Image is of a Colombian campaign rally in support of Iván Cepeda of the left-wing Historic Pact.
As always, my weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
The unstable stare-down in the Middle East continues. Yet again, there's been little region-level change, but there have been some big escalations. Namely, the entity has decided to go further into Lebanon, with all the casualties and destruction that will bring them, while simultaneously abandoning bases elsewhere in the theater due to constant pressure by Hezbollah. Seeking to pressure Hezbollah away from their successful strategy of attrition on IOF forces that attempt to advance only to receive rapid onset symptoms of FPVdroneitis, they have also decided to resume airstrikes on Beirut, which is an obvious violation of the region-wide ceasefire that Iran may or may not militarily respond to, but they do seem very diplomatically displeased as of me writing this sentence. Meanwhile, Iran has responded to US drone incursions with strikes on Kuwait military bases. Trump has escalated his demands lately, so a return to war seems more likely than ever.
In Bolivia, Paz appears to be escalating in response to undiminished general strikes, with Congress allowing him to declare states of emergency at will, and therefore get the military more easily involved. In Colombia's runoff elections, far-right candidate Espriella won the first round of the runoff election with 43.7% of the vote ahead of left-winger Cepeda's 40.9%. Every poll had Cepeda beating Espriella by varying margins, so this appears to be a fairly standard case of the US putting their thumb on the scale; as the saying goes, they do not trust the population of Colombia to do democracy correctly and they couldn't risk them accidentally electing the wrong person.
Over in Sudan, the conflict appears like it is moving in a pro-SAF direction, with some significant military gains against the UAE-backed RSF, although the military situation is still fairly complicated. A potentially notable news item that I missed a couple weeks ago is that the US seems to have ended their strategic ambiguity over who they consider the true government in Sudan, as they now firmly recognize the SAF over the RSF. Why exactly this has occurred is a little beyond me. Could be because they see how the winds are blowing militarily; could be because they want to fuck over the UAE for some perceived slight (to be America's ally is fatal etc etc). The humanitarian situation appears no better though, with millions of people remaining in incredible hardship and near-starvation, and RSF-backed genocidal atrocities of the kind that Zionists would nod approvingly at.
Thankfully, China is looking at all these manifold crises and has dramatically escalated the speed at which they are writing strongly worded letters and are calling for a revitalized UN.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on the Zionists' destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
As I've said, the only group to which you have ascribed any importance or relevance to this point on this topic is socdem bourgeois politicians. And I responded to that by saying that if anyone, the Palestinian resistance deserves the credit. And you've become sidetracked by trying to pretend I my focus has been in pushing some grand thesis about antizionism rather than responding to your wrong prioritization and claims.
I am not shifting, I am replying directly to what you said, after quoting it, in context, with clear and plain language. You seem hung up on the word "credit". You suggested my logic would imply something, as if that something were abusrd and/or wrong: that by Israelis would deserve credit for the normalization of antizionism. And I am answering you: yes, they certainly do own responsibility for much of it, I just wouldn't use credit so I could avoid the appearance of any form of validation of genocidal Zionism. In other words, your "by your logic" claim is not pointing to something absurd, but something obviously true.
It is quite strange that you act like my focus is simply who deserves credit for the normalization of antizionism. I brough up the topic of antizionism as an example of how Mamdani et al are opportunists. They worked against this for decades, and only started using the language once it was already popular. The entire relevancy of discussing the Palestinian resistance is to contrast it to your focus on Zohran Mamdani as such a valuable force for the normalization of antizionism.
Missing it? It is simply not the topic at all. Unless by hegemony you are being vague again and you're trying to include antizionism in it? Who knows.
You are. It was a one-off example of my trying to recenter you, to point out how ridiculous your focus was, and now you cna't stop talking about it. Heck, you're trying to act like it's my political foundations or something, lmao. I'm not responsible for the various narratives about me that you've invented, but a lot of them have to do with "credit" for whatever reason.
