What is Marxism?(Advanced Edition here to break some taboos for a better Marxism)

[Dodo]

Read first please

Seeing I am having troubles with many self-proclaimed Marxists, I wanted to ask this question. First I'll define my view, then I need you people to tell me what it is:

1)What am I the way I see it
- a follower(?) of dialectical school in philosophy. In essence, this is what I equate to Marxism. I take Marxism to be dialectical view's specific form under bourgeoisie epoch, that is the bourgeoisie dominated relations of production(capitalism) and ideology(set of ideas an values that sprung out from this).>you can see from here how much I value the Hegellian aspect in Marxism
The epoch that starts with enlightenment also means that materialism is almost taken for granted at this point. Thus, I am a dialectical materialist(and ideas, while influential, are to be understood in their material context for they are -largely- manifestation of material conditions). Marx turned it materialist because idealist dialectics has stopped its revolutionary role. Marx started the critique of the next epoch under materialism. The ontology of future in his epoch.

However, I do not take the theoretical framework of historical materialism or rest of the theories that sprung out from Marxism to be the essence. They are merely theories that sprung out from this view. They are replace-able and can become obsolete...they are not "objective sciences" just like any other social science out there. They are ideological choices I have the option to make in understanding the objectively existing reality(and I mostly do). That does not however mean that those theories necessarily correspond to reality the way they are made.

2) What do I think Dialectical Materialism is?

Dialectical view is the revolutionary philosophy of change that takes NOTHING for granted. Essentially, its the un-ending critique of all that exists that never stops making that self-criticism, that accepts no theory or belief to be time-less or objective in its essence. And that is exactly what makes it scientific, scientific in essence for it considers things in its relational context and epoch. Scientific-ness does not come from the so-called "objective" use of the tools in a time-less manner, as far as I am concerned Marx was highly critical of these sciences and positivism.
The philosophical roots of this kind of thinking lies in the bourgeoisie philosophies that were mainly idealist and created the empiricist-pragmatist line in epistemology. Dialectical critique shows that since each epoch has its own tools and our senses are not independent from what it is "measuring", it cannot be objective science. E.g, an economist that deals with economic data deals with in terms of capitalism induced ideology. He does not view a crisis process as end of capitalism, he has the expectation that it will continue since it is the end of development in his view.

So dialectical materialism is not a science, nor it is "laws of nature" as some propose it to be based on Engels' anti-duhring". As Engels himself also says many times, his work is manifestation of dialectics in his own epoch, that is the materialist views of his own time. He says that everything comes into being and passes away all the time.
His laws are not to be taken as laws of nature for we cannot know laws of nature according our current knowledge(you can argue that we can never know if we will ever know/// an ESTABLISHED set of natural laws are as lenin would put it "metaphysical materialism" as opposed to a "dialectical materialism"//// and no I am no leninist)...those 3 "laws" are merely guides that proposes;
1- that everything always changes, and those changes at some point make a change in essence(qualitative)
2-Unity of opposites is to show the forces at play, that there are counter-forces to things which play a main-role in buidling up of any change
3- every change is a product of its pre-conditions, nothing is independent of its pre-conditions(negation of negation)....thus NOTHING is static for everything always changes, including capitalism, and therefore an abstract concept of socialism. Having a static understanding of a socialism is un-dialectical and leads to dogma.But these are "no" laws, no one ever brought laws to dialectics, and dialectics is not "intellectual property" of Engels. He was aware of this, but the people who followed unfortunately, not.

What is the whole Marxist rhetoric and theories than?

Analysis based on Marxist views(200 years of accumulated theories, sometimes contradicting each other from various Marxist view based theoreticians for a specific cases they faced in their times that might still apply to today)...essentially a negative view of the positive sciences, mostly manifestation of modernist views that looks for something else under existing phenomena. Historical materialism for instance, while a valid explanation is doubtful in its scientific qualities as K.Popper has shown. None of the "theories" of Marxism are independent of this phenomena...they hold important explanatory power, in various "upgraded" forms and are good guides where some concepts even became taken for granted in many fields of social sciences....but they are not at the heart of Marxism, and I will go as far as to say that a Marxist can reject these theories and come up with a fully new explanation and theoretical-set(and should aspire to do so instead of intellectual laziness). A Marxist does not even need to be a socialist. At least a socialist in an established way, socialism refers to, foremost, an abstract NEGATION of what we are living in. If we still connect capitalism's current dynamics to a socialist future, then its okay(which it still mostly does, depending on spatial differences). I am just trying to point out that socialism is not a "must" for Marxism as a philosophy which is what defines the essence of Marxism(as a Marxist you can critique socialism if you are living in it). A view for revolution through critique of TODAY, the world in its "last instance" as Lenin loves to say. This also means that I view ALL TENDENCIES to be unnecessary dogmatic set of beliefs that needs to be purged ASAP.



IF however, that is not what defines Marxism and all those theoretical sets need to be part of Marxism, then what should I call myself?

I am a dialectician, I am a materialist, I am a dialectical materialist....I am for critique of all ideology and established norms, I am for change of all production relations until "emancipation" of all from all sorts of social oppression. However, I do not accept upon myself any static ideology. A day can come(hypothetically) and I can talk against historical materialism, LTV, an established understanding of socialism, even the idea that class antagonism is the ultimate problem of oppression.

