So marx supported state socialism (communism)?

i agree

Didn't he rail against religion and the family, or am I tripping?

he did, the post you're replying to is wrong. marx was not at all about kindness. conflict theory is central to his worldview and his historical materialism was inspired by stirner's egoism
i wish marxism was more like how they describe, though. it's more that way in the paris manuscripts

He was critiquing capitalism and hardly ever touching on a future society. He was intentionally uninterested in that.

made me lol. I don't think Marx was a bad person, I honestly don't get that feeling from reading him, I think he did care. But it was under the auspice of creating a grand theory of society, derived from incredible scientific pretensions, that he expressed his moral sentiment. I think he probably really did believe what he was saying, but it was motivated by a desire that reality should turn out in a level of fairness that reality generally doesn't allow to exist.

It is hard to criticize men who are clearly much more intelligent than you, but I still think that something like this played into why he made his theories the way they are. The man had the ability to understand that you can't consider the entirety of human labor as a homogenous total, and then divide it into equal segments allotted to each person, he surely understood that this was ridiculous, because he says mere lines before that human ability is not equal, and the sum total is not equal for different societies, including generations of the same society, and that the efficacy of production is bound up in specific social conditions that mean you can just allot to one person a certain amount of fungible productivity that could carry over to any domain, the specific circumstances that create production in one time and place with specific people can't be universalized out over society. And yet he asserts this, at the very beginning of Capital, without any justification whatsoever. This is one example, but there are others, this one is very pertinent to why I think his understanding is flawed though.

The works of geniuses are often full of things like this, whcih simply don't make any sense, which the person clearly had the intelligence to understand was wrong, but which he wouldn't for some reason look at, and that he had the very large amount of ability to provide rationalizations for that dissuade critique.

>The man had the ability to understand that you can't consider the entirety of human labor as a homogenous total, and then divide it into equal segments allotted to each person, he surely understood that this was ridiculous, because he says mere lines before that human ability is not equal, and the sum total is not equal for different societies, including generations of the same society, and that the efficacy of production is bound up in specific social conditions that mean you can just allot to one person a certain amount of fungible productivity that could carry over to any domain, the specific circumstances that create production in one time and place with specific people can't be universalized out over society. And yet he asserts this, at the very beginning of Capital, without any justification whatsoever.
i'm having a tough time understanding what you mean here. what exactly are you saying Marx asserts at the beginning of Capital?

Kek

One of my favorite pastimes is quoting Marx at self proclaimed marxists and seeing them talk about how that’s not what Marx would say

My writing is unclear because I'm neither the smartest nor best read on the subject, here is the passage in Capital that made me think that.
-
If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common
property left, that of being products of labour. But even the product of labour itself has undergone
a change in our hands. If we make abstraction from its use value, we make abstraction at the same
time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a use value; we see in it no
longer a table, a house, yarn, or any other useful thing. Its existence as a material thing is put out
of sight. Neither can it any longer be regarded as the product of the labour of the joiner, the
mason, the spinner, or of any other definite kind of productive labour. Along with the useful
qualities of the products themselves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the various
kinds of labour embodied in them, and the concrete forms of that labour; there is nothing left but
what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in
the abstract.
Let us now consider the residue of each of these products; it consists of the same unsubstantial
reality in each, a mere congelation of homogeneous human labour, of labour power expended
without regard to the mode of its expenditure. All that these things now tell us is, that human
labour power has been expended in their production, that human labour is embodied in them.
When looked at as crystals of this social substance, common to them all, they are – Values.
We have seen that when commodities are exchanged, their exchange value manifests itself as
something totally independent of their use value. But if we abstract from their use value, there
remains their Value as defined above. Therefore, the common substance that manifests itself in
the exchange value of commodities, whenever they are exchanged, is their value. The progress of
our investigation will show that exchange value is the only form in which the value of
commodities can manifest itself or be expressed. For the present, however, we have to consider
the nature of value independently of this, its form.

