There is power in Marxism that you cannot find in other systems of ideas. Marxism is a totality; if you’re a committed Marxist, you can’t pick and choose where to apply it. You cannot have a bit of Marxism for breakfast and a bit of liberalism for lunch. Choosing to be a Marxist means examining every facet of the social world through a rigid system that rejects esotericism, magic, or religious thinking.
But when you step outside your Marxist bubble, you realize: people are fucking idiots. Not "idiots" meaning "stupid," but ἰδιώτης (idiotes), an Ancient Greek term for a private person indifferent to politics or public life. Most people refuse to see the connection between politics and their daily existence. They prioritize a "good" private life: a stable job, a wife who cooks and cleans, 1.8 children, maybe a dog, a home, and holidays twice a year (sorry, Americans, this is Europe). Young Marx (or Engels, I can't remember) once called this an "animal’s life": unreflective, driven by instincts the bourgeoisie instilled in workers. Tragically, this remains true 150 years later. The separation of private and public life poisons any cohesive society.
As capitalism’s crises deepen, bourgeois propaganda (mass media, PR) aggressively pushes unscientific, esoteric, and religious ideas. I told my family I’m a materialis - not chasing money, just rejecting spirits - and they got sad for me. Like I’m some empty husk because I don’t "feel" ghosts. It’s even more exhausting to explain that most "personal" thoughts aren’t original. Humans rarely have new ideas; we recycle old ones. Yet people resent being asked to examine their beliefs. They deny that their desires are manufactured by mass media, or that history predates them. Many cling to a nonexistent sentimental past or an idealized future. I’ve developed profound hatred for the state, family, private property, and religion. My mother understands my critiques of the state, religion, and property, but family is sacred to her. Explaining its evolution as a social structure is pointless. This mental block leads to a common schema: individual → family → nation. You see this everywhere. ("States are cities; cities are families.") Most people can’t grasp their own historicity.
This is why meaningful mass political action is nearly impossible today. As a Marxist, you must constantly fight: first, to stay sharp and avoid sinking into the swamp of bourgeois society; second, to drive change against bourgeois society’s current. The river of bourgeois history flows against the general arrow of history. Paradoxically, Marxism is liberating: it reveals history’s direction. But bourgeois history is the only history that exists now. As a Marxist, you're forced to swim upstream. Swimming upstream is the exhaustion.
>>2421696I'm not sure what answer you expect, because the answer is well known and stayed the same for the last century and a half. Before the bourgeois had nuclear bombs they had guns and armies, yet we still struggled. You can't keep a slave population forever. Yesterday's slaves, too, have nuclear weapons, in case you've forgotten.
You have to politically organize. You have to find like-minded communists in this atomized hellscape and you have to push yourself and every other comrade to burnout in your praxis while building a party capable of holding dual power during a time of crisis, and be ready to smash the bourgeois state, to enter civil war, and for the proletarian dictatorship to win. This all sounds like phrases - but it is the only truth we have, that no other political faction has. We realize this way of living cannot go on forever - in this we are different form liberals. We realize armed struggle has to happen somewhere along the way - in this we are different from social-democrats and other reformists. And we realize there is no going back - this makes us different from fascists.
You have to struggle to do the impossible. Let there be uncessant struggle, let there be what cannot be.
>>2421684I basically think like a Marxist but live like an ἰδιώτης because I'm a lucky coward. I know it won't last. Only I'm the one who cooks and cleans and I've got 1 instead of 1.8.
>I told my family I’m a materialis - not chasing money, just rejecting spirits - and they got sad for me. Like I’m some empty husk because I don’t "feel" ghostsI'm so glad I wasn't raised religious. My family is full of libs but at least they're all agnostic.
>>2421756It's a bluff. Why would they do that when it would lower
their quality of life, the very thing they're seeking to preserve through their class rule?
>>2421769Because for them the alternative is worse.
>>2421777>These are spiteful, awful people who are already willing to support genocide, what’s omnicide to them?There's that, also. We're witnessing the culmination of American egoism or individualism or whatever you want to call it. The requirements for reaching the apex of business or politics in the US is that you have no qualms about however many thousands or millions of people you have to hurt or even kill to get what you want. Not only that, but getting what you want is not only a reward in itself for this behavior, but also treated as evidence that you were right and right to do it, but most importantly that your material success is because of your extra super specialness.
So you've got a society ruled by people whose chief cultural conceit is the centrality and exceptional nature of themselves and the worthlessness of everyone else that isn't special like them. Seeing that overturned isn't just a repudiation of their privileged place in society. It's a refutation of every value they've based themselves and their lives and legacies on. The idea that the world doesn't need them is so anathetical to their world view, they'd rather burn the whole thing down than contemplate the idea that it could get on just fine without them, or worse yet that it could be better off. Billions would die, but there's no doubt that
they would survive, because they're special, and the universe has already made clear that it can't do without them.
Anything,
anything is preferable to the idea that the world doesn't need them or that the millions of dull mundanes they now rule can rule themselves. Even Armageddon.
