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nonsensical rubbish

I would appreciate it if clueless "Marxist" amateurs refrained from hacking into my wiki articles on Marx's concepts and vandalize them. Sadly, many articles have become nonsensical rubbish because Marxists defaced them. While this demonstrates the stupidity and sectarianism of the Marxists doing it, it simultaneously turns people right off Marx as well, whereas the purpose is to provide an accessible introduction to concepts. User:Jurriaan 11 may 2010 14:21 (UTC)

kritik or propaganda?

Some of the criticisms of Marx's theories are straight rubbish and propaganda. You can't expect us to take you seriously when you write nonsense like "workers choose their own employers, stable prices, and own their own private property" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.80.104.182 (talk) 03:14, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

In listing a few of the main kinds of criticism, I was not commenting on the validity of the criticism, I was merely describing what the criticism is about. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.144.162.215 (talk) 18:36, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

bias

Statements like "Althusser's suggestions have misled many people" do not indicate a neutral point of view. The article is exhaustive, if a little specialized, and that is fine, but it is arguing for the correctness of "value-form theory" against other interpretations, rather than summarizing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.226.228.62 (talk) 20:22, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree as author that, although it is true that Althusser misled many people, this is as it stands not a "neutral point of view". Sometimes telling the truth is not neutral. However, this article as a whole does not specifically argue for the correctness of value-form theory. There is no evidence that it does. In fact, a big part of the article is devoted to criticisms made of the value-form idea. It is not clear what my critic means by "value-form theory" - does he mean Marx's value-form theory or does he mean the "value-form school"? It is not clear that my critic has any clue about what he is talking about, so I cannot take his comment very seriously. User:Jurriaan 30 November 2011 1:43 (UTC)

I have adjusted the sentence about Althusser, to make it more neutral. However, I should warn readers that Althusser was a Stalinist nutcase, a weirdo. He had electric shock treatment in his youth; he suffered persistent mental illness; he was hostile to the student and workers' revolt in 1968; in the end, he strangled his own wife to death and then claimed he did not know what he was doing. Althusser was marketed by rich boy Perry Anderson and New Left Books in Britain and the United States, as the latest thing in Marxism, and in the 1970s, Althusser became very influential in the social sciences and humanities worldwide. I suppose the main reason was that Althusserian research was easy, both because he recycled already existing theories with an added leftist flavor, and because you could just read some books, and then philosophize about that as "research". User:Jurriaan 6 December 2011 15:14 (UTC)

Not all scholars agree that, in reality, Althusser was a human-hating nutter and an intellectual fraud. Thus, Alex Callinicos, one of the main ideological leaders of the British neo-Trotskyists, stated that Georg Lukacs, Theodor Adorno and Louis Althusser were (sic.) "the most outstanding Marxist philosophers of the century" (letter by Alex Callinicos published in the London Review of Books, Vol. 4 No. 7, 15 April 1982). Callinicos's first book, written in the days when he was an Oxford University don, was devoted to Althusser's Marxism. User:Jurriaan 23 May 2012 00:52 (UTC)

Here is one of the famous quotes in Althusser's autobiographical statement:

"In fact my philosophical knowledge of texts was rather limited. I was very familiar with Descartes and Malebranche, knew a little Spinoza, nothing about Aristotle, the Sophists and the Stoics, quite a lot about Plato and Pascal, nothing about Kant, a bit about Hegel, and finally a few passages of Marx which I had studied closely. My way of picking up and then really getting to know philosophy was legendary: I used to enjoy saying it was all done by 'hearsay' (the first confused form of knowledge according to Spinoza). I learnt from Jacques Martin who was cleverer than me by gleaning certain phrases in passing from my friends, and lastly from the seminar papers and essays of my own students. In the end, I naturally made it a point of honour and boasted that 'I learnt by hearsay'. This distinguished me quite markedly from all my university friends who were much better informed than me, and I used to repeat it by way of paradox and provocation, to arouse astonishment, incredulity, and admiration (!) in other people, to my great embarrassment and pride." - Louis Althusser, The future lasts forever: a memoir. New York: The New Press, 1992, pp. 165-166.

