So, after all your whining and bickering, what’s actually scientifically incorrect with marxism?

I think the right questin would be "what's actually scientifically correct about marxism?".
The more I know about marxism the more it seems like someone mistaking opinions for facts.

People enjoy welfare capitalism better than a communist society. The proletariat are content with being stolen from as long as they get burgers, beers, and bitties.

In terms of being scientific well dialectical materialism was a pretty ridiculous way to view the movement of history in the first place. There does seem to be something more to human beings than material conditions i.e. flesh, money, food. clothing, housing aren't the only things that push history forward. Look at ascetics or Christians. Fanaticism towards something is far more powerful a moving force than material conditions.

Kant talks about rational beings and I think he is right in categorizing us as rational beings. (basically having the ability of choice). etc etc ideas are more powerful than earthly being. Science itself is flawed i.e. creating systems for things that are not systematic. I'm dumb.

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To be fair, I don't think Marxism denies free will. The assertion to my understanding is that material and ideal exist in relation, with primacy (not exclusivity) given to the material. 'Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.' etc etc

Everything. The argument is absurd on It's face.

>The assertion that capitalism will inevitably fail seems unfounded.
It is inevitable as all systems and humanity itself will one day fail, question is when and how.

>Communism has come and gone, while capitalism isn’t going anywhere.
So far we´ve only competition between those two systems was a conflict between two coalitions. One was Russian led another one was American led. The fact that another communist (as in ideologically communist) power with immense potential is gaining power, while US is declining rather fast would contradict the claim that "capitalism isn’t going anywhere". I´ll wait a few months for the depression, before making such judgements.

That's nice. Source? (no sarcasm).
However, the fact that there are non physical causations don't mean that a materialistic system like Capitalism has a tremendous effect on our lifes.
The fact that you have a good soul doesn't mean that if tomorrow you are literally starving, a few days away from dying from hunger, you won't kill and eat a grandma in order to survive (materialistic explanation).

>scientifically
as in Wissenschaft? sure. as in empirical science? don't think that has much to say about Marxism at all. people are just going to talk about economics itt, and I want you all to remember economics is not under the umbrella of empirical science

material and ideal exist in relation, with primacy (not exclusivity) given to the material.
I tend to really agree.
Capitalism has it's own immanence, it's own dynamic. It's a system that could exist without humans, or with soulless humans. But it has tremondous effects on human lifes.
Idealist people don't understand that Capitalism has a will of it's own.

The 'ideologically communist' power is gaining power because it became...more capitalist.

“Inside every cynic there is a disappointed idealist”
-Faggot

Communism is like a snake eating it's own tail to get to the mouse inside it's stomach

>It is inevitable as all systems and humanity itself will one day fail, question is when and how.

Gommunism too? wasnt that the final eternal stage of human evolution accoring to Marx?

Yeah when you actually say it I don't think it's really a controversial assertion, the issue comes in when you look at a lot of the genuinely 'economist' vulgar stuff from the 20thC, that has for the most part been superseded, built upon, etc. I similarly worry that it's a form of wishful thinking when they assert that climate change will necessarily 'destroy' capitalism (though it's certainly a possibility).

>more capitalist
Kinda - it's more accurate to say they allowed more markets. Markets aren't necessarily synonymous with capitalism. But those markets are subordinated to the hugely powerful, centrally planned SOE's, firms that Xi has consistently valourised over the private sector.
monthlyreview.org/2018/10/01/on-the-nature-of-the-chinese-economic-system/
ft.com/content/3e37af94-17f8-11e9-b191-175523b59d1d

A very peculiar and particular kind of capitalism, taking a form known more to Singapore and Korea than the West.

Dialectical materialism is a useful philosophy with practical application - look at The Biological Biologist by Levins and Lewontin to see its use in biology (especially in ecology and genetics); as a biologist myself I have used the ideas in the book when looking at embryonic development.

human evolution has to end one day too

...therefore?

What do you mean? Take the idealist pill friend. It’s all up to perception. I’m doing fine in the world and I cannot complain working at restaurants and going out with friends. Why do you care so much about nature unless it directly affects you? I think most people who care about lower case nature instead of upper case Nature just like it in a vain and self indulgent way. Humanity is a product of it and I find way more fascination with other humans and their products than anything else. Just look at things from a perspective of light interest instead of cynicism. Things aren’t necessarily bad or good they are just as they are. You can try to change it for preferences sake, but don’t be so presumptuous that you are doing it for indistict universally good. Things are simply neat or disinteresting.