part 1/2

A use value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because human labour in the abstract has
been embodied or materialised in it. How, then, is the magnitude of this value to be measured?
Plainly, by the quantity of the value-creating substance, the labour, contained in the article. The
quantity of labour, however, is measured by its duration, and labour time in its turn finds its
standard in weeks, days, and hours.
Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour
spent on it, the more idle and unskilful the labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be,
because more time would be required in its production. The labour, however, that forms the
substance of value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour power. The
total labour power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities
produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour power,
composed though it be of innumerable individual units. Each of these units is the same as any
other, so far as it has the character of the average labour power of society, and takes effect as
such; that is, so far as it requires for producing a commodity, no more time than is needed on an
average, no more than is socially necessary. The labour time socially necessary is that required to
produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill
and intensity prevalent at the time. The introduction of power-looms into England probably
reduced by one-half the labour required to weave a given quantity of yarn into cloth. The handloom weavers, as a matter of fact, continued to require the same time as before; but for all that,
the product of one hour of their labour represented after the change only half an hour’s social
labour, and consequently fell to one-half its former value.

part 2/2

>Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour
>spent on it, the more idle and unskilful the labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be,
>because more time would be required in its production. The labour, however, that forms the
>substance of value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour power.
-
This is the egregious section. He just asserts that it's homogeneous, as though you could abstract the world that way, when it really is not.

Marxism doesn't exist.
What Marxists believe and what Marx's ideas were seems to be entirely unrelated.

The whole "Marx didn't believe that" is a retarded argument, as self identified Marxists believe it and that is what is being criticised.

>Is there anything Marx did actually believe in according to them?
There isn't a single identifying characteristic to being a Marxist, it can mean anything at all.

He did want a stateless, classless society. He didn't think you could or would want to get rid of all hierarchy. It is anarchism and he wasn't an egalitarian. This is all factual straight from his words.

good post user i share some of your sentiments

oh I see what you mean. yeah, Marx thinks labor is "homogenized" under capitalism in the sense that skilled labor is ultimately reducible to unskilled labor, with respect to how value is determined.

>The whole "Marx didn't believe that" is a retarded argument, as self identified Marxists believe it and that is what is being criticised.
Why would you be concerned with what people who call themselves Marxists believe over what Marx believed, if you're trying to come to a conclusion of whether Marx was right or not?

I find that idea ridiculous, not even a single person's labour is homogeneous, it depends on the situation he is in. That doesn't even get into this idea that you can just put all people together, abstract their total worth, and then distribute to each human individually as an average, it makes no sense.

The way a society is set up intrinsically affects how its members perform, and their differences in ability are related not just to human difference, whcih also exists, but also to how they have been acclimated to their particular work.

Marx seems to just ignore this in his desire to make a general human labour unit, which has no relation to how the world actually functions.

>I find that idea ridiculous, not even a single person's labour is homogeneous, it depends on the situation he is in.
qualitatively, yeah of course.
>That doesn't even get into this idea that you can just put all people together, abstract their total worth, and then distribute to each human individually as an average, it makes no sense.
that's not how Marx thinks labor is homogenized.
>The way a society is set up intrinsically affects how its members perform, and their differences in ability are related not just to human difference, whcih also exists, but also to how they have been acclimated to their particular work.
sure. don't see how that's at odds with anything Marx is proposing.

We are saying the same thing, that labor is different depending on its situation, but Marx wanted to make that one homogeneous thing, when it''s a very variable thing.

Marx wanted it all to be the same thing, when it isn't, the very existence of people being differernt, and their difference when they are pullled away from their occupation, make his entire endeavor impossible.

Human labor is just not homogeneous.

don't really know what you mean when you say Marx "wanted" labor to be homogenized. he's not proposing labor ought to be homogenized. he's claiming that labor IS homogenized in capitalist economies w/r/t how value is determined.

>state socialism (communism)
die slow retard

He says it is because it's conducive to his ideas that iit be that way.

I explained why it isn't that way pretty clearly.
Just read the excerpt of Marx I posted and what i said about it.

>State socialism is a classification for any socialist political and economic perspective advocating state ownership of the means of production either as a temporary measure in the transition from capitalism to socialism, or as characteristic of socialism itself.[1] It is often used interchangeably with state capitalism in reference to the economic systems of Marxist–Leninist states such as the Soviet Union to highlight the role of state planning in these economies, with the critics of said system referring to it more commonly as "state capitalism".
>A Communist state (sometimes referred to as Marxist–Leninist state or workers' state) is a state that is administered and governed by a single party, guided by Marxist–Leninist philosophy.

