Dr. Darren Staloff, Marx's Historical Materialism
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- čas přidán 22. 04. 2022
- You can find Marx's Selected Writings here amzn.to/3An1Vr2
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Dr. Michael Sugrue earned his BA at the University of Chicago and PhD at Columbia University.
Omg, finally someone explains Marx without trying to convince me that I am going to commit a historical atrocity somehow in the process of understanding Marx
Still very dismissive to me and disingenuous. Like when he says we celebrate capitalism by cheering for those who make the most profit by FOLLOWING THE RULES. JAJAJA paraphrasing of course, but following the rules?
Am not naive, I know they wouldn't root for marx or communism but a lot of these teachers interject a lot of their own biases, at least this guy didn't so much.
@@eckiuME23 When he is using the examples of games, he is talking about how games in society reflect values and that the games of capitalism celebrate the score and competition.
I wonder if Professional Wrestling counts more towards the ancient conception of games as theater.
Chilll
Me thinks the lady doth protest too much. (Also we're more worried about future atrocities.)
2:18 Hegel, Continental Europe, David Ricardo
3:15 Hegel vs The Enlightenment
Show me the Mathematical Laws of Human Development
4:24 Engles, companion of Marx
5:20 Explaining Human History on a Naturalistic Basis
6:04 The Problem of History
7:05 1. Philosophical Anthropology
Marx was an admirer of Charles Darwin
- Consciousness is the last thing humans develop
7:45 MAN THE PRODUCER. Humans produce with cognition.
9:02 Division of Labor is a (long-standing way of life)
10:48 Scarcity - Inability to produce enough for EveryHumanPerson
11:27 Enclosure of Resources
13:20
1. Scarcity 2. Division of Labor 3. Homo-Fabor [Developing life to one's favor, typically altering life enviornment with Labor and Tools]
14:14 History is the story of the Forces of Production
1. Means of Production [Tools, Weapons, Facilities, Raw Materials]
2. Abstract Labor Power [Muscle, Techniques/Skills/Sciences]
17:23 Relations of Production
Ownership
Mastery/Slavery
Renting or Leasing
Contracts
20:00 The Economic Base and The Superstructure
Level of Development
20:38 Law, Politics, Culture, Philosophy, Painting, ALL CULTURE THAT IS NOT SCIENCE
Ex. Lacrosse. 21:40
Sports are like a Factory Industry
24:38 Culture reflects and justifies itself
Jousting
Hunting
Debate
25:50 Exactly 3 Modes of Production
Marx's PH.D. was on Aristotle
Ancients - 1700s: Slave Labor, it is just
Medieval - Feudal Serfdom Labor, degrees of freedom
Industrial - Equality Labor
28:06 Laws of Production
1. Persistence, as long as there is room for technological growth/fostering of development
2. Hinderence and Revolutions - When Development is Fettering 28:44
3. New Modes gestate
31:44 Trade Union, Workers United
32:08 Dynamic/Competitive/Forced Revolutionary Structure
FASTER FASTER Steam --> Oil --> SPACE
34:40 Business Cycle: UPS AND DOWNS
REVOLUTION = The Culmination of Declining Production
37:09 The End of Scarcity
Everything is pre-history until Scarcity is solved
Socialism - Nationalization of Communism
Communism - Free Anarchy
38:08 Power and Problematics of Marx
Unifies World History into Large Epochs
39:52 Judging The Past based on The Present, Re-Evaluation
40:21 Judging Capitalism deficient as A PROPHECY
Speaking of Future Events as Present Events
42:46
Thanks, Time Stamp Guy
You're awesome
Thanks for the stamps breh!
🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼
Well done!
It is truly inspiring to see someone so energized to educate others on how to reach their own conclusions. It has given me much to think about.
Another exciting and enlightening lecture. As always, thanks for posting these on CZcams for everyone!
Great lecture!
Regarding "no Greek philosopher condemned slavery", Russell in history of philosophy wrote that Diogenes the Cynic and his followers condemned slavery.
