“To understand Marx is to be a Marxist.” — Bertell Ollman
Marxism isn’t something you can un-see once you see it. I’ve had conversations with business owners before when they were explaining basic Marxist concepts without knowing it. A lot of people are kind of struggling to find an explanation for why everything is so fucked up, but because no one has actually explained Marxism to them or recommended that they read Marxist texts (teachers will lose their jobs and get blacklisted if they do this, parents are also disincentivized to mention it because Marxism can also help with class struggle at home), they basically find themselves having to reinvent the wheel, even though at this point we have almost two centuries of Marxist scholarship and plenty of praxis to confirm the theory. Bourgeois folks definitely understand Marxism, there’s just certain aspects they don’t want to understand (the overall tendency for profit to decline for example), and the proletariat also often gets the basics (my boss is my enemy and all bosses are enemies) without having even heard of Marx. It’s the labor aristocracy (IMO), trapped in the mid-deck of the sinking Titanic, which is confused.
Sorry, meant to quote this:
parents are also disincentivized to mention it because Marxism can also help with class struggle at home
Ahh, this is Harriet Fraad’s thing, but Wilhelm Reich also used Marxism in The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Basically, in the modern nuclear family, there is a contradiction between the parents and children. Parents may want one thing, children may want another. A parent might not want his kids to learn about Marxism because they might team up against him or realize how society itself enforces the enslavement of marriage for instance. I also felt like this sometimes as a teacher. I was intensely aware of how being alone in a room with dozens of students put me at a great disadvantage. If they had only gotten over their own petty internal disputes, they could have been running the classroom, the school, and who knows what else.
Honestly it's extremely rare.
You'll find them in history departments and political science departments and in the occasional former-Marxist apostate but aside from that at best you're going to come across people who have read the Manifesto and there's every chance that the anti-communist indoctrination they've absorbed over their lifetime has clouded their interpretation of it.
I'm not saying that you have to agree with Marx to understand him but if you want to understand Marxism then you have to weigh it based on its internal arguments rather than projecting your own beliefs onto it.
The overwhelming majority of the vocal anti-communists I encounter are charlatans and blowhards, and the most tragic part about it is that, to people who have done the reading, it's painfully obvious and yet they'll be out there proclaiming that Marxists are "too afraid to debate them" and that the only response they get from Marxist is a dismissive "Read theory".
But there's another side to this story.
When you've actually done the reading, there are some very clear tells when a person hasn't even done the most basic reading themselves. This is the exact reason why they get told to read theory or they get dismissed and ridiculed; flat earthers get ridiculed by geologists and physicists because flat earthers don't take the science seriously so there's absolutely no reason why a scientist would take them seriously. But also, when you have a person who doesn't even grasp the very fundamentals or even the basic terms then it makes a discussions functionally impossible because the knowledgeable person is going to be tasked with interpreting what the ignorant person is attempting to say (rather than taking their words on face value), extrapolating out their argument from there, rebutting their argument (which, at any point, the ignorant person can deploy a motte-and-bailey tactic by claiming "that's not what I meant!!") making their own argument in a way that the message can be adequately conveyed across the barrier of scientific illiteracy, and all the while they also need to correct the ignorant person and educate them on their misconceptions and their gaps in knowledge while defending their own position.
Anyone who knows their stuff quickly becomes very dismissive of the arrogant attitude of a person who claims to know their shit when it's obvious that they don't because they've probably already tried playing a straight hand, as described above, and fast learned how impossible a task it is.
Here's a small example from something recently:
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So, on the face of this it seems pretty innocuous, right?
This comment was in response to a topic about Marxist-Leninists btw. To a person who knows the basics, there are some major tells in what this other person says.
A person who knows the basics understands that "Leninist" is a term that Trotskyists identify with. Marxist-Leninist is a term that "Stalinists" identify with. While they are both part of the philosophical tradition of Marxism and Leninism, to conflate the two is like confusing a Catholic with a Protestant; these are both part of the same religion and the same religious heritage however they are very much in opposition to one another.