I agree with this
Idk I always get that Marxism was a bit absolutist for my liking. You can talk about the wide scale trends of things using materialism, but that doesn’t answer why deifferent societies were structures differently. It also does not consider people as individuals but as class identities, which at least now in the west isn’t to distinct unless you go to the extreme ends of the board. I would say the history of ideas and the public psyche also have a substantial effect besides just class.

I certainly understand the aspect you speak of when you say 'absolutist' - Jameson is well known for his defence of 'totality' - I just don't think it's necessarily a flaw, at the very least not a fatal one. As long as it is elastic enough to cover things like free will, individuals - cf Althusser on 'semi-autonomy - modern developments in class structure, and so on, I see no reason why materialism can't answer things like 'why different societies develop differently', even if the answer is something as simple as 'randomness'. Nothing wrong with a certain degree of 'coherence' or 'totality' in an ideological system imo, we need metanarratives, especially in this day and age. Which isn't to deny things like 'the history of ideas and the public psyche' either.

>You can try to change it for preferences sake, but don’t be so presumptuous that you are doing it for indistict universally good. Things are simply neat or disinteresting.
>Things aren't necessarily bad or good
Cope. Sorry. But it's fine, we shouldn't judge.
Well, i'm not working at restaurants, and believe, me, Capitalism is shit. Instead of working in your domain, you could work for the community instead. Way more fulfilling than this shitty system based on wage labor, satisfying and fuelling the egoistical desires of everybody, in exchange of wage slavery.

The idea of the self-dissolution of the state after socialism doesn't make any fucking sense. It's like if I gave you a hammer, and told you to destroy the hammer with the same hammer. The state needs resources to do anything, including to destroy itself. People need to be employed by the state to erase the state. Fucking Carl faggot was just talking out his ass. Utopian nonsense garbage.

What do you think happens when you use a hammer enough times with enough force retard. Besides it's more comparable to using a hammer and then assuming that you'll drop said hammer after you've finished the job. Regardless, it's likely there'll still be 'institutions of governance' or whatever term you want in communism, Marx's point was that there'll be no class character to that body, that it won't be an instrument for one class to repress the other, but just another '''neutral''' institution.

No, it's like being in a room with a bunch of shit and being given a hammer, and then being told to smash everything in the room. Until finally you're left with a hammer. You cannot smash a hammer with the same hammer, just like you can't beat yourself to death.
>Marx's point was that there'll be no class character to that body, that it won't be an instrument for one class to repress the other, but just another '''neutral''' institution.
Right, the state will totally not view itself as separate from the people it rules and it will always remain that way. UTOPIAN NONSENSE GARBAGE

Lewontin tried to compare single genetic loci between individuals as a means of invalidating human population categories, and deliberately mischaracterized the entire field of evolutionary psychology as genetic determinism. His corpus is inherently political, and the dialectical method by which he derived it is neither apodictic nor useful in constrained study, which is why it never caught on in evolutionary biology. To him, every biological system must spring up de novo from some dialectical relation between genetics and environment; we can never point to a singular cause or set of causes as a primary etiology. The same goes for Gould. Lewontin's only long-lasting contribution is gel electrophoresis, a technique which has no reliance upon his theory. E. O. Wilson and others were right to single him out as a dead-end. You're probably the sort of person who will also claim that Lamarck and Lysenko have been vindicated by epigenetics.

Never seen a hammer break fuck me lmao are you special, whatever I'll just leave your dumbass analogy alone. The more serious point - the alleged utopianism of higher stage communism etc etc. Yeah it's so abstract and 'neat' that I could only ever see it happening with either something else (AI presumably) at the helm of the global economy, or a fundamental change in human psychology and all the rest. Not impossible I suppose, but not something I'm gonna be holding my breath for in the next few decades, centuries, or perhaps ever, given the climate armageddon we're potentially facing this century. If your only objection though is the utopianism of claims pertaining to an unimaginably distant and not even certain/likely/possible future - depending on your perspective - well, I can't say I give too much of a fuck. Just doesn't seem substantive.

If the hammer broke, it wouldn't be smashing the thing it needs to smash. If you mean that the state would dissolve at the moment it was no longer necessary, please explain the mechanism by which that would happen. My point is that if an ideology is predicated upon on the world itself changing in a substantial and uncertain way in order for the ideology to be realized, than it isn't worth addressing. At least no more worth addressing than a 6 year old asking "What if ponies could fly? Wouldn't that be great?"

