I thought we could discuss the present state of "Marxism" as a coherent system, and what it even means to be a Marxist today. The primary problem, as I see it, is that Marxism has taken on decidedly different meanings according to which discipline one is referring to. Marx himself was a "cross-disciplinary" thinker, and he would most likely criticize the strict division of sciences that we have today. From a contemporary view, Marxism is (at least) an economic theory, a sociological approach, a historical apparatus, and a philosophical school. Each of these disciplines have developed Marxist strands that can be independent of each other, leading to the chaos that is academic Marxism in the last few decades. While all of them have contributed valuable insights, the obvious casualty has been the conception of Marxism as a proletarian theory that informs a real communist movement. When you take away the economic and the historical aspects of it, Marxism becomes something like a liberal criticism of social relations, as was the case for many "humanist" strands of it in the West. The majority have abandoned the materialist conception of history, viewing it as a reductionist theory, and emphasize cultural, ethnic, gender etc. perspectives.
The unsettling conclusion is that Marxism has itself become part of capitalist production, when stripped of its revolutionary edges. i would guess that this is why many people choose to go back to Marxism-Leninism, searching for a genuine praxis of constructing socialism, and look at any contemporary Marxists with a suspicious eye. However, is this the best alternative? Do we have any chance uniting the multitude forms of Marxism into a unified approach?
The people to reject any facet of marxism don't call themselves marxists. The problem Marxism faces today is the same it has been facing since the 2nd international, on one hand you have dogmatists and on the other you have revisionists.
there are however people that have tried and are still trying to develop marxist science even further. and this is the research that's really censored by neoliberal academia, since it presents a genuine effort to evolve marxism and make it capable of facing today's post-monopoly capitalism. i'd tell you to google Viktor Vazjulin, but unless you speek german/russian or greek you won't find anything on him.
Connor Bennett
Looked and the title and was expecting some good discourse but OP went downhill real fast and at such a steep angle that I don't even know where to begin.
In attacking them one should not hesitate to use the advances in other sciences - statistical mechanics, information theory, computability theory. And, to re-establish scientific socialism there must be a definitive break with the speculative philosophical method of much of Western Marxism. From the time of Marx till about the mid-twentieth century, most left intellectuals saw socialism and science as going hand-in-hand, in some sense. Most scientists were not socialists (though some prominent ones were), but Marxists seemed to regard science as friendly to, or consonant with, their project, and even saw it as their duty as materialists to keep current with scientific thought and assess its implications for social questions. But since some point in the 1960s or thereabouts, many if not most Western Marxist thinkers have maintained a skeptical or hostile attitude towards science, and have drawn by preference on (old) philosophical traditions, including Hegelianism. It is not clear why this has occurred but these may be some of the factors: • The conception of science as socially embedded. Science in bourgeois society is bourgeois science, rather than offering muh privileged access to an independent reality. This idea was obviously present in the Proletlult tendency criticised by Lenin, and was later expressed in Lysenkoism. In addition there has been a conflation of science and technology in the minds of many writers. The role of nuclear weapons no doubt played a part in this and spilled over to a general hostility to nuclear power. Socio-biology too, was seen as hostile to progressive social thought, so the alliance between Marxism and Darwinism came to be weakened. Evolutionary psychology could be seen as transparent apologetics (for example [47]), but this blinded left thinkers to progressive Darwinists like Dawkins[15, 14]. • Althusser, the French communist philosopherwas obviously pro-scientific in intent, but may have unwittingly influenced many of his followers in 1This article is part of a systematic program of work aimed at contributing to this critique, previous articles were [10, 5]. 4 a contrary direction. One could easily get the impression from Althusser that while staying too close to Hegel is an error, empiricism is a cardinal sin. Equate empiricism and science, and you’re off to the races. • The appropriation of the "Scientific Socialism" label by the USSR and its official ideologists. • The brute historical fact that while science was doing very nicely, socialism in the West was not. Thus undermining the idea that Marxism and science somehow marched together. Whatever exactly is the cause, the effect is that while in the 1930s (say) one might have expected the "typical" young Marxist intellectual to have a scientific training – or at least to have general respect for scientific method – by the turn of the century one would be hard pressed to find a young Marxist intellectual (in the dominant Western countries) whose background was not in sociology, accountancy, continental philosophy, or perhaps some "soft" (quasiphilosophical) form of economics, and who was not profoundly skeptical of (while also ignorant of) current science2. Unlike that Western Marxist tradition have to treat political economy and the theory of social revolution like any other science. We must formulate testable hypotheses, which we then asses against empirical data. Where the empirical results differ from what we expected, we must modify and retest our theories3.
