Submitted 1 day ago by DylanMc6@lemmy.dbzer0.com to [deleted]
There is no reason to study Marx other than you find it interesting or because it relates to something your interested in. There is very little utility in knowing the theory.
Marx was a genius similar to Freud. They changed the way we look at the world and gave us new tools to think about the world. Beyond that, their particular ideals are often as wrong as two left shoes.
There is plenty of room on the left for people who reject, or are ignorant of Marx.
Dam, great reply
You could try out a DSA book club. They sometimes read through fiction books that are much more entertaining than straight up economic theory (…for some) then everyone discusses. It’s a very approachable way to start understanding marxist/leftist socioeconomic ideas. Link: Reading Groups
What if I prefer to study from the comfort of my bedroom? Just asking.
Most of them are virtual groups - no need to leave the bed!
You can… read Marx? Or find a podcast about him?
It’s economics, “boring” or “dry” kinda comes with the package
I don’t mean Marxism-Leninism, I mean regular Marxism
If you want to explore classical Marxist ideas in an entertaining way, check out Michael Burns on YouTube. He used to run the channel Wisecrack and makes videos about philosophy, and he is a classical Marxist who talks a lot about Marx and Engels. That being said, these days you’re not going to find much discussion of Marx that doesn’t cover Marxism-Leninism in some way.
For clarity MLism was reverse engineered by Stalin to justify the violent oppression of the working class, it spread to other regimes that wanted to justify the same, but Lenin didn’t have a lot to do with it.
Read Kayanerenko;wa The Great Law of Peace. It’s political theory from the Indigenous people that gave Engels the idea for communism.
Get your communism straight from the source, don’t settle for the cheap European knockoff.
No, I meant this: https://www.booktopia.com.au/kayanerenk-wa-kayanesenh-paul-williams/book/9780887558214.html
That one looks like a very direct legal explanation of the law, which will be less useful to non-Haudenosaunee, because it doesn’t explain everything to a novice level. Kayanesenh spends a long time explaining the fundamentals to the reader, and goes on a lot of tangents about some very important philosophy.
Which indigenous people?
Which indigenous people?
The Haudenosaunee (People of the Longhouse) on Turtle Island (North America), commonly known as the Iroquois.
Also just get into anarchism instead. Anarchists are always sexy.
Stupid sexy anarchism
Idk. I’ve always experienced that people who claim to be anarchists are just libertarians in hiding.
I don’t know what to do about that
Ive met tons of anarchists who had a firm grasp of anti-capitalism
It’s easy to get that impression on Lemmy, but if you come to https://soulism.net you can read a manifesto from anarchists so far left that some anarchists refuse to believe in us.
there’s a chick whose videos get posted on videos@lemmy.ml, I don’t remember her name but it should be something super obvious. She seems to know not just the theory but also a lot Russia in the period of time it was written in.
Also there’s this guy on youtube called Andrewism. He interprets a lot of theory for adaptation in the future and for building community now where he lives. He’s pretty cool.
Very interesting, did not know about either, thanks!
Don’t.
Things seeming boring and dry is your mind telling you that you’re trying to learn something that isn’t interesting to you. Fancy tricks to hide that core truth won’t undo it.
Why do you think you want to learn Marxist theory? To have status among leftists? Go punch a Nazi. To understand modern or historical leftists? Their actions aren’t guided by Marxist theory. To have status among political theorists, economists, and liberals? Lol. Lmao even.
To gleam a better way to have a succesful revolution that results in a better society? Okay, cool, do you have a community of people that won’t starve to death within days of trade being cut off? If no, congratulations, now you know all Marxist theory that you need to know until you do have such a community.
While I do strongly oppose fascism in all forms, I prefer not to fight. However if I do know martial arts, and some fascist hooligan comes at me, I would probably kick their ass in self-defense.
I’m looking to study socialist theory because I’m getting very sick and tired of capitalism going unchecked, as well as the conditions of the very archaic bourgeois-capitalist system that enable people to push others around because of who they are.
Do you have a community of people that won’t starve to death within days of trade being cut off?
I assume you’re talking about the famines that happened in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin - there are factors into why that happened such as the bureaucratization of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and lack of the agricultural tools needed for farming. If the US were a socialist country and they’d bring them a bunch of tractors and such (like in the alternate history story “Reds! A Revolutionary Timeline”), the famines wouldn’t happen. NOT being rude, NOT being insensitive, just saying.
I assume you’re talking about
No, I’m talking about you, dear liberal hippie, having a community that can survive a transition away from capitalism. Once you have that you can talk about the finer details like what to do once you’ve survived or what to do with the labor left over after you’ve done what is necessary to survive.
Unlike the USSR, we now live in a world where food production is highly commercialized, globalized, and industrialized. What if John Deere used Starlink to brick every tractor in your revolutionary polity with a malicious software update? What if the same happened with every food processing factory and food warehouse?
There is value in learning things that at first glance seem boring or dry.
Why do you think you want to learn Marxist theory? To have status among leftists? Go punch a Nazi. To understand modern or historical leftists? Their actions aren't guided by Marxist theory. To have status among political theorists, economists, and liberals? Lol. Lmao even.
It's also possible that OP is studying this stuff simply because they are interested in political philosophy
If they are interested in it, then why is it boring to them? Genuine question.
There is value in learning things that at first glance seem boring or dry.
Is there? If the school system is any indication, people can spend literal years studying things they find boring without retaining them. Plus they can develop a hatred for the subject. Plus all sorts of bad intellectual habits like pretending they know the answer so they’re allowed to move on.
I agree that things that feel boring to someone can turn out to be important to them, but that’s a contextualization issue, not a nose-to-the-grindstone one. As the game design adage goes; you have to show the lock before having them hunt for the key.
I would start with Duck Soup.
Which Marx Brother is your favorite?
I really like Harpo
Nope
I mean you can look for cartoon guide to marx or something like that. Maybe youtube has some videos about it that are not so dry?
No.
Twinklebreeze@lemmy.world 7 minutes ago
How many times are you gonna ask basically the same question?