See, look at this slew of absurdities and inventions. We are discussing the necessity of Mamdani and his like? I am not so vague. I pointed out that he's an opportunist similar to Bernie and you should temper your expectations massively. Your response to this was this silly made-up nonsense: "But none of that has anything to do with the realized and still potential utility of figures like Mamdani. The DSA ate shit over anti-Zionism for several years ago; this year the New York mayor publicly snubbed the annual fascist zionist parade. That kind of normalization is worth all the annoying liberal nonsense that comes with electoralism, and I'm sorry none of you on Hexbear have ever made a convincing argument for why we should throw away that normalization of our politics".
Note that this comment tries, again, to place the normalization of antizionism proximal to Mamdani, implies that we are somehow throwing it away by critiquing Mamdani as an opportunist, something that you seem to have now conceded? No coherence at all, just jargon.
Regarding "take for granted": lol. lmao. I dare you to explain your reasoning in full clarity and specificity.
At the moment I think I'm spending most of my time trying to get your responses to make any sense and in any way respond to what I am actually saying and not the stuff you make up, but my main points are actually about very basic and well-established Marxist thought, e.g. on what opportunism is, who is opportunist, and how you're falling for opportunism in particular with these unprincipled statements in defense of Mamdani.
That's the central premise of your argument? I'll remind you that I brought up antizionism. I joined this conversation when you were making excuses for Mamdani not firing Tisch. I brought up antizionism to explain that Mamdani is an opportunist. That he comes from a political strain that is itself consistently opportunist. That their commitments are shallow, they depend on conflating words with different meanings, that you should temper your expectations and not attribute so much to them.
So, let's accept that your stated central premise is just what you have stated. What does that have to do with what I have said? What is it in response to? How does it contradict what I have said? It's almost too vague to engage with, it reads like a truism, but its relevance to this discussion, to Mamdani, to what I have said? It just reads as pointless straw man and deflection. Hell, I could even argue with your "central argument", but WHY? Why do I need to tilt at every vague windmill you invent?
I strongly disagree that the topic we are discussing is, holding "the reins of power in the state". At the moment 90% of my time is spent trying to keep you on task and honest. And repeatedly reminding you of what I said previously, as it doesn't match your characterizations. And of course, you had to cut my quote in half because the second half demonstrates the inconsistency lol.
I think basically anyone reading this comment section can easily identify that the pattern is excuse-making for Mamdani.
Hell let's just look at this one quoted section.
You outlined what Mamdani's thinking is? Are you in his head? How do you know? Aren't we talking about just some guy, a bourgeois politician? I can describe him following the same pattern as his predecessor and the leverage (largely nonexistent) that anti-bourgeois organizations have over him. How can you describe Mamdani's thinking? Is he your buddy? You see some kinsihp or something? No, you are being overly generous about possible reasons he could be justified in not firing his police chief in order to ensure he meets his campaign promises. This is going above and beyond to make excuses for him.
You saying you think he's wrong does not change the attempt to rationalize and justify. Look at what this was meant to be a response to and tell me how it responds to it as anything other than rationalization agianst critique.
I said they are important in normalizing anti-Zionism; I didn't say they are THE ONLY IMPORTANT people when it comes to "this topic"
If you can't even bother to get that aspect of my argument correct, then I'm not wasting my time with the rest of your semantic essay
You skipped again over 90% of my response and are now complaining about what I "can't even other to get". Oh dear.
Read what I said again more slowly. What I said and what you said actually mean different things. I will explain if you need it, but I think you are fully able to read and understand.
Semantics is meaning, particularly the meaning of words. It's common to dismiss others as just arguing semantics, but this is almost always just a bad faith defense of wrong ideas or an aversion to discussing them. Because semantics is highly relevant to the flim-flammery of opportunist language, the most important aspect being conflation. Is Mamdani simply an "anti-Zionist" as you keep saying? Or is he an opportunist that used "anti-Zionism" and is not actually sticking to it (there being virtually zero material reason for him to do so)? If we are lazy with our application of terms and apply them broadly, we can describe a wishy-washy opportunist in terms that imply a committed pro-Palestine cadre has taken control of New York.