Wyatt Carter
marxism in itself is science however, and it incorporates itself the science of the study of history, of political economy and of the formulation of class struggle. while it should be linked with other sciences (like all of them are linked with each other), marxist scientists shouldn't necessarily come from hard science backrounds. Someone who is willing to study history in a scientific dialectical method is still a scientist, he doesn't have to do string theory to be one.
this is coming from someone whos doing a phd in stem btw and also studying modern revolutionary theory
Daniel Cook
which language should I learn first?
Ayden Watson
dunno, i know greek and german
greek is pretty much useless, but some of the most important living marxist scholars atm are greek. german is more useful i believe, as for russian i know serbocroatian and i think its pretty close. i know serbo-cro isn't a hard language, so if russian is anything like it it wont be hard. german isn't hard either, greek is hard though because of the alphabet and tonal system.
i really gave you a non-answer here, sorry
Jacob Mitchell
to add, one of the scholars im currently following is Dimitris Patelis, however all his lectures are in greek. Was thinking of offering to translate some of them with his approval, but I really don't have the time for it. It's a waste too because many people don't understand marxism at all, even people claiming to be marxists
Justin Bailey
so is greek more valuable to learn for reading their stuff?
Parker Gutierrez
patelis is writing 2 books now to build on vazjulin, dunno if those will be translated in english though.
first of all tell me, whats your maternal language and are you already bilingual?
Don't make me throw up in my mouth. Searching for a genuinely scientific praxis and theory to boot has led to communization theory in both anarchist and Marxist circles (common conclusions from separate attempts is always a good sign), not the utopianism that is trying to cargo-cult replicate the conditions and course of the 1917 Russian revolution and what grew out of it subsequently.
Jace Lopez
there is no denying that about half of so-called Marxists are accelerationist anti-imperialist half-wits
Xavier Cook
anarchism has nothing to do with the science of marxism
Thomas Allen
I swear I've already seen it before, it's a good read nevertheless.
Hudson Hughes
Yes it does, Proudhon's writing was influential to Marx after all. What the other user is referring to is anarchists and marxists reaching similar conclusions in the face of 20th century failures, and that is very relevant to marxism.
Aiden Lee
Hegel and Fichte also influenced Marx, that doesn't make idealism relevant in theory or praxis with marxism. Marxism is after all the synthesis of idealism's contradictions, representing the mark in history where philosophy passed from the abstract to the real.
Xavier Martin
Anarcho-marxism when
Brayden Nelson
My first language was french, you can probably guess my second one
Leo Watson
then out of the 3, german will most likely be the easiest for you to learn
Wyatt Walker
You said it had nothing to do with Marxism, I pointed out that wasn't true as Marxism borrows heavily from Proudhon. While Proudhon and Mutualism are outdated and not particularly useful, to deny that Marxist theory has nothing to do with it is false.
There's communization and most ancoms make use of Marx's work.
Brody Thomas
You are arguing semantics really. You wrote that anarchism comes to scientific conclusions, then grouped it together with marxism. So let me rephrase that. Anarchism isn't a revolutionary theory, but merely a unscientific petite-bourg offshoot of utopian socialism
Nicholas Murphy
Yes, specifically in regards to communization theory. Read up on it, I believe Dauve should be palatable enough.
notanargument.jpg Take your flag's advice and read Proudhon.
