Marxism and Freud Anonymous 08-06-23 21:48:05 No. 13047
I've noticed that a lot of orthodox Marxists are also obsessed with Freud and are convinced that Freudian psychoanalysis is essential for combating fascism, and I don't understand why. Can someone explain the connection?
Anonymous 09-06-23 01:09:33 No. 13059
>>13057 > since Germanic society pre-War is definitely repressed in some form or another Lol no.
Weimar Germany was literally the most sexually liberal country in the world. Actually, part of the reason Hitler was elected was because Germans didn’t like all the sexual promiscuity going on
Anonymous 09-06-23 03:00:17 No. 13075
>>13047 OP, you are labeling "orthodox" Marxism stuff that isn't actually orthodox Marxism. My best guess is you confuse contemporary western academic Marxism for "orthodox Marxism". That's in error.
contemporary western academic Marxism do indeed try to juggle Freudan and Marxish theory.
Orthodox Marxists OTOH critiqued (and continues to critique) Freud and psychoanalysis more broadly as a bourgeois science (see Lenin's comments on it for just one example).
Anonymous 09-06-23 05:32:44 No. 13657
>>13047 I don't know if people are obsessed with Freud specifically but more psychology in general. Depending on what you mean by orthodox Marxist there could be several reasons. Some people who call themselves orthodox say it as a rejection of Lenin to say that he strayed from Marx. Those people are usually in the same group as liberals that try to use psychoanalysis to explain why people turn to "totalitarianism" and try to equate communism in practice with fascism. Some Marxists call themselves orthodox to say they are anti-revisionist for some specific change in the USSR which can vary depending on their view of how and why the USSR failed. They think its important to study psychology to explain how the masses could let the revolution be subverted. They might say something like blue jeans coca cola and rock and roll convinced people to give up on communism.
A lot of communists don't think there is a psychological reason for the failure of the USSR and think that it was overthrown by forces from the outside. Psychology might also be important to them to understand western propaganda and color revolutions and to explain them to others. Edward Bernays was the creator of modern advertising wrote a book called
Propaganda and was Freuds nephew.
>His best-known campaigns include a 1929 effort to promote female smoking by branding cigarettes as feminist "Torches of Freedom", and his work for the United Fruit Company in the 1950s, connected with the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan government in 1954.I think if your adversary is using this tool its important to understand it if you want to be able to have some kind of counter.
Anonymous 12-06-23 05:35:35 No. 17633
okay so hear me out: communism is about society and stuff right? And society is made of people And people have their subjective experience, and they have agency and also conspicuous lack in agency. This is where the unconscious comes in, and psychology as a whole after it. Freud is a very prominent historical psychologist, and actually out of the early psychoanalysts he was one of the less woo, and out of the field of psychology as it is now, psychoanalysis is one of the most focused on theoretical understanding rather than an empirical approach. Lacan sort of takes this a step further and he pivoted away from clinical work towards theory; this is relevant because so many of the different approaches in psychology have to do with selling something, but his very theoretical approach is not so easily translated to any single marketable therapy method. Given all of this, i don't get Freud hate? Tho OP: orthodox marxists like Lucaks are sort of idealistish in orientation so idk… i definitely understand the uneasyness around the big focus on subjectivity, but at the same time psychoanalysis is a science of subjectivity, and subjectivity is something we all deal with, so… it's a science of revolutionary subjects, we might as well at least consider what it has to tell us. Especially as another anon said, the bourgeoisie are using this stuff against us, because it's real, and we should know how to at least come to terms with or counter that if we can.
Anonymous 12-06-23 07:39:20 No. 17854
>>17633 Are you familiar with this?
I've not dug deep into psychology yet, only surface-level, but this was apparently the psychological theory that the soviets (pre-Khrushchevization) developed.
Would love to get some input from other comrades ITT about what you think of this, if you've read some of the papers etc.
