Political Theory

Re: Marxism - A materials list

Torsten — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 14:11:45 GMT

fakename:

so when one says that millions of dead people shows the stuff marxism is made of, there is something true in that.

And when one looks at the same time how millions of people worship Che Gueverra and Nelson Mandela I guess that says something about what these people are made of, too.

Re: Marxism - A materials list

fakename — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 06:44:31 GMT

In defense of Market Fundementalist though, I think that one can discover cause from effect -if not then empiricism is a lost cause. Indeed it may, and I'm going out on a limb here, even unmask the essence of problems too though I concede that this is the more roundabout way of doing things instead of pure apriorism.

so when one says that millions of dead people shows the stuff marxism is made of, there is something true in that.

Re: Marxism - A materials list

ViennaSausage — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 05:01:25 GMT

"A materials list"

Nice pun.

Re: Marxism - A materials list

Giant_Joe — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 23:00:24 GMT

Giant_Joe:
I keep trying from time to time and it comes off as psycho-babble. :(

Try reading Hegal. You'll want to commit an atrocity. The 1844 Manuscripts aren't too bad. I think Capital is probably the worst.

So I got around to reading some stuff trying to explain Hegel. Just awful. It seems that some contemporary philosophers are easy to understand and read, while those who base their work on Hegel's dialectic (or derivative philosophical thinking) are impossible to make decent sense of. I'll stick with using logic and the senses to try to understand the world. The dialectic is just insanity.

This has led me to this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer

I'll get to his stuff eventually.

Re: Marxism - A materials list

Andrew Cain — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:33:00 GMT

I have heard that a book by Paul Craig Roberts called Alienation and the Soviet Economy is a good look at how the concept of alienation drove the Soviet experiment

Re: Marxism - A materials list

Bert — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 06:49:45 GMT

wilderness:

But glad to see you were being sarcastic. I can't readily tell over the internet, and by the kind of posts you present here I probably could have been more understanding since you've never given any reason for me to think you were being serious.

Sometimes it's hard to pick up sarcasm on the internet, but I regularly talk to people online who have a dark sense of humor. It's like reading Stephen Wright jokes, sometimes it doesn't make sense to people who aren't used to it (or have no clue what they are talking about).

wilderness:

You're posts are usually enjoyable and knowledgeable about liberty issues.

That's good to know. I didn't know if I posted enough to make myself memorable.

Re: Marxism - A materials list

wilderness — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 03:40:15 GMT

wilderness:

Is that sarcastic or what? Ideas don't burn.

And can anybody say: thought-police.

Wake up!

Bert:
If you can't catch my sarcasm I don't know what to tell ya.

I apologize for the exclaimed remark. It would have been more efficient and sympathetic of me to stick with the question and why I questioned what you said "ideas don't burn" and "thought-police". But glad to see you were being sarcastic. I can't readily tell over the internet, and by the kind of posts you present here I probably could have been more understanding since you've never given any reason for me to think you were being serious. You're posts are usually enjoyable and knowledgeable about liberty issues. I misunderstood what you said.

have a good night.

Re: Marxism - A materials list

Bert — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 09:05:13 GMT

MarketFundamentalist:

Bert:
If Hazlitt said Keynes is wrong without giving a critique on General Theory, it wouldn't go far.

Keynes has not killed millions like Marx.

Who's the greater risk? Keynesian theory has killed millions of economic opportunities, and it seems to be a greater academic concern than Marxist theory.

I'm getting off track, that's an entire discussion in itself. Regardless, if you refuse to read something on the premise that the theory has killed millions of people and that you are afraid that it might change your own train of thought then maybe you aren't so grounded in the theory you support if you feel that reading one or many works by Marx would change your mind (maybe you are mentally weak and easily persuaded). There's no real reason not to read someone else's work. It's no different than a communist saying someone shouldn't read Human Action or some other capitalist literature because it may change their mind.

Re: Marxism - A materials list

MarketFundamentalist — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 08:45:14 GMT

Bert:
If Hazlitt said Keynes is wrong without giving a critique on General Theory, it wouldn't go far.