Where does that put me since I seem to get a lot heat? Do you consider me a Marxist? I am looking for serious answers(ask clarification questions pls), IN BEFORE:
-bourgeoisie
-petty-bourgeoisie
-opportunist
-well, I don't mind "revisionist" as long as it does not touch the essence, the critical attitude
-elitist
-detached from reality(I live in a developing country, unemployed atm, in a mega-capitalist city that is experiencing the full-hit of neo-liberalism and am actively struggling here and there, clashing from time to time in semi-organized manner)
-and all that sort of stalinist idealogical-dogmatic jargon for easy dis-missal of a "traitor"

[John Nada]

You're a Jucheists.:lol: Just kidding.

I think you're a Marxists. Any theory doesn't just stay static and timeless. There's constant changes, discoveries and even regressions to an incorrect theory. Some theories are found to be untrue, some older discarded ones are verified. I think, like Newton's theory of gravity or Darwin's theory of evolution, that Marx's theories are still mostly sound, but that new developments were, are and will be added to it. However,
However, I do not accept upon myself any static ideology. A day can come(hypothetically) and I can talk against historical materialism, LTV, an established understanding of socialism, even the idea that class antagonism is the ultimate problem of oppression.While it's hypothetically possible for those theories to be disproven in the future(either superseded by a better ones or a vast change in society), I just don't see that. What's the problem with them now?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

As I'm sure you're aware, I consider you to be a "Marxian" liberal, that is, someone who uses vaguely "Marxist" rhetoric in pursuit of essentially liberal goals. To that end, you empty Marxism of all its content, leaving it some sort of vague "philosophy of change" that everyone and their dog would happily subscribe to, as it doesn't actually involve any of that scary "dictatorship of the proletariat" stuff.

For example:



1)What am I the way I see it

- a follower(?) of dialectical school in philosophy.

Not only is Marx's status as "a philosopher" extremely questionable (and he certainly never saw himself as one), you're talking about an inherently political position and reducing it to one of passive reflection, "being a follower of... [a] school in philosophy" as if being a Marxist was the same as being a Husserlian or a Spinozist or an Elean or...


The epoch that starts with enlightenment also means that materialism is almost taken for granted at this point. Thus, I am a dialectical materialist(and ideas, while influential, are to be understood in their material context for they are -largely- manifestation of material conditions). Marx turned it materialist because idealist dialectics has stopped its revolutionary role. Marx started the critique of the next epoch under materialism. The ontology of future in his epoch.

Here, all the talk about materialism aside, we have the exact inverse of materialism: the ruling ideas of an epoch (and materialism is definitely not a ruling idea) determine the objective reality. This is more than most idealists would have claimed.




Dialectical view is the revolutionary philosophy of change that takes NOTHING for granted. Essentially, its the un-ending critique of all that exists that never stops making that self-criticism, that accepts no theory or belief to be time-less or objective in its essence.

And here is the point where dialectical materialism is emptied of all of its contents, and replaced with some fairly inane generalities. Yes, unending critique and so on, that all sounds nice and so on, but it doesn't really mean anything. And it definitely does not capture the essence of Marx's dialectical method. (Not to mention that Marx himself would find quite a few things to be objectionable about this general relativism.)


Historical materialism for instance, while a valid explanation is doubtful in its scientific qualities as K.Popper has shown.

Popper is not taken seriously by any living philosopher of science, and never was, really, starting from his own pupils like Lakatos, who had to "correct" Popper to avoid drawing obviously wrong conclusions, such as the notion that evolutionary theory is unscientific (drawn by Popper himself). Amusingly, for all your talk about philosophy, you aren't really engaging with the subject, and you ignore the body of work from Duhem to Laudan and beyond.


A Marxist does not even need to be a socialist.

And this is really the crux of the issue. Yes, barring the non-socialist Marxist being a blatant imbecile, Marxism leads to socialism. Being a liberal and fighting for ecological democratic confederations or whatever is not compatible with being a Marxist.


At least a socialist in an established way, socialism refers to, foremost, an abstract NEGATION of what we are living in.

Well, no. Again, for someone who puts so much stock in philosophy, you are surprisingly willing to misuse terms like negation. A negation, for Marx, is never abstract; it is the concrete result of concrete developmental tendencies in a physical phenomenon. Socialism, then, is not an abstract term devoid of meaning, an empty signifier, but the mode of production that succeeds capitalism and is based on the social control of the means of production.

[Hit The North]

I have to agree with 870. The fact that your post doesn't even mention the class struggle once indicates that you grasp Marxism at a very abstract level, like a handful of air. To suggest that one can be a Marxist without being a socialist neglects the fact that Marx became a socialist/communist before he became a Marxist. All of Marx's work is an attempt to give a voice to the "real, existing movement..." The point is to change the world. To denude it of its participation in the historical movement of the working class is to empty Marxism of its of content.

The goal of Marxists shouldn't be to develop some clever theory of everything; the goal is to assist in socialist revolution.

[Dodo]

You're a Jucheists.:lol: Just kidding.
However,While it's hypothetically possible for those theories to be disproven in the future(either superseded by a better ones or a vast change in society), I just don't see that. What's the problem with them now?

