Can a Non Marxist admire Karl Marx and still not be a Marxist just like a Non Social

[tradeunionsupporter]

Can a Non Marxist admire Karl Marx and still not be a Marxist just like a Non Social Darwinist can admire Charles Darwin and still not be a Social Darwinist or believe in Social Darwinism ?

[MarxSchmarx]

Can a Non Marxist admire Karl Marx and still not be a Marxist just like a Non Social Darwinist can admire Charles Darwin and still not be a Social Darwinist or believe in Social Darwinism ?

Well short answer yes, long answer ... SIGH.

For starters, Charles Darwin recognized that his theory of natural selection had no moral and limited sociological and economic bearing, and with the significant exception of women, he categorically denied an evolutionary, biological origin to the prevailing social mores of his time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin#Social_Darwinism and references therein gives an OK summary).

But let us set that aside. Now of course one can "not be a Marxist" - the phrase "Marxist" means too many things to too many people - after all, Marx emphatically insisted he was not a Marxist and Obama is routinely called a Marxist in even some circles that should know better.

The question therefor dissolves into what is meant by "admiration". Do we "admire" Socrates, even though his social philosophy (at least as interpreted by Plato) was repugnant? Do we "admire" Joan of Arc for her courage? If you merely "admire" Marx for happening to fall along some list of historically important people, then sure, you don't need to be a Marxist. But at the end of the day, this makes Marx a mere historical curiosity, no more worthy of our admiration or serious study, than, say Qin Shi Huang.

But if we were to admire Marx the way we were to admire Darwin, Einstein or Ramanujan, it seems to me we have to become what is broadly understood as a "Marxist". For, unlike Darwin's theories, which carefully circumscribed the implications for society at large, almost all of Marx's theories and analysis strike at the heart of social organization and fundamental questions about what it means to be a human being and a citizen. Our admiration for Marx the scholar and Marx the social scientist, rather than Marx the dead white guy, necessarily commits us to adopt a distinctly Marxist (in more respectable circles it's call "Marxian") analysis of social organization.

[#FF0000]

Can a Non Marxist admire Karl Marx and still not be a Marxist just like a Non Social Darwinist can admire Charles Darwin and still not be a Social Darwinist or believe in Social Darwinism ?

You can be a fan of Marx and not necessarily agree with or believe in everything he's ever said.

And Darwin was not a Social Darwinist. He stated somewhere that his observations really only apply to the natural world.

[mikelepore]

For starters, Charles Darwin recognized that his theory of natural selection had no moral and limited sociological and economic bearing,.

Natural selection could have a bearing on society and economics, but the traits would have to be biological. For example, if the tallest people could more easily reach the fruit in the trees and therefore in a time of famine they were the people who didn't starve, that could be a case where something related to society and economics was affected by natural selection. The problem with "social Darwnism" is that people use this term when they are discussing traits aren't biological in origin, for example, when a society's laws allow certain people to own a given amount or wealth or to have a given amount of political or military power.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Well, I would say that many people who have called themselves Marxists over the years were not actually in line with what Marx was talking about - democratic socialists specifically.

Marx has a lot of academic respectability (Marx studies departments or Marxist analysis of lit or whatnot) and is read by a lot of people who go to business school. In fact, Marx seems to always be mentioned in establishment papers and journals like the Wall Street Journal: during boom times they like to write about how irrelevent and wrong Marx was, and during busts they always run articles with titles like "Was Marx Right?" or they have quotes from Wall Street goons citing "Capital" or mentioning that Marx had good insights into the system.

On the other hand in academics (other than History and maybe sociology) they don't talk about Marx's views on class and certainty not about Revolution. It's the same with Gramsci studies departments - they completely divorce this academic study of their works from the entire point of their studies and writings (i.e. working class revolution).

So to make the Darwin analogy: it would be like if schools set up departments to study Darwin and establishment people liked to cite Darwin in journals and so on... but only for his ability to catalog different kinds of finches, not for his ideas about evolution.

[Agnapostate]

The account of Bakunin translating Das Kapital into Russian tends to come up over and over again, and it's an important one: Marx was primarily an anti-capitalist theoretician, writing comparably little about socialism or communism. As such, all anti-capitalists, regardless of their specific tendency, can benefit from his work. And even orthodox economics has accepted some Marxian facets for explanation of empirical phenomena.

