For fellow Marxist apostates: what made you turn away from Marxism?
I had abandoned Marx and Lenin when I had realised their theory is based on a massive hypocricy: if you are do not treat members of the upper classes as human beings but as machines programmed to optimise their economic interests, you are a doing le based materialst analysis and are epically owning moralists and idealists, but if you are do not treat members of the lower classes as human beings but as machines programmed to optimise their economic interests, you are an evil fascist, eugenicist, and social darwinist (and sometimes racist). Realising that, I ditched ML and jumped on the technocratic communism team.
>>2438942>if you are do not treat members of the upper classes as human beings but as machines programmed to optimise their economic interests, you are a doing le based materialst analysis and are epically owning moralists and idealists, but if you are do not treat members of the lower classes as human beings but as machines programmed to optimise their economic interests, you are an evil fascist, eugenicist, and social darwinist (and sometimes racist).Correct. Now face the wall.
>technocratic communism team.Might as well just say you’re a technocrat, revisionist.
>>2438942I was a member in my countries socialist party for 2 years i also got around for meeting with the other big groups.
Its not marxism or the politics of these groups that i pushed me away,not even the strategy of what we did or anything like that its the peopel the human capital if you will the people associated with all of this just and pardon me but scum i must have meet irl atleast 200 socialists/trots/anarchists/socialdemocrats/activists/radicals and not a single one could i call a good person or even a decent person just scum,human trash.
Was a Marxist until recently, now I’m an anarchist.
First, I’ll say some good things about Marx:
1. His description and analysis of capitalism is correct
2. Materialism (in Marx’s sense) is and always will be a more useful way of looking at the world than culturalism
3. Bakunin was right that for all his personal flaws (and he had many), Marx was a man of analytical genius, and his work remains *the* cornerstone of anti-capitalist politics and theory for a good reason
Okay, that out of the way, I’d say about 60 to 70 percent of his followers are dipshits for the following brief reasons
1. An alarming number of Marxists treat Marxist theory as a dogma rather than an actual theory capable of change, and sneer “revisionist!” at any Marxist intellectual doing interesting or innovative work in ways that are too heterodox for their liking. Which flies in the fucking face of what Marx was doing. Marx was a fucking social scientist, not the founder of a religion
2. Marxists themselves are some of the most viscerally insufferable people in the anti-capitalist movement, every time these people show their true face under conditions of online anonymity they just act like edgy radlibs, sneering and moralizing over anything and everything, and then wonder why people would rather eat razors than joining PSL or whatever (anarchists can do this too, but they don’t go out of their way to dick wave in the way marxists do). Yeah maybe don’t make screaming “I WILL SKULLFUCK YOUR DAD FOR BEING TREATLER COCOMELON IS FASCIST AHAHAHAHA I CORNCOBBED YOU CORNCOB BIIIIIIINCH” on Twitter the public face of your ideology
3. They’re not fucking Marxists. They’re Engels-ists getting it filtered from Lenin. Or they’re Luxemburgists. Or Bordigists. Or Frankfurt Guys. Or Althusserians. Marx’s body of work was fundamentally open-ended and “Marxism” is just a whole bunch of people treating the man’s work as a sacred text to to be interpreted rather than as a tool to be used and coming to all sorts of incompatible and esoteric conclusions, and then shooting each other over it
4. Marx’s entire project is a massive refutation of great man theory, but Marxists are some of the most hypocritically great man brained dipshits alive. Every breath they take is them glazing the dick of Great Men Who Understood Marx Bestest, whether it’s Stalin or Trotsky or Mao or blah blah blah
TL;DR Basically, you could say I’m an anarchist because, unlike Marxists, I actually take Marx and the best of his followers seriously and at their word
>>2438942Because not only Marxist was racist and homophobic I think is virtually impossible for communism to flourisy
The best we can hope for is social democracy
>>2440292>Marxist intellectual doing interesting or innovative workCan you point out any such work aside from twitter threats made by socdem literal whos? Marxism is a science and should be treated as such, therefore any revisionism in the strict sense should be a big deal and liberal revisionist rhetoric has shown itself as a very real threat again and again. A student of Marxism should be humble enough to assume past marxists to have reached a greater understanding of political economy than them until proven otherwise.
>Engels-istsNow this is a particularly bad case of revisionism pushed by Kautskyites, Humanists and similar ilk. There is no indication Marx disapproved of what Engels wrote within his lifetime. Any allegations of "Engelsian falsification" i have seen rely on very narrowly litigating the role of dialectics in Marx and speculating about what the unwritten volumes of capital would have looked like.