A person who wants to be taken seriously when talking about Christianity must be able to know the difference between Catholics and Protestants, and there's no way that they'd accidentally confuse the two. In the same way, a person who can't tell the difference between a Leninist and a Marxist-Leninist is really tipping their hand by signalling that they don't know what they're talking about.
Now the next tell is "material analysis". That's what a person does in a lab with a microscope.
They are attempting to refer to "materialist analysis", which is analysis based in dialectical and/or historical materialism. Materialism -> Materialist. There's no mistaking this one. You wouldn't call someone "a Catholicism" because, if you are at all familiar with Christianity then you'd know that the term is "Catholic" and you wouldn't slip up on that. In the same way this applies to Marxism and the term "materialist".
Of course there's no way that I was going to teach this fool how to polish their arguments to better pass it off as if they're more knowledgeable than they are; if you don't take the subject matter seriously then you don't get taken seriously in my book, and this applies to the overwhelming majority of anti-communists in my experience.
Yes. They were well read individuals and either academics or students.
The average person (depending on location) is anticommunist. The average person has never read a single page of political philosophy. Why would you expect them to have read, or even have an interest for, Marx.
Have you read modern works by liberal economists and philosophers? I know I haven't, and it's an issue.
Neither do the masses need to read Marxist theory. Mao led them to found the PRC when few people could even read and write.
I would actually strongly recommend reading liberal philosophy. I haven't read any modern liberal philosophy but I really would recommend reading the big names in liberalism like Hobbes and Rousseau and Locke etc.
It can be useful because in many respects Marx reacted against liberal political theory and wrote in response to it. It's also useful to draw upon when engaging with liberals.
From a historical materialist perspective, it can be really illuminating to do a critical examination of liberal political philosophy from the understanding that this is one of the best representations of the superstructure reflecting the base.
As an example here, although this is not speaking about the base in the strictest sense (i.e. being about production) Hobbes wrote in a time which was wracked by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants in Europe, and with this in mind it becomes obvious that the political conclusions that he arrives at are a direct product of the realities that he faced and the solution to the otherwise intractable social problems that he saw all around him.
That's not to excuse his position but I'm sure you get what I'm driving at here.
If we understand liberalism broadly in the sense that it's designed as a way of mediating struggles which would otherwise devolve into civil war and, as such, it's essentially a transposing of this struggle onto a sort of agreed-upon political boxing ring then it helps to clarify what's going on by giving this a broader historical and philosophical context. It also gives insight into how liberalism manages crises and, especially, in how it fails to manage crises and ultimately how it has sown the seeds of its own destruction.
As we see the breakdown of the so-called "liberal order" (cursed phrase) we see a natural result which is edging closer to civil war.
While I'm loath to call the January 6th event an insurrection (those clowns carefully walked between the velvet ropes, took selfies and nabbed souvenirs for God's sake - there was nothing truly insurrectionary about it) this event shouldn't have come as a surprise to people who understand what conditions liberalism sprang forth from and the current conditions that are reemerging as liberalism breaks down under the weight of its own inherent contradictions.
It's also kinda fun on an intellectual level to watch as the diehard liberal argues against the very values of the system that they ostensibly uphold and/or as they push for policy which undermines the very foundations of liberalism. There's a lot of room to play the contradictions there if you ever feel like engaging a liberal in a debate when you know the political philosophy that they're oblivious to.
Ultimately it's an intellectual and philosophical pursuit but there unless you're really interested in the history of ideas or political philosophy then there's more important stuff for you to focus on; to be post-liberalism is admirable but to be anti-liberalism is imperative.