Russell's history is often more Russell than history. Since none of Diogenes' writings survived, all we have is later stories about him which are of uncertain accuracy. He may have rejected slavery as he rejected nearly everything else, but Cynicism entails that slavery is no harm to the slave (as Diogenes indicated of his own slavery) but to the master, weighing him down with superfluous possessions. I doubt that this is what is meant nowadays by "condemning slavery".
@@dr.michaelsugrue thanks! Thanks to several of your lectures I learnt that the modern world was shaped by three philosophers: Marx, Freud and Kant.
@@dr.michaelsugrue For what it's worth, I think that's best and most Christian way to condemn slavery.
@@pearz420huh
Just amazing. Thank you so much for posting
In the age of short, skippable intros, I am enjoying the 30s intro to these videos that activates my schemata for the rigorous mental work I am going to be confronted with
I’ve listened to Dr. Staloff’s latest lectures in Audible’s “Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition” he’s still got that beautiful flow.
I was going to ask in here whether Dr. Staloff is still alive and kicking? I guess that answers my question.
@@brucekern7083 100 percent, and he's not that old (like 61, I think). Same age as my father. He teaches at CUNY.
@@brucekern7083 he is. He's hosting a show with dr. Sugrue on this channel
Such a lucid explanation. Thanks a lot for making it available.
Also a great lecturer. Articulate and well structured. Easy for me to follow, though my English is less than good.
Very impressed, and i know that this is the tip of the tip of the iceberg, and the great bulk of the content remains to be seen.
Banger
🔥🔥
Great point about designated hitters in American League baseball. It creates too much specialization in a sport where otherwise everyone has to take a turn hitting the ball. It's crazy that there's a Marxist interpretation where that reflects the increased specialization in the economic system.
As sport has become more commercialised, the level of specialisation has increased following the "it can only exist as long as it iterates on itself and evolves into a more advanced system/means". There was a feudal period of recreational turned professional sports, where enclaves gathered together out, and as the rewards has increased, these demands and focuses have followed alongside sports.
Take the European football example, for instance. It used to be 11 players who could kick or stop a ball, yet now, teams operate by having special roles. For instance, you don't just have attacking players or defensive players. Rather, you have wide & central players. The central players will have different attributes and specialisations that allow them to function optimally. A wide attacker who plays on the left might often favour their left foot, in order to give them the best possible kick towards where the "goals" are scored. Defensive structures follow the same as American ones - wide defence are agile and exhaustive, central defence are strong and powerful.
Outside of that, as we see in other industries, R&D in the form of sports science comes into play. As all sports have commercialised, teams are expected to have other specialist roles to facilitate optimal production. You have teams of people tracking nutrition, game data, fitness regimes and personal growth of their players in order to help them achieve the best they can, i.e. create a viable mode of production to produce wins.
There is method in the madness, even in a hypercapitalist market.
In America, there are two great devils: Darwin and Marx. I never considered the connection between them, it's a great connection that the professor makes.
why would darwin and marx be devils? this is pure dogmatism
@@hajihajiwayep science is whats evil lol not those interpreting for personal gain 🤦♂️
I was born a Marxist, to an American Leninist communist. He brought a bust of Lenin back from Moscow in 1972, when I was 15 years old. I never had much use for Lenin. He is more of a failure than success in my humble opinion.
I learned about Marx in the course of my religious studies at university. This reprise is most welcome, and perfectly aligned with my own perceptions and emotions, even though I’ve only actually read little of what is mentioned.
The problem for Marxism: 40:18 It is (was) prophesy.
42:59 “I can’t help feeling, that marks is historical materialism is the most useful part of Marxism.”
This is a full throated endorsement of Marx’s Historical Materialism. I agree. It is useful.
Is that an endorsement of Marx?
Dr. Staloff and I are both recovering Marxists. When I first met him 40 years ago, he was focused on Marxist aesthetics.
@@dr.michaelsugrue sorry for the gravity of this request but
1. What lead you to Marxism
2. Why the need for you to recover
3. What is the new solution you found to the problem Marxism "could have" solved
4. What is Marxist aesthetics?
@@dr.michaelsugrue What did you move onto after Marxism? Full disclosure: speaking as a full-blown active Marxist militant, member of the IMT.
