Just now, dimreepr said:

How can it be (bolded mine), that's like saying Jesus ignored the money lender's bc money has nothing to do with our lives, or that Mohamed didn't include it in Shariah laws.

Dialectic materialism is an excuse, not a reason.

You can take Das Kapital and combine it with a completely different philosophical framework, this is what Liberation Theology does (with Christianity), so does Analytic Marxism (with analytic philosophy). Das Kapital is a development of the economic thought of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, it's a separate thing from the philosophical writings of Marx and Engels which are mostly based on Hegel and Feuerbach.

Edited November 6Nov 6 by Otto Kretschmer

Just now, Otto Kretschmer said:

You can take Das Kapital and combine it with a completely different philosophical framework, this is what Liberation Theology does (with Christianity), so does Analytic Marxism (with analytic philosophy)

That seems to be the mistake that Hitler made with Nietcshe.

2 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

That seems to be the mistake that Hitler made with Nietcshe.

I don't get what you mean. Das Kapital is not a work of philosophy, it's an economic critique of the capitalist mode of production, it doesn't tell you what (or how) to do.

Wikipedia is a good summary of what it is about:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital#Synopsis

Edited November 6Nov 6 by Otto Kretschmer

Money is a fundamental part of human society, you can't divide it into haves or have not; philosophically it's the same.

For instance, Nietcshe assumed that Jesus was fundamentally wrong bc it was based on a slave mentality, and that a greater understanding will logically follow bc we're better than that...

37 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

How can it be (bolded mine), that's like saying Jesus ignored the money lender's bc money has nothing to do with our lives, or that Mohamed didn't include it in Shariah laws.

No, not at all. The economic analysis of capitalist production in Das Kapital is just objective algebra. The dialectics stem from the class conflict over who gets to pocket the surplus value and the subjective moral judgments associated with that. As @Otto Kretschmer states, these two aspects are quite separable.

Your bible stories seem utterly irrelevant.

56 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Dialectic materialism is an excuse, not a reason.

Drivel.

DM is a philosophical approach to the resolution of conflict through creation of a new 'synthesis'.

21 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

No, not at all. The economic analysis of capitalist production in Das Kapital is just objective algebra. The dialectics stem from the class conflict over who gets to pocket the surplus value and the subjective moral judgments associated with that. As @Otto Kretschmer states, these two aspects are quite separable.

Your bible stories seem utterly irrelevant.

Not at all, philosophically they are examples of different attempts to put a saddle on the beast; you can't separate philosophy from economics, any more than you can separate philosophy from science.

21 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

Drivel.

DM is a philosophical approach to the resolution of conflict through creation of a new 'synthesis'.

Lack of sufficient funds to sustain my me/family is a reason for conflict, the resolution is often a desperate struggle; philosophy is for after...

Marx was just pointing out, that we can expect a black swan event

@sethoflagos

A curious note - I've just read why Stalinist USSR wanted to ban quantum mechanics. The reason seems cringeworthy from the objective perspective - it was about the observer effect and the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The Soviet authorities believed that the idea of an act of observation collapsing the wave function is idealist since it's about mind influencing material reality instead of just being a product of it. There was also the second, less important argument relating to the Heisenberg uncertainity principle that operates on probability and supposedly refutes the dialectical materialist claim about the universe being a perfectly knowable, clockwork-like mechanism.

Edited November 8Nov 8 by Otto Kretschmer

3 hours ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

@sethoflagos

A curious note - I've just read why Stalinist USSR wanted to ban quantum mechanics. The reason seems cringeworthy from the objective perspective - it was about the observer effect and the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The Soviet authorities believed that the idea of an act of observation collapsing the wave function is idealist since it's about mind influencing material reality instead of just being a product of it. There was also the second, less important argument relating to the Heisenberg uncertainity principle that operates on probability and supposedly refutes the dialectical materialist claim about the universe being a perfectly knowable, clockwork-like mechanism.

Ah, we're back to the teleology you mentioned in the OP. What do you expect from such people? Rationality?

Rather reminds me of the 1948 Zhdanov decree where Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Myaskovsky, and others were castigated for formalism (as opposed to Socialist Realism). This, of course, spilled across the border into Poland where Lutoslawski and Panufnik were similarly censured plus Kodaly in Hungary.

Other than Krakus gherkins, these were some of the finest products to come out of the Eastern bloc in the mid-20th century and should have been paraded as major achievements.

Though I admit that Lutoslawski's concession to Socialist Realism, his Concerto for Orchestra is one of my all time favourites. But then, I also like Wagner. There's no accounting for taste, is there.

4 hours ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

@sethoflagos

A curious note - I've just read why Stalinist USSR wanted to ban quantum mechanics. The reason seems cringeworthy from the objective perspective - it was about the observer effect and the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The Soviet authorities believed that the idea of an act of observation collapsing the wave function is idealist since it's about mind influencing material reality instead of just being a product of it. There was also the second, less important argument relating to the Heisenberg uncertainity principle that operates on probability and supposedly refutes the dialectical materialist claim about the universe being a perfectly knowable, clockwork-like mechanism.

Well, Stalin did train as an orthodox priest, so perhaps it was to be expected that his dictatorship might extend to philosophical doctrines.

15 hours ago, exchemist said:

Well, Stalin did train as an orthodox priest, so perhaps it was to be expected that his dictatorship might extend to philosophical doctrines.

... or at least a quasi religious emotional reaction to ideas that seemed even slightly contrary to his world view.

Edited November 9Nov 9 by sethoflagos

16 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

... or at least a quasi religious emotional reaction to ideas that seemed even slightly contrary to his world view.

Yes, that’s the thing about Stalin. He was not just a totalitarian dictator intent on securing absolute personal power. He actually seems to have believed this shit, fanatically.

11 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Yes, that’s the thing about Stalin. He was not just a totalitarian dictator intent on securing absolute personal power. He actually seems to have believed this shit, fanatically.

He was likely a narcissist. BTW, go to any communist- or USSR-related subreddit and say something negative about Stalin. Then observe the number of downvotes... On r/USSR there is a guy with a nickname "StalinsMassiveDong" who denies the Holodomor.

Edited November 9Nov 9 by Otto Kretschmer