8 Bit Philosophy: What is Marxism? (Karl Marx + Super Mario Bros.)

[8-Bit Philosophy]

What is Marxism? (Karl Marx + Super Mario Bros.)

What is Marxism?

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[RichHomieChaotic]

While Marxism sounds like a good concept, it can't be successful long term. Eventually human nature will kick in and the greedy will ruin it for everyone else.

 

[Danny Ocean]

In before someone says "It's a nice idea in theory, but the reality of 'human nature'(tm) means it would never work."

Edit: Nevermind. I typed too fast.

 

[Mid Boss]

While Marxism sounds like a good concept, it can't be successful long term. Eventually human nature will kick in and the greedy will ruin it for everyone else.

Exactly. From what I understand that's why the system has never worked before. Everyone was always trying to game the system thinking THEY deserve more than everyone else. That's fine for average people to do. Rules and regulations can adapt to that. But it's when the people running the system do it that everything falls apart.

Not everyone is self aware, empathetic, and selfless and so communism doesn't work. Capitalism works because it plays on something we all are. Greedy. Of course Capitalism has massive problems as well with it inevitably resulting in incredible wealth disparagement. As we are seeing now here in the US.

Unions helped even things out striking a balance between the two. Ensuring that workers got their fair share of the corporate profits and fought against worker exploitation and abuse. But corporate powers lobbied heavily to get unions de-fanged and now only 11% of people are in unions compared to the 35% back in the 70s. Coincidentally CEO pay rose and wages for everyone else dropped corresponding with the slow death of unions. Now the pay of a CEO is 350 times more than the pay of the average worker of their own company. While every other first world nation it's around 30 times more.

With the death of unions the only things standing between us and corporate machinations is the government and they are blatantly bought and sold. They need millions of dollars to run an effective re-election campaign and are offered HIGHLY lucrative jobs by companies for when they leave office. It's blatant bribery. The current system we have now can't even be called Capitalism as the big players don't have to follow the rules that everyone else does because they have our politicians on speed dial.

I use to live in a small town where the only two places that paid a dime over minimum wage was a small fiber glass factory and a small chair factory. A hose manufacturer wanted to move in a build a factory. That would have created competition for jobs pushing up wages. So fiber glass and chairs called the city government and suddenly hose couldn't get a building permit to save their lives. They tried for five years constantly being blocked by red tape. They eventually gave up and chair and fiber glass's low wages were protected from competition.

Then the recession hit. Chairs shut down, fiberglass now pays minimum wage, and half the people in my home town are unemployed and almost everyone is living on welfare.

 

[Blazing Hero]

Marxism fails simply because those who control the power of the system become the oppressors. It is a nice concept but those who seek to reign over it will inevitably become corrupt and oppressive.

 

[09philj]

I like high income and corporation tax rates because they exploit greed rather than fighting it. I don't know what ideology that falls into, but I'm that.

 

[Gorrath]

While Marxism sounds like a good concept, it can't be successful long term. Eventually human nature will kick in and the greedy will ruin it for everyone else.

Exactly. From what I understand that's why the system has never worked before. Everyone was always trying to game the system thinking THEY deserve more than everyone else. That's fine for average people to do. Rules and regulations can adapt to that. But it's when the people running the system do it that everything falls apart.

Not everyone is self aware, empathetic, and selfless and so communism doesn't work. Capitalism works because it plays on something we all are. Greedy. Of course Capitalism has massive problems as well with it inevitably resulting in incredible wealth disparagement. As we are seeing now here in the US.

Unions helped even things out striking a balance between the two. Ensuring that workers got their fair share of the corporate profits and fought against worker exploitation and abuse. But corporate powers lobbied heavily to get unions de-fanged and now only 11% of people are in unions compared to the 35% back in the 70s. Coincidentally CEO pay rose and wages for everyone else dropped corresponding with the slow death of unions. Now the pay of a CEO is 350 times more than the pay of the average worker of their own company. While every other first world nation it's around 30 times more.

With the death of unions the only things standing between us and corporate machinations is the government and they are blatantly bought and sold. They need millions of dollars to run an effective re-election campaign and are offered HIGHLY lucrative jobs by companies for when they leave office. It's blatant bribery. The current system we have now can't even be called Capitalism as the big players don't have to follow the rules that everyone else does because they have our politicians on speed dial.

I use to live in a small town where the only two places that paid a dime over minimum wage was a small fiber glass factory and a small chair factory. A hose manufacturer wanted to move in a build a factory. That would have created competition for jobs pushing up wages. So fiber glass and chairs called the city government and suddenly hose couldn't get a building permit to save their lives. They tried for five years constantly being blocked by red tape. They eventually gave up and chair and fiber glass's low wages were protected from competition.

Then the recession hit. Chairs shut down, fiberglass now pays minimum wage, and half the people in my home town are unemployed and almost everyone is living on welfare.