@@Zayden.MarxistEeeeeew
These lectures are great. I just really wished the audio was better. But I’m sure that isn’t easily accomplished with the old/degraded source material
I think it's possible to clean up the incoherent noise
Thank You
The ponytail makes Staloff's neck look even longer.
Thank You!
Very well as articulated.
great video. enjoyed it
5:55 "Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution."
It is not in the communist manifesto. It is from Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts 1844. P. 43
1. Man with a ponytail, 2. From the College of William and Mary. 3. Does he moonlight at Colonial Williamsburg?
Great talk in a great series!
Great video, thank you very much , note to self(nts) watched all of it 42:26
Is there an audio download of these lectures?
I don’t know about these specific but I have a lecture series on the Socratic dialogues by Michael Sugrue from the great courses on audible it’s about 8 hours long and can’t be found on CZcams
So rising wages would prevent a ression?
marx did not think the superstructure was an epiphenomenon. That would be undialectical.
perfect tnx
Is it necessary to read Marx to understand the work? I think I've got the essence of it, but I welcome any thoughts on what is required reading on the matter. Thanks all.
I would say it isn't necessary to read Marx to understand him, but if you get all of your information second-hand then you're going to lose some of the nuance, and you're going to be reading him through someone else's filter. Marx wrote a lot, some of it published in his lifetime, some published posthumously from scribbled notes that weren't meant to be read by anyone. He changed his mid about many things over the course of his lifetime, and refined other things. Sometimes he was vague, sometimes he contradicted himself, sometimes he was nearly incomprehensible.
So whoever you learn about Marx from, they will be picking and choosing what to tell you out of all this chaos. Which is fine - reading _all_ of Marx, let alone reading it closely, would be a giant project - but it is something you need to bear in mind. So it is a good idea to read widely.
Having said all that, I would recommend trying to read volume 1 of Capital, if you are interested and have the time to dedicate to it. I'd also recommend David Harvey's companion to that volume, or his companion lectures on CZcams. As with anyone else, though, he obviously has his own biases and interpretations.
yes
A great channel here on CZcams to learn some more without reading would be Epoch Philosophy. I would also recommend the lecture series from Rick Roderick. He did a few lecture series for the same company these lectures came from
It has no interest in solving problems, it only sees opportunity for profit. The golden calf. The taming of man was conducive to the treadmill of production and maintaining the social structures that are used to socially engineer out the strong.
Yum. Knowledge.
Nice
Professional soccer is actually HIGHLY speciallized player by player, but it became so during the process of industrialization on factory teams. Another aspect of soccer which connects to historical dialectic is the major disruption created by particularly south american players in the 60s who outmanoeuvred and outplayed their ridged industrial opponents because they had begun playing as soon as they could walk out of economic neccessity. By the 21st century, the tactical aspect of positions, formations, stratagies have formed a synthesis with the individual skill aspect of aethletic virtuosity and passing ability to produce the highly structured but also highly skilled teams as they currently exist. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
😊🙏
Bradley Cooper could play him in a movie
My understanding of Marx's " labour power" is that it is the capacity to work, which is capitalism can be purchased from the worker, who has to use the wages to keep him or herself alive, while the capitalist to make profit has to pay the worker less than the actual added value obtained from the work. Accumulated profit = capital.
This is just an example of Marx's general misunderstanding of people. You work to survive. Everything you described is just how economic exchange has always been. You either work for yourself by tilling your own land, or you work for someone else for a wage.
Marx's main thesis was that eventually all production would be centralized by market forces and cheaply made commodities so abundant that "value" no longer means anything. THAT is what communism is for Marx, a post value society.
It's bullshit.
Workers of the World Unite
Naah, cause if we stop working we wouldn't be workers.
@@BboyKeny stopped working for one moment to unite?
Please do.
I can happily survive when you run it all into the ground.
@@BboyKeny ???
