figured people on /lit/ would have heard of upton sinclair

>>8575760
>but most women are stupid anyway.
Ahh, okay, you're one of THOSE posters.

>>8575760
>you realize the more people learn a trade it's wages are low?
You realize that nothing I said implied anything else and that you're changing the subject?
>if they want money
Not the point dumbass.
>they should become engineers
Yes, everyone in healthcare should become an engineer. That would turn out great.

>>8575290

Don't need to dream. Most commies end up killing themselves anyway

>>8575785
>>8575780
>>8575775
you do realize america is the only country with good healthcare because is not a socialist healthcare system?

>>8575807
>america is the only country with good healthcare
Then why do all the rich people piss off to clinics in Scandinavia when they need treatment?

>>8575818
because is cheaper, paid by your taxes sven.

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>>8575799
>the people who are having the most sex on college campuses are going to commit suicide

uh......lol

Anyone who reads Marx needs to then read Adam Smith or some modern economics work.

Planned economies and socialism have led to lower standards of living and millions of deaths from starvation (among other causes) over the last century. But hey, why not one more try?

>>8575983
>Adam Smith
Labour theory of value lmao.

>>8575992
Smith's work obviously isn't completely sound. It was the basis on which all other economics was built though.

>>8575983
You have it in reverse you idiot. You read Smith, and then Ricardo, and then Marx. Reading Smith after Marx is retarded.

>>8575087
>I live in a 3rd world country.
That doesn't mean what you think it means.

>Everyone here has access to food
If everyone is a subsistence farmer, that's not always true (poor crop years/famine). If it's urbanized that's not true either because urban areas are unproductive food wise for the most part.

For a lot of the world now the problem is access to water anyway.

>>8576017
Before Smith you should read Mill and before Mill you should read Hume. Also before Marx you need to read Hegel.

>>8576017
The order doesn't matter much my autismal friend. I understood what Marx was saying without reading any previous economists.

>>8576101
>Before Smith you should read Mill
Stupid tbqh. Was Mill a time traveler?

>>8575087
>I live in a 3rd world country.
>Most poor people here also have cars
Wut. Which 3rd world country is this?

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>As wrong and stupid as other meme ideologies like anarchism or libertarianism
>Also responsible for massive amounts of human suffering and tens of millions of dead
Is Communism the ultimate JUST ideology?

>>8576113
No I'm just dumb. Disregard that abortion of a post.

>>8576122
>Also responsible for massive amounts of human suffering and tens of millions of dead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOnIp69r6vg

>>8576100
What the fuck are you talking about man

Both rural and urban areas have food and water for everyone. Except for the ones who live in northeast. Literally all of them there are capable of leaving those areas to live in a big city and have a job. They don't because they lived all their lives there.

>>8576233
>Both rural and urban areas have food and water for everyone. Except for the ones who live in northeast
Oh wow, classic "I'm totally right if you ignore where I'm wrong!"
>Literally all of them there are capable of leaving those areas to live in a big city and have a job.
Uh huh, not retarded thinking there.

>>8576127
You were right on reading Hume and Smith tho, the two were like besties or some shit.

>>8576250
I never found a single person in my whole country who ever disagreed with that thought. I know tons of guys who came from the northeast to work in my city, and they always say "Oh I had to leave my parents and brother there, they were too attached to the land".

They don't leave because they don't want to. And even then, they are still able to survive there, but it is way harder.

>>8576255
Thanks. I've never read any of these authors I posted but I know enough history that I think that would be a good rough reading order, except for Mill.

Is it true that you should read Hegel before Marx? From what I understand Hegel best developed the idea of the dialectic and understanding the dialectic allows for a better reading of Marx.

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>>8576256
>I never found a single person in my whole country who ever disagreed with that thought.

>>8575882

They'll be working like slaves in a few years anyway when the reality of living in debt kicks in

>>8576283
>They'll be working like slaves in a few years anyway when the reality of living in debt kicks in

Why are you on the academic reading board if you never went/aren't going to college

You obviously don't read many books, so I'm just curious.

