Hold the fuck on, this person has a degree in philosophy?
People in the imperial core study philosophy and somehow don't read Marx? How the fuck can they understand anything of 20 century philophy let alone history without it?
Good lord.
Also, you don't become leftist becaus of some ultra nerd shit you read trying to be edgy, you become a leftist out of spite of this fucking world after reading a teaspoon of history or just watching the homeless walking in the street whule there is a fucking TV show about superyachts in the background.
In many curriculums, he's not mentioned at all. I took a class on political theory and he wasn't mentioned once. I took another on European history and he was mentioned twice, once during the industrial revolution when the proffessor said Marx was wrong because thwre were factory managers, and again with the October Revolution. He was briefly mentioned in an intro to sociology course by my professor, but we spent significantly more time on Weber. He's been systematically torn out of curricula.
Edit: I legitimately think it was wiped per the University's orders too because the sociology professor was involved in DSA. Likewise in an international relations course, my professor had a May 1968 sticker on his laptop. He mentioned Lenin and Imperialism once and then continued on like it had never been said. I did see a sociology adjunct tell some students (not his) to read the Manifesoto though.
I remember my Intro to Political Science class literally taught that "socialism is when the government does stuff, communism is when it does a lot" meme as true.
I think lib history professors love Weber. It’s like Marx minus Marx if that makes sense—examining the world (or at least Europe in the last few centuries...) economically but also through this mystical thing called “culture” which arises from nothing and cannot be resisted.
I had a history professor in college I loved as a lib. He was fond of Weber and Israel (although he never talked about Israel because I think he knew how gauche it looked). I took several classes with him and we got on well together but he screwed me on my final evaluation because (I believe) I publicly supported BDS. Many years later he posted a photo of himself standing within a few feet of Elizabeth Warren.
That's depressing. Also that Weber thing talking about culture sounds like some shit pulled out from some "right wing theorist" spewing bullshit about the superior culture etx
Yesterday I was listening to the Know Your Enemy podcast episode on Blue Collar Conservatives which features an interview with two former blue collar conservatives. So much of what they said about their youths (particularly an emphasis on self-help books) reminded me of my own youth, even though I grew up in a lib house. It can sometimes be difficult to disentangle liberalism from conservatism.
difficult to disentangle liberalism from conservatism.
Oh, why would that be, huh?
Like really, the only clear differences are their treatment of brown, LGBT and non-christian people. All the rest is basically "murican civil religion" and McCarthyism with slightly different levels of zealotry but the lines are very blurred.
It’s slow polite fascism versus fast impolite fascism.
Libs however think that communists and fascists are the same.
Fascists think that libs and communists are also the same.
People in the imperial core study philosophy and somehow don’t read Marx?
#JustAngloThings
In most of Europe they still read Marx a lot.
There’s seemingly a very weird division between what’s studied within and without the Anglosphere. Students on “the continent” study Freud, Lacan, Marx, and Hegel, but you will only hear these characters mentioned with contempt (if at all) in Amurka. We’re stuck instead with Plato, Foucault, and George Orwell lol.
It's super dependent on the university. In my (pretty high ranked) US university, our required contemporary civilizations class required reading Marx, and there was at least one class on socialism in some department every semester. During my time there I took a history of european radicalism/socialism class, a history of cold war cybernetics (of which a large part was Marxist debates about it in the USSR), and a Hegel class. I know political economy was also offered and required reading Marx's critiques of political economy, Next semester a Marxism In Germany and Russia class is being offered.
Plato, Foucault, and George Orwell lol
One of these things is not like the other
I soured on Foucault when I found out about his relationship with children.
I swear it's partially a continental philosophy vs non continental program divide. Like a lot of US programs I think hardly touch Hegel even.
