Which is Marxism?

[condor]

Is Marxism a tool or a belief system? If it is a tool, then how does Their Morals and Ours fit with this?

[The Idler]

A tool. Trotsky was not a Marxist so what he wrote about morality in his work 'Their Morals and Ours' is irrelevant.

[condor]

I'm pretty sure, someone who wrote In Defence of Marxism was a Marxist.

[Heilmann]

Trotsky was not a Marxist so what he wrote about morality in his work 'Their Morals and Ours' is irrelevant.

Whatever the merit of Trotsky's work(s) and whatever tendency you may belong to, claiming Trotsky wasn't a Marxist is pretty far out.

[#FF0000]

Is Marxism a tool or a belief system? If it is a tool, then how does Their Morals and Ours fit with this?

A tool for understanding the world. That said, plenty of people (including plenty of 20th century Marxists) certainly did treat it like a belief system.

[Rugged Collectivist]

Why are the two mutually exclusive? Marxism is a set of assumptions that allow us to analyze social phenomena. In this way it is both a tool and a belief system.

[Heilmann]

Why are the two mutually exclusive? Marxism is a set of assumptions that allow us to analyze social phenomena. In this way it is both a tool and a belief system.

Except Marxism isn't a set of assumptions a priori, but is a method - i.e. a tool - that allow us to analyze social-historical phenomena.

Whether the class struggle constucts a set of morals, however, is another question.

[Sibotic]

Marxism is presumably a belief system, being a series of beliefs which might include a 'method' which is clearly not a neutral term but closely tied to its historical place and ties to the proletariat and a revolution which is or was clearly ethically substantial. Calling a substantial set of claims to truth and so on a mere 'tool' seems strange, that for instance a bed is covered need not be a 'tool' and can be an actual claim, so it's unclear why Marxism can't make such claims when obviously it generally does, about political economy, whether or not there should have been a revolution, the role of practice in history, human production, and so on.

Other than the stigma of the term 'belief system,' it would probably be closer to that, although obviously the term itself has flaws when applied to the situation in any real sense.

[ShadowStar]

Is Marxism a tool or a belief system? If it is a tool, then how does Their Morals and Ours fit with this?

Marxism is both. Marxism is used to analyze the world and also is a political belief system. I do not see why it can not be both.

[condor]

Because if you believe in something, you stop looking for something better.

[ShadowStar]

Because if you believe in something, you stop looking for something better.

Or you look for ways to perfect that belief.

[Rafiq]

Except Marxism isn't a set of assumptions a priori, but is a method - i.e. a tool - that allow us to analyze social-historical phenomena.


What should be made clear, however, is that a 'method' and 'tool' in our case does not mean some external thing we can 'use' to realize some other ends. In other words, Marxism might be a method, but it is through this method that we arrive at social-consciousnesses, one that forces us to critically evaluate the foundations of our own desires, wants, and visions for a future society.

Furthermore, that Marxism is a method does not reduce it to being a 'tool'. A tool is something anyone can pick up or put down for any reason they like. Marxism might be a method, but one cannot be a Marxist insofar as they are not a communist - it is already an engaged, partisan and "biased" position. Lenin and Kautsky differed in this regard - according to Kautsky (and later Stalin, at that), any neutral observer, scientist can see the truth wrought from Marxism.

For Marx and Lenin, this was not so - one had to take a side in the class struggle before being able to do away with old superstitions. This 'loop', this circular, 'paradoxical' loop is inescapable: "How do you measure the truth of Marxism? Through Communism? How do you measure this truth? Through Marxism?" - this is Lezlek Kolakowski's argument, basically. We should shamelessly accept this 'paradox'. It is not through "science", or the logical conclusion of ethics that one becomes a Communist. One does not choose Communism, one falls into it when they are able to, for whatever reason, muster up the courage to do away with old social superstitions, articulate their own suffering, grievances and ills with those that are universal, and so on. In a sense Communism and Marxism are synonymous - Marxism is the practical application of Communism, for Communism is only social and historic self-consciousness. Marxism is the historic vehicle that "embodies" Communism, both the Communism of the philosophy of history, and the movement that seeks to abolish the present state of things, in other words.

Communism arises out of the logical conclusion of real existing antagonisms and struggles that pervade real existing society. Communism is the "NO" to the demand that one falters on bringing a struggle (a wage dispute, EVEN in the context of the 19th century, the fight for political freedoms, ETC.) to its logical conclusion, casting aside metaphysical, superstitious, ETC. reasons meant to the shield of the exploiters.