Anonymous 04-07-23 03:00:34 No. 18532
>>13075 >Orthodox Marxists OTOH critiqued (and continues to critique) Freud and psychoanalysis more broadly as a bourgeois science (see Lenin's comments on it for just one example). site:site:www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works "freud", "psychoanalysis"
>0 results Post proofs or you're full of shit. I'm far from an expert on Freudian theory specifically, but it's obvious that it had an early impact on the socialist movement.
As for the definition of "Orthodox Marxist" - there's no universally agreed upon definition, but the people who call themselves Orthodox Marxists usually support a political strategy and party model closer to the early Second International than the Third International. Theory daddies being late Engels, early Kautsky, pre 1917 Lenin, Liebknecht, Bebel, etc. So if we're dealing with that period the connection is obvious. One of Freud's most foundational works was a case study of Ida Bauer, the sister of Otto Bauer, the Austrian Marxist leader whose whole schtick was how impeccably orthodox he was against revisionism and Bolshevism. Not just him though - Trotsky respected psychoanalysis and had his daughter moved to Berlin to undergo treatment. His confidence probably came from the fact that socialists dominated the first wave of Freudian practitioners, after all the Frankfurt School was founded starting in 1923.
Again, not an expert on Freud, but the connections seem obvious. I also very strongly doubt that the socialist movement would have preferred the alternative to Freud - for all the unconscious sex stuff people like to mock him for, his central thesis was that mental distress was a result of traumatic personal experiences. That's a hell of a lot better than mainstream biomedical psychiatry was at the time, which was deeply tied to the eugenics movement and blamed all anti-social behavior on "defective" genetics rather than a sick society.
Anonymous 04-07-23 04:30:48 No. 18533
>>18532 Humble yourself.
http://www.marxists3va6eopxoeiegih3iyex2zg3tmace7afbxjqlabmranzjjad.onion/archive/zetkin/1924/reminiscences-of-lenin.htm >Clara Zetkin - Reminiscences of Lenin (January 1924) >Chapter 6 >Women, Marriage and Sex Read the entire book, or at the very least the entire chapter.
Anonymous 04-07-23 06:18:54 No. 18534
>>18533 I stand corrected.on Lenin. You yourself state that this is "just one example", however - what are the others? I'm not trying to tear you down or to try to defend Freud's theories, I'm curious to know what classical ("orthodox") Second International Marxism thought about psychiatry.
One interesting thing I found while looking around on Marxists.org was that Karl Kautsky, who was definitely an authority of the Second International era, made a fairly in-depth critique of Freudian theory in his 2,000 page magnum opus
The Materialist Conception of History published in 1927. Here's a quote from page 58:
<Truly, the notion is absurd that the nature of primitive man, as he was prior to all culture, could be studied by examining the waste-products of civilization in Professor Freud’s office. <That is not to say anything against the importance of the Freudian hypotheses for medical science. They may stimulate it in a very fruitful manner. On that question I cannot pass judgment. But the object to which they refer, the unconscious, demands for its study, more than any other, the acutest self-criticism, sobriety, and precision. And it is just this object that most easily tempts one to arbitrary construction, exaggerations, and premature hypotheses. Unfortunately, Freud is very much inclined to such excesses, and many of his disciples have taken over from their master not his genius but his excesses. [Kautsky here quotes two passages from Freud’s Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, pp. 137, 121, and comments:] When one reads Freud, one could believe that all of man is only an appendage of his genitals. … <I have repeatedly been called on to incorporate results of psychoanalysis into my conception of history. However, I have not yet found any that would cast a new light on the historical process. 1 therefore sec no reason to move onto this, for the present, at least for me as a layman, still very insecure territory. Should others who are more familiar with the nature of psychoanalysis want to draw upon it for the solution of historical problems, there is no objection to that; only it must be demanded that they understand something not only about psychoanalysis, but also about history and political economy. Without these, a conception of history is impossible.Interesting stuff. It's worth noting that the bulk of
Materialist Conception.. is said to have been written
before 1914, with the project put on hold in favor of Bolshevik-bashing polemics and the like, so I'm especially curious when these lines were written. I still stand by my claim that classical / orthodox Marxists originally became interested in Freud's theories, rather than cabal of academic Freudians suddenly attaching themselves to Marxism at some point.
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