I don't really have any problem with most Marxist theories, I have given a whole thesis using some major Marxist theories. Its just their handling by Marxists. It might look like small issue, but it is massive in reality.


As I'm sure you're aware, I consider you to be a "Marxian" liberal, that is, someone who uses vaguely "Marxist" rhetoric in pursuit of essentially liberal goals. To that end, you empty Marxism of all its content, leaving it some sort of vague "philosophy of change" that everyone and their dog would happily subscribe to, as it doesn't actually involve any of that scary "dictatorship of the proletariat" stuff.

I can understand that. Just keep in mind that if I support PKK it does not mean I embrace their bourgeoisie influenced ideology. You should understand that I am trying to stay equally distant to all ideologies, picking the ones I view progressive for support. I don't embrace any beyond the critical revolutionary attitude.


Not only is Marx's status as "a philosopher" extremely questionable (and he certainly never saw himself as one), you're talking about an inherently political position and reducing it to one of passive reflection, "being a follower of... [a] school in philosophy" as if being a Marxist was the same as being a Husserlian or a Spinozist or an Elean or...
Well in his famous quote he says that philosophers have interpreted the world but they should change it. Thats sort of the line I embrace, the critical analysis of all that exists for revolutionary change. Obviously, critical analysis goes through understanding of philosophy that exists to get an insight on ideology of the hegemon ideas.


Here, all the talk about materialism aside, we have the exact inverse of materialism: the ruling ideas of an epoch (and materialism is definitely not a ruling idea) determine the objective reality. This is more than most idealists would have claimed.
What I mean is that, given our current scientific knowledge(referring to positive sciences) materialism is taken for granted. Of course its not embraced by everyone including many philosophical traditions.

That the ruling ideas determine objective reality however is not wrong, nor it is more dominant than the objective reality determining the ruling ideas. I never claimed that the ideas are the driving force of history on their own...the "idea" I refer to here are themselves manifestations of material reality. And are thus part of the objective reality themselves. Not as mere products of human minds, but as a result of our interaction to the world. Thats quiet the classic view, with more emphasis on the ideology bit....since the age of ideologies, ideology-in-itself had gotten a stronger role in modern society than their more natural manifestations in the pre/early-industrial era. Their roots are in manifestation of objective conditions.

The insistence on classical exact sentences on this topic is exactly something I'd criticize and view as dogmatic to connect this to the topic at hand.
Having said that, literally as I was writing this line I was realing Panoekek on "Society and Mind in Marxian Philosophy".
Here is what I read which I'd say completely puts what I think to words:

Hence Marx’s thesis that the real world determines consciousness does not mean that contemporary ideas are determined solely by contemporary society. Our ideas and concepts are the crystallization, the comprehensive essence of the whole of our experience, present and past. What was already fixed in the past in abstract mental forms must be included with such adaptations of the present as are necessary. New ideas thus appear to arise from two sources: present reality and the system of ideas transmitted from the past. Out of this distinction arises one of the most common objections against Marxism. The objection, namely, that not only the real material world, but in no less degree, the ideological elements – ideas, beliefs and ideals – determine man’s mind and thus his deeds, and therefore the future of the world. This would be a correct criticism if ideas originated by themselves, without cause, or from the innate nature of man, or from some supernatural spiritual source. Marxism, however, says that these ideas also must have their origin in the real world under social conditions.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/society-mind/ch03.htm


And here is the point where dialectical materialism is emptied of all of its contents, and replaced with some fairly inane generalities. Yes, unending critique and so on, that all sounds nice and so on, but it doesn't really mean anything. And it definitely does not capture the essence of Marx's dialectical method. (Not to mention that Marx himself would find quite a few things to be objectionable about this general relativism.)

I ain't talking about relativism, my problem is with the way theories are perceived by Marxists...not theories themselves. I do not "reject" theories, I merely state that theories can be obsolete or left behind if new realizations point to that. We have to know our theories are not necessarily representation of the reality, that they can be missing the "whole picture" it is trying to catch and be ready to change-updated. That is all. I.E, theory does not define Marxism, it is the revolutionary critique that defines it.


Popper is not taken seriously by any living philosopher of science, and never was, really, starting from his own pupils like Lakatos, who had to "correct" Popper to avoid drawing obviously wrong conclusions, such as the notion that evolutionary theory is unscientific (drawn by Popper himself). Amusingly, for all your talk about philosophy, you aren't really engaging with the subject, and you ignore the body of work from Duhem to Laudan and beyond.
Noop, I haven't read Duhem and Laudan. I read the Logical Positivist-Popper-Kuhn-Lakatos line and stopped there while working on my thesis for I had spent excessive amount of time formulating epistemology.
K.Popper has many problems in his ideas, that I do not deny. It can be said that he mis-understood Marxism as well. However his idea of "falsificationism" is something ingrained in ANY epistemological issue.
That historical materialism verifies its own reality is an un-deniable fact. That it is un-falsifiable in its look to history is true. That its predictions have not manifested is also a problem we are facing. That major predictions from the beginning had to constantly shift position with new events in HM is also something that challenged the scientific quality(scientific in the bourgeoisie sense) of HM.

