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A more updated version would be that neoliberalism is the opiate of intellectuals. Much (but certainly not all) of Marxism has held up rather well in retrospect

by cultus 7y ago

A more updated version would be that neoliberalism is the opiate of intellectuals. Much (but certainly not all) of Marxism has held up rather well in retrospect (especially teh critique of capitalism), especially in the conditions we face in 2020.

ardy42 7y ago
> A more updated version would be that neoliberalism is the opiate of intellectuals. The real opiate of the intellectuals is any system that gives you the belief that you've got things mostly figured out. Neo-liberalism definitely qualifies for some, but so does Marxism. However, given the current state of things, there's probably more value to be had now from reading Marx than some venerable free market tract. Just don't let it go to your head.
- cultus 7y ago
  Oh sure, there's very serious problems with orthodox Marxism. It gets somewhat of a pass because all historical communist regimes have started far before capitalism had run its course (which even now it hasn't necessarily). However, the dictatorship of the proletariat is just something I cannot buy ever working out without the revolutionary vanguard just turning into the new masters. This is a critique that left-anarchists have always had of Marxisms. However, Marxism also has a point that a complete economic overturning is impossible without force, necessitating a vanguard anyway. So, I don't think anyone can remotely say what comes after our economic system.
  - seiferteric 7y ago
    This is what I always wondered. Where does the claim to political legitimacy come from if force is required?
    - cultus 7y ago
      There's no such thing as political legitimacy, at least in terms of the philosophical concept existing in reality. Legitimacy in practice just means that there are not enough people opposed to a regime to take it down. It's just really a restatement of whether people have confidence that it won't collapse.
- ellius 7y ago
  This is the thesis of Popper's "The Open Society and Its Enemies." He argues, correctly I think, that you can find intellectual strands going back to Heraclitus and Plato which revolve around the idea of some "central force" or "law of history" that enables a thinker to predict the future. He says that the alternative and preferable society is a skeptical one that views history as a series of experiments and tries to infer what amount to rules of thumb rather than grand "world historical" theories or forces.
Frost1x 7y ago
You'll always have people who support one set of ideas over another as long as there's enough ambiguity/uncertainty in critical factors to sway one way or another. Actually it seems to be even deeper than that (e.g. "flat earthers"). In this case, evidence that requires time to collect and events to play out are a realm of uncertainty and ambiguity are frequently played on when comparing capitalism to historic other systems we know "didn't work." At the same time, you'll have many who understand that those levels of uncertainty and ambiguity can be gamed to their favor and will support which ever options of the uncertain benefit them the most, regardless of what they may believe to be true. For some reason were so confident and or arrogant that we "have it right" while others have it wrong. Meanwhile, we look at macroscopic trends that are toxic and continue preaching dogma. When we talk about the scale of economic systems and societies, there's a lot of uncertainty of how any axiomatic rules result in macroscopic/emergent behaviors that we see. It's so complex it's often incredibly difficult to look at macroscopic behaviors we dont want as a society and walk them back to first principles or lower order principles that causes the issue to fix them. For some reason though, it feels like as society we don't try to fix them or those who play on uncertainty and fear to their advantage seem to always win everyone over. Capitalism is extremely good at a lot of optimization problems and squeezing out efficient solutions. The issue is that it has to be well constrained to optimize for what we want and not optimize for things we don't value as society. General health and well being seems to be one of those factors we're not optimizing well for.

by cultus 7y ago

ardy42 7y ago

> A more updated version would be that neoliberalism is the opiate of intellectuals. The real opiate of the intellectuals is any system that gives you the belief that you've got things mostly figured out. Neo-liberalism definitely qualifies for some, but so does Marxism. However, given the current state of things, there's probably more value to be had now from reading Marx than some venerable free market tract. Just don't let it go to your head.

cultus 7y ago
Oh sure, there's very serious problems with orthodox Marxism. It gets somewhat of a pass because all historical communist regimes have started far before capitalism had run its course (which even now it hasn't necessarily). However, the dictatorship of the proletariat is just something I cannot buy ever working out without the revolutionary vanguard just turning into the new masters. This is a critique that left-anarchists have always had of Marxisms. However, Marxism also has a point that a complete economic overturning is impossible without force, necessitating a vanguard anyway. So, I don't think anyone can remotely say what comes after our economic system.
- seiferteric 7y ago
  This is what I always wondered. Where does the claim to political legitimacy come from if force is required?
  - cultus 7y ago
    There's no such thing as political legitimacy, at least in terms of the philosophical concept existing in reality. Legitimacy in practice just means that there are not enough people opposed to a regime to take it down. It's just really a restatement of whether people have confidence that it won't collapse.
ellius 7y ago
This is the thesis of Popper's "The Open Society and Its Enemies." He argues, correctly I think, that you can find intellectual strands going back to Heraclitus and Plato which revolve around the idea of some "central force" or "law of history" that enables a thinker to predict the future. He says that the alternative and preferable society is a skeptical one that views history as a series of experiments and tries to infer what amount to rules of thumb rather than grand "world historical" theories or forces.

Frost1x 7y ago

You'll always have people who support one set of ideas over another as long as there's enough ambiguity/uncertainty in critical factors to sway one way or another. Actually it seems to be even deeper than that (e.g. "flat earthers"). In this case, evidence that requires time to collect and events to play out are a realm of uncertainty and ambiguity are frequently played on when comparing capitalism to historic other systems we know "didn't work." At the same time, you'll have many who understand that those levels of uncertainty and ambiguity can be gamed to their favor and will support which ever options of the uncertain benefit them the most, regardless of what they may believe to be true. For some reason were so confident and or arrogant that we "have it right" while others have it wrong. Meanwhile, we look at macroscopic trends that are toxic and continue preaching dogma. When we talk about the scale of economic systems and societies, there's a lot of uncertainty of how any axiomatic rules result in macroscopic/emergent behaviors that we see. It's so complex it's often incredibly difficult to look at macroscopic behaviors we dont want as a society and walk them back to first principles or lower order principles that causes the issue to fix them. For some reason though, it feels like as society we don't try to fix them or those who play on uncertainty and fear to their advantage seem to always win everyone over. Capitalism is extremely good at a lot of optimization problems and squeezing out efficient solutions. The issue is that it has to be well constrained to optimize for what we want and not optimize for things we don't value as society. General health and well being seems to be one of those factors we're not optimizing well for.