>>2421684>This is why meaningful mass political action is nearly impossible todaythe problems you describe have always existed, and they didnt prevent mass political action. Yes its hard, yes most people would rather not concern themselves with it, but mass political work have to recognize this and yet still persist
>As a Marxist, you must constantly fight: first, to stay sharp and avoid sinking into the swamp of bourgeois societyI mean, not everyone who adhere to the ideas have to be a revolutionary warrior monk dedicated to making it happen and doing ruthless criticizing all the time. I have great respect for those who do, but having a lot of sympathizer simply getting the ideas around and raising the political aspect when its relevant is already being part of it.
>Swimming upstream is the exhaustionalso why good to join orgs. You dont have to do it alone, and you dont have to do it all the time. Everything doesnt rest on your sole shoulders
>>2421738What are you imagining? That they're just going to nuke themselves? Like if there's a mass uprising in the US, the US government is going to turn the nukes on itself and not only are they going to consider this a win scenario by turning any one or more of their major cities into nuclear slag, but vaporizing however many thousands or millions of people, and killing millions more with radiation. Not only all of that, but this is somehow going to make the underlying problems that produced this uprising to just go away?
Nukes are a serious practical problem but I swear people just use it as an excuse to deny the need or possibility of revolution. It was the same with the US military for years. "How can a revolution succeed against the strongest military in history???" As though an aircraft carrier is going to help against insurgents in an urban sprawl that stretches from bangor to miami. Like the only tactic that seems to occur to some people is that if there's an abrams tank the only thing to do is go out in front and let it shoot you. "How are we supposed to beat that?"
Ignorance, conformism and magical thinking aside, one thing that pisses me off is how everywhere in mass media, social interactions and the normie Internet you can see the death of nuance in real time. Every online argument is like watching two toddlers going "nuh huh" defending their dumbfuck either-or takes and you can sense how unwilling people are to engage with complex ideas or criticism, or even to show a minimum of empathy for others, particularly strangers. It's the consequence of a decades-old, multi-front attack on the fundamental cognitive mechanisms that allow people to independently form thoughts, led by instant gratification algorithms that favor short-form content. There's also a constant push by propagandists and politicians to normalize this sort of either-or logic and non-sequiturs in everyday talk: "oh you don't support sending one gorillion dollars to israel so they can decimate the remaining children? you must be a hamas terrorist who hates america"
This is gonna sound pretentious as fuck but I'm glad my irl friend group has meaningful discussions on the most random ass topics like life and relationships, entertainment, national politics, markets, tech and science. Guess studying mathematics and going to grad school led me to meet a ton of interesting people, who maybe aren't Marxists nor have a grasp on dialectical materialism (some do) but definitely are halfway there by rejecting bullshit and embracing critical reasoning and dialogue as an approach to life. Most of said friends are autistic as fuck in a good way and have some kind of science background, others are artists or in med school and so on. There's a reason why Marxist thinkers have always insisted it's a scientific approach to history, and why a bunch of people in the "hard" sciences leaned left in the 20th century, according to some accounts (I think Paul Cockshott made a point about this once, also think e.g. Einstein's writings about lib-ish socialism or whatever)
It's easy to doomerpost about porky going "gaza but with nuclear weapons and clankers with guns" on the entirety of humanity if global revolution were to happen, or about not ever getting there because people don't care and if they do they have no hope, but I have hope that resistance networks can be built. It starts with cultivating the connections you have right now, checking on your friends and family, loving and caring for them, talking about current topics they care about bringing your materialist point of view. Tell them the "loneliness epidemic" is a consequence of the youth being sold unattainable ideals and living in impossibly expensive cities without third spaces, tell them why dating apps or AI and other dumb tech trends are built for profit rather than some altruistic purpose, tell them about the housing market or really whatever comes to mind. Do commentary – hell social media is full of viral content like this nowadays. But fundamentally remember that caring for your homies is praxis
>>2421684I don't think any revolutionary movements went around saying they wanted to end people's religions and family. Sounds self defeating.
Engels thought in future socialism men would have to be monogamous like women were in his time. A strange view of abolishing the family.
>>2426090>dedicated professionals, not supersoldier warrior monks.Lenin DIDNT DRINK
Lenin DIDNT SMOKE
Lenin OPPOSED PROMISCUITY
Lenin OPPOSED LAZINESS
Lenin LIFTED WEIGHTS
Lenin USED WEAPONS (while hunting)
Lenin WAS BALD
he was BASICALLY A WARRIOR MONK FOR MARXISM
>>2426112>I don't think any revolutionary movements went around saying they wanted to end people's religions and family. Sounds self defeating.
<Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.
<On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.
<The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
<Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.
<But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.
<And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.
<The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.
<But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus.
<The bourgeois sees his wife as a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.
<He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.
<For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.
<Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.
<Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.
<Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848, Chapter II. Proletarians and Communistshttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm >>2426136Yes, I'm aware of those Marx quotes, but he didn't lead a revolution. The Stalin quote is from 1927, after they secured power. I don't think Lenin and Stalin went around saying the Bolsheviks were gonna outlaw religion and family, even when they opposed the church.