I went with Lakatos's method in my thesis...that there is a core Marxism of rev-theory that criticizes things that are taken for granted...and there is a research program around it from classical views to post-Marxism. So there is both a dialectic of ideas within the "research program" and outside with other paradigms.



And this is really the crux of the issue. Yes, barring the non-socialist Marxist being a blatant imbecile, Marxism leads to socialism. Being a liberal and fighting for ecological democratic confederations or whatever is not compatible with being a Marxist.
You have to do more for me to take your -opinion- on the subject more seriously. Give references, tell me what makes you think that way or something....I can't base my view on Marxism and socialism on what you believe it to be.
Again, I am not embracing those ideas, I support them in their context. Don't be dishonest on that issue.

Wasn't Marx himself a liberal at some point in his life?Or is this your menshevik obsession at play? Did people attack you a lot for being a Trotskyite? They dug the "menshevik" issues of Trotsky?
I don't care...like another poster said, we are not a re-enactment society. Also, how does me being a liberal go parallel to my belief in destruction of the capitalist economic system? Isn't belief in market economy a core quality of a liberal? Can one be liberal by being anti-market?



Well, no. Again, for someone who puts so much stock in philosophy, you are surprisingly willing to misuse terms like negation. A negation, for Marx, is never abstract; it is the concrete result of concrete developmental tendencies in a physical phenomenon. Socialism, then, is not an abstract term devoid of meaning, an empty signifier, but the mode of production that succeeds capitalism and is based on the social control of the means of production.
I used what I said in the same context in my signature, the quote from Marx.
There -definetly- is a negation that is solid as rock always in the process and coming into being. The problem is, how much the followers of negators, the revolutionaries are in grasp of this negation. Thats the abstract-ness I am talking about. Thats why I talk of an abstract negation for here, I am on Marxist theory of knowledge ground, I am not making any statements regarding the nature of post-capitalist society.

[Dodo]

I have to agree with 870. The fact that your post doesn't even mention the class struggle once indicates that you grasp Marxism at a very abstract level, like a handful of air. To suggest that one can be a Marxist without being a socialist neglects the fact that Marx became a socialist/communist before he became a Marxist. All of Marx's work is an attempt to give a voice to the "real, existing movement..." The point is to change the world. To denude it of its participation in the historical movement of the working class is to empty Marxism of its of content.
The thing is, whatever capitalism is negating right now can be very different in comparison to circumstances of Marx, which brings me to next bit:


The goal of Marxists shouldn't be to develop some clever theory of everything; the goal is to assist in socialist revolution.
We are on complete disagreement here.

It is Marxism that leads us to a struggle for socialism. They do not automatically come together, but we go to socialism through the Marxist understanding of the world. Marxism in-itself does not contain socialism.

That the "goal is to assist socialist revolution", without the critical insight is a belief, is an ideology. If you cut it from its Marxist roots and critical view, essentially for all we know, people might be going for a detached alternative reality someone formulated in the 19th century..much like the Islamic state and how Muslims chase a reality of their own(well, thats an extreme example but I hope it delivers the message). It also sums up our 20th century "communism" experience which ended on a long-run failure.

[Hit The North]

The thing is, whatever capitalism is negating right now can be very different in comparison to circumstances of Marx, which brings me to next bit:


This is beside the point. Whatever the terms of the class struggle, whatever historical transformations it goes through, Marxism must constantly address it.


We are on complete disagreement here.

It is Marxism that leads us to a struggle for socialism. They do not automatically come together, but we go to socialism through the Marxist understanding of the world. Marxism in-itself does not contain socialism.

This is ass-backwards. I reiterate, Marx was a communist, not a "Marxist". He adopted a movement which predated his involvement and gave it a new rigour and understanding. So, properly speaking, you are correct, Marxism does not contain socialism, rather it is socialism that contains Marxism. Marx commits his brain and his effort to the service of the proletarian revolutionary movement. To separate Marxism from that movement is to rob it of its purpose.


That the "goal is to assist socialist revolution", without the critical insight is a belief, is an ideology.

Well this is a position of your own making, not one I have subscribed to. I nowhere claim that our goal is to assist socialist revolution in an uncritical manner. Instead I am contesting your assertion that one can be a Marxist without being a socialist.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I can understand that. Just keep in mind that if I support PKK it does not mean I embrace their bourgeoisie influenced ideology. You should understand that I am trying to stay equally distant to all ideologies, picking the ones I view progressive for support. I don't embrace any beyond the critical revolutionary attitude.

The thing is, you have claimed on numerous occasions that the supposed "democratic confederalism" of the PKK (surely you're familiar with Marx's quip about "those who see the millennium in the democratic republic) is "the only way forward", socialist, "against all oppression" and so on.


Well in his famous quote he says that philosophers have interpreted the world but they should change it.

Well, no. He states that "the point, however, is to change it". Not that philosophers specifically should change the world.


Thats sort of the line I embrace, the critical analysis of all that exists for revolutionary change. Obviously, critical analysis goes through understanding of philosophy that exists to get an insight on ideology of the hegemon ideas.