It is... embarrassing for a Marxist to complain about semantics. What do you think Marx was doing?
Again, it all boils down to conspiracy, which, of course is immune to counter-evidence, such as the fact if he was an opportunist, then he would've joined the zionist parade that took place the other day and used the excuse of "supporting New York Jews", since that would've materially benefited him. The opportunist just missed the perfect opportunity to cozy up to the Zionist power base.
Yet he didn't, and your arguments can't account for that, beyond more conspiracy theorizing, classic political idealism
You want to haggle over wording because you can't deal with how the pipeline of power actually works, ignoring the realities of municipal politics and assuming without evidence that Mamdani can just abandon his base without consequences, a potential risk of national federal politics but not city-municipal level formations. This is why you rely on semantics, because material reality escapes you
This right here, says EVERYTHING I need to know about you, Marx did not argue semantics; he argued mechanics gleaned from observation, critique through analyzing concrete conditions and economic flows, Marx famously broke away from the Young Hegelians precisely because they believed that fighting over the "meaning of words" and ideas was how you changed society
You are, in the most fundamental sense of the word, a Liberal
Oh I guess we're starting with my 7th sentence this time and ignoring the rest, lol.
There is nothing conspiratorial about a bourgeois politician having no real commitment to following through on their campaign promises and not standing by groups and movements they used to get elected. It is, in fact, the open and plain norm. Same as liberals dithering about how that is smart and good.
Opportunists walk the line, they try to play "both sides". The classic version is variations on class collaborationism, presenting it instead as a practical way to achieve working class aims. Consequently, they absolutely take actions that seemingly work in both directions. You'll notice that his "action" in this case is passive, it's basically just PR, it has no real material impacts. This is what can be pointed to, apparently, for concrete action. Yes, he will surely receive pushback from Zionist lobbies that push no matter what and are quite well funded. But this is a fairly minor action, is it not? Just not attending a fascist parade? But then, more materially, when it comes time to push against settler stolen land sales? Why, send the cops! That's a more direct action, don't you think? Hard to be more concrete than the use of state violence... against pro-Palestinian protesters.
You say this is something immune to counter-evidence, but of course it would be simple: Mamdani could consistently be on the side he proclaimed to be, not wishy-washy and doing this shit. The direct evidence of the opportunism is already staring you in the face. And again, this is just one guy. If he were backed by and beholden to a disciplined party, we could discuss what strategic retreats might look like, but we aren't even at that minimal level of seriousness. It's just one socdem politician beholden to bourgeois electoral interests.
It really seems like your idea of opportunism is that you pretend to be on one side and then fully and nakedly join the other once elected to be a government official. And you wonder why we discuss semantics...
It is... trivial and implied, not even something to account for. I think you may also not know what idealism is? That's certainly not a correct use of the Marxist term, even putting aside the flawed logic.
I'm not haggling. I'm telling you when you aren't communicating correctly or coherently. You make references to terms but use them in contexts that don't make sense. You use exaggerative, praising language for electoralist projects, wrapping in in vague socialist terms, and use denigrating language for on the ground organizing efforts. I try to figure out what you might mean between all this noise and explain, and you ignore 90% of what I respond with. This is a pattern.
We must of course discuss semantics because you don't seem to actually know the basic lexicon of Marxism even though you are constantly deploying it to promote opportunists or denigrate those with whom you're disagreeing. It is made the subject through your behaviors. It is not my fault I have to try and figure out your meaning through the obscurantism. It is also not my fault that I have to correct mistakes that you make central to your responses, repeatedly.