I only took issue with your retarded assertion that a hammer couldn't break itself my man, it wan't on the level of the actual analogy. Besides, I already said what the supposed justification was, and it's not that -
>it's more comparable to using a hammer and then assuming that you'll drop said hammer after you've finished the job
To get away from this overextended metaphor though, I DON'T think that Marxism is actually predicated on 'higher stage communism'. I think what Marx referred to as higher stage communism (the 'utopia') was just an attempt at a logical extrapolation of what might happen when socialism eventually faces its own sublation. Or if he didn't mean it that way, that's how any non-retard with the benefit of modernity should choose to understand it, same thing. The important part to me is 'socialism', i.e the thing that Marx could observe in embryo even in his time, and which has actually existed. What comes after I neither know nor particularly care, since as I said it'd almost certainly be after my death (consider how long it took between the first capitalist countries and the first socialist one). I nevertheless find what is termed 'socialism' by Marxists both desirable and necessary. The 'utopia' is rhetoric, aspirational, and possibly even just bait for hippy-type retards after all, who knows.

> Lewontin ... deliberately mischaracterized the entire field of evolutionary psychology as genetic determinism
Evolutionary Psychology is genetic determinism - the reduction of traits and behavior to some claimed evolutionary benefit. This was even more evident at the time of Lewontin's writing, as genetics was the only known mechanism of information transfer across generations and species.
>the dialectical method by which he derived it is neither apodictic nor useful in constrained study.
I have used the dialectical method in studies before, in study of developmental factors in the development in xenopus embryos (specifically their neural crests) - of course I didn't mention dialectical materialism by name but references to Levins and Lewontin when arguing for looking at the system as a non-hierarchical whole-part interaction. The complex interplay between miRNAs, methylation, genetics, BMPs, SMADS, Wnts etc cannot be reduced down to the Cartesian hierarchical part to whole structure model.
>E. O. Wilson and others were right to single him out as a dead-end.
I havent read E.O WIlson specifically but the 'theory' of sociobiology has itself been used a political tool, similar to how you claim Lewontin's work is political in nature, despite some validity - however, when looking at humans, sociobiology is too prone to different kinds of bias that reduce its validity. Humans are, obviously, biological creatures but we are constrained by biology as much as we have overcame it - even agriculture can be argued to be against evolutionary developed human biology as early human fossils show the 'damage' done by crop cultivation on bones and teeth (often found damaged) when compared to hunter gatherer humans.
>You're probably the sort of person who will also claim that Lamarck and Lysenko have been vindicated by epigenetics.
The serious answer to this is that its a contradiction on your part to assume I like Levins and Lewontin while believing Lamarck and Lysenko have been vindicated by epigenetics, considering Levins and Lewontin expend considerable effort destroying their theories; the more truthful answer is that I have defended Lysenko and Lamarck as a joke by using epigenetic theories when talking to people not as well educated about epigenetics, but never seriously and never sober.

If your intention is to defend the whole of Marx's theory, you don't get to dismiss his vision of the endgoal of humanity. It's central to the ideology. That's the point of my original post, it's the weak link in the whole thing, along with the rest of the historical determinism. It was this fatalistic idea of events that spurned on socialists of many stripes for the better part of the 20th century, and can't be cast aside so easily. You're quite free to believe in a coming socialist system, but that's a different discussion completely.

There’s a theory that Rick Rubin is possessed by the same spirit that Marx was, or that they’re related.

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>defend the whole of Marx's theory
The fuck no modern Marxist does this. Marx thought the first socialist country would be Britain. No proponent of ANY ideology that's been around long enough defends the literal entirety of said system. How many capitalists defend the slave trade or My Lai or whatever. None of which precludes the idea by the way that higher stage communism isn't something I find desirable, I just don't think it's a certainty. Hardly controversial. Besides, Marx wasn't a historical determinist. Again:
>Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past
Incidentally, you say inevitable, determinist communism 'can't be cast aside so easily', so given the fact that I just did exactly that (from your point of view anyway, presumably) am I just not a Marxist by your standards or what? I've no idea.

The question in the OP was, what is scientifically incorrect with Marxism. I answered with a flaw in Marxism, as Marx himself put it. Now I am being told my answer wasn't good enough because nobody actually believes what Marx wrote (because it was wrong), so what's the point? This thread was over before it started.

