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Comment by 21asdffdsa12 | Hacker News Reader

Marxims is such a lazy evaluation system. Discarding culture altogether, refusing analysis of religion, its basically a Proof Of Non work, when it comes to sociology and analysis

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I think it’s unfair to say that it’s “lazy.” Neo Marxists understand the way those factors affect impact economics but because they’re very difficult to quantify in a heavily quantitative focused academic environment you’ll see less focus upon it, even when analyzing standard fare free market capitalism. I consider it a double standard to put burdens of analysis more upon one ideology than another. Sociology and religion are already highly qualitative disciplines by nature of the limits of science and our known physical reality (eg. we can’t time travel let alone reliably) and the kind of advantages systems like feudalism, monarchism, mercantilism, etc. work with authoritarian centralized systems is consistent across many societies including why some cultures tend toward syncretism and why others reject certain tenets and customs. The Nordics weren’t Christian, after all, and they absorbed it much more than American indigenous while Black Americans have very different relationships to Christianity than African blacks such as in Somalia and Ethiopia - this isn’t the wheelhouse of economists typically in academics but various humanities departments unrelated to business. Those influences and trends usually get labeled under the standard generic realities of imperialism given so much orchestrated power influences societies en masse while most bottom up movements against these structures tend to come from humanities focused areas away from economic interests like the arts, but this is why the Soviet Union and even China suppressed these freedoms because of the tendency to cause discord and dissent in a precarious society. As such, most leftist literature, especially outside academia (already an institution that must exist within the confines of a funding society), sounds predominantly like they’re criticizing basically every dominant human social construct, which is where the ideological position is cornered. This isn’t to say that I agree with this kind of discourse either because it doesn’t convince people beholden to these dominant constructs.

Why do people focus on things that have never worked? Studying Marxism is analogous to studying astrology. It's the most failed economic system ever tried.

When you study Marxism you're studying an economic point of view, not a form of government. IIRC most of his work is observational and there's just not much to disagree with once you break essays down to a bullet-pointed outline.

The only thing you should be upset about with Marx is his prose.

The Labor Theory of Value is a basic component of Marxism and is demonstrably false.

The other tenet is looking at everything through the lens of class struggle. The modern incarnation of that is interpreting all of history in terms of race. Social mobility in free countries like the US shows that the class struggle theory is woefully inadequate.

Time would be better spent studying free markets, the law of supply and demand, etc.

Its more aching to theology, as the economic model is very simplified, assuming all constraints can be easily overcome - once you sparsed out the oversimplified sociological model. They have no concept for a limitation of resources, no concept for organizational complexity, no concept for investment pooling- beyond "the party of benevolent revolutionaries" controls all. Any toddler could come up with something more coherent..

If they did, why are they constantly surprised, science gives you prediction power- scientific analysis, should make you the one who surprises others. "Eclipse.. now!" is science, not "Why is it suddenly dark! Must be xyzs fault!"

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