>Marxists themselves are some of the most viscerally insufferable peopleI blame the state of internet discourse in general. I've noticed plenty of people being vocally wrong or right about something, because conflict drives engagement.
The appeal of Marxism is that it gives you a theory of everything. Its like Aristotle. The philosophy is connected to theory of history which is connected to the economics and to praxis. Because its so tightly integrated its like a jenga tower. Marxists are reluctant to change anything because it might cause the whole system to break so they change nothing. So you end up with a fossil that gets no updates. Because of the collapse of the USSR, Marxists have developed a siege mentality where all outsiders are bad unless proven otherwise. Every other idea or theory is either ignored or brushed off with dismissive hand waving. Even the least unhinged Marxists come off as arrogant and nutty.
Several Marxist theories are just plain wrong or seriously flawed. Marxism was more or less an attempt at reformulating liberalism. The two share the same destination but differ over how to get there. So Marxists suffered from a parasitic relationship with liberalism. Whereas bourgeois liberals created entirely new institutions like modern codified law, the modern state, standing national armies etc. Marxists simply tried to mod these. In any case, liberals can easily point out that their system is more stable in getting to the destination, which neuters the Marxist critique. "Sure, markets may be inefficient but they are better than command economies." So Marxist projects ultimately wind up leading to a restoration of liberalism or end up watered down like China.
Marxists accepted the foundations of Western politics, economics, and sociology. They never seriously challenged the logic and the assumptions behind those ideas. So Marxists were never able to produce a really serious critique of the system we all live under. Despite their contributions, their critique of the system wasn't very deep and nowadays is pretty hollow, one of the reason these guys are constantly attacking each other as CIA agents or bourgeois stooges is because deep down they know how empty it all is.
>>2438942So you traded critical analysis for “Le people are machines”.
I’d take a di.scord server of leftcoms who giggle over slurs and moralism over a bumbling wanna be dictator like you.
>>2438942When I read Orwell.
He hits the nail on the head. Animal Farm is every Marxist/ML state that ever existed.
It also really opened my eyes on how Marxist society and revolution is a utopian pipe dream. It's based on delusions, idealisms and conditions that cannot be reproduced in real conditions.
Circling back to ML implementation is where the proof is manifested. They always start with a revolution, then revisionism happens, classes return, revolutionaries get purged and bourgs take over, concessions are made and dogmas are dropped, people get fed up with all the oppression, hypocrisy and bad living, and before you know it pic related happens.
>>2440856>SO WHATThat's what your saying about superior not for profit healthcare education so on so forth?
OK, bye 👋
>>2440292>Marx’s body of work was fundamentally open-ended and “Marxism” is just a whole bunch of people treating the man’s work as a sacred text to to be interpreted rather than as a tool to be used and coming to all sorts of incompatible and esoteric conclusions, and then shooting each other over it>>2440432>The appeal of Marxism is that it gives you a theory of everything. Its like Aristotle. The philosophy is connected to theory of history which is connected to the economics and to praxis. Because its so tightly integrated its like a jenga tower … Because of the collapse of the USSR, Marxists have developed a siege mentality where all outsiders are bad unless proven otherwise. Marx kind of has a dual character, because on the one hand he was more of a scientist than many of his later followers. Engels also clarified a few things. It is open-ended and not teleological. But he also had an intolerant side, and I think that side was stressed more when things got serious and when Marxism fell into the hands of revolutionary politicians. Marx could describe tendencies and contradictions, but he could also be rhetorical, and Marxists can treat what was rhetorical as scientific "truths." Marx was also not interested in certain things, but it's like those things became unimportant because he didn't find them interesting.
>>2440799>When I read Orwell. >>2440844>It's a critique of capitalism, but it does work as a critique of vangardism too.Check out Milovan Djilas' "The New Class." He wrote a critique of communism in the 1950s that hits very hard because he was a high-ranking communist politician and revolutionary. His basic argument is that the party bureaucracy formed a new class and they owned everything and had privileges and became increasingly vulgar and blatant about it. Orwell's instincts were more literary and emotional. I like Mao. I think a lot of communists stop short when it comes to turning their own method back around on themselves. That said, it might also be that this "new class" also really emerged out of the mode of production of large-scale industry anyways. The base produces the class, and once it exists, the class builds an ideology around it and the institutions (police, censorship) to justify and protect its position, which in this case was dogmatic Marxism-Leninism. They didn't like new ideas because they were a bunch of industrial managers for whom the system worked.
