Marxism

hyperrreal · 2014-08-26T19:21:44+00:00

Marxism and various post-marxist theories have tremendous value as ways of looking critically at the contemporary west. The best critiques of capitalism and media culture come from the radical school of thought, because they have an intellectual framework independent of what is used to support the system.

Where Marxism falls short is providing real alternatives to the current system. It also falls to recognize that it critiques the norm from a very easy position, because it doesn't have to defend the implementation and results of an actual sociopolitical/socioeconomic system.

The problem with talking about Marxism is that most people, even many liberals, feminists, or leftists, have no idea what they are talking about. They just throw around complicated terms without understanding the philosophical context in which they evolved, or they push a Marxism Lite™ which seems friendlier but is shallow and ultimately divorced from real Marxist thought.

Edit: To answer your questions specifically. What TRP has in common with Marxism is its attitude towards the established system of sexual relations. It purports to have arrived at a set of truths or ideas, grounded in human history, which have been obscured by the current system. It also places the blame on systemic processes (SMV, systems of evolution, etc) much like how Marx faults the system of capitalism, and not the individual capitalists.

The role of the middle class in Marxism is a complex issue, and bourgeoisie actually refers to the middle class of merchants, traders, bankers, and other capitalists who usurped the power of the landed aristocracy through their control of capital. The petite bourgeoisie are the group who we would say are being crushed by the current socioeconomic climate.

Radical feminism is directly descended from Marxism, so that's a pretty easy connection to make.

AshleyYakeley · 2014-08-27T03:29:15+00:00

Marxism fails to account for the value to society of shouldering risk.

Regardless of how you organise your society, all human endeavour is associated with risk. Even if it's just running a bakery, you cannot predict how many people will want your fresh bread each day, so you have to guess how many loaves to make, and either throw out the stale excess or disappoint some customers. Nor can you predict changing patterns of demand, or issues with ingredient supplies, or whatever.

Under capitalism, the owner of a business takes on the risk of the endeavour, while the employees take on the labour. If the business fails, only the owner loses their hard-earned initial investment. In exchange for this risk, if the business succeeds, the owner profits. And the person making the risky decisions is the one who will most gain or lose by it.

By contrast, Marxist thought tends to treat the economy as clockwork, where everything is largely predictable. For example, to Marxists, the value of labour is equivalent to the amount of time that was put into it (provided it is "socially useful"), and ignoring the variability and unpredictability of demand for product. So they see the profits of private business as a form of exploitation, rather than as compensation for risk.

We_Are_Legion · 2014-08-26T19:49:42+00:00

This post on TRP was the only mention I've seen. Personally, I've spent most of my life in the east, and only traveled to western countries on short trips of upto a few months each so there are some aspects of life that western redditors talk about where I'm clueless, but feminism as a media movement does remind me of tactics used by Chinese state media, minus the ability to actually pull content. Might be irrelevant since it probably could be just because it works.

mcmur · 2014-08-26T19:29:43+00:00

In many ways I consider myself a marxist I am also anti-feminist.

In fact, I feel all these social-justice feminist circle-jerking has usurped class consciousness. Nobody wants to talk about class-conflict anymore, everybody wants to talk about gender-conflict. Instead of focussing on economic class as the focal-point for global and national inequality feminists and their cronies maintain that the real catalyst for inequality in our society is gender and skin color and has essentially boiled down to petty identity politics and oppression-olympics pissing contests. Which to me is absurd, especially in today's world where capitalism has gone global.

Take from that what you will.

fiat_lux_ · 2014-08-26T19:31:15+00:00

Agree with a lot of the critique. Disagree on the commonly proposed solutions. I believe that is the same for a lot of others, not just rpers.

Most of the criticisms I see of Marxism from rpers is more specifically lobbed at "cultural Marxism" though. It's more thematic for rpers' purposes but different from what you're thinking of.

JJAB91 · 2014-08-27T00:39:44+00:00

http://i.imgur.com/cAHn4wV.jpg

homo_homini_lupus · 2014-08-26T19:24:30+00:00

Engels on the origins of the family the state and private property, the basis of Simone De Beauvoir's nonsense and a lot of other feminist "history".

asd1100 · 2014-08-26T20:35:38+00:00

I think it oversimplifies the relation between classes, regardless of how oppressive it may seem , it has always been symbiotic. It allows a lot of leeway in terms of accuracy, and is more than often just a intellectualised form of propaganda, hate speech or even political dissent.

I think that the only thing marxist about the red pill is the approach to the gender war, but that is only because it was framed a such by feminism beforehand. Feminist argue that patriarcal structures are oppressive do to power being unavailable to the female class.

The red pill argues that biologically women hold the only intrisinc production asset that matters to us as a species: the ability to produce children and that has always been considered primordial in every society and the patriarchy is just a manifestation of that gynocentrism as men as the disposable class had no other alternative that to produce material goods to compete for the priviledge to have a child and then raise it. As marginal productivity per individual grew, power structure where formed . That social structure despite being in the hands of men, was all for the benefit, security and protection of women.

Women where spared hard labor, dying in wars or conquest and where often "married" or grouped so they would not need to fend for themselfs because they would have a man to do it.

leftajar · 2014-08-27T20:40:26+00:00

Marxism is not useful because it ignores the well-established psychological field of behaviorism. To be fair, behaviorism didn't exist for another 100 years after Marx, so at best he was uninformed.

Behaviorism states, in a nutshell, that people will do a particular behavior more frequently when rewarded, and less frequently when punished. Seems pretty basic, right?

Marxism posits, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." That is outrageously naive, because it ignores the basic truths of incentives. A Marxist society would offer no economic incentive for any man to maximize his ability. If you're getting paid the same whether you mop floors or become a brain surgeon, why go through grueling medical training?

It's simply obsolete and not useful.

leftajar · 2014-08-27T22:38:48+00:00

Cultural Marxism is damaging, because it encourages people to slot others into "oppressed" and "oppressor" classes, when really we're just individuals trying to enjoy our lives.

Feminism, being a subset of Marxism, clings to the idea that women are an oppressed class, with men as the oppressors. Here are some example beliefs spawned from that mentality:

“I feel that ‘man-hating’ is an honourable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them.” – Robin Morgan, Ms. Magazine Editor

Rape is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear” — Susan Brownmiller

“In a patriarchal society, all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent.” — Catherine MacKinnon

These are major, high-ranking feminists.

YNWYJAA · 2014-08-31T18:06:52+00:00

Redpillers are almost always conservative. Conservatives like to throw around the word "Marxist" the way liberals like to throw around the word "Fascist" while not having a damn clue what the term actually means.

CFRProflcopter · 2014-08-26T19:17:07+00:00

A quick opinion. I actually think TRP and Feminism share commonalities with Marxism, perhaps in different ways.

TRP members, in particular, have a tendency to use similar methods of analysis with regards to social class. This is just one example. The idea that our state capitalist society has a ruling class, the idea that the ruling class attempts to manipulate society for their own gain, the idea that the middle class suffers as a result of those actions, these are all very Marxist ways of looking at the world.

Are there other ways in which TRP, feminsm, ect overlap with Marxism?

Reginleifer · 2014-08-26T22:24:09+00:00

We're going an awfully long way just to get a date. :-(

Title	Marxism
Author	CFRProflcopter
Upvotes	5
Comments	59
Date	August 26, 2014 7:04 PM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/2eniqd/marxism/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/marxism.285009 https://theredarchive.com/post/285009

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