Lenin said this in 1918:
We must be extremely careful in fighting religious prejudices; some people cause a lot of harm in this struggle by offending religious feelings. We must use propaganda and education. By lending too sharp an edge to the struggle we may only arouse popular resentment; such methods of struggle tend to perpetuate the division of the people along religious lines, whereas our strength lies in unity.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/nov/19.htm Here's the Engels bit I was thinking of. He also goes on about how post-capitalist relationships will be more based on love instead of money. How wonderful. Why not talk about that as propaganda instead of "abolish the family" which sounds like a conservative straw man and Marx noted other socialists hated it.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch02d.htm"If now the economic considerations also disappear which made women put up with the habitual infidelity of their husbands – concern for their own means of existence and still more for their children’s future – then, according to all previous experience, the equality of woman thereby achieved will tend infinitely more to make men really monogamous than to make women polyandrous."
Humans have a natural inclination toward idealism and metaphysics. Thinking that things are a certain way and will always be that way—that this is so because God wanted it that way, or the universe, or nature, or whatever—also applies to capitalism. They find it difficult to remember that existence is constantly changing, that nothing is eternal, not even our notion of the “self.”
Liberals, however, are also like this: we must fight for justice, equality, tolerance, and so on, but these are only metaphysical ideas.
Buddhism actually fits very well with Marxism because of this, it's the reality of existence itself
>>2421684>an "animal’s life": unreflective, driven by instincts the bourgeoisie instilled in workersAnd what of it?
Other great authors also had choice words about the majority.
Non-great writers too.
>Most people can’t grasp their own historicity.Same as above.
People grasp things just fine. It's a problem of being a fish in water.
Anyway, it's not such a big deal. Same as it's ever been.
>>2426602Basically. One structural, the other individual / "spiritual".
One note, naturally. The concept of a natural inclination is also bogus.
>>2421684>>2421684János Kornai was a Hungarian Jewish communist economist who was pretty orthodox in his analyses up until the point he learned that some of his academic collegues were harrassed under Rákosi.
As a typical Hungarian Jew who survived ww2 whe was inclined to give his support to the anti-nazi communist government established in Hungary by 1949, but around 1956-59 he realized that some of his closest collegues were harrased (tortured, gulaged, Recsk'd) by le evil gommunists, and started to develop a critical lense on the (much more stale) communist goverment of Kádár himself.
First, he published a book, titled "Shortage", signifying how command economies "can not" fulfill everyday needs, and how they "intrinsically lead to" sub-standard economies, and then he joined the (pro-capitalist) regime changers, and now look where my fucking country is GDP- and minum wage-wise…
>But when you step outside your Marxist bubble, you realize: people are fucking idiots.One of his post-regime change "criticisms" of Marxism was that it was an "all encompassing ideology," making clear History, Psyhology, Economics, Ideology, and so on, which he termed "rather fishy…"
He was post-modernist in his later years like that, basically saying that
any (ideology/science) that dared to encompass such a huge epistemic territory is suspect by default.
………………Meanwhile, a dominant majority of Hungarian ppl think that they lived better lives under communist rule than under this currently unfolding regime change.
==ALL I WANNA SAY IS: EXTERMINATE ACADEMIC """"SOCIALIST-CRITIQUE FAGS"""""…
THAT'S ALL.
Btw, this self-holocausting Jew had fantasies of grandiour: he, in the late 1980's shared a boat ride in Hungary with the then Chinese premiere, talked about his "big Shortage book" with him, and was convinced that CHOYNAH "turned capitalist thanks to him. Who'se laughing now, bitch?!?!? >>2421684>why meaningful mass political action is nearly impossible todayThe real reason is the existence of an imperial-core enbourgeoisified proletariat (Engels), "labour-aristocracy" (Lenin), and that is all.
There will be NO revolution in the imperial core, unless the whole value-sucking and value-redistributing apparatus fails.
>>2428622We can still work on a few different actions then:
1. Fight imperialism.
2. Support the development of the productive forces and the proletarianization of the petty-bourgeoisie.
On the contrary: Having such a relaible framework to analyze the world means your understanding of it is more organized. I stopped panic-checking the news pretty early on because I no longer think there's some secret vote-jutsu to fix everything, but instead a clear line of sight toward the goal you gotta organize to get to.
Viewing people as stupid is itself spooky, magical nonsense. If you really apply marxist thought to everything, you understand that everyone is operating as rational as possible given their conditions. It just happens to be a lot of people are stretched thin, often more than they realize, and may lack critical information that may help them, or have difficulty sifting through the noise to tell that's the information they need to act on. They may be overheated, dehydrated, underslept or any number and combination of things.
A lot of the rest of what you said is debate addict reddit atheist babble. God / ghosts / whatever else isn't relevant to praxis and thus not under the purview of marxism in a way that matters, lest your matarialism be downgraded to the vulgar physicalism that Marx so thuroughly refuted. Focus on what matters, not on what is and isn't matter.
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