@@BboyKeny that's the point.
is this talk based on the german ideology?
38:57
If we define nothing else, can someone please tell me what consciousness is?
You haven't defined "definition"yet, so nobody can.
To be honest I didn't like to say, but "definition" is a universally accepted concept: The act or process of stating a precise meaning or significance; formulation of a meaning.
That is not used with the same linguistic ambiguity as "Reason" and even more so " consciousness". Like a cat can Reason, that is indisputable. We could say that every conceptual experience is a hypothesis, a basis for Reason, but how much a priori knowledge is necessary and at what point do we make a distinction between higher and lower animals?
I watched a debate last night between Jordan Peterson and a theoretical physicist, it was pure theatre, a muddying of the waters to make them seem deep. It was pure show boating with no attempt at any point to explain or define the concept. Peterson stated before that there are forces at work in our psyche over which we have no control, is that consciousness.
@@davidconroy8554 To be honest, you are factually wrong. There is no more consensus about "definition" than there is about "reason" (See Mcintyre, Wittgensteins Investigations and Plato's Meno).
I will thank you, I haven't even started on Wittgenstein, I wasn't sure I wanted to, but I will.
Consciousness is the awareness of the relation between cause and effect resulting in an increase in faculty.
So glad I can ejoy this as often I find my self smoking weed.
so real
Hell yeah
Brate
@@LasArmas_ o7
@@408sophon 💯💯💯💯💯💯
Well really it's based on the dominance hierarchy, Peterson a real advocate for Christian values loves the dominance hierarchy.
:)
Can’t help but notice that all the arguments about the base-superstructure are reasoned backwards to fit the preconceived notion. The idea that the ancient Greeks’ justification of slavery is BECAUSE slavery is the basis of their society? It’s the kind of thing you could only postulate in retrospect. The ancient Greeks “justified” slavery because they saw it working, and didn’t have any sort of historical clairvoyance that allowed them to view it in the context of of future generations. Slavery worked in the past and it was working for them now. That’s why they justified it. The centrality of slavery to their economy merely made it a prominent point of intellectual attention.
Now the layers of historical materialism begin to peel away. It's ironic that this was devised by a man who pronounced the absurdity of writing cookbooks for the future.
Those who don't do, teach. Those who neither do nor teach, are Karl Marx.
But, as I understood it presented in this lecture, is that not exactly what is meant by Marx's explanation of the ancient Greeks' justification of slavery in terms of a base-super structure? that their conception of slavery is necessarily bound up within their particular social organization? that is, is it not the case that their discussions of slavery are expressions of a broader culture conditioned by its specific and particular material conditions? As you yourself explained - the Greek philosophers and poets, the individuals who discussed or rather justified slavery, they themselves could only conceptualize slavery as was presented to them in all-ready existing, functioning social practices. That the possible extent of their reasonable inquiry was then limited, determined, totally by their actual, material conditions follows unless we allow also for some other external non-material factor(s) to influence their cognition. In this view, the Ancient Greeks' justification of slavery can not wholly reduce to efforts of deception for personal gain but as expressions of intellectual efforts governed by their material circumstances. Generalizing from this example, what can we infer about all possible "purely" intellectual endeavors but that these efforts are determined, both in the questions that can be meaningfully posed and in the answers that can be reasonably presented in response, totally by material circumstances? This, I think, presents significant problems for the view that knowledge and all expressions thereof - cultural or academic or practical -can, even principally, be separated from the material, social conditions in which it is presented, the broader base-superstructure.
I apologize if, in my response, I have misunderstood your argument. I would then greatly appreciate any clarifications or further explanations you would be willing to present so as to better our mutual understanding!
@@emileschlemmer1033 Tbh I don't recall my train of thought when writing the original comment. But personally I don't believe intellectual considerations are solely governed / constrained by one's material conditions. To believe this literally would make progress beyond those conditions impossible, yet clearly this progress has occurred historically. (i.e. I do believe non-material external factors are to be allowed for. Or maybe non-material internal factors. Such as one's sense of conscience and morality regardless of what society looks like).
