Are We Picturing Karl Marx Incorrectly?

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Hi everyone.

I read the Communist Manifesto for the first time many years ago. Sometimes I read it again just for fun. Today, I want to talk about some of the stuff I learned from it.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/

"Cultural Marxism" isn't real. I didn't really see any politically correct content in the manifesto. It was almost purely focused on economic issues. Here are some other notable quotes.

"The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial."

"They (the commies) do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement."

In other words, Marx isn't interested in imposing morality on the proles. He also seems to think that he doesn't need to fight for women's rights because they've always existed.

Perhaps he should check his privilege.

Another Thing: In section two, Marx delivers eight new laws for socialist countries. Look at rule 8.

"8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture."

That sound almost ... right wing. Am I the only one who think that sounds a bit right-wing?

Karl Marx also said this: "Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary."

Bottom Line: I think that people today have a very warped view of Karl Marx. Today, he is often associated with the SJW crowd. In reality, he was an economic populist and little else.

Marx was about class struggle, and collectivism.

But it took later thinkers to use his class struggle paradigm to address issues he didn't address, and to expand on his ideology, and they often took it way beyond his original vision.

Marx thought that colonialism was "a progressive force drawing backward peoples into civilization", and he assumed that his worker revolution would happen in an advanced industrial country in western Europe or America first (even eastern Europe was too primitive for Marxism, much more the third world). But when Marxism was finally put on the map it was put on the map in Russia first, and then in China, Vietnam, and Cuba. And it took the writings of Lenin and Mao to expand the Marxist approach to be applied to critiquing western colonialism paving the way for Marxism to be the rallying ideology for third world anti colonial struggles.

Apparently from what you're saying he wasn't a "gun grabber". Quite the opposite. So that would make him welcome in the NRA (not thought of as being a leftie organization).

But "creating industrial, and agricultural armies" making industry and agriculture arms of the state (ie creating a state run economy) - which is exactly what Marxist regimes of the 20th century did. Don't know how that is "right wing".

Well ... Marx wanted a world in which everyone works.
That's what conservatives and an-caps usually claim to want.

In practice, capitalism often creates idle rich and leads to widespread unemployment but whatever.

Friedrich Engels actually took him to task for this and argued that womens' role in society relative to men directly parallels workers' position. In capitalism, for example, he noted the emergence of what we've come to call dating culture. Which is essentially contractual in nature and a step forward from womens' position in feudalism, but not equality.


Marxists have traditionally been for lax gun control, yeah, because they've been used to disarm revolutionary movements. The first lasting laws on it in the US were used against the Black Panthers.

I have some disagreements with Marx here on public safety grounds, but I'm the weird one on that and even I'm pretty moderate on the issue.


He did mention in the Manifesto some cultural trends from feudalism, like the power of the Catholic Church, that were gradually fading as the commerce-based mode of production superseded land-based production. So, he did start the ball rolling on cultural analyses in his model. Engels and later Gramsci continued this.


Well, workers. He envisioned bottom-up workers' councils running society. Unfortunately it's pretty hard for this to last under a barrage of outside pressure, militaries don't run well in a bottom-up way. Of the two cases where it was attempted: the USSR quickly turned into a top-down bureaucratic monstrosity the minute military pressure came against it in the Russian Civil War, the Catalonian resistance were defeated in the Spanish Civil War.

There are a lot of marxist feminists who would argue that sexism is a consequence of capitalism, and that it ceases to exist in communist societies.

I think these people need to visit China.

No indeed. The legend goes (and I use that word deliberately) that cultural marxism was a later invention either by disenchanted Western intellectuals of a Marxist bent or an inspired Soviet psyop designed to destablise a country entirely or at the very least break the chains of patriotism that were assumed to be preventing the predicted worker's revolt from ever materialsing.

China calls itself socialist.

North Korea also calls itself democratic. What's your point?

The Truth About China

Clutural Marxism has no specific meaning. It's a set label more or less meaning "things we don't like" and used by certain kinds of right wing ideologue. These kinds of set labels are very useful for people who are building conspiracy theories.

It goes like this: you define a set with no conditional parameters for membership, then describe all sorts of disparate ideas, people and events as members of that set, and finally you note that they are all part of pattern because they all belong to the set.

For example, you could start with CM = {multiculturalism, Political Correctness} /per William S. Lind, nutter founder of Cultural Marxism

Then you can start adding random elements, as you find things that offend your sensibilities. For example (again drawing on the Ur Cultural Marxism believer, Lind):

CM = {multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Frankfurt School, Critical Theory, blacks, students, feminist women and homosexuals}

You can just keep adding whatever you like:
CM = {multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Frankfurt School, Critical Theory, blacks, students, feminist women and homosexuals, Freemasons, Catholics, Illuminati, Night Managers at 7-11} , etc.

This gets certain people very worked up and they enjoy that very much. It's a mistake to look to anything written by Marx for help in understanding it because it doesn't have anything to do with Marxism, except in the negative value of that word--but any word with negative association would do. '

You could just as well have named the catch-all set "cultural barbarians" or "psychological satanists" and it would work just as well. If you wanted to play the same game from a lefty POV, you could call that group "Cultural Nazis" -- or just keep using "fascist" as a generic term of abuse, as people on the left have been doing for decades.

