karl marx
[image linked to wikipedia page image]
not sure why i haven’t added a page before now.. i guess just so controversial..
adding page while taking in egalitarianism (can’t remember how i got there) –
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egalitarianism
Marxism
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels believed that a revolution would bring about a socialist society which would then eventually give way to a communist stage of social development, which would be a classless, stateless, humane society erected on common ownership and the principle of “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs“. Marxism advocates egalitarianism for the working class. Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto that “the working men have no country” and “workers of the world, unite!“.
However, Marxism rejected egalitarianism in the sense of greater equality between classes, clearly distinguishing it from the socialist notion of the abolition of classes based on the division between workers and owners of productive property. *Marx’s view of classlessness was not the subordination of society to a universal interest (such as a universal notion of “equality”), but was about the creation of the conditions that would enable individuals to pursue their true interests and desires. Thus, Marx’s notion of communist society is radically individualistic.
Karl Marx was a proponent of two principles, the first applied to socialism and the second to an advanced communist society: “To each according to his contribution” and “from each according to their ability; to each according to their need“. Although Marx’s position is often confused or conflated with distributive egalitarianism, in which only the goods and services resulting from production are distributed according to a notional equality, in reality Marx eschewed the entire concept of equality as abstract and bourgeois in nature, preferring to focus on more concrete principles such as opposition to exploitation on materialist grounds and economic logic.
see – have so many people/pages who/that reference him on site.. so dream app/chip would link it all.. rather than having to search.. embed in words/ideas..
which .. at least here.. sounds like what he was after… *here – pursue interests/desires.. radically individualistic
individualism ness gets to michels take on ni…?
@mbauwens
RT @joakinen: Is the next phase networked individualism or cooperative commons? blog.p2pfoundation.net/is-the-next-ph… via mbauwens
aren’t they the same thing..?
@mbauwens – : no they aren’t … bitcoin is a good example of the former, faircoin of the latter
? barry wellman ni..? .. re wire ness
networked individuals working toward common purpose & universal human interests
a nother way via hosting life bits
add bee page…Loretta Lynch…
how I feel.. ie w Michel…
no one asking me anything ..assuming I don’t know…
when I ask them… it’s based on assumed languages/verbiages/defns… where wikipedia (and hopefully hosting life bits) really does well.. linking all the words to intended meaning
which is pretty much the crux of all problems..
ie: gb shaw.. assumption communication has been accomplished and danger of single story
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Karl Marx (/mɑːrks/; German:[ˈkaɐ̯l ˈmaɐ̯ks]; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a philosopher, economist,sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. Born in Prussia to a middle-class family, he later studied political economy and Hegelian philosophy. As an adult, Marx became stateless and spent much of his life in London, England, where he continued to develop his thought in collaboration with German thinker Friedrich Engels and published various works, the most well-known being the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto. His work has since influenced subsequent intellectual, economic, and political history.
Marx’s theories about society, economics and politics—collectively understood as Marxism—hold that human societies develop through class struggle: a conflict between ruling classes (known as the bourgeoisie) that control the means of production and working classes (known as the proletariat) that work on these means by selling their labour for wages. Through his theories of alienation, value, commodity fetishism, and surplus value, Marx argued that capitalism facilitated social relations and ideology through commodification, inequality, and the exploitation of labour. Employing a critical approach known as historical materialism, Marx propounded the theory of base and superstructure, asserting that the cultural and political conditions of society, as well as its notions of human nature, are largely determined by obscured economic foundations. These economic critiques would result in influential works such as Capital, Volume I (1867).
According to Marx, states are run in the interests of the ruling class but are nonetheless represented as being in favor of the common interest of all. He predicted that, like previous socioeconomic systems, capitalism produced internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system: socialism. For Marx, class antagonisms under capitalism, owing in part to its instability and crisis-prone nature, would eventuate the working class’ development of class consciousness, leading to their conquest of political power and eventually the establishment of a classless, communist society governed by a free association of producers. Marx actively fought for its implementation, arguing that the working class should carry out organised revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic emancipation.
Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and his work has been both lauded and criticised. His work in economics laid the basis for much of the current understanding of labour and its relation to capital, and subsequent economic thought. Many intellectuals, labour unions, artists and political parties worldwide have been influenced by Marx’s work, with many modifying or adapting his ideas. Marx is typically cited as one of the principal architects of modern sociology and social science
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why reputation as new currency fails us
[..]
inequality has been with us for a long time. Industrial capitalism didn’t reverse it in the nineteenth century, and finance capitalism is not reversing it in the twenty-first.
The only thing that can reverse it is political action aimed at changing systems that seem to many people to be simply the way things *have to be. We invented our social arrangements; we can alter them when they are working against us.
*supposed to’s are killing us
a nother way – systemic/deep/simple/open.. enough for all of us..