>>8576264
I think Marx knew Hegel's thought really well. A few years back the standard thinking seemed to be that Marx had really based his idea of Hegel on Chalybaus (who is the source of the whole Hegel as thesis antithesis synthesis meme), but a lot of his interaction with the Young Hegelians had been downplayed in a lot of academia at that point. It may be that in Marx trying to aim his writing at a more general audience took some direction in explanation from the equivalent of pop philosophers. but it's not something I've had a chance to properly look into.

>>8576297
So after Marx would it be prudent to read Dewey and Veblen? (For chronological purposes)

>>8576289
>it's a debt slave doesn't even challenge the claim episode

>>8576514
But you didn't challenge my claim. Also I really don't think me being in college is anything much to worry about. At least I don't live with my parents.

>>8576507
Actually this is stupid and I regret posting it because you don't need to read these two together to understand them. I just thought it would neat or something.

>>8576518
I'm not the anon you replied to, but nobody has to respond to an ad hominem seriously. Anyone who spends more than 15k in debt to get an "academic education" has made a poor deal.

>>8576536
Good thing I haven't anyways. Good luck with that associates degree senpai

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>tfw FARC HAS BEEN JUST BTFO
>marxists BTFO

fuck off my country commies.

>>8576554
No wonder this place is shit

Colombians are here

>>8576542
Then why would you respond to someone talking about debt serfs, clearly that isn't you.

>>8576557
shut up faggot.
GOD BLESS THE USA.
GOD BLESS CAPITALISM.
COMMIES MAY AS WELL DIE AND BURN IN HELL.
MARXISTS BTFO

>>8576563
Because he is saying rude things

>>8576566
Come to Wyoming theyll really make you sing God bless the USA

>>8576567
He's not wrong though.

>>8576576
I would waste more money if I could.

I should. I love financial aid

>:]

>>8576573
Colombia is already a puppet state filled with usa dick suckers, may as well become another state.

>>8576514
>challenging bait

The guy is already doing you a favor by replying, do you need him to be so generous as to swallow your bait whole?

>>8575671
>ignores the role of organizational labor in the production of goods
I haven't read Capital in ages but there's a section where he argues that a merchant is entitled to fair pay for being the transporter of goods between villages and you could extrapolate that to administration and clerical. I think the spirit here is that once "your money does the work for you" that's when you went full capitalist

I've still no fucking idea after all these years how the "dialectic method" is supposed to work though. Hurr there's two things and they act against each other? Or together with each other to reach a third state? There's also always only two sides to an issue?

>>8576289

I dropped out of university because I wasn't a fan and I still read. I didn't realise being an academic was mandatory.

>>8576591
There's nothing bait about debt serfdom lad.

>>8576599
It's not the debt serfdom that's the bait, it's the accusations. The old, you're too stupid to get rich, so shut up, argument (in one of its many forms). I always wondered why this argument was so popular with internet trolls. I guess you win either way. Hell, I'm just wasting my time by gracing you with my reply. I hope you can keep that erection going.

>>8576630
It wasn't a baby boomer argument at all. It's an argument that the majority of people in college don't understand that debt isn't free money.

>>8576643
That argument would have been a lot stronger and more convincing if it was actually stated.

>>8576646
Thankfully now it is so you won't be forced to talk about an erection I may or may not have any longer.

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>>8576507
>>8576524
There are so many directions to go in after Marx that yeah sure whatever don't worry about it. If you want to stick with econ then probably Sombart and Weber. To me it seems like philosophically it dies down a bit around there until you get Neo-Marxism and some bits like Leninism and Trotskyism, and more developed ideas about historiography and anthropology and so on (these had a major upheaval in the latter part of the 19th C). If you look about Trotsky coming to Marxism, I think his view gives a good idea about how the ideas where spread far but not necessarily dominant, it was really only one communist/socialist type political philosophy. Dewey and Marxism comes after these things, around the 30s I think.