And we return to you just making things up about my positions again. So creative! PS at the risk of talking about semantics (oh no!) I'm not sure what Mamdani's base even is aside from DSA liberals that 100% oppose discipline.
If it's material reality I assume you can refer to concretely it and explain yourself with specifics. Quote me saying the things you just alleged I did. Go ahead! Be specific! Material reality needs to be respected!
PS the thing you are referring to is at best a political strategic reality, though hardly one I've promulgated. Oh no semantics! Why on earth would I correct your repeated misuse of language to try and berate me!?
lmao. Capital, Chapter 1: Commodities. Hmm. What does Marx spend his very first words on, at length? Surely it isn't a precise and careful semantic overview of the commodity as the central object of production for understanding capitalist relations. Marx was accutely focused on semantics, it's a large part of the point regarding how capitalism obscures its core relations - one must elucidate those core relations to understand and oppose the capitalist system. Capital is a critique of political economy, after all, and spends much time talking about how political economists of the time are wrong, in part from obscuring true relatiosns, calling something one thing when it's really another. For example, again from early in Chapter 1 of Capital: "Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour spent on it, the more idle and unskilful the labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be, because more time would be required in its production. The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour-power." Putting aside the fact that Marx is 100% concerned with semantics there, he is also correcting past and contemporary political economists' views on the labor theory of value.
Have you read anything Marx wrote? I have met a lot of DSA Marxists who kind of just fake it and you talk a lot like they do.
Oh deary me I'm getting the vapors
Yes, send NYPD to the synagogues. First they'll listen to him and it definitely wouldn't result in a federal crackdown. Again pure political idealism, daydreaming bullshit, immune to the actual prevailing conditions
In one sentence you acknowledge he's a single guy, and then in the next you demand he perform political feats that require the backing of a disciplined, fully developed workers' party. Do you believe the DSA is a fully developed workers' party? Meanwhile I'm going here in reality, pointing out he's normalizing socialist politics at the municipal level and that's an acceptable progression of our politics
Reducing a deep materialist and structural critique into a mere argument over vocabulary and definitions, Marx is not doing linguistic analysis; he is doing an ontological and material analysis of social forms. When he breaks down the commodity into use-value and exchange-value, he isn't saying, "People are using the wrong words for things." He is saying, "The material reality of capitalist production forces physical goods to take on these dual, contradictory social properties." That is real abstraction, not mere linguistics, and it's very liberal to confuse that reality
Also Marx in that paragraph is not "correcting past and contemporary political economists' views on the labor theory of value." He's not talking to economists at all, Adam Smith and David Ricardo his two biggest influences, already had that real abstraction locked down, he's talking to the layperson and building to an explanation of the concept of Socially Necessary Labor Time
Also by trivializing Marx's work as a battle of linguistics, you completely miss the fact he isn't simply saying bourgeois economists chose the wrong labels, but that the common analysis of capitalism in his day made two fundamental structural errors: Naturalizing Capitalism and Fetishizing Surface Appearances while ignoring the underlying dynamics of social production, that's not a question of semantic elucidation, that's a failure to perceive structural historical reality
You cannot linguistically "correct" commodity fetishism, because it is built into the objective structure of how a market economy operates. It requires a transformation of the material mode of production, not just some clearer dictionary
Hate to break it to you, but your argument is structurally rooted in liberal philosophy and epistemology, as if capitalism is simply a conceptual error or a giant linguistic misunderstanding. In Marxism, capitalism is a physical, violent rearrangement of human labor and resources, Marx wasn't trying to win a debate by redefining words; he was mapping the mechanics of an objective, physical system. Also your conception implies all a politician needs to do is say the right things, do the right things and perform symbolically in a "socialist" manner and everything else will fall into place, under a worldview like that no wonder you perceive anyone explaining prevailing conditions and structural barriers as "excuse making"
This time we start with my 12th sentence!
PS weren't you bailing? You're just shitposting in the other reply now.
????
