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The legacy of Karl Marx...

  
  

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Quantum
13:57 / 05.09.05
back up all money by a commodity (gold, silver, oil, whatever you want) to the tune of 100%

Funny, Leap also advocated a return to the gold standard.

Funny because he's an anarcho-socialist anti-globalist anti-capitalist (some might say luddite) with a penchant for melee weapons, so that's maybe the only similarity between your philosophies. Except extremism.
 
 
illmatic
14:51 / 05.09.05
Just to chip in, I don't really have a problem with jbsay's definitions when I substitute the word "statism" for "socialism". It makes more sense then.
 
 
Ulysses Lazarus
09:26 / 04.10.05
Marx's legacy seems spotty to me. The idea of him as 'philosopher' always seems a bit repugnant to me for reasons outlined above- i.e. his own attitude about the uselessness of philosophy. I prefer to split Marx in two for the purpose of salvaging from him what little shreds still seem useful. First there's Marx the political theorist- largely useless. Second, there's Marx the sociologist- spotty but when taken in the context of other thinkers provides a specific insight into human behavior altho tainted by his time and place.

I find Marxist fetishism a bit strange considering the age in which we live. Indeed, I have trouble trusting any school of thought developed before the advent of (among other things) Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, general semantics, genetics, memetics, sociobiology, relativity and so on. Dovetailing off of this, Marxist politics seem to me a mere inversion of 19th century capitalist ideology and far too rooted in European capitalism of the day to provide much useful fodder for the contemporary world.

Further, the addiction of Marxoid theorists to excusing the actions of Marxism in practice seems like so much tautological hairsplitting to me. While the Christian-Marxist parallels have been much explored by thinkers far more intelligent than myself one parallel seems too striking to ignore. Specifically the idea that once someone commits an act unpalatable to Western middle-class liberals s/he steps into some vague, metaphysical realm of 'non-Marxist.' This seems strikingly akin to the tendency of certain Christian sects to argue that Constantine / the Pope / Hitler / whoever 'weren't Christians' because Christians don't do bad things. I don't really understand what such arguments mean to achieve other than to divorce Marx from any of his real life followers who, once in power, have demonstrated the ruthlessness endemic to nearly all consequentialist 'end justifies means' world views.

Indeed, I might even go so far as to argue that the only reason Marxoid tendencies exist today as a viable political movement (in as much as they do) stems from the Soviets winning the war. I can think of another strain of socialism which in practice results in genocide while paying lip service to liberation. Hint- they once used 'oppressed nations of the world, unite!' as a slogan. In some alternate universe I can't help but wonder if angry youths and ivory tower bound leftists argue the comparative merits of Otto Strasser and Francis Parker Yockey.

Still, I think that the less pseudoscientific elements of Marx provide a relevant analysis of human behavior when stripped of their economic determinism and quantitative fetishism. The Marxist theory of alienation seems particularly illuminating in explaining why people some people behave in such incredibly anti-social ways-'rebellion' which often amounts to destruction and immiseration of their own communities as opposed to their 'class enemy.'

Finally, I think that Bucky Fuller's idea about never subscribing to an ideology which blames wholesale groups of people for the problems in the world rather than using one's own brain as a problem solving machine seems a decent guiding principle. I find myself incredibly wary of easy answers and Marx seems to have little but. Not to mention the fact that it's so fucking dreary.

Then again, much of my view of Marx is doubtless tainted by beautiful Saturday afternoons in high school spent selling copies of 'the Militant' and the general tendency of most people raised working class to want to 'get rich or die trying.'
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
09:37 / 04.10.05
Oh, fuck off.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
09:45 / 04.10.05
I mean, seriously.

the general tendency of most people raised working class to want to 'get rich or die trying.'

Because obviously a) this is true rather than a hopeless generalisation and a tired reactionary cliche to boot, b) in contrast to the middle and upper class who never want to preserve or increase their wealth, and c) a great way of disproving Marxist thought, which in no sense allows for the fact that "people raised working class" might tend to buy into materialism etc... Obviously.
 
 
Ulysses Lazarus
19:36 / 04.10.05
Oh, fuck off.

Have I struck a nerve, love?

I mean, seriously.

the general tendency of most people raised working class to want to 'get rich or die trying.'

