Karl Marx was a Sexist.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Many Marxists have a habit of trying to validate all their positions by saying that Karl Marx would have agreed with them. I think this is a terrible argument. Instead of canonizing and theoligizing Marx, we should critique, build upon, and revise his thought. Here is one of the reasons why he is not a prophet who's word is holy:
Socialist Program written in Gotha, 1875:

First: Universal, direct, and secret suffrage for all males over twenty years, for all elections, municipal and state.

His daughter once game him a questionaire and this was one of his answers:


Q: The Quality you like best in woman? A: Weakness

Sources:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/04/01.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/bio/media/marx/79_01_05.htm

Edit: Meant to post this in discrimination, my bad.

[Zostrianos]

Marx was a man of his time, raised in a chauvinistic 19th century culture. He certainly wasn't perfect, but that doesn't invalidate what he created.

[Art Vandelay]

As stated above, Marx was a man of his time (an extremely progressive man of his time), it's not surprising.

[thriller]

I agree as far as canonizing Marx. I think it is very easy to do so since he was not a prominent leader of any workers revolution of his time that lasted for more than a year. And he may have been a sexist. He may have also been homophobic/transphobic. I am not aware of any stances he made on those issues. But I believe revolutionaries have come a long way from 1848 and have advanced the struggle to sections of the working class previously unnoticed or even forbidden by some past Marxists. The only real "acceptable" way to validate ones opinions on Marxism is when it comes to an economic understanding of society and the political ramification IMHO. The social aspect of capitalism (and therefore the struggle against it) has created an entirely new era of thinking since industrialization.

[Questionable]

I personally never canonized Marx. I like him for his analytical method and I think he was generally progressive because of his recognition of the nature of human history, but if he had some reactionary views it wouldn't make me stop being a Marxist.

[Yuppie Grinder]

I personally never canonized Marx. I like him for his analytical method and I think he was generally progressive because of his recognition of the nature of human history, but if he had some reactionary views it wouldn't make me stop being a Marxist.

That's very good to hear. I agree.

[Positivist]

As stated above, Marx was a man of his time (an extremely progressive man of his time), it's not surprising.

This is true, but the point isn't that Marx was a bad man or something, it is that Marx's word isn't the final one on everything pertaining to society and that citing his support or his opposition to particular positions does not validate them.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I don't know, Karl Marx did write some good things on women's issues, like:

"Social progress may be measured precisely by the social position of the fair sex (plain ones included)."

Plain ones included, how gracious of him! :lol:

It is true, though, that Karl Marx did live in an era that, looked at from today's POV, had social views that were quiet bad. It's a benefit that it seems like only Marx and Engels get, though...I remember some user on this board a while back bashing George Washington or someone like that because of his views on homosexuality, for example.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Thomas Jefferson's view that homosexuals should be castrated instead of executed was quite progressive for his time.

[Ostrinski]

We are students of Marxism because we adopt the analytical methodology not because they were great human beings or even decent human beings at all. That should also go for every other socialist whom we might draw influence from, and I hope that goes without saying because I'm sure it's true for a lot of them.

[Questionable]

I don't know, Karl Marx did write some good things on women's issues, like:

"Social progress may be measured precisely by the social position of the fair sex (plain ones included)."

Plain ones included, how gracious of him! :lol:

It is true, though, that Karl Marx did live in an era that, looked at from today's POV, had social views that were quiet bad. It's a benefit that it seems like only Marx and Engels get, though...I remember some user on this board a while back bashing George Washington or someone like that because of his views on homosexuality, for example.

I think it's more necessary to dismantle the cult of personality built around the Founding Fathers, so harsh critiques about their social views are necessary since people like to characterize them as awesome progressives when they were really quite conservative from a certain standpoint.

[Grenzer]

Not just from a certain standpoint. Even by the the standards of the age. The political nature of the American revolution was really quite conservative by any standards. As a comparison, check out the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

The American system was marked by many conservative traits, such as the separation of powers.

[Rafiq]

Marx was casually (on a personal level) a sexist, not ideologically or theoretically. I could care less.

[Yuppie Grinder]

I don't think the conservative/progressive dichotomy was really a thing at the time, but I might be wrong. I know the left/right dichotomy was born from the French Revolution, and I imagine it wasn't a wide enough idea to matter to the American revolutionaries. The conflict in early American politics was between the anti-democratic Federalists (Washington, Adams) and the adamantly democratic statesmen (Jefferson and his buddies).

[Rafiq]

I don't know, Karl Marx did write some good things on women's issues, like:

"Social progress may be measured precisely by the social position of the fair sex (plain ones included)."

Plain ones included, how gracious of him! :lol:

It is true, though, that Karl Marx did live in an era that, looked at from today's POV, had social views that were quiet bad. It's a benefit that it seems like only Marx and Engels get, though...I remember some user on this board a while back bashing George Washington or someone like that because of his views on homosexuality, for example.


See, this is evidence. Programmically Marx and Engels were not sexists, they were just personally insensitive when it came to these types of issues and sexist on a personal level.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Not including women in universal suffrage is undeniably sexist.

[Caj]

Everyone arguing that Marx wasn't a sexist is completely missing the point of this thread, namely that Marx was not some infallible prophet.

[hetz]

Many Marxists have a habit of trying to validate all their positions by saying that Karl Marx would have agreed with them.There's a difference between what Marx said about things relevant to scientific socialism in general and the things Marx said which are not at all relevant to us: calling Lassalle a "Jewish nigger" and what not. Especially when he said that in personal letters and such ( like the "confession" OP posted )

[Yuppie Grinder]

There's a difference between what Marx said about things relevant to scientific socialism in generaland the things Marx said which are not at all relevant to us: calling Lassalle a "Jewish nigger" and what not. Especially when he said that in personal letters and such ( like the "confession" OP posted )

Wow, I didn't know about that. Isn't it Lassalle that Marx copped the line "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need." from? Funny considering how many of Marxism's most important figures were Jewish or black.

[hetz]

The Jewish nigger Lassalle who, I’m glad to say, is leaving at the end of this week, has happily lost another 5,000 talers in an ill-judged speculation. The chap would sooner throw money down the drain than lend it to a ‘friend’, even though his interest and capital were guaranteed. In this he bases himself on the view that he ought to live the life of a Jewish baron, or Jew created a baron (no doubt by the countess). Just imagine! This fellow, knowing about the American affair, etc., and hence about the state of crisis I’m in, had the insolence to ask me whether I would be willing to hand over one of my daughters to la Hatzfeldt as a ‘companion’, and whether he himself should secure Gerstenberg’s (!) patronage for me! The fellow has wasted my time and, what is more, the dolt opined that, since I was not engaged upon any ‘business’ just now, but merely upon a ‘theoretical work’, I might just as well kill time with him! In order to keep up certain dehors vis-à-vis the fellow, my wife had to put in pawn everything that wasn’t actually nailed or bolted down!http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1862/letters/62_07_30a.htm

You might notice that this was written in anger.
I also don't think that Marx was completely serious when he wrote some of the things in his "confession".

[Positivist]

Wow, I didn't know about that. Isn't it Lassalle that Marx copped the line "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need." from? Funny considering how many of Marxism's most important figures were Jewish or black.

Haha yea including Marx

[Prof. Oblivion]

Socialist Program written in Gotha, 1875:

First: Universal, direct, and secret suffrage for all males over twenty years, for all elections, municipal and state.

He didn't write this. Your source, the interview, in the end note, clearly states that this is "The Programme of the Socialist Workers’ Part of Germany". This is most well known as the "Gotha Programme".

Also, he didn't even address the issue of women's suffrage in his critique because he criticized putting forward such a demand at all.



His daughter once game him a questionaire and this was one of his answers:


Q: The Quality you like best in woman? A: WeaknessHe also lists his favorite occupation as "Glancing at Netchen". Netchen, as your source states, was Marx's cousin. Unless you are accusing him of being an incestuous pervert, I don't think he was being serious; more likely he was being "jocular".

[Yuppie Grinder]

Damn yr right.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Well, my point remains that we shouldn't deify the man, or anyone else.

[Prof. Oblivion]

Well, my point remains that we shouldn't deify the man, or anyone else.

Certainly, I was just having some fun with your sources. ;)

I don't think you'll find anyone here arguing that we should deify him, but you'll find that people who agree with you still will do it.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Haha yea including Marx

Moses Hess wrote some pretty suspect things about Jews, and he was a Jew too.

[human strike]

I don't get this "man of his time" excuse. Does it really make that much difference? We live in a world today that is still sexist. If somebody you know said something sexist would you excuse them with "he's a man of his time," or would you challenge them? It may have been over 150 years ago that someone may have said or done something oppressive, but that doesn't make it any less oppressive just because it was more universally accepted at the time. I think we should look back on history and rather than make excuses, recognise that some people were massive douches.

And it is not necessarily true either to say that an individual's ideas or theory are not wrong because they held prejudiced views. If Marx, or anyone else, was prejudiced towards anybody for whatever reason, I think we should consider the wider ramifications of this on what they had to say on everything, not just issues concerning whatever minority. I think intersectionality demands that we consider that.

But, yeah, the point is don't canonise individuals.

[Os Cangaceiros]

If somebody you know said something sexist would you excuse them with "he's a man of his time," or would you challenge them?

