Realistically, there are no banned books today, outside of stuff like Turner Diaries and Mein Kampf and terrorist guides. And even those (outside of terrorist guides) are usually just semi-banned, i.e. Amazon and most reasonable booksellers and libraries won't stock them, but you can buy them by other means and it's probably not illegal.
So I have no idea what's your point here. The "liberals" who promote reading "banned books" refer to stuff like small school libraries not stocking whatever the American media and Twitter decided to wreak hysteria about this season.
Libraries buy books based on community interest. That's why they usually have many copies of the latest best-seller, and very few copies of books about, say, getting a ham radio license. When people in a community are interested in Marxist theory--and face it; very, very few people have read Das Kapital in it's entirety, fewer have fully understood it, and all of them have degrees in philosophy--the libraries will buy books on Marxist theory. When people want to read Walter Benjamin or Mikhail Bakunin, the libraries will buy that. When people want to read Ayn Rand (who is even less entertaining than Marx, and she's trying to be entertaining), libraries will buy that.
My library has exactly as many copies of Ulysses as they do Das Kapital, and I'm in a very small town in the deep south. No one cares of banning James Joyce. Space on library shelves and funding is limited, and libraries don't usually see a point in filling up that precious space with, and spending money on books people 'should' read that are never going to get checked out.
I wonder if a supposed lack of interest in Marxism could have anything to do with over a century of rabid and relentless anti-communism from every privately owned media source and position of authority, combined with the awareness that those Americans who publicly express interest in communism will have their careers and possibly even their lives destroyed?
It's probably more because philosophy in general isn't something that lots of people have an interest in, economics are often boring, and Das Kapital combines both into one incredibly dense, challenging to read book.
Personally, I think that Marx and Engels do a great job of describing the problem, but I don't think that their solution takes human nature into effect. Economics assumes that people are fully rational actors that will do the smartest thing all the time, but that's clearly not the case; there are other forces shaping human behavior. Marx and Engels don't seem to account for that.
“Human nature” is a concept that, in your mind, is unchanging and immortal. It possesses infinite power. It acts upon the material world, but the material world cannot act upon it. It is also only brought up when anyone mentions the possibility of actually making the world better. “We can’t have communism because of human nature”—even though the concept of private property itself did not exist before the invention of writing. Communism was the norm for 95% of the time humans have spent on Earth.
If human nature is infinite, immortal, and unstoppable, if the material world has no effect upon it, how is it different from god?
You are caught in quite the bind here. If you admit that human nature can change, that means that communism is possible, and that the entire liberal project is a sham. If you refuse to admit this, you instead admit that human nature is divine, and reduce yourself to the status of a religious lunatic. Which will it be?
Not so at all. Human nature can, and does change, albeit very, very slowly. Evolution exists; humans continue to evolve through natural selection. We have mitigated some of the environmental effects, in that people that would not have survived to reproduce a hundred years ago now survive and thrive, but we are still evolving.
Communism was the norm for 95% of the time humans have spent on Earth.
Yes, this I agree with.
Communism works very, very well when you know everyone. Communes still exist today, and they are wonderful places, because everyone knows everyone else, and is able to work for the common good. Bad actors are quickly recognized and removed. This is what is called a community; community is direct and personal, because each individual knows each other individual, or at least knows someone that knows that individual. You can still find echoes of this with civics clubs, certain churches (not megachurches), and other local chapters of national organizations.
But this is not what we have now. Society has replaced community. Rather than everything being personal, everything has become impersonal and depersonalized. (That this feeling of being disconnected is pervasive in society; it's giving rise to right-wing extremism, as young people--mostly boys--looking for community are finding fascists that welcome them into a community. This is a large part of the reason why cells of groups like the Proud Boys are successful) Society is a largely external force, outside of the individual. In a society, problems are external to the individual; in a community, problems are internal to the individual, because the individual knows every other person.
Human nature can not keep pace with the ways that we are changing out environment. We have evolved to live in tribal groups, but in our development and reproduction as a species we have out paced the size of communities we have evolved to function within. Societies attempt to create a framework that allows individuals to continue to function, despite no longer being directly connected to the other people around them. Society has largely failed, and continues to fail to adapt in modernity; this is true for both capitalism, and so-called communism at a nation-state level.
For decentralized, anti-authoritarian communism to work, it must be personal and individual. You would need to evolve--or devolve--to tribal groups, or very small village-states. You could not have countries as we currently understand them, and we would certainly have a hard time e.g. coming to agreements about combating climate change (esp. when you consider that there are certain religious communities that are personally invested in denying that climate change is even real). Moreover, we have seen that there have been no successful transitions from communist revolutions to true communist societies yet. Is it possible in the future? Sure. But that's not the way that evidence is pointing.
