r/Marxism

Abridged excerpt from ‘To An American Journalist’s Questions’ 20th of July 1919.

Q. What else would you care to bring to the notice of American public opinion?

A. More than anything else I should like to state the following to the American public:

Compared to feudalism, capitalism was an historical
advance along the road of “liberty”, “equality”, “democracy” and “civilisation”. Nevertheless capitalism was, and remains, a system of wage-slavery, of the enslavement of millions of working people, workers and peasants, by an insignificant
minority of modern slave-owners, landowners and capitalists. Bourgeois democracy, as compared to feudalism, has changed the form of this economic slavery, has created a brilliant screen for it but has not, and could not, change its essence. Capitalism and bourgeois democracy are wage-slavery.

Capitalism has outlived itself. It has become the most reactionary hindrance to human progress. It has become reduced to the absolute power of a handful of millionaires and multimillionaires who send whole nations into a bloodbath to decide which group of plunderers is to obtain the spoils of imperialism, power over the colonies, financial “spheres of influence” or “mandates to rule”, etc.

The collapse of capitalism is inevitable.

The capitalists, the bourgeoisie, can at “best” put off the victory of socialism in one country or another at the cost of slaughtering further hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants. But they cannot save capitalism. The Soviet Republic has come to take the place of capitalism, the Republic which gives power to the working people and only to the working people, which entrusts the proletariat with the guidance of their liberation, which abolishes private property in land, factories and other means of production, because this private property is the source of the exploitation of the many by the few, the source of mass poverty, the source of predatory wars between nations, wars that enrich only the capitalists.

The victory of the world Soviet republic is certain.

I've heard this argument many times from fellow comrades that the USSR was dissolved "illegally". This claim has two sub-parts

1. The USSR was dissolved by external forces, as opposed to the people of the USSR deciding to dissolve it

2. The process of dissolution itself was "illegal"

Since I don't quite understand this argument due to a lack of knowledge, I wanna learn more. In particular, I want answers to these questions:

1. Did the USSR democratically decide to dissolve itself? If so, then it wasn't as much "dissolved" as it decided to dissolve itself. Now this might look like a linguistic critique, but what I'm asking is who, the people of the USSR or external forces, was mainly responsible for the dissolution of the USSR

2. What do we mean by the word "illegal". Legality and illegality implies a certain set of laws. But whose laws are we talking about? Are we talking about the laws of the USSR? Are we talking about international law? What exactly do we mean by the word "illegal"?

Human-created mathematical tools and physical formulas are products of human thought. They function as instruments for describing certain classes of phenomena. Although they can achieve increasingly accurate approximations, they can never be identical with reality itself.

In mechanics, for example, the concept of “force” originally arises from human sensory experience. The first step is to quantify this feeling and correlate it with measurable quantities (such as volume, resistance, or displacement). In this way, force is spatialized and connected with numbers, making it calculable. We can see that every step of this process involves human practical activity.

Similarly, time is associated with phenomena such as planetary rotation, revolution, or even frequencies of light. In doing so, the internal subjective sense of time is transformed into an externally measurable and spatially representable structure, allowing time itself to be expressed and computed in graphical or mathematical form.

From this perspective, so-called “objective laws” are, from beginning to end, laws of human practical activity. Only because certain regularities are extremely stable do we come to regard them as a purely “objective” reality independent of human beings.

At the same time, I have always believed that any claim we make must be grounded in the fact that we are human. Anything beyond human existence is, for me, ultimately unknowable, and therefore indistinguishable from nothingness.

On the one hand, I tend to think that the so-called “objective laws” independent of human consciousness are something quite abstract and almost metaphysical, somewhat similar to Kant’s notion of the “thing-in-itself”: if something is fundamentally unknowable, then it is effectively equivalent to nothing.

On the other hand, any “objective law” that can be clearly articulated and understood is already a manifestation of human consciousness; it cannot exist independently of human cognition.