Because obviously a) this is true rather than a hopeless generalisation and a tired reactionary cliche to boot, b) in contrast to the middle and upper class who never want to preserve or increase their wealth, and c) a great way of disproving Marxist thought, which in no sense allows for the fact that "people raised working class" might tend to buy into materialism etc... Obviously.

way to engage the most throwaway part of that post without any reference to the substantive issues raised about marxoid thought. if anything's a cliche it's labelling criticism of marxism as "reactionary." while the generalization may seem trite you've done little to engage the tendency of the working class to believe in the system which oppresses them. i'm more than familiar with the marxoid dogma of "false consciouness" which by the way seems the worst kind of elitist middle-class snobbery to me, as for the most part does most organized political marxism. ps: in marxoid thought materialism is what the working class is missing, not overburdened with.

pop into any marxoid propaganda session and count the working class people represented there that don't work as plants working toward some functionary position in a union. i suggest you shan't need to refer to yr second hand.

in general i find that most marxist memebots fail to engage charges of marxism's crusty, cobwebbed nature other than dogmatic shouting and reverting to the use of political swear words such as "reactionary." i find it worth noting that the eminent marxist lenin (a marxist far before the bolshevik coup d'etat) dismissed the weak nuclear force as "magic."

but let's cut to the chase, shall we? what the fuck has marxism done to liberate working people? please spare me yr references to the labour movement which even marx acknowledged came directly out of their struggle and the paris commune which you should know damn well was proudhonian (sp?). history shows roughly two tendencies of marxoid thought re: actual struggle.

1) co-opt it and butcher the rank and file after it's over.
2) abstention from the point of view of dogmatic purity (see the near universal trotskyite non-engagement of any third world liberation movement)

the best of marxism seems to come from the more explorative, least marxist corners of the movement- Cuba, the Sandinistas, the Vietcong, the Eastern European dissident marxists, &c.

for my own part any ultra-reductionist theory cuts off possibilities of flexible thinking and dynamic problem solving. nietzsche's religion analogy seems particularly shrewd when viewed in this regard.
 
 
Jackie Susann
03:31 / 11.10.05
the best of marxism seems to come from the more explorative, least marxist corners of the movement- Cuba, the Sandinistas, the Vietcong, the Eastern European dissident marxists, &c.

yeah but then aren't you basically winning the argument by narrowly defining marxism as 'crusty useless ideology produced ages ago and unable to change' and assigning any use of marx's ideas that is actually engaged in the world or developed in terms of contemporary or specific local conditions as not really marxist?
 
 
Ulysses Lazarus
11:34 / 11.10.05
yeah but then aren't you basically winning the argument by narrowly defining marxism as 'crusty useless ideology produced ages ago and unable to change' and assigning any use of marx's ideas that is actually engaged in the world or developed in terms of contemporary or specific local conditions as not really marxist?

A valid criticism. I suppose I wanted to make the point that the less marxist marxism becomes the more effective it becomes. The praxis of many third world revolutionary groups has as little to do with marxoid political dogma as do social programs in the U.S. or U.K.

Still, I don't consider the almost universal application of marxism as highly statist and repressive aberrations. It seems to stem from the whole phenomenon of claiming to possess answers.
 
 
Jackie Susann
01:08 / 12.10.05
yeah but everyone, every politics, thinks it has answers. thinking that 'thinking you have the answers' is bad is, itself, an answer.

I suppose I wanted to make the point that the less marxist marxism becomes the more effective it becomes.

but this is exactly what i mean - if you assert that marxism that is effective is 'less marxist' and that the standard of marxism is 'marxoid political dogma', you have won the argument by definition. it's like saying darwin is useless by describing every significant development since his time as 'less darwinist' and insisting that the only real darwinism is 'darwinoid dogma'. and you could go on to point out the terrible effects consistently wrought by social applications of darwin's ideas.
 
 
Ulysses Lazarus
11:29 / 12.10.05
yeah but everyone, every politics, thinks it has answers. thinking that 'thinking you have the answers' is bad is, itself, an answer.

this seems a bit like a semantic word game to me. while realizing that 'thinking that "thinking that you have the answers" is bad is, itself, an answer' (anyone still with us?) resembles 'the set of all things which doesn't include itself which only includes itself if it doesn't' (whew)... i think that once yr operating on that level of metathought and self-reflection yr doing a hell of a lot better than most people walking the earth today.

does it make you immune from criticism? no. but certainly a guru who says 'don't trust me' is qualitatively different from one who says 'trust me unquestioningly.'

