Given that this site is primarily composed of marxists(-leninists), what are self-criticism that you have about Marx's works ?
Personally, my biggest problem with marxism is dialectical and historical materialism. Marx himself didn't seem to care all that much after his Theses on Feuerbach but the concept, revived during the IInd International, now has an almost central place in any discussion about Marxism.
My biggest issue with it would be that it is overly general. Most philosophers and scientists already accept the idea that the world is in motion and perpetually changing. The idea that everything is in a situation of interdependence and that only the understanding of a concept in its overarching totality can bring about correct knowledge appears to be already mostly accepted. Positing these through "laws" as Engels puts it in his Anti-Duhring is imo simply creating meaningless and vacuous terms. Apart from making deontological conduct claims to how we should avoid making hagiographies and seek to have a global understanding of a phenomenon prior to assessing claims about it is almost tautological in regards to today's scientific approach and conduct.
I think a big issue as to why it became popular is simply that it's somewhat easy to understand compared to marxian economics, and that it avoids one having to make normative claims. It made sense in the early 20th century to point these out, as materialism was still a relatively "modern" paradigm, but nowadays it seems redundant.
Thoughts ?
>>2790092> Most philosophers and scientists already accept the idea that the world is in motion and perpetually changing. The idea that everything is in a situation of interdependence and that only the understanding of a concept in its overarching totality can bring about correct knowledge appears to be already mostly accepted.Is it though? Consult vid related 29:02 section titled "the revolt against science"
(forgive the poorly formatted ctrl+v from a PDF
https://www.marxists.org/archive/dutt/1935/fascism-social-revolution-3.pdf- The Revolt against Science. The more and more conscious reactionary role of modern capitalism, and the growing ideological revolt against the machine and sense of antagonism to the development of technique, necessarily expresses itself on a wide front in the entire ideological field. A transformation in the dominant trends of capitalist ideology becomes more and more conspicuous. This transformation expresses itself in the growing revolt against science, against reason, against cultural development, against all the traditional philosophical liberal conceptions which were characteristic of ascendant capitalism; in favour of religion, idealistic illusions, denial of the validity of science, mysticism, spiritualism, multiplying forms of superstition, cults of the primitive, cults of violence, racial charlatanry (“blood” and “Aryan” nonsense) and all forms of obscurantism. This tendency was already visible from the outset of the imperialist epoch, and especially before the war. It has enormously increased in the post-war period. The relationship between science and the bourgeoisie has never in fact been an easy one. Only in the first revolutionary period of the bourgeoisie (in seventeenth-century England or in later eighteenth-century France) has there been real enthusiasm. In the nineteenth century, with the bourgeoisie in power, although the enormous profits to be won from the results of science led to universal official recognition, laudations and a somewhat stingy financial support, the suspicion was always present that the development of the scientific outlook might undermine the social foundations. Hence the gigantic battles of the nineteenth century over each advance of science. The leaders of nineteenth-century bourgeois science were still warriors in the midst of a widely hostile social camp. Education was still in general jealously guarded on pre-scientific lines and under clerical control. But what is conspicuous about the present period is that the offensive against science is to-day led, no longer merely by the professional reactionaries and clericalists, but above all by the majority of the more prominent, officially recognised and highly placed leaders of bourgeois science. The main bulk of the officially distinguished, be-knighted and decorated scientists of the bourgeoisie have openly joined the clerical camp. They proclaim with wearisome iteration the reconciliation of science and religion, the overthrow for the thousandth time of the errors of materialism, the limitations of scientific knowledge, and the supremacy of the “higher” aspects of life which cannot be approached along scientific lines. In a spate of lectures, essays, treatises and books, whose popular, vulgarising and often grossly unscientific character betrays their propagandist aim, they endeavour to utilise each new advance of research and discovery, not in order therefrom to reach a more scientific understanding of reality, but in order to throw doubt on the whole basis of science, and on this ground to proclaim the vindication of the particular tribal gods of their locality. These utterances, still further vulgarised, are broadcast amillionfold by all the machinery of capitalist publicity as the “last word of science.” In this way, at the same time as for technical and for strategical purposes science has to be more and more widely employed in practice, a basically reactionary and even anti-scientific outlook is endeavoured to be pumped into all the capitalist-controlled forms of “popular culture.”This transformation in outlook on the part of the responsible leaders of bourgeois science (with the honourable exceptions of a small and courageous minority) was recently illustrated in the treatment of the fiftieth anniversary of Darwin’s death in 1932.This anniversary provided the opportunity for the entire forces of capitalist culture to proclaim, either the complete obsolescence of the theories of the hated Darwin, or alternatively, the complete reconciliation of Darwinism with the religious conceptions which he fought, and the final refutation of the atheism to which he secretly (Darwin’s letter to Marx) adhered. The distinguished scientist