And where did that lead you? Right back to Marx. According to Wikipedia:
Chomsky does not consider Bolshevism "Marxism in practice", but he does recognize that Marx was a complicated figure who had conflicting ideas; while he acknowledges the latent authoritarianism in Marx he also points to the libertarian strains which developed into the council communism of Rosa Luxemburg and Pannekoek.[39] His commitment to libertarian socialism however has led him to characterize himself as an anarchist with radical Marxist leanings.
without actually constructing an argument of my own
The guy's literally written a book and started a magazine to convince people to be socialists. His point is that if you want to convince Americans in 2020 to be socialists, you want to give them an argument that speaks to them as Americans in 2020. It's not as if Marx is the only person who can articulate socialist ideas.
It's as much Nathan's responsibility to be willing and capable of actually engaging with Marx and Marxist works. Instead he's quote tweeting randoms to say nothing else except "old books bad".
to say nothing else except “old books bad”
Old books can absolutely be inaccessible to modern audiences. This isn't a new or a radical concept.
It isn't a radical or new concept that Nathan could just read any number of other books on Marxism and Marxist economics if he actually seeks to learn about it rather than quote tweeting randoms on Twitter. He could actually ask in good faith without being dismissive about it. Instead, he does "old books bad".
Nathan could just read any number of other books on Marxism and Marxist economics if he actually seeks to learn
And here's exactly what he's criticizing in these tweets: people who fall back on "read these books if you want to learn anything, and if you don't, you're an idiot."
READING BOOKS IS HOW YOU LEARN THINGS IM GOING FUCKING CRAZY AT THIS STUPID BULLSHIT
Did he say not to read any books, ever? Did he say not to read any books about socialism? Or did he say that relying heavily on a book from generations ago is worse than making a case for socialism today?
In early 1968, the [Black Panther] party sold copies of Mao's Little Red Book to university students in order to buy firearms. Soon thereafter, they made the book required reading and began adopting the Maoist “serve the people” model of political activity.
The Black Panther Party could teach people how to read, starting with Mao and Marx.
Is he saying not to read any socialist literature? He runs a magazine that publishes socialist literature.
there’s newish short books written by people like Michael Parenti that summarize the concepts in the old books
He's not saying don't read those books; hell, he refers to a modern leftist author right there in the screencap. He's saying that we should be summarizing leftist ideas for modern audiences and for our modern situation, not just demanding people read something from the Civil War era.
The guy publishes a socialist magazine. Do you think he disagrees with everything Marx ever said, or is he maybe making a different point here?
I think he just generally dislikes how propagandised against Marx is and what a huge mountain of hostility and distortion there is to correct in order to forge a path forwards. He therefore wants to never ever mention the name for fear of the hostility it will create in those he is seeking to reach.
He is an opportunist trying to avoid the harder but correct path.
why yes i am certain he disagrees with the materialist conception of history
That would be fine if he actually said that instead of characterizing Marxists as religious fanatics.
He does actually say that, in the same series of tweets.
Wait, so if you pick out only one thing a person says, and ignore the rest of their statements on the same topic, they might sound bad? No way!
I refuse to believe you can’t decipher between somebody cherry-picking an argument to invalidate it and someone not being okay with a public figure portraying people who encourage others to read the works of one of the most recognizable and influential writers when it comes to leftist politics as crazy cultists. I agree with the overall message and I’m not even a Marxist, this is just bad faith, Comrade.
a public figure portraying people who encourage others to read the works of one of the most recognizable and influential writers when it comes to leftist politics as crazy cultists
who encourage
He's not talking about people who give you a friendly suggestion to read this or that if you want to know more. He's talking about people who repeat "read theory" a bunch instead of explaining how socialism could actually work. And if you interpret "religion" to mean "crazy cultists," that's something you're adding, not something he's saying.
From their other posts it seems to me that hogposting is arguing for Marx to be treated as Newton is in physics - the vast majority of physicists and engineers don't read Principia or Opticks. Newton's ideas are foundational, but no-one studies "Newtonism". The central, lasting concepts have been modernised and synthesised with the broader study of physics, and there is definitely pushback in some circles at the suggestion the same should be done for Marx.
I don't think this is really Robinson's point though; he just seems allergic to anything related to Marx.
Your instinct was right, he is thoroughly anti-Marx. Here's a clip of Nathan on his podcast saying that socialists would be better off if Marx didn't exist. He rejects just about all of Marx's contributions.