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11 min
when marx talked about freedom.. he talked about freedom in 3 ways
1\ freedom from economic necessities..from threat to life
2\ freedom from interference by other people
3\ freedom to express yourself.. be yourself..
that’s freedom.. now what freedom is there in this *free society..?.. when people are not free of economic worry.. tremendous uncertainty/fear.. lack of control.. **when people have no control over their lives.. they have no freedom..
**is this what Benjamin means by sovereignty in the stack..?
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via Paul
Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) tweeted at 6:47 AM – 8 May 2018 :
What kind of Marxism survives in the era of algorithmic control? My essay for @NewStatesman https://t.co/ZaCHMZN2Ca (http://twitter.com/paulmasonnews/status/993834794122391553?s=17)
The tragedy is that none of them understood how thoroughly humanist Marxism had been at its conception – and only Dunayevskaya ever would.
Marx disdained philosophy, writing that “philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it”
The purpose of human beings, says the Marx of 1844, is to set themselves free. They are enslaved not just by capitalism, nor by any specific form of class society, but by a problem arising from their social nature, which obliges them to work in groups and to collaborate via *language, not simply instinct.
*beyond words.. idio-jargon et al.. to stop the obliging ness..
When humans make things, or discover a new idea, we tend to embody our concept of “self” in the new object or idea – a process Marx calls self-estrangement or “alienation”.
We then allow our products, mental and physical, to exercise power over us, whether in the form of religions or superstitions, or by fetishising consumer goods, or by mindlessly obeying routines and disciplines that we have created for ourselves. To overcome alienation, Marx argued that humanity has to rid itself of all hierarchies and class divisions – which means abolishing both private property and the state.
the it is me ness
The 1844 manuscripts contain an idea lost to Marxism: the concept of communism as “radical humanism”. Communism, said Marx, is not simply the abolition of private property but the “appropriation of the human essence by and for man… the complete return of man to himself as a social (ie, human) being”. But, says Marx, communism is not the goal of human history. It is simply the form in which society will emerge after 40,000 years of hierarchical organisation. The real goal of human history is individual freedom and self-realisation.
When they published these notebooks in 1932, Soviet academics treated them as an embarrassing mistake. To do otherwise would be to admit that the whole materialist conception of history – classes, modes of production, technology versus economics – was underpinned by a profound humanism, with moral implications
Could it be that Marxism was not, after all, a break with the philosophical humanism of the Enlightenment, but its most complete expression?
When researchers eventually discovered and published Marx’s “Fragment on Machines” in the late 1960s, Dunayevskaya understood it was the last piece of the puzzle. This was not an account of capitalist economic breakdown due to the falling profit rate, it was a theory of technological liberation. Freed from work by the advance of automation, Marx had foreseen how humanity would use its leisure time: for the “free development of the individual”, not some collectivist utopia..t
huge
leisure to eudaimoniative surplus via gershenfeld sel
Her (Kahlo) focus on the defenceless self, on the beauty of the oppressed person, on the inescapable power of the natural world, were all products of her engagement with the same idea of freedom that Marx had expressed in 1844. But she just couldn’t reconcile it with the Marxism of the Moscow textbooks, and the textbooks won.
Once the Paris Manuscripts were brought to light, the dilemma was clear: either Marxism is about the liberation of individual human beings or it is about impersonal forces and structures, which can be studied but very rarely escaped. Either there is a “human essence”, which we can rediscover by abolishing property and class, or we are a sack of bones conditioned by our surroundings and our DNA.
In the coming century, just as Marx predicted, it is likely that automation coupled with the socialisation of knowledge will present us with the opportunity to liberate ourselves from work. ..The economic system that replaces it will have to be shaped around the goal he outlined in 1844: ending alienation and liberating the individual.
The revolutionary subject is the self.
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assembly by hardt and negri .. called examination of marxist politics for a new century – publisher weekly
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(40 min) from top documentary site:
who was karl marx (2018)
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(@umairh) tweeted at 5:48 AM – 1 Feb 2019 :
Yeah, it was socialism that was behind a global slave trade, Marx himself made billions from selling little African children. Get a grip man, also nobody’s a socialist in the absolute sense you’re thinking about anymore https://t.co/232OGMGlm9(http://twitter.com/umairh/status/1091317385833918465?s=17)
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David Graeber (@davidgraeber) tweeted at 5:32 AM on Wed, Apr 03, 2019:
On the other hand if they push this line hard enough they might succeed in totally rehabilitating the reputation of Marxism https://t.co/4WV0IwkQEQ
(https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/1113403844099301376?s=03)
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from Paul Mason‘s clear bright future:
part 4 – marx
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there is a lot to criticize in marx’s work. but his core idea – that humanity as a species is biologically capable of setting itself free thru technological innovation, self transformation and work – has to form the basis of a 21st cent radical humanism..
tech as it could be..