This too is vanity and striving after wind.

No Cultural Marxist refers to people like Angela Davis and Patricia Hill Collins, who have specific Marxist ideas along the lines of race, culture, gender and sexuality.

Apply the word cultural to is not a stretch. Personally I would say all Marxism is cultural, but this is referring to an along the lines of race, sex, gender, etc.

Have you read the Movement for Black Lives manifesto? Please read it in its entirety. That is Cultural Marxism and there is a clear connection to these theories.

To say it has no meaning is disingenuous.

Critical Race theory, is a neo-Marxist theory.

Capitalism is part of an economic system. Not even a whole economic system. There are many forms.

It is important tot be able to express your views otherwise you will not be to be able to fight injustice.

The solution to the problems with capitalism, don't lie in Maxism, becuase Maxism is a one party political system. There is no democracy in that.

Also I'm not defender of China, but do you have any idea how poor China used to be, and hope many people have left absolute poverty as result of the economic reform? You know how many people died during the great famine, as a direct result of Mao's policies.

North Korea isolates itself, and the people are starving.

Also there is no point achieving one kind of equality at the expense of all of there rights. That is swapping one form of justice for another.

Last edited by 0_equals_true on 15 Oct 2016, 6:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

"Cultural Marxism" is - as Adamantium pointed out - a mostly meaningless term. It is a textbook example of a "snarl word" intended only to demonstrate antipathy towards some individuals, ideas or groups.

The fact that almost no one (anyone at all?) define themselves as Cultural Marxists only reinforces this point...

... another dumbed-down political buzzword to avoid like the plague...

How about just Marxist then? Or the Marxist theories of Angela Davis?

The Southern Poverty Law Center wrote up the "Cultural Marxism" idea back in 2003

The analysis is still good.

The thing about giving examples of real people and ideas that are part of the "Cultural Marxism" set as evidence that the set is a real thing is that it's a form of circular reasoning.

Angela Davis and Patricia Hill Collins are part of the set (because I say so). The set must be real because it contains the elements "Angela Davis" and "Patricia Hill Collins." Those are real people, therefore the set that contains them is real, too.

But the logic falls apart when examined.

We are all free to apply identifiers to ideologies we wish to criticise. You think they are not plenty of political buzzword coming from the other side? What make them any better/

I said the ideas of, namely critical race theory, the power model and general approach of instersectionalism, cultural appropriation, etc. Those are actual ideas if you prefer those labels. There is a connection to Marxist schools of thought, made by actual Marxists or neo-Marixists.

So we know who we are talkign about. Whether you like that grouping is up to you, but that is the basis for analysis I'm making.

Personally I do both, I criticise the ideas individually an the overall ideology behind it.

Instersectionality is probably the more relevant target right now, because many people have been taught this without examining the pitfalls to this approach.

One thing is true: Whist there is a Marxist motivation, they don't explain this to everyone they are teaching these concepts to. So I'm quite happy to also look at those concept based on their own merit aswell.

However to imply there is no Marxist inspired social justice cause of that kind based around culture an medias effects on race, gender and sexuality or other -ism is dishonest. For one there is a Marxist sociologist called nominalist / Dr. Mark Foster who used to post on WP, who I don't dislike, that expressed sympathies to that effect:

http://www.markfoster.net/struc/nct.html



So here we have a Marxist clearly using the term. Yet you deny it exists.

If your argument is that neo-Marsxism is not the same Marxism this is also playing with definitions, unless you also reject most of the core Marxist ideas. Besides at least one of the clearly identifies as a Marxist and the other uses a Marxist inspired theory.

Last edited by 0_equals_true on 16 Oct 2016, 8:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

Okay...Pravda (the WP poster, not the newspaper) gave a fuller explanation of what Marx meant by "armies of workers" than you. Marx's bottom up democratic vision was not the same as how things worked out in real Marxist states. But even so it still is not "right wing". Quite the opposite.

"Wanting everyone to work" is like "wanting everyone to breath". Its not an manifestly partisan belief. But when you get down to how you believe labor should be organized: thats where ideology comes in.

And you have to look at context. Modern Marx influenced thinkers want "full employment"- "everyone should work" because "capitalism requires unemployment to keep employed workers scared and oppressed" in their view. Where as a conservative would say "everyone should work" as opposed to "having bums on welfare". They say similar things but for opposite reasons.

Also Marxists are usually very big on labor mechanization for any task rote enough where it can feasibly be done, which is about 90% of labor. To vastly increase free time while keeping the same (or even a greater) level of production so we can maintain our current lifestyles to enjoy said free time, and open up room for more people to pursue the creative labor that they enjoy. Which can be described as "following their passions," whether it's writing, a specialized trade like the law, exploring, arts and craftwork...

Marxists believe communism can only be fully achieved once scarcity is ended, which is the main thing distinguishing them from anarchists.