Which is pretty much the opposite of Marx wanted to say. The tenth thesis on Feuerbach was an attack on the passive, contemplative attitude of those who Marx would later lampoon as "critical critics"; here you imply that your analysis, your "critical criticism", is going to change society.


What I mean is that, given our current scientific knowledge(referring to positive sciences) materialism is taken for granted. Of course its not embraced by everyone including many philosophical traditions.

Of course materialism isn't taken for granted. I don't know what gave you that impression.


That the ruling ideas determine objective reality however is not wrong, nor it is more dominant than the objective reality determining the ruling ideas. I never claimed that the ideas are the driving force of history on their own...the "idea" I refer to here are themselves manifestations of material reality. And are thus part of the objective reality themselves. Not as mere products of human minds, but as a result of our interaction to the world. Thats quiet the classic view, with more emphasis on the ideology bit....since the age of ideologies, ideology-in-itself had gotten a stronger role in modern society than their more natural manifestations in the pre/early-industrial era. Their roots are in manifestation of objective conditions.

There are two statements here, of which one is trivial and the other blatantly wrong. Yes, people (sometimes) act on the basis of their ideas. No one has claimed otherwise. But their ideas do not determine objective reality: the bourgeoisie can imagine that crises are accidents and not an inherent feature of capitalism as much as they like, this will not stop crises from happening regularly. The last few sentences are really the point: "ideology-in-itself" replaces the material world as the determining factor. This is pretty brazen idealism.


Noop, I haven't read Duhem and Laudan. I read the Logical Positivist-Popper-Kuhn-Lakatos line and stopped there while working on my thesis for I had spent excessive amount of time formulating epistemology.
K.Popper has many problems in his ideas, that I do not deny. It can be said that he mis-understood Marxism as well. However his idea of "falsificationism" is something ingrained in ANY epistemological issue.

I really don't know what to say other than "no, it isn't". Falsificationism is a very specific and mostly dead school in the philosophy of science; you won't find falsificationism in Duhem for example, or in Canguilhem.


That historical materialism verifies its own reality is an un-deniable fact.

Well, no, the sentence in fact doesn't mean anything.


That it is un-falsifiable in its look to history is true. That its predictions have not manifested is also a problem we are facing. That major predictions from the beginning had to constantly shift position with new events in HM is also something that challenged the scientific quality(scientific in the bourgeoisie sense) of HM.

That is the tired old Popperian claim, which rests on a serious misreading (or more likely a lack of reading; it's known, for example, that Popper often did not read the authors he was criticising, including Hegel) of Marx. Marx never specified


I went with Lakatos's method in my thesis...that there is a core Marxism of rev-theory that criticizes things that are taken for granted...and there is a research program around it from classical views to post-Marxism. So there is both a dialectic of ideas within the "research program" and outside with other paradigms.

Then I'm sorry to say you didn't quite understand Lakatos; the "core" of a research programme according to Lakatos is a hypothesis, not a method.


You have to do more for me to take your -opinion- on the subject more seriously. Give references, tell me what makes you think that way or something....I can't base my view on Marxism and socialism on what you believe it to be.

Good grief, are you serious? The entire last section of Anti-Duhring is devoted to demonstrating the connection between historical materialism and socialism as the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat.


Also, how does me being a liberal go parallel to my belief in destruction of the capitalist economic system? Isn't belief in market economy a core quality of a liberal? Can one be liberal by being anti-market?

"Democratic confederalism" does not abolish the market or capitalism.


I used what I said in the same context in my signature, the quote from Marx.

The quote from Marx before he became a Marxist, yes. And we don't even have to wonder what the mature Marx thought about his position at that point, as we have an entire work, The German Ideology, devoted to lampooning the sort of "critical criticism" which never deigns to descent from the Empyrean heavens of ideas into practical work, and practical positions.

[Dodo]

*doubled*

[Dodo]

This is beside the point. Whatever the terms of the class struggle, whatever historical transformations it goes through, Marxism must constantly address it.
That is alright. Since classed society in-itself refers to oppression. Though it is not the only source.



This is ass-backwards. I reiterate, Marx was a communist, not a "Marxist". He adopted a movement which predated his involvement and gave it a new rigour and understanding. So, properly speaking, you are correct, Marxism does not contain socialism, rather it is socialism that contains Marxism. Marx commits his brain and his effort to the service of the proletarian revolutionary movement. To separate Marxism from that movement is to rob it of its purpose.
I have not seperated it, I just say that Marx was a revolutionary. He was a liberal at some point as well if we are to go into that. What makes Marx, MARX was that he established the critique of society with its totality. There were non-Marxist socialists before Marx. Socialism is an ideology, Marxism is not. Marxism is philosophy. Some will claim here that it is a science. All I can tell them is that they are living in 1880s.


Well this is a position of your own making, not one I have subscribed to. I nowhere claim that our goal is to assist socialist revolution in an uncritical manner. Instead I am contesting your assertion that one can be a Marxist without being a socialist.

That is kind of the point of this thread. I do not -necessarily- call myself a socialist. Yet I am for all critique of society. Socialism for me is an abstract terms, a negation of contemporary day, but I need to seperate it from ideological socialism with established beliefs/ethics. 870 says that then I am a liberal. Can I be a liberal and be critique of capitalism, market relations and want to abolish them then? What am I?