*endthreadrot*
 
 
sdv (non-human)
11:27 / 15.10.05
I especially enjoyed this which finally tempted me into this thread..."...Indeed, I have trouble trusting any school of thought developed before the advent of (among other things) Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, general semantics, genetics, memetics, sociobiology, relativity and so on..." When I was younger the selection of "great thinkers" who helped create modernity - was usually listed as 'Freud, Marx, Darwin and Sassure...' With occasional gestures towards unnamed feminists and of course Neitzsche.

What seems significant in the change and the supporting justification is that in the bizarre attempts to render Marxist thought irrelevant what is being reproduced is... a willingness to discard thought because of 'when' it was produced... Even the great anti-humanist anti-marxists such as Foucault never fell into this intellectual trap.

It's acceptable to critique the specifics of marx/engels and the errors of other marxists theorists - but quite wrong to discard on the basis of Marx happening to live in the 19th C. Nor is it acceptable to reject the theory/philosophy on the basis of the despotic and murderous behavior of what was as Zizek called it 'actually existing socialism' -- but I'm sure that we can all see why western thinkers need to be especially careful about these issues - as a post-colonialis might say remember 1494...
 
 
Tom Paine's Bones
22:31 / 16.10.05
I suppose I wanted to make the point that the less marxist marxism becomes the more effective it becomes. The praxis of many third world revolutionary groups has as little to do with marxoid political dogma as do social programs in the U.S. or U.K.

What you also seem to be doing here is arguing that the differences between Marx and those you wish to portray as Marxist (such as Lenin) are insignificant, and those with groups you wish to present as breaks from Marxism aren't.

I don't think you're wrong to suggest that you can't just see Marx as some holy writ that can be followed without interpretation and adjustment to reality (the widescale break between theory and action is a major failing of much of the left). I am slightly confused on who you're trying to convince of that. I don't see anybody on this thread arguing otherwise.

Can you elaborate on your view that the Paris Commune was undoubtably Proudhonian as opposed to Marxist?
 
 
Ulysses Lazarus
08:49 / 17.10.05
Can you elaborate on your view that the Paris Commune was undoubtably Proudhonian as opposed to Marxist?

Just something we discussed in a political theory class in college. The professor mind you was quite sympathetic to Marxism and had in fact studied in Yugoslavia. I had remembered reading something to the effect before. In any event, while it may not have been 'Proudhonian' per se, it certainly wasn't 'Marxist' and like many other social movements quickly became co-opted by marxoid idealogues.

What seems significant in the change and the supporting justification is that in the bizarre attempts to render Marxist thought irrelevant what is being reproduced is... a willingness to discard thought because of 'when' it was produced... Even the great anti-humanist anti-marxists such as Foucault never fell into this intellectual trap.

I think shelf life seems highly relevant, particularly when framed in the context of Marx's limited world view. The man used ENGLAND as a reference point for most of his research. Beyond that, his observations seems largely specific to a time as well as a place. Further, I think there's something to be said for the theory that theories inevitably fall to the wayside not because of their inherent metaphysical 'shortcomings' but because they become less and less relevant to contemporaries as time goes on.

Example: A lot of people find Peter Carroll easier to read than Aleister Crowley. Since an idea really isn't worth much if it can't be communicated properly, one could rightly make the case that Crowley's work (particularly his early work) is largely irrelevant in the light of more accessible, modern thinkers such as Carroll, Leary, &c. This question is only irrelevant in academia where people think that the more confusing one writes, the smarter one is.

Simply put, Marx describes a world which DOES NOT EXIST. Some of his sociological methods may still be useful, but looking to the man for politics seems to me a left 'turn back the clock' perspective.

The problem with Marx isn't the age, it's the mold.
 
 
sdv (non-human)
15:54 / 17.10.05
In which case Doctor, and I hesitate to point this out, you also have to discard the entire history of pre 20th C thought. Can there be any thought that exists prior to the 20th C which you regard as acceptable... ?

Crowley ? sorry one has to laugh...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
16:21 / 17.10.05
Sorry, Doctor Benway, but a quick question. You told us that we should know damn well (I quote) that the Paris Commune was Proudhonian, but now it appears that you do not know yourself with absolute certainty whether the Paris Commune was Proudhonian or not. This seems to me rather confusing. Could you clarify? Is there an expectation of knowing that the Paris Commune was Proudhonian in philosophy that pertains to others but not to yourself?

