"Marxism" is a misnomer

[Ol' Dirty]

"I am not a Marxist." -Karl Marx


This quote is often taken out of context to mean that Marx didn't actually believe what he wrote about. Rather this quote is meant to express Marx's opinion on naming a political idea after him. He opposed the "great man theory" idolization of individual figures in the history of humanity, instead believing that history was shaped by socioeconomic classes. He himself used the term "scientific socialism" or "communism" to describe the body of thought pioneered by him and Engels.

Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, it doesn't matter. The idea of "Marxism" is a thing that people on the left should reject.

[n0thing]

What do we call them then?
Gradualist communists?

[Jimmie Higgins]

It's a useful identifier - there are a lot of words that could be changed for things to be more accurate or descriptive, but language is always changing and so it's better to go with what most people will understand.

I hardly use the term Marxist to describe people or groups - but I think that's more because a lot of the non-Marxist self-identified socialist traditions are gone.

[gorillafuck]

"I am not a Marxist." -Karl Marx


This quote is often taken out of context to mean that Marx didn't actually believe what he wrote about. Rather this quote is meant to express Marx's opinion on naming a political idea after him. He opposed the "great man theory" idolization of individual figures in the history of humanity, instead believing that history was shaped by socioeconomic classes. He himself used the term "scientific socialism" or "communism" to describe the body of thought pioneered by him and Engels.

Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, it doesn't matter. The idea of "Marxism" is a thing that people on the left should reject.
I notice your tendency is Luxembourgist....

[Zolken]

Marxism is as much a religion as any other 'ism' .. the sooner people realize this the sooner mankind will reach maturity.

[Lolshevik]

I would vote in favor of "scientific socialism" as our official term, but, if my girlfriend is any indication of the general mood, it sounds silly to people outside of the movement.

[mykittyhasaboner]

Marxism is as much a religion as any other 'ism' .. the sooner people realize this the sooner mankind will reach maturity.
Maybe you'll reach some maturity the sooner you realize that Marxism is not a religion. Also to right off something because it's an "ism" is pretty immature.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Marxism is as much a religion as any other 'ism' .. the sooner people realize this the sooner mankind will reach maturity.

So ChristianITY isn't a religion?

[ZeroNowhere]

I am getting tired of this quote. Anyways, I'll repost my comment on it from the 'Non-Doctrinaire Communist' (surely an oxymoron) group's board:


While it has been abused by Rubel and such for ages, all it was was Marx distancing himself from a group of communists in France who happened to be calling themselves 'Marxists' (implying some association with him), with Engels later calling Lafargue a 'so-called Marxist' in a letter, and referring to French 'Marxism' as an "altogether peculiar product". Engels suggests that one of the reasons was using historical materialism as an excuse to avoid study of history rather than as a tool for doing so. Some stuff on the context is given here (http://libcom.org/forums/theory/context-marxs-i-am-not-marxist-quote-09062009).

So, as far as I'm concerned, you have no right to claim knowledge of 'what Marx really meant when he said' that. There's no reason to believe that he was saying anything more interesting or profound than that he had nothing to do with those French communists.
Marxism is as much a religion as any other 'ism' .. the sooner people realize this the sooner mankind will reach maturity.
Correct, for example, atheism, nihilism, anti-labelism, surrealism, prisms, etc. Similarly, statements which seem injected with the highest levels of profundity are necessarily infected with emptiness. This, by the way, explains why one looking to be most profound should never state facts; rather, they should state psychology.


This is the complete quote:Um, Engels didn't say that. As should be evident by the reference to him in the third person in that passage, as well as the fact that the statement was hardly well known at the time.


Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, it doesn't matter. The idea of "Marxism" is a thing that people on the left should reject.Oh no, the label has a name in it! How utterly uninteresting!

[Devon]

I really don't like the idea that political/economic ideologies (or secular philosophies in general) can be religions. It's just a way of smearing ideas you don't like. It's kind of jerky.

[Revy]

I really don't like the idea that political/economic ideologies (or secular philosophies in general) can be religions. It's just a way of smearing ideas you don't like. It's kind of jerky.

The misogynist quack E. Belfort Bax promoted the idea that socialism was a religion, if I recall correctly...

[ZeroNowhere]

The misogynist quack E. Belfort Bax promoted the idea that socialism was a religion, if I recall correctly...
Lots of people do it. I recall calling communism a religion back in my liberal days, for example.

[Dimentio]

"I am not a Marxist." -Karl Marx


This quote is often taken out of context to mean that Marx didn't actually believe what he wrote about. Rather this quote is meant to express Marx's opinion on naming a political idea after him. He opposed the "great man theory" idolization of individual figures in the history of humanity, instead believing that history was shaped by socioeconomic classes. He himself used the term "scientific socialism" or "communism" to describe the body of thought pioneered by him and Engels.

Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, it doesn't matter. The idea of "Marxism" is a thing that people on the left should reject.

What Marx rejected was how his contemporary adherents interpreted him.

[Ol' Dirty]

BTW, how do I change my tendency?

[Luís Henrique]

"Marxism" is a misnome

Because there would be a magical word that could adequately grasp the metaphysical essence of the thing we miscall "Marxism"?

Please.

Words are conventional. "Marxism" is as good a name as anything else.

Luís Henrique

[JimmyJazz]

“Incidentally, here one must introduce a general attitude toward one of the most controversial terms of the modern world: Marxism. When asked whether or not we are Marxists, our position is the same as that of a physicist or a biologist when asked if he is a ‘Newtonian,’ or if he is a ‘Pasteurian’.

“There are truths so evident, so much a part of people's knowledge, that it is now useless to discuss them. One ought to be ‘Marxist’ with the same naturalness with which one is ‘Newtonian’ in physics, or ‘Pasteurian’ in biology, considering that if facts determine new concepts, these new concepts will never divest themselves of that portion of truth possessed by the older concepts they have outdated. Such is the case, for example, of Einsteinian relativity or of Planck's ‘quantum’ theory with respect to the discoveries of Newton; they take nothing at all away from the greatness of the learned Englishman. Thanks to Newton, physics was able to advance until it had achieved new concepts of space. The learned Englishman provided the necessary stepping-stone for them.

“Obviously one can point to certain mistakes of Marx, as a thinker and as an investigator of the social doctrines and of the capitalist system in which he lived. We Latin Americans, for example, cannot agree with his interpretation of Bolivar, or with his and Engels' analysis of the Mexicans, which were made accepting as fact even certain theories of race or nationality that are unacceptable today. But the great men who discover brilliant truths live on despite their small faults, and those faults serve only to show us they were human. That is to say, they were human beings who could make mistakes, even given the high level of consciousness achieved by these giants of human thought. This is why we recognize the essential truths of Marxism as part of humanity's body of cultural and scientific knowledge. We accept it with the naturalness of something that requires no further argument.”

-Che Guevara


Personally, I think the problem with "Marxism" most often starts when the term "Marxism" ceases to describe an empirical outlook and begins to describe a purely normative stance. But of course there's also an opposite danger of passive, "mechanical Marxism"*.

Socialism is something a person may desire (normative). Class struggle is an empirical fact--it exists whether anyone likes it or not. And Marx's great contribution, boiled down to its simplest possible summary, was to show that socialism has a class character. That's an assertion that's rather impossible to deny today, in light of all the history that's transpired since Marx's time.

So yeah, I'm a Marxist.


* “The logic of the class struggle does not exempt us from the necessity of using our own logic. Whoever is unable to admit initiative, talent, energy, and heroism into the framework of historical necessity, has not grasped the philosophical secret of Marxism.”--Leon Trotsky