In other words, Althusser himself boasted openly that his academic success was based on gossiping and plagiarism, and that in reality he knew very little about Marx at all. This, then, was the "scholar" hailed by the academics as being among "the most outstanding Marxist philosophers of the 20th century". User:Jurriaan 14 Feb 2013 21:55 (UTC)

Here is a relevant quote from Sebastian Timpanaro on Althusserianism:

“During the twentieth century, each time that a particular intellectual current has taken the upper hand in bourgeois culture - be it empirio-criticism, Bergsonism, Croceanism, phenomenology, neo-positivism or structuralism - certain Marxists have attempted to 'interpret' Marx's thought in such a way as to make it as homogeneous as possible with the predominant philosophy. This did not at all mean that there was not a sincere, and often fruitful, desire for discussion and mutual encounter. But it did mean a wish for the mutual encounter to take place on common ground; a wish that Marxism should appear as the philosophy which had already satisfied in advance the requirements of the most avant-garde elements of bourgeois culture, or which was at least able to incorporate them within itself without distorting itself. Above all else, it was feared that Marxism might appear to be a naive, simplistlic, and out-dated philosophy. This situation has continued into the present; indeed, the rapid pace with which cultural fashions succeed one another in the West forces certain Marxists to undergo ever more rapid metamorphoses. Althusser's structuralist-leaning Marxism represents, for the time being, the latest in these modernizing operations. No sooner have you begun to rejoice at the refutation of the 'humanist' and 'historicist' version of Marxism than you realize that it is bourgeois culture itself, in its advanced technocratic phase, that has repudiated humanism and historicism. Now that one cannot win anyone's ear unless one translates the most commonplace things into structuralist language, the task of Marxists appears to have become one of proving that Marxism is the best of all possible structuralisms." - Sebastian Timpanaro, On Materialism. London: Verso, 1975, p. 73-74. User:Jurriaan 4 March 2013 12:38 (UTC)

Reduction edits

Once again Nikkimaria has valiantly endeavoured to reduce the length of an article I originated. About 42% has been deleted by Nikkimaria and another editor. I'm personally not all that happy about that, but I am also mindful of the need of the article to conform better to wiki standards, for which length is a consideration. If my try-out bites the dust, so be it. If readers want to access the "full monty", they can still do so, by going to the larger version of the article, dated 3 May 2013 , which is still available in the archive record for this article. User:Jurriaan 9 May 2013 4:23 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.64.48.162 (talk)

This article should be WP:SPLIT into sub-articles anyway, with the current one as the main article. Each top section is long enough to become a stand-alone article on its own. Diego (talk) 06:12, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

The issue of splitting the article should have been discussed earlier, before Nikkimaria cut out nearly half of the article. If the article was split up first, much of the material would not have to be cut and would not be wasted. User:Jurriaan (talk) 9 May 2013 1:39 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.64.48.162 (talk)

Reinsertion

I have reinserted a bit from the original article in the current article such as it is after Nikkimaria's reduction edits. That bit is: "Because value is expressed as exchange-value, it seems to the ordinary observer that value and exchange-value are simply the same thing. And since exchange-value is most often expressed by a money-price, it seems that "value" and "money" are the same thing. But Marx argues they are not the same things." This part is absolutely essential to understanding what the concept of the value-form is about and so I have re-inserted it. Jurriaan (talk) 23:28, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Footnotes problems=

I should warn readers that some of the footnotes no longer make sense after the massive reduction edit by Nikkimaria. That is not my fault.Jurriaan (talk) 10:45, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Beware of Bob Rayner's "editing"

The scam editor Bob Rayner User:Bobrayner specializes in cutting large bits out of articles that he doesn't like, for no reason at all or for some spurious reason. He doesn't understand anything about the subjectmatter. The article then has to be reset to what is was before his vandalism. This article is still being worked on from time to time and Rayner's destructive habits are unwanted here. Jurriaan (talk) 19:23, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps you could stop lying about me and making personal attacks, and explain why the article should be built around a giant quotefarm, synthesis, and in-universe rhetoric. bobrayner (talk) 16:43, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

It is not me that has anything to do with in-universe rhetoric, but you who engage in in-universe editing. You live in a world of your own where you are the God of editing. This article is not a giant quotefarm, that is just your smear, it is just that the text has to be appropriately referenced. You are an proven article wrecker, with a long record of wrecking articles, and your groundless editing nonsense will in turn be reverted.Jurriaan (talk) 09:51, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

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