4481

Are you just going along with my bit or is this a serious response?

Either way, perfect response!

4482

I appreciate it! It is sad that people want to throw millions of deaths under the rug in the name of theory.

4483

Who specifically?

4484

What are “the good parts”?

The idea that workers are exploited?

I mean, you can take that as a superficial statement, at which point it’s not really Marxism at all, so labeling it as such is kind of pointless and counterproductive given the baggage…

But if you want to take it as a more detailed statement, using Marx’s arguments… Then it ends up just being wrong, because the math that Marx used to try and prove exploitation was fundamentally flawed.

That’s the thing, at this point, Marx doesn’t add anything to the conversation. He’s either brings widely discredited ideas, or he brings nothing.

You don’t need the Marxist label for anything. It’s nothing more than an albatross around your neck. You don’t need Marxism to criticize capitalist practices.

4485

I think the problem here is that you can’t discern the difference between Marx and Marxism.

4486

I find both hills full of dead rhetoricians in this thread to be darkly amusing.

Dudes don’t any of you have better things to do?

4487

Guys, socialism is bad because the Nazi’s were socialists right?

4488

It’s fun to look back at times like these at the actual notion that was raised that led to these knee jerk trigger word reactions.

IE, TLDR, 21st socialism needs to come up with an alternative to speculative stock based financing.

Clearly that is advocacy for violent revolution and a tearing down of the system in favor of a Stalinist regime of central planning and authoritarianism.

4489

Wait, you mean it’s not?

I withdraw my support for the proposition.

4490

No, the current system of legalized gambling that is the stock market is perfect

no notes

4491

On the one hand, good point. Fuck it dude, let’s go bowling.

On the other hand, we’re all guilty of spending at least some part of our day commenting about politics with strangers on a video game forum. It’s not like one type of discussion here is superior to another. The shame of one is the shame of all.

Even so, you’re right. I’m gonna go for a jog. And I think I might take a sanity break from the forum to appreciate the better things in life. Like cheap beer, bad martial arts movies and popcorn in between the couch cushions.

4492

But avarice and ambition in the rich, in the poor the hatred of labour and the love of present ease and enjoyment, are the passions which prompt to invade property, passions much more steady in their operation, and much more universal in their influence. Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions. It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate that the owner of that valuable property, which is acquired by the labour of many years, or perhaps of many successive generations, can sleep a single night in security. He is at all times surrounded by unknown enemies, whom, though he never provoked, he can never appease, and from whose injustice he can be protected only by the powerful arm of the civil magistrate continually held up to chastise it.

Is this:

  • a description of how things work?
  • a proposal for how things ought to work?
  • both?
4493

The actual sequence that led to folks defending Marxism to the death was:

And my somewhat tongue in cheek comment of

… And then this resulted.

4494

Right, that was the start of the post that had the tldr; I posted. Yes, he used the bad word.

While obviously a sensitive term, it’d be nice if people could focus on the actual point being presented instead of having a huge knee jerk reaction to certain terms every time they appear.

4495

Like I said, it was kind of a joke. I honestly didn’t expect for folks to jump to Marx’s defense.

4496

Your second point is completely valid and I’m as guilty as any here. On the other other hand I find my overall well being is improved when I can restrain my participation in these rhetorical versions of Iwo Jima.

4497

Perhaps, not, but it really seems you at least hoped someone would say something, anything that you could then perceive as “jumping to Marx’s defense and thus to a defense of all the evils that are attributed to marxism” regardless of the content of that comment so you could then post the same tangential crap that always gets posted in these derailments. It’s silly. Which is why it gets mocked.

4498

Oh, I see where this is going. Cool.

4499

Quite literally, my email has stopped working, my phone has stopped working, and i can’t text, call or email any clients, so i’m waiting for IT to figure out what’s going and / or contemplating running to BB and getting an entirely new service line. Maybe a Pixel phone?

Sorry for breaking my attempted rule at not commenting on things like this.

4500

The difference is clear, as clear as Marx’s endorsement of violence and dictatorship.

“there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.”

This quote actually shows Marx’s lack of economic understanding because of the zero sum world he believes in. Thank you for sharing!