timdrake

I shouldn’t have to explain that repeating what you already said won’t somehow make it count as a justification.

I shouldn’t have to explain that telling you to read a specific book is not the same thing as saying “read theory” (nor is it a thought-terminating cliche, as just saying “read theory” could be); I shouldn’t have to explain why books aren’t five bullet points long in the first place or why “If their arguments are too complicated to present in a Lemmy post, they’re too complicated to be bothered with.” isn’t something anyone should unironically say.

I shouldn’t have to tell you that reading (thought-terminating cliche) about any nation will show you that the way you think things are presented (“It pretends that you only relate to people of your own ‘nation’, and that nobody in your nation relates to anybody outside of it. It’s drawing hard lines on a spectrum and trying to define portions of that spectrum as homogeneous groups, entirely distinct and different from others just on the other side of that line.”) isn’t actually how they’re presented. If only anyone had realized that ~the delineations between nations aren’t really so rigid and people of different nationalities have things in common and interact with each other! I shouldn’t have to explain that people of different regions have different cultures/languages, that the concept of nations is not a completely ideological invention and that conflicts between nations are not just caused by ideology.

I shouldn’t have to explain the difference between being an Aries and being of a particular nationality, how people of particular nationalities relate to each other in an actual way and how nationality can be changed, but that, as long as you stay in the US/retain US nationality you actually do have a stake in their position wrt other nations, whether you like it or not.

I shouldn’t have to explain to you how it’s arguing in bad faith to write out a condescending spiel about how you “understand” that I psychologically need the concept of nations to make sense of the world and that’s why I made fun of your “alternative.”

I have very little patience for bad faith arguments

Don’t laugh don’t laugh

It is still bad, and it is still wrong.

You have to actually justify the things you say. Anarchism is truly even worse than communisation theory.

Every state is its own little empire, enforcing its will against the individuals within it just as more powerful states try to impose their will on other states (and their own people).

Read Hegel's Philosophy of Right or any Winfield and you'll immediately realize how philosophically incoherent your position is.

You don’t need national identity. You don’t need national cultural history. You can have individual identity and individual cultural history. These can be defined by yourself and the others you relate to.

Others you relate to! I wonder if this somehow inevitably transforms into national identity!

In the preface to the 1882 Russian edition of the Manifesto, Marx and Engels say that the Russian commune could “pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership” only if the Russian Revolution (which he saw as inevitable, though it was not inevitable that it would "take[] place in time" (first draft of letter to Zasulich), and in the Letter to Otecestvenniye Zapisky he says that if Russia continues on its path, it will have lost this chance to skip the phase of capitalist development) is supported by wider revolution in the West. Otherwise, the Russian commune “must [] first pass through the same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West.”

There’s zero approval by Marx here for the notion of skipping the phase of private production/property in one country without a wider revolution.

Marx told Zasulich at the time that education was one of the most crucial factors in the possibility of bypassing the agonizing stage of capitalism.

No he didn’t.

I’m sorry things have gotten aggressive, I didn’t intend for that at first. I appreciate your words on the state ownership of the mop thing. Things are going in a circle in both conversations and I just want to be done with it. I have things I’d like to say but at this point I’d just be repeating myself and fueling the argument again. Just forget everything.

You do not have a correct notion of science. You just ignored what I said.

Insisting on the existence of something outside of the material merely because it cannot be empirically disproven is still not evidence of this existing.

I feel like slamming my head against the wall. That isn’t what happened. I did not insist that things outside the material exist because this cannot be empirically disproven, I said that you cannot assert that nothing outside of the material exists because there is no way for you to prove this within your view of what constitutes proof.

The purpose of this post is to give an extremely simplified introduction to dialectical materialism, not to give an expansive and comprehensive summary of idealism. I spent a few paragraphs on idealism, if you think I am genuinely reducing the entirety of idealist philosophy into a few paragraphs then this is just naked bad-faith.

I did not accuse you of “reducing the entirety of idealist philosophy into a few paragraphs,” I accused you of listing as general features of idealism things which are not generally the case for “idealist” philosophers.

