the thing. Shape does not exist in itself; shape only exists in so far as a thing is finite. Thus within the concept of shape there is being and not-being, a unity of opposites. (2/2)

But it is possible to enter that kingdom only by means of a radical change in the present social activity.“ (G. V. Plekhanov, The Meaning of Hegel) (5/5)

discovered those laws and made a rigorous scientific study of their working. Modern dialectical materialism, which, in the opinion of philistines, must turn man into an automaton, in actual fact opens for the first time in history the road to the kingdom of freedom and conscious activity. (4/5)

behind their backs, independently of their consciousness. Once those forces have been discovered, once the laws by which they work have been studied, people will be able to take them in their own hands and submit them to their own reason. The service rendered by Marx consists in having (3/5)

Unconsciously: from its standpoint the course of history is determined in the final account not by man’s will, but by the development of the material productive forces […] People made and had to make their history unconsciously as long as the motive forces of historical development worked (2/5)

These people fundamentally misunderstand what Marx meant and how dialectics, i.e. Marx’s logic, works. (4/4)

Marx speaks of the abstract value of the commodity— the labour time within it— as representing the essence of price, not of price as a bare reflection of it. This misunderstanding has led Marxists/Marxist adjacents to reject the LTV in view of how people can manipulate price in the modern day. (3/4)

I find Marx’s specific phrasing here very important in order to understand prices in the present day. People tend to interpret the LTV as stating that price is a mechanical reflection of the labour time congealed within a commodity, but this is incorrect and misunderstands Marx’s logic. (2/4)

This quote is attributed to Hegel by Plekhanov in The Meaning of Hegel: I haven’t been able to find out exactly where it’s from for sure, but it’s likely from Hegel’s Lectures on Fine Art

much as the intellectual guides the proletariat. (8/8)

bidding and actualise their perfect revolution is undialectical nonsense: it is the mechanism that is oh so characteristic of these flawed deviations from Marxism. The relationship between intellectual and proletariat is, of course, dialectical. The proletariat guides the intellectual just as (7/8)

through their needs; it is through the proletariat that the Marxist intellectual comes to realise their genuinely revolutionary activity. To view the relationship between intellectual and proletariat as the intellectual coordinating their pawns (which they find in the proletariat) to do their (6/8)

Marxism is revolutionary in so far as it is connected with the people. Gramsci, who is, by no mere coincidence, a common target of the sterile left com attacks, stressed this principle. Gramsci explains that the Marxist intellectual finds their spheres of investigation through the proletariat, (5/8)

must lie primarily in addressing these needs and participating in the development of proletarian forms of organisation. (4/8)

come to understand the liberation of the proletariat merely in terms of the immediate negation of capitalism, and thus their theory loses contact with its revolutionary essence, the proletariat. The activity of Marxists, in order that they be really revolutionary, in theory and practice, (3/8)

as opposed to the peasantry, due to the element of organisation that is essential to the proletariat’s existence. The proletariat's historical importance stems from such concrete factors, and the recognition of this reality is vital. When one abstracts away from these realities they (2/8)

It’s so beautiful🥹