It's worth noting that unions weren't simply de-fanged. Some are still quite powerful in fact while others are weak by comparison and in terms of real power. IN addition to the weakening of unions, many of them became institutions unto themselves, not so much looking out for the worker's interests but for the union's interests. Corrupt or incompetent union leadership charges workers a portion of their wages for no practical gain to the worker, leading to disenfranchisement and rejection. I, like many, support the notion of worker's unions and see them in a positive light but find the reality of their workings to fall somewhere between impotent and self destructive.

 

[MonsterCrit]

While Marxism sounds like a good concept, it can't be successful long term. Eventually human nature will kick in and the greedy will ruin it for everyone else.

Exactly. From what I understand that's why the system has never worked before. Everyone was always trying to game the system thinking THEY deserve more than everyone else. That's fine for average people to do. Rules and regulations can adapt to that. But it's when the people running the system do it that everything falls apart.

You must leverage whatever slim advantage you have to get ahead in this world. The simple truth is Marxism suffers from a seminal flaw. It doesn't account for the driving force behind human behaviour. The drive to be better than someone else in someway. Everyone likes to think they are better than someone. It becames ironic that people believing they are better than someone because they believe no one is better than anyone. Sort of like being proud of the fact that you are not proud of anything.

It's why we all try to get a little ahead. Sure this doesn't apply to everyone but sadly it is the fate of those those who are not to be swept under the feet of those who are.

Not everyone is self aware, empathetic, and selfless and so communism doesn't work. Capitalism works because it plays on something we all are. Greedy. Of course Capitalism has massive problems as well with it inevitably resulting in incredible wealth disparagement. As we are seeing now here in the US.

It's not even as black and white as that. We all want to survive and while we are all capable of empathy and selflessness there is a finite amount of empathy we can feel. You can't care about everyone because at the end of the day, at some point you are going to be in conflict with someone for a scarce resource. Whether it be A tin of beans, a house, a car or even the attention of particular person.

Unions helped even things out striking a balance between the two. Ensuring that workers got their fair share of the corporate profits and fought against worker exploitation and abuse. But corporate powers lobbied heavily to get unions de-fanged and now only 11% of people are in unions compared to the 35% back in the 70s. Coincidentally CEO pay rose and wages for everyone else dropped corresponding with the slow death of unions. Now the pay of a CEO is 350 times more than the pay of the average worker of their own company. While every other first world nation it's around 30 times more.

You also have to realize that unions themselves were becoming corrupted by the power they wielded and as such when a group is given power they will invariably leverage that power for the greatest personal gains of said group.

With the death of unions the only things standing between us and corporate machinations is the government and they are blatantly bought and sold. They need millions of dollars to run an effective re-election campaign and are offered HIGHLY lucrative jobs by companies for when they leave office. It's blatant bribery. The current system we have now can't even be called Capitalism as the big players don't have to follow the rules that everyone else does because they have our politicians on speed dial.

I use to live in a small town where the only two places that paid a dime over minimum wage was a small fiber glass factory and a small chair factory. A hose manufacturer wanted to move in a build a factory. That would have created competition for jobs pushing up wages. So fiber glass and chairs called the city government and suddenly hose couldn't get a building permit to save their lives. They tried for five years constantly being blocked by red tape. They eventually gave up and chair and fiber glass's low wages were protected from competition.

Then the recession hit. Chairs shut down, fiberglass now pays minimum wage, and half the people in my home town are unemployed and almost everyone is living on welfare.[/quote]

That's the problem. You see labour becomes less valuable over time. With technology and mechanization allowing one person to do the jobs of as many as 10 the demand for labour shrinks and conversely the competition for what few jobs are left drive the wages down because as the employer much like a person shopping for apples... it's in your best interest to get the most for as little as you can.

Marxism is a great idea...but like any Utopia. they greatly fail. Marxism fails because at somepoint... soime human is going to have to be given authority to decide what is 'needed' by another human. How much is a fair wage, How much is a fair allotment of grain. etc.

 

[TakerFoxx]

Question about Marxism: when it says that there is no private ownership, does that mean no personal possessions whatsoever, or just no privately owned businesses?

Also, how does it relate to things like the arts and entertainment? Because just by writing a popular book that lots of people read, you are being elevated over everyone else. Would that not be allowed or how would that work?

 

[Devieus]

Marxism is why we can't have nice things, because then everyone else will have them too; it also completely eliminates privacy and personal preferences, because everything you want, do, or like will affect the commune as a whole. That's why I can see communism work on a small scale, where everyone knows everyone, but falls apart spectacularly on a greater scale.

It also completely isolates a place from everyone and everything else, because a change in the population shifts the dynamic too much.

And the dictatorial stuff happens too, I guess.

 

[cthulhuspawn82]

Marxism doesn't address the problem of what happens once the workers have overthrown the capitalist. The whole factory shuts down because the "machine monkeys" aren't smart enough to run a business. We always note that rich people didn't get their own their own, and this is true. But a factory owner who loses all his workers can just round up any group of high school dropouts. A group of factory workers who lose there manager, however, are out of luck because none of them have the intellect and greatness to run a major operation.

