The Anti-Marxist Arrangement
antileftistmarx.substack.com
The Problem Proposed

If you were ever curious why post-leftists, such as Aimee Terese, call themselves Marxist but not leftist, you're in luck! This article, written by Benedict Cryptofash, is the first in a series that makes the argument that Marx was not a leftist.

  • LeninWeave [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Benedict Cryptofash

    OK, you weren't joking about the name.

    On the other hand, apparently radical segments of the left, such as the Democratic Socialists of America

    lol

    For the left, Marx is the ultimate leftist, and therefore the ultimate democratic radical. For the right, Marx is the ultimate leftist, and therefore the ultimate radical Democrat.

    :jesse-wtf: who fucking cares what the rightoids think?

    Dismissing Marx’s association with the left because this term was absent from his vocabulary might lead a leftist to respond that “left/right” was not as ubiquitous in the mid-nineteenth century as it is today ... I argue, however, that ... Marx was not merely not a leftist. He was an antileftist, whose originality emerged through a ruthless criticism of the left-wing politics of his time, namely, the various schools of socialism and anarchism against which he sharpened his historical analysis of class society.

    This is just semantic masturbation over the historical meaning of the terms "left" and "right". I regret reading this already.

    This whole thing is the author beating off about how smart he is because he doesn't use "left", which might be a good point if it weren't made in the dumbest possible way. "Leftists" nowadays use it to mean "against capitalism". You can replace it with "anti-capitalist" if you want, but none of this makes whatever "post-left" ideological wankery the author is trying to convey interesting at all.