As for me “not understanding idealism” and “not reading any philosophy whatsoever,” both of these are false assumptions.

These are not assumptions. Read my explanation.

As for the existence of god, an Absolute, a being outside of physical limitations

The absolute cannot be outside of anything. Do you know what words mean? And the absolute is not a being, the absolute is being, and the fact of existence necessarily leads to the absolute. Read the Science of Logic.

Simply claiming that I would not accept proof does not excuse you from providing it for your arguments to land.

And I have; you refused to read where I told you the arguments are when they cannot be condensed to a quickly typed up message, and refused to acknowledge the arguments I gave directly or otherwise misunderstood them while simultaneously accusing me of arguing in bad-faith based on that misunderstanding. You haven't made a single actual argument in this entire conversation.

You repeatedly say I never made an argument or gave examples despite me doing both, you just reassert things in opposition to these arguments and examples which you deny the existence of and then in the same breath say that ~“simply saying things is not in fact a counter.” You are the one that doesn’t know the difference between making an argument and just saying things.

You insist that naturally occurring things need to be “processed” before they can be sold despite anyone with a functioning brain knowing that’s not universal. Do we even live on the same planet? At a certain point all I can do is say it’s obvious.

Marx’s chief argument isn’t that use-values exchanging means they must have an underlying value alone, it’s that the prices in an economy are not random, and so must be the result of their common elements, as can be exchanged for the universal commodity, money.

The problem is that I’ve read his argument and know for a fact that it goes exactly how I described it, that Marx does not establish prior in the argument that prices in an economy are not random, with the common element notion following from this; in fact, this is a conclusion he gets to simultaneously with the conclusion that exchange-values are a reflection of this third thing, these are actually the same conclusion. You can’t read what I’ve said, you can’t read what Marx said, what else can I do? This is the start of the argument:

Hence exchange value appears to be something accidental and purely relative, and consequently an intrinsic value, i.e., an exchange value that is inseparably connected with, inherent in commodities, seems a contradiction in terms. Let us consider the matter a little more closely.

A given commodity, e.g., a quarter of wheat is exchanged for x blacking, y silk, or z gold, &c. – in short, for other commodities in the most different proportions. Instead of one exchange value, the wheat has, therefore, a great many. But since x blacking, y silk, or z gold &c., each represents the exchange value of one quarter of wheat, x blacking, y silk, z gold, &c., must, as exchange values, be replaceable by each other, or equal to each other. Therefore, first: the valid exchange values of a given commodity express something equal; secondly, exchange value, generally, is only the mode of expression, the phenomenal form, of something contained in it, yet distinguishable from it.

Again, no capitalist is going to calculate SNALT, they are going to notice the cost of production and sell above that, meeting the market roughly where similar commodities are sold. Supply and demand therefore regulate price to value

You don’t need to reiterate that it isn’t intentional twice in response to my message where I acknowledge Marx says it isn’t intentional. And you are just assume value = SNALT again.

Science is necessarily idealist, as the Logic proves (and you can read Winfield’s lectures on the logic as well, the first one explains the same thing); it’s very simple to prove this, since beginning with foundations (as “materialism” does) causes everything that follows to fall into opinion. Now I don’t think you know what you mean when you refer to “idealism,” since the first and third of the “3 basic teachings of materialism as counterposed to idealism” are not in opposition to “Hegel’s idealis[m].” The general features you give of “idealism” are not general at all and you would know that if you’d read any philosophy whatsoever. I just can’t believe you think you’ve reached the Truth as opposed to all of those idealist philosophers yet haven’t even bothered to try and understand any of the history or basics of philosophy. I mean you think the trivial notions that “everything is connected and should be understood in context” and “when you add on a bunch of little things then a big thing happens” are some big revelations that elevate “materialism” and that a “dialectical relationship” is just when two things act upon each other; no wonder you haven’t touched Hegel, because this is what you think he brought to the table.