Although I have not deeply studied Hegel’s philosophy, I am inclined to understand “objective laws” as a dynamic process arising from the interaction between human consciousness and material reality in practice. In this process, consciousness first becomes aware of its own limitations and continuously sublates (aufhebt) them. It is therefore an ongoing, dynamic process of development.

I would appreciate hearing your thoughts on this.

I’ve continued my research into marxism, socialism, communism, capitalism, the works. I think that where I stand economically and what I think would be a good direction for society to move in has become more indignant in my views lately, after looking more into the economic systems of China/USSR.

My questions today are less skeptical of communism as a whole, but skeptical of the label itself. As I’m sure many of you know, it’s quite the heated debate between western economists and everyone else about if China is an actual communist nation. One side will tell you that with their mixed market, they’re not actually communist. Another person will tell you that they’re still communist, but just incorporating markets in a transitional stage.

I don’t see why any of that matters. I think the consensus otherwise is generally that China is doing well economically, and that their citizens have been elevated to a much higher quality of life than previously thought obtainable under “communism”.

I suppose my question is, why do people spend so much time focusing on China’s label? If capitalists can even mostly agree with you that China is succeeding, why does the label matter? Seems like all that matters is studying the system, improving upon its shortcomings, and implementing a similar system in other developed nations. And if not, explaining why it shouldn’t be implemented.

Extending upon that, why are marxists so attached to the labels “communism/socialism”? These labels are extremely stigmatized, and it seems like trying to build upon these words specifically is illogical. Why label yourself a communist, when you could call yourself something else, still have the same goals, and likely grow the movement easier?

Think about this: if you were trying to convince a staunch conservative to join a communist movement, they might turn you down if your organization is called the “National Communist Party”, just because of what they associate with that word. However, if you called it the “National Liberationism Party” (or something similar, just a word that’s not strictly associated with political ideology that can be used in place), then you might be able to convince a conservative to join the movement.

I think right-wing people are much more class conscious than often given credit for, however they associate being conservative with what they were raised as, or use motivated reasoning to justify applying that label to themselves. But if you asked a conservative, “do you dislike extensive government surveillance and political lobbying?” they might just tell you yes.

However, they would not tell you yes if you were wearing a bright red hat with a hammer and sickle. So, essentially my questions are: why the persistence of a useless debate on a label (specifically in reference to China’s economy), and why the insistence on continuing to use a stigmatized, propagandized label? What’s the problem with adopting a new name under the same value system?

Thanks in advance.

Marx wrote an excellent critique of capitalism, included a series of contemporary opinion and dissected it well, even naming the methodologies for that critique. But neither he, nor Engels, resolved any practical design rules. Or proposed any more than a philosophy of living which has massive gaps in the practical application.

https://preview.redd.it/ss5sy2zom1bh1.png?width=1485&format=png&auto=webp&s=c0b8f80ea3186adb6dc13b24cb518b267a29971f

What do people think about this book? I'm starting to question if Hobsbawm was even a Marxist. He is very undogmatic - most of the time I feel like it could be written by a capitalist. There is a sense throughout that the intellectual drift of the age is going to culminate in Marx but he never says that outright. Should I be reading him or will he corrupt my thoughts?

I was reading the manifesto and I wondered, are there any historical examples of people who own the means of production working together to take down the petite bourgeoisie? I can grasp it theoretically but I know no historic examples, history is not my forte.

https://preview.redd.it/5sndf1b8t0bh1.png?width=987&format=png&auto=webp&s=13cac029d45eb73140ac996947b2ccaf627c10af

The subject of the first sentence is the bourgeoisie

I’ve been having philosophical talks with my muslim gf (we know this is supposedly against the book but oh well) about dialectical materialism (of which i’m understanding more and more the implications) and we’ve come to a conclusion : she is kinda idealist (ideas exist independently of materiality) and a dualist (separation between material and "spiritual") and i’m a full on materialist.

It got me thinking about the idea of god when i told her i also viewed dialectical materialism as a sort of spirituality, a way to "trust the forces" hence letting your whole self focused on what can be done, then it hit me.