I don't think that explanation would make sense in a contemporary circumstance, obviously.

[Prof. Oblivion]

I don't get this "man of his time" excuse. Does it really make that much difference? We live in a world today that is still sexist. If somebody you know said something sexist would you excuse them with "he's a man of his time," or would you challenge them?

Well, you can't really "challenge" Marx on any possible sexist statements he's made. He's dead.


I think we should look back on history and rather than make excuses, recognise that some people were massive douches.Not everyone is a perfect revolutionary like you; that doesn't inherently make them (i.e. 99.999999% of every human being who has ever lived) "massive douches".

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

We can separate Marxism from the personal opinions of Marx. All revolutionaries are products of their times, and can still hold backwards views. I mean, I'm less concerned about Marx's sexism or homophobia than I am when I see it from living people within the revolutionary movement in the here and now.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Well, my point remains that we shouldn't deify the man, or anyone else.This is really a product of the USSR - and following counties - fetishization of Marx and other figuers to legitimize governments and parties.

Any Marxist who's read at least two things by the guy should know not to glorify "great men" of history.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

I dunno guys; He had a pretty awesome beard.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I don't get this "man of his time" excuse. Does it really make that much difference?Yes.

I don't believe that Marx or Engels were explicitly sexist - although they may have had some views that today would seem to still be a little accomodating to chauvanism. But their political writings show that they were concerned with sexism, saw it as a part of class rule in general and in capitalism and held ideas on women's liberation that would be considered radical even by some kinds of feminists today. Their ideas about class and their observations about the way that women's relation to production was being defined by the bourgoise in their time have allowed a framework for analyzing oppression which others have been able to expand on or use to fight for liberation.

But if we look at Marx and Engels on homosexual rights, well there's nothing. And if we look at their personal letters, there are even a couple of instances where each of them mock people for engaging in homosexual acts.

Should they have known better - are they homophobic for these attitudes, for not adressing sexual liberation when it comes to sexual minorities? Not really, this really is a case of "people of their age". Not because of prevailing attitudes - because there were few prevailing attitudes when it came to homosexuality because it was not concieved of as an identiy or group in society until the late 1800s. Communities of homosexuals didn't really develop until the 20th century around WWI and WWII (where lots of people from rural areas were brought into military service and men could discover these attreactions and act on them for the first time - and women who (especially in WWII) could get jobs with the military doing clarical work, or taking vaccated jobs had more independance and could also act on homosexual attractions and relationships. Before that, homosexuality was just something that people did - not who someone was. So there are tons of accounts of homosexul relationships but not an identifyable group of people in society.

So some of the ugly things that were written shouldn't be ignored, but the context is imporatnt too - and ultimately, their ideas and understanding of class and oppression in society have created ways of understanding and being able to fight for LGBT liberation.


We live in a world today that is still sexist. If somebody you know said something sexist would you excuse them with "he's a man of his time," or would you challenge them?No because they would be living in a time where there has been significant women's movements and attacks on sexism. They can choose which side to be on.


It may have been over 150 years ago that someone may have said or done something oppressive, but that doesn't make it any less oppressive just because it was more universally accepted at the time. I think we should look back on history and rather than make excuses, recognise that some people were massive douches.Ok, but what does that mean for the theories and ideas - not much unless you can see ways in which their ideas and so on aid and promote sexism.


And it is not necessarily true either to say that an individual's ideas or theory are not wrong because they held prejudiced views. If Marx, or anyone else, was prejudiced towards anybody for whatever reason, I think we should consider the wider ramifications of this on what they had to say on everything, not just issues concerning whatever minority. I think intersectionality demands that we consider that.

But, yeah, the point is don't canonise individuals.
And yet you are still looking at this issue in a "great man" way - just in a negative rather than glorifying light. The fetishists say, "Marx was so great, everything he said was profound" "Lenin loved the working class so much that yadda yadda" etc. But it's the same mistake in reverse to say, "well since Engles mocked someone for being a "buggerer" in 1860, it must mean that any ideas about oppression from a Marxist prerspectice are tainted and any ideas Engels had are now not useful.

[human strike]

Well, you can't really "challenge" Marx on any possible sexist statements he's made. He's dead.

Quite. And likewise, why make excuses for him?


Not everyone is a perfect revolutionary like you; that doesn't inherently make them (i.e. 99.999999% of every human being who has ever lived) "massive douches".

I said some, i.e. part of the whole, not all, i.e. the whole. And I think my point is exactly that nobody is a "perfect revolutionary".


And yet you are still looking at this issue in a "great man" way - just in a negative rather than glorifying light. The fetishists say, "Marx was so great, everything he said was profound" "Lenin loved the working class so much that yadda yadda" etc. But it's the same mistake in reverse to say, "well since Engles mocked someone for being a "buggerer" in 1860, it must mean that any ideas about oppression from a Marxist prerspectice are tainted and any ideas Engels had are now not useful.

But that isn't what I'm saying, is it? I'm not saying it must mean that, I'm saying it might. I don't think we really disagree on this point.

[Devrim]

He also lists his favorite occupation as "Glancing at Netchen". Netchen, as your source states, was Marx's cousin. Unless you are accusing him of being an incestuous pervert, I don't think he was being serious; more likely he was being "jocular".

I think saying that people who are married to their cousins are incestuous perverts is a pretty shocking thing to say. People are allowed to marry their cousins in the overwhelming majority of the world's countries, marriages between first and second cousins account for about 10% of the world's marriages, and in some counties of the Middle East over half of the marriages.

I don't know about its context where you come from, but in Western Europe, these sort of statements are generally part of a racist diatribe against people from the Middle East and South Asia, generally alongside such things as Mohammed was a paedophile.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/Charles_Darwin_by_Julia_Margaret_Cameron_2.jpg/170px-Charles_Darwin_by_Julia_Margaret_Cameron_2.jpg

Charles Darwin, as some here would have it, "an incestuous pervert".

Devrim

[Prof. Oblivion]

I think saying that people who are married to their cousins are incestuous perverts

I appreciate your contribution, but I used the term "incestuous pervert" because, firstly it is regarding his cousin, and secondly because it has to do with peeping on someone, not marrying them.

I think this is beside the point though.

[l'Enfermé]

I think saying that people who are married to their cousins are incestuous perverts is a pretty shocking thing to say. People are allowed to marry their cousins in the overwhelming majority of the world's countries, marriages between first and second cousins account for about 10% of the world's marriages, and in some counties of the Middle East over half of the marriages.

I don't know about its context where you come from, but in Western Europe, these sort of statements are generally part of a racist diatribe against people from the Middle East and South Asia, generally alongside such things as Mohammed was a paedophile.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/Charles_Darwin_by_Julia_Margaret_Cameron_2.jpg/170px-Charles_Darwin_by_Julia_Margaret_Cameron_2.jpg

Charles Darwin, as some here would have it, "an incestuous pervert".

Devrim
A 54 year old man having sex with the 9 old daughter of his senior lieutenant and successor does not strike you as pedophilia?

[hatzel]

All these 'well an individual's personal opinions aren't relevant to their theoretical work'-type arguments have never sat too comfortably with me. The personal, as they say, is the political, and as such (to callously draw the phrase out of its original context, perhaps) I don't think it's necessarily accurate to posit such a clear line demarcating an individual's private musings and their 'official' published works, as if they are two self-contained spheres. In this sense I'm reminded of those Heideggerians who claim that Heidegger's philosophy is (and remains) essentially correct, his well-known association with the Nazis being 'a separate (or personal) matter' which does nothing to draw the legitimacy of his philosophical project into question. This seems a totally bogus position to take; certainly his 'political' positions would have influenced his entire structure of thinking, and if in turn this structure of thinking allowed him to justify these political positions, then there is clearly a flaw in the structure somewhere which must be confronted.

Compare this to (post-)Heideggerian thinkers like Lacoue-Labarthe, who analyse the links between Heidegger's thought (namely his continued adherence to humanism) and his support for Nazism, whilst also drawing out alternative possible trajectories from certain aspects of Heidegger's pre-war texts - without ever claiming that Heidegger's association with the Nazis can simply be overlooked, that there is a disconnect between his philosophical and political thought, that his philosophical texts shouldn't be read (and criticised) in light of his political positions; but also, importantly, not simply discarding Heidegger's thought as a whole, rather than grappling with both the strengths and weaknesses contained within it. (Of course in this example, his private life and personal relationships may also be enlightening, but this isn't a thread about Heidegger and the Nazis, so I won't pursue that)

In much the same way, it's a dangerous game to automatically claim that an individual's understanding of the world, their political theory, their social analysis etc. is 'basically correct,' if they are revealed to take abhorrent positions in private. It's kind of like when you read fin de siècle socialists rabbitting on to their friends or in their diaries about how the Jews totally suck and control the economy and the government and everything and that should be totally stopped, before writing a few articles for the local leftist rag about how important it is to smash capitalism and smash the state; it doesn't seem too farfetched to suggest that perhaps this individual's socialism has more to do with breaking the perceived Jewish stranglehold over the masses by challenging the institutions through which it is supposedly enacted, and perhaps this is enough for us to question the foundations of their entire body of work. I would consider it utterly ludicrous to claim that such an individual's socio-economic analysis could ever be considered unquestioningly and in complete isolation from other sides of their thought; instead it must be wholly deconstructed, analysed to locate the thread of antisemitism running through it, or to find where and how it is lacking in such a way as to allow room for their openly antisemitic expressions elsewhere. Then comes the question of whether or not anything of value remains, which obviously depends on the individual in question.

