There is a fundamental contradiction in many of the Marxist studies that are produced in the West. Every time that they speak of Marxism in Asia — in China, Korea or Vietnam — or when they speak of popular movements in Africa such as in Egypt or Libya, they highlight the influence of religion on these political movements and the national adaptation of Marxism. When any Marxist researcher studies, for example, Chinese Marxism, they are obliged to address the influence of Confucius’ philosophy on Chinese culture in a general manner and on Chinese Marxism in particular. Likewise, the influence that Islam has on many African countries is always taken into account, or the influence of Confucianism in Asia more generally.
When the time comes to look at Marxism in Western politics, however, the influence of Christianity in the construction of the symbolic, subjective and theoretical universe of this Marxism is rarely taken into account. It is as if in Asia, Confucianism has an influence on politics, in Africa, Islam has an influence on politics, but in Brazil, in the US, in France, in Portugal, Christianity does not perform a similar role in forming historic subjectivity. This is a mistake for a very simple and objective reason, which Antonio Gramsci points out in several different passages of Prison Notebooks: the Catholic Church is the longest operating institution in the West. No other institution has managed to stay alive for so long with the capacity to disseminate and circulate ideas and concepts, through a body of intellectual priests, bishops and theologians, organized within a bureaucracy like the Catholic Church has. So it is impossible to speak seriously about Marxism, politics, subjectivity, culture, and the symbolic field in the West without incorporating the role of Christianity in each social formation, in each specific country as elements of analysis.
I believe it is impossible to understand the phenomenon that is poorly described as “populism” (a term which I do not use), of this relationship of the popular classes with people like Lula, Getúlio Vargas, Miguel Arraes, Brizola, Perón, Velasco Ibarra, and Hugo Chávez without understanding the basic configurations of the Catholic relationship between devotees and saints. Obviously this is not the only explanation, but there is a symbolic element in the political structure of this relationship. I have been thinking about this for a long time. It is not my idea — Domenico Losurdo and Roland Boer have written about how the fetish for defeat is one of the fundamental characteristics of Western Marxism and how this is a misunderstood derivative of Christian culture.
First, let us discuss a large tendency in western marxism. According to Perry Anderson there is a separation between Western and Eastern Marxism, and Western Marxism is basically a kind of Marxism which has, as a key characteristic, never exercised political power. It is a Marxism that has, more and more frequently, concerned itself with philosophical and aesthetic issues. It has pulled back, for example, from criticism of political economy and the problem of the conquest of political power. More and more it has taken a historic distance from the concrete experiences of socialist transition in the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Cuba and so forth. This western Marxism considers itself to be superior to eastern Marxism because it hasn’t tarnished Marxism by transforming it into an ideology of the State like, for example, Soviet Marxism, and it has never been authoritarian, totalitarian or violent. This Marxism preserves the purity of theory to the detriment of the fact that it has never produced a revolution anywhere on the face of the Earth — this is a very important point. Wherever a victorious socialist revolution has taken place in the West, like Cuba, it is much more closely associated with the so-called eastern Marxism than with this western Marxism produced in Western Europe, the United States, Canada and parts of South America. This Marxism is proud of its purity, and this is the first elemental characteristic that derives from Christianity.
Gramsci shows that one of the main historical concerns of the Catholic Church has been to control the reading and the diffusion of Christianity, blocking the rise and spread of popular, autonomous and base level interpretations and thereby saving the purity of the historic doctrine. Therefore, the Catholic Church can say that Christianity is love, equality, loving thy neighbor, compassion and non-violence, despite the fact that it has been a fundamental weapon in the legitimization of slavery, the crusades and colonialism, and despite the coziness of various elements of the Catholic Church with Nazi-fascism and the military dictatorships. There is a constant throughout the entire history of Christianity which is that these elements don’t corrupt the doctrine. They are either false expressions of Christianity, or they are facts, like potatoes in a sack, that have no theoretical, political or, most importantly, theological meaning. So, the fact that history denies the affirmation that Christianity is based on compassion and peace does not change or challenge the doctrine.