Keynes has not killed millions like Marx.

Re: Marxism - A materials list

Bert — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 07:07:15 GMT

MarketFundamentalist:

Andrew Cain:
What is 'the real shit'?
Anarchism.
Marxist theory makes sense in a way.
It makes sense as much as Mein Kampf does. Ask the millions killed by Marxism how it makes sense to them.
you can't criticize something you are unfamiliar with.
That is true, but we are all familiar with Marx's record: millions dead all in the name of a utopia.

If you tend to prove that you are right you must also prove why your opponents are wrong. Simply going on that millions are dead due to his theory doesn't hold up if you can't explain why.

If Hazlitt said Keynes is wrong without giving a critique on General Theory, it wouldn't go far.

Re: Marxism - A materials list

MarketFundamentalist — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 07:03:29 GMT

Andrew Cain:
What is 'the real shit'?

Anarchism.

Marxist theory makes sense in a way.

It makes sense as much as Mein Kampf does. Ask the millions killed by Marxism how it makes sense to them.

you can't criticize something you are unfamiliar with.

That is true, but we are all familiar with Marx's record: millions dead all in the name of a utopia.

Re: Marxism - A materials list

Bert — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 06:56:02 GMT

wilderness:

Bert:

MarketFundamentalist:

Yeah, cuz this is the real shit. I'd strongly discourage anyone from reading or trying to make sense of Marx, as he was the cause of untold misery for millions of people. Reading Marx is the equivalent of reading Mein Kampf and trying to "understand" the same statist bullshit. Its evil and makes absolutely no sense to me at all.

Let's have a book burning and get rid of anything that could taint our fragile little minds.

The list will include:

1. Das Kapital

2. General Theory

3. Mein Kampf

Once those books are burned, we will never have to worry about their ideas again.

Is that sarcastic or what? Ideas don't burn.

And can anybody say: thought-police.

Wake up!

If you can't catch my sarcasm I don't know what to tell ya.

Re: Marxism - A materials list

nirgrahamUK — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 06:15:29 GMT

Rothbard seems to have always got there first......

Re: Marxism - A materials list

wilderness — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 05:45:07 GMT

hey. i just got done reading that paper today Conza. good paper.

Re: Marxism - A materials list

Conza88 — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 04:53:53 GMT

nirgrahamUK:

Andrew Cain:
They don't know Marxist doctrine, they invent it.
no doubt the key to the longevity of 'Marxism'.

"Marx, in fact, has been hailed by the hermeneuticians as one of the grandfathers of the movement. In 1985, for example, at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association in Las Vegas, virtually every paper offered in political theory was a hermeneutical one. A paradigmatic title would be "Political Life as a Text: Hermeneutics and Interpretation in Marx, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Foucault." (Substitute freely such names as Ricoeur and Derrida, with an occasional bow to Habermas.)

I do not believe it an accident that Karl Marx is considered one of the great hermeneuticians. This century has seen a series of devastating setbacks to Marxism, to its pretensions to "scientific truth," and to its theoretical propositions as well as to its empirical assertions and predictions. If Marxism has been riddled both in theory and in practice, then what can Marxian cultists fall back on? It seems to me that hermeneutics fits very well into an era that we might, following a Marxian gambit about capitalism, call "late Marxism" or marxism-in-decline. Marxism is not true and is not science, but so what? The hermeneuticians tell us that nothing is objectively true, and therefore that all views and propositions are subjective, relative to the whims and feelings of each individual."

So why should Marxian yearnings not be equally as valid as anyone else's? By the way of hermeneutics, these yearnings cannot be subject to refutation. And since there is no objective reality, and since reality is created by every man's subjective interpretations, then all social problems reduce to personal and nonrational tastes. If, then, hermeneutical Marxists find capitalism ugly and unlovely, and they find socialism beautiful, why should they not attempt to put their personal esthetic preferences into action? If they feel that socialism is beautiful, what can stop them, especially since there are no laws of economics or truths of political philosophy to place obstacles in their path?" - MNR, The Hermeneutical Invasion of Philosophy and Economics