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Happy Birthday, Karl Marx!

On May 5th, 1818, Karl Marx, hero of the international proletatiat, was born. His revolution of Socialist theory reverberates throughout the world carries on to this day, in increasing magnitude. Every passing day, he is vindicated. His analysis of Capitalism, development of the theory of Scientific Socialism, and advancements on dialectics to become Dialectical Materialism, have all played a key role in the past century, and have remained ever-more relevant throughout.

He didn't always rock his famous beard, when he was younger he was clean shaven!

Some significant works:

Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

The Civil War in France

Wage Labor & Capital

Wages, Price, and Profit

Critique of the Gotha Programme

Manifesto of the Communist Party (along with Engels)

The Poverty of Philosophy

And, of course, Capital Vol I-III

Interested in Marxism-Leninism, but don't know where to start? Check out my "Read Theory, Darn it!" introductory reading list!

214 comments
  • Weird take, i guess the current definition of capitalism, but go to Ancient Rome or Babylon and tell me you don’t see capitalism

    • Answered here. Commerce isn't Capitalism, and neither is small manufacture.

      • Sure. But that was largely due to the constraints on the rate of growth prior to the industrial revolution. Capitalism was still functionally exigent, it was just operating under a rate of growth capped by the surplus human and animal labor could produce.

        The advent of transatlantic travel (wind power) and the waterwheel and eventually steam power and modern fertilizers was what caused human productivity to spike. Suddenly, you could see returns on investment at double or even triple digits within decades. Prior eras saw single digit growth in even the wealthiest countries on Earth. Wealth was accumulated at a glacial pace.

        Piketty's "Capitalism in the 21st Century" covers this in depth.

        Rome was a power center for over a millennia in large part because of the enormous consolidation of investment capital within the city limits. The Republic-cum-Empire took in revenues, built capital, expanded its economy, and then consumed the expanded economic output as revenue. But that took centuries to accumulate. None of Rome's neighbors ever had the surplus necessary to invest or the time to expand like the Romans did. London managed a similar scale of development in decades. And then it burned down. And then it was rebuilt a few decades later.

        You can argue that the desire to rapidly accumulate wealth is a facet of human nature. You can also argue that the rate of accumulation only became notable in the last 400 years, such that "capitalism" as a productive force wasn't relevant until recently. But you can't argue that cumulative gains were somehow unknown to anyone prior to the Dutch East India company.

  • Eh, isn't that argument more about being greedy for ressources rather than capital in particular? I mean, why did empires conquer stuff?

    • There exists a strong current within Liberal economics that asserts that the formation we have arrived at now is because over time, Humanity has assumed the system most fit for our nature. Some take the path you percieve it as, a focus on greed, rather than Capitalism specifically, but that's not what the meme addresses.

      The advancement Marx made is recognizing Capitalism as merely one stage in the progression of Modes of Production historically. His analysis of Socialism and Communism was rooted in how it naturally emerges from Capitalism, just as Capitalism had emerged from Feudalism. The Capitalist Realists, who see Capitalism as eternal, stand in contrast to that notion and assert Capitalism as the final default stage. "There is no alternative," of Thatcher.

  • Wrong, capitalism exist since exist money and greedy people which govern countries, since Pharaons and Kings, since the concept of property.

    • Answered here. Commerce isn't Capitalism, and neither is small manufacture.

      • I don't speak about small manufacture and commerce, capitalism is only another name of feudalism, where a small minority is the owner of the most part of the resources of a population and even of the population itself. This is the situation which is the same since thousends of years, it's irrelevant how we call it, it's always the same pyramid scam.

  • You guys would have a very bad time in the 1500s let's be real

    • I think the vast majority of people would. What do you mean by "you guys?"

    • Someone from the 1500s would have a horrible time in the 21st century.

      What kind of quality-of-life do you think modern day subsistence farmers and hunter-gatherers enjoy? How critical has English standard literacy, modern mathematics, and digital technology sophistication become for survival?

      Like, you're thinking as a settler-colonialist living a middle-class lifestyle in the modern moment. You're not thinking as a denizen of Hispanula prior to the Columbian exchange, where the primary past times were fishing, frolicking, and fucking. Move that guy up to the modern era in the highest quality of life countries in the world and they just become homeless illegal immigrants.

      If I have a choice to live in the 16th century or the 21st century, and I know I'm going to be born in Haiti... fuck the 21st century, that shit sucks.