It reveals that he neither does theory nor praxis
He runs a socialist propaganda outlet. He's written a book to persuade people to be socialists. How is none of that theory or praxis?
It's beyond counterproductive to rip apart someone who's undeniably working to get people over to our side.
We don't call physics Newtonology, or make young physics students read Newton's unabridged original works. Nor do we pretend that Newton is the most insightful figure for a comprehensive understanding of modern physics. He's probably not even history's most famous physicist.
Marx should be treated precisely as physics treats Newton or biology Darwin - someone to be recognized as a giant in the field who fundamentally advanced our understanding of the discipline, but not to be understood as central to the very identity of the discipline. Incidentally, that's precisely what NJR is arguing for. There may be an unfair implication that many/most people who call themselves Marxists don't already see it that way, but it's hard to reasonably dispute that there's a branding problem at the very least.
no, njr is an explicit utopian. he has no interest in “understanding the discipline” beyond identitary lines. he does not understand and goes as far as rejecting the fundamentals. marx is not a building block to his brand of socialism, no matter how much he vaguely alludes at “liking some of what he said”, marx is nothing but an obstacle
that's right instead we need epic based aoc to do it instead
We need an ideology that is not personality-based, this is why I'm rejecting Marxism in favour of Chomskyism.
My read on Robinson is that his whole shtick is to try and make socialism appear respectable to liberals. In order to do that, he needs to draw a distinction between the bad revolutionary Marxist form of socialism, and the good socialism that avoids spooking liberals by pursuing electoral paths instead of calling for a dictatorship of the proletariat. The psychology is the same as a gay guy who tries to assure straight people that not all gay men are effeminate and sex crazed--that he's one of the respectable ones.
Richard wolf and David harvey are the only respectable forms of that, because they are honest.
What particularly makes them honest?
Edit: it was a genuine question, I like Wolff, and I think that like Bernie he has an honest/earnest demeanor, but I just didn't know if there was a more substantial observation that someone had made.
I love how he wants to get away from politics of personality but then brings up Chomsky as an authority.
It's almost like understanding Marxism and the Marxist critique of economics would require you to read and engage with the works of the man who's the namesake of the intellectual tradition you're apparently so fucking curious about, or to literally even attempt to engage with any authors in the Marxist tradition
It's easier to debunk idiocy than truly understand a difficult truth.
I've spent years thinking about the implications of relativity and I'm still only like 1/3 of the way to fully understanding it.
He does engage with Marx's writings:
I blame Karl Marx for that, somewhat. Marx helped kill “utopian socialism” (my favorite kind of socialism). The utopian socialists used to actually dream of the kind of worlds they would create, conjuring elaborate and delightfully vivid visions of how a better and more humane world might actually operate. Some of these veered into the absurd (Charles Fourier believed the seas would turn to lemonade), but all of them encouraged people to actually think in serious detail about how human beings live now, and what it would be like if they lived differently. Marx, on the other hand, felt that this was a kind of foolishly romantic, anti-scientific waste of time. The task of the socialist was to discern the inexorable historical laws governing human social development, and then to hasten the advance of a revolution. According to Marx, it was pointless trying to spend time drawing up “recipes for the cook-shops of the future”; instead, left-wing thinkers should do as Marx believed he was doing, and confine themselves “to the mere critical analysis of actual facts.”
Agree or disagree with what's he's saying here, he obviously isn't just ignoring Marx.
You piss and moan about the guy not reading Marx in good faith, then you're shown he's read Marx, and instead of taking that in good faith you assume he just skimmed some quotes? Get the fuck out of here.
lmao is Nathan holding your family hostage, stop defending objectively dumb tweets, it's not that hard.
lmao you're more interested in punching people on the left than in listening to what they have to say
“utopian socialism” (my favorite kind of socialism)
is this a fucking joke
Agree or disagree with what’s he’s saying here, he obviously isn’t just ignoring Marx.
I also think he's too optimistic and too critical of existing socialist projects, but the point here is that he's not criticizing something he hasn't even read.
garbage social climber
I've personally never heard a better way to describe him.
Robinson is referencing Marxism here not entirely in the context of any particular Marxist theory (which it is clear he's never even considered reading), but at the broader orientation of people who identify as Marxists alongside Marxist organizations in it of themselves.