Many Marxists act the same way. Their biggest worry is the purity of the doctrine. Every time that historical facts challenge the doctrine or show the complexity of the practical operationality of elements of the theory, they deny that these elements are part of the story of Marxist theory and doctrine. This is, for example, what doctrines of betrayal are built on. Every movement that appears to stray a bit from these “pure” models that were created a priori is explained through the concept of betrayal, or is explained as “state capitalism.” Therefore, nothing is socialism and everything is state capitalism. Nothing is socialist transition and everything is state capitalism. The revolution is only a revolution during that glorious moment of taking political power. Revolution is always a political process which has two moments: a moment of destruction of the old capitalist order and taking power, and a moment of building a new order. Starting from the moment of building a new social order, it’s over. The contradictions, the problems, the failures, the mistakes, sometimes even the crimes, mainly happen during this moment of building the new order. So when the time comes to evaluate the building of a new social order — which is where, apparently, the practice always appears to stray from the purity of theory — the specific appears corrupted in the face of the universal. It is at this point that the idea of betrayal is evoked, that the idea of counter revolution is evoked, and that the idea of State Capitalism appears in order to preserve the purity of theory.
A great example of this was when the Soviet Union entered its process of terminal crisis. As the end of the Soviet Union approached many western Marxists announced that it was a great event in the history of Marxism because finally Marxism was liberated from that experiment that was born during the October Revolution, that distorted Marxism, that transformed Marxism into a mere State ideology. Now, without having to explain the ball and chain of the Soviet Union, Marxism could finally be liberated and reach its emancipatory potential.
Another factor that is very common in the western left is to treat suffering and extreme poverty as elements of superiority. It is very common in Western leftist culture to support martyrs and suffering. Everyone today likes Salvador Allende. Why? Salvador Allende is a victim, a martyr. He was assassinated in Pinochet’s coup d’ etat. When Hugo Chávez was alive, many sectors of the left turned their nose up at him. If he had been killed, for example, in the 2002 Coup attempt, he would be adored by the immense majority of the western left today, as a symbol of suffering and martyrdom. Since he continued exercising power as leader of a political process which, by necessity, had various contradictions, he was increasingly abandoned, as time passed — I don’t even have to mention what has happened to Maduro here. These same sectors which celebrate and support the idea of Allende because he defended democratic socialism do not see or do not want to see that Allende governed almost entirely through decrees. At the time, the Chilean constitution had a legal mechanism which enabled the executive branch to govern by decrees that did not have to be approved by parliament or the Supreme Court. So Allende was able to make laws through decrees which bypassed Congress and the Supreme Court. Since Allende did not have a majority in Congress and suffered a lot from the bourgeois opposition, he basically governed through decree throughout his entire mandate. This kind of action today is enough justification to label any left leader that practices it as authoritarian, to compare him to Trump, Bolsonaro, or Erdogan. If Allende was alive today he would also be criticized, but he died.
Another example of this is the situation with Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. To most western leftists, Che Guevara represents a rebel dreamer. In real life he was not, but they have built this image around him. Che Guevara died immolated in the jungles of Bolivia, so now he is a symbol of sacrifice, martyrdom and the agony of defeat. Fidel stayed in Cuba as leader of the Cuban Revolution and all of the contradictions of this process. Today he is viewed as a bureaucrat, without charm or appeal, by many if not the majority of the western left. Che Guevara is an eternal symbol of resistance, of dreaming, of utopia that is unfulfilled because of death.