Georgism might be interesting in that it was a major competing idea of wealth redistribution too. There's also the whole Tories against Whigs, but then one nation Tories against Labour movements too (in which case I would recommend having a look at, in addition to Ricardo on Smith, the Manchester school, enclosure acts, the corn laws and the peelers.All of this lead to a major change in how Smith was interpreted, likely in opposition to what he was really trying to argue). I think typically that whole thing gets called Fabian socialism or liberal socialism maybe? Then there's the whole Bakunin/anarchist/anti-state split (and that comes back heavily with the rise of the USSR, they actively attacked anarchist socialists including in Spain/Catalonia).

>>8575678
theodor adorno and the rest of the frankfurt school, gramsci as well touch on this

>>8576772
Marx does too. That's the whole capitalism informing culture and society shizzle is about. And then a bunch of the Marxian economists too in the 60s.

http://www.strawpoll.me/11351129/

>>8576116
probably South Africa. :(

>>8576233
You are from Brazil and you dont know a fuck what you are talking about. People starve and dont have access to water on south too.

My favourite part is where Marx describes women as inherently proletariat as the are forced to have their """""labour"""""" exploited by their property owning husbands.

>>8577211
And Brazil has really terrible development urbanization wise. Holy shit that guy's retarded, too many people have gone too quickly into the cities if anything.

>>8577242
They couldn't own property by and large dipstick

>>8575697
>if you don't become indoctrinated by this book you have low reading comprehension
No, Karl your book just sucks.

>>8577479
Husbands couldn't own property? That's a strange claim to make...

>>8575073
What is this post even suggesting, if anything>?

>>8577496
why are you being intentionally retarded?

>>8577527
No, just condescending. Still confused how you managed to so grossly misread what I wrote. What did you think I mean?

>>8577540
That Marx is making some weird pun on labour? That ladies lived a life of leisure? That they were somehow all married?

It's a weird fucking comment. Read some Jane Austen or something.

>>8577627
No to the second and third and the first was more of a gag spin but you are on to something with the classical heroine literature. Because men (typically) all the power in the relationship (in the form of wealth) Marx likened marriage to the relationship between proles and bourgeoisie. Their labour was basically their fanny.

>>8575118
>I'd like to see a communist but TOTALLY democratic state
Literally how would that work

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I wonder how many people on this thread actually believe Robert Conquest's OMG STALIN KILLED TRILLIONS bs. You know, the shit where he added all the Russian and German soldiers killed in WWII to the total. I love how Americans think they're immune to propaganda.

And suck on this while you're at it: did you know that China suffered from periodic famine for...oh, I don't know...ITS ENTIRE HISTORY and that Mao's horrible collective farming methods, even before the Green Revolution, made China a food-secure nation for the first time ever?

And before you go all apeshit with AH HAH THE GREEN REVOLUTION IS CAPITALISM, consider how it was implemented in terrible old Communist China (think RURAL china here, the part growing all the food) as opposed to SUPER OSM FREE MARKET FREEDOM CAPITALIST India, where people still regularly starve to death and die from preventable diseases.

But hey, don't worry about all that, just look for a market solution to every problem. Like climate change. That's gonna happen when you have a continuously expanding, rapacious world economy that knows no limits. And before you hit me with "LOL dont worry, the technocrats will save us from ourselves line," keep in mind that they won't be taking you. It'll be their rich friends and a few high-end call girls. Have fun and remember, look out for number one!

>>8577707
It's an interesting point, but the Green Revolution is about using petrochemicals to make inorganic fertilizer. It's not about just growing food.

