:salute:

I tend to agree, even though I understand what August was saying. In the case of Marx, his philosophies tended to mirror his personal "failings", thusly failing to create a separate identity. Frankly his economic and social structures really only seemed a misguided attempt at justifying his own squalor due to a system he could not excel in.

Frankly, I don't think we was in any way a genious. Anyone could as easily devise such a concept of a social structure in theory, and many educated individuals could have dressed it up just as pretty. The idea of equality was certainly not new to Marx - rather, he simply decided to add fantasy elements of human nature to allow for a theoretical equal existance.

That's not genious any more than your average fiction writer.

I'm not saying I'm an expert on Marx or I've read more than you (I am sure I have not), I have read enough to form my opinion & I guess it's just simply a matter of opinion. Marx dedicated all his life to a theory that is horses**t. It's like calling Mussolini a great strategist or something. There could be some joker who spent 40 years analyzing and forming a theory on how the world is flat,,, and that equals failure. To me, being as specatularly wrong as Marx was, is a good indication of how brilliant he was not. I'll give you this, he was completely devoted to his work and single-minded.

Agreed.

To expand, it was a theory that was based upon assumptions that, even at the time, were seen as flawed. Ultimately, he did nothing more than create a social construct based upon nothing more than wanting it to be true.

Wishful thinking is NOT brilliance.

I don't really have an opinion on Marx, Aramike, but to pull you up on one point (in a manner that echos the point you made on religion)...

I think that if someone can change the world, if only temporarily (and what change is not ultimately temporary?) through mere "wishful thinking" then that's a form of brilliance. If nothing else he did at least manage to tap into the wishful thinking of a great many people. Some (myself included) would argue that Jesus (for example) did the same thing, though with perhaps more success than Marx, depending on how you measure success.

To make the more general point, the world is what we make it. What is New York if not a towering collection of wishful thoughts? Your comment suggests to me that you underestimate the power of the human will.

NeonSamurai. You have a point, however just look at the first reponses as examples.
A definitive statement but wrong.
Everyone has a lot to learn , but in this instance it was himself that had to learn it.
An agreement with the mistake above, though with the redeeming feature that perhaps their knowledge was lacking.
well what can you say about that , wrong again and with no effort to find out if they were indeed correct ?

So when you say
you are correct. I prefer the gradual approach so poeple can find out for themselves. UnderseaLcpl made the firststeps but didn't look beyond Hackett to someone like longstreet, johnston or royall.

Yet what makes this tangent on the subject funny is that it essentialy stems from me calling the fundamentalist muslims backwards hicks and people objecting to the accuracy of that label for them.

Redneck is a state of mind:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27764

cheers:yeah:

Marx was not a genius in any philisophical way. What he was a genius at - was manipulation. He took a theory that was blantantly flawed, and sold it to people in such a way that they helped him increase his own personal power....

The theory was crackpot, the man himself was one of the consumate salesmen of his time, and thus, the outcome demonstrated a level of personal power genius.

Most leaders of history who failed for obvious reasons, Marx, Hitler, Napoleon, etc - were all brilliant in many things, and totally clueless in others.

I don't necessarily disagree, in a sense - but I suppose we must look at context. From my perspective, I took things to mean intellectual brilliance, and that's what I was referring to.

Even so, I understand the point you're making. But I still feel a disconnect between "brilliance" and "wishful thinking".

I'd ask you to define "intellectual brilliance" but it might head along a pointless tangent. I guess what's really bugging me here is I'm seeing people attacking this guy Marx (who TBH I know very little about) on a sort of "personal" level (e.g. he had a bad character, he had a poor intellect, he wasn't original, and so on) which is all rather beside the point AFAIC. He could have been an immoral, stupid, idea-stealing moron but none of that has any bearing on whether or not the ideas were good ideas or bad ideas. If people disagree with the ideas they should attack the ideas, not the man. Attacking the man is just cheap.

I'm not sure what you're reading because we've all mentioned that his ideas were, well, crap, based upon flawed logic and seemingly rooted in his character.

Is there any particular idea you want to see refuted?

As far as attacking the man himself is concerned, really I think that only goes so far as stating that his ridiculous ideas were rooted in an attempt to justify his behaviors.

I really don't think anyone has the time or inclination to do a point-by-point list of all the errors in Marx's ideas, so in summation, you'll just have to accept that people think his ideas were, well, stupid - at least as far as the term "Marxism" is applied.

I'll accept that some people think his ideas were stupid. ;)
I'm just pointing out that none of the people in this thread who fall into that category have justified their position with anything more than hot air. :O:
No, I don't want to debate any of his ideas. I don't even know what his ideas were. Didn't he invent communism or something? :88)

Generalizations of a man's view is not hot air. In any case, that's the whole debate, isn't it? Whether or not the man was brilliant...

And the reason for the lack of specifics is that it has been assumed that the participants of that debate on his brilliance are at least somewhat familiar with the man and his story.

In any case, the reason I don't see him as brilliant, beyond what I've already stated, is that his positions and ideas are typically based upon false axioms - in other words, the fact that his ideologies have since been utter failures, is further betrayed by that, if you looked at them at the time, those failures were completely predictable because they were based upon false premises.

Essentially, he pretty much attempted to describe human nature blatantly inaccurately or incompletely (ie "labor power"/transformative nature/commodity fetishism) in order to support his views.

So, he was a liar - and a cheater. And his ideas were based upon that. Hence why it is difficult to separate the man's character and his philosophies.

Simple solution. Send those that complain with radical motives back to their own country. Those that accept the lifestyle/laws of their new homeland are welcome anyone else can bugger off. Wouldn't that be an insult to the royal family?