[Hit The North]

That is kind of the point of this thread. I do not -necessarily- call myself a socialist. Yet I am for all critique of society.

Socialism/communism is the positive affirmation of the critique of capitalism. Critique in itself leads nowhere. Either you critique capitalism in order to reform it or you critique it in order to supersede it. If you don't call yourself a socialist, how do you describe your politics?

[Comrade #138672]

I have to agree with 870. The fact that your post doesn't even mention the class struggle once indicates that you grasp Marxism at a very abstract level, like a handful of air. To suggest that one can be a Marxist without being a socialist neglects the fact that Marx became a socialist/communist before he became a Marxist. All of Marx's work is an attempt to give a voice to the "real, existing movement..." The point is to change the world. To denude it of its participation in the historical movement of the working class is to empty Marxism of its of content.

The goal of Marxists shouldn't be to develop some clever theory of everything; the goal is to assist in socialist revolution.I agree with you on everything, except that clever Marxist theories cannot hurt the movement, if they indeed assist it. They do not necessarily exclude each other.

[Fakeblock]

Calling Marxism 'the critical [and therefore dialectical?] attitude' is so vague as to be meaningless, as some posters have already pointed out. Once you are asked to qualify this critical approach, you will invariably have to make positive statements, necessarily based on an underlying conceptual problematic.

An example: you claim that the dialectical view criticises all that exists. Obviously we're not meant to take this literally. So, I'll assume, that you criticise the given state of things, sociopolitically: the dominant ideology, capitalist exploitation of labour, etc. In short, the entire capitalist social structure, and from the point of view of the proletariat no less. However, by adding these necessary qualifiers, we have already gone beyond mere criticism. We have, if we have conceptualised the object of our criticism correctly, entered the domain of historical materialism and, suddenly, we do not merely criticise, but explain! It is obvious, then, that dialectical materialism is nothing without historical materialism, that we cannot take the correct philosophical standpoint without the knowledge. The reasons why we acquire this knowledge are irrelevant It's foolish to talk about 'the purpose of Marxism'. The effect is what matters.

The truth is that everyone can claim to be philosophically critical. Most people do. The question is what you're critical of. To answer this question, as a Marxist, you need historical materialism.

[Dodo]

The thing is, you have claimed on numerous occasions that the supposed "democratic confederalism" of the PKK (surely you're familiar with Marx's quip about "those who see the millennium in the democratic republic) is "the only way forward", socialist, "against all oppression" and so on.
If I did that I misrepresented myself, I'd like to see where I said that though.


Which is pretty much the opposite of Marx wanted to say. The tenth thesis on Feuerbach was an attack on the passive, contemplative attitude of those who Marx would later lampoon as "critical critics"; here you imply that your analysis, your "critical criticism", is going to change society.
I never said I am against revolutionary activity.


There are two statements here, of which one is trivial and the other blatantly wrong. Yes, people (sometimes) act on the basis of their ideas. No one has claimed otherwise. But their ideas do not determine objective reality:

You reckon?Are you saying humans have no power over objective reality? The pre-conditions of the objective conditions determine us yes, but after that it is our dialectical interaction with the objective reality in which we change the objective reality as well.


the bourgeoisie can imagine that crises are accidents and not an inherent feature of capitalism as much as they like, this will not stop crises from happening regularly. The last few sentences are really the point: "ideology-in-itself" replaces the material world as the determining factor. This is pretty brazen idealism.

I am quiet sure you are mis-representing my words. I felt like Panokek described what I meant rather good. Ideas once unleashed are material forces that can change the world. It is the context ideas were born in that is the material conditions of that time. Once unleashed, idea gets a "thing-in itself" like meaning to the masses. Therefore even if ripe conditions for it are gone, such they can still remain there to change objective reality or present a strong influence on it. E.g, religion, race, nation, gender..etc


I really don't know what to say other than "no, it isn't". Falsificationism is a very specific and mostly dead school in the philosophy of science; you won't find falsificationism in Duhem for example, or in Canguilhem.
If I am looking at the correct guy it says Duhem died in 1916. The other dude is of this period but does not look like a "mainsteam" guy at all.
In anycase, if you are going to go by mainstream thought in scientific community, Marxism died long-before Popper. Whereas it seems like it is coming to an end, the rhetoric that dominates social SCIENCE today is post-modern. Its critique of Marxism goes way beyond that of Popper.
Putting aside what mainstream think, Popper's point on Marxism confirmation bias is pretty blatantly obvious. Functionalists are no worse in explaining society when confirmation bias is at play.


Well, no, the sentence in fact doesn't mean anything.

Depending on your relation to your thoughts on the matter being -belief-


That is the tired old Popperian claim, which rests on a serious misreading (or more likely a lack of reading; it's known, for example, that Popper often did not read the authors he was criticising, including Hegel) of Marx. Marx never specified
For fucks sake, decide. Did Marx specify or not? The whole reason we are debating here is because I say Marxism is NOT a science with specific beliefs and tools. Marx&Engels however used the word science and inevitability of socialism many times given their circumstances.

