CleverOleg

That post about some neoliberal momo not understanding what Marx said about value got me remembering something back from my undergrad econ program. One of my primary professors was a true libertarian. And the way he viewed Marx was... something.

On one hand, he of course tried to shit on Marxism. I remember in one of the first classes of Macro 101, he brought out the "labor theory of value is wrong because mud pies don't have value" line (this is something Marx specifically addresses and debunks within the first few pages of chapter 1 of Capital). He would unironically say "the problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other peoples' money". He praised Pinochet for being an "economic miracle worker" and said that high unemployment at the time in Europe was due to "socialist policy".

Yet at the same time, he also had this weird admiration for Marx and Capital specifically. I don't think he ever read it or even bothered to understand it. But he did see Capital as the logical conclusion of 19th century political economy - an unbroken line from Adam Smith to Marx. Despite being a libertarian and someone who did read philosophy, he just thought that Smith, Ricardo, Marx et al were wrong to focus on "value", and it's origins in labor. So while he admired Smith as the guy who put down on paper a lot of the first ideas of how an economy works, he ultimately saw him as "wrong". And Marx just inadvertently showed how silly it is to come up with theories of value. According to this professor, Marx "killed" political economy. Marx was somehow "wrong" and also a giant of political economy.

I remember he squared all this by thinking it was the marginalists/Austrians who got it right by focusing on supply and demand. That the forces that push supply and demand are all that matter, and that we only need to understand what drives prices because prices are the very way that the gods of capitalism speak to us. Since price movements are all that matter, he thought economists should focus on what are the "rules" that drive human behavior because behavior drives prices. And this is why (according to him) he was a libertarian: it was guys like Friedman and Hayek who truly understood hUmAn NaTuRe. Humans are always self-interested, we seek to maximize utility, etc. Start from those first principles and you can figure out your economy.

So it was eye-opening to me when I actually read Capital, how it showed how someone I looked up to really didn't have a clue about what he was talking about. Marx DID bring political economy to its logical conclusion, it's just that the capitalists didn't like the conclusion he arrived at. So instead, they do what my old econ prof did: don't bother learning what Marx said, just shit on it with pithy quips and just say SoCiALisM dOeSn'T wOrK. No one will challenge you because no one reads Marx. Because as people like Hilferding and Bukharin showed many decades ago, the economists who think they can actually take on Marx and defeat him only end up embarrassing themselves (not to mention how Marx knew what he detractors would say and specifically addressed their points in Capital). But if you never engage with Marx in the first place....

(fwiw he also shit on Keynes who I do think had some correct ideas. IIRC he thought Keynesianism worked for a couple decades during and after WW2 because reasons but that the last few decades showed that monetarism and libertarian economics is the one true gospel. This was before the GFC in 2008/09 of course...)

Just sharing this as a "does anyone else ever feel this way?" post

I am fortunate to have a number of friends I have kept close most of my life, and a lot of family members who I am close with. I am unfortunate in that most of these people skew reactionary.

When I was a lib, it was easy for me to just write off political differences as inconsequential, especially since politics was a very minor part of my relationship with them. But now that I'm a commie, I've found it harder to not only keep up these relationships, but to actually feel love and care for people who I have loved and cared for for decades. Now in general, this isn't much of a problem with friends because I moved away from my hometown, and these relationships are kept on life support by group chats. These chats are largely just meme shit or talking about sports. But I've been surprised by an actual changing of feelings for two people who were my closest friends at one point.

But there is one person in particular for whom I am struggling with this. This person is my oldest and closest friend. This person knows I skew left but not as far left as I actually am. And I knew this person had libertarian leanings, but politics was something they never actually cared about in the past. In the last 6-12 months, they've gotten more strident and vocal with the libertarian crap (for example, telling me yesterday that they think it's ok that 16 million people will lose Medicaid coverage because the government shouldn't be in the business of healthcare). And as they have begun to be more serious and into their libertarian ideology, I find myself not feeling those same feelings of love and care, and really not sure I want to be this person's friend anymore. Someone I went to grade school with and really is like a brother. It's like, there's something about the libertarian ideology that if someone holds to it, I find it so repugnant that I can't be in a relationship with person. Not to mention this person has all sorts of anti-communist brainworms, which is why I've held back telling them how far left I've gone. They're genuinely not racist or anti-LGBTQ, I don't really think they are a "bad" person... but I just am so against their politics that I find I am starting to lack those feelings of love and friendship you should have for a close friend now.

This just feels jarring to me as I have always had very stable affections for people, and have always held love for people despite disagreements and seeing things differently. It feels like there is this massive gulf in how we see the world (because there is ofc) and that just sorta kills how I feel about this person.

Anyone else?

Link

I think it’s a good statement, short and to the point. The replies are absolute poison though, hasbara bots really honing in on them. Feds will try and make something stick but it doesn’t sound like he was even a member.

(I want to preface this by saying my problems are of course absolutely nothing compared to what Palestinians and especially Palestinian parents must go through. I am only expressing these feelings in case there are others who feel similarly and don’t want to feel alone).

I have little kids. For over a year and a half now, I cannot shake this feeling. I don’t really know what to call it. But I cannot accept that my kids have this happy, comfortable life while there are little kids just like them being tortured to death under rubble, in fire, and by IOF bullets. Why am I in this position while Palestinian parents are in theirs? How can reality be this warped? I look at my kids, I can see them experiencing what thousands of kids in Gaza have had to endure, and my brain kinda shuts down. And in those moments it’s actually hard to be around my kids. This isn’t all the time - most often I’m able to be a good, present parent. But in that state it’s like I don’t want to be reminded that children even exist in this world.