Marx, of course, criticised the Commune for organising democratic elections when its very existence was threatened by external factors (arguably a strain the same attitude that caused such trouble in the Soviet Union, it being constantly under threat from external forces), but democracy is not entirely Proudhonian either - the grass-roots social progressivism of the Commune neither, I would offer from a position of ignorance, mirrored the social philosophy of Proudhon or Marx, but provided a basis for followers of both to claim that it would if allowed to flourish have organised itself along their lines.
 
 
sdv (non-human)
18:14 / 17.10.05
Haus,

For what it's worth and I can't supply the references at the moment - there have been a number of claims made by anarchist thinkers over the years that argue the Proudhanian case, usually for similar mistaken and anti-marxist reasons. (My particular favorite being one that argued that the lumpen-proletariat are the agents of historical change...) However the key error seems to be that they imagine that a marxist might claim that marx/engels might be said to have helped create the commune rather than understand what happened...

Given this I'm interested in the idea that 19th C revolutionaries were philosophical - is there evidence to support this ? and what kind of philosophy might this be ?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
18:56 / 17.10.05
Well, the minutes of the meetings of the commune were published for quite some time, although they are now out of print and I don't have a copy here. The Commune abolished the guillotine but reinstated the ten-month calendar - that might give some idea of their philosophical grounding, at least in some areas...
 
 
Jackie Susann
08:34 / 19.10.05
its not semantics. when you say that thinking you possess answers is a problem, you are asserting that you have an answer, just to a different question, i.e., is there a need for overarching social change? you are effectively saying no. that is an answer.
 
 
Ulysses Lazarus
09:10 / 28.11.05
Crowley ? sorry one has to laugh...

Yes, 'one' has to, I suppose if one conveniently ignores that Crowley tangibly created a better world with his ideas (hint- yr parents call it 'the 60s') while Marx's ideas have led to little more than totalitarian slaughter, self-righteous middle-class prosthetyzing and a plague of Trotskyite splinter groups o'er the land. I suppose one would also have to laugh if one pompously dismissed any idea which did not comfortably fit into a bourgeois radical, historical materialist, third worldist or other similar metamemes which generally attack mysticism, magic and subjective experience in general with rhetoric on the level of 'that's stupid, sell our banal newspaper instead.'

Sorry, Doctor Benway, but a quick question. You told us that we should know damn well (I quote) that the Paris Commune was Proudhonian, but now it appears that you do not know yourself with absolute certainty whether the Paris Commune was Proudhonian or not. This seems to me rather confusing. Could you clarify? Is there an expectation of knowing that the Paris Commune was Proudhonian in philosophy that pertains to others but not to yourself?

I'm really rueing that statement. This is one of those things that I remember studying in college but can't for the life of me find any supporting information for now. Then again, I've not looked that hard. In any event, I suppose it would be just as fair to call on a Marxist to prove the Marxism of the Paris Commune- something I suspect they would be far better at than I since A) Marxists, like a certain grade of Golden Dawn member, interpert all phenomenon as a sign of the Marxism B) they have much more of a stake in this argument than I do.

Eschewing my earlier didacticism in favor of a more balanced approach- the Marxist 'claim' on the Paris Commune seems tenuous at best if for no other reason than the diffuse ideological nature of the workers' movement of the late 19th century in general. Further, it fits into their general tendency to retrofit anything they wish into their own paradigm thru selective attention. Indeed, the Russian Revolution was far from monolithic and that was in the age of the professional army of Leninist anarchist killers. It seems untenable- again, this is totally a subjective intuition- to suggest that the Paris Commune had 'Marxist leadership' in any acceptable use of the term.

If only I'd held onto all of my Marx and Lenin and a stack of internal Leninist literature that could choke a camel...
 
 
sdv (non-human)
14:58 / 28.11.05
John

"Yes, 'one' has to, I suppose if one conveniently ignores that Crowley tangibly created a better world with his ideas (hint- yr parents call it 'the 60s')..."

Rubbish....
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
16:25 / 28.11.05
Children, children. Crowley is a blind alley, and nothing so far suggests that you're going to be able to tease anything of value out of a scrap over him. Suffice to say that if Crowley had invented the 60s, I'd have more waiting staff.

Now, back on Marx.

Eschewing my earlier didacticism in favor of a more balanced approach- the Marxist 'claim' on the Paris Commune seems tenuous at best if for no other reason than the diffuse ideological nature of the workers' movement of the late 19th century in general.

