Just saying. How’re yall doing, by the way?

  • IceWallowCum [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    It’s ok! I’ll try to add a bit to what other already said, in simple terms. I’ll respond to punctual questions in another comment.

    I’ll talk about two important ideas here: historicity and collectivity. This whole mode of thought is very complex and there is no shame in feeling overwhelmed at first and not getting it with just some short online comments. Marx took thousands of pages to develop all these ideas, and others still had to develop them further.

    One important thing to keep in mind during an analysis is that, although things simply pop up on our mind when we experience them, that is not the case in reality outside our head - your land didn’t just pop up into existence the way you experience it right now. Sure, you simply bought it from another person, but that’s not where the land started existing. Assuming you are from the US, how did a piece of land in America become a market product in the first place? To understand that, you have to look into history. Way back then, someone had to take the land away from others (natives) using force and then keep it from getting taken away by others also using force. The state was created by these situations: as a mediator of ownership of the newly explored property. How is that mediation put into practice? To see it, let’s bring it a little closer to yourself: what would happen to you if, instead of buying the land, you simply got into it and said it’s yours? Best case scenario, you’d be dragged away by cops - that is, the state would use force to mediate property rights. Unless you have an army to fight the state, you are not keeping that land.

    So, since things in reality develop through historical processes, it is wrong to not consider those in your analysis, you won’t get close to thinking something that is objective (ie. that exists outside your head).

    Also, just reflecting about oneself and your own personal experiences will hardly deliver a correct analysis. The world is collective - everything around you and inside you were made by a long chain of producers scattered in space and time. Failing to add this consideration into your analysis won’t get you close to reproducing reality correctly inside your head either.

    Hope this helps! Try the “primitive accumulation” chapter of Capital, it’s towards the end and will give you a great picture of all this, as it describes the political events that gave birth to English capitalism. It’s not a hard read, as it is not abstract as the initial chapters are. Then come back and tell us what you think 😄

    If you’re feeling adventurous, read the introduction to Grundrisse, although that one is more complicated. The book lays down a lot of Marxist ideas, and also describes the method of analysis Marx used to reach them. My two comments were based on these two, respectively.