Ok,I can agree with you on the benefit of convention. I just dislike a lot of the marxist rhetoric of us vs them instead of taking a more nuanced stance on issues. Class is a part of it, but so is theology, extraclass social bodies, corporations (In the more classical sense, not in the more specific modern idea), philosophy, morality, the extent to one should be free or constrained by social ties, etc. Of course all these things are interrelated, and it would be stupid to say that class doesnt influence religion, but it would also be vain to say religion doesn't influence class or any other combination of interactivity. In addition there is definite hard power as verses soft power.

And of course, just how peopl "think" has way more importance than one might conceptualize. If one believes in a dichotomy of bourgeoisie and proletariat, one will see it and it will become true, If you instead see coblers, store owners, and business executives, that is the truth. Same as how nationalism formed.

To be fair my man all you said was it didn't make sense. It does make sense, in the sense that it's internally coherent, plausible, etc. Just not necessarily 'likely'. Our exchange was mostly just an attempt on my part to assert that - the implication being that you can't really claim it's 'scientifically incorrect', since it's in the future. I overall think the discussion of higher stage communism is necessarily something that CAN'T be debated or whatever. It's just a bunch of abstract premises. In that sense it's NOT an important part of Marxism. Whether it constitutes a 'flaw' I don't know or care, too much, that's your business. That wasn't my beef with your post.

>Class is a part of it, but so is
Yeah I don't disagree with any of this, my only counterpoint would be that I think class - as in, economic relations - have a certain primacy when it comes to historical development. At least, most of the time. But yes, of course religion influences class, for example. Ideology in general is a massively influential force, and can sometimes account for behaviour that otherwise wouldn't make sense if we were 'class determinists' or whatever.
>If one believes in a dichotomy
I agree with this also, I just think that, since class has a certain centrality to historical development, that the general tendency, *especially* during social crises, is for 'naked' class politics to increasingly assert itself. Of course Marxists have also for a long time noted the increasing, often antagonistic fractions, interests, and behaviours of, for example, 'the proletariat'. Which is completely necessary, I agree in that sense.

Marx's theory of value is a scientific theory according to Popper and Lakatos' criteria.

Then we are on the same page here. My gripe isnt with Marx personaly, anyone who denies his immense personal contribution to economic thought, and the more material aspects of philosophy is deluded. Its just the connotations of absolutism that Marxism still tends to have, especially among people who skimmed marx and his offshoots more than anything (As well as the common rallying mantra's, but thats part and parsel for rallying the common people behind a subject that is rather complex).

1.) the idea that a proletarian revolution is inevitable/ people can have the 'needs' that would in previous times motivate them to revolution, be displaced or lessened through any number of methods currently employed by capitalist oligarchs

2.) the underestimation of techonology/ before any proletarian conciousness could form we'll reach singularity and then the whole realm of commerce and capital shifts if it doesn't get completely snuffed out

>scientifically
I think it would be an economic issue, which is not literally science.

It's entirely conjecture, like most of the intelligentsia's theories regarding society and economics. Seems plausible, empiricism is irrelevant.

Yeah fair enough I get you, though yeah I still think a certain 'absolutism' is gonna be an inevitable feature in any ideology that has to actually compete in the social arena. But anyway I'm going to bed, take care man.

This is the mischaracterization that I was referring to. In your mind, evolutionary biology must necessarily be a totalizing discipline rather than one which provides a pluralistic explanation of certain behaviors, because dialectics are a totalizing method in which all phenomena are expressed together as a unity. I refuse to accept that you can derive a system like methylation/acetylation, which has clearly demonstrable etiologies, as a dialectical totality. Yes, it is part of a very complex regulatory mechanism with many levels of feedback and interrelation with other systems, but it is simply impossible to discover or even apprehend
all these mechanisms wholecloth. There are important cases where there exists a clear hierarchy of causality--point mutations, gene imprinting, chromosomal translocations, etc.--and by identifying them as such, the greater mechanism can be pieced together. Biochemistry and microbiology, like all physical sciences, are multipolar. Even if they are not fixed or mutually independent, hierarchies of causality are inevitable. Your dialectical methodology is a deus ex machina that you can slap onto a new finding so that you can slur this multipolar nature into something resembling a unity. That's how Hegel did it, that's how Marx did it, that's how Carlyle did it, that's how Lysenko did it, that's how Gould did it, and that's how Lewontin did it. I have no doubts that most of them did so with genuine intentions, but it is impossible that they moved from premises to conclusions in the way which they did through dialectics. Rather, they rationalized their findings or the findings of others with a methodology that was sufficiently vague to allow them to do so in the way that they saw fit.
>I havent read E.O WIlson specifically but the 'theory' of sociobiology has itself been used a political tool, similar to how you claim Lewontin's work is political in nature
No, not similarly. Evolutionary biology has been used as a political tool ex post facto, yes. However, its scope and direction of study has not been perdicated by politics as with Lewontin. Lewontin even admits to this. It would be projection on your part to assert this about the origin and intent of evolutionary biology.