Created a throwaway just to reply to this lol I study Law at a prestigious (private) university in Brazil and we haven't had any Marx pretty much, professors in general will even avoid talking about Pachukanis. Even in Economics or Sociology classes we weren't assigned any Marxist texts, which is just surreal. There was one very based professor which gave us a textbook that used Pachukanis' General Theory of Law, but that was pretty much it so far. Other than that professors will, at most, mention Marx or Marxist thought en passant. I'm pretty sure it's orders from up top, like in @dimmer06's case.
no, not really. they tried to "purge" schoolteachers who were "indoctrinating" students but not even that went far. the vast majority of prestigious universities in Brazil are public and run by the federal government, so Bolsonaro tried to defund them and he keeps appointing ghoulish deans to run the universities, but besides that he hasn't been able to do much besides scattered actions.
don't get me wrong, good quality education, especially public university education, is under siege. but this isn't a recent development, it's something that liberal governments have been trying to do away with for a while, being pressured by private education conglomerates like Cogna or Yduqs. most academics aren't in danger of being arrested or harmed though, the only thing that is at risk is their jobs if the private sector succeeds in abolishing public universities.
"We won't teach you this very important thing cuz you wouldn't enjoy brunch anymore"
People in the imperial core study philosophy and somehow don’t read Marx?
People don't study Marx precisely because they live in the imperial core.
You get sold the story of the inherent subversibility of theory and the continuous process of recuperation, but those things shockingly enough have limits and are sold mostly to demoralize you. People that argue for this stuff "unironically" and seem to not care they're on the losing end of the "ideas war" get pushback precisely BECAUSE they live in the imperial core and know the emperor has no clothes. The empire knows that all that's needed is for enough people to keep pushing this direction to topple the card castle.
It's extremely common to never read Marx in philosophy, economy, or poli sci degrees. Richard Wolff talks about this a lot. Shit sucks.
I had a philosophy minor, and made it almost all the way to the end of my PhD coursework before a professor put any Marx on a syllabus.
I've taken a few philosophy classes and never once have any of them ever mentioned marx /:
I didn't even know that was weird until seeing your comment
Imperial core here with undergrad degree. I read a bunch of Marx.
But not in philosophy or Poli sci classes lol. In German class. It was pretty great.
PS Freud is much less pretentious in German. He just says, "the it" or "it" while English language academics have to get up their own asses and make it Latin as "the id".
Not really since I don't actually like Freud. My opinion on him is that he was good for jump-starting psych but should largely be left to history.
I like what I've heard from tertiary sources but haven't really dug into him yet.
One of my degrees is in a liberal art type thing and mention of Marx was exceedingly rare, most of the time only in the context of Marxism being one particular way you can choose to analyze culture, but it's better to not be stuck with any one particular analysis, which seemed to be the whole concept of "critical theory." I never heard it referred to as critical theory. It was just the assumed, standard sort of viewpoint.
I'm not a Marx fundamentalist, I have no idea what did he said. But friends from highschool that choose the last years specialization on "social sciences" (ie the people that later studied law, pedagogy, psychology, etc) had to read Das Kapital. In fucking highschool man. Then in college he was mentioned several times in very different subjects.
Yeah, I grew up in the American south, so my high school experience was more like "Evolution is probably incorrect also you shouldn't be gay or Muslim"
Doubt they had to read Das Kapital in high school, but they probably had to learn some stuff about it. It's more or less the same here. Even in economics departments there's some Marxists but in sociology, political science etc they are ubiquitous. Complete aversion to anything Marx related is an anglo thing.
That sucks so much too because historical materialism is very much explicitly against projection.
Yep, working in the bowels of capitalism (corporate offices) + actually learning history is what did it for me.
Imagine being proud of not reading theory while basing your youtube channel on how epic nerd things knower you are.
To be fair, economic side of things isn't her wheelhouse. She made several videos about capitalism and they weren't good.
She presents herself as an educator on these sorts of thing, but she didn't even read Capital outside of part of it years ago! I am all for making Marxist critique accessible to outsiders and spreading the worldview, but if you're going to be the one educating people on these sorts of things, you should have done the required reading.
I agree, but does she even consider herself a Marxist? Seems like it's not really her thing...
Obviously not from the thread, but the Capitalism video was clearly trying to articulate a Marxist critique or something very similar.
It was decent but the whole thing started as a response to Richard Spencer which was kinda cringe
I mean the primary purpose of her channel for a long time was deradicalizing chuds.
"yes, I am a leftist, yes I know it's an economic theory, no I haven't read any of the fundamental economic texts, yes I make educational videos on that field, no i do not have an understanding of economics."
