Is Marxism dead?

[Jako]

For the sake of at least attempting to maintain some intelligent discussion in the region, I propose the question 'Is Marxism dead'? Or at least dying. Undoubtedly it will survive as an intellectual curiosity; a handy way of explaining history and a radically alternative system of economics. But how many successful and flourishing political movements describe themselves as Marxist? Is it just to be exiled to the irrelevant political fringes, where even radicals on the Left do not wish to associate themselves with it? Why didn't Marxism, with its emphasis on the emancipation of the working-class, ever become more popular with the masses?

'I don't believe in the dogmatic postulates of Marxist revolution. I don't accept that we are living in a period of proletarian revolutions. All that must be revised. Reality is telling us that every day. Are we aiming in
Venezuela today for the abolition of private property or a classless society? I don't think so. But if I'm told that because of that reality you can't do anything to help the poor, the people who have made this country rich through their labour and never forget that some of it was slave labour, then I say 'We part company'. I will never accept that there can be no redistribution of wealth in society. Our upper classes don't even like paying taxes. That's one reason they hate me. We said 'You must pay your taxes'. I believe it's better to die in battle, rather than hold aloft a very revolutionary and very pure banner, and do nothing ... That
position often strikes me as very convenient, a good excuse ... Try and make your revolution, go into combat, advance a little, even if it's only a millimetre, in the right direction, instead of dreaming about utopias.'

- Hugo Chavez

[Star City]

Ah, good timing. The question my History class is currently answering is "Is Socialism Still Relevant Today?". I'll take some extracts and post it here next week (I'm also writing a non-college follow-up essay aswell)

[The Red Factions]

I get the feeling of a déja-vu. I'll reply later today.

[Jako]

You're right - we've discussed this sort of thing so many times before it seems pointless to go into the same old argument again. I just want to maintain a semblance of proper intelligent debate here!

If only you were all Brits - then we could discuss the amazing revelation that Liberal Democrat Party wannabe leader Mark Oaten paid rentboys to shit on him....

Actually maybe it's a good thing we don't talk about that! Bloody liberals!

[Star City]

Fascinating. Can I expect some more 'Lib-Dems don't have a leader' jokes from Tony rather than answering serious questions about various issues?

[The Red Factions]

What you are attempting to insinuate, Jako, is what people get to hear as often as possible from the western media and other institutions of western state power. this society. Your quite right in saying that it is the prevailing view, that Marxism is dead. But once again, the prevailing view of any period throughout human history, has been the view of the ruling class.

Marxism is not dead. That labourites like yourself would spend so much time in attempts of all kind to refute it proves that. Already in the early 19th century, "intellectuals" affirmed with great certainty that "Marxism was to be irrelevant in the 20th century", barely a decade before the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The French revolution in 1830, 1848 and ultimately the establishment of The Paris Commune 1871, as well as The Russian Revolution in 1917, the uprisings in Germany in the 20's, the success of the Chinese Revolution in 1949, Vietnamese Revolution in 1945, the revolutionary regimes in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Cuba etc..etc..., not to mention the actual class struggles waged in Nepal ( or China for that matter ) proves your claim wrong. Marxism is as relevant as it was in the 19th century as it is in the 21th century. Communist parties remain politically important in many European countries and particularly so in the Third World, ( India, to name on example ) where the working class toils under the mercyless slavery of capitalism.

In an internationally interconnected and globalised world, dominated by corporations and big business whose only objective is to maximise their profits at all costs and where the developed countries ruthlessly exploit the third world for its own profit - the essence of Marxism remains as relevant as ever. We witness today a disturbing reality for the advocates of capitalism : the gradual emergence of mass unemployment and social unrest in the advanced countries of capitalism, as well as an increasing nightmare of poverty, exploitation, segregation and war for the vast majority of humanity in the Third World. This reality and the futility of the so-called "progresses" made by parties like Labour inevitably produces tensions in society which do burst out into open conflicts as we witnessed in France only a few months ago.

All attempts to dismiss Marxism as "dead" is an act of futility.