In the same way, somebody who is known to harbour Eurocentric, patriarchal, heterosexist etc. positions can be expected to express (however subtly) Eurocentric, patriarchal, heterosexist etc. assumptions throughout their thought. Not that they necessarily will, nor that every word they say is wholly tainted by these reactionary underpinnings...simply that there remains a possibility, that one must be on one's guard. In this case, one could analyse Marx's thought: there have certainly been a number of feminist economists who have criticised the Marxist understanding of the economy for its patriarchal bias (whilst also drawing significantly on Marx's work, steering it in new directions); post-colonial and post-development theorists (many, again, coming from a broadly Marxist milieu) have dismantled vast swathes of Marx's thought for its reliance on Eurocentric ideas of, for example, progress. Here we see individuals who clearly rely on Marx, and yet still manage to challenge many of his fundamental assumptions...

Devrim has given another example in this thread, in fact: an individual's Eurocentrism may influence their position on people being...involved with their cousins, let's say - something which, on the surface, has very little to do with the question of the global position of Europe. Not accusing BC of anything here, but if there were an individual known to adopt racist and Eurocentric positions, it would be advisable not to claim that their opinions on marriage and sex were 'basically correct' without analysing the interplay between these two sides of their thought, and how each builds upon (or at least leaves room for) the other. More consideration would be required before deciding on exactly how useful these opinions are.

I can't help but feel that these kinds of approaches run the risk of opening the door to some pretty unsavoury characters and ideas, rather than engaging in serious critical thought. If it were shown that Marx (or anybody else, for that matter) took up particularly deplorable positions on certain matters, it wouldn't necessarily be adequate to consider it simply an aberration in an otherwise impeccable theoretical contribution; the role of these biases and prejudices in other areas should certainly be considered. At the same time, however, somebody's opinion on this or that cannot be used as a blanket condemnation for their thought in general, it simply...serves to encourage deeper examination, I suppose, to tease out the good stuff, redirect the kinda okay stuff and disregard the unsalvageable stuff...

[Ocean Seal]

This is true, and well known. His thought is still useful despite this.

[Devrim]

A 54 year old man having sex with the 9 old daughter of his senior lieutenant and successor does not strike you as pedophilia?

No, it doesn't at all. Paedophilia concerns prepubescent children, and I think that all of the sources are quite clear that this wasn't the case with Ayşe. The Islamic sources are also full of contradictions and other sources put her at a different age when the marriage was consummated.

However, I can other stand why people who want to insult Muslims choose the lowest one. What seems less clear to me is why historical context is completely ignored by those who don't want to do that.

If we wanted to take a different historical context in the year 1880 (i.e. at a time when relatives that I can remember were alive and not nearly a millennia and a half ago), the minimum age for marriage in the majority of US states was 10, and in Delaware it was 7, yet we don't hear people referring to the 'United States of Paedophilia' very often.

There are of course many Western monarchs who married children for political reasons for example Richard II of England who married Isabella of Valois when she was 6, yet I have never heard him refereed to as Richard the Paedophile.

I think it is fair to say that the line 'Mohammed was a paedophile' is one that is generally used by people who are caught up in the current racist campaign against people from the Middle East and South Asia.

Devrim

[Jimmie Higgins]

The personal, as they say, is the politicalYeah, they say that, but it's wrong. In the 60s an 70s it lead to some pretty awful kinds of moralism and divisiveness - you aren't down with the movement because you didn't drop out of school and organize full time like I did (with the money I have from my family). You didn't put your life on the line for the movement, so you are a sell out! You can't be a real feminist and fall in love with a man!

That being said, I think that it's true that you can place someone in a context and you can separate someone with good politics who is an asshole in regular life. What would be a wrong approach though would be to paper-over this, putting something in it's context, shouldn't mean just waving it away.

But in this specific case, unless someone can show how these supposed remarks are reflected in the overall ideas and theories of how women are oppressed and how that might be ended, it's really a moot point. Yeah Engels said some atrocious things about gay people - but the framework and views he helped develop are a piece of the kinds of politics that I think can help win liberation from sexual oppression.


I don't think it's necessarily accurate to posit such a clear line demarcating an individual's private musings and their 'official' published works, as if they are two self-contained spheres. In this sense I'm reminded of those Heideggerians who claim that Heidegger's philosophy is (and remains) essentially correct, his well-known association with the Nazis being 'a separate (or personal) matter' which does nothing to draw the legitimacy of his philosophical project into question.Coming up with an analysis dedicated to eradicating classes, locating the oppression of women as a fundamental part of that class oppression and looking back historically and arguing that women were the first oppressed group by classes... and then people finding some quotes decades later in personal exchanges that are awful... is different than arguing for an understanding of the world and then joining a movement with it's own views of the world and later claiming that there was no overlap.


This seems a totally bogus position to take; certainly his 'political' positions would have influenced his entire structure of thinking, and if in turn this structure of thinking allowed him to justify these political positions, then there is clearly a flaw in the structure somewhere which must be confronted.Clearly? You just made an argument that marxist theory has room for sexism - a big claim that has to be backed up with more than "clearly".

Ok, but seriously, is there evidence of regular and consitant attacks on women in Marx's personal writings? I am not aware if there were - though I really don't spend much if any time thinking about Marx's personal life. It seems much more likely that he said some awful things or said things in poor taste or even out of insensitivity and ignorance and then decades later when those attitudes look to the common view as ugly as they are, did people with a political problem with Marx's views cherry-pick private correspondences in order to try and attack his political framework.


Compare this to (post-)Heideggerian thinkers like Lacoue-Labarthe, who analyse the links between Heidegger's thought (namely his continued adherence to humanism) and his support for Nazism, whilst also drawing out alternative possible trajectories from certain aspects of Heidegger's pre-war texts - without ever claiming that Heidegger's association with the Nazis can simply be overlooked, that there is a disconnect between his philosophical and political thought, that his philosophical texts shouldn't be read (and criticised) in light of his political positions; but also, importantly, not simply discarding Heidegger's thought as a whole, rather than grappling with both the strengths and weaknesses contained within it. (Of course in this example, his private life and personal relationships may also be enlightening, but this isn't a thread about Heidegger and the Nazis, so I won't pursue that)Rather than the personal is the political, the above case would be "the worldview is political" wouldn't it? I mean it's totally different - here's someone who seeks to explain the world, joining a movement that claims to have an explanation of the world. It's possible to have mixed consciousness - to hold contradictory ideas at the same time to an extent - but generally people only adhere to an ideology that makes sense based on at least some of the ideas they have.


In much the same way, it's a dangerous game to automatically claim that an individual's understanding of the world, their political theory, their social analysis etc. is 'basically correct,' if they are revealed to take abhorrent positions in private. Did Marx consistently oppose freedom for women in private?


It's kind of like when you read fin de siècle socialists rabbitting on to their friends or in their diaries about how the Jews totally suck and control the economy and the government and everything and that should be totally stopped, before writing a few articles for the local leftist rag about how important it is to smash capitalism and smash the state; it doesn't seem too farfetched to suggest that perhaps this individual's socialism has more to do with breaking the perceived Jewish stranglehold over the masses by challenging the institutions through which it is supposedly enacted, and perhaps this is enough for us to question the foundations of their entire body of work. I would consider it utterly ludicrous to claim that such an individual's socio-economic analysis could ever be considered unquestioningly and in complete isolation from other sides of their thought; instead it must be wholly deconstructed, analysed to locate the thread of antisemitism running through it, or to find where and how it is lacking in such a way as to allow room for their openly antisemitic expressions elsewhere. Then comes the question of whether or not anything of value remains, which obviously depends on the individual in question.Yeah except this again, is the political is the political. Many of these kinds of socialists had actions and positions which directly reflected these reactionary views. US "social-chauvanists" in the Socialist Party at around the same time battled with the left to SUPPORT anti-immigration and white supremacist laws and political positions.


In the same way, somebody who is known to harbour Eurocentric, patriarchal, heterosexist etc. positions can be expected to express (however subtly) Eurocentric, patriarchal, heterosexist etc. assumptions throughout their thought. Not that they necessarily will, nor that every word they say is wholly tainted by these reactionary underpinnings...simply that there remains a possibility, that one must be on one's guard. In this case, one could analyse Marx's thought: there have certainly been a number of feminist economists who have criticised the Marxist understanding of the economy for its patriarchal bias (whilst also drawing significantly on Marx's work, steering it in new directions); post-colonial and post-development theorists (many, again, coming from a broadly Marxist milieu) have dismantled vast swathes of Marx's thought for its reliance on Eurocentric ideas of, for example, progress. Here we see individuals who clearly rely on Marx, and yet still manage to challenge many of his fundamental assumptions...Um, but many of these theorists are also not revolutionaries, many were totally and philosophically opposed the the idea that the working class would or could rule.

