🔹 Context: industrial revolution. Mechanisation in agriculture meant less workers were necessary on the field, so people go to the city to find a job. This leads to exploitable workers, low wages, dangerous conditions.

🔹 Marxism is a scientific method. (I didn't know that.)

🔹 "Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." Now finally a philosophical point of view I can agree with.

🔹 Hegel: ideas and understanding are the motor of change in the world.
Marx: no, material conditions are. You need to change the material conditions of people in order to change your understanding of the world.
This is "materialism" (Marx) as opposed to "idealism" (Hegel).

🔹 For example: individual wage labour creates individualism, whereas villages create solidarity, because people have specialisms. If the baker is ill, no one in the village has bread. In a factory, workers compete for wages.

#marxism #Hegel #Marx #materialism #idealism #individualism #solidarity

🔹 Dialectics

🔹 Marxism is a lot of things. It's a method, a theory of history, a critique of capitalism, an analysis of class struggle, and then communism. Communism is a political and an economical system, it's a stateless, classless and moneyless society. According to Marx, communism was a hypothesis of the future, his speculation, his prediction of what was going to happen. Not a moral obligation.

🔹 Anarchism is idealistic and principled against the state. Marxism wants to create the material conditions for this to happen 'naturally'. The state will stop existing because we don't need it anymore.

#marxism #dialectics #communism #anarchism

🔹 The contradiction of capitalism. The proletariat does labour for a wage, the bourgeoisie owns the means of production. Wealth, class and power are centralised in the state.

🔹 Capitalism relies on "naked" exploitation: it IS exploitation. Naked means that there is no need to "justify" the exploitation through race or religion or...

#marxism #capitalism #exploitation

🔹 Mode of production (eg capitalism or feudalism)
(equals) =
relations (between classes)
(plus) +
forces (= means + workers)
Dialectical relationship: they influence each other.

🔹 Commodities and the labour theory of value. I thought this was a lot of words to say that labour adds value, and that surplus value comes from the power of labour through underpayment. Workers are paid the minimum amount that is necessary for them to show up the next day and work again.

What I didn't understand fully: labour adds value, okay, labour turns a bunch of wool into a hat so that is clearly added value. However, scarcity (whether real or perceived) also adds value, no? So what does Marx say about this? Does sentimental value have a place in Marxism?

🔹 "socially necessary labour time". If an average person needs one hour to repair a car, one hour is going to be the price paid. A slower person doesn't get more money. Quantification of labour through xyz is unfair.

#Labour #marxism #surplusvalue #commodities

🔹 Alienation. (This was super well put.) The worker creates the product, but doesn't own the product. The moment the product is finished, the worker loses their relation to it. The product becomes more valuable than the worker, and thus more powerful. So the more the worker works, the more he loses value and power. The objectification of labour means the loss of realisation for workers.

This reminded me a lot of the Rana Plaza disaster (garment-factory building in Bangladesh that collapsed, killing more than 1000 workers). These workers make clothes, absolutely not for themselves, and their lives are valued less than the product.

#Marxism #RanaPlaza #alienation

Today I attended a collective learning event on anti-imperialism.

We discussed the final part of Marx, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Mao, Samir Amin and a practical example.

#antiimperialism #Marx #Marxism #communism #Lenin #Mao #SamirAmin #RosaLuxemburg

The communist revolution, working towards a communist society, means creating the material conditions for a stateless society. A stateless society is always also a classless society.

From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.

1️⃣ "Workers of the world, unite!" aka class consciousness.
2️⃣ Seize the means of production. Produce for your needs, not for profit.
3️⃣ Dictatorship of the proletariat. This is seen as a true democracy, as opposed to the bourgeois democracy we have now.

#communism #CommunistRevolution #marx #marxism

What I don't understand about this is how the means of production are to be seized by the proletariat, who are then also going to rule, so the state owns everything. Then the states stops existing. There's a big leap there.

#communism #marxism

@bebatjof Orthodox Marxist view is this: the state is a necessary structure of managing class conflict in a class-based society. Do you have classes in conflict? Then you have a state to manage the conflict. Do you not have classes? Then no state is needed and also does not arise.

Now, class, for a Marxist, is a product of social relations relating to an economic base of society. So, once the economic base is transformed so that class conflict, and ultimately class *itself*, disappears, the state will no longer be necessary. State will "wither away" in accordance with the disappearance of class; reappear to the extent that classes remain.

In short: the state is not an "owner" or necessary controller of things (as your formulation assumes), for a Marxist. The state can be an owner or controller of some things, but that is not its basic function. What characterizes the state for a Marxist is that is it a necessary political structure of class conflict, which just loses its function when classes disappear.

A 'political' organization of a classless society would, by definition, be something other than a state-form on the Marxist view. It would be a mere tool for administering things, not managing structurally antagonistic social relations.

@bebatjof That being said, there are a lot of different models for how this is supposed to work:

- Leninist “transition state” theory (highly structured state phase as mechanism)
- Council communism (decentralized workers’ councils as mechanism)
- Anarchist communism (explicit rejection of transitional state, often no clear mechanism or entirely incompatible views with Marxism)
- Contemporary Marxist sociology (varied models of post-capitalist governance and how that is supposed to pan out in terms of overcoming the state)

@bebatjof What makes one a Marxist when it comes to a theory of the state is *not* agreeing on which mechanism will work politically. As you can see above, Marxists disagree wildly about which political path can and will work (or be effective). It is not a failure of Marxism that it does not provide that answer uniformly, since there is no uniquely Marxist stance on which politics or mechanisms will work.

What Marxists share is the common notion of the state as a certain kind of thing, i.e., a necessary structure arising out of class antagonisms, which makes it downstream from the class phenomenon itself and thus social relations in the economic base.

@Hylas I had to think about this for a while before replying.

Basically you are confirming what I said, while also saying that this is not a failure of Marxists.

There is clearly a big leap between state communism and a stateless society, and Marx does not have an answer here. You have explained Marxism back to me, added that there are several models and that Marxists disagree with each other, which completely confirms my point.

Calling this not a failure of Marx / Marxists is tendentious and your disdain of anarchists is very much showing. I asked for help (implicitly) but not for a lecture. You're clearly knowledgeable, but I don't feel like engaging in a conversation.

Good day.

@bebatjof That’s fair—I won’t push the discussion further.

Just to clarify one thing: I wasn’t simply confirming your point. I was trying to point out that your initial question rests on a view of the state (as a kind of owner-agent) that Marxism doesn’t really share, which is why my reply took the form it did. I was aiming to explain what Marxism, on its own terms, is trying to say.

In any case, I’ll leave it there. Good day.