What would be some good starting points for these two gentlemen in either English or my native German?
I'm curios to learn more about their thinking considering it vastly extended beyond "Free gips and evil capitalists!" and "Invisible hands! Free markets for the win!"
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For Smith start with The Passions and the Interests by Hirschman (it's short) and for Marx start with Tucker's Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx, or the first volume of Kolakowski's Main Currents of Marxism (a little bit harder unless you know some German idealism already)
Those are my recommendations for how to get a good start on understanding their intellectual contexts anyway
Not where Smith is concerned. OP you can just dive right in and read Wealth of Nations, it's a perfectly straightforward work.
Marx's commie gobbledyasiatic is more convoluted, so in that case some secondary lit is helpful.
I occasion IQfy once a week or less now and when I do I check out the marx threads. Sure enough, you have always already recommend kolakowski. Do you have a life beyond anti-communist posting on IQfy or are you paid to do this?
not same anon, but for as much lefties accuse the right of being paranoid conspiracy nuts, you guys sure match them word for word.
Are you the same crazy guy who keeps accusing me of being a fed because I recommend Kolakowski, arguably the standard overview of Marxism for half a century? Nothing to say about how I'm recommending Tucker, the editor of the famous Marx-Engels Reader every single Marxist has on their shelf. It's only the Kolakowski that's offensive. Hirschman is an economic historian who does a really good history of the Scottish Enlightenment school of political economy in the 18th century. I guess I posted him too because I'm "anti-libertarian" or something?
I'll tell you the same thing I told him, I found it very difficult to get into Marx when I was just starting and those were the books that helped me. Have you seen how shitty the Marx threads are here? It's a bunch of people who haven't read Marx talking to one obnoxious troony who has but still can't explain him to anyone. If I see a thread with people asking for where to start with Marx, I do the same thing I do in any other thread where I can actually help someone out.
He probably saw some troony accusing Kolakowski of being a Congress for Cultural Freedom shill on his tankie discord, and it's now one of the six buzzwords his mind has a reflex response to. It's like knowing Popper and Merton were CIA-promoted without having read them or even really knowing what that means. It's just part of their LARP worldview to hate the CIA (a good thing but you should actually develop it toward some real understanding).
I barely browse or engage with this board (or anywhere online) anymore, as I said. It shouldn't be surprising that people think you're a fed though. They probably do it because they don't want to think about the quality of life of someone who sits on their ass all day every day waiting for a marx thread so they can recommend anticommunist lit.
At the end of the day, I know who Arnold Ruge is because I read a book, and you know to get mad at the funny Polish name of an author you've never read because your tankie friend told you to in an internet chatroom.
I think at the end of the day I'm having sex and you're here
Interesting. I had never heard of Kolakowski until now but I will definitely be certain to never read him for sure.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm
>Kolakowski, arguably the standard overview of Marxism for half a century?
Highly questionable statement.
>Are you the same crazy guy who keeps accusing me of being a fed because I recommend Kolakowski, arguably the standard overview of Marxism for half a century? Nothing to say about how I'm recommending Tucker, the editor of the famous Marx-Engels Reader every single Marxist has on their shelf. It's only the Kolakowski that's offensive.
Incidentally knew a Yugoslavian Marxist who grew up there and thought it was great on the whole but not democratic enough and recommended Kolakowski.
Adam Smith had some opinions that today's capitalists wouldn't like. One of those includes the labor theory of value which Marx accepts as integral to the logic of capitalism when he criticizes it in Capital. Marx respected Smith but he didn't like lesser later economists. Reading Marx directly will tell you some things about Adam Smith.
>One of those includes the labor theory of value which Marx accepts as integral to the logic of capitalism when he criticizes it in Capital.
Adam Smith does not really embrace the LTV (at least not in the way that Marx formulated it) and he certainly does not view it "as integral to the logic of capitalism" like Marx does. LTV is, for him, a way to explain the value of items, and especially in primitive economies (whereas in a capitalist economy, labor becomes less important in determining the value of an item). The value of the item was also mostly in it's utility as saving or commanding labour rather than the Marxian conception of LTV. It's important to note, however, that the classical conception of value was very confused, which is why the marginal revolution was so important in the history of economics.
communist manifesto is very short and very readable
26reads.com/library/97549-the-communist-manifesto
I recommend the book 'The Worldly Philosophers' as a starting point in the introduction.
The communist manifesto needs updating. The industrial proletariat is a minority class in europe.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch03.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch04.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch14.htm
>The communist manifesto needs updating.
what about it needs updating?
>The industrial proletariat is a minority class in europe.
so what? it was a minority class in Germany in 1848 too lol
Well for communists it doesn't really matter, "petty bourgeoisie" are falling into the proletariat so they count them as proletariat they just call it an "indirect domination of the proletariat". We're democratic so long as you do what the theorists say 🙂
>"petty bourgeoisie" are falling into the proletariat so they count them as proletariat
no they don't. the petty bourgeois who fight against falling into the proletariat have the opposite interest to the proletariat, because they cling with all their might to their petty property and to the scraps they can get from the bourgeoisie for being useful to the preservation of capitalism.
here's what putting the petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat into a single bucket means in practice, in the words of Marx:
>Just as the democrats abused the word “people” so now the word “proletariat” has been used as a mere phrase. To make this phrase effective it would be necessary to describe all the petty bourgeois as proletarians and consequently in practice represent the petty bourgeois and not the proletarians. The actual revolutionary process would have to be replaced by revolutionary catchwords.
170 years later this still perfectly describes all the "socialists" who don't sharply distinguish between the two classes: they're revolutionary only in their catchwords and they don't represent the proletarians at all, but the petty bourgeois
>"Free gips and evil capitalists!" and "Invisible hands! Free markets for the win!"
Nah bro, you got it. That's literally all that their respective thoughts boil down too. :^)
Smith is a nuanced thinker who warns about mercantile self-interest and regulatory capture if the state isn't strong enough to promote the general welfare. He doesn't worship the free market. He just thinks it's a nifty way to distribute resources if handled appropriately. Merchants are the heroes and villains of The Wealth of Nations.
What’s the point of this thread?
Read "An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital" and "How To Read Marx's Capital" by this based watered down Keynesian neoliberal circulationist ultraleft revisionist.
bumping
Smith wrote one work anyone cares about today therefor you shouldn't read that and instead read his other major work Theory of Moral Sentiments (which was what he was primarily known for in his lifetime). If you want to see Marxs true psychological state read his work Herr Vogt
>If you want to see Marxs true psychological state read his work Herr Vogt
In which sense?
paranoid schizoid conspiracy theorist
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blamp
smith is extremely overrated, a lot of these "free-market" think tank guys like him because he took a bunch of other economist's work at the time and watered it down.
I think Michael Hudson today does a good job today carrying on the arc from Smith to Marx.
>What would be some good starting points for these two gentlemen
have you tried their wikipedia articles?