Another example of this is the contrast in how the People’s Republic of Korea is treated compared to Palestine. Both nations engaged in the same struggle — the anti-colonial fight for national independence. In the case of Korea, the struggle was made from a socialist perspective. Korea succeeded, despite being a country that is fractured by imperialism. It has an economy that is relatively strong, with a reasonably high level of industrialization, a very strong national army and capacity to launch nuclear weapons. So, Korea is not a defenseless nation. Palestinians are a people who are deeply oppressed, in a situation of extreme poverty, that don’t have a national economy because they don’t have a national state. They don’t have an army or military or economic power. Therefore, Palestine is the total incarnation of the metaphor of David vs. Goliath, except that this David doesn’t have a chance of beating Goliath in political and military conflict. Therefore, almost everyone in the international left likes Palestine. People become ecstatic looking at those images — which I don’t think are very fantastic — of a child or teenager using a sling to launch a rock at a tank. Look, this is a clear example of heroism but it is also a symbol of barbarism. This is a people who do not have the capacity to defend themselves facing an imperialist colonial power that is armed to the teeth. They do not have an equal capacity of resistance, but this is romanticized. Western leftists like this situation of oppression, suffering and martyrdom.
Another very well known case is that of Vietnam. Everyone supported Vietnam when it was under attack, being destroyed and bombed for over 30 years. Vietnam beat Japan in WW2, then had to fight France, and then had to fight the United States. From 1945 to 1975 it spent 30 straight years without being able to build a damn school or hospital because a bomb from France or the United States would drop and destroy it. When the country was finally able to beat all of the colonial and neocolonial powers and had the opportunity to start planning, to build highways, electrical systems, schools and universities without having bombs land on them the next day and destroy everything that was being done, the country was abandoned by the majority of the left. It lost its charm, it lost its enchantment. There is a fetish for defeat in the western left. It is an idea that defeat is something majestic.
A clear example of this fetish is in the case of the coup in Bolivia. Slavoj Žižek, the famous critical thinker, wrote an article called Bolivia: the Anatomy of a Coup, and what was his big concern? It was to show that Evo Morales was democratic, that Evo Morales did not purge or jail traitors during coup attempts in the past, and that now these same people committed a coup against him. In other words, Žižek praises the very element which led to the defeat of the revolution in Bolivia as proof of ethical and moral superiority. Look how marvelous Bolivia is today. Every day an activist is murdered or jailed, but they have the moral consolation of not have been repressive or authoritarian with the Bolivian bourgeoisie.
A third element that is common in the western left comes from the Christian concept that salvation is not a product of a person’s actions, but a decision made by God. It is the notion that, although you work to do good deeds, to follow biblical law, to be a good person and so forth, your salvation is a decision of God’s. Subjective efforts related to the central point of Marxism, which is the conquest of political power (as Lenin said, “everything outside of political power is an illusion”), [1] have been devalued due to this influence from Christian culture, even though the majority of Marxist intellectuals are atheists. Instead, the highest value becomes an eternal position of resistance, which produces a sense of pride. When Bernie Sanders lost the democratic primary for the second time, a renowned Marxist professor at the University of São Paulo posted on Facebook, “We fought like never before. We lost as usual but the fight continues. Now, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is the future of socialism in the United States.” The Marxist logic of thinking of all political conflicts in terms of strategy, tactics, coalition politics, programs, of critically analyzing mistakes to avoid making them again, of hitting the enemy from a political or even military standpoint in order to take power has simply vanished, replaced by an eternal movement of resistance as if it were proof of divine grace. The very logic that should be the essence of politics, which is the logic of strategy, is devalued as resistance becomes an end in itself.