Yeah it makes sense as a Marxist to do so. I'd recommend, and intend to do so myself, to read modern works, because you should always read things that go against your biases, in general. It's silly and dogmatic to only read work by Marxist academics, and worse yet to only read
I gotta be honest with you, and this is probably my ignorance and my bias shining through (a very powerful combination indeed), but I can't really think of any modern liberal philosopher that isn't primarily an economist besides... Fukuyama I guess? lol. And I really don't have time for him or anyone else who is just an apologist or who gets their ideas directly out of the trashcan of ideology.
I'm open to being convinced otherwise though.
Nah I mean economists. Piketty is the first name that comes to mind - broadly left wing, makes a strong case, but comes from a different philosophical background (not Marxism). It's why I am planning on reading Arrighi — a post-marxist but left wing view on imperialism.
Michael Hudson is great, but he doesn't challenge a Marxist's worldview, simply because he too is a Marxist. But a modern one, and a good economist, and a proper academic.
See how I don't even know real liberal academics to read? I want to improve on that. I'm still looking for a modern liberal analysis of imperialism
Arrighi is good but a tough read (I got through about 100 pages before I tapped out). I've been reading Hegemony and Socialist Strategy recently, and while it's also tough it is holding me a bit better. It could be that I need to revisit Arrighi given how I'm doing with this current book.
John Rawls died like 20 years ago but he's pretty modern, definitely a liberal, and definitely not an economist.
Not beyond le communist manifesto.
Vast majority have no concept of even just the timeline between Marx and Lenin, let alone the division of who wrote about what or what each of them did.
In a way, they’re not exactly wrong…? I was partly pushed out of Trotskyism and into MLism by the realization that Stalin pretty much did what Lenin or Marx would have done, had they been in his position.
every iteration of the struggle that builds on past theory to keep a socialist project alive is such an incredible gift. exactly as you said it - i don't see how Trots can stay Trots when theyre actually being intellectually rigorous and not doing some anti-Soviet hero worship revisionist type thing
I don’t think Trotsky was all bad, just that he became bad when he turned against the USSR. I will also critically support Trots if they ever actually manage to do anything other than sell newspapers.
To their credit though I think the WSWS is valuable on its own. There's not a lot of left wing news out there available in the West and WSWS can be a decent entry point into a greater leftist environment, as well as providing valuable labor news in its own right.
From my own reading Trotsky seems to make more sense psychologically than revolutionarily. He goes through this revolution with Lenin and Stalin and others and then loses power to Stalin after Lenin's death and worries that Stalin will destroy what they worked so hard to build. While we know him to be wrong enough that Stalin guides the USSR successfully in its fight against Nazism and then it outlasts him by another 40 years, I can't imagine how big a blow that would be to the ego in the moment without the benefit of that hindsight.
pretty much. yeah would never say he was ALL bad but can say historically he's not really a man worth building an ideology off of
I don’t think Lenin would have liquidated the party to the point that it became powerless to push back against the growing power of the bureaucracy, which I think is one reason why the USSR doesn’t exist anymore. I think Stalin did a lot of good actually, but liquidating (mostly kill, but sometimes just expel, sure) the majority of party members serving in positions of authority was pretty bad, both morally and in terms of the long term health of socialism in the USSR; and not something I think Lenin would have done. I think Lenin would have ended the NEP and collectivized agriculture at some point, but not in the manner or timescale that Stalin did (I think Lenin would have listened to Bukharin on those issues). Of course, that said Lenin and Bukharin probably don’t industrialize fast enough to stop the Nazis in WWII (imo the best argument in favor of Stalin) so idk.
This is my hot take and it's about as close as I'll veer to an anti-communist position but I'm on the soft end of believing that the USSR faced off against so many problems internally and externally that it probably wasn't going to survive in the long run.
