Welcome again to everybody! Make yoursmellf at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is our weekly discussion thread.
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I haven’t read a Marx text in a while and I kinda forgot how frustatingly difficult he can write. At least Lenin figured you can at some form of humor to your text without them becoming goofy.
Plus I always struggled more with the philosophical parts of Marxism versus economics, science and things about the state etc. No idea why I started with the philosophy stuff first now.
Marx is far more difficult for me to read through than Lenin, which is why I have read little from him directly so far. What are you reading now? I am going through capital volume 1 at the moment.
Marx is difficult I think because of his background and who he was and who he intended his works to be communicated too. He was purely an academic speaking in academic language writing, in most cases for other academics. Thats why if you read his personal letters, he seems to speak more like a human would, and if you read his publications intended for reading by everyone (like the communist manifesto) he does engage in allegory and imagantive writing to accent his points (…there is a spectre haunting)
Meanwhile Lenin had to be able to communicate with the educated russian class, but also the rank and file of the revolutionary army as well as the Russian serf class; he knew most of his writing had to be understood on the terms of the less educated as a whole class but intended to educate everyone to the level that they could understand him removed from western academic language, to his benefit I think; detatching from liberal academic language is a revolutionary thing in itself.
Materialist philosphy is so cool honestly, I read a great materialist theory on reincarnation recently that argued since our conciousnesses are material things that we can be sure exists, as we pilot one, our conicousnesses themselves where made by material conditions and those conditions will repeat given an infinite amount of time.
Which means we’re all trapped in this infinite conciousness loop called reality weeeee.
Isn’t that just the “if you have infinite monkeys banging on typewriters you’ll eventually get Shakespeare” thing, though? Not that consciousness can’t be revived, but it’s pretty unlikely for the same one to form again.
But it already formed once, why is it unlikely it would happen again?
Its more if you consider infinitie, you get the heat death of the universe then persumably a ‘reset’ of conditions with another big bang, repeat on an infinite timeline and eventually the same conditions that make you repeat. A materialist look on this would consider this ‘copy’ of you the same if everything that happened prior to you becoming you happened again.
Huh
That sounds like Nietzschien eternal recurrence.
there are similarities and it deffo takes some inspo from it; but it also is an interpetation of re-incarnation/meta-physics that tries to incoperate modern understandings of physics into its analysis which makes it a little different; I suppose the difference and what makes it materialist vs Nietzch is that this theory is open and will adapt to new devolopments in physics + our understanding of the edge of the universe, and also that some of its assumptions like ‘material circumstances created your concisousness’ rather than it being something else.
What philosophical stuff by Marx are you trying to get through?
It wasn’t too overphilosophical by Marx per se. I was reading on Marx’ and Engels’ critique of Hegel and it send me down a rabbit hole of Hegel, Kant, Marx and some rando’s at 10 in the evening after working 9.5 hours. Some things are easier on a clear mind.
Part 3 of the German Ideology has some amusing roasts of Stirner.