[Star City]

Marx identified technological progress as the cause of the big changes - we can't be far away when every day a few hundred people are replaced by a few robots (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30735)

[Jako]

"The French revolution in 1830, 1848 and ultimately the establishment of The Paris Commune 1871, as well as The Russian Revolution in 1917, the uprisings in Germany in the 20's, the success of the Chinese Revolution in 1949, Vietnamese Revolution in 1945, the revolutionary regimes in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Cuba etc..etc..., not to mention the actual class struggles waged in Nepal ( or China for that matter ) proves your claim wrong"

Well since my question was about the contemporary state of Marxism, most of your argument - since it is based upon historical examples - is irrelevant. Although I will concede that Marxism is obviously still an influence on the insurrectionists in Nepal, let's not get into the whole China debate again. There's another thread for that (incidentally I wonder what Marx would have thought of Google compromising with the tyrannical Chinese state authorities by severely restricting freedom of information on its new Chinese search engine. At least Mao would have approved).

Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia....they're not really countries associated with successful, happy peoples. I'm not sure how many Western workers would prefer to live under Angolan communism than liberal capitalism. And Cuba's a joke - Fidel Castro only embraced communism and Marxism once it was obvious he needed the Soviet Union to defend his regime from U.S aggression. Half the population of Cuba would probably go to live in Florida tomorrow if they were allowed to.

"Your quite right in saying that it is the prevailing view, that Marxism is dead. But once again, the prevailing view of any period throughout human history, has been the view of the ruling class"

Are there are any students of politics here? Or even of literature, or history? How many have been taught about Marxism during their studies? I would be surprised if anyone hadn't. And who has found the education system - undoubtedly the "tool of the ruling class" or whatever - actively persuading them to dismiss Marxism? On the contrary, I'd hazard a guess that Marxism is still very much part of the academic world, as it has been for a very long time now. The difference is that people no longer embrace it. Is this because they have been brainwashed by the capitalism? Or is it because Marxism has become (quite reasonably) associated with the Russian Revolution, Lenin, Stalin, etc, and is therefore approached with a certain scepticism. Rather than an inspirational answer to every social, economic and political problem of the future, perhaps Marxism is seen by most as the cause of many problems of the past.

I'm not saying I agree with this view - I'm just stating what I suspect to be the truth!

"This reality and the futility of the so-called "progresses" made by parties like Labour inevitably produces tensions in society which do burst out into open conflicts as we witnessed in France only a few months ago."

How successful were your attempts to agitate, educate, and organise the working-class of the French ghettos? I hope they didn't find you too patronising!

"All attempts to dismiss Marxism as "dead" is an act of futility."

Granted, but all attempts to deny that it is no longer the great ideological motivation for revolutionary change that it perhaps once was is hiding away from reality.

[The Red Factions]

Your provocation attempts are equally futile, Jako. Your attempts to distort my words in an effort to mock me will not be echoed by me. We may of course, discuss what I actually said in another thread but I doubt you would take up that challenge. That you would be attempting to derail this thread into petty insults speaks highly of your real intentions and tactics, as I doubt you are really interested in debating Marxism and its relevance today given the approach you're taking.

I've noticed a pattern emerge as you debate. Your style could essentially be summed up as "I'm sure that if X had been that way then Y would have happened - proving my original point". Secondly, you don't tend to see further than your own nose and your own generation.

You are right in saying that many of the countries I've listed are not ones generally associated with a "happy and succesful people". That is why this type of revolution occurs there. To dumb it up for you - unhappy people are prone to revolution - whether the regimes ( who exist to this day ) could be described as genuinly socialist is subject for another debate, but their existance is an indication of the relevance of contemporary Marxism.

As can be seen in the many activist movements that remain to this day, inspired by a wide range of Marxist ideas, the renewed vitality of Marxism, socialist concepts and practices in present-day Latin America where the masses are constantly pushing further to the left ( Chavez included ) is just one indication amongst so many others of the ways in which Marxism remains a primary source of international inspiration for class struggle and revolutionary theory. The growing mass movements against corporate globalization find their ideological origins in Marxism. To name another "contemporary example" The loud international criticism to the U.S. war in Iraq as “imperialist” is a telling indication that Marxism remains a primary source for popular thinking.

[Jako]

I don't understand the double standards at work here: you are allowed to constantly making snide references to my political activism whereas I'm not allowed to remind us all of what you said you were going to do in France?! I would have thought your personal experiences of nurturing the revolutionary potential of the working-class would be extremely relevant to this particular discussion.

Unhappy people are prone to revolution, indeed, which in turn suggests that happy people are not willing to pursue social transformation. Marxism surely then encounters a problem when the working-class, as the player in the class conflict that has been given the role of revolutionary, is apparently very satisfied and unwilling to jeapordise what they have for something that is only theoretically better.