The British are to soft.

You might be in trouble if that happened in the place where you live. ;)

So are you suggesting that Anjem Choudary is deported from Ilford back to Bexley?
Should the british state pay for his bus fare or should they make him walk?

@Tribesman

I do not know the origins of the term "Redneck", nor do I particularly care to be honest. It is not something that is relevant to me. As such I have not followed the intricacies of the discussion here on that topic, nor have I entered into it. My comments to you were more of a general observation of the posts of yours that I have read.

I have to ask, do you think your approach is effective? By effective I mean, are you successfully conveying your message, are people 'listening' to what you write, and considering what you 'say'? From my own observations I would have to say the answer is no.

For one thing, ridicule and insult shut down real communication between people. No one will care what you have to say if you deride them and their opinions, no matter how correct you may be. Second, hinting at knowledge with out providing evidence of it, is not a proper form of argumentation. For one thing, you could well be bluffing. A lot of people when faced with an argument they cannot 'win' will turn to trying to bluff their way out of it by suggesting they know something the other person does not, but with out demonstrating any of it. Also that method it puts you in an intelectual tower from which you can leer at the 'ignorant' peasantry below you.

You have to provide some 'meat' to your arguments if you want people to take you seriously. We don't expect vast treatises on the subject at hand, a condensed version would suffice. But you have to offer something more then cryptic hints, or you will just be ignored. Furthermore if you really want people to consider what you have to say, and do further investigation into the subject. You have to create the right kind of mental and emotional environment for that to happen.


@Skybird

That has to be one of the nicest compliments anyone has ever payed me. I would certainly never say that your statements lack determination. I have often wondered how much the language barrier contributes negatively to what you write. You write very well in English, and I enjoy reading what you have to say, even if I may not agree. But your structuring of sentences can be odd at times, and you sometimes make incorrect use of words. Such things unfortunately can corrupt the intended message.

I usually take a lot of time composing what I have to say. I carefully weigh every sentence to make sure it is saying precisely what I want to get across. I also read and reread my posts multiple times to make sure my message is clear, my reasoning is sound, my judgment is fair, and that I am being open minded to what others are saying and have properly considered what they have said. Unfortunately its a very time consuming process, this post for example, will have taken me about 2-3 hours to complete.



Now on to Karl Marx.. Yep ol Karl was not the nicest of people, and yes a lot of his theories and ideas have been discarded. But not all of them have been. In Sociology he is still a fairly important figure, due to his key contributions to conflict theory and his concepts of the mode of production, the means of production, and the relations of production. Conflict theory is still a major theory in Sociology, and the 3 concepts above are still used to this day (though not in their original form). So he does deserve some credit.


Lastly a small comment on socialism. Socialism is not a bad form of government, it is one of the oldest forms we have. The problem though is that it only works properly on the microscopic scale, in groups of around 50 people or less. Tribal society is a type of socialistic structure. The members of the tribe help one another to survive, and no members have major power over other members. All members contribute, and when a member is unable to, the rest of the band pulls together to help that individual. What is important to understand though, is that corruption does not happen very easily at that scale. Slackers/abusers are quickly found out and ejected from the society, and people cannot easily be greedy and take too much with out getting caught. Unfortunatly though, once you hit a certain population, where people do not know everyone in the community, corruption becomes a real problem.

Interesting point. I would counter (more for the sake of argument than because I'm an out-and-out socialist) that you have the exact same problem in any large population regardless of the economic system in place. In fact, as you said, it becomes difficult in a population over 50 people so you get the problem within individual organisations, let alone whole countries. I've worked in two large corporations both of which had more than their fair share of slackers. The management in one of those corporations correctly identified the problem, and correctly identified the solution (lay off 20% of the staff) but then used it as an excuse to fire the 20% who disagreed with the way management were doing things, rather than the 20% who were slacking. As for the abusers, capitalism seems to me to reward them more than anyone else! Take the banking crisis for example. The point I'm making, in a round-about way, is that at no point have I seen capitalism providing a fix/solution to the problems you've highlighted.

Not to mention my many typos! :D I'm typing too fast, and then am too lazy to correct them.

Remarkable, becasue I say much the same about democratic principles, I said repeatedly they only work on local (=low, small) levels, and communities of limited size. You hear me, Lance? ;) Maybe one should include the functionality of capitalistic market principles to be community-size-dependent as well.

What have all these assessements in common? Leave the governing, the owing, the entrepreneurs the space to bend rules that are to their subjective disadvantage but in favour of the community, and the probability increases they will do that. Allow the elite to avoid being affected by the consequences of their governing decisions, and they are more likely to act in favour of their interests even if it is at the cost of the interest of the community. the winner in this confrontation of onterests often is the one being richer than the other, which makes him more powerful (to form the rules to his liking, or to walk around them and get away with it), and this "space", the opportunity to evade, is due to the size of the community, and it's regulation mechanisms having become too complex.

I am currently putting together an essay adressing some of these things, amongst others, a bit in the way what you said regarding yourself taking 2-3 hours for a post. Just that it is not only 2-3 hours, but so far occasional work over 2-3 days. :DL

Means: I'll be back at this in the near future. Maybe not exactly this, but you'll recognise some familiar points.

Oh I would not argue that democracy also works best at the micro scale. Frankly all our forms of governance, even communism, work at their best in the very small scale. The larger the system, the easier it is for corruption to seep into the many cracks.

The problem is how to best escape from the corruption, given human nature. That is something I don't have a solid answer for other then perhaps successive layers of small communities.