You can call me a determinist or accuse me of taking Simone Weil too seriously (although I arrived at this position before I came into contact with Weil's thought, for whatever that's worth) but I just don't really see how the USSR could have sustained itself while also overcoming the obstacles that were in its way because each obstacle required a certain response and that response would have major consequences for the future of the USSR which would bring about new obstacles that would (arguably) inevitably become more intractable and in order to overcome them it had to make major compromises or to completely reverse course on certain things (which would either have either required immense foresight and political will to achieve or the opportunity to reverse/change course was already foreclosed upon by previously made choices).
I don't engage with this sort of speculative thinking very much because it's unbecoming of a materialist but you have problems like the need to centralise and modernise agriculture in the USSR vs the need to liquidate the kulaks vs the need to prevent the famine, as an example.
Imo you maybe get to pick two of those three options. But if you don't liquidate the kulaks then you risk counter-revolution from below, so you have to do that and you have to do that ASAP.
But if you do liquidate the kulaks then the people who are, at that point, the largest force for organising agricultural production is also taken off the board and you need to redevelop a new structure for organising agricultural production and as much as kulaks were selfish scumbags, they had a vested interest in their little fiefdoms being as productive as possible in order to profit as much as possible. This is where I hit the limits of my knowledge (and I'm not sure if there's any research out there on this) but I suspect that they held the best knowledge on farming practices for their local areas at the time (aside from the weird orthodox superstitions where crops wouldn't be planted or harvested prior to certain religious observances). When you take out the kulaks, you need to reorganise agriculture and you run the risk of things becoming anarchic and you lose the positive conservative forces that had stabilised agriculture up until that point (for better or worse) because now everyone is suddenly contributing their two cents on what should or should not be done and you have to find the right people with the right ideas and put them into leadership positions with the hopes that not only their ideas are right for the conditions but that they'll somehow thrive as a leader in their community. And you're probably coordinating all this via sporadic telegrams from the Central Committee to Secretary Kosior who is then issuing directions to party cadre who are doing their best to implement these policies while administering tracts of land the size of France using goddamn bicycles.
It's a pretty cursed situation to be in and it's almost destined to be a comedy of errors until the bugs get ironed out.
But if you coopt the kulaks and use them as the force for modernising agriculture then you give them a lot of additional power which risks them using that against your revolution (and they would have) except with extra political and economic clout that you afforded them then they would have been much more likely to at least critically undermine the entire revolution (and it would have) if not to overthrow it entirely but also then you face the backlash from disaffected masses of the low peasants who you promised better conditions to after the revolution and all yet you've done is to provide the kulaks with better whips and so you are likely going to cause a counter-revolution from that angle as well (and it would have).
The same can be said for the NEP men, the political strife from within the party both in the early days and in the twilight of the USSR, the purges, the rapid industrialisation, the need for heavy industry vs the demands for dispensing treats, and of course WWII amongst plenty of other problems.
It was like expecting the party to thread a series of needles but all in one go with no do-overs. At some point you're going to miss, whether it's by the force of bad luck, bad information, a bad call, malicious actors, or the necessity to course correct in the here and now to continue forward in the present which has the unintended consequence of fucking things up (potentially irreparably) later on etc.
I'm glad that I won't ever find myself at the helm to face that sort of situation. Fuck that.
This is an awesome analysis and I agree 100%. I’ve thought to myself before, it’s like the Soviets were playing a video game on Expert mode without ever having played the game before. They had to face impossible problem after impossible problem and I think they did well given the challenges they faced. I do take solace in the fact that for the first few centuries of capitalism, there were all sorts of failed revolutions. Changing the world is an incredibly slow process that is faced with both successes and defeats.
While I might be critical of someone like Stalin, I generally don’t find myself judgmental about a lot of the things he gets criticized for (except for the Purges, I think that was an own goal and not helpful and not something I just say in hindsight). There were so many problems they had to face, I know I would have fared a lot worse in those situations.
I know someone who, even though they didn’t read Capital, read a lot about it through summaries and that sort of thing. They didn’t actually disagree with anything per se and thought Marx was incredibly insightful, but they just felt Marx’s analysis wasn’t relevant anymore because something about how “capitalism has proven in the last 150 years to make everyone around the world better off”.