  • Is it? I'm pretty sure private property and ownership was a thing in the middle ages. People selling stuff to make a living, merchants... Isn't the oldest known text some babylonian dude complaining about the faulty products of a merchant?

    • Trade has existed for as long as humanity has existed, correct, but trade isn't Capitalism. Capitalism specifically emerged from Feudalism. The historic ability for a class of property owners to employ wage laborers was only made possible through advancements in production.

      To give an example, the feudal peasant largely produced most things they used, from clothes to housing. They would produce excess for their feudal lord, and some small handicraftsmen and guilds formed specialized labor. These were not Capitalist formations, but pre-Capitalist.

      Eventually, technological advancements like the steam engine appeared. This revolutionized production, and gave huge rise to a class of owners that could purchase this new machinery, and employ workers in wages to create commodities. The barrier to entry is progressively lowered skill-wise, while the barrier to entry in the market as a Capital Owner raised, as firms began to solidify into factories. This coalesced into a marketplace of wage laborers selling their labor power to various Capitalists, eventually becoming the Capitalism of the time of Marx.

      Does this all make sense? Engels, in Principles of Communism, summarizes it as such:

      The proletariat originated in the industrial revolution which took place in England in the second half of the last [eighteenth] century and which has since then been repeated in all the civilized countries of the world. This industrial revolution was brought about by the invention of the steam-engine, various spinning machines, the power loom, and a whole series of other mechanical devices. These machines which were very expensive and hence could be bought only by big capitalists, altered the whole previous mode of production and ousted the former workers because machines turned out cheaper and better commodities than could the workers with their inefficient spinning-wheels and hand-looms. These machines delivered industry wholly into the hands of the big capitalists and rendered the workers' meagre property (tools, hand-looms, etc.) entirely worthless, so that the capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers. This marked the introduction of the factory system into the textile industry.

      Once the impulse to the introduction of machinery and the factory system had been given, this system spread quickly to all other branches of industry, especially cloth- and book-printing, pottery, and the metalware industry. Labour was more and more divided among the individual workers, so that the worker who formerly had done a complete piece of work, now did only part of that piece. This division of labour made it possible to supply products faster and therefore more cheaply. It reduced the activity of the individual worker to a very simple, constantly repeated mechanical motion which could be performed not only as well but much better by a machine. In this way, all these industries fell one after another under the dominance of steam, machinery, and the factory system, just as spinning and weaving had already done. But at the same time they also fell into the hands of the big capitalists, and there too the workers were deprived of the last shred of independence. Gradually, not only did manufacture proper come increasingly under the dominance of the factory system, but the handicrafts, too, did so as big capitalists ousted the small masters more and more by setting up large workshops which saved many expenses and permitted an elaborate division of labour. This is how it has come about that in the civilized countries almost all kinds of labour are performed in factories, and that in almost all branches handicraft and manufacture have been superseded by large-scale industry. This process has to an ever greater degree ruined the old middle class, especially the small handicraftsmen; it has entirely transformed the condition of the workers; and two new classes have come into being which are gradually swallowing up all others, namely:

      I. The class of big capitalists, who in all civilized countries are already in almost exclusive possession of all the means of subsistence and of the raw materials and instruments (machines, factories) necessary for the production of the means of subsistence. This is the bourgeois class, or the bourgeoisie.

      II. The class of the wholly propertyless, who are obliged to sell their labour to the bourgeoisie in order to get in exchange the means of subsistence necessary for their support. This class is called the class of proletarians, or the proletariat.

    • Free market trade has existed and changed shape throughout most of human history. Advice with how to deal with it is in the Old Testament. how often or consistent it revolved around a common currency is/was constantly changing, though

  • Where does 500 years come from? Capitalism goes back at least 3000 years, right?

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81%E1%B9%A3ir

    • I answered more in-depth in this comment, but trade is not Capitalism itself. Rather, Capitalism as a system is merely one of the many Modes of Production based on trade. Capitalism emerged specifically alongside the Industrial Revolution, the system of workers selling their labor-power to large Capital Owners competing in commodity production could only arise with advancements in productive technology such as the Steam Engine.

      Prior to the rise of Capitalism, various pre-Capitalist forms of production existed, such as small manufacturing workers who used their tools to make a complete good to sell, or the guild system, but these were never capable of giving rise to the vast system of accumulation the Capitalist system created through the

      M-C-M' circuit

      Where M is an initial sum of money, C a number of commoditied sold at value, and M' the larger sum of money gained from selling the commodities.

214 comments