/edu/ - Education

It’s probably closest to Marx’s own personal beliefs as a person. But in my opinion it still clings way too hard on the Marxist dogma of the proletariat infinitely and absolutely being the world-historical subject, which is something Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought correctly address.

>>5425
go back on /dead/ theorylet retard

>>5425
Fuck off Ah Q
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch03d.htm#c.1.6

>>5424
This is something I agree with. Often it seems Marxist Humanists have rejected all experiences from the 2nd international to Lenin and Mao all the way to the collapse of the Soviet Union. As aberrations of Marx’s original intentions, and while I do believe as you said that Marx’s original intentions were humanistic and were more concerned with the liberation of the individual, and not so much as creating a society that is initiated through some doctrines or some new political philosophy that’s formulated as a constitution. But the issue in terms of objective conditions eventually led to what the experiences of the Soviets and China were. Now this is my personal speculation but I honestly believe that what the Soviet Union and China were building was a real alternative and one we would all have to go through to come out the other side if you will with a true freedom, of communism or humanism and naturalism as Marx theorized. The despotic or “authoritarian” regimes in many ways is an essential part of the process or the movement towards the self realization of real freedom. Like Marx says it’s not just about making private property disappear but the very movement and contradiction of private property that leads to resolution.

>>5423
No, not really. Reading Marx chronologically, it's clear that he progressed from his early humanism, which was influenced by Feuerbach, to a properly materialist analysis, fully developed in Capital. Marx went from discussing alienation as the central factor depriving Man from his ideal human nature to saying outright that alienation is a necessary aspect of production in all societies, past, present, and future.

To offset their reliance on Marx's early writings, the Marxist humanists latch onto whatever they can interpret as humanist in Marx's later writings, specifically in the first chapter of Capital: the concept of the fetishism of commodities and the free association of workers. To sum up Marx's observation, in commodity production, material relations between people (direct exchange of the products of concrete labor) become social relations between objects (mediated market exchange of the products of social labor, commodities, and money). When people see objects as commodities and through exchange, the true nature of the material relations of production are obscured, and the role of the objects is elevated to the status of a religious fetish. In commodity production, concrete labor only becomes social when it's mediated by exchange (and value).

For labor to be directly social, it has to be unmediated, an example of this is in the relation of personal dependence that a peasant has with a feudal lord. TO the peasant it's obvious that their personal labor is being used up to serve the lord. A hypothetical example is a community of freely associated individuals, who consciously and willingly apply their labor for the community as a whole, and the resulting social product is rationally divided up for use or reinvestment. That's all well and good for the Marxist humanists, but if you compare this to Marx's discussion of alienation in his 1844 manuscripts, there is little comparison. The idealized "Man" is no longer present, the division of labor is no longer spoken about as the original sin of alienation, and human freedom is used to illustrate an example in distinction to coercion rather than as an ideal future society.

Marxist humanism does not seem to be a method of analysis that is concerned with communism: the real movement to abolish the present state of things. Rather, it's a ethical ideology *for* communism, which is for them the ideal of morality and freedom.
>>5424
>Marxist dogma of the proletariat infinitely and absolutely being the world-historical subject
This is definitely another problem, and it's something that humanists will never be able to decouple from.

Humanism is just another kind of supremacism and it's very idealist.

>>5429
Interestingly there’s an argument amongst some Marxists on the continuity of Marx; of the young Marx and the older Marx after the 1848-1852 revolutions. Arguing whether there was a “break” between his earlier philosophic ruminations and his dive into trying to understand political economy of the time through his critique. It would be too much to say that he dropped all his humanist ideas but it’s more accurate to say that his humanistic ideas became much more well developed and matured but the time he wrote Capital.

>>5430
I won’t consider uncritical statements like that this as arguments and so they’ll be discarded.