I tried to explain that no, lots of people in the Global South in particular are not better off, how nearly all the improvement in living standards in poor countries since the mid 20th century has mostly been contained just China, and how since Marx’s time a lot of the super-exploitation has occurred within imperial core countries was just exported to the periphery. But like so many American libs, this person just sorta handwaved all that away as unimportant. I mean, of course capitalism does have an incredible ability to create capital and increase commodity production. It can improve the lives of certain strata of society and even the working class IF workers exert their class power politically; but the idea that capitalism just makes the lives of everyone better ad infinitum is not accurate.
There were people ~100 years ago like Bohm-Bawerk who I do believe read Capital with the idea to critique it. But the thing with Marx is, if you go in trying to “disprove” him you’re going to miss a lot of the important stuff and get a lot wrong. Bohm-Bawerk, who I do believe was very smart and did understand a lot of it, still got a lot wrong and Marxists like Hilferding and Bukharin dunked on him pretty resoundingly (and Andrew Kliman did too, recently). But nowadays no, the anti-Marxists greatest warrior is probably James Lindsay and that guy clearly hasn’t read any of Marx. At best he’s quote-mined the Manifesto.
all of the "improvement" is through industrialization, not some kind of market capitalism
the ussr centrally planned its industrialization after the revolution and in a matter of 4 decades, while also going through two world wars, managed to go from a agricultural society to a space exploring society. thats literally one single generation of russians being like "let's speed run this shit" and then fucking doing it while simultaneously pushing back one of the largest invasions in world history
There are critiques of Marxist writings that have merit, but they're from modern post-marxist scholars who are still socialists and still desire to see communism happen, they just think the underground of Marxist philosophy made mistakes in what they wrote regarding class analysis.
I personally haven't, not to say it's impossible, but usually they brought up incorrect definitions of socialism and over-inflated atrocities of former socialist experiment, that they didn't budge on when I tried to argue back.
I consider the person I argued with intelligent, but capitalist propoganda runs deep.
Not really. I've met a few that have read like the Manifesto or a few other works and like some secondary lit on Marx; usually completely misunderstanding things (as they don't know anything about what Marxists have done historically, the philosophical context Marx emerged from, etc.). None that have given a serious good faith effort to study Marx. And certainly not anyone who's actually studied like MARXISM (which, IMO goes way fucking beyond Marx - like Marx is important to Marxism, sure, but like if you aren't taking into account everything that's happened since then, you have no fucking idea what Marxism is). Anti-Marxists have no fucking clue.
Honestly Marxists have the only interesting and useful critiques of Marxism. It's still very useful to read lib theorists though
Yeah I got into it with an ex friend once who did read Marx. He loved philosophy and he read Capital like a philosophy text. He basically was just mad there was so much math in a philosophy text and then said that Marx was making wild unfounded predictions. He called Marx "just another Nostradamus."
Ex friend.
Yea, I read the communist manifesto in preparation for this debate
Love to write and print out a big famous article about how perfect social equality isn't my goal and is a stupid-ass idea, only for millions upon millions of idiots in the next two centuries to constantly talk about how the central tenet of my worldview is that there should be perfect social equality
The only person I've ever met who was against communism but very well read on Marx was a very odd Swedish fascist I met online once. It was the strangest conversation. He actually had a good understanding of Capital and knew what a materialist conception of history looks like.
Problem was he was also a bizarre contrarian Catholic fascist. He was against communism, but he did praise Marx's scholarship a few times. He seemed to be some kind of professor or historian though, so this might be cheating. He had to understand Marxism probably because of his job, since I think his field was some kind of 20th century history or sociology or something.
Weird guy, would have been a nice informed conversation if not for his rampant bigotry he didn't conceal. I'd hope reeducation could fix people like him but I'm not holding my breath.
