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Comment by kelseyfrog | Hacker News Reader

Capital Vol 1. Mostly because it demonstrates two things:

1. How small ideas can have big consequences - each section is a logical consequence of the former, and

2. How multidisciplinarism is greater than the sum of its parts. One can be an ok historian, sociologist, or political theorist, but combined can find connections outside of the narrow scope of any single domain.

The accounts of working conditions, especially of children, will never leave me.

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You mean Marx’s? Shame on you spreading this nonsense

He’s been very influential in the field of economics. What about Capital do you think is nonsense?

Hitler has been influential too. And also Stalin, and many other bloody “influencers”.

Virtually Everything in Capital is an artificial made up nonsense, starting from the basic premise of class struggle being the root cause of economic dynamics.

I know that both from experience growing up in one of shitty socialist countries and from talking to professional economists with various backgrounds.

So, do you think that there is not a conflict between labor and capital, where the first is provided by workers that want to be well paid, and the second having the objective of growth and reproduction, and so wants to minimize coasts like salaries? I see this conflict happening a lot when workers begin a labor strike, or when company owners do union busting and anti-union activities. When for the workers, the ideal percentage of unemployment should be 0%, but for capital owners, it should be higher, or the labor price becomes too high. I think there are lots of examples of conflicts between labor and capital.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...

There is a conflict, this one and many others.

And also there are not only conflicts but mutual interests.

And also all of it differs drastically from type of industry, country, culture, type of company, current macroeconomic situation, political regime etc etc.

This is nothing but wishful thinking and malicious ignorance to take 1 of many factors and build an ideology on it.

And ideology that eventually can not solve a single problem it intended to solve.

Even if you don't believe that the main contradiction in capitalism is between capital and labor, all the points made by OP are still valid: the book shows how small ideas have big consequences and that the whole is bigger than the sums of parts.

You know, you do not need to agree with a philosopher to learn things with him. The main point of philosophy is being able to understand ideas from different thinkers and learn something with them, even in cases where you do not agree much with them. Moreover, Marx is one of the most influential thinkers in the XIX century. You lose a lot when you let your ideology dictates what kind of ideas or books you are not allowed to explore or if you let these things creates a strawman that do not let you think objectively about some ideas.

Stop calling him a thinker.

He is no more “thinker” than hitler.

Do you learn a lot from hitler?

The basic premise of Capital is that use value and exchange value are different things. Class struggle is the conclusion. A conclusion is something at the end of a book. You're clearly arguing about something you know nothing about.

Marx is nonsense, but as we've seen lately, nonsense turns out to be a powerful and dangerous thing. As with most powerful, dangerous things, it's much better to deal with it from a position of understanding, than from a position of ignorance or indifference.

Yes, but do you need to read every page of mein kampf to know that it’s bullshit?

i say let psychiatrists and cult researchers do the job of figuring out why those ideas take off, and let’s hide those silly books from mass access

Hiding ideas has never worked. It's crack to disestablishmentarians who view it as "they're hiding the truth!"

Knowing something is bullshit doesn't translate into being able to effectively refute the thing because telling someone that the thing is bullshit is unconvincing.

I will prove it now in situ. Your take is bullshit. See, failed to change your mind.

I know my take is bullshit, lol.

I don’t have time nor energy to craft a perfect comment with evidence and good reasoning, many people smarter than me have done it multiple times (and many millions have died proving Marxism wrong).

You can waste whole life and arguing with idiots about stupid ideas, not my cup of tea )

So why have a take you know is bullshit?

To show others that there are plenty of people who don’t buy this marxist crap, and to shame original comment for spreading nonsense

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