>>8575087
Capitalism's ability to progress the productive forces exceeds that of any other historical system. Marx recognized this and actually praised it. The progress achieved results in improved living standards, gradually dispersing across all members of the system (albeit unequally). However, like other historical systems, capitalism faces an impediment to its growth and continuance, due to internal contradictions. Eventually, latent potentials to progress the productive forces become suppressed by capitalism, requiring a new system to succeed the old. The underlying theory of this exhaustion of the capitalist system is the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. All profit comes from value, and all value comes from human labor. But the exploitation of human labor cannot exceed the laborer's basic biological costs of reproduction. In contrast, there is theoretically no limit to the exploitation of the means of production/machinery. In the long-term, to slow the price-lowering/profit-dampening effects of increased productivity, capitalism attempts to maximize exploitation, but faces the barrier described above and the problems of decreased productivity growth. The main symptoms of the decline include an increasing amount of "fictitious capital" (speculative finance divorced from real value, etc.), lower productive investment, falling rates of technological productivity growth, etc.. Once capitalism loses its progressiveness, Malthusian pressures combine with capital's need to maximize exploitation, causing stagnation or decline in living standards -- the "immiseration of the proletariat".

>>8577764
Yes, but the endgame is to increase food production.

Also, keep in mind that Norman Borlaug himself cut his teeth working on all those terrible horrible socialist government Alphabet Soup programs of Roosevelt. Wasn't much free-market initiative to prevent starvation, it seemed.

>>8577707

>Hehe, it wasn't that bad guys. Facts are Western, Capitalist propaganda? One more try?

>>8577791
>Hehe, Murica is always right! Rush Limbaugh told me so! The free market only deals in facts! Smoking will improve my health! Coca-cola is good for me!

>>8577787
>Yes, but the endgame is to increase food production.
Uh, no not exactly. Certain kinds of starvation has decreased (for now) at the expense of increased malnutrition. Often it increases production of one foodstuff at the expense of others (like killing insects and fish in rice paddies that traditionally fed the farmers). The food produced is typically very low quality (if you want to factor that in to production). The varietals used require incredibly high maintenance a lot of the time, you need to transport way more fertilizer, pesticides, way more reliance on irrigation, than traditional varieties.

It increases something like bulk yield of certain specific foodstuffs on a land area of field basis.

>>8577846
>Certain kinds of starvation has decreased

Funny, I thought there was only the kind where you don't eat food and die. I guess there's that weird starvation that that clown Chris McCandless died from, but how common is that?

>>8577857
>Funny, I thought there was only the kind where you don't eat food and die.
Hahaha. You are so retarded. How amusing. Hahaha.

>>8577871
Color me corrected. You're a fine example of an oxygen-starved brain, probably from huffing glue. I was talking about the kind that deals with food.

>>8577877
>Color me corrected. You're a fine example of an oxygen-starved brain, probably from huffing glue.
Do you always talk like a wanker?

>I thought there was only the kind where you don't eat food and die.
Death is not a condition of starvation. You can be in a state of starvation and not die. Plus there are different conditions giving rise to starvation.

Marx ultimately was just somebody with a lot of contempt for humanity. His followers are usually filled with similar prejudice and suspicion.

>>8575983
>Planned economy
>Workplace democracy

Pick one

>>8575807
Explain please, murican friend

why would you even want equality

>>8575118
>>8575071
>>8575544

High school economics.

Underage reported

>>8575671
economics :^)

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>>8577707
>I wonder how many people on this thread actually believe Robert Conquest's OMG STALIN KILLED TRILLIONS bs. You know, the shit where he added all the Russian and German soldiers killed in WWII to the total. I love how Americans think they're immune to propaganda.
It's nice to be able to spout nonsense when you don't have to back it up by sources.

But the Soviets killed more than 40 million people EVEN EXCLUDING WWII altogether.
The Chinese were also experiencing famine in the 1950s when most of the world had gotten rid of that type of problem so it's not a valid excuse either.

You are nothing more than a mass murder apologist.

https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM

>>8575544
Another idiot.

Lenin set up the Cheka which executed thousands of dissidents and political prisoners without the right to a fair trial. I don't give a fuck what kind of hat he wore.

>>8575807
You realize America has one of the most broken healthcare systems in the western world, right?