>>2440980well, they're never satisfied.
want to start your own commune? utopian.
want to vote for left-wing candidates? reformist.
want to be charitable? moralist.
its a prison of defeatism. thats why i also realised that its important to separate politics from the civil. marxists will often use politics as an excuse to be bad people, while mocking anyone who thinks being on the left means trying to actually making things better.
>>2440292You are contradicting yourself, my guy.
>1. An alarming number of Marxists treat Marxist theory as a dogma rather than an actual theory capable of change, and sneer “revisionist!” at any Marxist intellectual doing interesting or innovative work in ways that are too heterodox for their liking.>3. They’re not fucking Marxists. They’re Engels-ists getting it filtered from Lenin. Or they’re Luxemburgists. Or Bordigists. Or Frankfurt Guys. Or Althusserians.Which one is it? Do Marxists develop theory further or are they dogmatists?
>Marx’s body of work was fundamentally open-ended and “Marxism” is just a whole bunch of people treating the man’s work as a sacred text to to be interpreted rather than as a tool to be used and coming to all sorts of incompatible and esoteric conclusions, and then shooting each other over itPeople here screech endlessly about groups that actually use Marxism as a tool to uplift the people instead of treating it like a sacred book. Especially the largest one, CPC. They have no respect for the materialist criteria of truth, only their idea of what a socialist society should look like.
Either way, if your conclusion was to become an anarchist - a group that historically failed to bring about any change at all - then I don't know what to say. You are just not a materialist.
I think it's time to move away from Marx. I don't mean abandon his work but why do we make him the center of everything? There's no Nietzscheism, no Foucaultism etc but we can still appreciate those guys. We need to stop making literally one guy the center of a cult. Forget Marx!
>>2440292>2. Materialism (in Marx’s sense) is and always will be a more useful way of looking at the world than culturalismDisagree. The irony is that Marxists themselves wind up being vulgar materialists. I'm not even sure if Marx was a philosophical materialist or if he was just following Victorian scientific conventions. If by 'materialism' you mean analysis of how a community makes a living within its environment, that idea has merit but serious limits. Its pretty obvious that material conditions do not determine society the way Marxists claim they do. Autistic fixation on material conditions leads to a dozen other factors being ignored. The materialism of Marxists often blinds them. They end up coming with unhinged explanations for things entirely through extrapolating from Marxist dictum rather than studying the question and anyone who disagrees with them is branded an anti-materialist.
>Marx’s body of work was fundamentally open-ended and “Marxism” is just a whole bunch of people treating the man’s work as a sacred text to to be interpreted rather than as a tool to be used and coming to all sorts of incompatible and esoteric conclusions, and then shooting each other over itThe reasons Marxists shoot each other over disagreements is because they believe Marxism is a science. In their modernist conception of science, there can't be two truths and a difference of opinion on a point would be tantamount to conceding Marxism isn't a science. So wherever they disagree, one side must be false and since Marxism is a political movement the people who are false always end up being turned into enemies who have to be purged. Liberals behave in more or less the same way, but liberalism is a looser tradition than Marxism meaning there's more room for internal disagreement. Marxists can never agree to disagree because their extreme materialist scientism precludes that.
>>2440976Anarchists often have the same problems as Marxists. Like communists, they love their arcane Victorian theories, like to lecture to people, and think they know what's best for ordinary people without bothering to listen to them. They are also prone to cultist thinking and fads that expose them as moral hypocrites e.g. Rojava. The plus side is that anarchist theory seems less dogmatic but not by a huge margin.
>>2440996>Which one is it? Do Marxists develop theory further or are they dogmatists?Those things aren't contradictory. Marxism as we know it today was a post-Marx creation. A lot of the stuff Marxists take as bible came from Engels and Kautsky. A complete critical edition of Marx's entire work has never been published. Marxism ossified in the period between the 1880s-1920s and has remained more or less static ever since.
>>2438942>if you are do not treat members of the upper classes as human beings but as machines programmed to optimise their economic interests<implying marxism is vulgar economismdidnt read marx award
>technocratic communismLMAO
>>2442040<"consciousness" in sociological terms<implying proletarians can even choose not to keep "producing value for rich people" (?)<some philosophical shit about being le individualfucking retard
>I didn’t know shit about Marxismyou clearly still dont
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