Yeah, Marxism as written was very much a product of its time and place (Germany during the Industrial Revolution). A lot's happened since then, and while I can see the "alienation" thing appealing to teenagers, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense in most of the world in 2014.
Oh yeah I get that, but the thing is that it seems to be the glue that holds his ideas together, so any sort of modern marxism should have to radically alter itself to be ideologically consistent and i don't really see that
Yeah, Marxism as written was very much a product of its time and place (Germany during the Industrial Revolution). A lot's happened since then, and while I can see the "alienation" thing appealing to teenagers, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense in most of the world in 2014.
If you don't like Marxism that's understandable, but acting like the term of art "alienation" is some kind of Hot Topic t-shirt thing? Like I would love to live in the world where the minutia of economic inequality and labor theory was the hip edgy thing that all the kids are into these days, but somehow I don't think that's the case. :p
Anyway, the concept is actually pretty timely in the US today. Most of the jobs that have been made since the recession are crappy minimum wage jobs, the kind of thing no one's going to really be able to take pride in, and then there's the vast gulf between how productivity has increased and how wages have, uh, not. The alienation between what the average worker produces and what they receive just keeps growing.
i'd try to articulate myself better but like my brain is feeling kinda scrambled right now
though to get to the root of things Marx's "economics is the root of everything and we can make people happy solely by changing economics" bent seems to fall short and does not really correlate to how people feel/function in my general experience/observations
that's not to discount economic factors altogether or to suggest that there aren't problems with our current economic model, but rather that the approach given by Marx seems rather obviously and frustratingly incomplete, but i lack the level of knowledge and expertise to propose more holistic solutions
to be fair to marx, psychology as a field of study was much less far along (did anything resembling psychology even really exist back then? dunno) when Marx was writing
to be fair to marx, psychology as a field of study was much less far along (did anything resembling psychology even really exist back then? dunno) when Marx was writing
Psychology in the sense we would recognize it with people like Wundt got off the ground when Marx was fairly old.
also the way that contemporary marxists seem to rather consistently feel that having a kinda shit office job is mostly equivalent to working 12 hour shifts in a coal mine circa when marx was writing is goofy
like yeah i'm not determining what i make or how i spend my work day, but why are those things so important? like he just says WOW THOSE THINGS ARE IMPORTANT OK and i'm just supposed to nod in agreement?
I recently read an article about Marx where he dissed people who refused to help efforts to make things better for workers just because it wasn't *full communism*
The economists want the workers to remain in society as it is constituted and as it has been signed and sealed by them in their manuals. The socialists want the workers to leave the old society alone, the better to be able to enter the new society which they have prepared for them with so much foresight.
And I thought "wow the only people I've seen do that in the modern day are hardcore Marxists"
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
He was banging on about how PC some of the sitcoms were and why couldn't everyone be white etcetcetc. Apparently Pete & Pete was their best show because it was set in white New Jersey suburbia. :P
maybe the mechanism of confusion is that LINGUISTICALLY, it is additive: 100,000 = "hundred thousand" "hundred thousand" sounds like "hundred" plus "thousand".
but MATHEMATICALLY it is multiplicative, NOT additive.
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i'd try to articulate myself better but like my brain is feeling kinda scrambled right now
though to get to the root of things Marx's "economics is the root of everything and we can make people happy solely by changing economics" bent seems to fall short and does not really correlate to how people feel/function in my general experience/observations
that's not to discount economic factors altogether or to suggest that there aren't problems with our current economic model, but rather that the approach given by Marx seems rather obviously and frustratingly incomplete, but i lack the level of knowledge and expertise to propose more holistic solutions
like yeah i'm not determining what i make or how i spend my work day, but why are those things so important? like he just says WOW THOSE THINGS ARE IMPORTANT OK and i'm just supposed to nod in agreement?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation
being able to choose work hours is important for maintaining a life
and no i didn't eat an jalapeno raw, i just bit into a four horsemen burger. in retrospect the name could have tipped me off
so i will combine the two
killer drumming
"There's a hundred centimeters in a meter, and a thousand meters in a kilometer, so that's eleven hundred centimeters in a kilometer."
Thankfully, this was quickly rectified.
maybe the mechanism of confusion is that
LINGUISTICALLY, it is additive: 100,000 = "hundred thousand"
"hundred thousand" sounds like "hundred" plus "thousand".
but MATHEMATICALLY it is multiplicative, NOT additive.
so if your thought basis is linguistic, then you might default to thinking it was additive.