Yes I agree that the rise of the Left in S.America is significant, and undoubtedly Marxists choose to interpret this as evidence of the reliability of their views. But in the quotation I put in the first post of this thread it seems that Chavez is trying to distance himself from Marxism. Significant? Perhaps this is why hardline Marxists see Chavez as just another useless social reformer, even if he has populist leftie leanings.

I would really like to contest the suggestion that the massive anti-war feeling across the world was necessarily a sign of support for Marxist thinking. Is it only a Marxist who would think it was wrong to go into Iraq? The majority of anti-war activists, in the UK at least, seemed to be middle-class liberals, though of course the Marxist Left did get heavily involved to use the publicity. And our resident neo-fascist nutters, the British National Party, were also against the war. And fascists, as I'm sure you're aware, HATE Marxism.

Would you not agree that an increasing source of revolutionary identity is to be found in 'radical' religious beliefs? When an unhappy people become prone to revolution, it's not just Marxism that they can turn to. In many areas of the developing world at the moment it seems that support for 'radical' Islam is a more popular expression of anger against imperialism, Western liberal capitalism etc, than Marx. Today's victory of religious fundamentalists Hamas against semi-secular, semi-socialist Fatah in the Palestinian elections is further evidence of this worrying trend. Instead of the rational class based analysis of struggle, they're turning to irrational religious absolutism. Scary stuff, eh? I'm sure we can agree on that.

It is good to see healthy discussion taking place, though it'd be nice if more people joined in.

[EuroSoviets]

Now it's my turn.

I'm sick and tired of people trying to tell me Marxism is dead. Or that it is dying. Any such implication indicates a misunderstanding of what Marxism is. What Marxism is not is a political ideology. Marxism in the correct usage is an economic analysis, a social analysis and a political analysis all rolled into one. It is a system of analysis that attempts to explain in a very definite way how society evolved from Mycenaean palace cultures to industrialized society.

I don't understand how something like that can 'die' - Marxian thought forms a part of all history courses, of all archaeological courses, of all politics courses and of all English courses - not to mention is, along with Weber, one of the two foundation stones of sociology. Marxism is very alive today.

If the question is more definite, such as "Are Marxist political parties an irrelevance in today's political process?" then the answer is of course going to be, at most levels, yes. That said, most of the popular movements since Thatcher's victory in 1984 have had at their core a group of Marxist political theorists. Whilst populists can appropriate political movements such as the anti-war movement, the first people on the scene were the Marxists, with their small scale rallies and stalls and leaflets. These were soon followed by independent thinkers, curious youth, the liberal left and the rest of the opportunists like the Conservative Party.

A favourite phrase of Vladimir Lenin was that the working class in a time of revolution will be a hundred times to the left of the revolutionary party. This is relevant because it is true - but what is also true is that the current period is not a revolutionary period, leaving the Marxist parties stranded at the extremes of the left, isolated - just as they were, for example, in 1848 in Germany, or in 1871 in France or in 1914 in Russia. To simplistic political analysis, there seems to be no way back from this - hence Labour leaders like Neil Kinnock tried to disavow the militant labour and socialist movements in the 1980's - and Labour leaders like Blair continue to tackle the Unions as though the Unions were a threat.

What is telling of your position Jako, as a liberal, is that you mention the defeat of the 'semi-secular, semi-socialist Fatah' by 'religious fundamentalists Hamas' in elections in Palestine, marking a step away from 'class based analysis of struggle' - I have news for you. It's going to get an awful lot worse. People are always against something before they can be for something else. In that case they are against the face of oppression which seems to bear a Jewish religion, thus vindicating their own faith in fundamentalist Islam.

Those who contend that conflict is not at the heart of the capitalist system analyse Marxism as being dead - they see no reason for it. The contention of Marxists and history itself is that there is a need for it. If Marx hadn't invented Marxism, someone else would have - it is the clearest, highest expression of the future dialectic resolution of tension between the proletariat and the ruling class. If you'd said to a French peasant in 1720 - or in 1552 - that they were destined to rise up against their feudal lords and then be slaughtered by the money grubbing 'bourgeoisie' they'd have looked at you like you were mad. That doesn't change the fact that if you fast forward to 1788, it happened.

Somewhere on this planet, organized industry must exist - clustered together because of the idea of the nation-state and their independent laws which must in turn be lacking in favour towards the toiling classes in order to keep industry within their borders and thus gain them to revenue to be a strong country. That organized industry will experience continuous pressure - and will be educated by it - and there will be a world cycle of revolutions.