He did send NYPD to the synagogue. You seem to not know this? You think it is a hypothetical and absurd? It seems you don't even know what I am referencing? Oh dear.
The irony.
These are not really in contradiction if you omit the part I didn't say: "requires". A disciplined party with sufficient structure and internal organization can make that happen, it is a force for this. Otherwise it is... just one guy, a bourgeois politician, and you're betting on him having that discipline all on his own (of course that one guy basically never does). Discussing your completely imaginary strategizing on Mamdani's part is pointless, discussing strategic retreat in the context of a disciplined party could have value. That is what I said. You have misrepresented me yet again, and I am not speaking in riddles. Just read carefully and speak honestly.
Obviously not lol.
Oh now it's socialist politics at the municipal level, not antizionism? I wonder how often you've rote repeated this. Certainly more variations on in this conversation than anything acknowledging what I have said in reply.
Next up: skipping over 30 of my sentences in between what you quoted! I wonder what intervened.
Oh I didn't reduce it, Marx did! It's called Chapter 1: Commodities. That's one of the sentences you have conveniently pretended did not exist. He broke it down so folks could systematically understand him and his quite subtle points critiquing political economy. He spent much effort on definitions, relations, and how to present them in a particular ordering. The idea that Marx was not heavy in semantics is truly amazing, and the fact that you're doubling down so hard on this is... well I don't know quite what the best description is. It's like embarrassing, but also revealing? And shameless? It's like you're daring every person who has read Marx and knows what words mean to disrespect you.
Semantics is not only "linguistic analysis". While it is about language, its focus is on meaning of lamguage, what is meant when saying something, what a term actually means (often multiple options of course). So when Marx says, "this is what a commodity is", he's focusing heavily on semantics - he's specifically not using the common understanding, but is constructing his own redundant lexicon so as to best explain his understanding, and in doing so relating the two. When he talks about what value is, he is focusing on semantics and most who are naive to Marx have a lot of trouble understanding value as a result, since the word has many other meanings that can easily distract. Every time Marx some comment like, "critics suppose [term] is [x], but is is actually [y]", he is making a semantic point, actually the same kind I have been making and that makes your belly ache like nothing else, apparently.
Ontology is virtually inseparable from semantics. And I am convinced you don't know what materialism is in this context. Regarding these ideas, in general, Marx was primarily focused on social relations, with those of economic production being primary. I was going to keep talking about materialism but I don't think I'm speaking to a particularly receptive audience.
Oh, is that all semantics is? When I tell you you're using a word wrong? This explains your behavior, but it is also incorrect.
Oh, no. Incorrect. Commodities are not just physical goods, though the examples usually are to help people understand. And the purpose of dividing up these various values is for... guess what... semantic clarity. Marx is divvying up the forms of "value" so their properties, hidden in plain sight, can be explained in isolation, and so that value, what he really cares about, can receive focus. Value was previously conflated when it came to these 3, you see, inasmuch as value was previously described. This has to be deconstructed for Marx to make his points.
Just word salad over and over again, recycling various words that puff up your chest or something. Marx's work there is specifically a critique of political economy, of pointing out errors in the overall approaches of classical political economists, beginning with a fundamental deconstruction of commodities that can be built upon later. It involves both semantics and she, abstraction, and more than that as well. You're painting yourself into a little dichotomous box that simply doesn't apply. I say "X has Y" and you chime in with "but X also has Z, lib!", thinking yourself clever.
Incorrect. He was in part referring to a criticism of the labor theory of value, one that says, "if more labor time means more value, why isn't the slow worker's commodity more valuable?" This hews close to Ricardo's definitions and certainly his critics'.
Repetitive
Incorrect. You keep saying "X has Z" as if it contradicts "X has Y" by default. This is such a basic error if thinking, I can only see it as a lie that I said: "Marx only wrote about semantics".
Second time you did that. I wonder if there will be more.