We shouldn't dismiss things that people may have said that are awful, but we also have to put it in context. Both the historical context and in context of their overall thought. As far as I understand, it's not like Marx had good positions and then there is one position where he was like: but women shouldn't have any rights. It wasn't an explicit or even implicit in his political views as far as I can tell.

I think historically many of the claims of some kind of personal sin behind marx's politics which then makes those poltics suspect are from weak political attacks of some sort. Much of this also comes from a context where academics with Marxist sympathies or backgrounds tried to reconcile the liberatory ideas in Marx's writings with the homophobia, sexism, and nationalism among other things of the so-called communist states. So it's a working-backwards trying to locate the "original sin" in thought that later allowed oppressions to exist in supposedly Marxist governments and socialist countries.


I can't help but feel that these kinds of approaches run the risk of opening the door to some pretty unsavoury characters and ideas, rather than engaging in serious critical thought. If it were shown that Marx (or anybody else, for that matter) took up particularly deplorable positions on certain matters, it wouldn't necessarily be adequate to consider it simply an aberration in an otherwise impeccable theoretical contribution; the role of these biases and prejudices in other areas should certainly be considered. At the same time, however, somebody's opinion on this or that cannot be used as a blanket condemnation for their thought in general, it simply...serves to encourage deeper examination, I suppose, to tease out the good stuff, redirect the kinda okay stuff and disregard the unsalvageable stuff...^This I very much agree with. Alarm bells should ring - however I have been unconvinced by many of the specific charges against Marxist thought - along with other common academic complaints about Marx being "deterministic" and so on.

At any rate, god forbid anyone here go on to become a famous leftist - just think of what future political opponents will say about your political positions based on personal facebook posts or revleft rants in chit-chat.

[doesn't even make sense]

Nobody who even comes close to understanding Marx can really deify him because his work provides a much better way to analyse things than attributing them to the quirks of individuals. The latter is a liberal's pastime.

[l'Enfermé]

No, it doesn't at all. Paedophilia concerns prepubescent children, and I think that all of the sources are quite clear that this wasn't the case with Ayşe. The Islamic sources are also full of contradictions and other sources put her at a different age when the marriage was consummated.

However, I can other stand why people who want to insult Muslims choose the lowest one. What seems less clear to me is why historical context is completely ignored by those who don't want to do that.

If we wanted to take a different historical context in the year 1880 (i.e. at a time when relatives that I can remember were alive and not nearly a millennia and a half ago), the minimum age for marriage in the majority of US states was 10, and in Delaware it was 7, yet we don't hear people referring to the 'United States of Paedophilia' very often.

There are of course many Western monarchs who married children for political reasons for example Richard II of England who married Isabella of Valois when she was 6, yet I have never heard him refereed to as Richard the Paedophile.

I think it is fair to say that the line 'Mohammed was a paedophile' is one that is generally used by people who are caught up in the current racist campaign against people from the Middle East and South Asia.

Devrim
Evidence that Muhammad married Aisha when she was 6-7 and began having sex with her when she was 9 is available all over the internet I think. For example: http://www.answering-islam.org/Shamoun/prepubescent.htm

Aisha, from my understanding, either did not begin puberty or only began it. Anyway. "In psychiatry, the most commonly used diagnostic criteria for diagnosing psychiatric ailments are those from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders. The latest issue is DSM-IV-TR. The DSM classification is a system that classifies and defines all accepted psychiatric ailments and symptoms, with their inclusion and exclusion criteria. The following are the inclusion and exclusion criteria for pedophilia:

A. Over a period of at least six months, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children (generally age 13 years or younger).B. The person has acted on these sexual urges, or the sexual urges or fantasies caused marked distress or interpersonal difficulty.
C. The person is at least age 16 years and at least 5 years older than the child or children in Criterion A. "

Muhammad fits all 3 criteria. He was definitely a pedophile.

And as far as Richard II goes, while I'm no enthusiast for European medieval history, I do believe that Richard II married Isabella as a way to make peace with France and their marriage was never actually consummated as he died 4 years into it. Muhammad, on the other, was apparently sent a magical dream by Allah who commanded him to marry Aisha, a 6 year old daughter of his top lieutenant. What kind of scumbag invokes divine magic in order to rape his friend's 6 year old daughter?

[Leo]

On the original point, Marx did not write the Gotha Program and had serious criticisms of it, although he can be criticized for not addressing the point in his Critique of the Gotha Program. He is merely quoting the text in the linked interview.

On his answer given in that survey game, I think there are things that can be said though it is extremely far fetched to draw the conclusion that Marx was a sexist.

I understand that the original poster may have wanted to be thought-provocative, and I agree that Marx or anyone else for that matter shouldn't be seen as a prophet or all-knowing or always right, and should be criticized. Nevertheless, I think it is unfair to consider Marx to be a sexist based on these quotes.


I think it is fair to say that the line 'Mohammed was a paedophile' is one that is generally used by people who are caught up in the current racist campaign against people from the Middle East and South Asia.

It is, nevertheless, something quite frequently repeated here in Turkey as well, and not only by the opponents of Islam, but by Islamists themselves - though not as often or vocally.

[Rafiq]

All these 'well an individual's personal opinions aren't relevant to their theoretical work'-type arguments have never sat too comfortably with me. The personal, as they say, is the political, and as such (to callously draw the phrase out of its original context, perhaps) I don't think it's necessarily accurate to posit such a clear line demarcating an individual's private musings and their 'official' published works, as if they are two self-contained spheres.


Do not take my post here as laziness, because in many ways I agree with you, hence, I felt not the need to respond to the rest. Anyway, I believe you have misunderstood me, and the fault here lies with me for not properly wording my post. Of course, for example, if Marx was an occultist this would certainly taint his theoretical foundations, no doubt. My point though, was that Marx and Engels regarding sexism were personally lazy in regards, in other words, they did not consistnatly uphold what we call today a "political correctness", as no one did. But programmically they were not racists or sexists, not to say that they did not hold racist or sexist views themselves, but that they would have supported black liberation struggles and feminism. Personally I unequivocally have supported the gay rights movement for more than a few years, but it took me a couple months to really, on an unconscious level do away with homophobia (this was maybe two or more years ago, for the record), do away with words like "faggot" and the likes. I meant no more than this. And regarding Marx and Engel's eurocentricism, this is always blown out of proportion. Marx explicitly focused on Europe, for obvious reasons. It is undeniable Europe at the time (and even today) was the center of intellectual, scientific and philosophical progress. But, Marx did write toward the end of his life quite exstenstively (compared to what we would initially expect of him) on the East. You can find this in the book Marx on the Margins, from Islam to the Asiatic mode of productions, they were very vocal. And regarding their conception of historical progress, Marx did away with most of his teleology in accordance with his abandonment of humanism. Anyone who has a shred of knowledge of historical materialism knows this.

Of course Marx was not a prophet, but he is definitely up there with Newton, Kepler, Darwin, in regards to their relation to their respective fields. Marx had formulated a revolutionary conception of social change, of human behavior itself, in the same way Darwin constructed a revolutionary view of change in the natural world, in the same way Kepler emancipated the astronomy from astrology, Marx emancipated our conception of historical change from idealist concepts like the great man theory.

[Positivist]

Moses Hess wrote some pretty suspect things about Jews, and he was a Jew too.

Wasn't saying jews can't be anti-semitic, just thought it was funny.

[L.A.P.]

Funny considering how many of Marxism's most important figures were Jewish or black.

...including Marx himself being Jewish and all

[Positivist]

No, it doesn't at all. Paedophilia concerns prepubescent children, and I think that all of the sources are quite clear that this wasn't the case with Ayşe. The Islamic sources are also full of contradictions and other sources put her at a different age when the marriage was consummated.

However, I can other stand why people who want to insult Muslims choose the lowest one. What seems less clear to me is why historical context is completely ignored by those who don't want to do that.

If we wanted to take a different historical context in the year 1880 (i.e. at a time when relatives that I can remember were alive and not nearly a millennia and a half ago), the minimum age for marriage in the majority of US states was 10, and in Delaware it was 7, yet we don't hear people referring to the 'United States of Paedophilia' very often.

There are of course many Western monarchs who married children for political reasons for example Richard II of England who married Isabella of Valois when she was 6, yet I have never heard him refereed to as Richard the Paedophile.

I think it is fair to say that the line 'Mohammed was a paedophile' is one that is generally used by people who are caught up in the current racist campaign against people from the Middle East and South Asia.

Devrim

Relaxed (to be generous) child sex standards in the US and Europe hardly do anything to justify that Mohammad did it too. "Hey it's ok that mohammad married a 9-12 year old, because some douchebag kings did it for political reasons too" isn't working for me.

[Positivist]

...including Marx himself being Jewish and all

Beat ya to this

[Anarchocommunaltoad]

Pretty much everyone pre1962 was sexist. Standards probably need to be time specific.

[hetz]

...including Marx himself being Jewish and all Marx was more German than Jewish.
He had some Jewish heritage, but that's all. Marx sought to distance himself from "Jewishness" in general.

