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Showing posts with the label Philosophy

Reified and Deified - Our World of Things

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Can you imagine a world without capitalism? Yes? Are you sure the world you are imagining is truly free of capitalism? If not, why is this the case? In my last post we have discovered what value is, we have seen its true face and "history" (if you can call it such), yet we have not really touched its implications. We know what value is and how it manifests itself as the money-form but this still does not touch capitalist reality, we do not know much about how value dominates us. We shall at first again start with Marx own introduction to the fourth section of the first chapter of Capital: "A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties." -Karl Marx: das Kapital This is not unknown to us, in my last article we have already seen how value assumes very complicated forms, which are expressed as very simple relati...

[German] Erlebt der Faschismus wirklich ein Comeback?

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In den letzten Jahren beobachte ich (vor allem hier, in Deutschland), dass rechte Parteien immer mehr an Popularität gewinnen, wie zum Beispiel die „rechtskonservative“ und „nationalistische“ AfD (Alternative für Deutschland), aber auch kleine Parteien wie die NPD (National „demokratische“ Partei Deutschlands) oder der „Dritte Weg“ etc. Passiert es also wieder, kehrt der Faschismus zurück, wie er in den 20er und 30er Jahren in Deutschland an der Macht war? Natürlich kann ich die Zukunft nicht vorhersagen, aber es zeichnet sich eine Art Trend ab, die nationale Befreiung der Dritten Welt schreitet voran, die Arbeiteraristokratie im imperialistischen Mutterland merkt das und beginnt, entsprechend ihrem Klasseninteresse aktiv zu handeln, ebenso das Kleinbürgertum. Gegenwärtig sieht es jedoch weniger kritisch aus, weswegen? Das möchte ich nun begründen: Ein historisches Beispiel: Gehen wir zurück in die Zeit nach 1920, nach Deutschland, als der Faschismus als frische, neue Bewegung aus dem ...

The Eternal Debate About Value

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Over the last few months, I noticed one particular thing: What is value, anyway? And has "value" always existed, or is this category something peculiar to capitalism? And wait, what does all this have to do with commodity production? One question opened my mind to the next, but where are the answers? The Question Of Questions: What Is Value? Many Marxists already fail at this "simple" question, what actually is value in Marxist economic theory?  The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,” its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity. -Karl Marx:  Capital: Critique Of The Political Economy     Is the introductory sentence of Marx's work "Das Kapital" and already contains a lot of explanations about "value", first it is said that only in capitalist societies wealth occurs as an "a...

Is Fascism Really On The Rise?

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Is fascism really making a comeback? In recent years, I have observed (especially here, in Germany) that right-wing parties are gaining more and more popularity, such as the "right-wing conservative" and "nationalist" AfD (Alternative for Germany), but also small parties like the NPD (National "Democratic" Party of Germany) or the "Third Way", etc. So is it happening again, is fascism returning as it was in power in Germany in the 20s and 30s? Of course, I cannot predict the future, but there is a kind of trend emerging, the national liberation of the Third World is progressing, the labor aristocracy in the imperialist motherland notices this and begins to act actively according to its class interest, as does the petty bourgeoisie. At present, however, things look less critical, why? I would like to explain this now: Let us go back in time, after 1920, to Germany, when fascism arose as a fresh new movement from the dying German petty bourgeoisie,...