More word salad. The pieces kind of make some sense in isolation, but trying to make sense of them together might be impossible. Marx was of course talking about even more than that, but sure naturalizing capitalism was one aspect he critiqued and stated pretty plainly as a historical truth regarding modes of production. Regarding fetishization I'm not really sure what you're trying to refer to. In the part we are discussing it is a social property of commodities where capitalist production obscures origins and puts, in consideration, almost fantastical properties on the commodity itself. Both of these are highly semantic in their discourse, of course, especially the latter in how he describes the way in which properties and statements are made about commodities themselves as if they have them, rather than a relation being highly obscured.
I don't want to try and guess what you might mean by "structural historical reality". I think it's just words you think sound meaningful.
Oh dang now my whole argument about linguistically correcting commodity fetishism is out the window. Dang it! My life's work!
Oh wow fake nonexistent Chana says a lot of weird things in your pattern of speech, don't they? I wonder why my "argument" that you're referring to even is in this context.
Not entirely, as you're describing something in the vein of vulgar materialism. A common mistake for those who haven't read Marx. The dialectic is a bit more nuanced than that, exploring both objective and subjective in his analysis. Remember, Marx also critiques philosophers of only trying to understand the world, saying instead the point is to change it. Though this is now the third or fourth straw man about what I said regarding Marx and semantics. Exact same format, even.
Pure invention.
You know it's kinda incredible someone could construct such a tortured conception of Marxism by way of a simple category error. The issue isn't whether Marx used precise language (he obviously did); it's whether the core object of his critique is semantic
You suppose when Marx says something like, "Critics suppose [term] is [x], but it is actually [y]," he is making a semantic point about what a term means, he's not, you're conflating scientific correction with linguistic definition; that's a category error
When he corrects people on "value," he isn't saying, "Let's agree to define this word differently." He is saying, "You think value is a natural property of an object (like its weight), but I am proving to you that it is actually a hidden social relationship forced onto that object by the mechanics of capitalist exchange." That is a correction of scientific fact, not vocabulary
You also confuse the presentation with the inquiry, another logical trap, the irony is Marx actually addressed this exact point in the Postface to the Second Edition of Capital. He distinguishes between his mode of inquiry (Forschungsmethode) and his mode of presentation (Darstellungsmethode), the raw, chaotic, empirical reality of industrial England structured using a highly ordered, abstract, almost purely logical progression of definitions
So yes, he uses a "lexicon-like" presentation because he is trying to peel back layers of a deeply confusing system. But the logic driving Chapter 1 is not the logic of language; it is the logic of the value-form as it actually evolved historically. Marx didn't invent the concept that abstract labor creates value; the historical development of the market economy invented it, and Marx is just mapping it
Also Marx did not create his lexicon out of whole cloth; it wasn't a personal or insular, his concepts: use-value, exchange-value, money, commodities, were the standard terms of classical political economy used by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Jean-Baptiste Say. Marx's genius was not that he invented a new vocabulary, but that he took the existing vocabulary of bourgeois economics and showed that its internal logic logically led to crisis and exploitation, he didn't invent "surplus value" as a cool new word; he uncovered the actual, uncompensated hours of human sweat that bourgeois economists were hiding behind the word "profit."
Also your assertion that "Ontology is virtually inseparable from semantics." while the new vogue in certain branches of modern linguistic philosophy completely misses the entire point of his materialist inversion of Hegel
For Marx, social ontology (what exists) exists through physical human practice, completely independent of whether we have the language to describe it
A 19th-century child factory worker in Manchester didn't need to understand the "semantics" of surplus value, nor did the factory owner. The owner didn't have to read Marx to exploit the child; the objective, material pressures of market competition forced him to do it. The social relation happens in the physical world first. Language just plays catch-up
Capitalism's distortions are real illusions generated by the material act of exchange, but that doesn't mean you overthrow the structural laws of capitalism through semantics; it will continue to function smoothly until the material relations of production are physically overturned
Fun fact: most category errors are... semantic. Including many of those discussed by Marx.