It is an indisputable fact that there are Marxist organizations that are hardly anything different than cults, this is especially true of trotskyist organizations. They wield no political power and they demand every single one of their members to give sizable percentages of their salaries to the organization which pays to support the political activities of their central committee members. This isn't to say they don't contribute in positive ways to their communities, but this can become cult like.
It's also unquestionable how correct Marx was about many of the flaws of capitalism, but I think it's worth questioning his view that socialism was inevitable (which is absolutely a form of magical thinking). And it's also worth noting how correct Lenin was about running left political organizations using democratic centralism for decision making.
but I think it’s worth questioning his view that socialism was inevitable (which is absolutely a form of magical thinking).
I get what you're saying here but it definitely wasn't "magical thinking."
All Marx said was that the inevitable tendency of capitalism was for more and more people to fall into the Proletariat, and for capital to consolidate as the rate of profit fell, all of which did absolutely happen.
He assumed that this would create strong conditions for socialism. What it did instead was create a century of calamity, which occasionally led to Socialism, and occasionally led to harsher reaction.
If you think about the transition from Feudalism to Liberalism, it too was inevitable, in a historical sense. But it would be easy to feel like, in 1840, like all the revolutions had failed and the monarchy would last forever. Then 1848 happened, and it still felt impossible. But 100 years later, it was basically gone in most places.
In our context, you can't ignore the protracted war capital fought since WW2 to fight contradictions and suppress socialism. FDR wasn't kidding when he said he saved capitalism. Bretton Woods was as much a Cold War effort as any coup or intervention.
And now we're clearly at the end of the road. For environmental reasons, ignoring everything else.
Whether that means Socialism or another century of calamity is yet to be seen.
Aristocracy still exists all over the world though, including in relatively developed countries from Brunei to Saudi Arabia. Liberalism wasn't inevitable just as socialism wasn't inevitable.
I still absolutely agree that it was material conditions that enabled such a change to occur but that isn't inherent to revolutionary change as theorized by Marx.
Aristocrats have been able to maintain power so long as their citizens view their actions as benevolent, the same is true of liberal democratic regimes who used levels of social democracy but also substantial propaganda to maintain the air of benevolence and greater good.
Additionally age demographics play a huge role in determining the likelihood of a popular insurrection and is a key material condition within any society seeking revolutonary change.
hold up, which trot orgs do this. Solidarity and Salt, the two biggest, definitely do not.
They probably mean the ortho-trots.
I haven't seen one in 10 years so I can't really comment on them.
You want to talk about ideology reaching near religious fanaticism, listen to Chomsky try to explain his view on Marx.
Chomsky has lots of good takes, but when it comes to Marx he just gets plain old fashioned weird.
Yeah his argument against historical materialism is super weird, and is really against economic determinism.
It's all that MKULTRA LSD water that the CIA has been pumping into him since the 60s.
Sometimes someone writes something so incredibly stupid that you have expend an egregious amount of mental energy just to decipher what point they're trying to make.
Calling everyone with whom you disagree a liberal is the 42,069th form of liberalism.
By revealing the basic laws of social development, Marxism raised history to the level of a genuine science capable of explaining the nature of every social system and the development of society from one social system to another. That was a tremendous victory for scientific thought.
Bourgeois sociologists, economists and historians could not refute the materialist conception of history, nor oppose to it a theory acceptable to the majority of bourgeois scientists. Yet many bourgeois scientists obstinately repudiate historical materialism. Why? Because it refutes the “eternity” of the capitalist system. For if the transition of society from one system to another takes place in accordance with objective laws, then it must follow that the capitalist system is bound to give way to another, more progressive social structure. And that is something not only the capitalists, but the scientists dependent on them materially and spiritually find it hard and bitter to acknowledge.
Never in the history of class society has the ruling class believed in the inevitable doom of its system. The slave-owners felt sure their system would last for ever, for had it not been established by divine will? The feudal lords who superseded them likewise believed their system had been established by divine will and for all time. But they were forced to give way to the bourgeoisie, and then it was its turn to seek comfort in the illusion that capitalism was “eternal” and “unassailable”. And many learned sociologists and historians, reluctant to break with capitalism, try in every possible way to refute the fact that the development and change of social systems follow intrinsic laws that do not depend on the will of the ruling classes and their ideologists.
Hence, bourgeois ideologists wage war on the Marxist conception of history not because it is wrong, but precisely because it is true.