When I talk about the Greeks in their historical context, I do not mean to say that they are entirely without fault for merely accepting their social institutions. However I do think it is very important to treat them mercifully and leniently because of their context when evaluating them from our privileged position far in the future. I believe the majority of people in any given society will tend to accept the world as it is presented to them, and that only a minority will seriously and critically analyse it or try to change it, and that fewer still will actually succeed in these endeavours. So it is inappropriate to be ruthlessly exacting in our judgements of the past, applying modern standards to prior eras. Better to be contrite and try to learn from these eras, while celebrating those in the past who actually managed to make breakthroughs and stand above the crowd.
As for Marx, I think he does imply deceptive intent in the endeavours of past intellectuals. Very much so. He postulates that private property / ownership was something invented in the past, implicitly by a would-be ruling elite. His whole idea of false consciousness is predicated on the dominant systems of society blinding the people who live in them. His "opiate of the masses" is explicitly formulated as a soporific fed to the masses by the ruling classes to maintain their power and hide the true nature of their society. This, I think, is a baseless aspersion bred of precisely the wrong kind of ruthlessly exacting judgements of the past. He assumes that the immoralities of the past were constructed and maintained for nefarious reasons, rather than simply being a product of mundane, even unconscious forces that simply hadn't been challenged yet by anyone.
Who saw it working?
@@ExpiditionWild Anyone alive at the time who cared to think about it or analyse it.
Was there scarcity in Native American tribes?
Of course
No -- no ideology in sports either ... (or science, as he stated).... Marx was undoubtedly an original thinker, but he surely did not appreciate the primitive human instincts of competition, aggression, drive, curiosity, creativity, ambition--in short, yes ... human nature! These are inherent In human beings and thus cut across all social classes.
Thesis and antithesis, are Capitalism and Communism not becoming a synthesis?
Artful application of prothesis
And Hegelian principles
Homo Economicus and the Return of Merkantilism
This guy absolutely gets off work, puts on his Faith No More shirt and his blue acid washed ripped jeans, smokes a blunt and shreds some guitar. My stonerdar 5000 is going off too much man
So non humans are not conscious? Lol I think that is a bit too black and white, his analysis of hunter gatherers erks me also.
I like how he mentions Punk Eek and than just bypasses it.
10,000. You don't know my half.
@@dr.michaelsugrue
🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂
I was confused for a while and thought it was a refference to hunter gatherers establishing sedentary society around 10,000 years ago. I got ya. Yeah, ain't smoked in a while but my stonerdars still up and running
Homo Faber + Homo Sapiens + Homo Demens + Homo Ludens = sqrt (Homo Fractalus).
I think he stole George Carlin's ponytail.
You might be right this looks like around the time George filmed the first season of his sitcom.
czcams.com/video/5VAs32jOsGs/video.html Bloody hell, that's called a falsifiable prediction of a theory, not a prophesy. Why ruin the lecture by this weird remark, when in the beginning he talks about historical materialism being an attempt to build a scientific understanding of history? Every theory has to make predictions that can be checked afterwards to verify or disprove itself.
Plekhanov and other theoreticians of the Second International set Party doctrine up to 1914. They could not predict WWI, instead they claimed workers of the world would unite against their common enemy, capitalists. In fact, the workers fought against each other for their nations, not with each other because of their class. The economic determinist "laws of historical development" half of Marxism was falsified more than a century ago. WWI is a big thing to miss.
The nondeterministic other half Lukacs and Gramsci for example were not falsified, because this half is not falsifiable. Kaput.
If you are interested in the gory details, the first thing I published (1983) explains why Marxism was always incoherent, so I had to find a new way of understanding, like Augustine leaving the Manichaeans. The essay is on Substack.
Moreover, the recent discoveries at Gobekli Tepe prove that the origin of civilization lie in religion, not economics. Marx was wrong.
@@dr.michaelsugrue 1. Wars are stochastic. Especially the WW1. That's like predicting position of a single electron in a double-slit experiment. The communism prediction on the other hand is a limit of the theory, which is deterministic.