Even considering the United Kingdom, the working class is far from content. Everywhere you go, someone is bitching about the state of Unions, or reality TV or the fact that you can't trust politicians, that pension funds are going bust all over the place, that people are going to have to work longer hours and longer years, that the nature of the capitalist system is uncertainty. No one is talking about revolution - but then no one is even talking about Unions these days. It is cyclical; Unions are not pluralist structures designed to be 'marketed' to employees - they are designed to be the militant expressions of workers' power, and to hell with non-Union workers.

The core irony is that ultimately the capitalist oligarchs and their political lackeys will be the ones to rebuild the Unions by their pressure from above.

One final point; I don't know how much experience you'd had with Marxist parties (excluding the SWP who have a special section all to themselves) but tell me this - if you compare, say, the Socialist Party now with the Socialist Party ten years ago, what do you see?

[EuroSoviets]

Oh come on Jako, it doesn't take this long to formulate a reply!

[D.S. of Soviet Sexy Girls]

cfes said:

Those who contend that conflict is not at the heart of the capitalist system analyse Marxism as being dead - they see no reason for it. The contention of Marxists and history itself is that there is a need for it. If Marx hadn't invented Marxism, someone else would have - it is the clearest, highest expression of the future dialectic resolution of tension between the proletariat and the ruling class. If you'd said to a French peasant in 1720 - or in 1552 - that they were destined to rise up against their feudal lords and then be slaughtered by the money grubbing 'bourgeoisie' they'd have looked at you like you were mad. That doesn't change the fact that if you fast forward to 1788, it happened.

It's late in the night now, and I'm not going to make any lengthy argument. However, I can't but say that this argument is rather odd, ES. How could you say something was to happen ? That's a rather strange way to analyse history.
If Marx hadn't invented his theory, well, perhaps someone else would have, but perhaps not. It's impossible to say something was to happen, except in very precision situations, and we are not talking of that here.

And, perhaps Marxism is a "tool" to analyse/explain behaviors and economical interaction through History. But, it's just like in science, tools does not last for ever. At one point, something better came to replace them. If you want a good example, just take a look at the evolution of the Atom's model during the 20th century.

[EuroSoviets]

Sorry, I forgot I'm talking to a bunch of liberals.

Consider the individual. Liberal muppets (non-judgmental) ask the ridiculous question "If Hitler hadn't been born, would Nazi Germany have happened?" The question ascribes a vast amount of importance to the individual. Hitler was simply a product of a social situation; of forces acting on him and on society. The depression, the defeat of Germany during World War I, the harsh exactions made by the other imperial powers on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles, the nationalism engendered by the 'new' Germany, which had only really been in existence since 1871.

Hitler became a nexus - the personification of those forces. Just like Lenin was a nexus for the working class revolution or Stalin was a nexus for the bureaucratist counter-revolution. To say that an individual is responsible for history is simply a supreme expression of vanity, brought on by the cult of the individual which we're taught to worship in popular history because the actual explanation of say historical dialectics would involve big words and might lead to political conclusions which those who teach don't really want us to reach.

Moving to Marx or Smith, or Aristotle or any of a score of famous authors who crystallized into theoretical form ideologies and ideas already pre-existent in society. Take Hobbes. His early works began exploring the theories which The Leviathen later crowned. In order to explore those ideas, they had to be pre-existent in society; indeed they were. Hobbes read works which were immensely popular with the ruling class of his day - one such was Thucydides, a Greek historian who was interpreted by ruling class ideology to have favoured monarchy as the most perfect form of government. Which was handy since Monarchy was the form of government and Hobbes was pro-Monarchist. He simply crystallized into written form the notions of human nature and so on that were pre-existent.

In the same way Marx. Dialectics were Hegel's idea; Marx simply brought together ideas that were circulating in revolutionary and philosophical circles. He became a nexus and from him crystallized what we call Marxism - which has roots leading back to Aristotle and further. Marxism was a product of the 19th century, the economic forces acting, the intellectual slant of the times, particularly the massive re-approbation of the classical world and so on. Marx' initial ideas like the German Ideology reflect how these ideas crystallize out of pre-existent material. Capital and the Communist Manifesto are developments upon earlier themes expressed in Marx' works and in the works of other contemporary philosophers.