I'm thinking your approach to disagreement is to just be unpleasant and act in bad faith until the other person decides it's not worth their time. And in defense, rely on obscurantism and straw men. Wouldn't want to reply to what the other person is actually saying, eh? This most recent reply doesn't directly address anything I said!
There's something you learn over time when you eventually become knowledgeable in one or more topics. Those who are naive, insecure, or simply unaware rely on obscurantist language. They love to use jargon in place of clear statements, directly as a substitute, to try and give the appearance of understanding, the appearance of belonging among the group they to become a peer in. Those who are secure, knowledgeable, comfortable in the topic? Yes they can use the jargon, but they try to do so for clarity, and do not rely on it to obscure.
Your comments consistently demonstrate the former, not the latter. The point is not clarity, but to be pedantic. Perhaps to simply avoid discussing what is actually at hand? You do seem to be averse to a direct conversation, to addressing what I actually say. Not just ignoring 90% of what I say, but then additionally taking the time to invent and respond to things I didn't. This quoted bit has both properties.
Precision in language: not a point I have discussed outside of you pretending at knowledge and constantly misusing socialist (and other) terminology.
Whether the core object of his critique is semantic: nah just quote me. What did I actually say about Marx and semantics? You are clearly averse to what I actually said, as it isn't that!
See you don't even know what semantics is! In an example of pure irony, Marx often uses semantic points to actually point out category errors, that is literally what commodity fetishism describes. One of the things we're talking about. The commodities themselves do not truly have the properties with which they are allegedly imbued. Marx points this out: what does it mean when a commodity is ascribed those properties? Does it really have them? Can a commodity itself have them? Generally, no! Yet he critiqued political economy for doing so, for saying, say, that a commodity actually possesses value, obscuring the more accurate understanding that value is a "crystallization" of labor in production.
But why am I explaining this? You obviously don't care. You're belaboring the absurdly obvious point that Marx focused quite a bit on semantics to make his points, including the very first chapter of Capital. It's not a point even worth discussing, it's like you're trying to say the sun is purple and those who disagree are liberals. Is it a good use of time to tell that person what purple is and what a spectrograph might say?
Now semantics is vocabulary...
"You say value is X, but it's actually Y" and you struggle and still think Marx isn't talking semantics.
Oh do you want to have this discussion auf Deutsch to be extra pedantic? Vielleicht koennen wir. Oder nicht. Schade.
More word salad. Nothing to be found here, it's not even connected to the premise you just presented. Forschung and Darstellung are not rejections of semantics in any way. You seem... deeply confused.
It is literally about defining the commodity, semantically splitting "value" to do so, and in the context of contemporary political economists' understandings, especially how those semantic category errors obscure the true relations. Can you read the title of Chapter 1 for me out loud? I wonder what Marx had to say about Ricardo and Destutt. Another way to tell newbies: they never read the footnotes.
Tedious, irrelevant.
Tedious, irrelevant, though also not really correct. Marx did forward new meaning and language in some of those examples.
More word salad. Now semantics is just inventing new vocabulary! Now we're discussing Marx's genius! Wouldn't want to discuss what I've actually said huh? Keep talking about literally everything else.
Oh you did eventually get around to mentioning something I actually said. Good job. Pat on the back.
I assume this was meant to be a complete sentence and thought but ended up as... whatever this is. Not parseable.
Cool story what does it have to do with what I said?
Look at how long it takes you to say simple things. How many words, how things must be injected for no purpose other than to give the trappings of familiarity.
Cool Marx described phenomena, description didn't create the phenomena. Wow. Oh amazing. I can't believe it. Blowing my mind here. Next you're going to tell me Newton didn't invent gravity. Give me time to recover first, though. And try to keep that revelation to fewer than 4 paragraphs.
A straw man addressed in my previous comment. Just shameless behavior.