Nothing exists out of the material universe, all thought, ideas, and matter exists in the material world.

There simply is no way to prove this from your perspective, relying on experience is already begging the question by assuming the determinacies of experience you intend to prove; anyways the notion that God would imply something existing outside of the material world already shows you don’t know what God is (the absolute). As far as I know, Hegel never posited anything existing outside of the material world.

not a single idealist notion has ever nor could ever be proven

More accurately you wouldn’t accept that proof because you assume that proof must be experiential (which is just begging the question again), despite “materialism” as a position referring to matter in general, which is an idealization that can never be directly experienced or observed, despite experience relying on onto-logical categories to be determined, and despite the myriad of logical arguments that can be found in Marx and Engels’ works.

Because this implies they exist outside of the material universe.

And how do you know nothing exists out of the material universe?

Relying on gods, supernatural forces, or other impossible phenomena to explain real, existing phenomena gets in the way of actually understanding reality around us

Only if these explanations are false (god is not impossible, in fact god necessarily exists, see the Logic), which you just presuppose. How do you know your assumptions are better than anyone else’s? This is the height of philosophy?

Yes, generally.

So not necessarily. I don’t know why you’re standing your ground on this absurd position that natural resources necessarily need to be extracted, refined and produced, or even transported to be exchanged.

Yes, again.

Right except that just isn’t true. It’s not necessary, all you need is an agreement. In terms of generalizing this exchange, that’s a different question. But I already explained why that doesn't matter.

All commodities can be reduced to labor and raw materials, full-stop.

Simply claiming that something is true is not in fact enough to make it true.

Simply claiming that something is “trivially wrong” is not in fact enough to make it trivially wrong.

I was under the impression that you acknowledged that “there are so many qualities commodities share besides being products of labor” [-me] but that “this does not make his argument invalid, though” [-you]. It doesn’t make sense for you to say this otherwise. So why would I have to list those qualities? I guess you changed your mind upon seeing the quote, but you should’ve just admitted this. The thing is, even if there weren’t these qualities, you would still be wrong because conceptually this would still make the argument invalid.

Regardless of specific use values, commodities all have the quality of existing in time, being comprised of matter for Marx, have the quality of being use-values in being exchange-values (that is, their use for the seller is always to be exchanged, regardless of their specific use for the buyer), I think this is enough.

Again, the Law of Value is generally about the social inputs and social outputs of capitalist economies.

I already responded to this:

Now, I know that the law of value is supposed to come specifically with highly developed industrial society with large scale social production which makes the abstract real etc etc however the issue is that this then messes with Marx’s argument I went over in the prev comment where he tries to prove the LTV by going over the concept of commodities/commodity exchange as such without regard for this.

research and development

Not necessary.

Simply saying it’s an “unjustifiable presupposition” isn’t a counterargument.

Right, because I’m not countering an argument; a presupposition isn’t an argument.

You can call it a mistake if you want, but I was clearly referencing the fact that call commodities are reducible to labor and natural resources. This is why Marx directly references labor and natural resources as the mother and father of all material wealth.

Right no I got that, it’s just that it makes no sense to reference that here, as I explained. There’s no way this isn’t a mistake, and there’s no way the confusion is on me. “You can call it a mistake if you want” is a funny response though.

Because the price of labor-power is essentially regulated around what can be produced in a day of laboring, with the expectation that this is enough to reproduce a day of laboring. In other words, wages are kept around the level needed for workers to continue the production process in terms of means of consumption. This is reflected in the price of the commodities produced by the labor process.

You evidently do not understand what I’m asking.

Again, not a mix-up.

Again, there’s no other explanation. Which is why you just transition to a different point in the next sentence.

Your original critique, if I am being as charitable as possible, is that use-values can be exchanged without having values. This is directly addressed by Marx, in the first chapter of the first volume of Capital.

He can address it all he wants, it contradicts his argument I went over in the first place, that exchange of use values necessitates the presence of value. Forget everything else, this is the argument.

I can, because supernatural processes do not exist.

How do you know this?