[l'Enfermé]

Oh, I was gonna post this before I got distracted with all that Muhammad and pedophilia silliness:

For an authoritative take on Marx's and Engels's stance on "women's liberation"(i.e feminism, gender quality, sexism, and all that jazz), just out comrade Draper's "Marx and Engels on Women's Liberation", which is apparently a chapter from his Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, which I have never had the fortunate of acquainting myself with really.

http://marxists.org/archive/draper/1970/07/women.htm

A rewarding read for anyone with the spare time to check it out, comrades.

[human strike]

Pretty much everyone pre1962 was sexist. Standards probably need to be time specific.

Yeah, and pretty much everyone in Nazi Germany was an anti-semite so the Holocaust needs to be looked at in the context of where and when it happened with a different set of standards, right?

Godwin's Law I know, but you understand the point I'm trying to make here? I mean, hopefully you were just trolling...

[Anarchocommunaltoad]

Yeah, and pretty much everyone in Nazi Germany was an anti-semite so the Holocaust needs to be looked at in the context of where and when it happened with a different set of standards, right?

Godwin's Law I know, but you understand the point I'm trying to make here? I mean, hopefully you were just trolling...

Patriarchal society was pretty much the bedrock of much of the world's culture since the dawn of time. Criticizing it with this much gusto may be logical, but it makes the same amount of sense as saying that everyone who thought that the four humors made up human body was mentally retarded.

edit:
There were clear alternatives to National Socialism in Germany. Sexism was ingrained in the collective psyche and zeitgeist for pretty much forever.

[Rafiq]

Yeah, and pretty much everyone in Nazi Germany was an anti-semite so the Holocaust needs to be looked at in the context of where and when it happened with a different set of standards, right?


What a stupid thing to say. Who here, General strike, who here in this very thread, (assuming your bullshit claim, that almost everyone was an anti semite when this was quite obviously not the case) supports individuals from Nazi Germany who were at the very least subject to mild accusations of anti semitism? No one. There is a difference in consciously blatant forms of (and petite) bourgeois ideology and standards for "tolerance" (can't stand that word).

And the holocaust didn't occur because people were simply spontaneously fueled with hatred because they fell victim to extremely competent propaganda organs. It was an unconscious expression of the class interests of specific classes. As for the proletariat, they were coerced, and they did not fall without a fight. Better use a better example or shit analogy, General Strike.

[hetz]

It was an unconscious expression of the class interests of specific classes.Keeping these people for slave labor, not exterminating them, would have been in the interest of the ruling classes. For example the big German companies like Krupp or IG Farben ( which I think made Zyklon B ) complained about the starvation of millions of Soviet POWs in the first years of the war who could have otherwise been used for forced labor ( later hundreds of thousands of Ostarbeiters and others came to work in German factories ).
The Holocaust was an expression of brutal, mad and irrational ( from the point of view of German industry ) hatred, not neccessarily class interest of the ruling class.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Keeping these people for slave labor, not exterminating them, would have been in the interest of the ruling classes. For example the big German companies like Krupp or IG Farben ( which I think made Zyklon B ) complained about the starvation of millions of Soviet POWs in the first years of the war who could have otherwise been used for forced labor ( later hundreds of thousands of Ostarbeiters and others came to work in German factories ).
The Holocaust was an expression of brutal, mad and irrational ( from the point of view of German industry ) hatred, not neccessarily class interest of the ruling class.

It was irrational from the standpoint of most people who are not trying to reorganize Europe for German capital. The specific deaths were not in the class intrerests - it wasn't like colonial settler-states where the population needed to be cleared in order to take the land and resources - although like with Japanese internment in the US I'm sure some indviduals profiteered off of the ghettoization and then relocation of jews and others. Not to mention the major companies who had contracts with the NAZIs and even with the camps themselves! But none of this is why this specifically happened.

But the NAZIs, and that kind of repression followed by an attempt to radically alter the imperial order of Europe, was in the interest of German capital and the holocaust was the logical end-point to their fucked-up politics.

At first the NAZIs needed to crush opposition and they did this through direct confronations as well as more general political organization against communists specifically, but all militant workers generally, as well as scapegoated internal groups. This absurd and horrific view was the way people were rallied to the party.

When some stability was reached (unemployment allieviated through nazi keynsian-type projects and later military buildup) those not directly targetd by NAZIs could "go along" without being NAZIs just as many people in any country will tend to ignore a govenrment they have no control over as long as things don't get too crazy and there is not much economic volitility. Then when the NAZIs were quickly winning the war, they could still get broad support, because their claims were being realized, so even if you didn't think it was necissary, you were surrounded by tons of propaganda saying eveyone supports it - and there is no domestic opposition (because it was gone) and no real negative consaquences at home. But as the war dragged on, some of the fragility of the regime began to come to the surface more as people began to dounbt if this insane attempt at taking over Europe was actually going to work. So when the NAZIs were loosing the war, in order to keep the government/party together and justify a war-drive that basically crashed all of Europe into a brick wall of death, they needed even more to make their failing attempt into a "historic crusade" and so the internal logic of the NAZIs lead to full removal of the scapgoated people, but then as the allies closed in, nobody wanted to be the guy caught by Russian or Western troops holding the key to mass-internment prisons, so "extermination" was the way they saw out of the situation - and also as the fufilment of the politics they had that lead down this road.

[black magick hustla]

i don't get this threads. marx was miles ahead of almost any contemporary in terms of social views. for fucks sake, he was questioning the structure of the family in 19th century as a construct that disempowered women. he backed radical republicans against slavery, irish and indians against the brits, and he talked about international brotherhood of people of all nationhoods. of course he isn't as "progressive" as the most "progressive" people today but i would argue that at least in terms of theory and worldview, he was more progressive than average people today in almost every social issue, and that is pretty fucking impressive for some german dude that lived 200 years ago.

[Rafiq]

Keeping these people for slave labor, not exterminating them, would have been in the interest of the ruling classes. For example the big German companies like Krupp or IG Farben ( which I think made Zyklon B ) complained about the starvation of millions of Soviet POWs in the first years of the war who could have otherwise been used for forced labor ( later hundreds of thousands of Ostarbeiters and others came to work in German factories ).
The Holocaust was an expression of brutal, mad and irrational ( from the point of view of German industry ) hatred, not neccessarily class interest of the ruling class.

The Jewish populace were ejected from the process of capital accomulation (the petite bourgeousie thew off a load of themselves to stay affloat) and worked to death, an old tendancy of capitals. When they would not die, they were simply killed. It was not simply a matter of requiring free labor. And it was certainly not irrational in the interests of the german bourgeoisie.

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

The Jewish populace were ejected from the process of capital accomulation (the petite bourgeousie thew off a load of themselves to stay affloat) and worked to death, an old tendancy of capitals. When they would not die, they were simply killed. It was not simply a matter of requiring free labor. And it was certainly not irrational in the interests of the german bourgeoisie.

I'm guessing that you formed this opinion after reading Amadeo Bordiga's "Auschwitz, or the Great Alibi". Isn't this a problematic way of "explaining" the Nazi holocaust? Reducing it to the "laws" of capitalism with people being nothing more than the expressions of their class interests, is a complete denial of human agency in the whole affair. It comes off as exclusively economic and reductionist, and I don't think it will serve you well in the long term.

[Rafiq]

I'm guessing that you formed this opinion after reading Amadeo Bordiga's "Auschwitz, or the Great Alibi". Isn't this a problematic way of "explaining" the Nazi holocaust? Reducing it to the "laws" of capitalism with people being nothing more than the expressions of their class interests, is a complete denial of human agency in the whole affair. It comes off as exclusively economic and reductionist, and I don't think it will serve you well in the long term.

No, although Bordiga did provide useful details in regards. Of course people are not all expressions of their class interests, as false consciousness exists. The superstructure is formed as a result of existing class interests, i.e. In this case, to sustain the process of capital accumulation and capitalist social relations (whether this is a direct, conscious will or not, most likely not). Though of course things react upon each other, and so on. But for an event, such a mass mobilization of the state organs, from Germany, this was unconditionally in the interests of the bourgeois class, and even bourgeois historians have a hard time evading this fact. Class relations are forms of human agency, but to say it shortly, direct human agency has little to no effect on our daily affairs in a certain sense. In the process of seeking a grand Liberalist utopia, the Bourgeois classes, their revolutionary organs, merely were acting unconsciously in the interests of their class, conquering state dictatorship. Although they had direct conscious interests, the development of the productive forces was not a direct reflection of their fantasies. So what do you mean by "human agency"? Historical materialism exists in totality, there is no room for a "balanced" idealist analysis. In being shocked, mystified by this prospect even, you do nothing be reestablish the legitimacy of this "reductionism". They say what separates a human from a beast is self realization. Nonsense. Human self realization, for the thousands of years before us, amounted to the same self realization an animal can achieve, a spontaneous conception of existing phenomena, ideologically, as a reflection of their means of survival. Only materialism can allow for us to achieve genuine self realization.

What is absurd is to leave a blank void, of the origins of the holocaust. Isn't it more absurd to attribute the holocaust to some sort of spontaneous-widespread racism, which apparently was not an exemplification of specific class interests in accordance with developments within the capitalist mode of production (The depression, the slow death of the petite bourgeoisie) or even worse, Hitler's personal fantasies? The proletarians were in a state of false consciousness, but what fascism represented, the great fasces, was the bonding of the petite bourgeois and bourgeois classes together to contain both the power of the proletariat and capitalism's destructive tendencies. They failed, at the least, with the latter.