>>5431
Not the biggest fan of Althusser, but it's obvious to anyone familiar with Marx that there is a break, a rupture of thought. Marx didn't just have "philosophical ruminations" he had a PhD in philosophy, he was a great admirer of philosophy as an intellectual discipline. He went from that to criticizing philosophy as a whole in 1844:
<Feuerbach’s great achievement is: (1) The proof that philosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned
Here you can still see its remnants, with the assumption of an ideal human nature, but it's clearly a progression away, not within. In Marx's later writings, the reliance on conceptual idealism is completely gone. Once Marx discovered the materialist method of analysis, he didn't go back, and neither should you.

>>5429
>>5423
I thought to contribute a relevant section of The German Ideology, picrel and linked:
< In the form in which Sancho understands it, the question again becomes sheer nonsense. He imagines that people up to now have always formed a concept of man, and then won freedom for themselves to the extent that was necessary to realize this concept; that the measure of freedom that they achieved was determined each time by their idea of the ideal of man at the time; it was thus unavoidable that in each individual there remained a residue which did not correspond to this ideal and, hence, since it was "inhuman", was either not set free or only freed malgre eux .

<In reality, of course, what happened was that people won freedom for themselves each time to the extent that was dictated and permitted not by their ideal of man, but by the existing productive forces.

>>5433
Is it in economic manuscripts of 1844 that he has his break or after it?

>>5435
1844 manuscripts, "Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy in General"

>>5433
humanism and materialism aren’t mutually exclusive. you seem to thing that humanism has anything to do with idealism in the first place, or that Fruerbach is somehow anti-humanist, which he’s not. please do not speak on subjects which you know little of.

>>5429
>Marxist humanism does not seem to be a method of analysis that is concerned with communism: the real movement to abolish the present state of things. Rather, it's a ethical ideology *for* communism, which is for them the ideal of morality and freedom.
lol wtf. please quote literally any sentence in Lukacs that tries to treat Marxism as an “ethical philosophy” . please just fucking read a book.

>>5433
ive recently being trying to read "On The Reproduction Of Capitalism" I'm curious to hear your criticism towards Althusser

>>5438
>that Fruerbach is somehow anti-humanist
The point was about philosophy, not humanism.
>please do not speak on subjects which you know little of.
Ditto

>>5439
>lol wtf. please quote literally any sentence in Lukacs
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. It is obvious from OP's post that we are talking about the philosophical current of "Marxist humanism", that is to say, people that actually call themselves "Marxist humanists". It is obvious that I was talking about the Johnson-Forest tendency from my post, which covered the general positions of that tendency. It is obvious that Lukacs could not have possibly been a "Marxist humanist" in the 20s, because the 1844 manuscripts had not yet been published. But it is only obvious to someone who isn't intellectually lazy, which excludes you.

>>5440
There was an althusser thread a while back, I can't seem to find it, had a good discussion there. Basically, "For Marx" was undercooked and Zizek has developed a better theory of ideology that is not as clunky as ISA.

>>5443
Marxist conceptions of ideology are my main interest right now, both Zizek and althusser seem heavily influenced by Lacan, so I guess zizek would be the next logical person to read, Which of his texts would be the best place to understand Zizeks view of ideology?

>>5444
Sublime Object of Ideology

>>5443
Ive spent the last 5 days reading Althusser and secondary literature on him. Im sorry but he is BASED. He is only hated because he killed his wife and nobody wanted to translate his posthumous texts (where he destroys those accusing him of structuralism) into english. Another tragedy caused by the Anglo menace

is it right to say that marxist humanism links closely with social reproduction theory?

Like, obviously Capital is Marx's masterwork, but I think the problem with it alone, is that you can get too caught up in the wage labour dynamic and neglect the reproduction of the working class, which of course involves other things than wage labour, such as domestic work, the environment, culture, etc.

>>5467
Proletariat Refuses interpellation from Repressive State Apparatuses

>>5467
He falls into positivist dogma and fails to uncover the fundamentals of ideology, unlike Zizek

>>5470
“For, instead of saying: ‘Fight false ideas, destroy the false ideas you have in your heads – the false ideas with which the ideology of the dominant class pulls the wool over your eyes, and replace them with accurate ideas that will enable you to join the revolutionary class’s struggle to end exploitation and the repression that sustains it!’, Action declares: ‘Get rid of the cop in your head!”

Althusser sucks ass at coming up with slogans though