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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
@mintit for posterity
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