You see there are two groups in Marxism today. Those who see Marxism as a science of reality that takes us to inevitable end of history. And those who believe it is a critique of existing society for revolutionary change.
EVEN if both points to a concept of socialism, their analysis an deduction are completely different. One believes in established theories and a positive approach, the other believes in a negative critical approach.

The fact that your view is closer to that of analyticals and their roots in empiricists is pretty obvious to me. Whereas the continental philosophy(Kant-Hegel line) which Marxism was rooted in(and up to this day still shapes from critical theory, structuralism, post-modernism, post-marxism, psychoanalytics) had always been critical of this. The second group which I connect myself to emphasizes ideology and thus roots its connection to Marxism in "alienation" concept(structuralists maybe not so much, haven't done an in-depth reading of Althusser).

The way I see it and the observations I can make shows me that;
critical thinking has achieved a great deal in social transformation(even if in the reformist sense) and in perception to this day, and it still strong and influences mass-politics. The era of "scientific" Marxism was in 19th century when that was the dominating ideology, its achievements came to an halt at social-democracy. That socialism is inevitable came at risk and in fact now we have to consider fascists at a time of economic crisis. The "scientific" Marxists are in their little groups where only they themselves understand each other and take their flags to the frontline when there is a mass protests because they want to look like they are leading those masses...oh god, those flag fights at every protest I go to.....like I said, they are more concerned with their own existence than any revolutionary change. They have to revolutionize their own mind first.

That being said, I have never dismissed the economical or sociological categories in Marxian -science-. I just have a different relations/connection to them. I hope you won't misrepresent my views as being ANTI all those concepts.


Then I'm sorry to say you didn't quite understand Lakatos; the "core" of a research programme according to Lakatos is a hypothesis, not a method.
are you doing this on purpose? I did not say there is an established method. My emphasis on Lakatos's model was to show the dialectic of ideas inside and outside the program.



Good grief, are you serious? The entire last section of Anti-Duhring is devoted to demonstrating the connection between historical materialism and socialism as the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

I have a question for you: Do you even understand my position? What am I suggesting? What is my problem with?



"Democratic confederalism" does not abolish the market or capitalism.
Hint for my question above: This is exatly what I my problem is with. Democratic conferalism is not an established ideology, nor I am a "democratic confederalist".....rather the problem I deal with is how you relate to concepts of socialism and capitalism which is highly problematic and the way I see it anti-Marxist.

Democratic confederalism is not a clear position on many things. The only clear thing is that the position is men's return to nature free of oppressive relations(in Marxian, critical theory and post-modern even sense because well, they are more up to date than you are and realize that the only source of oppression is not economics, it is part of a dialectical totality)



The quote from Marx before he became a Marxist, yes. And we don't even have to wonder what the mature Marx thought about his position at that point, as we have an entire work, The German Ideology, devoted to lampooning the sort of "critical criticism" which never deigns to descent from the Empyrean heavens of ideas into practical work, and practical positions.
The tradition I relate to is quiet rooted in Latin America and where I live it is partially in p k k. I know of a lot of loooong revolutionary struggles in these cases.
I don't have a practical position?
What do you mean by "practical position"?

bonus knowledge: the praxis of -mature- Marx cooked in the political process has utterly failed, all he could see in his life was a destroyed Paris Commune.


Socialism/communism is the positive affirmation of the critique of capitalism.
No problem here.


Critique in itself leads nowhere.
No problem here

Either you critique capitalism in order to reform it or you critique it in order to supersede it.
I critique it to supersede it.


If you don't call yourself a socialist, how do you describe your politics?
And thats the problem. I consider myself a revolutionary Marxist, however I do not take theories of a past-century as the core tenets of Marxism. I reject that it is a science for I don't need that kind of bourgeoisie legitimization. Does that mean I dismiss theories? NO. All I say is that they are replaceable and not necessarily or timelessly true factual work. Furthermore, I assert that early Marxist theories also do not grasp the totality of relations and there is a strong tendency to get lost among economic concepts.

For instance, because p k k throws something like democratic confederalism on the table, the classical rhetoric thinking comes with accusations that it does not use the "literature" it is supposed to be using. Because to this tradition, "socialism" is a reality that is constructed that we are supposed to "enforce".....they cannot grasp that socialism refers to the negation of what exists today. And they deal with this "shallow" stuff and well, go as far as to state that these people are bourgeoisie liberals and are no different than ISIS.

So if my position is the revolutionary change of this society where the ideological cloud over oppression are lifted, including that of capitalist economic relations so as to open the way to abolish them then what am I? A liberal? I don't call myself a socialist necessarily because socialism in the minds of pop-culture AND Marxists refers to something static...an established doctrine modeled on Euro-centric capitalist modernity. On that, my position is the same as young Marx in my signature.

[Dodo]

Calling Marxism 'the critical [and therefore dialectical?] attitude' is so vague as to be meaningless, as some posters have already pointed out. Once you are asked to qualify this critical approach, you will invariably have to make positive statements, necessarily based on an underlying conceptual problematic.

But I do not have problems with making positive statements. The thing is, when we are lifting the clouds on reality which is ideology, we replace it with another ideology. My issue here is how we relate to this.
Many claim that Marxism is that other ideology, which is socialism whereas I see it as the process of lifting that ideology.