2. Not enough is known about Gobekli Tepe to claim it can support of falsify anything.
Any religious theory is bullshit, because you can't measure anything and no predictions can be made. At least marxism has mathematical model underneath, so one can reason about it. Better a partially incorrect scientific theory, than idealistic useless bullshit.
@@dr.michaelsugrue Except Marx doesn't attribute the origin of civilization to economics. He quite explicitly critiques economic reason as an abstraction. The origin of civilization, according to Marx, lies neither in economics nor religion: it lies in human labor, i.e. self-conscious creative activity, i.e. species-being and the modes and relations through which that species-being is organized.That's the source of both economy and religion, which are both abstractions from said source.
This man knows very little about football (soccer).
I have a manifesto called libertarianism based on virtue ethics. It would be true socialism. I don't think we ever had socialism, just tyranny.
We have the Military Complex they are the Socialist Nationalist of the US the citizens have socialist programs but the business owners the investors the politicians seem to be the only capitalist the rest of us are paid a wage or have a contract but that's what US seems to have become a Greek Theater of 1000 faces without bounds.
In short: Marx is great, he explains how forces of production are developed, how and why modes of production switch, why capitalism has internal contradictions and can't go on forever, EXCEPT... he's so wrong about all those things because he's saying it before the owl of Minerva is ready for fly time...
Sweet Jesus... This was like watching someone making a decent cake for 1 hour, only to take a dump on it in 1 minute and say "Well... if we remove this thing from the top, it could be of some use"
German Idealism was a mistake.
I disagree. There's still much to be learned from it. Not all German idealism is Nazism.
God created Man in his image and when they were cast out of the garden of Eden, he created Germans.
Technically any idealism is a mistake, the narcissism in formulating grand philosophical theories based on assumptions about abstract human experiences is staggering. Any true or useful human philosophy should not treat human much different than other mammals and should have scope for including ignorance and vagueness of human knowledge.
That is why I am an empiricist.
@@saimbhat6243 To identify with it would be a mistake, but there is a lot to learn from it. Look at today's European political diversity, for example ( not that it is ideal, tho). Look at the Latin American struggle too.
@@saimbhat6243 empiricism is a mistake
great talk, trying to explain to novice marxists that marx saw capitalism as a solution and not the problem is like hammering a nail with a sponge. His later critique of working conditions and cultural impact is worth noting however during his time those same criticisms have almost all been mended. I am a general capitalist however communism is a great means for mass labor forces of certain industries, like all social theories they cannot be applied over an entire society, we must govern surgically not with a fire hose.
No, he saw Communism as the inevitable solution to the problems that all preceding economic modes faced, that being the contraction of all industries, markets, and consequently people. Capitalism is only one step to this conclusion.
@@danieljliverslxxxix1164 well if that was his idea hes not a as bright as i thought he was. How can you have communism when people are of uneven talents and intellects? Their will always be some form of class system, when people are free to make choices and assimilate how they see fit.
@@benjaminseng4271 Communism in terms of access to resources, doesn't mean we all look the same and behave the same and think the same, but that these mutual differences that everyone has are allowed to be expressed by all instead of an elite few, hence the phrase "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need."
It seems that you are the novice you were talking about in your initial comment.
@@danieljliverslxxxix1164 I didnt say we would act or look the same I think youre imposing a cliche view which I hadnt expressed, because its pointless to suggest that would ever be the case without a totalitarian rule which we can rule out. Im simply saying that in a peaceful free society the natural predatory instincts are expressed as domination of space and resources and means. Now he is some what correct when applied to smaller organized units, families, townships and some other organizations, where all members are more likely to cross pollinate socially. However the evidence even in these cases is novel. Marx can be applied successfully in a surgical way in the real world, but his conclusion are not a natural conclusion in modern society.
@@danieljliverslxxxix1164 the approach you are referring is more like the marxist-stalinist narrative that was generally accepted/imposed in the urss. Marx works are far beyond such a closed narrative. Enrique Dussell explains that problem in several lectures and in his writing