[Prof. Oblivion]

But for an event, such a mass mobilization of the state organs, from Germany, this was unconditionally in the interests of the bourgeois class

"The bourgeois class" is not a monolithic entity and to claim that the holocaust was in the generalized interests of the bourgeoisie is nonsensical and shows a poor understanding of how economic interests transform into political interests and play out in a state arena.

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

Rafiq,

I don't know if I'll be able to draft a proper response to what you've said (since I'm very busy at the moment), but I'd like to clarify some things first, should you wish to continue this conversation, or any conversation with me at all in the future.

About half of what you wrote is, to my mind, an overreaction, not to mention pure projection—that is, you assign views to me that you yourself have rejected, but I haven’t expressed. For instance, I was neither “shocked” nor “mystified” at what you had said; your “Marxist” explanation of the Nazi holocaust is rather typical for me. There was nothing in my comment that suggested I felt otherwise. You simply made that up, possibly because you were playing up histrionics to get a rise out of me, or you felt threatened by what I said. At this point I won’t hazard a guess. Furthermore my initial comment gave absolutely no indication that I wished to look at the Nazi holocaust as a “blank void”, or that it cannot be explained except by purely superstructural elements. You have absolutely no proof of that other than my mentioning of "human agency", a concept which is hardly alien to Marxism.

So in the future, when engaging with me, please do the following:

1.) Do not pretend to know how I feel. Your attempt to extrapolate my states of mind like "shocked" or "mystified" from four sentences that I wrote is simply laughable.

2.) Do not pretend to know my views when I have barely expressed them. You do not know my views, and a term you find objectionable will not get you there. The most you can say at this point is that philosophically I'm an anti-reductionist. Although if you wish to look at my other posts in RevLeft to get a better flavor, feel free.

3.) Do not put words in my mouth.

If you can follow these conditions, I'll try my best to fully reply to you.

[Luís Henrique]

I agree that Marx or anyone else for that matter shouldn't be seen as a prophet or all-knowing or always right, and should be criticized.

Sure. But the question is, under which theoretical frame should we criticise him?

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Kepler emancipated the astronomy from astrology.

He did, and he did it while writing horoscopes.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Relaxed (to be generous) child sex standards in the US and Europe hardly do anything to justify that Mohammad did it too. "Hey it's ok that mohammad married a 9-12 year old, because some douchebag kings did it for political reasons too" isn't working for me.

Jerry Lee Lewis married his 12 year-old cousin. And it certainly was not for political reasons. Was he a paedophile?

Those things are to a huge extent cultural. What was the common practice in Mohammad's time? Was it something different from what everyone else was doing?

The mainstream views about who is and who is not a child are historically changeable; what is considered obvious abuse of a child today may have been seen as consensual activity between grown-ups as late as 150 years ago.

It is one thing to actively defend our own 21st century views on such issues as far superior to the views of previous and more benighted times. It is a completely diffferent things to imagine that people in the far (or even not-so-far) past could have taken our own views for granted.

Though in revleft the rule often seems to be the opposite. Criticising the ways of a palaeolithical society is off bounds, because "they should be free" to preserve "their ways". Understanding that a palaeolithical person might do things we consider absolutely abhorrent, because, well, it is part of "their ways", however, conflicts with our perennial a-historicism.

Luís Henrique

[Take The Long Way Home]

Marx was a man of his time, raised in a chauvinistic 19th century culture. He certainly wasn't perfect, but that doesn't invalidate what he created.

if he was a man of his time,he would try to get as richer as he can and he would suck to higher class of his time. Face it,so what if he was a sexist,no one is perfect

[Luís Henrique]

And it was certainly not irrational in the interests of the german bourgeoisie.

The interests of the bourgeoisie, German or otherwise, are irrational.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

if he was a man of his time,he would try to get as richer as he can and he would suck to higher class of his time. Face it,so what if he was a sexist,no one is perfect

Marx's time was full of socialists and wannabe socialists of the most diverse kinds. Marx's time - and even older times - were full of people who didn't give a rat's ass to the perspective of getting insanely rich.

If he was a man of the 16th century, how would he talk about a proletariat? Being a man of the 19th century, as he was, how would he be able to talk about issues that only emerged in the 20th century (many of them, indeed, only because he set the conditions for such issues emerging)? The people trying to put labels on Marx calling him sexist or racist, would they be able to even articulate such thoughts if they were not, willingly or not, intellectual heirs of Marx?

And it always baffles me that the discussion of sexism is lowered to the personal level - was this or that guy or lady sexist, yes or not? -; our society is sexist, we can of course react against such sexism and try to oppose it, but not one of us can claim to be completely free of sexist tendencies; they are intertwinned in the basic fabric of our lives.

Luís Henrique

[Fruit of Ulysses]

What an oddly lovely thread this has turned out to be! Guess I'm the johnny come lately, but I'l put my two cents in anyways: I just want to clarify that the remark about "plain ones too" was written in a personal letter, not in any sort of official document. From the context of the letter it looks entirely humorous in intent, here is the preceding lines from the letter:
"Joking aside, very great progress was demonstrated at the last congress of the American ‘Labor Union’, inter alia, by the fact that it treated the women workers with full parity; by contrast, the English, and to an even greater extent the gallant French, are displaying a marked narrowness of spirit in this respect. Everyone who knows anything of history also knows that great social revolutions are impossible without the feminine ferment."

heres the link on MIA
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_12_12.htm

and I'd like to add that, the Richard the pedophile comment was brilliant.

[Crimson Commissar]

I'd have to agree that the worship of Marx and his personal ideas amongst Communist movements can sometimes be ridiculous. Calling him sexist seems a somewhat extraordinary claim though. Honestly I couldn't care less what qualities he liked in women, or whether or not he perhaps fetishised weakness, because that doesn't have even a drop of relevance when it comes to his ideological standpoint.

Women were in many regards marginalised and disregarded by much of politics in the 1800s. It's no surprise that he didn't pay much attention to them in his writings considering the world in which he was raised at the time. The fact that he called for universal suffrage at all was a revolutionary thing. Remember that by stating "all males", he was including the entire non-white populations in Europe and the Americas into the equation too. Something that in itself was unthinkable for the time.

I also have to question whether or not, if Marx had seen his ideas put into practice in his lifetime, he would have had any control at all over what place women had in the new society whether he liked it or not. He might have been the founder of Communist thought, but he was no prophet. I doubt working class women would have stopped to squabble over how he failed to mention females when speaking of universal suffrage rather than just getting on with the job of achieving it themselves.

[Rafiq]

"The bourgeois class" is not a monolithic entity and to claim that the holocaust was in the generalized interests of the bourgeoisie is nonsensical and shows a poor understanding of how economic interests transform into political interests and play out in a state arena.

Of course on a directly consciuos level, as in, the bourgeois as a whole gathering together, planning to murder the Jewish populace is nonsensical. However the fact that you would interperate my post in such a way signifies your narrow understanding of Marxism, or more specifically, our conception of the state and the means of which the class interests of the bourgeoisie are seen to, whether they be conscious or not. They may not know they are sustaining the class relations that sustain their dictatorship, but none the less they are. It's not simply a matter of "economic" interests. That's garbage bourgeois-rationalism. This conception of the "economic", you know, "The stock market didn't do so well today, so the style of music will change" is an even more nonsensical conception of the "economic". These are not relations sustained by income. These are definite class relations which compose the whole of our society, which serve as the foundational basis for all social existence, by which one class dominates the state, and none the less, these interests are "transformed" into political interests. Though more importantly, this assertion, this conviction, that the interests of the bourgeois class are not completely political, that they are just "economic interests" and the state, an entity with no class nature, carries out "political interests", is ludicrous. The holocaust didn't occur because the German state wanted to, on a direct level, increase the income of the German bourgeoisie. The Jewish populace was ejected from the process of capital accumulation as the petite bourgeoisie were dying as a class, and their only means of sustaining themselves, without falling into the ranks of the proletariat was to throw the Jews, or more specifically, sacrifice them to the pressure put on them by capital. Again, the fasces is the binding of the bourgeois and petite bourgeois classes.

[Rafiq]

About half of what you wrote is, to my mind, an overreaction, not to mention pure projection—that is, you assign views to me that you yourself have rejected, but I haven’t expressed. For instance, I was neither “shocked” nor “mystified” at what you had said; your “Marxist” explanation of the Nazi holocaust is rather typical for me. There was nothing in my comment that suggested I felt otherwise. You simply made that up, possibly because you were playing up histrionics to get a rise out of me, or you felt threatened by what I said. At this point I won’t hazard a guess. Furthermore my initial comment gave absolutely no indication that I wished to look at the Nazi holocaust as a “blank void”, or that it cannot be explained except by purely superstructural elements. You have absolutely no proof of that other than my mentioning of "human agency", a concept which is hardly alien to Marxism.

Your keeness, or moreover, a great many of of users here, of whom are guilty of a crime no less erroneous, in interpreting my posts in such a direct and, I am tempted to say, literal level is nothing short of a most irritating phenomena. When I said you were shocked and mystified at this prospect, I did not mean you were unfamiliar with it. It was a concept that you were appalled even exists, which operates outside of the bourgeois-idealist conception of history, of which you are undoubtedly constrained by, intellectually.

