this post was submitted on 05 May 2025

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Happy Birthday, Karl Marx! (lemmy.ml)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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On May 5th, 1818, Karl Marx, hero of the international proletatiat, was born. His revolution of Socialist theory reverberates throughout the world carries on to this day, in increasing magnitude. Every passing day, he is vindicated. His analysis of Capitalism, development of the theory of Scientific Socialism, and advancements on dialectics to become Dialectical Materialism, have all played a key role in the past century, and have remained ever-more relevant throughout.

He didn't always rock his famous beard, when he was younger he was clean shaven!

Some significant works:

Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

The Civil War in France

Wage Labor & Capital

Wages, Price, and Profit

Critique of the Gotha Programme

Manifesto of the Communist Party (along with Engels)

The Poverty of Philosophy

And, of course, Capital Vol I-III

Interested in Marxism-Leninism, but don't know where to start? Check out my "Read Theory, Darn it!" introductory reading list!

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 21 hours ago

And they say that marxism is outdated lol

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Communism is actually human nature. Think about before the human era when everyone was hunter gatherers working together and sharing was what kept everyone alive. There was no currency or concept of ownership.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I recommend this thread, though maybe don't bother going down the chain that far as it becomes a stalemate.

Essentially, you're correct in that tribal societies were very communistic, but not Communist. Marxists call this "primitive communism," as a distinguishing factor from Communism, a highly industrialized and global society emerging from Socialism.

The truth is, all modes of production are "human nature." Human nature, after all, is malleable, and is largely determined by which mode of production humanity finds itself in. Each mode of production turns into another due to human nature, Capitalism is merely also human nature, just like feudalism, tribal societies, as is Socialism and eventually Communism.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

But is human nature not more acutely observed within the view of coercion, control and oppression? Marx says himself that the human history is defined by class wars between the haves and the have nots, with or without capitalism we will have a system that expresses control and oppression.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Marx states that all hitherto existing history is the history of Class Struggles. In analyzing tribal societies, he did so as they did indeed lack class, money, and a state, but were distinctly not "Communist" as production was low, and life relatively harsh and brutal. Communism as a mode of production is the classless society of the future, the end of class struggle. There will be new contradictions and new changes, most likely, but class as a concept is abolished through a global, publicly owned and planned industrial economy, in Marx's analysis.

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[–] [email protected] 65 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Today I honor Cowbee's Sisyphean task of explaining that production/trade and capitalism are two different things 🫡

[–] [email protected] 40 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (13 children)

It gets easier, actually! So I wouldn't call it Sisyphean. Different parts of Lemmy have different levels of understanding, if I can get parts mostly aware to be more aware, then that helps trickle into other instances, and it's easier than doing so in instances where Marxism is seen hostiley.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (2 children)

smh why do libs have to embarrass themselves everytime there is a reference to Marx

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

I'll be honest, I picked this meme precisely because I knew it would draw out liberals, and I think it's been effective in convincing a few people to reconsider their prior understanding.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Peter Kropotkin comes flying down from the sky in a cape:

"Mutual aid is human nature and a factor of evolution"

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I'd say it depends more on the Mode of Production. Early humanity found it integral to survive, and many groups even today rely on Mutual Aid to continue. However, it isn't a hard requirement across all classes in society, yet these class formations are also "human nature," just as the conditions to eventually abolish class society are "human nature" as well.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 days ago (6 children)

So as a leftist that I think identifies with Marxist-Leninist ideology but that didn’t find the communist manifesto an interesting nor easy read (it was small but not really approachable) are there any books that you recommend? I’m no economist but I do like reading logical arguments as to why capitalism doesn’t work, or better said, doesn’t work for the good of the majority but instead for a small minority (for whom it works very very well)

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