I mean you do see the parallels between the bolded portion and the religious type reasoning he alluded to right?
This is something I'm struggling with personally — the culmination of my experiences, observations, and information disseminated to me have led me to start believing that Marxism/historical materialism is... well, correct. That it is based in scientific fact, that it is the most logical conclusion when presented with the evidence provided, that there's no other sound interpretation. I've never such a strong belief in something sociopolitical before, I've always tried to keep a healthy level of doubt and an open mind so I could build myself a newer conclusion based on further experience. Yet, this feels like the end of the road, like there's nothing more to be concluded, like if you disagree, you just don't have a proper understanding, and I don't know how to reconcile that. I feel so strongly as though this is the "truth" because of what I've experienced, yet I lack the skills to convey why. Got me feeling like a zealot spouting complex conspiracies.
In my experience, the important thing to realize is the unconscious psychological and social factors that lead us to adopting a belief system. We like to portray ourselves (contrasted with others) as passionlessly evaluating the sum total of the evidence following it unquestioningly, but I don't find that a particularly compelling or accurate description.
So I think in terms of a weak sort of fallibilism, where yes, I do think what I think, but I also note that I'm just some guy who is just as open to cognitive bias and social influences as anyone else. I think that is a very helpful way to mitigate notions that I am smarter or more honest or braver than anyone who just couldn't arrive at the same conclusions as me.
Thank you, Comrade. It's very easy to forget we're just as subject to those unconscious social factors around us as everyone else, and you can never be sure that you're approaching something unaffected.
Fundamentals Of Marxism-Leninism
Long live the eternal science of Marxism-Leninism.
Someone should really do something about the "Pine View School to Brandeis to Yale Law to Harvard to Bourgeois Saboteur of the Left" pipeline.
Hey folks, focus on the ways this guy's opinions are incoherent and bad, not how he dresses. Policing how people present their appearance is pretty damn shitty.
And having to point this out on a leftist forum makes me sad.
He puts himself out there as the face of friendly democratic socialism (a quirky eccentric professor type), and tries to market it to the rest of America, i think its 100% fair that he gets criticised for the image with which he has chosen to portray socialism.
Also he has really shitty takes on US imperialism, absolutely part of the Brooklyn soft-left that refuses to argue the points and counter decades of imperial propaganda.
He's a public figure so his appearance is open to scrutiny? Yeah that's going to be a really fucking helpful precedence to set on the left when we try to boost the voices of, say, trans and nonbinary people.
Having really shitty takes on US imperialism should give you enough ammo to criticize him with. Stop making excuses for shitty behavior.
He dresses like all the gay guys in my local gay neighborhood did circa 10 years ago.
Ok, fair enough. I can see how this would intersect with homophobia.
Perhaps the easiest way to understand why colonialism was so horrific is to imagine it happening in your own country now. It is invaded, conquered, and occupied by a foreign power. Existing governing institutions are dismantled and replaced by absolute rule of the colonizers. A strict hierarchy separates the colonized and the colonizer; you are treated as an inconvenient subhuman who can be abused at will. The colonists commit crimes with impunity against your people. Efforts at resistance are met with brutal reprisal, sometimes massacre. The more vividly and accurately you manage to conjure what this scenario would actually look like, the more horrified you will be by the very idea of colonialism.
One would think this revulsion was now universally shared. But that is far from being the case. The majority of British people are still proud of colonialism and the British Empire. Americans continue to show an almost total indifference to the lasting poverty and devastation inflicted on the country’s indigenous population.
From an article titled "A Quick Reminder of Why Colonialism Was Bad." Current Affairs also publishes plenty of pro-Palestine articles. Where are these bad takes on imperialism?
In particular:
When anyone points me to the Soviet Union or Castro’s Cuba and says “Well, there’s your socialism,” my answer isn’t “well, they didn’t try hard enough.” It’s that these regimes bear absolutely no relationship to the principle for which I am fighting. They weren’t egalitarian in any sense; they were dictatorships.
and:
The primary lesson here is not about “egalitarianism” or “socialism” or even “communism” since Castro, Mao, Stalin, and Lenin did not actually attempt to implement any of those ideas. Instead, the lesson is about what happens when you have a political ideology that contains a built-in justification for any amount of horrific violence. The bad part of Marxism is not the part that says workers should cease to be exploited, but the part about the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” The dominant “communist” tendencies of the 20th century aimed to liberate people, but they offered no actual ethical limits on what you could do in the name of “liberation.”