>communism is "just a bunch of abstract premises" that can't be debated
but it's the whole fucking point man

Not 'communism' but 'higher stage communism' you know? As in the specificities of stateless, classless, moneyless society. Idk if you're the same user I've been speaking to, but the exchange mostly seems to come down whether you view this full communism as inevitable, possible, or impossible. I fall in the middle of those three, but it just doesn't seem a useful debate for me desu, either for Marxists or non-Marxists. Idk anyway I'm going to sleep, take care mate

...

Nothing. Dialectical Materialism is more accurate than science.

The eternal progression of dialectics between opposing forces of systems will prove Marx to be right about the eventual collapse of capitalism, but his timing is off. I think he was wrong about the revolution itself being the workers rising up against the owners of the means of production. Its not going to be the workers. It might rather be the culmination of capitalism with AI and advanced technologies that will allow for the emancipation of human labor effectively synthesizing capitalism and communism under a new totalitarian world government. So in some sense, I believe that capitalism was a means to achieve the latter, we just dont know that yet.

>falsifiablility
nigga you memeing me right now?

no sir

what will it take for people to finally say that communism doesn't really work?

*creates Netflix and McDonald's*
there, proletariat no longer care

>(as in ideologically communist)
LOL big cope

Conusmerism was and is definitely a serious obstacle to anyone who wants capitalism gone, and something I don't think pre-20thC Marxists really foresaw, not in how alluring it is as a *worldview* anyway. The issue is that a lifestyle of consumerism has a dual effect. It smothers 'class struggle' or whatever, definitely. But it also generates new demands and expectations. As a certain lifestyle is promoted and propagated by the ruling class, it becomes normalised, and eventually seen almost as a necessity, and this process is something Marx *did* foresee (a process the right has also noted, in its own way and with its own language). But what happens when the only way to afford McDonald's and Netflix and all the rest of that shit is through debt accumulation? We'll find out in the coming decades I guess.

>There’s nothing more dangerous than a majority group who have nothing to lose but their chains.
They've already been given something to lose. People have houses and tv screens and electronic gadgets.
The "proletariat" doesn't exist anymore.

kropotkin got btfo when malatesta had to tell him no theres not enough food available to simply overthrow the capatalists were gonna have to work to produce more. still love the fat bastard tho

>In your mind, evolutionary biology must necessarily be a totalizing discipline rather than one which provides a pluralistic explanation of certain behaviors
Evolutionary Psychology is treated as a totalising discipline by its practitioners, this can be seen as a failure of the way we perform science today or as a failing of its practitioners, and therefore must be criticized as one. In reality its entirely possible to sublate evolutionary psychology into a dialectical understanding of human psychology and biology.
> I refuse to accept that you can derive a system like methylation/acetylation, which has clearly demonstrable etiologies, as a dialectical totality.
No you cant take a reduced part of a whole system and look at it dialectically because that defeats the whole purpose of a dialectical understanding of biological systems. Of course we can look at the mechanisms of methylation/acetylation/phosphorylation and how/why they are performed but to look at them singularly is inherently reductionist and reduces our whole understanding. Reductionist attempts to understand epigenetics without the use of dialectics are always incomplete and are responsible for contradictory findings in certain fields of biology. Again I have to relate this back to research I have been involved in but when looking at the embryonic development of the neural crest in multiple model species (yes somewhat including human cells) isolating variables, as mentioned in my previous post, changes their function so much false conclusions are produced. The simple fact is that dialectical materialism has a use in science and I, and my colleagues, have benefited from. There is no debate here because the theory of dialectical materialism in science has been proven by practice. A multipolar explanation is not comprehensive enough to replace a more dialectical explanation, otherwise I would have used it. There is a unity of biological systems, down to the cellular level and to reject it as "simply impossible to discover or even apprehend" is unscientific and comparable to not studying quantum mechanics because its too difficult at the moment.

Nothing.

It is rational to question authority. The group that follows blindly is soon exploited.