I know it’s an economic theory
No, being a leftist is when you don't hate women and minorities.
But seriously though, from all the unflattering caricatures she made of both anarchists and MLs and general lack of principled takes on the economic side of things I assume that Contra is basically a succdem. What kinda of economical knowledge do you need to be a succdem? Just say that socialized healthcare won't make the country implode, because it seems to work everywhere else and that's that.
Reading Marx isn't a prerequisite to being left wing but also Contra has, if this tweet is to be believed, read quite a fair amount of Marx and studied him at a university level
Are we reading the same tweet? The tweet is a list of Marx's writing that she has read and a brag about having studied him in university. The tweet is annoying because it is overeducated nerd shit. She stopped reading Marx after reading a bunch of it, you don't have to like keep rereading it over and over like a mantra every day, you get the nerd cred for just reading it once
She's a liar, she hasn't read a lick of Marx, she lifted the bibliography section from Wikipedia and posted the ones she thought would make her sound smartest
lol she can't even form a coherent outline of Keynesian General theory despite the fact it forms the bedrock of her ideology.......yet she wants us to believe she read Marx, I have more respect for MMTers then twitter hacks like her
Caring about what YouTubers think. This is a 69th type of liberalism.
sure climate catastrophe may make the planet unable to support complex life, but it's a good thing nobody is being "annoying" about it!
Apparently she didn't pay attention because she made a video complaining that Marx only described two classes lol
Ah yes, Marx said "all history hitherto existing is the history of the struggle between 2 distinct and permanent classes"
I stopped reading [philosopher] because [similar philosophers] are annoying
Wonder why she dropped out of her philosophy PhD.
What do you mean white yank weirdos constantly tweeting shit is not a good approach on understanding whatever that Marx dude said?
This is the main issue with people who make online content creation their main thing. They're inevitably consumed by the confines of it, only seeing things in terms of discourses, comment threads, fanbases, whatever. Like how in the heck am I supposed to take someone seriously like "the working class needs an organized movement of our own also thanks for the 17 gifted subs fam, let's get the hype train going everyone"
This is the same exact viewpoint I've heard college educated types express in regards to Marxism over and over. Like a "Marx's works are really interesting, but Marxists are the worst. I'd hate to be like them. Anyway I'm a Foucaultian epistemological positivist with influence from blah blah blah academic jargon."
Isn't it funny how all these people have all these super important and super complex worldviews which are so extremely cultivated and worked out and yet they never translate to anything in the real world?
Sometimes they get jobs as grifters at pointless think tanks if that counts
It's just really funny how two of them could debate with each other about society and political theory all day long, even though functionally they're exactly the same and only wake up once every 4 years to vote for the same person. At best they may write a woke take on some popular movie or something. What better way to showcase how impotent these currents of thought are if not at the very least combined with marxist analysis and communist praxis?
well yeah of course. when your most deeply ingrained value is just commodity fetishism, every aspect of one's personhood becomes available for commodification. your beliefs are just something you consume as part of the spectacle or whatnot.
Yeeeeup. Worked with a dude getting his philosophy masters and the goal is basically to be not wrong but also totally useless.
It's a defense mechanism when people are confronted with views they know are right but for whatever reason can't accept them (see how a lot of people respond to veganism by saying that vegans are just the worst, it absolves you from confronting what the vegans are actually saying).
They hate Marx because he realized the implications of his theory and was like "bruh, we need to simplify this so any prole can read about it during their breaks. This shit is fucked." which led to real world revolutions with "tainted" versions of his theory.
It's way easier to be an ultra and play with imaginary trainsets that never leave the hypothetical than to make that transition from FM to AM.
I hate it. I'd make them leave, but I don't believe in private property.
Bourgeois ideology runs through them still, yet they grew enough awareness to pretend they shouldn't express it as openly as they did before they were made aware.
If you replace "Marxists/leftists/whatever" in a lot of tweets with "Sherlock fans" and the meaning doesn't change, you understand that this is actually just someone complaining about their menchies because another group was mean to them online and is completely unrelated to anything in the real world or politics.
Hard for me to understand how you could ever stop reading Marxist texts once you really get going. It’s like a drug, and like a drug, it feels great.
