(apologies if this isn't an appropriate server to post this on) Being so heavily criticized for your ideas, knowing how many people feed into ideas of how man is innately selfish (whether inspired from Hobbes or Rand) How much propaganda has been fed (coming from an american perspective atleast) to the people, you have to neatly present your ideas so you don't seem so extreme but even ones that you'd think sound reasonable to the common person may seem ridiculous to someone else. Isn't it tiring? I got out of marxism for the sake of a spiritual relaxation so that I could feel some sort of peace out of it all, and now I feel as though to go back while I also can't help but feel this sense of duty to educate myself further even if it means I develope hatred. This is a more emotional problem I know, but I feel like there has to be someone out there who may understand and give some advice or at the very least direct me to another server to share.

Hi what do you think about Rosa Luxemburg's works? I have been reading here writings, it is right on the money, she is right that revolution is the key to change, not reforms

Having read the communist manifesto, Marx states that the fall of the bourgeoisie will be due to their inability to support the lives of the proletariat as the proletariat sink deeper into poverty. In which case, shouldn’t Marxist organisations be opposed to welfare, as this simply reduces the alienation of the proletariat from the bourgeoisie? At the same time, I do not understand how an organisation claiming to represent the interests of the working class could oppose things like universal healthcare and other workers rights. Can anyone explain this to me?

So I recently started reading theory for the first time, I decided to go with a book about the LGBTQ+ Community, since I'm part of the community and it sounds quite interesting. It's called "Sexuality and socialism - history, politics, and theory of LGBT Liberation" and its by Sherry Wolf. It's written from a Marxist perspective. Now, in the introduction you can read a lot about Unions and the LGBTQ+ Communitys' involvement/how they help each other out. It mentions the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union and their banner stating: "Race-baiting, Red-baiting, and Queer-baiting is Anti-Union". I'm guessing Queer-baiting nowadays has a different meaning than back then? I can't find any other definition but I wouldn't know how that makes sense in the Union context, especially because I don't think being queer was a 'selling point' for people back then, right? Also, I just realized the book is from 2009 and in the introduction I can already notice that it's from a different time (by referencing the changes of the queer community bc of the economic collapse) Does anyone have any good recommendations for starters like me that don't feel as dated? (I'm still going to read it, but I'd be interested in seeing how a Marxist would assess society today, bc of right wing beciming more and more strong again) (If i worded something bad, I'm sorry, English is my second language)

I'm fairly new (I think) and I've read the manifesto and the principles of communism by engels. I tried reading German Ideology (Idealism and materialism) but it was definitely way harder than the political literatures and then I realised my philosophical understanding of marxism was very poor because I didn't know what marx was critiquing of the idealists.

I decided to do my research and felt that l'd have to know a little bit of Hegel and absolute idealism. But to know Hegel, I'd have to know a bit of kant and so I thought I'd have to go through German Idealism to REALLY understand Marx's critique of idealism and the young hegelians.

I don't have academic philosophical background but I'm willing to put the work in and at least know 1 percent of the things marx was trying to critique. Can somebody give me a reading list to better understand German Idealism before I delve into Marxist philosophy?

Hello everybody!

I'm wondering if anyone would be able to point me in the direction of some unanswered debates within Marxism or similar leftist circles. Given Marxism's popularity and historical prevalence I'm finding it difficult to zone in on areas that have not already been vigorously examined and debated. Some of Gramsci's works are proving promising so if nothing else I will continue down that road.

Thanks in advance comrades.

Slaves don't make wage and they also don't sell their labour. They are clearly not proletarians. If the proletariat is the uniquely revolutionary class, is there any Marxist justification for freeing slaves and ending slavery aside from a possible conversion into proletarians?

I'm trying to understand Bordiga's "Activism". Although there are comments explains the context of the work, i'm still struggle to understand what does he mean by activism?

Something I have been fascinated by is Lenin's unique organisational approach. The Leninisst vocabulary is one which is rich which useful words, such as dogmatist, liquidationist and revisionist.

If one were to want to read more about Lenin's organisation techniques, where should one go?

recently finished the excellent (and dense)Prisoners of the American Dream by Mike Davis, and looking for other good works that analyze the historic development and processes of American political economy, anyone got any favs?