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sometime between may and sept 1843 3 new ideas came to marx:
1\ struggle against religious superstition is not enough .. have to focus on changing society that breeds it.. impulse to invent gods hard wired as long as gaps in scientific knowledge
ok.. so always .. because always gaps in knowledge..
besides.. knowledge isn’t the point – of humanity et al
2\ only way to achieve complete human freedom is to abolish private property.. when we make something in order t sell it or buy something made by other people, we are disconnecting ourselves form the most human thing we do, *which is to work
rather.. *to make/be our art – let’s do this first: free art-ists.. eudaimoniative surplus
3\ beyond abolishing property.. no ownership
imagine no possessions.. et al
marx said simply: communism is the project of individual human freedom
common ism.. et al
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when we ask ‘what’s the essential attribute of a human being?’ marx says that we should look for qualities that have been constant throughout all the diff forms of society .. for marx, one such quality is our ability to work to a conscious plan and in a necessarily social way
rather.. undisturbed ecosystem: ‘in undisturbed ecosystems ..the average individual, species, or population, left to its own devices, behaves in ways that serve and stabilize the whole..’ –Dana Meadows
essence: maté basic needs
unlike all other thinkers about human nature, marx puts labour at the centre of being human
rather.. art
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according to marx, as soon as human can produce a surplus, a power struggle starts over how it is divided..
agri surplus et al and measuring things et al
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the whole of 19th cent liberalism revolved around the idea of a static, permanent human nature.. their default position was to believe that everything in history was determined by a previous event, and yet that human beings retained an innate, unchanging capacity for freedom of choice
so much
for marx.. free will is not something innate and immutable: it is something we possess only partially in societies governed by classes and scarcity. for marx, free will is something humanity can achieve by changing its social circumstances..
once we understand that the structure of all societies has been premised on specific systems of labour and wealth hoarding: then we can see how all advances in tech, productivity and complexity have tended to increase alienation
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in capitalism .. the number one fetish object is money.. everything is mediated by it.. money and commodities are what we are obsessed with.. in large part because most people don’t have enough of either..
marx said that to abolish alienation we need to abolish private property.. to give humans real freedom of action we need to abolish the power relationships that create a poverty stricken working class and a wealthy commercial elite alongside each other. you would also have to abolish money and, ultimately, abolish work
yes.. money (any form of measuring/accounting).. measuring as managing et al
yes.. the supposed to’s.. of school/work
since none of this could be done w/o an even more complex social org than capitalism, and even better tech.. marx understood that the push/pull of history.. was the only route to ending human self estrangement
today.. we do have the means to tech/mech (as it could be.. augmenting interconnectedness) for/toward a more complex social org (2 convers as infra toward undisturbed ecosystem; eudaimoniative surplus)
that is what communism meant for marx. but anyone who tells you that communism was his goal is wrong.. marx said abolishing property was only the beginning of human liberation.. once you’d abolished property, you would consciously have to go on fighting to end all forms of self estrangement, alienation form other people and from nature, and all forms of fetishism – whether religion, money, obsession or consumerism.. far from being the ‘end of history’ said marx, communism would rep the ‘end of the prehistory of humanity’..
for marx, this was not some lofty idea or project. it was just the logical outcome of a process we are discovering in much great detail: our evolution into a species that expresses its shared intent via *language and cooperation using tech progress..
but today that *language begs (and can afford) to be ie: /idio-jargon/self-talk as data].. and *cooperation begs to be.. via daily curiosity ie: cure ios city
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more we know about neuroscience and evolutionary stages.. more marx’s teleological view of human nature looks scientific, not metaphysical
that we think we have to define/defend things as scientific.. huge part of the problem..
marx got a lot of other things wrong – but his determination to define humans as something more than the puppets of a great mind or cogs in the machines of history is this greatest legacy to the age of ai.. quantum computing and genetic engineering..
this is why we need to be using tech/ai/whatever-you-call-it.. to listen to and facil daily curiosity
every voice.. every day
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w the onset of ai we are about to take a step beyond what’s been routine for 40 000 years: we will soon be able to create *tools that know more than us, and which may quickly develop attributes we cannot control nor even observe
*yeah.. i don’t think so..
but i do think we could take a step (leap) beyond what’s been routine.. if we use tech to do something we haven’t yet tried.. ie: augment our interconnectedness via 2 convers as infra
to build marx’s theory of human nature into a project of liberation thru tech, we are going to have to pose the question: what did marx get wrong?.. the answer is: quite a lot
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from david graeber‘s theory of value:
239: much of marx’s early work.. was concerned w anal of religion.. one might even say his work on ideology was largely a matter of applying concepts developed for the critique of religion to the econ sphere.. logic behind marx’s critique of religion was fundamental to his way of thinking about the human condition in general.. ie: human being are creators.. social/natural world is something we have made and are continually remaking.. our problem is that we never seem to see it fully that way and therefore can never take control over the process; everywhere, instead, people see their own creations as controlling them. religion thus becomes the prototype for all forms of alienation, since it involves projecting our creative capacities outward onto creature of pure imagination and then falling down before them asking them for favors.. and so on..
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be you. 