I’ve long been on the train of actualizing religion, abundant heaven being communism and firey hell being global warming (we got upwards of 46°C in France), then the thought arrived : idealists believe god is an entity moved by their ideas (let there be light because i said so), while my construction of what i could call god is a vague concept of the forces involved (let there be light because that’s just what happens under these conditions lol)

the most counter intuitive part for me is that idealists’ god would have a materiality (an all knowing all powerful entity) and materialists’ god would be an abstract conjugation of forces thus having no materiality.

bonus point : idk if it’s bs but i’ve heard "muslim" means something along the lines of "submitted to the order of things"

am i onto absolutely nothing ?

Lately I've been seeing a lot of content that is either very basic questions about marxism or replies to those questions from equally new marxists explaining that maintaining commodity production and the law of value is a perfectly viable marxist strategy or that this and that conservative religious leadership must be defended because of multipolarity etc. etc.

I get that this sub is for multi tendency discussion, but we should still maintain some sort of baseline quality for discussion and enforce the rules in the sidebar.

My understanding is that Marxist materialism is not really the kind of vulgar materialism that is often conceived in the sense of believing the world is composed of atomic simples that interact with each other, and is rather more relational in nature and argues that construct of the mind and people’s internal mental states are ultimately heavily conditioned by and contextualized by external material conditions and social relations.

That being said in recent years, I’ve become more interested in the idea of metaphysical Idealism as proposed by philosophers like Bernardo Kastrup. My thinking is that if mind is seen as the ultimate substrate of reality, this does not necessarily conflict with dialectical materialism or even materialism more broadly as one can simply just switch out the ontological makeup of reality with mind rather than matter - as long as the actual relations between what we perceive to be physical entities, minds and social relations function essentially the same as under a materialist paradigm, I don’t see why this would be in conflict with Marxism. Especially if one rejects the more woo woo claims of things like mental states being able to directly affect the physical world and things like that.

I am really curious about how we actually combat reformism on a societal scale. Like, I understand that it just doesn't work, but that really doesn't hold up for people. So I'm curious on who has a plan for how to convert reformists, or outcompete them, while not getting alienated from the ultimate goal, socialism.

North Korea is mostly in all but name (and even that to a extent has withered away with the removing of Marxist Leninism from the constitution) a bureaucracy where specific leaders are elevated to such a high status be immortalized everywhere when Marxism is about the collective class rather then individual leaders. It also has very bad labor rights, even if we do go “well it’s anti west) so we’re many historical dictatorships that are still heavily heavily criticized by most Marxists.

Can we say that capitalism is the ultimate cause of climate change? Or is it inevitable reason of entropy? There are different aspects, either it could be due to capitalism or natural entropy phenomena. I am just honestly curious about climate change. So what is opinion of Marxists ? What does actually Marxist think?

Hello everyone, I got radicalized the last few years because of the things happening in Germany and around the world.

I was a social democrat, thought in the framework of liberal democracies, and thought marxists are too quick to dismiss the positive effects of a capitalist economy, that is regulated by a state.

In the last few years I saw that almost every point of a Marxist analysis (reformism doesn’t work, imperial wars, rise of fascism in liberal democracies, stagnating wages, capitalist crises (climate, corona etc.), failure of liberals to address problems accordingly etc.) came true, and describe the reality in a more accurate way than the regular idealistic understanding of liberal democracies.

So I read a lot, learned more about the basic stuff: materialist view instead of idealistic view on things, class relations, alienation, accumulation of capital, dialectical materialism etc. I studied political theory for a long time so it’s wasn’t that hard to get into it, but it was really hard to fight all the misconceptions in my head about what Marx allegedly wanted/said. I thought in a different way my whole life, so these positions were pretty mind-blowing at first, especially because even in academic circles I often got taught the same stuff about Marxism as people hear in high school. What I mean with that, is that they look at the Soviet Union and extrapolate then why Marxism is destructive and doesn’t work, often even without really knowing anything about Russian history or the actual texts Marx wrote.