Your rejection of the dynamic material conditions of which led to the holocaust, the rejection of this clear relation, does indeed leave a blank void of "complexity" which apparently cannot be "reduced" to anything, as if it was great and big enough to begin with, beyond human social relations, beyond material conditions! Oh my, this was truly a cosmic event, of which most likely shook the universe as a whole, no? You overestimate humans and their capacity for "agency'. Indeed, we Marxists unequivocally attribute all human history to human agency, but not conscious or direct human agency. In other words, we Marxists regard this obscene concept of "free will" as unscientific and, I on a personal level regard it as intellectually lazy. Why do you keep spouting about this garbage, about "human agency"? Are you under the impression that I hold that some ghost, some cosmic force is using humans to achieve it's own ends? No? Then spit it out, and admit it, your conception of "human agency" is nothing short of a conception of "free will"!


So in the future, when engaging with me, please do the following:

1.) Do not pretend to know how I feel. Your attempt to extrapolate my states of mind like "shocked" or "mystified" from four sentences that I wrote is simply laughable.


Do not act like you are exclusive in being shocked and mystified, it is a general tendency that has plagued and proved itself a great embaressment for real Marxists. It was not completely and solely directed at you, sure, it was directed at you, but others as well. You don't know what I mean by "shocked" and "mystified". You are incapable of articulating the fact that such a grandoise event was not a product of human "free will", an "agency" existing in a vacuum. If you come forward, and announce that you denounce this notion of "free will" then you can do nothing but agree with me, agree that the holocaust was not a spontaneous result of hatred and racism in itself, but that hatred and racism, as a phenomena in Germany, did not come from Hitler's ass, but from very specific material conditions. To divorce the Nazi state from the German bourgeoisie is more laughable then coming to quite a probable conclusion based on your "four sentances" which are by the way nothing new, they wreak of this garbage "man Marxists are to materialist now". I mean, shut the hell up. Don't you know that, since after Lenin, even under Stalinism, throughout, historical Materialism was constantly bastardized and "de-mechanicalised", and that, one by one, every bastardization of Marxism, from Trotskyism to Maoism, sought to loosen the theoretical foundations of historical materialism? Do you think you're original, Megaman? Do you think you represent a new era of Marxian thought, oh wow, no one has ever thought of that before! Perhaps, Megaman, perhaps, looking at the theoretical mess that was the Marxism of the later 20th century, from Maoism to "post" Marxism, or "postmodern Marxism", perhaps we as Marxists (and this has absolutely nothing to do with a mass party movement, this is strictly scientific) need to instead strengthen historical materialism and furtherly once again utilize it for an analyzation of the rapid developments of capitalism since the 1980's.


2.) Do not pretend to know my views when I have barely expressed them. You do not know my views, and a term you find objectionable will not get you there. The most you can say at this point is that philosophically I'm an anti-reductionist. Although if you wish to look at my other posts in RevLeft to get a better flavor, feel free.


Oh, how could I ever reduce your almighty views to the common shitstink of vulgarizers, oh great Megaman! You, as erudite and theoretically complex as you are, represent the future of Marxism!

I don't need to pretend to know your views. I've seen your posts, I know them.


If you can follow these conditions, I'll try my best to fully reply to you.


How generous of you, to give me the chance to once again waste my time with you. In spite of your courteous and most charitable offer, I must decline.

[pastradamus]

As someone you could call loosely Marxist(the definition I most agree with of myself) I believe as some previous comments suggested that he was a man of his time. He is not a god. Marx was a human being and human thoughts sculpted his philospohy. Marx was very much in the interest of womens rights and he often commented on them but he was brought up in an era of cultural chauvanism and warmongers for leaders.

[Rafiq]

The interests of the bourgeoisie, German or otherwise, are irrational.

Luís Henrique

No, in attempting to sustain their class dictatorship they are completely rational, whether they recognize capitalism's destructive tendencies or not.

[Rafiq]

And, a lot of you really miss the faults of both Marx and Engels, which was (specifically Engel's) German chauvinism and racism toward the slavs, or races in general. Marx, who supported the Americans against Mexico, who supported the British colonization of India. Engels, who supported a great war against the slavs, who despised the American Indians. But it is not all so simple. Marx, who then matured, began to display more progressive views, who started to support anti colonial Indian militants, who began to recognize the possibility of a revolution or communism in Russia based on the organisation of the peasantry, started to slowly do away with these backward views.


Edit: I'll start a thread on this subject soon

[Rafiq]

He did, and he did it while writing horoscopes.

Luís Henrique

And? I'm sure in many respects Darwin would have been cast as a fool in modern times due to some specific findings in evolutionary biology, and none the less Isaac Newton as well!

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

Rafiq,

I apologize for the delay in my post. I have been dealing with some rather excessive busy work. Since your recent post is mostly ad hominem and projection (again), I’m going to ignore it entirely. This is the post I intended to write before I read your verbal temper tantrum.

Initially, I was planning to respond to you point for point, concentrating on the history of Germany during the 1930s. But I realized that this would be inadequate. After all, we are not dealing with mere interpretative differences in history, but opposing conceptions of the Marxist method itself. Something you said recently gave the best clue of this:

“They [the bourgeoisie] may not know they are sustaining the class relations that sustain their dictatorship, but none the less they are.”

This is simply a “truism”, and a rather useless one at that. It is only the start of an explanation of the German crisis, not the end of one. So what does this quote really tell us? Certainly not a unique point of departure that sheds any light on the Nazi holocaust or Marxism’s explanatory power; instead we only get the “skeleton” of a real Marxist analysis in your posts, stripped of all its entrails and organs. What you have written is nothing but an endless (and somewhat fatalistic) stream on “structures and forms” in class society that only appears to have explanatory power with terms and dramatic flair—but ultimately it is rather vague because you make no effort to analyze German capitalist society as it actually existed in the early twentieth century.

The error you have made is quite elementary—that is, for a structuralist. You conflate base and superstructure in such a way that the latter ends up being nothing more than the rationalization of the former. The traditional Marxist conception of this relationship is actually about dependence, not importance. The role of ideology and culture, while tied to economy and structure in the final instance, is relatively autonomous from them, and can take on a life of its own, especially in a deep historical crisis like Germany’s in the thirties. That ideology is a “secondary characteristic” in capitalist society does not make it less important. This is what I was trying to express by taking “human agency” into account, as it allows us to examine people themselves and their “false consciousness” concretely instead of throwing it out and sticking only to class structure.

But you seem to disagree. If it is true that “men make their own history, but they do not do it as they please”, then you are guilty of only concentrating on the qualifying clause. After all, you make no mention of culture, mass psychology, or anything specific about the human actors of Germany in your assessment, be it bourgeois or proletarian. In the context of what you wrote, how can you even begin to speak of “unconscious motives” when you never paid any attention to how the consciousness of the German masses was determined by their actual social being, be it “false” or “true”? While you do acknowledge that it’s not all about “economics”, reductionism doesn’t always refer to economics. You simply replace the word “economics” with “form”. Then, when you sense danger to your position, you attempt to adopt an orthodox posture and insult your critics, claiming that we’re idealists and fools with either “narrow understanding” or “bourgeois-rationalism” (whatever that means). This is indicative of intellectual dishonesty, at the very least.

In conclusion, I believe that what you have had to say about the Nazi holocaust so far has been next to worthless. Your philosophical method is just too woefully inadequate for the task. You mechanically reduce everything to the economic and structural forms of capitalism, all while adhering to a determinist model of history— ironically claiming that your critics are the ones with a closed mind. Your Marxism is an eviscerated one, lacking its head and heart.

[Weezer]

I think ultimately instead of arguing over Marx's sexist or not sexist legacy, we should the example to better ourselves and learn from it, in other words, let's not be sexist.

Marx and Engels both had some very backwards positions. Especially if we want to be seen as rational to the world, we have to deconstruct the notion that we "worship" Marx and Engels and other revolutionary figures, which includes admitting their mistakes. Marx and Engels have the basis for the ideologies of almost everyone here, but they wrote no Holy Bible, Qur'an, Dhammapada or any kind of dogmatic texts, they wrote against dogma and blind thought and acceptance.

[Luís Henrique]

And? I'm sure in many respects Darwin would have been cast as a fool in modern times due to some specific findings in evolutionary biology, and none the less Isaac Newton as well!

Yeah, that was the point. People aren't monoliths.

The (very acritical) "criticism" in the OP seems to point that, since Marx made some (probably jocular) comments that would be considered in bad taste in our "identity politics era", his reasoning must have some deep flaws that make it essentially anti-liberatory.

But just like Kepler freed Astronomy from Astrology while making horoscopes, Marx set the intellectual conditions for a thorough criticism of male chauvinism (and racism, and national chauvinism, and antisemitism, and homophobia, etc) while eventually making politically incorrect jokes in his private correspondence.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

No, in attempting to sustain their class dictatorship they are completely rational, whether they recognize capitalism's destructive tendencies or not.

How is it possible to be "completely rational" in defending an irrational system?

