You act like there was never a guy named Karl Marx who proved this stuff, and debunked many myths about the economy, like 150+ years ago. It isn't just a random thing like a superstition. In fact believing capitalism isnt responsible is almost a superstition.

Wages are flat while production has skyrocketed the last 50 years, a little longer than I've been alive. The system produces a few rich people at one end and a bunch of poor people at the other, that's what it is meant to do, it's what it does. It isn't just an economic system, its the state and media as well.

People aren't just blaming all their problems on capitalism like some petulant child. There are causes that are very clear and some more hidden, but its no secret and hasn't been for a pretty long time.

[+] rottingleaf@lemmy.world -8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] Juice@midwest.social 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Clearly you've never read Marx in any meaningful way, which is unfortunate. If you think Marx is a "reductionist model" then you are cleanly, plainly, completely mistaken. Das Capital isn't a pamphlet, its 4 unfinished volumes.

Your anti intellectualism is a sad affair, but propaganda is a hell of a drug. I love being told by people who haven't studied Marx what he is all about. Do you also have strong opinions on Augustine, Hegel, Kant or Descartes? Have you ever read them?

Balance of power

What power? The power of workers? You might have more Marxist ideas than you think.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world -1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If you think Marx is a “reductionist model” then you are cleanly, plainly, completely mistaken. Das Capital isn’t a pamphlet, its 4 unfinished volumes.

You know, an adequate Marxist (I've met such, believe it or not) would not argue that it is a reductionist model (every model is, my point was that Marxists apply it universally without feedbacks, for which no model is good) and of course wouldn't use amount of text as a measure of quality or correctness.

Your anti intellectualism is a sad affair, but propaganda is a hell of a drug. I love being told by people who haven’t studied Marx what he is all about. Do you also have strong opinions on Augustine, Hegel, Kant or Descartes? Have you ever read them?

This text doesn't make sense. I have a strong preference for Marcus Aurelius' notes and Tao Te Ching over these, if you insist, but Descartes is fine too.

What power? The power of workers? You might have more Marxist ideas than you think.

In this case the power of people with interests weighing more on the employer's side or the worker's side. I wouldn't say it's power of workers, just like wind filling ship's sails is not ship's power.

I don't think anything is strange in intersections.

[–] Juice@midwest.social 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Thank you for the considerate response.

You might be more well equipped for Marx than you think. The Tao the Ching, and the I Ching are both works of dialectical philosophy. Marxism, when applied correctly, is a fusion of empirical materialism and dialectics. Whenever people new to Marxism struggle with his method, I always recommend the Tao te Ching. People raised with western rational model, like us, struggle with contradiction in our reasoning. Except when it affects our lives directly, our minds reject it. The Tao teaches us to stay with the contradictions, which is what is needed to perform a dialectical analysis, since dialectics is the logic of change, progression, and synthesis, relation and contradiction.

This along with the mention of Marcus Aurelius reminds me of when I first started trying to educate myself, and came across the work of Nick Taleb. Its a bit pitched to the right for my taste these days (although his sterling advice, "don't be a sucker" is as good advice as you'll ever get,) but at the time it is what got me into studying philosophy, Meditations was the second philosophy book I ever read. I don't consider myself a stoic, but I loved that book at one time, as well as the Enchirideon by Epictetus.

Your claim of an imbalance in power between the workers and owners is at least an acknowledgement of Marx's theories. Maybe you like that balance, lots of people have a fetish for "balance of powers" and maybe there's something to that. Except the balance can't be achieved, it always prefers the owners and requires historical amounts of civil unrest to make any reluctant progressive change at all.

I don't appreciate being told that I'm in a cult, a cult that never existed, and certainly Marx never started one. Its dishonest, but I guess you picked it up somewhere. I def didn't know what Marx was about before I studied him. Buy now if I don't know an author, I don't have to pretend I'm smart or know something I don't, I just say I don't know and if I am interested then I study them. Very simple and honest.

Here's the thing they won't tell you about Marx: when you're a worker and you learn to read him, because he's difficult, you realize that he confirms your experience as a worker and goes deeper. He proves what we suspect but that everyone tells us isn't true. He removes doubt and provides a way forward --

-- and then you study the history of the USSR and other 20th century socialist experiments and the doubt comes back. But Marx was, hands down, the greatest intellectual of the 19th century and should be read and studied by all. Not to indoctrinate into a cult, but to actually open peoples minds to what is possible, and how class rule, throughout history, has worked tirelessly to alienate us from our selves and each other. Capitalism is just the latest and greatest form of class rule.

But a better world is possible!