Together, the three elements that I just described create a kind of narcissistic orgasm of defeat and purity. The subject takes pride in not having any relationship with the entire historic concrete movement of the working class socialist and liberation revolutions. They take pride in not having any theoretical or political connection to the revolutions in China, Russia, Korea, Vietnam, Algeria, Mozambique and Angola. They are, instead, proud of the supposed purity that their theory is not contaminated by the hardship of exercising power, by the contradictions of historical processes. Being pure is what provokes this narcissistic orgasm. This purity is what makes them feel superior. It makes them feel that they have a privileged moral and ethical standpoint compared to the other leftists who, for example, recognize the Chinese or Cuban or Korean revolutions and, therefore, accept “authoritarianism” and accept an economy that is not based on the total realization of self-management. This kind of Marxism has no critical power. It can produce and does produce a lot of good analysis of reality but it is incapable of producing a movement that is strategic and revolutionary that aims to take political power. Therefore, the process of rebuilding a revolutionary Marxism in the West has to recognize these symbolic elements, which have become ingrained in Western Marxism, that were smuggled in as contraband from Christianity. These elements have to be submitted to radical criticism and surpassed.
>>2920622Hey faggot if you're gonna just dump an entire text through multiple replies you can at least sage Jesus Christ
>>2920630s-socrates i-is that really you…? … owo
Nice wall of text but the principal religion in east Asia is Buddhism not confucianism
>tldr: you cannot criticize anything
new rightoid meta just dropped: you can spread reactionary anticommunist propaganda just so long as you frame it as "criticism"
The retard who wrote this text has been kicked out of every party he was a member of because he uses politics as a mechanism to build his personal brand.
>>2920694ok but that doesn't make the text wrong
Total Christcuck death
>>2920751Completely ignoring the fact that there was plenty of "reactionary anti-communist propaganda" flung about between socialist states. Were Mao and Hoxha anti-communist for shit talking Khrushchev? If they were, are you not being anti-communist for shit talking AES in those countries? Should we venerate Gorbachev because he was the leader of the largest socialist experiment on earth at the time or should we maybe have a think about how a retard/traitor (up for debate) could come to power and create the centrifugal forces that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the defeat of socialism in Eastern Europe over the course of a few years?
We should learn from what was clearly a failure on account of the fact that half of planet earth is no longer Red and that involves critically engaging with history, as well as contemporary socialism, instead of conjuring up our own headcanon where our ideological predecessors did everything perfectly until it all came crumbling down for no particular reason.
Mind you, I think the "Western Marxism" approach of simply stating all of these states were not socialist is just as lazy and stupid.
Just by reading the title, I was ready to bet it was written by Roderic Day for redsails.org.
Well I was right about Red Sails, which does nothing except repost some Losurdo, Parenti, and talk about how AES is awesome and everyone who emits a single criticism against it is a Western treatlerite (but it's okay when Roderic Day spends his bourgeois parents' money on trips in Latin America, he is not a treatlerite because he isn't, okay?).
Turns out it was written by a Brazilian member of the PCB who grew up in the favelas and now is now semi-popular on social media. Fine.
The problem is that, for an article talking about Western Marxism, I barely see the position of actual "Western Marxists" being discussed or even them being mentioned by name in the text. The only ones I see mentioned is Perry Anderson, who is a British New Left guy who hasn't been relevant in a long time, Slavoj Zizek, who has been infamously problematic for many regarding some of his pro-liberal West opinions over the years, and "a renowned Marxist professor at the University of São Paulo", which as far as I know, is not part of the West but the Global South.
And that's it.
>the fetish for defeat is one of the fundamental characteristics of Western Marxism and how this is a misunderstood derivative of Christian culture
Yeah, yeah, and I could say "the fetish for class collaborationism is one of the fundamental characteristics of Eastern Marxism and how this is a misunderstood derivative of Orthodox, Confucian and Islamic culture."
I don't know understand why anti-Western Marxists insist all the time to conflate criticism based on Marxist categories derived from the original theory, with "a fetish for defeat". Why do we need to shutdown our brains if someone proclaim themselves as communist?
>Gramsci shows that one of the main historical concerns of the Catholic Church has been to control the reading and the diffusion of Christianity, blocking the rise and spread of popular, autonomous and base level interpretations and thereby saving the purity of the historic doctrine.
We can say the exact same thing about Marxism in AES countries. Some interpretations are more acceptable than others, see Isaak Rubin vs. Stalin, or Yue Xin and the Jasic Workers Solidarity Group vs. proponents of the Guangdong model within the CPC.