Luís Henrique

[Comrade #138672]

I think it's more necessary to dismantle the cult of personality built around the Founding Fathers, so harsh critiques about their social views are necessary since people like to characterize them as awesome progressives when they were really quite conservative from a certain standpoint.I think the same is true for all of us.

[MaximMK]

It doesn't matter really. We are here because we like his historical materialism his view on the state on capitalism and the tendency for a communist society. He surely had other opinions too on everyday stuff he was a living man that woke up everyday did his every day stuff etc. It doesn't mean we have to agree with everything he says and think of him as perfect. We just like one segment of his personality.

[Devrim]

Evidence that Muhammad married Aisha when she was 6-7 and began having sex with her when she was 9 is available all over the internet I think. For example: http://www.answering-islam.org/Shamoun/prepubescent.htm

It is quite telling that the example that you use is a Christian run anti-Islam site. The age of nine is quite possibly true. However, there are many sources that contradict it. Unsurprisingly the Islamic sources like the bible are full of contradictions.


And as far as Richard II goes, while I'm no enthusiast for European medieval history, I do believe that Richard II married Isabella as a way to make peace with France and their marriage was never actually consummated as he died 4 years into it. Muhammad, on the other, was apparently sent a magical dream by Allah who commanded him to marry Aisha, a 6 year old daughter of his top lieutenant. What kind of scumbag invokes divine magic in order to rape his friend's 6 year old daughter?

Mohammed's marriage to Ayşe was also very clearly a political marriage.


Relaxed (to be generous) child sex standards in the US and Europe hardly do anything to justify that Mohammad did it too. "Hey it's ok that mohammad married a 9-12 year old, because some douchebag kings did it for political reasons too" isn't working for me.

I think this is a good example of what goes on here. The US and Europe had 'relaxed child sex standards' (remember that this meant 7 years old in the state of Delaware in historically recent times), but what Mohammed did is judged as something terrible and outside of history.

Of course in the period before the modern age (and still in some places today), children were viewed as commodities to be traded in marriage for their parents gain. Certainly Mohammed's marriage to Ayşe is a case of this happening. However, it is something that was pretty common to all societies. The fact that their is a racist campaign against people from the Middle East and South Asia is the reason why we hear so much about Mohammed and so little about the state of Delaware with its seven year old brides.

Devrim

[Leo]

Sure. But the question is, under which theoretical frame should we criticise him?

Under our own theoretical frame, of course, whatever that may be.

[blake 3:17]

@ Devrim -- I believe my paternal grandmother was married at 13 to my grandfather who was a liberal journalist and politician. 1914 or 1915. It may have been some kind of arranged marriage -- I've no idea how she'd have gotten from Wales to Canada.

[human strike]

What a stupid thing to say. Who here, General strike, who here in this very thread, (assuming your bullshit claim, that almost everyone was an anti semite when this was quite obviously not the case) supports individuals from Nazi Germany who were at the very least subject to mild accusations of anti semitism? No one. There is a difference in consciously blatant forms of (and petite) bourgeois ideology and standards for "tolerance" (can't stand that word).

And the holocaust didn't occur because people were simply spontaneously fueled with hatred because they fell victim to extremely competent propaganda organs. It was an unconscious expression of the class interests of specific classes. As for the proletariat, they were coerced, and they did not fall without a fight. Better use a better example or shit analogy, General Strike.

I know it's an unforgivable sin on a forum, but I was being sarcastic. Obviously not everyone in Nazi Germany was an anti-semite, just as not everyone in 19th century Europe was a misogynist (or sexist).

[Devrim]

@ Devrim -- I believe my paternal grandmother was married at 13 to my grandfather who was a liberal journalist and politician. 1914 or 1915. It may have been some kind of arranged marriage -- I've no idea how she'd have gotten from Wales to Canada.

Yes, and I presume she didn't think of herself as a victim of paedophilia either. It is an example of how times change.

Devrim

[Comrade #138672]

That's odd. I thought Marx was pretty much in favour of the liberation of women.


Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.
- Karl Marx

[Soomie]

Didn't he hate jews as well? I just think it's ironic given that his theory is based off of egalitarianism.

[Comrade #138672]

Didn't he hate jews as well? I just think it's ironic given that his theory is based off of egalitarianism.Really? How do you know this? I think that someone who is genuinely in favour of the liberation of women, should also be in favour of the liberation of all people regardless of race.

Maybe he hated some of the Jewish bankers and Capitalists. Not because they were Jews, but because they were part of the bourgeoisie.

[Soomie]

In the beginning of the version of the Communist Manifesto that I have it says in the introduction that he did not like Jews, and often made slurs about them. I quote:

"He had few Jewish friends. He wrote about the Jews of Europe, always regarding Judaism as a stupid superstition, and the jews as a community caught in the vice of capitalism from which only a revolution could free them. He adopted from his christian neighbors the habit of calling people and ideas he did not like "dirty-jewish" rather they were jewish or not, and when he really hated someone (for instance, Ferdinand Lasalle, a man of Jewish origin who became the greatest socialist and trade union leader in the 1860's) Marx would call him a "dirty jew of negro blood."

I just thought this was all a bit shocking to be at the beginning of the Communist Manifesto given Marx's philosophies.

[Luc]

In the beginning of the version of the Communist Manifesto that I have it says in the introduction that he did not like Jews, and often made slurs about them. I quote:

"He had few Jewish friends. He wrote about the Jews of Europe, always regarding Judaism as a stupid superstition, and the jews as a community caught in the vice of capitalism from which only a revolution could free them. He adopted from his christian neighbors the habit of calling people and ideas he did not like "dirty-jewish" rather they were jewish or not, and when he really hated someone (for instance, Ferdinand Lasalle, a man of Jewish origin who became the greatest socialist and trade union leader in the 1860's) Marx would call him a "dirty jew of negro blood."

I just thought this was all a bit shocking to be at the beginning of the Communist Manifesto given Marx's philosophies.

ya but is it sourced at all? and if it is are those sources credibal?

[Soomie]

ya but is it sourced at all? and if it is are those sources credibal?

Yeah, the author posted a bibliography. Not sure how credible the sources are. I believe those are from a few books listed about his life.

[Luc]

Yeah, the author posted a bibliography. Not sure how credible the sources are. I believe those are from a few books listed about his life.

can u post 'em? not the whole bibliography just the sourced material

[Soomie]

can u post 'em? not the whole bibliography just the sourced material

There are no intext citations, so I'm just making best guesses that the information was gathered from this one:

Karl Marx: His Life and Environment - I. Berlin

[Luc]

There are no intext citations, so I'm just making best guesses that the information was gathered from this one:

Karl Marx: His Life and Environment - I. Berlin

ah, damn i can't find any free copies so i cant check anything maybe someone else here might have it :unsure:

[Drosophila]

Related

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[Comrade #138672]

There are no intext citations, so I'm just making best guesses that the information was gathered from this one:

Karl Marx: His Life and Environment - I. BerlinI. Berlin was a Liberal. This doesn't necessarily mean that he was lying, but he had many reasons to do so.

Without quotes from Marx or Engels himself, it's difficult to believe.

[Luís Henrique]

Under our own theoretical frame, of course, whatever that may be.

What are the available ones? Or are there so many that such answer is impossible?

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

always regarding Judaism as a stupid superstition

Judaism is not a stupid superstition?!?!?

To me, it certainly is. No better than Islam or Christianism, for what is worth.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

I know it's an unforgivable sin on a forum, but I was being sarcastic. Obviously not everyone in Nazi Germany was an anti-semite, just as not everyone in 19th century Europe was a misogynist (or sexist).

The comparison is not a good one, and doesn't hold.

Misogynism is much deeper and ingrained into our culture than antisemitism. It is also much older: it is probably as old as mankind, while antisemitism is something like seven or eight centuries old - an in the peculiar, racialised form it took in Nazi Germany (and Western Europe in general in the late 19th and early 20th century) it is about 150 years old and no more.

Misogynism is a constitutive part of any modern capitalist society's ideology, and it contaminates even the resistance attempts - even those that are explicitly and intently opposed to patriarchy and misogynism. Compared to that, Nazism, and even the much more widestpread antisemitism of the late century are almost epiphenomenal.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Judaism is not a stupid superstition?!?!?

Part of the problem may be rooted in this confusion. "Modern" antisemitism (Nazi antisemitism, paradigmatically) tends to confuse "judaism" with a "race", while older forms of antisemitism (Catholic antisemitism, for instance) tended to take judaism as merely a religion. This allows conservatives such as Isaiah Berlin to misrepresent criticism (even Enlightenment-based criticism) of judaism, and attempt to transform Marx into an antisemite.

It doesn't help that one particularly stupid aspect of judaism as a stupid superstition is that it actually agrees with racialised antisemitism in believing that it is a hereditary condition. To both racist antisemites and mainstream "judaists", a Jew is a person who was born to a Jewish family, regardless of whether his or her views of the "unspeakable" coincide or not with the "judaist" orthodoxy.

Luís Henrique

[RedMaterialist]

was shakespeare an anti-semite because of "the merchant of venice," or sexist because he wrote "frailty, thy name is woman?"

[Dazdra Flynn]

I'm happy to say that the method I call Marxism isn't actually limited by the prejudices of its namesake. Like all science, it benefits from criticism and scrutiny, and preconceptions of all kinds rarely make the cut.