I’m still very new to all of this and admittedly have a lot of reading and work to do, but one question in particular, regarding practical politics, won’t stop bothering me, and its a critical one. I don’t see why I should support Hamas specifically or any of the BRICS states in general. The more I read, the more economic Marxist positions make sense for me, and it’s a blast to learn so much new things, but I just don’t get why China, North Korea etc. are often supported in Marxist circles. As I said, this is a „beginner“ question I guess, so the answer may be obvious, but supporting these states or organizations is why I don’t really want to jump head first into all of this stuff.

Maybe you can help me broadening my understanding, straighten out my misconceptions, and any helpful resources in general for learning more about Marxism are appreciated highly. Thank you all.

I’m currently reading The Great Cosmic Mother (published in 1987) by Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor.

For context: Sjöö was an anarchist and both she and Mor wrote in the radical feminist / feminist spirituality area. This book is a history of goddess worship and the idea that it was replaced with more patriarchal religions that led to all these other things happening.

I’m on a chapter about Marx where they say the following: “They rightly wanted to save humanity from religious exploitation; but in their narrowing of focus, their economic and class reductiveness, they split the human being into two conflicting parts: material existence versus spiritual existence. This split was just the mirror image of the already existing religious dualism. As dogmatic Marxist communism unfolded in country after country, this split reinforced the same “alienation” of the human condition that Marx had wanted to resolve. It has created the dreary state capitalism of Soviet Russia and its satellites, in which the state works, dourly and mechanically, to enforce its definition of human life as spiritless mechanism. It has given fuel to the propaganda engines of the reactionary systems in all countries, so that the world is ripped apart in a false dichotomy between ‘godless communism’ and ‘divine capitalism.’ For if communism is atheistic, its opponents can claim to be mandated by God, however phony this claim might be.”

I am still learning a lot about Marxism, but I wanted to hear this community’s thoughts on this. Do you think spirituality has a place in a Marxist society? Should it?

Probably a common issue but I’d be interested to see what everyone here thinks. I have a group of mates who go drinking with. They all reject politics and stay clear from it but it’s impacting my view on them. They tend to lean right/central in their views and it’s putting me off them. I don’t want to alienate myself from friends but their core values differ so much from mine it’s difficult. I think they view me as preachy and slightly mental as I do get into passionate debates with them and to be honest they are very closed minded and not well educated.
Am I going about this wrong?

I am planning to pick up Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. I am an education graduate and I have encountered countless mentions of Freire so many times, especially his critique on the banking method. As someone who has done amateur study on Marxism—not having read the foundational texts fully but understanding well enough the principles, I feel like this work is a good piece for me to re-immerse myself back into leftist theory especially in relation to my profession.

What are some good literature to pair this with? Thank you so much in advance!

Hey I seem to have forgotten a logical response to the labor theory of values explanation for famous actors. Example a famous acter being paid millions a min for saying idk “I love Pepsi” how can that be explained threw this theory? Obviously the market is irational but if someone would say to me “why is the famous person getting paid millions when a normal person would get paid 20$ and might even do the “acting” better” I seem to have forgotten a explanation that will sound normal and convincing to a regular person. Can anyone remind me ty

And I don’t mean sports players getting paid millions (at the end of the day they get paid a lot but are still workers) I really do mean this specific example of acters, their fame, and getting paid so much for ads…. Ty

hi all! just looking to spark some conversation on this and get some opinions.
I (F24) have been a reader for almost 10 years. My tastes have obviously evolved in that time and am currently in a big history/theory era. I read a lot of books about other cultures and times in history, as well as some theory such as capital by karl marx and such. Ive been speaking to older family friends (40+ years) about my reading habits and I’ve continuously gotten the question “why would you read that” “whats the point in reading that” and specifically “what makes you feel like you need to read in a social conscious way”
idk what to make of these questions, coming from someone who used to find interest in reading her history textbook, they dont seem to understand I find these topics interesting or want to better my world view.
I do read books that are not history adjacent (ie just getting into some emily henry!) but its specifically what i like to call “woke leftist books” that draw confusion from friends and family.
any thoughts on how to help them understand? does anyone else read like me and have had this experience? tia!