>Every movement that appears to stray a bit from these “pure” models that were created a priori is explained through the concept of betrayal, or is explained as “state capitalism.” Therefore, nothing is socialism and everything is state capitalism. Nothing is socialist transition and everything is state capitalism.
Most leaders of AES don't say they achieved a fully successful transition to socialism AFAIK, if you dig enough. We just had 100 years of state-capitalism, yes, and starting from the 1970s-1980s, you can use replace state-capitalism by "mixed economy".
I mean, I definitely prefer a mixed economy to pure neoliberalism, it's okay, but this is not the end goal if you read the Critique of the Gotha Program. Is Xi Jinping going to die if I point out modern-day China is a mixed economy?
>A great example of this was when the Soviet Union entered its process of terminal crisis. As the end of the Soviet Union approached many western Marxists announced that it was a great event in the history of Marxism because finally Marxism was liberated from that experiment that was born during the October Revolution, that distorted Marxism, that transformed Marxism into a mere State ideology.
No so-called Western Marxist is explicitly cited here. Who is the author talking about? Someone who existed in history, or is he describing an hypothetical someone who existed according to his vibe, and weirdly enough would have said something virtually identical than liberals?
If I take someone like Cornelius Castoriadis, who even rejected Marxism in the 1970s but was left-wing and extremely pro-direct democracy, he said the collapse of the USSR was simply the end logic of a process that started with the Prague Spring, Solidarność and so on, but also warned that:
<"There’s a general misconception that what we have in the west is the best of all possible worlds – which I’m sure will remain dominant in eastern Europe for a few years. But a democratic society requires active participation, a degree of passion for common affairs. Today in the west, that is absent."
As you can see, his diagnosis was way more nuanced than "it was a great event".
>When Hugo Chavez was alive, many sectors of the left turned their nose up at him.
Not by Mélenchon, who actually took a lot of shit all the time from liberals, for being in favor of him. Would you say Mélenchon is an hardcore Eastern Marxist? No, he is just a democratic socialist, or an old-school Bernstein-style social democrat, whatever, I still like him.
There is also a multi-millionaire investment banker called Matthieu Pigasse in France who provided advice to Chavez and Maduro, and finance left-wing media. You can bet isn't an hardcore Eastern Marxist either.
>These same sectors which celebrate and support the idea of Allende because he defended democratic socialism do not see or do not want to see that Allende governed almost entirely through decrees. At the time, the Chilean constitution had a legal mechanism which enabled the executive branch to govern by decrees that did not have to be approved by parliament or the Supreme Court. So Allende was able to make laws through decrees which bypassed Congress and the Supreme Court. Since Allende did not have a majority in Congress and suffered a lot from the bourgeois opposition, he basically governed through decree throughout his entire mandate.
What was the actual content of these decrees? Macron also govern by decree. Governing by decree to bypass parliament isn't good in itself, it's what you do with it that matters.
>Fidel stayed in Cuba as leader of the Cuban Revolution and all of the contradictions of this process. Today he is viewed as a bureaucrat, without charm or appeal, by many if not the majority of the western left.
Again, by who?
>When [Viet Nam] was finally able to beat all of the colonial and neocolonial powers and have the opportunity to start planning, to build highways, electrical systems, schools and universities without having bombs land on them the next day and destroy everything that was being done, the country was abandoned by the majority of the left. It lost its charm, it lost its enchantment. There is a fetish for defeat in the western left. It is an idea that defeat is something majestic.
What should the western left have done? Soyface endlessly over Vietnam? Vietnam surely is admirable for fighting against 4 imperialist powers in the span of half-a-decade, but then what? Not to mention Vietnam did planning for 10 years until it started implementing market reforms with Đổi Mới in 1986. Should the western left have soyfaced when they did that?