Feudalism or feudal is a disputed term. Historians like Elizabeth Brown and Susan Reynolds criticized the usage of the term. And Marx and Marxists did use this term a lot. But I'm not trying to say Marxism is wrong here as someone who didn't understand theory enough. I hear that Reynolds did recognize a economic feudalism of Marxist - "marxist feudalism". My question is how does Marx define the term feudalism (bc obviously I don't read Marx enough to know that), when did it start, what are its scope? Does medieval Muslim world and Asian has feudalism? Is serfdom a compulsory part of feudalism?

I'm trying to read "The Historical Invariance of Marxism". I kind of understand who are the deniers and falsifiers but fell to understand who are the modernizers. Can anyone rephrase what Bordiga mean by "modernizer"? tyia

I've decided to use the remainder of the year to really ground myself in dialectical materialism. While I think I have an ok foundation of understanding, I've identified these 4 books as helpful for me to take the next step:

The German Ideology parts I and III (Marx)

Anti-Duhring (Engels)

Dialectical and Historical Materialism (Stalin)

On Contradiction (Mao)

I'd love to hear feedback on which order I should read these four. Also open to adding any others or removing some from this list (though the first two I can't see not reading).

Just finished reading this text. Some of these questions are probably pretty obvious, I just want to make sure I have a crystal clear understanding of it.

1. What does Marx mean by the "dangerous class"? Is he speaking of the remnant classes of pre-bourgeois society, or the lumpen-proletariat? "The “dangerous class,” the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue."
2. Marx says the bourgeoisie are increasingly unfit to rule as it can no longer maintain the conditions for its own existence without impoverishing the proletariat. It (bourgeois) has to feed him (proletariat), instead of being fed by him. Would social welfare be an example of this, or just an increase in wages?
3. In the Section II: Proletarians and Communists, he says communists do not form a distinct party opposed to other working-class parties. What is meant by this? Also, what does he mean when he says communists do not impose their own sectarian principles to shape the proletarian movement?
4. Later on, Marx says communists do not need to abolish personal property earned by individual labor (e.g., that of artisans or small peasants), which is already being eroded by industrial development. Is he implying that it should be abolished? it's just that there's no need since bourgeois industry is already doing so?
5. Regarding wage labor and its appropriation, Marx says that the average wage laborer earns only enough to sustain a bare existence, just enough to continue as a laborer. In contemporary (U.S. & E.U.) society, is the state and federal minimum wage artificially higher than what it would be otherwise?
6. Marx speaks of private property only existing for 1/10ths of the population. Is the percentage higher or lower in our present time?
7. What exactly does Marx mean when he speaks of the integration of agriculture and industry? He says agriculture will be combined with manufacturing, and the distinction between town and country will be gradually abolished through a more even distribution of the populace. Wouldn't this be ecologically destructive? What would this look like in practice?
8. When he talks about Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism, he says that early proletarian movements failed due to the underdeveloped state of the proletariat and the lack of economic conditions necessary for their emancipation, conditions that only the bourgeois epoch could produce. In a way could this be seen as a sort of premonition for the failure of the Soviet Union?
9. In Section IV, he advocates for unity and agreement among "the democratic parties" worldwide. Who are these democratic parties?

Meaby not a 101 question but can anyone tell me if I'm wrong about anything.

Ok so from my understanding dialectical materialism is the idea that everything in the world has some form of relation with everything else in the world even if very slight or invisible and that everything is in constant shift due to these relations.

Sometimes X opposes Y and thats a contradiction and when it is resolved X and Y (or one) are changed. This means everything is dynamic something that is true today might be false tomorow.

So to evaluate truth we can't hyperfocus on the state of something as it was 100 years ago because a lot has changed since then we always have to start from the material conditions aka zoom out as much as possible before evaluating a zoomed in position.

It makes sense to me that human labour-power is the source of surplus value in Marx's day as it was required to make commodities but surely in the modern day automation can also create value because it creates commodities that can go on to be sold for a profit? This dawned on me when I was looking at the tendency for the rate of profit to fall as variable capital (human labour-power) gets replaced with constant capital (automation in this case) thereby generating less surplus value but I'm just confused as to how automation cannot produce surplus value.