>>8575807
no, we don't realize that

enjoy your $600k student loan for that prestigious med school
you do realize that you've only enrolled there just so that you would have better "market" placement and could rip more money off of your patients for practically providing the same basic mindless protocolled bullshit services everyone offers? (which roughly translates exclusively into providing overpriced agressive medications so that the big pharma jew could ""put bread on the table""?)

you do realize that with murrican capitalist medicine there's literally no way you could practically ensure, even if you had unlimited amounts of money to spend, that the physician you've chosen is actually THE BEST in some field?

ah, murrica; the land of the free to bullshit, and the home of the brave in how much they're being bullshitted so often by their own fellow citizens

>>8575049
I don't really blame Marx for what he wrote. History has shown him to be wrong, but I can easily understand where he was coming from, given the historical context. It's not exactly a crime against humanity that he didn't correctly predict how the technological revolution of the 20th century would play out. I still hate Marxists with a passion, though.
On a semi-related note, one of my friends, who is somewhat of a Marxist (but not a full-blown extremist) said the funniest thing the other day, in complete sincerity:
>The problem is: the proletariat is just too comfortable these days.
I thought this really highlighted the mental gymnastics Marxists perform on a regular basis. He basically acknowledged that capitalism has actually made everyone, collectively, better off. Then complained that this was, in fact, a problem in itself. It's like they constantly try to shape the world to their ideology, rather than admit they're wrong. These sorts of people lament improved living conditions as an impediment to the violent uprising of the proletariat, which would confirm their pet theory.

>>8577691
Equal division of capital (i.e. economic power) + equal division of political power (i.e. one person, one vote). Simplest thing in the world.

>>8578384
While by no means I want to defend Lenin, this isn't exactly a uncommon situation through the history of capitalism either.

In fact, the US funded a bunch of dictatorships in South America which killed a fair number of people as well, not to mention all the other genocides caused by neocolonialism.

Communism is shit.

And even then, it is impossible to happen. Literally impossible. See Lenin, he actually wanted to make a communist "paradise". He tried, died, Stalin took over, and then rip in pieces. He fucked all of the "communism".

Even if you actually make a communist paradise, it won't last. Some fucked up leader will always take over.

>>8578595
Also, Lenin said he would leave once his paradise had been established, so that everyone would be equal. Even if he did, at some point, there would differences. There would be richer and poorer people. And at some point, a leader would rise among people. It's human nature.

>>8575049
http://www.city-journal.org/html/how—and-how-not—-love-mankind-12177.html

>>8575239
Then we'd just be talking about some other bearded theoretician who came up with something similar to socialism

Marx didn't invent radicalism, he just described it and the conditions that lead to it

>>8575544
Lenin still lead the party when the power over the means of production was removed from the worker's councils and centralized to the party. Lenin isn't a sainthe just died conveniently.

But he was no doubt 10 times more intelligent and benevolent than Stalin. A brilliant an he was

>>8575671
>>8575671
First of all thanks for being sincere.

>It's like Marx thinks it's not really work unless it's some kind of mindless manual labor
There are managers in socialism, it's what happens with the profits that matter. You have some points here maybe, but also simplifying a bit.


As for Hegel, just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's not meaningful. Also it's philosophy and not religion.

Marxism is really mainly a tool for criticism of capitalism. You don't have to believe every word of Marx to be a Marxist. Obviously he is wrong on some points but that doesn't ruin the legitimacy of many of his arguments.

>>8575699
>Nobody gives a fuck about your dumbass ideology bro
You should check this out

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_century

>>8577764
The Green Revolution was not just about making fertilizer widespread. In many of the countries, like India which had a huge boom in food production, the largest factor was land management reform.

>>8575807
16000 preventable deaths anually in America during the 21st century

>>8577707
>And suck on this while you're at it: did you know that China suffered from periodic famine for...oh, I don't know...ITS ENTIRE HISTORY and that Mao's horrible collective farming methods, even before the Green Revolution, made China a food-secure nation for the first time ever?

If you look at the level of violence in China prior to that period the communist revolution was fairly normal. China was a tumultuous place for a long period of time.

