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Tay Zonday
@tayzonday
Quick issues with Marx— Marx was a structuralist. He theorized that permanent structure determines outcomes. Marx’s most important critics are poststructuralist leftists like— Derrida [TLDR- structure can always be repeated differently by an individual] Foucault [TLDR- structure is not permanent but trickles up variably from regulation of sex, sexuality and punishment] Noam Chomsky [TLDR- our brains, as shown by being hardwired for generative grammar, need varying and fluid interventions to maintain state power] Henry Louis Gates Jr [TLDR- European modernity and literary criticism is incomplete and wrong, as critiqued by signification, a sophisticated African tribal intellectual criticism] That list can go on. Leftist takedowns of Marx are much more important to know than right-wing ones. Marx has brilliant and correct critiques— for example, that all value in capitalism is social and therefore arbitrary/theocratic— But his meta-structure is too simple to characterize all struggle.
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Tay Zonday
@tayzonday
Oh, and I ran out of space @olystuart (my apologies, happens a lot especially when my ADD med hits 😂) I think Adam Smith is probably the most succinct articulation of the fundamentals of capitalism Smith posits a currency marketplace with rational actors who transact (purchase) being guided by rational self-interest. He describes basic market dynamics like supply and demand, competition, scarcity, and valuation being a stenographer of merit. It’s noteworthy that Adam Smith’s capitalism tends towards equilibrium and exists in a world without state-enforced brands, trusts or other things that accelerate business consolidation. Smith’s model cannot explain where perpetual profit and growth comes from, which is a great indicator that later theorists who tried to account for this (like Keynes and Milton Friedman) had to normalize non-market manipulations to explain the twentieth century world.
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Leeward Bound
@leewardbound
you just became my new favorite modern cryptoleft philosopher, you just said so many things that i think are true and important, never seen anyone else get even close to summing it up for a post-chomsky era, most leftists are still trapped debating Stalin, Trotsky and Mao, which i find exhausting (bc they aren't really relevant in the information age) ive believed for years that i think Marx had some valid points but isn't appropriate for the modern age (for the same reasons you said earlier that classical Capitalists never envisioned modern "capitalism") but ive never interacted with any leftists actually formally educated on the topics to half this degree, or with such a balanced understanding of capitalism and why it's not all pure evil. 🦄🦄🦄🦄🦄 here's a lil ham for ya, and please know that if you ever want to write more on these topics, you'd have eager readers and paying customers. @tbsocialist get this guy involved in something, we need him.
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