It’s like, sometimes when my kid is laughing I can only thing about how there’s another kid half a world away who is screaming in pain, or experiencing terror and sadness in a way I cannot comprehend.

I was raised as an evangelical Christian. The main reason I deconverted years ago was I could not accept the idea of eternal conscious torment in hell for all unbelievers. I could not accept that that was how the universe worked. That was nearly 15 years ago. I hadn’t even thought about it much until these last 19 months. But I recognize the feeling since it’s all coming back. I see kids being tormented and killed, and it’s like my brain cannot accept this is reality.

Seeing that little light inside my children, and know that thousands of little lights are getting snuffed out… I don’t know, I just don’t have any more words or tears.

Ever since the election, there seems to be a torrent of polling that shows Americans in their late teens and early twenties are fairly reactionary (young men overwhelmingly so). I’m old so I don’t know anyone IRL in that age bracket. But something about what the media has been claiming for months now doesn’t seem to sound right. Idk maybe it’s 100% true but it’s something I have a hard time taking the media’s word for. I know we have quite a few users here in that age bracket. What are your real-life experiences (i.e. not online) with this? Do you think this age demographic is actually trending reactionary?

(I do remember digging into the details of one poll, and while it seemed there was more affiliation with Republicans than previous, it also seemed like there were an also very large segment that were openly showing to be further left than the democrats? So maybe more reactionary sentiment but also more genuinely leftish sentiment?)

I am so conflict-avoidant that I’m now at the point that most people in my life don’t actually have any idea I’m even close to being a commie. I really want to start expressing myself more openly and honestly - especially since I feel like I’m actually harming my mental health by not saying how I feel - but I always feel held back. Any tips on improving this are appreciated.

As in our comrade Karl Liebknecht, co-founder of the KPD? All these years I’ve been saying “LEEB-necked”, two syllables. But the I heard Matt Christman say “Leeb-KUH-neck-et” (four syllables). And I realized I don’t really know why I was saying it like I was. Anyone know how to actually say it?

I identify differently depending on the context.

When around comrades, I will identify as a Marxist-Leninist, as this is the most precise definition of what I hold to. I generally don't use this other than around comrades because no one else has any idea of what it means.

If I'm around people who at least sort of know what Marxism is, I'll call myself a Marxist. But in my experience this is pretty rare. Or this is what I will default to around people who I know are leftist broadly. I feel like "Marxist" is accurate enough where getting into the details of M-L isn't really necessary.

But when I'm around most normies, I will identify as a socialist. I think it's accurate enough to convey to people who do not have a very developed political understanding what I hold to. "Socialist" at the same time conveys a commitment to radical change well beyond the current Republican/Democrat paradigm, while not, for example, putting my job in jeopardy if I call myself a socialist to co-workers.

So the obvious question is why I don't call myself a communist very often IRL, even though I am one. I have before and used it a bit interchangably with M-L among comrades, but I don't use it around people I don't know well and know they are down with it. What I have found with the people in my broader social circle is such a huge lack of political understanding that calling myself a communist only shuts people down. When it comes to Americans, I think it's easy to overestimate their political understanding. I used to think most Americans just think communism is when "everyone is equal". What I've found is worse than that: it's more like people just have this vague notion that "communism = evil". They have no idea what it's about other than decades of propaganda that just equates communism as the ideology of our enemies and those who want to destroy America. So to most Americans, a communist is just someone who is "very bad person" who wants to destroy America (I mean, death to Amerikkka of course, but it's so much more than that). My own parents just think that communism means atheism and can't explain it more than that.

I totally understand the idea that we shouldn't shy away from calling ourselves communists. We need to normalize the idea because communism specifically is what's needed to save the planet. But idk, at this time and place in the US it feels like trying to do this just closes more doors than it opens, at least with the politically ignorant (most people).

I’ve tried to educate myself more about Palestine, decolonization, and the one-state solution over the last year and a half. It seems intuitive to me that ethnostates should not exist and that no, it’s not valid to carve out a land for the exclusive use of a certain people (especially but not exclusively when someone else is already there). So it’s not just about Palestine, but also about places that seek balkanization along ethnic or religious lines.

So while it’s intuitive to me, I realize that it’s not intuitive to nearly everyone around me (in the US, for reference). There seems to be this very pervasive understanding that of course the Jewish people should have their own exclusive land. Or that if two or more groups of people don’t like each other, it’s better to “divorce” and split up the country.

I struggle with explaining why all this is bad and not a real solution, though. Is there any more in-depth resources (books, articles, academic papers) that articulate a theory of why ethnostates are bad, and why splitting up places isn’t a solution?

It’s been long enough, I find myself really missing Matt’s voice. I never really followed his CushVlog - mostly because there was other stuff I wanted to get through when he was putting those out, and I’m also not great with sitting down and listening to YouTube videos.

So I’d like to watch some episodes, but I also don’t really want to slog through all of them. Do you all have any episodes that you like and can recommend?

I’m really trying to commit myself to getting a better understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of Marxism. I’m starting with the Vietnamese textbook on dialectical materialism that Luna Oi translated, before moving on to The Dialectics of Nature and Anti-Duhring.

My problem is I really struggle with philosophy. Marxian economics I can vibe with all day, but philosophy is something I’ve never been able to really get a hold of (but wanting to fix that).

So my first big struggle is understanding the difference between dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics. Is the former more of the worldview or viewpoint, and the later is more for explaining and analyzing specific processes? And if that understanding is correct, isn’t materialist dialectics the things we should be committing ourselves to as it’s what helps us better understand material reality (rather than dialectical materialism, which I guess would be more of a “belief statement?)? I don’t know I probably have a lot of this mixed up, just looking for any help on this I can get.