and leading authority on Darwinism in England, Sir J. A. Thomson, wrote for general public consumption in the Daily Telegraph (April 19, 1932) under the singular title: “Darwin Fifty Years After: We Now Accept Evolution, Yet Believe in a Creator”:There are some changes in our ideas since the hot-headed days that followed the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859.Thus many of us are clear that there is no inconsistency in accepting the evolution idea and yet believing in a Creator who ordained the original Order of Nature in some very simple form. The evolution theory does not try to “explain” things in the deeper sense. Evolutionists . . . leave to philosophy and religion all questions of purpose and meaning. This is a change for the better. The shamefaced “agnosticism” of the nineteenth-century scientists has given place in the twentieth century to proclamation of “a Creator.” This is an excellent example of the “progress backwards” of capitalism in decay. A further example of the transformation was afforded by an inquiry into “The Religion of Scientists” conducted by the Christian Evidence Society and published under this title in1932. A questionnaire was sent to all Fellows of the Royal Society; replies were received from 200. The results on some of the principal questions showed the following proportions:1. Do you credit the existence of a Spiritual Domain? Favourable, 121; Intermediate, 66; Unfavourable, 13.2. Is belief in evolution compatible with belief in a Creator? Favourable, 142; Intermediate, 52; Unfavourable, 6.3. Does Science negative the idea of a personal God as taught by Jesus Christ? Favourable (to Christianity), 103; Intermediate, 71; Unfavourable, 26.Thus, omitting the intermediates, a “Spiritual Domain” (the expression is explained in the book as having been intended to mean the denial of materialism) wins by 9 to 1. “God” (“a Creator”) wins by 23 to 1. Christianity wins by 4 to 1. These are the answers of a representative group of distinguished bourgeois scientists in 1932.We are not here concerned with the philosophical or theoretical significance of this transformation. What is important for present purposes is the social significance and role of thisdevelopment. The general fact of this avowed transformation of outlook of the majority of outstanding official representatives of bourgeois science, the loudly heralded movement against “materialism” and “the limitations of science,” towards “idealism” and religion, is familiar ground. How far this alleged movement of opinion is really true of the best bourgeois scientists, or of the mass of younger working rank-and-file scientists, is less important than the fact that the dominant official influences both in the bourgeois scientific world, and in general bourgeois discussion, actively support, foster, patronise, encourage and in every possible way advertise and press forward this trend. What is not equally clear to all is the direct connection of this ideological trend with the whole process of capitalism in decay. It is at once its reflection, and helps to carry it forward. The revolt against science, which bourgeois society to-day encourages in the ideological sphere, at the same time as utilises science in practice, is not only the expression of a dying and doomed social class; it is an essential part of the campaign of reaction. This is the basis which helps to prepare the ground for all the quackeries and charlatanries of chauvinism, racial theories, anti-semitism, Aryan grandmothers, mystic swastikas, divine missions, strong-man saviours, and all the rest of the nonsense through which alone capitalism to-day can try to maintain its hold a little longer. All this nonsense may appear on a cool view, when some particularly wild ebullition of a Hitler or a Goebbels about blood and the joy of the dagger and the Germanic man and the primeval forest, is produced, as highly irrational and even insane. But in fact it is as completely rational and calculated, for the present purposes of capitalism, as a machine-gun or a Zinoviev Letter election. There is method in the madness. For capitalism can no longer present any rational defence, any progressive role, any ideal whatever to reach the masses of the population. Therefore it can only endeavour to save itself on a wave of obscurantism, holding out fantastic symbols and painted substitutes for ideals in order to cover the reality of the universally hated moneybags. Fascism is the final reduction of this process to a completely worked out technique. In unity with this revolt against science goes the general cultural reaction, the revolt against culture, the revolt against education, the cutting down of education in all capitalist countries, the increasing reactionary discipline and militarisation in the universities and schools, and—the final and complete symbol of the culminating stage revealed by Fascism—the burning of the books.
>idea is created during a time where it wasn’t broadly accepted, nor seen as self-evident and the complete opposite was being pushed
<well ackschually nowadays it’s accepted so that means dialectical materialism is bad somehow
Not to mention that believing that the world is perpetually in motion, everchanging and interconnected still doesn’t fully match the idea of dialectical materialism. It’s like saying a plane and a motorcycle are the same because both have wheels, which apparently makes plane a superfluous term according to your reasoning. And I can’t look past how silly your central argument is and then how verbose the rest of the OP is.
Also, Marx’s works and Marxism are not the same thing, yet you use them interchangably. You also mention both dialectical materialism and historical materialism and continue to refer to both at the same time as if they were interchangable, which displays your ignorance again.
>>2790343you have said why OP is wrong but you have not corrected OP's misinformation for the young impressionable minds browsing the thread
not so much of marxism but of marxists
endless bureaucracy, just another movement completely coopted by neoliberalism. Most marxists are just succdems with some revolutionary language sprinkled on top.
also they're very naive