So, hang on... if the diffuse quality of the ideological nature of the workers' movement in the late 19th century makes the Marxist claim on the Paris Commune tenuous, how exactly does it not make the Proudhonian claim equally tenuous? What, precisely, is it about Proudhonian thought that you feel has the power to transcend diffuse ideology in a manner beyond the power of Marxism?
 
 
Jackie Susann
21:35 / 28.11.05
in an attempt to end this argument - Marxism as a formal doctrine did not exist at the time of the Paris Commune. Marx later remarked that he'd been blocked in his thinking, and that the Paris Commune had shown him possibilities of worker self-organising that let him extend the systematicity of his thinking, i.e., through the Grundrisse and Capital. so if you really care, Marxism is modelled on the Paris Commune, but it is clearly anachronistic to assert that the Paris Commune somehow considered itself Marxist. to that extent, Proudhon undoubtedly had a greater influence on the events than Marx, although arguably Marxism has a greater explanatory power with regard to the events.

is there any possibility this thread will go anywhere interesting? i realise i am personally responsible for rotting it more or less beyond repair, but still...
 
 
sdv (non-human)
08:58 / 29.11.05
(personally) i think what made it impossible for this thread to go anywhere interesting was the reactionary assumption that a philosophy was assumed to 'redeemable', which presumes that Marx and socialist thought is in some sense to blame, and secondly that the subject was Karl Marx. How could it become 'interesting' when this effectivibly forbade a discussion about anything interesting about Marxism and it's impact on recent thought ?

Instead a discussion about 19th C french history and the international - and those tired discussions about Bakunin and Marx (shudder...) - and oh god (somebody give me strenght) -- 'the camps the camps... and the millions of dead...'

enough..
 
 
Lurid Archive
09:23 / 29.11.05
Actually sdv, I was hoping that someone would address this sort of question and explain how they think Marx is relevant in the present.

We've had threads on this before, but I'm interested in how people think that Marx stands up or is changed in the light of modern economics. How much of Marx remains? And is economics really the best yardstick with which to judge Marx? Or is the influence of Marx more broad than the boundaries of modern economics allow? In short, I'd like to go back to where the discussion started off.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:12 / 29.11.05
I'm glad you asked that, Lurid, because I find myself at the moment involved in a discussion of hip-hop which in its terminology is intextricably tied up with the analysis of capitalism provided by Debord, which I think is enormously dependent on Marxist thinking - over here. Now, admittedly, Debord is pretty retro at this stage, and probably gets less 'spec outside Barbelith, but we're talking about Marxist economc theory providing a continuity of critique across different applications and scenarios, which is at least a place to start. So, Marxist thinking there is being used aas part of a toolkit examining, in this case, how bling functions in hip-hop.

DPC: My aim with the Paris Commune discussion was to point up how ideologies are being associated or dissociated - in particular, Dr. B very confidently asserted at first that the Paris Commune was a product of Proudhonian rather than Marxist thinking, and then that the ideology of the time was too diffuse to ascribe to a particular strain of thought. On the other hand, the very idea of the redemption of Marxism, as sdv mentions above as a problem with the question, assumes that Marxism is responsible for or at least closely associated with, for example, Maoism or Stalinism. Possibly once oyu give ground on the idea that a principle can exist in anything other than an ideal state (jbsay's capitalist wonderland, the paradise of the proletariat), it becomes an attractor of historicality, the aim of which is to glue as many bodies to it as possible...
 
 
sdv (non-human)
15:00 / 29.11.05
I can see that an argument that suggests that Marxism remains a relevant toolset for those engaged in a critique of contemporary Western society could be easily made. But this is obvious given the explosion of interest/use of marxist thought in the past 6-7 years. However perhaps this is redundent as no sustainable critique of western society has been produced that is not crucially dependent of marxist work. Even the most non-marxist postmodern critiques (I'm thinking especially of the work of Lyotard, and Foucault) would not have been possible without the earlier marxist work and are usually weaker as a consequence of the avoidence of the issue. It's interesting to compare this with the most interesting critiques of western capital/society today which tend towards being directly marxist or post-marxist.

After this preamble I am thinking of - Harvey's recent critique of neo-liberal imperialism, Laclau's even more recent text on 'Populism', the steady growth of the spinozist-marxist line and Kristeva's adoption of Debord's spectacle -- all point towards the ground on which an acceptable critique of present day capitalism starts.

Harvey's work especially makes me want to invert the question Lurid asks - how is it possible to imagine that a critique of neo-liberal/globalist econcomics cannot have a least one foot on the marxist line of thought ?
 
  

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