this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2024
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Memes

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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 18 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] lets_get_off_lemmy@reddthat.com 24 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Long, boring, hard to pay attention to. I read philosophy and theory sometimes but it's few and far between for those reasons. I really have to be in a special mood to sit down and read something that dense.

Edit: I'm not the original commenter

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 19 points 2 months ago

Long, boring, hard to pay attention to.

There are simpler, shorter, and easier works by Marx, Like Critique of the Gotha Programme, Wage Labor and Capital, as well as Value, Price, and Profit.

[–] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 0 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Reading Marx is like reading Adam Smith. Both wrote about economic systems before economics was even a thing. All ideas start somewhere but our ideas, and our society, have advanced dramatically in the 140+ years they've been dead. They're more interesting for historical purposes than economic ones.

[–] ElectricAirship@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 2 months ago

But it's also hard to know what contemporary economists are arguing without reading those foundational writers

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

All of Marx's main concepts, surplus value, classes and class struggle, alienation, are just as relevant today as when they were written. Much like Newton, Marx built the solid foundation that scientific socialists stand on today.

[–] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Right, but nobody tells anyone interested in physics to read Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. If you're interested in history, sure. If you're interested in physics, read a modern physics textbook.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 months ago

Yeah, nobody learns Maxwell's equations anymore, they're so 19th century. 🤡

[–] TokenBoomer@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Easy to follow vidyas onYoutube might be more engaging.

[–] rockSlayer@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Das Kapital described crypto before digital computers were even an idea. His work is still relevant.

[–] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I thought to look this up cause I think it's neat and it's often the case that some technology is described long before you'd think. The first description of using electrical switches to do logic operations came in 1886 in a letter from Charles Sanders Peirce. That's between Capital volume 2 and 3, and most importantly, AFTER he described the law of value.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Both wrote about economic systems before economics was even a thing.

Lol. Lmao, even.

and our society, have advanced dramatically in the 140+ years they've been dead.

In what manner has this proven Marx wrong?

[–] GiveMemes@jlai.lu -5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

You're very good at saying you're right and very bad at providing evidence. The best thing about lemmy's size is I can recognize which usernames to disregard immediately after enough encounters.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What evidence am I supposed to provide here, exactly? I'm asking for clarification.

[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 months ago

Memes. Look at their username.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The books Marx wrote are the evidence. If you read them then you'd see why they are obviously relevant today. Of course, reading and understanding serious literature takes more effort than trolling on public forums.

[–] Achyu@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Are there any modern books which talk about the same/similar contents which are easier/smaller for a beginner to start?

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

These books are fairly accessible and touch on a lot of the same ideas you'd find in seminal works like Das Kapital

  • Profit Pathology and Other Indecencies by Michael Parenti
  • Understanding Marxism, Economics: Marxian Versus Neoclassical, and Understanding Socialism by Richard D. Wolff
  • Super Imperialism and Finance Capitalism and Its Discontents by Michael Hudson
  • Capitalism, Coronavirus and War by Radhika Desai
[–] Achyu@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 2 months ago
[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 months ago

It's always hilarious when illiterates proceed to make clowns of themselves by discussing things they haven't read.