Lincoln James
Proudhon invented the term "scientific socialism" - you can go read "What Is Property?" and ctrl+f "scientific socialism". Marx even praised his work as such.
Ryder Smith
i don't read non-dialectical garbage
i don't need to argue about anarchism, many critiques of it have been written. i consider anarchism and it's theory of individual emancipation as metaphysics at best, bourgeoisie at worst.
Taking something from someone's work doesn't make the previous work valid as a theory. Marx drew heavily from the german idealists, but in the end concluded that while their methodology was the most scientific, idealism is garbage.He also wrote a critique of Proudhon
i've read about anarchism, i know it's historical roots and it's dogma. unfortunately, as i'm a phd student in neurobiology i barely have time to study revolutionary theory, let alone anarchist garbage. i have limited free time, and i'd rather spend it learning about the science of marxism.
Adrian White
ye im the non-serious one
Nathaniel Jenkins
I'm working on a bachelor's right now in CS and agree somewhat with that statement. Natural sciences are absolutely essential to our project of critiquing economistic, political, and philosophical forms of thinking and exposing their underlying material relations.
If you already know English, then German will probably be a lot easier. Plus, you get to read Neurath and Stirner and Marx in their original language. I learned Russian on my own and it was hell. German still has declined nouns with corresponding adjectives and a system of verb conjugation, but it is nothing compared to Russian, where everything changes its ending according to use so that words can be ordered however you like in sentences (except for those little preceding ones like k, no, v, na, to, do, etc, which generally go before the noun in question).
Yes, but Proudhon was the first writer to elucidate what Marx built a (if you're a Marxist) fully mature version of. It has more or less all of the features which define Marxism in general. Read the linked article here:
No, that was me. Marx even specifically acknowledged anarchism as a variety of scientific socialism, and it still would be even if he hadn't. The world doesn't revolve around what evenly-distributed-beard-guy said 150 years ago. No one says that anarchism is utopian and petite-bourgeois as a whole except for unscientific Leninists. End yourself.
Eli Martin
Clearly not well enough to know about what the first guy to call himself an anarchist actually wrote about. Your knowledge of anarchism is on par with a stormfag's knowledge of race.
Well I certainly can't take you seriously if you're unable to read. It's relatively short and well-cited, you should be able to read it in less than an hour.
Jacob Parker
These people are also revisionist for simply modifying. Though there is a difference between good revisionism and bad revisionism. So I'm sure you meant BAD revisionist.
Lucas Stewart
Mate like i said, I will not argue about this here simply because it has been so well argued by many people that it's pointless for me to attempt this, and for the fact that I cannot take non-dialectical theory as science no matter how much you think it is
anarchists argue out of metaphysical dogma, in contradiction to everything history has showed us. again, not gonna get into this as i don't have time and it would be pointless to begin with.
ye one hour for the article, another 3 for the citations and another 5 for material that discusses said citations.
you're clueless. as expected of an anarkiddie of course
Parker Kelly
I know this is a bit of a nitpick, but the guy in the photo is doing something I hate. The raised fist is a sign of solidarity, of the oppressed coming together to combat the bourgeoisie! It is not something that should be represented by barely clenching your fist and having your thumb sit meekly on the side. It should be a powerful raised first, with your thumb in the position like you're gonna punch a fascist and clenched with the strength of working class!
William Adams
And how would you know this, given you admitted to not reading the arguments of anarchists?
An hour was accommodating for extremely slow readers. Read it or shut up.
Jace Clark
In other words, idpol is contaminating the collective unconscious even in academia?
Regardless, the fundamental problem is that revolution is a matter of the right moment. A painful fact that we avoid remembering is that we pretty much have to wait for a moment of great capitalist crisis to act, don't we? We course, we should try to study and spread consciousness while the right moment doesn't arrive, but still, ultimately we're at the mercy of capitalism's own contradictions.