I saw on Youtube the author of this article made vid related about visiting Vietnam recently. I'm gonna watch it, and I hope it won't be "Look, they have roads! They have shops! Just like a normal country! Isn't socialism marvelous??!!!" infantilizing bullshit.
>They take pride in not having any theoretical or political connection to the revolutions in China, Russia, Viet Nam, Algeria, Mozambique and Angola.
Every anti-colonialist woke activist in France loves Frantz Fanon….and is also pro-Ukraine. Go figure.
Anyway, this is typical Red Sails slop. Nothing of value to be gained except a caricatural view of communist history, that criticize Western Marxism for not soyfacing over AES while providing zero actual solution to make socialism and Marxism more popular in the West.
So I'm watching the video of the author about Vietnam.
At first he discusses safety a Brazilian shop owner. Yeah, it's true that Vietnam is pretty safe, but it's not an unique trait of Vietnam. China, Japan and both Koreas are even safer, and SEA as a whole is comparably as safe as Vietnam, with the exception of Cambodia, some parts of the Philippines and Myanmar for obvious reasons.
If anything, crime in the American continent as a whole (except Canada and Paraguay), especially in Brazil, Mexico and the USA is an anomaly, not the norm.
Also authorities will keep an eye on you if import newspapers or books against the government and that kind of things, some bloggers have their freedom of speech restricted, but it's nothing special and also the norm in most countries around the world, including in the West.
The most interesting part is when he discusses with the representative of the Brazil-Vietnam chamber of commerce.
The representative rightly point out that commerce has been a long millenary tradition in China and Vietnam, so the communist party can't easily completely get rid of this, which is pragmatic.
But the real interesting point is that, there is at the very least one huge conglomerate called Vingroup controlling a massive amount of capital in Vietnam.
The obvious question is: isn't the existence of such a capitalist monopoly not in contradiction with the state ideology of Vietnam? The representation says "I don't know how to resolve this contradiction with Marxism", but then kinda dismiss it by saying "if Vietnam didn't have this conglomerate, another conglomerate from another country would operate here instead". Which is true, I agree, but I don't really see the difference between this and let's say the place of Samsung and other chaebols in the South Korean economy.
Then he talks with an historian about the life of Ho Chi Minh, which I agree was an absolutely remarkable anti-colonial leader.
After the wars, Ho Chi Minh made sure to delegate the political orientation for the future of Vietnam as he was getting old to other cadres in the communist party, which was a good thing.
And they came up with in the late 1980s with Đổi Mới, which was basically equivalent to the Chinese market reforms operated by Deng Xiaoping.
They mention that in China and Vietnam during the 1990s and 2000s, there was rural flight, and that health care was privatized (!!!) and education partially privatized too.
And guess what, health care is still mostly privatized in Vietnam, though public healthcare is starting to develop notably in Hanoi. In China, a public fund now covers 70% of most medical costs. Certainly better than in the USA, but it's exactly the same in France and Japan. In the UK and Brazil, many services at public hospitals are completely free, the thing is that of course the wait might be long.
Which brings me back to this part of the article:
>When [Viet Nam] was finally able to beat all of the colonial and neocolonial powers and had the opportunity to start planning, to build highways, electrical systems, schools and universities without having bombs land on them the next day and destroy everything that was being done, the country was abandoned by the majority of the left. It lost its charm, it lost its enchantment. There is a fetish for defeat in the western left. It is an idea that defeat is something majestic.
When I went to China and Vietnam, learned more about their histories and ended up saying the exact same things these Brazilians are saying, Americans told me "your opinion doesn't matter, you were just a tourist, you don't know how is life there" and that the opinions of the Chinese young people I talked to didn't matter too because they were talking in English to me, and therefore not representative of the average Chinese person.
But when this Brazilian guy or Hasan Piker do the same, it's great.
Because the main difference is that I said "Their rapid economic development surely is very impressive, but I don't see what are the crucial differences between 'socialism' there and 'capitalism' in Europe and Japan". You just need to be orientalist and suddenly your opinion matters.