This is not a minor detail....when historical materialism or whatever negation is taking place at a certain time(the ideology of the opposition in a given time and place) becomes a static thing, it becomes dogma. This might not be as obvious to you but when you are out there talking to Marxists you realize this. For instance, 870 will view pkk as a bourgeouisie gang and their concept of democratic con-federalism as part of this bourgeouisie structure.

The problem is, he is not approaching the issue critically, he is approaching the issue with created "ideology"...which is also fine. The problem is, he is approaching with a past-negation from early 20th century. Doesn't p k k do for instance positive statements? They do, but they do it for now.


An example: you claim that the dialectical view criticises all that exists. Obviously we're not meant to take this literally. So, I'll assume, that you criticise the given state of things, sociopolitically: the dominant ideology, capitalist exploitation of labour, etc. In short, the entire capitalist social structure, and from the point of view of the proletariat no less. However, by adding these necessary qualifiers, we have already gone beyond mere criticism. We have, if we have conceptualised the object of our criticism correctly, entered the domain of historical materialism and, suddenly, we do not merely criticise, but explain! It is obvious, then, that dialectical materialism is nothing without historical materialism, that we cannot take the correct philosophical standpoint without the knowledge. The reasons why we acquire this knowledge are irrelevant It's foolish to talk about 'the purpose of Marxism'. The effect is what matters.

The truth is that everyone can claim to be philosophically critical. Most people do. The question is what you're critical of. To answer this question, as a Marxist, you need historical materialism.

I never said I put historical materialism aside. My mere point as I always emphasize is that historical materialism -isn't- Marxism. I don't understand why people attack me over this....I say that in an hypothetical scenario, positive theory bit is -replaceable- IF things were to change. Obviously if you believe HM to be the equal of Marxism, when things change and you accept that then you would have to stop being a Marxist. But the critique of what you live in does not necessarily end....

There would however been an extra debate over HM's analysis if we were to get into it because as you know HM became dogmatized over the past century to a great extent and people tried to replace itself as Marxism, not realizing that this gave a very strong weapon to anti-Marxist philosophy-science. There are many flaws and missing bit with historical materialism in its original forms...and people who have ideologized the early Marxist negations unfortunately cannot go beyond these "scientific" theories in their interpretations which obviously leads them to make misjudgements and attack people with ridiculous things like mensheviks.

[Fakeblock]

But I do not have problems with making positive statements. The thing is, when we are lifting the clouds on reality which is ideology, we replace it with another ideology. My issue here is how we relate to this.
Many claim that Marxism is that other ideology, which is socialism whereas I see it as the process of lifting that ideology.

This is not a minor detail....when historical materialism or whatever negation is taking place at a certain time(the ideology of the opposition in a given time and place) becomes a static thing, it becomes dogma. This might not be as obvious to you but when you are out there talking to Marxists you realize this. For instance, 870 will view pkk as a bourgeouisie gang and their concept of democratic con-federalism as part of this bourgeouisie structure.

The problem is, he is not approaching the issue critically, he is approaching the issue with created "ideology"...which is also fine. The problem is, he is approaching with a past-negation from early 20th century. Doesn't p k k do for instance positive statements? They do, but they do it for now.


I never said I put historical materialism aside. My mere point as I always emphasize is that historical materialism -isn't- Marxism. I don't understand why people attack me over this....I say that in an hypothetical scenario, positive theory bit is -replaceable- IF things were to change. Obviously if you believe HM to be the equal of Marxism, when things change and you accept that then you would have to stop being a Marxist. But the critique of what you live in does not necessarily end....

There would however been an extra debate over HM's analysis if we were to get into it because as you know HM became dogmatized over the past century to a great extent and people tried to replace itself as Marxism, not realizing that this gave a very strong weapon to anti-Marxist philosophy-science. There are many flaws and missing bit with historical materialism in its original forms...and people who have ideologized the early Marxist negations unfortunately cannot go beyond these "scientific" theories in their interpretations which obviously leads them to make misjudgements and attack people with ridiculous things like mensheviks.

Historical materialism is not merely a loose connection of unfalsifiable hypotheses. It cannot be said to be correct or incorrect as a whole. We an only speak of the effectivity of historical materialism in producing the knowledge of its object (an object distinct from the objects of the theoretical ideologies of pre-Marxism). Historical materialism is the specific approach to the field of history. What then constitutes the specificity of this approach? The specific scientific concepts that form its basis - social relation, mode of production, relations of production, productive forces, class struggle, social formation, etc. in their specifically Marxist senses - and its specific method.

To be clear, I do not think historical materialism constitutes a science as such (in the sense of the natural sciences for example). However, in the major works of the Marxist tradition, we can certainly find the beginnings of a scientific discipline, even if it's still in its infancy. And I do think that, even 150 years after the publication of Capital, we can say that Marxism is both philosophically and scientifically in its infancy, held back, at once, by its incompatibility with bourgeois ideology and its infiltration by it. The worst thing, then, we can do as Marxists is trivialising the revolutionary discoveries of historical materialism and their importance in the class struggle. For how else than by knowledge of the current situation do we shape and apply our political principles? 'Without revolutionary theory, there can be mo revolutionary practice' and that.