I don't know, maybe I'm missing something very obvious. Perhaps I haven't understood Marxism properly but some help would be greatly appreciated.

Hey yall I wrote a brief summary of Marx's book Wage-Labor and Capital. Looking for any feedback or critiques, feel free to check it out!

https://absurdcornbread.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/146551616?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fhome

I would like to find, if it is not much of a bother, some sort of "all in one" compilation of all marxist texts (including but not limited to: phamplets, books, essays, letters, etc), preferably in audiobook format, although not necessarily. If possible i would also like a guide alongside this educational journey, and maybe some pre-marxist texts to study first? All in due time, thank you internet :D

As I understand it, and perhaps I don't, syndicalism is just anarchists in trade unions. Not sure what that actually means in practice because it's my experience that anarchists have no real programme to achieve their goals and are thus easily dismissed by bourgeousie media.

I'm given to believe that marx and marxists repudidate syndicalism. Can we expand on this and explain further? THanks

I’m referring to the idea that institutions like the U.S. Supreme Court operate almost like a third, unelected, and untouchable house of the federal legislature.

I'm just geniounly curious. I can't imagine that we would just continue the lazzies-faire competition with each other.

Basically the title. What I mean is, theorists that are generally not taken to have correct analysis since Leninist thought became the "orthodoxy" of global Marxism since the mid 20th century. I am thinking of people like Plekhanov, Kautsky etc.

The First passage is: “At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena.”

What is the bourgeoisie of foreign countries referring to? Is it referring to how nations may be against each other for their own bourgeois interest like the US vs Russia? So the proletariat use this to their advantage and are pulled into political battles by a foreign nation (e.g. proletariat party in America getting funding or attention from Russian bourgeoisie)? Are they taking advantage of the fact that they can use the bourgeoisie of different countries and turning them against each other? Or is foreign bourgeois just referring to generally any bourgeoisie party that may oppose another bourgeoisie party and maybe country means something different in older English? Sorry if this sound ignorant this is my first time reading the communist manifesto.

The second passage is: “The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.”

I’m wondering is this referring to the general education a proletariat may have in school and access to information in libraries? Or is it referring to their knowledge about the political sphere around them? And is this also referring to turning the bourgeoisie against each other as mentioned in the previous passage?

Hi everyone. In my understanding, the USSR ceased to be a dictatorship of the proletariat after the counter-revolution which broke away from the international proletariat, taking control over the International, and began centralised capitalist development of the semi-feudal economy.

My question is: was this development of the Russian revolution inevitable after the defeat of revolutions in highly developed countries such as Germany which could have "exported" capitalist relations to the USSR? Or could the USSR have remained under the International's control as a DotP even with the defeat of the German revolution and still have developed capitalism domestically?

I think the problem is that, in the class struggle which occurs under capitalism, whose side would the hypothetical proletarian government take, given that it would theoretically have to side with the bourgeoisie to allow capitalist development - thus ceasing to be proletarian. It seems to me then that such development would be impossible.

Sorry if this is a bad question, if it helps on this subject I have read What was the USSR? (Aufheben Collective), and Why Russia isn't Socialist (ICP).

The argument in Capital hinges on the production of the commodity labour power, but Marx does not actually get very far into explaining how that is produced. I’m wondering if anyone has any suggestions on follow up readings that can help illuminate this question, which to me seems extremely important.

Some questions I have around this issue:

• I would appreciate a further exploration of the distinction between labour and labour power. For example, what is it about human labour that allows it to produce more value than labour power costs? As opposed to animal work for example.

• What weight do we give to “expectations” in the factors that determine the value of labour power?

• Marx considers the capital spent in the production of commodities as split into to basic parts: constant and variable capital. Can we think of the production of the commodity labour power in the same way? What are the variable parts and what are the constant parts? If we can’t think of it in those terms, why not?

Hi everyone. In Q25 of Principles of Communism, Engels discusses electoralism and has this to say about the US:

In America, where a democratic constitution has already been established, the communists must make the common cause with the party which will turn this constitution against the bourgeoisie and use it in the interests of the proletariat — that is, with the agrarian National Reformers.

I was under the impression that as Marxists we are against "making common cause" with any non-Communist party. Also, were the small-holding farmers helped by the National Reform Association even historically progressive?