If you describe the same economic system, but ask "What is so socialist about Vietnam and China? How should we socialists be inspired by it", suddenly you are accused of repeating FOX News propaganda. It's funny.
>>2920750Ruthless criticism of nothing that exists
>>2920762This is a good, informed post and you are attempting to argue your position in such a way that anyone could attempt to challenge it as well and lead to fruitful discussion.
>>2921099This is mordant bickering that adds nothing to the discussion and potentially breaking rule 11. Please, argue for the point you're presenting in an honest and open way
>>2921102I have no point I'm just shit posting tbh
Commodity production status?
>>2921209Asking for the end of commodity production is like asking for the end of gravity
>>2921218It’s a law of reality no different than the laws of thermodynamics, you’re never getting rid of labor specialization either, labor only gets more complicated and specialized instead of what your German Jesus predicted
It’s so funny that rightoids act superior on here when they’re the ones wasting their time making themselves miserable by forcing themselves to be around people they hate for validation while their political project collapses around them because of a drunk news anchor
>>2921106Nobody misunderstands what you're doing.
I'm theorycrafting a way for the future AES StateSec to purge all the leftcoms they find. It's not like you deserve to see commodity form being abolished, and what the fuck are you going to do, anyway? Get out of your chair? Amount to something?
>>2921232That’s true of literally everything and anything though, it’s all dust in the end so why do anything?
>>2921223A law of reality no different from natural laws like thermodynamics or gravity except that it demonstrably does not operate in every social formation.
>>2921241It does show up in every social formation given enough time and development
>>2921242So again not like a natural law that is a constant. You can have social formations without commodity production and especially without it being the dominant form of production.
>>2921254Natural laws aren’t constant either because the universe had a beginning and will end, meaning time and natural laws extend and change past both
>>2921235All political projects are doomed to end with a news anchor trying to to compensate for whiskey dick by starting a war?
>>2921256I don't see how that changes anything. As long as the universe exists there will be gravity. Humanity also had a beginning and will one day end, but the existence of commodity production is not a constant to it the same way gravity is to the universe.
>>2921279It is and that’s why the status quo is here now
OP the reason this is not addressed is because Marx already addresses it by way of feuerbach, basically Feuerbachism is secularized christianity in the form of an idealist philosophy and marxism is imposing hegelian historiography and materialism on feuerbach.
so hot take marxism is already just secular and scientific version of achieving what christianity meant to
Neither socialism nor communism ever existed in real life. Anyone who claims otherwise is a paid shill.
>>2922463Not even primitive communism?
>>2920755the guy who wrote the article is brazilian
ancient chinese philosophies like confucianism and taoism had virtually nothing in common with marxism or any modern political/economic ideology and this comparison is apples and oranges, these are the philosophies of a dynastic/feudal society where the class system and the government and the supremacy of rulers were unquestionable facts of life, common people did not discuss such matters and wouldn't even know how to, it wasn't their place to concern themselves with political affairs, their place was to work very hard and provide for their families and serve their lords and rulers and obey the law. the ruling class lived on entirely different planes of reality, higher and higher all the way up to the emperor who resided in heaven - they didn't see the hierarchy as some arbitrary human construct, they saw it as the fundamental laws of nature. we have a tendency to project our modern way of thinking onto ancient societies and sort of operate under the assumption that it was only the material conditions that were different back then, but it wasn't just the technologies and the social structures that were radically different, human thought itself was also radically different, people had a completely different conception of the world and their place in the world that is quite alien to us as modern day humans born 2,500 years later.
>>2920622>When the time comes to look at Marxism in Western politics, however, the influence of Christianity in the construction of the symbolic, subjective and theoretical universe of this Marxism is rarely taken into account. could it be that in >the west marxist by rule of thumb simply aren't european?
>>2920634it is in china (and korea) from which it spread onto neighbouring countries
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