>He says it is because it's conducive to his ideas that iit be that way.
oh I see what you mean. well even if that were the case, it wouldn't have any bearing on its accuracy, I think we can agree.
>I explained why it isn't that way pretty clearly.
Just read the excerpt of Marx I posted and what i said about it.
all you seem to be saying is that labor cannot be homogenized because it's heterogeneous depending on the situation under which it occurs, which doesn't follow. this heterogeneity is exactly why Marx thinks labor is homogenized w/r/t how value is determined. I don't really understand your argument.

your own quote draws the distinction between state socialism and communism, mongoloid dog

What are some quotes you throw at them?

Listen here, perhaps try to actually fucking read what is being argued before you so desperately try to criticize it.
Suppose you've never read Kant, do you try to condemn the categorical imperative at every opportunity despite being completely ignorant of it?
Shut the fuck up and read a book.

why don't you read him and find out?

abbo marx

>his historical materialism was inspired by stirner's egoism
really? how
i would say historical materialism is more like a materialist version of hegel's dialectical method of history

>no more time than is needed on an
average, no more than is socially necessary.
Isn't this the point of the market? To discover the least amount of labour that is "socially necessary" to fulfil a task. To encourage development of new means of production so that a task requires less labour and more can be allocated elsewhere.

If communism is stasis, a negative-feedback loop, doesn't that mean it will always be outcompeted by a capitalist society. So we need either a single borderless world state, or post-scarcity AI scientists

marx was l/acc

95% of what marx wrote was descriptive.
the prescriptive aspects were vague and open to interpretation

it is. stirner is just one of the people who influenced him as he inverted hegel. marx's distancing himself from ethical arguments for socialism and assuming a sort of psychological egoism ("material interests") for the agents of history, including the future socialist revolutionaries, is due to stirner's influence
stirner also influenced marx's notion of ideology with his talk of "spooks". marx reads quite similarly to stirner when it comes to topics like religion, morality, the authority/laws of the (bourgeois) state, etc

>Isn't this the point of the market? To discover the least amount of labour that is "socially necessary" to fulfil a task. To encourage development of new means of production so that a task requires less labour and more can be allocated elsewhere.
Yes, this is literally Marx's thesis.

>If communism is stasis, a negative-feedback loop
I don't think it is?

>doesn't that mean it will always be outcompeted by a capitalist society
Communism doesn't exist alongside capitalism but succeeds it.

>So we need either a single borderless world state
Of course. Capital has done a great work dismantling borders those last 70 years.

Using quotes out of context like the MSM I see.

While he did write mostly descriptive stuff, and much of his prescriptive stuff changed over time, he DID have "ought"-opinions on most of the stuff OP asks about.

>so marx supported state socialism
In the immediate, Marx supported something like the Paris Commune. You could definitely call that state socialism, albeit local and radical-democratic (Civil War in France).

In a more general sense, Marx supported the legitimate authority in the hands of the proletariat, the dictatorship of the proletariat (over the bourgeoisie), that is, as long as "proletariat" and "bourgeoisie" remain meaningful categories (Letter to Weydemeyer; Critique of the Gotha programme). That could mean some kind of state.

In the long run, it's less clear, and usually people go to Engels for that stuff: "withering away".
Apparently Marx intended a later volume of Capital to be about the state, but it was not to be.

>he was an egalitarian?
This depends on what you mean by egalitarian, but he argued forcefully against a form of "equality of outcome" immediately under socialism:

"Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor." (Critique of the Gotha programme).

...instead arguing for some kind of labour voucher system, with equal compensation for equal work:

For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another." (Ibid.)

Of course, in the long run, it would be "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".

Call that whatever you will. He himself goes on to think aloud about the equality-semantics of it all.

>he wanted a stateless classless society?
Classless, yes, as he states throughout his writings. As for 'stateless', see above.

>anarchism

No, though sometimes he and anarchists agreed on specific points, and they all supported and pointed to the paris commune.

>abolition of oppressive hierarchies?
It certainly seems like a "dictatorship of the proletariat" would be pretty oppressive towards its enemies, although at the hands of the masses. The paris commune also certainly had chains of command.

Afaik he didn't particularly talk about "oppressive hierarchies" in the general (and why would he?).

In the long run he did, however, talk about abolishing things like the "enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor" (Ibid.).

Bad falseflag

BASED