>>8576122
>>As wrong and stupid as other meme ideologies like anarchism or libertarianism
>>Also responsible for massive amounts of human suffering and tens of millions of dead
Oh shit he got us. Time to pack it up boys. This guy just made an argument of such power that socialism won't exist anymore

Why do people make the statement "Marx was debunked" or "Marx was proven wrong"? Marx was a prolific writer and he made a lot of statements, not all of them have been proven wrong.

Maybe it is just a response to the statement "Marx debunked this".

It makes discussing him shitty desu.

>>8578811
Imagine socialists or anarchists reading Locke and Hobbes and disqualifying all liberal thought because of some dumb shit they say there. Makes about as much sense.

Perhaps it would be smartest for Marxists to focus on critique of contemporary capitalism. 150 years of piggy propaganda has made Marxism kinda dirty

>>8578825
>Imagine socialists or anarchists reading Locke and Hobbes

Hobbes did write a lot of stupid shit.

>>8578811
Agreed. "Debunked" is a word reserved for use by retards who then enter it into search fields to tap into the truth stream hidden from the rest of the herd. Marx was a critic. Of course everything he wrote will not strike the target, he was pointing out what he took to be flaws, and people take this as some kind of personal affront. I don't agree with Marx, but if you want to be taken seriously, online or irl, don't say debunked.

>>8578825
I have read Hobbes (although I don't think he is liberal) but what "dumb shit" did Locke write? I haven't read his works yet.

>>8578957
>(although I don't think he is liberal)

I haven't actually read either of them but about them so I don't know. However it's my impression that they are the two philosophers who pretty much laid out the foundation for liberalism.

Al tough liberalism of course is so much more wider than those two.

As far as I know Locke seemed like a pretty standard moderate liberal, so not too much dumb shit.

>>8575057
I've seen some socialists try to dodge it, my best attempt to justify it would be to say that labor is a necessary component to create value greater than the involved wages. Value is still ultimately what people are willing to sacrifice for something, of course.

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>>8575562
>Bourgeoisie were people too

>>8578976

>Hobbes and Locke
>Two foundations of liberalism

I don't know how you formed that impression, but my understanding (only read Locke) is that Hobbes was a strong statist who believed people needed strong government to combat their natural brutishness. So, certainly a "liberal" by modern standards but not a classic liberal by any means.

>>8575544
Except Stalin didn't rule as an autocrat and Trotsky and Deng were both saboteurs.

>>8575748
Communism wants to destroy bourgeois culture, which is not culture in any meaningful sense.

>>8575807
>you do realize america is the only country with good healthcare
Jesus. Stop living, please.
t. American

>>8575807
At the top yes, we produce the bulk of new drugs, medical equipment, highest level facilities, etc.

That said, our basic system of going to the doctor or hospital is a clusterfuck, and medical coverage is basically Jews jewing Jews jewing Jews. Hell if I know how to fix it, though.

So do Marxists believe that the end goal is a stateless society?

>>8577707
American education is an oxymoron. It's all ideology here.

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>>8577707
>>8577787
>>8577857
>>8577877
You're alright, anon. Busting out old meme just for you.

>>8580856
No
The endgoal is that everyone gets the benefits of their work.

>>8580891
I'm mesmerized by that pattern of numbers.

>>8580907
So does that mean the economy would be totally controlled and centralised?

>>8580917
It means it would be totally controlled and decentralized.

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>>8577707
when will people realize Stalin was the ultimate communist

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>>8580960
How can one comrade be so based?

>>8575049
Read the German Ideology my son.

>>8577707
Wow, you're pretty damn brainwashed lol

>>8581043
>says the brainwashed

It was written during the Industrial Revolution, when wage laborers had conditions that were worse than that of Medieval serfs. Marx correctly observed that industrialization and capitalism were not benefiting the masses, and that the efficiency was just used to increase profits without benefiting the working class with any higher standards of living, so he figured that the more advanced things got, the worse it would get for workers, as he didn't think employers would grant any concessions to their workers if they could make more money by worsening things. And part of the reason their conditions improved so much, is because communism became a serious, imminent threat in the West, and workers were on the verge of committing wholesale slaughter of their employers.