I don't believe that capitalism is the answer; that's failed to meet the needs of everyone economically, and has often failed to meet social needs. I don't believe that communism can work the way that it was conceived; it may meet the bare economic necessities of most people (baring famines caused by hubristic governments or intentional genocides), but has failed the social needs. I don't think that communism should be accepted or permitted in the way that it's been implemented by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, or any of the other communist dictators due to the way that it removes the individual, personal autonomies and liberties of the people in those systems. (And yes, I'm aware that "dictatorship" is a loose term, and that even an absolute monarch doesn't have unlimited power, but the USSR, China, Cuba, and others, have been effectively dictatorships.)
This isn't a problem that can be solved through black and white, reductionist thinking--capitalism -OR- communism--and I don't think it can't be solved through pure theory. I tend to have a lot of respect for people that will admit that they don't know what the solution looks like, while decrying both the communism that has existed as well as capitalism as it now exists. I have much less respect for people that insist that they know for certainty that this or thatwill work.
Keep moving those goalposts, daddy. 🥵 First you claim marxist literature is never purchased by the libraries, which could be easily disproved just by clicking the link I gave you. Then you imply they don't stock enough, even though according to the catalogue, as I've already said, they "hold 168 book by or about Karl Marx", including multiple copies of the same book (the abovementioned CotGP has 4 copies, an abridged edition of Capital has 49 copies, etc., not even getting into counting the marxist literature not written by Marx).
But it appears you expect the American public library system to lead the communist revolution, so discussing even banal data such as how many books are stocked by a library is probably pointless.
The New York Public library system has less than a hundred copies of The Communist Manifesto, one of the most popular and important books ever written, while it has thousands of copies of various books associated with JK Rowling, a notoriously transphobic writer. I wonder what the priorities of the system are?
I get your gripes. For the longest time The Devil and Karl Marx was one of only a handful of Communist related books in my local library system (and by far the most checked out). The city council and board of trustees even made successful efforts to censor Black History and Pride Month events and displays this past year.
That being said, we do have allies and even comrades working within the system as librarians and aides. The ones in my city managed to help me get Blackshirts and Reds and The Jakarta Method onto the shelves.
Libraries being one of the last remaining third spaces of public life will definitely be a zone of struggle as market interests seek to hollow out and privatize the ever diminishing Commons, but there's solidarity to be found despite how bleak the situation seems.
Realistically, there are no banned books today, outside of stuff like Turner Diaries and Mein Kampf and terrorist guides. And even those (outside of terrorist guides) are usually just semi-banned, i.e. Amazon and most reasonable booksellers and libraries won't stock them, but you can buy them by other means and it's probably not illegal.
So I have no idea what's your point here. The "liberals" who promote reading "banned books" refer to stuff like small school libraries not stocking whatever the American media and Twitter decided to wreak hysteria about this season.
Either way, in reality New York Public Library holds 168 book by or about Karl Marx.
Marxist books are usually difficult to find in public libraries. They aren’t banned, they’re just mysteriously never purchased and never displayed!
Categorically false, and delusional.
Libraries buy books based on community interest. That's why they usually have many copies of the latest best-seller, and very few copies of books about, say, getting a ham radio license. When people in a community are interested in Marxist theory--and face it; very, very few people have read Das Kapital in it's entirety, fewer have fully understood it, and all of them have degrees in philosophy--the libraries will buy books on Marxist theory. When people want to read Walter Benjamin or Mikhail Bakunin, the libraries will buy that. When people want to read Ayn Rand (who is even less entertaining than Marx, and she's trying to be entertaining), libraries will buy that.
My library has exactly as many copies of Ulysses as they do Das Kapital, and I'm in a very small town in the deep south. No one cares of banning James Joyce. Space on library shelves and funding is limited, and libraries don't usually see a point in filling up that precious space with, and spending money on books people 'should' read that are never going to get checked out.
I wonder if a supposed lack of interest in Marxism could have anything to do with over a century of rabid and relentless anti-communism from every privately owned media source and position of authority, combined with the awareness that those Americans who publicly express interest in communism will have their careers and possibly even their lives destroyed?
It's probably more because philosophy in general isn't something that lots of people have an interest in, economics are often boring, and Das Kapital combines both into one incredibly dense, challenging to read book.
Personally, I think that Marx and Engels do a great job of describing the problem, but I don't think that their solution takes human nature into effect. Economics assumes that people are fully rational actors that will do the smartest thing all the time, but that's clearly not the case; there are other forces shaping human behavior. Marx and Engels don't seem to account for that.
What is the difference between “human nature” and god?
God (probably) doesn't exist. Humans do.
“Human nature” is a concept that, in your mind, is unchanging and immortal. It possesses infinite power. It acts upon the material world, but the material world cannot act upon it. It is also only brought up when anyone mentions the possibility of actually making the world better. “We can’t have communism because of human nature”—even though the concept of private property itself did not exist before the invention of writing. Communism was the norm for 95% of the time humans have spent on Earth.