He also clearly doesn't read, Jesus Christ.
Anyway, shitting on the Cuban and Chinese revolutions is supporting imperialism and colonialism.
Here’s a classic example.
Any anarchist (and tons of other people on the left) has good-faith criticisms of the Soviet Union and other socialist projects. You can disagree with those criticisms (I disagree with many of them myself) but that doesn't make them imperialist, especially if they're coming from someone who's explicitly opposed to imperialism. To put it another way: do you have to unthinkingly support anything and everything Cuba or China does or else you're an imperialist? Of course not; critical support is a thing.
they offered no actual ethical limits on what you could do in the name of “liberation.”
This specifically is a classic anarchist or left-libertarian point: yeah, oppression by private capitalist interests is bad and needs to stop, but oppression by the state (regardless of that state's political nature) is possible, too, and is also bad and needs to stop. If you oppose the death penalty in modern America, you can oppose the death penalty in modern Cuba and China without being an imperialist.
He also clearly doesn’t read
I mean, this is just laughable, bad-faith nonsense. He cites leftist authors plenty and reviews their books. This is what bothers me about burning the guy at the stake because he doesn't show adequate reverence for Marx -- you have a guy who's unarguably doing more than his part to advance the cause of socialism and we're creating a part of the left willing to make shit up out of whole cloth to throw at him. That's not a good trend and it should be strangled in its crib.
Any anarchist (and tons of other people on the left) has good-faith criticisms of the Soviet Union and other socialist projects. You can disagree with those criticisms (I disagree with many of them myself) but that doesn’t make them imperialist, especially if they’re coming from someone who’s explicitly opposed to imperialism.
Disparaging socialist states, as a self-proclaimed socialist, by asserting that they aren't or weren't socialist or fighting for any egalitarian values whatsoever or that they were just dictatorships is reinforcing imperialist narratives. While these "criticisms" might be good faith in the sense that they're sincere, they're worthlessly simplistic and demonstrate no attempt to investigate these countries and their historical context whatsoever.
This persistent attitude among Western socialists that every socialist revolution in history was actually fake socialism, that it was just dictatorial "authoritarianism" or whatever, while insisting that Scandinavia is somehow socialist, is rooted in Western chauvinism.
To put it another way: do you have to unthinkingly support anything and everything Cuba or China does or else you’re an imperialist? Of course not; critical support is a thing.
That's a strawman. I never said you have to unthinkingly or uncritically support socialist countries. But it's clear from the piece that Robinson doesn't support them at all:
It’s that these regimes bear absolutely no relationship to the principle for which I am fighting. They weren’t egalitarian in any sense; they were dictatorships.
...
The primary lesson here is not about “egalitarianism” or “socialism” or even “communism” since Castro, Mao, Stalin, and Lenin did not actually attempt to implement any of those ideas. Instead, the lesson is about what happens when you have a political ideology that contains a built-in justification for any amount of horrific violence.
You absolutely, as a citizen living in the imperial core, have to support countries struggling against American imperialism to not be an imperialist. He doesn't.
I mean, this is just laughable, bad-faith nonsense. He cites leftist authors plenty and reviews their books. This is what bothers me about burning the guy at the stake because he doesn’t show adequate reverence for Marx – you have a guy who’s unarguably doing more than his part to advance the cause of socialism and we’re creating a part of the left willing to make shit up out of whole cloth to throw at him. That’s not a good trend and it should be strangled in its crib.
Oh come on, I obviously didn't mean that literally. No shit he reads things.
But he specifically does not read (or at least didn't understand even slightly) any of Marx, Engels, or Lenin, based on how he interpreted "dictatorship of the proletariat" to mean a literal dictatorship in the modern sense.
He's not "advancing the cause of socialism"; he's diluting it into meaninglessness and stripping it of its revolutionary character at a time when people are becoming radicalized. He's a textbook opportunist, and it's good that he's getting dunked on.
Sorry, making fun of how NJR dresses and being a leftist are not mutually exclusive
I didn't say they were, bucko. Being a leftist and being an asshole aren't mutually exclusive either. You're not furthering the cause by making fun of some guy's appearance, you're just coming up with an excuse to be a bully.
""""Leftism"""" is when you're always nice and never a meanie head