I just read in Caliban and the Witch that the Kabbalah got going in southern France about 800 years ago during the whole proto-socialist Catharism thing when lots of Jews went down there because it was one of the few places they could be free. The kabbalah was apparently produced in that time and place. I know nothing else about it so I cannot confirm however.
No wonder why the loony left loves communism! It's literally drugs for them! Thats why we need to save America by burning all books!
yeah "annoying" in this context translates pretty well to "ironclad logic that unfortunately refutes every preconception I had about the society that I was raised in, especially the ones that I thought meant I was a de facto Good Person"
edit: i'm salty and this is mean and exaggerated but salty will i stay, and so shall the exaggeration
holy shit i'm watching a pot point at a kettle and scream in real time
Well at the end of the day at least we can agree that we're all equally annoying.
You can not criticise a lib without annoying that lib, as such there is literally no reason to give a fuck about being annoying or not.
Yes, actually reading Marx is so enlightening and refreshing compared to hearing half thought-out opinions online.
I know people talk about it like reading is boring, but I actually think Marx and Engels are very engaging writers and the works hold up a lot better than some of the classic fiction read in high schools.
I find Engels, Lenin, Mao and others to be great writers. But Marx is a different beast. Like, he's legit tough to read.
But how many coats is it per yard? He never commits to an answer smh my head.
You just have to motivate yourself by all of the dunks on political scientists. Here's a cool excerpt from Ch. 15 of Capital, emphasis mine:
Mr Ashworth, an English cotton magnate, imparted the following lesson to Professor Nassau W. Senior: 'When a labourer lays down his spade, he renders useless, for that period, a capital worth eighteen-pence. When one of our people leaves the mill, he renders useless a capital that has cost £100,000'. Just imagine that! Making "useless", if only for a single moment, a piece of capital that has cost £100,000! It is in truth monstrous that a single one of our people should ever leave the factory!
He constantly uses dunks like this to justify his point and I love it.
What did you read from Marx? The issue is that a lot of his texts have a much different purpose from Lenin's and Mao's or even Engels'. He was trying to put a new science on firm and rigorous footing, unlike them who were often trying to appeal to a very wide audience, or face concrete and specific problems. People hear a lot about Das Kapital etc so often they think "wow if it is so important I have to try and read it" and then they see stars or end up misinterpreting stuff because it really isn't an amazing place to start, especially if you are on your own.
Reading is great because you can also go at your own pace, and reread sections until they make sense. YouTube leftists skim the books, and summarize with their own perspectives, which can sometimes be helpful in bringing relevant to the ideas, but mostly they lose the precise wording that authors are putting in the books.
But she stopped reading theory cuz "oh the obnoxious people calling Biden bad and being grumpy all day"
I hated Socialism in college because every socialist was a dramatic whiner. So this isn’t far off from my college experience as well.
I used to be the same way. I used to think the people constantly dragging democrats from the left were "counterproductive," that people who wanted a socialist revolution were delusional or dangerous, and I used to say things like "I voted for Bernie too, but if you really care about his platform, you'll vote for Hillary!" My younger self would be horrified by my current politics, but I just know a lot more now.
Yeah whatever but I assume you didn't have a degree in philosophy that I assume she does. HOW THE FUCK CAN SOMEONE UNDERSTAND DICK ABOUT HISTORY OR PHILOSOPHY WITHOUT AT LEAST READING SOME CLIFFNOTES ABOUT MARX. THIS LIB GOT A DEGREE IN PHILOSOPHY AND THE AONLY THING SHE READ WAS A PROPAGANDA LEAFLET AND SOME HYPERNERD OBSCURE SHIT FROM 1844 ONLY BECAUSE SHE REALLY WANTED TO BE EDGY
YOU DON'T BECOME A LEFTIST CUZ SOME NERD SHIT YOU READ WHILE DOING A PHD, YOU BECOME LEFTIST OUT OF SPITE OF THE CURRENT FUCKING WORLD OR READING A TEASPOON OF FUCKING HISTORY
AAAAAAAAAAHHHH DEATH TO AMERICA :monke-rage:
In my fucking shithole country you had to read some Marx at least in highschool, if the school had running water at least.
It's hard to type out a witty retort without realizing how annoying I am.