If human nature is infinite, immortal, and unstoppable, if the material world has no effect upon it, how is it different from god?
You are caught in quite the bind here. If you admit that human nature can change, that means that communism is possible, and that the entire liberal project is a sham. If you refuse to admit this, you instead admit that human nature is divine, and reduce yourself to the status of a religious lunatic. Which will it be?
Not so at all. Human nature can, and does change, albeit very, very slowly. Evolution exists; humans continue to evolve through natural selection. We have mitigated some of the environmental effects, in that people that would not have survived to reproduce a hundred years ago now survive and thrive, but we are still evolving.
Yes, this I agree with.
Communism works very, very well when you know everyone. Communes still exist today, and they are wonderful places, because everyone knows everyone else, and is able to work for the common good. Bad actors are quickly recognized and removed. This is what is called a community; community is direct and personal, because each individual knows each other individual, or at least knows someone that knows that individual. You can still find echoes of this with civics clubs, certain churches (not megachurches), and other local chapters of national organizations.
But this is not what we have now. Society has replaced community. Rather than everything being personal, everything has become impersonal and depersonalized. (That this feeling of being disconnected is pervasive in society; it's giving rise to right-wing extremism, as young people--mostly boys--looking for community are finding fascists that welcome them into a community. This is a large part of the reason why cells of groups like the Proud Boys are successful) Society is a largely external force, outside of the individual. In a society, problems are external to the individual; in a community, problems are internal to the individual, because the individual knows every other person.
Human nature can not keep pace with the ways that we are changing out environment. We have evolved to live in tribal groups, but in our development and reproduction as a species we have out paced the size of communities we have evolved to function within. Societies attempt to create a framework that allows individuals to continue to function, despite no longer being directly connected to the other people around them. Society has largely failed, and continues to fail to adapt in modernity; this is true for both capitalism, and so-called communism at a nation-state level.
For decentralized, anti-authoritarian communism to work, it must be personal and individual. You would need to evolve--or devolve--to tribal groups, or very small village-states. You could not have countries as we currently understand them, and we would certainly have a hard time e.g. coming to agreements about combating climate change (esp. when you consider that there are certain religious communities that are personally invested in denying that climate change is even real). Moreover, we have seen that there have been no successful transitions from communist revolutions to true communist societies yet. Is it possible in the future? Sure. But that's not the way that evidence is pointing.
I don't believe that capitalism is the answer; that's failed to meet the needs of everyone economically, and has often failed to meet social needs. I don't believe that communism can work the way that it was conceived; it may meet the bare economic necessities of most people (baring famines caused by hubristic governments or intentional genocides), but has failed the social needs. I don't think that communism should be accepted or permitted in the way that it's been implemented by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, or any of the other communist dictators due to the way that it removes the individual, personal autonomies and liberties of the people in those systems. (And yes, I'm aware that "dictatorship" is a loose term, and that even an absolute monarch doesn't have unlimited power, but the USSR, China, Cuba, and others, have been effectively dictatorships.)
This isn't a problem that can be solved through black and white, reductionist thinking--capitalism -OR- communism--and I don't think it can't be solved through pure theory. I tend to have a lot of respect for people that will admit that they don't know what the solution looks like, while decrying both the communism that has existed as well as capitalism as it now exists. I have much less respect for people that insist that they know for certainty that this or that will work.
The catalogue I linked literally shows they have a 2023 edition of "Critique of the Gotha Program", in the very first row of the results.
Nice, how many people live in New York state again?
Keep moving those goalposts, daddy. 🥵 First you claim marxist literature is never purchased by the libraries, which could be easily disproved just by clicking the link I gave you. Then you imply they don't stock enough, even though according to the catalogue, as I've already said, they "hold 168 book by or about Karl Marx", including multiple copies of the same book (the abovementioned CotGP has 4 copies, an abridged edition of Capital has 49 copies, etc., not even getting into counting the marxist literature not written by Marx).
But it appears you expect the American public library system to lead the communist revolution, so discussing even banal data such as how many books are stocked by a library is probably pointless.
The New York Public library system has less than a hundred copies of The Communist Manifesto, one of the most popular and important books ever written, while it has thousands of copies of various books associated with JK Rowling, a notoriously transphobic writer. I wonder what the priorities of the system are?
I get your gripes. For the longest time The Devil and Karl Marx was one of only a handful of Communist related books in my local library system (and by far the most checked out). The city council and board of trustees even made successful efforts to censor Black History and Pride Month events and displays this past year.
That being said, we do have allies and even comrades working within the system as librarians and aides. The ones in my city managed to help me get Blackshirts and Reds and The Jakarta Method onto the shelves.
Libraries being one of the last remaining third spaces of public life will definitely be a zone of struggle as market interests seek to hollow out and privatize the ever diminishing Commons, but there's solidarity to be found despite how bleak the situation seems.