Ideas and their name tags

[scarletghoul]

It recently occurred to me that a huge problem, a huge useless piece of crap clogging up our debates, is the fact that many ideas are viewed as inseperable from the person who made them (or is most associated with them). So instead of discussing the ideas logically and sorting stuff out, we end up talking about individual people.

It makes it difficult when you agree with a figure on one thing but not on another. For example I've been accused of hipocrisy a few times on RevLeft for being a 'Maoist' and 'Stalinist' but having a contradictary view to Mao or Stalin on this or that issue.

It also means people blank out certain ideas because they dont like the person who made them. Eg, when Anarchists dismiss the cultural revolution because Mao was a Leninist.

It means beginners start reading the selected works of Marx, when there are much more concise and easier explanations of his ideas written by other people.

etc

In short it ties ideas down to some guys corpse and prevents us from properly discussing them together. No one person was correct and one person incorrect on everything, so it seems weird that we regard the tendencies named after these people as correct vs incorrect. Should be all about pickin and mixin ideas and freeing them from the corpses of their creators,,

Just some thoughts

[whore]

i agree. it doesnt help that people direct new socialists to read the works of marx as a means of understanding "marxism".

this is also one of the reasons youll find it hard to find a "buhkanist" or a "kroptikinist", because anarchists go for ideas, not people.

i think it is sad when people say "i am a marxist" or "i am a leninist", simply because they agree with the ideas promoted by marx or lenin. and it becomes even more absurd the further away in time we get from these people. as more people write about those ideas.

in other words, i agree.

[Meridian]

Yeah, I agree that is negative. Many wanna-be revolutionaries today would probably be better off reading some contemporary writers than the "ancient" texts of various passed away communists.

The whole idea of an "-ism" is also not without its own set of restrictions. Often times something is lost by appealing to one or such "-ism", for example when describing a person's beliefs and political thoughts. Of course, it is unlikely we can go without a degree of such simplification. On the other hand, you could say there are plain material basis for certain "isms", such as "capitalism" and what constitutes being a "communist" (one who would partake in a communist revolution, for instance).

[SocialismOrBarbarism]

It means beginners start reading the selected works of Marx, when there are much more concise and easier explanations of his ideas written by other people.

To be honest I'd say this is a bigger problem and I really don't see how it would help end dogmatism by directing people to read others interpretations of Marx because this almost always ends up as a way to slip in your own dogmatic interpretation behind peoples backs because people will suggest introductions that fit their own views. Unfortunately many "academic" Marxists and writers biased towards certain tendencies present ideas as Marxian that bear very little if any relation to what Marx was really saying. Any talk of "properly discussing them together" is meaningless if everyone has a different understanding of them in the first place.

[Kuppo Shakur]

I was just thinking of this the other day. Nobody could (or should) agree with absolutely everything that someone else has said. There are always different interpretations and small changes need to be made as time goes on. I think these philosopher's ideas need to be more commonly broken up and referred to with a title that doesn't put too much focus on the actual philosopher. It's stupid for someone not to agree with a certain idea, just because the person who came up with the idea wore the wrong color socks.