These people were not inventing something new. They were giving what we see as a familiar form to something old. Had Marx not written his works, someone else would have; that is the nature of all history. All ideas find a personification. Had Marx not been born, then perhaps Herman von Genshler (non-existent, a name I plucked out of my head) might today be recognized as the modern father of Genshlerism, an ideology describing society as class based etc.

--------------------

Moving on, I'm going to disregard my normal etiquette of not attacking the poster. Do you have a brain?

The model of the atom. A better example would be the wave/particle debate of the late 19th Century. Physicists thought they had wrapped everything up; that anything they didn't know was an irrelevance to be tied down shortly. The bit they didn't know unravelled all physical discoveries of the previous hundred and fifty years and gave birth to quantum physics and theories of relativity. The changes discovered in the model of the atom were not a 'tool for analysis' they were the results of analysis.

The tool for analysis is science itself. The idea that there is a logical explanation to all things; that nothing is beyond human rationality. That tool is very much still in use today. Of course that tool faces challenges; the religious challenge it all the time. That doesn't mean we abandon the tool just because unimaginative dolts don't see that it is useful. You see the parallel I'm drawing?

[D.S. of Soviet Sexy Girls]

cfes said:

Sorry, I forgot I'm talking to a bunch of liberals.

Consider the individual. Liberal muppets (non-judgmental) ask the ridiculous question "If Hitler hadn't been born, would Nazi Germany have happened?" The question ascribes a vast amount of importance to the individual. Hitler was simply a product of a social situation; of forces acting on him and on society. The depression, the defeat of Germany during World War I, the harsh exactions made by the other imperial powers on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles, the nationalism engendered by the 'new' Germany, which had only really been in existence since 1871.

Hitler became a nexus - the personification of those forces. Just like Lenin was a nexus for the working class revolution or Stalin was a nexus for the bureaucratist counter-revolution. To say that an individual is responsible for history is simply a supreme expression of vanity, brought on by the cult of the individual which we're taught to worship in popular history because the actual explanation of say historical dialectics would involve big words and might lead to political conclusions which those who teach don't really want us to reach.

I agree Hitler was a product of Germany's situation after the Great War, and he became the personification of the ideology. However, without him, things would still have been different. Indeed, he brought his charisma to the party, something it hadn't. Sure history is made by masses, but some individual can have decisive influence on it at crucial periods such as the one in the 20's/30's. I'd be ready to bet that without the input from Hitler, the NSDAP wouldn't have so well succeed in post war Germany. Different men, different history.

cfes said:

These people were not inventing something new. They were giving what we see as a familiar form to something old. Had Marx not written his works, someone else would have; that is the nature of all history. All ideas find a personification. Had Marx not been born, then perhaps Herman von Genshler (non-existent, a name I plucked out of my head) might today be recognized as the modern father of Genshlerism, an ideology describing society as class based etc.

Who can say that someone else would have done the same way ? Nobody. Perhaps thinkers could have create a theory that would have evolved differently from the way Marxism did evolve. Sure, we'd have had something with the idea of class struggling, bla bla bla... but people could have used it differently. Nothing is written in advance.

cfes said:

Moving on, I'm going to disregard my normal etiquette of not attacking the poster. Do you have a brain?

I guess so.

cfes said:

The model of the atom. A better example would be the wave/particle debate of the late 19th Century. Physicists thought they had wrapped everything up; that anything they didn't know was an irrelevance to be tied down shortly. The bit they didn't know unravelled all physical discoveries of the previous hundred and fifty years and gave birth to quantum physics and theories of relativity. The changes discovered in the model of the atom were not a 'tool for analysis' they were the results of analysis.

The tool for analysis is science itself. The idea that there is a logical explanation to all things; that nothing is beyond human rationality. That tool is very much still in use today. Of course that tool faces challenges; the religious challenge it all the time. That doesn't mean we abandon the tool just because unimaginative dolts don't see that it is useful. You see the parallel I'm drawing?

I agree I could have choose a better example, but I was rather tired when I wrote this, and this evolution was the first that came to my mind.

However, the model is still a tool. It's created from analysis, but also serves analysis as it's what it is, a model. People said, this is the way an atom is let's base our calculations on this. Twenty years later, they realized it was not the best they can think of, and a new version appeared.

The tool to analysis the world is indeed science. But, science itself is based on other tools, which can be abandoned. I'd say history is rather the same. History in itself is the tool to analysis what happened to humanity during its life. Marxism is a tool of history, as much as Maxwell's theories is a tool of science. Both can one day be abandoned for something better.