[Rosa Provokateur]

No reason why they couldnt. I'm no Marxist but I have respect for Marx in that his critique of the Industrial Revolution was cutting-edge and his ideas on labor and value give interesting insight into our daily work-lives.

[Zanthorus]

Marx was primarily an anti-capitalist theoretician, writing comparably little about socialism or communism. As such, all anti-capitalists, regardless of their specific tendency, can benefit from his work.

I've already tried to show how wrong this is in this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1766993&postcount=12) reply to your thread on rhetorical strategy.

But to expand a little, Marx's "critique" of capitalism is not of the form of "critique" that most people are used to. In fact the critique of capitalism is not actually a critique of capitalism but a critique of political economy. To try and understand it a little better you need to understand how Marx viewed "critique". Marx did not merely "critique" things by saying "X and Y are wrong" and throwing away what was wrong. This passage from the Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right throws more light on it:


The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Marx's critique of religion in this passage is not merely saying that religion is wrong and tossing it aside but trying to get to it's basis, the inverted world which produces the inverted consciousness.

Similarly, Marx's critique of the political economists does not merely toss them and their theories aside as wrong. Rather he attempts to show that their theories are the product of of the fetishised forms of capitalism in which what are really just the results of human activity are concieved of as the result of blind "market forces" guided by the invisible hand. This is the whole basis of commodity fetishism. Now this specific critique of political economy - that it is based on an inhuman form of life (capitalism) - implies a specific form of resolution - the restoration of human relations, and the creation of a "truely human community" in which productive activity is the result of conscious planning by the whole community instead of blind market forces.

The whole use-value/exchange-value distinction also comes to prominence here. Capitalism is at the same time a system which develops the productive forces and increases use-values, and on the other hand attempts to increase the amount of value in the hands of the capitalist. The basic antagonism (or "contradiction" if you like) is the antagonism between these two aspects of capitalism. Marx makes it clear in the Preface to a Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy that his main concept of social revolution is based around the productive forces outgrowing the social relations which they had previously existed in. The production of greater and greater use-values is the new form of society which capitalism is pregnant with which needs to be ripped out of the social relations which created it (the process of exchange and valorisation) to create a new society based primarily on the production of use-values for human need.

In other words Marx's critique of capitalism implies within it the way in which the society that replaces capitalism will need to be structured. Therefore it is completely absurd to say that "all anti-capitalists, regardless of their specific tendency, can benefit from his work" since the critique of capitalism contained in Marx's work can have no logical conclusion other than communism.

[danyboy27]

i am a fan of clausevitz writing, but pretty much against militarism.

so yea, i guess you can.

[Ele'ill]

http://memegenerator.net/facepalm/ImageMacro/1202109/facepalm-NOT-ANOTHER-THEORY-THREAD.jpg

[A Revolutionary Tool]

Something epic by Zanthorus

Epic post by Zanthorus.

[Bud Struggle]

Epic post by Zanthorus.


since the critique of capitalism contained in Marx's work can have no logical conclusion other than communism.

'Cept--where is it in the real world? :)

[Jazzratt]

http://memegenerator.net/facepalm/ImageMacro/1202109/facepalm-NOT-ANOTHER-THEORY-THREAD.jpg

How do you expect to dance if there is no tune?

[Ele'ill]

How do you expect to dance if there is no tune?


Let's start by getting a job to buy a car to drive to the store to get the record player so that we can listen to the music (that I'll assume we already have) and dance the night away.

[Jazzratt]

Let's start by getting a job to buy a car to drive to the store to get the record player so that we can listen to the music (that I'll assume we already have) and dance the night away.

That's one hell of a tortured analogy.

[Ele'ill]

That's one hell of a tortured analogy.

As was its intention.

[AK]

Can a non-Marxist admire Marx to a certain extent? Yes. I'm one of those non-Marxists.

[Zanthorus]

'Cept--where is it in the real world? :)

I keep it hidden under my sofa along with the tooth fairy and the high E string which never breaks :)