[ckaihatsu]

Marxism *isn't* a belief -- it simply describes that the social world since the beginning of a material surplus has been created through mutually exclusive class antagonisms. One does not need to *believe* this for it to be true.

Moreover one can spontaneously *struggle* for one's best interests -- as for higher wages -- without actually being *class conscious*, a proof of the objective empirical existence of inherent class interests. (Because with all *specialty* interests -- as for any kind of 'identity' -- one is certainly already fully aware of the identity that one is proactively representing.)

[Sewer Socialist]

Let us assume for the sake of argument that recent research had disproved once and for all every one of Marx’s individual theses. Even if this were to be proved, every serious ‘orthodox’ Marxist would still be able to accept all such modern findings without reservation and hence dismiss all of Marx’s theses in toto – without having to renounce his orthodoxy for a single moment. Orthodox Marxism, therefore, does not imply the uncritical acceptance of the results of Marx’s investigations. It is not the ‘belief’ in this or that thesis, nor the exegesis of a ‘sacred’ book. On the contrary, orthodoxy refers exclusively to method. It is the scientific conviction that dialectical materialism is the road to truth and that its methods can be developed, expanded and deepened only along the lines laid down by its founders. It is the conviction, moreover, that all attempts to surpass or ‘improve’ it have led and must lead to over-simplification, triviality and eclecticism.

- György Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness.

[Бай Ганьо]

Let us assume for the sake of argument that recent research had disproved once and for all every one of Marx’s individual theses.

That would be overwhelming evidence against Marxist's claims of scientificity...


[...] It is the scientific conviction that dialectical materialism is the road to truth [...]

...and such conviction wouldn't be scientific at all.

[Sewer Socialist]

"Scientific" is not meant in the sense of positivism, but even if it were, things have changed in the last 150 years, and things that were once true no longer are. This doesn't mean "marxism" is outdated; only that assumptions made by many "marxists" must be challenged.

[Sibotic]

things have changed in the last 150 years, and things that were once true no longer are.
Scientifically, this might be true, but Marx also discussed this kind of thing in some detail. Marx rarely if ever cited 'research,' except when it wasn't that important to their theses, it would be bizarre to use that against Marxism. Obviously Marxism is non-neutral, anyway, so the whole question is a bit strange. It requires taking Marxism as just a series of neutral scientific propositions, which it isn't. Obviously its propositions about, let's say, value, the proletariat, capital, communism, the dictatorship of the proletariat if you like, what money is, historical materialism, etc., can't be 'falsified' by scientific research, and that's quite a lot of Marxism which is substantive rather than just 'method.' If you were to eliminate Marx's claims about the proletariat and socialism, then their method would have no basis or meaning - if you were to eliminate their account of capital's relations, you don't have a 'method' for understanding capitalism. People could take issue with Marxism theoretically, but then they could take issue with any part of Marxism theoretically.

Perhaps it might have been more worth contemplating whether Lukacs' account of 'dialectical materialism' which excludes the proletariat, history, capital, value, communism and its necessity, etc., and might accept wholly different accounts, isn't a sneaky restitution of reactionary categories within the language of dialectical materialism.

[Rafiq]

That would be overwhelming evidence against Marxist's claims of scientificity...

But listen, this is not the point. If the first natural scientists got all of their original thesis's wrong, would this discount engagement in attempting to scientifically know the natural sphere of life?

Marxism is nothing more than the insistence than the social, historic domain can not only be known scientifically, but transformed. If every empirical thesis - say, Marx's notion of asiatic society, was disproved, this would not render a materialist assessment of asiatic societies worthless, for one would have to employ the materialist method to understand why this was wrong, and replace it.

In a sense, Popper was right about the "ad-hoc" nature of Marxism, but this holds true for all science. Popper was in the position to justify not having to take this assertion, that the historical domain can be known scientifically, seriously. But he was not in a position to justify why Jesuits, clerics and theologians of the 16th and 17th century should have taken the insistence that the heavens and the Earth can indeed be known seriously. This is actually why he had so much trouble with Darwinism, in fact - Darwinism was just as unfalsifiable as creationism. This kind of positivism can only justify pre-established, acknowledged domains of practical truth, i.e. what practical mediums of life are we bestowed with the privilege of being able to know.


...and such conviction wouldn't be scientific at all.

Surely it is, if we understand 'truth' in practical terms, and not a pretense to "which narrative is ontologically true in our common, trans-social space of perception" (the space of bourgeois society in common, in other words, at the expense of partisan controversies within it).