 

[webkilla]

While Marxism sounds like a good concept, it can't be successful long term. Eventually human nature will kick in and the greedy will ruin it for everyone else.

Exactly. From what I understand that's why the system has never worked before. Everyone was always trying to game the system thinking THEY deserve more than everyone else. That's fine for average people to do. Rules and regulations can adapt to that. But it's when the people running the system do it that everything falls apart.

IMO its not as much a question of wanting to game the system, but a more instinctive drive to get the most bang for your buck so to say.

Consider that we evolved from apes that operated on a harem logic: Only the strongest male, who could fight off all the other males, got to bang around. Thus, we evolved with a drive to get the most ressources (food, shelter, fancy things to impress our peers) that we might display our superiority and thus attract a mate.

...yes, that is VERY oversimplified, but if you think about it then does make sense.


Parents always want what is best for their children - helicopter parents and tiger moms have always been a thing.

 

[Vanilla_Knight]

Marxism is why we can't have nice things, because then everyone else will have them too; it also completely eliminates privacy and personal preferences, because everything you want, do, or like will affect the commune as a whole. That's why I can see communism work on a small scale, where everyone knows everyone, but falls apart spectacularly on a greater scale.

It also completely isolates a place from everyone and everything else, because a change in the population shifts the dynamic too much.

And the dictatorial stuff happens too, I guess.

Well said. But here's a new video to indoctrinate people that marxism is powerful and inevitable, ignoring for a moment the bad things that happened to every country that embraced these ideas.

I had to laugh at the tagling:

Welcome back to 8-Bit Philosophy, where gaming makes you smart.

I wouldn't call disney versions of world impacting philosophy making anyone smarter.

Ugh, last time is was some BS non sequitur about wanting gender to go away completely and now it's "marxism is still a powerful ideology." No, it's a fundamentally flawed ideology. I lean far left in the American political spectrum, even to a length of saying I'm PART socialist, but not once would I ever call myself an anti-capitalist or a Marxist. In fact, far leftists and left-authoritarians piss me off a lot more than the far right because of how damned militant Marxism is when it comes to demonizing people for their social identities or class.

 

[Areani]

Karl Marx never ran a company. Never held political office. Never oversaw any accounts. Never even held a job - any job. Supported throughout his life by his friend Friedrich Engles, the son of a wealthy factory owner.

Considered by many to be the greatest social, political, and economic philisopher of all time.

All applications of his theories have ended in failure.

<img src=http://i.imgur.com/BZWXJhS.png>Marxism

 

[leviadragon99]

Well he's not wholly wrong at least.

Capitalism does have a dark side, it can be exploitative, it can crush the average worker, even push them out of work altogether.

The mistake of Marxism is in pursuing that unrealistic utopian ideal in defiance of certain cold, hard truths of reality, and how easy it is for the system he proposes to itself be abused by those who end up organising things.

I just wish more people would be willing to see the middle road. A little bit of capitalism, a little bit of socialism, mix em both together and you might just create something approaching balance and sustainability. This doesn't have to be a zero-sum game.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

Wow, good explanation!
Had this in school of course, but that wasn't quite as concise and well written

Thanks again, love the series.

 

[Dollabillyall]

It feels like Marxism has been boiled down to marxist communism... that's a shame because Marx is much more than just a communist utopia and his idea of a communist utopia is largely obselete or transformed to the point of barely being recognizable. I really miss the fundamental aspect of critical social theory as the core aspect of Marxism. The communist utopian view is more an outcome of that way of thinking rather than the essence of marxism.

 

[fractal_butterfly]

Marxism doesn't address the problem of what happens once the workers have overthrown the capitalist. The whole factory shuts down because the "machine monkeys" aren't smart enough to run a business. We always note that rich people didn't get their own their own, and this is true. But a factory owner who loses all his workers can just round up any group of high school dropouts. A group of factory workers who lose there manager, however, are out of luck because none of them have the intellect and greatness to run a major operation.

I think the only thing holding back the workers is the lack of funding. Of course you have to have a set of certain skill, but it is not some god-given Destiny for Greatness. You can learn those skills like any other skills.

But that's not what Marxism is about, if I understand it correctly. Even in a Marxist Utopia, there would still be managers, but they would no longer own the factory that they are running. The factory would belong to everyone.
Hm, thinking about it, contemporary huge joint-stock corporations work like this, don't they? They have not one owner, but a commitee of Managers and Stock Holders, who can even vote and throw out the original founder. So the corporation does not "belong" to anyone but to itself, in a way.
But the workers get still exploited and screwed over ;-)

 

[Mullahgrrl]

Question about Marxism: when it says that there is no private ownership, does that mean no personal possessions whatsoever, or just no privately owned businesses?

Also, how does it relate to things like the arts and entertainment? Because just by writing a popular book that lots of people read, you are being elevated over everyone else. Would that not be allowed or how would that work?

There is a diference betwee posessions and property.

Property is means of production and infrastructure and so forth and no single person should own them, no one will come after your knick-nacks.

Obviously Marx wasn't against writing popular books, he himself is one of historys most popular authors.