>>8581119
Doesn't that kind of prove that boycotts and voluntary unions can sufficiently protect workers from exploitation?

>caring about a non-fiction book that was published over 200 years ago

the only non-fic worth reading is the greeks

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>>8581321

>>8575696

>He thinks all rich people worked hard for their money.

>He thinks all rich people gained their wealth fair and square.

How quaint.

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Marx and Engels were not 100% right and a lot of the stuff done in their name is either tragic or hilarious or both, but the following arguments against them are pure alt-right-tier:

HUMAN NATURE
STALIN KILLED GORILLIONS
WHY DON'T YOU GO LIVE IN NORTH KOREA?
WE DON'T HAVE REAL CAPITALISM ANYWAY
MAO KILLED GORILLIONS
MUH FREEDOMS
SOMETHING SOMETHING NEW RULING CLASS
DID I MENTION THE HUNDRED BILLION-GORILLION?

>>8581469
>WE DON'T HAVE REAL CAPITALISM ANYWAY
>MUH FREEDOMS
Both are completely valid and completely uncharacteristic of the alt-right

>>8575057
please anon tell me about what would you reasonably say, because I am doing Social Studies right (I have to) and we are stuck in this bullshit and I want to scream, the teacher even say that Lenin was a good man.

>>8581528
what has to do Lenin with labor theory of value?

>>8575049
>How the fuck can anyone agree with this shit?
Marxists are basically violent chimps who want to be able to riot. They don't actually care that much about marxist theory, they just want to kill rich people and steal their stuff.

>>8581533
it just came into the Marx argument, because that's what we are studying, socialism, so Comte, but it feels like we are steering towards communism.

>>8575087
There is nothing in Marxism that suggests the workers will get to a point where they won't have food. Marxists don't argue that the living standards of the working class won't improve with the general state of society, either.

Rather, workers are given what hey need for social reproduction. Ie. they are given the minimal required for them to be the most productive workers.

What Marxism is mostly about is acknowledging EXPLOITATION and unequal and unfair distributions of wealth based on who does what labour.

From one perspective, Marx was completely wrong in that the working classes of first world countries have actually decreased, and there has been a large scale redistribution of wealth, enacted under capitalism (spurred on by Marxist trade unionists early in the last century, no less). This is slowly reverting though. The gap between rich and poor is slowly returning to its more historical state. (So Marx could very well end up being right -- remember that Marx theorized that communism would have to begin by revolution within a developed, industrial nation for it to succeed.. He thought and hoped it would hopefully happen in USA first.)

From another perspective, in our global community, what has happened is largely the relative disparity of wealth between developed nations and developing nations. Third world peoples have largely becoming the working class, working in factories for the pay of peanuts, compared to first worlders who largely enjoy more petty bourgeois roles in their work these days. We see the few remaining manufacturies shutting down all over the first world, shipping off to places where people will work for less. This is only acceptable to the working class of those developed nations because those workers were largely elevated to middle class. This could be seen as a mechanism of capitalism which helps it avoid dissent and revolution in a nation state.

For the citizens of a third world country to make a revolution against a bigger more wealthy nation's corporations, they would probably either have to wage war (suicide) or develop their own economy, factories, and gain possession of their nation's natural resources (something they are prevented from doing because of international trade deals)

In short: The Marxist class system wasn't wrong for its time, and it still applies now, but it looks deceptively different because of our global economy and the realities of late corporate capitalism.

>>8581540
>This is only acceptable to the working class of those developed nations because those workers were largely elevated to middle class.

and they reap the benefits of third world exploitation.

>>8578793
>the largest factor was land management reform.
Land management reform in the Green Revolution was use of petrochemical derived fertilisers and pesticides, and large scale irrigation in order to accomodate higher yielding crop varietals.