But if Marxists actually are out there struggling to overthrow capitalism, recognizing that is simply recognizing reality.
On of the tenets of Marxism is to see every conflict as the struggle between the capitalist class and the workers class. That’s wrong. There are a lot of conflicts that are not driven by the fight of the two classes.
Apart from that corporate Democrats that outraise Republicans simply aren’t Marxist in any meaningful sense.
The identity politics Democrats engage in is fundamentally Marxist. Plug in dichotomy, identify oppressor and oppressed end of the dichotomy, rinse, lather, repeat. Collectivism. Class consciousness, False consciousness.
Not marxists economically, but ideologically. And even while they’re not marxists economically, they are certainly anticapitalist, as most problems are attributed partially to capitalism, and the solutions to those problems are less capitalism and more government control of markets.
The identity politics Democrats engage in is fundamentally Marxist. Plug in dichotomy
To that extend the OP is a Marxist. He’s focusing on the dichomtomy.
Collectivism
Ideologically postmodernism leads to the acceptance that Black people can live in a Black community and don’t have to integrate into White society. Ideologically today’s left puts value on protecting native cultures and doesn’t believe in pushing modern Western cultural values on other societies.
That’s very much against Marx idea that everything is supposed to come together.
Today’s left considers that everybody is entitled to his own identity and there no need for individuals to integrate into the collective norms of identity. There’s no belief that there one correct identity and that if history finally advances to communism everybody will have that collective identity.
Diversity ideologically valued when Marx didn’t value it.
Seems to me that you and ChristianKl disagree on how many specific details can one remove from Marx and still call the result “fundamentally Marxist”. Specifically, whether you can remove “class struggle” and replace it with any “X struggle” (such as gender struggle or race struggle or otherkin vs non-kin struggle).
I suspect that you could both more or less agree that identity politics uses similar rhetorical tools as Marxism, only replacing class struggle with other values of X. And that the thing you disagree at is whether the rhetorical tools themselves should be called “Marxist”; because for you “Marxism” is in the rhetorical tools themselves, while for ChristianKl “Marxism” is the specific application of those tools to the class struggle.
Or I may be completely wrong here, but this was the first impression.
It seems worth distinguishing “has something in common with Marx’s ideas” from “is fundamentally Marxist”, especially as “Marxist” is a pretty inflammatory term because of the horrors perpetrated in the name of Marxism in the 20th century.
So, what are these ideas you’re calling fundamentally Marxist? I think it comes down to this: “Sometimes one group of people has more power and resources than another, and acts in ways that harm the worse-off group. We should frame such situations in terms of conflict between the two groups, even though some people in the worse-off group may not see it that way.”
I’m not sure I’d want to endorse those ideas, but they seem to me to fall far short of justifying the description as “fundamentally Marxist”.
certainly anticapitalist
Advocating more regulation of markets is not at all the same thing as opposing capitalism. I think you are confusing capitalism with, I dunno, libertarianism or something.
Capitalism means having lots of privately owned industry and trade. Anyone who isn’t advocating large-scale nationalization, or something more drastic than that, is not being anticapitalist in any useful sense.
On of the tenets of Marxism is to see every conflict as the struggle between the capitalist class and the workers class. That’s wrong. There are a lot of conflicts that are not driven by the fight of the two classes.
Apart from that corporate Democrats that outraise Republicans simply aren’t Marxist in any meaningful sense.
The identity politics Democrats engage in is fundamentally Marxist. Plug in dichotomy, identify oppressor and oppressed end of the dichotomy, rinse, lather, repeat. Collectivism. Class consciousness, False consciousness.
Not marxists economically, but ideologically. And even while they’re not marxists economically, they are certainly anticapitalist, as most problems are attributed partially to capitalism, and the solutions to those problems are less capitalism and more government control of markets.
To that extend the OP is a Marxist. He’s focusing on the dichomtomy.
Ideologically postmodernism leads to the acceptance that Black people can live in a Black community and don’t have to integrate into White society. Ideologically today’s left puts value on protecting native cultures and doesn’t believe in pushing modern Western cultural values on other societies.
That’s very much against Marx idea that everything is supposed to come together.
Today’s left considers that everybody is entitled to his own identity and there no need for individuals to integrate into the collective norms of identity. There’s no belief that there one correct identity and that if history finally advances to communism everybody will have that collective identity.
Diversity ideologically valued when Marx didn’t value it.
Seems to me that you and ChristianKl disagree on how many specific details can one remove from Marx and still call the result “fundamentally Marxist”. Specifically, whether you can remove “class struggle” and replace it with any “X struggle” (such as gender struggle or race struggle or otherkin vs non-kin struggle).
I suspect that you could both more or less agree that identity politics uses similar rhetorical tools as Marxism, only replacing class struggle with other values of X. And that the thing you disagree at is whether the rhetorical tools themselves should be called “Marxist”; because for you “Marxism” is in the rhetorical tools themselves, while for ChristianKl “Marxism” is the specific application of those tools to the class struggle.
Or I may be completely wrong here, but this was the first impression.
It seems worth distinguishing “has something in common with Marx’s ideas” from “is fundamentally Marxist”, especially as “Marxist” is a pretty inflammatory term because of the horrors perpetrated in the name of Marxism in the 20th century.
So, what are these ideas you’re calling fundamentally Marxist? I think it comes down to this: “Sometimes one group of people has more power and resources than another, and acts in ways that harm the worse-off group. We should frame such situations in terms of conflict between the two groups, even though some people in the worse-off group may not see it that way.”
I’m not sure I’d want to endorse those ideas, but they seem to me to fall far short of justifying the description as “fundamentally Marxist”.
Advocating more regulation of markets is not at all the same thing as opposing capitalism. I think you are confusing capitalism with, I dunno, libertarianism or something.
Capitalism means having lots of privately owned industry and trade. Anyone who isn’t advocating large-scale nationalization, or something more drastic than that, is not being anticapitalist in any useful sense.