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  • This stuff is too abstract for me. I am too dumb to understand this kind of idk what to call it.. social science? philosophy?

  • I've got to say, philosophers in general, and Marx in particular, are very non-rigorous in their works. In particular, these passages make no sense if read literally.

    Also, on this note, I have started going over Marx' works in my 'spare' time, and have begun making notes regarding how poorly he writes. I'm honestly not sure why I don't see anybody else criticise him for saying stuff like 'a commodity is a use-value' or 'a commodity is an exchange-value' and related things. This stuff, if read literally, is contradictory to other things that are said in the same paragraphs, and makes understanding what he means more difficult for no good reason.

    • Is this a “continental philosophers operating as normal before Wittgenstein” thing or is this a “Marx is particularly bad” thing?

      • The former (kind of - if memory serves, philosophers at least kept doing so after Wittgenstein). I am not at all calling Marx especially bad. Marx is singled-out because he's important when it comes to topics related to socialism and, well, given who we are, he's important when it comes to our views.

    • like 'a commodity is a use-value' or 'a commodity is an exchange-value'

      How are those contradictory? Or what other things do they contradict?

      • Those statements do not contradict each other directly, but it's very clear that a commodity is not its own use-value, nor is a commodity its own exchange-value. Use-value is very clearly meant to be the property of a commodity to satisfy a need, and exchange-value is meant to be a property of a commodity to be exchanged for something in a given context. That obviously makes use-value and exchange-value in the latter senses not synonymous with the term 'commodity', nor with each other.

    • I'd like to chalk it up to issues stemming from translation, but yeah I have a love-hate relationship with Marx's writing style. I'm waiting to see if the new Capital translation coming out next month makes it easier to get through.

      • No, at least some of the issues are in the original German as well.

        I'm honestly not sure why philosophers, while claiming to use logic, refuse, or at least, refused 100 years ago to structure their works the way mathematicians do, with very clearly outlined definitions and propositions.

29 comments