You have groups vying for power, with one group systemically oppressing another, and the morality of the situation adjudicated at that granulatiry. How does that not work? Can you reply with a specific?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjNJX64cBOE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGRVhsNX5Ao
Tangentially, I've seen a lot of "so basically (cultural) Marxism" type comments lately about anything and everything left-leaning in the US. Something memetic is going on there.
The memes (in the academic Richard Dawkins sense) which stick around are often the ones which have the strength of truth behind them.
You've just described thousands of years of history prior to Marx and hundreds of years of history after Marx across every single axis of the political spectrum.
This is more a description of "effective political messaging" than a description of "Marxism".
Has there ever been a great politician -- good or evil -- who didn't believe they had the weight of morality on their side? Who didn't tap into feelings of oppression, real or perceived?
Even Hitler cast his politics in terms of an oppressed people with a moral right to rise up. And if Mein Kampf is Marxist then you've got one hell of a definition of Marxism.
> The memes (in the academic Richard Dawkins sense) which stick around are often the ones which have the strength of truth behind them.
Well, anything popular taps into some truth, usually about the audience with whom the popular thing resonates.
But tapping into some truth and actually being true are two very different things.
Interpreted any other way, your claim is silly. Mutually exclusive ideas achieve this sort of memetic status (with different subpopulations) all the time.
Which is precisely what Marx claims to do, with essentially the model which Marx claims does so.
Well, anything popular taps into some truth
It's pretty obvious that Postmodernism is homomorphic to Marxism. It's also well documented that Postmodernism has intellectual roots in Marxism. Marxism is also outwardly and openly claimed by many in the current day political left in the US, in particular, the part which originates and most vigorously promotes Intersectionality.
Again, no. Marx's characterization is much more concrete than that, and really cannot be separated from notions of class and capital and commodity-form without rendering the term "Marxist" nearly meaningless. Or at least synonymous with much less politically-charged ideas like "materialism" or even just "politics". Separating Marx from those things is like separating Jesus from Christianity.
The next two criticism are more tangential and obvious, but hopefully more illustrative of the problem with the way you're trying to re-define Marxism
1. A capitalist operating as Marx would predict is not himself a Marxist, so your statement is especially confusing for more than one reason.
2. Plenty of non-Marxist -- even conservative economists -- tap into various Marxist ideas. And even more tap into the same ideas that Marx was himself building on (e.g., the effectiveness of providing moral justifications on the basis of oppression... not a Marxist innovation!). So drawing any tangential connection to Marx and labeling anything connected by that tangent as "Marxist" implicates 100% of economists. Which, again, makes the label "Marxist" kind of silly and pointless.
If you strip Marxism of Marx's actual core ideas, then "Marxism" ceases to mean anything. And class is a central component of those ideas.
At some point referring to something as "Just Marxism s/.../class" begins to occupy the "you are an idiot" box in on the PG argument hierarchy.
> It's pretty obvious that Postmodernism is homomorphic to Marxism
This seems mostly off-topic... you'll have to draw out the connection for me. (edit: Obviously, plenty of postmodernists critique closeparen's post and plenty of non-postmodernists would agree with closeparent's post. Are you sure you mean postmodernism?)
The Intersectional claim is basically that inherent markers like race have become a functionally like a marker of class.
Separating Marx from those things is like separating Jesus from Christianity.
You just keep on asserting this without specifying why -- probably because you find it particularly embarrassing. So you're saying there's something magically special about the very specific formulation? Many atheists have noted that Jesus has many similarities to many other religious/mythical figures. The principles are usefully generalized. As is the with religion, the fact that there are these patterns is significant in itself.
"Marxism" in such broad-brush terms is certainly not meaningless in any case. Use "collectivist" if you like. Anyone who throws individual rights under the bus in favor of the interests of the group and says phrases like "By any means necessary" or "all power comes from the end of a gun" is a party to ideologies which have played out in the deaths of tens of thousands to tens of millions of people, across different cultures, in different times, again and again throughout history.
Hm. Unless closeparen edited their comment, I've very confused, because that's not at all the claim that closeparen made.
In fact, the "all racism is really just a form of classism" is more common in conservative circles than leftist circles.
> So you're saying there's something magically special about the very specific formulation?
No, not at all. It's just one more idea. And it has a name. That name is Marxism. Use each name for the thing that it refers to, and nothing else.
> "Marxism" in such broad-brush terms is certainly not meaningless in any case.
Not really. Marxism refers to the political philosophy laid out in Capital and popularized in texts like the Manifesto. It refers to Marx's synthesis of a bunch of specific ideas -- Hegel's dialectics, materialism, the labor theory of value, commodity form, class warfare, markets, etc. -- some of which were unique to Marx and some of which pre-dated him by centuries. Marxism refers to, you know, Marx's system of thought.
I submit that whatever alternative definition you're proposing is silly and confusing.
> Anyone who throws individual rights under the bus in favor of the interests of the group
It's all fine and well that you're a traditional liberal, but calling everything that's "not you" a Marxist is pretty lazy.
I wasn't specifically referring to closeparen's comment at that point. What are you trying to pull?
And it has a name. That name is Marxism.
Sounds like your intoning some kind of quasi-religious exceptionalism.
Marxism refers to, you know, Marx's system of thought.
Which historically results in one group of people violently seizing stuff from another group of people using some collectivist morality because individual rights means nothing to them. Nothing confusing about that.
calling everything that's "not you" a Marxist is pretty lazy.
I'm calling everything collectivist that has resulted in the above Marxist. Historically, most everything collectivist that has gained control of a society has resulted in the above and has called itself "Marxist."
Which is silly and does not comport how anyone serious about political economy would use the term "Marxist".
You're free to use whatever words you want, but don't expect productive dialog if you dream up crazy definitions that no one else uses.
The phrase 'cultural Marxism' only betrays how little right wing pundits who use this phrase actually understand of Marxian theory and postmodern cultural studies generally, since frankly the vaguely left wing strains of academic cultural theory spent the last 50 years _critiquing_ Marxism from the vantage point that it did not pay enough attention or have a meaningful theory to talk about these issues. Postmodernism and Marxism generally have been somewhat 'at war' within academia, though generally you'll find that the 'founding fathers' of cultural studies and postmodernism (say, Adorno, or Derrida, Foucault) themselves express admiration or sympathy for Marx himself though they rarely considered themselves Marxists per se. "Cultural Marxism" is kind of a misnomer -- they'd be better off saying "left wing postmodernists" or "liberal cultural relativists" or something, but those don't sound as boogeyman, do they?
Your point ascribes to me a sense of morality to me as a sneaky way of putting words in my mouth. "as you seem to be implying." In reality, I need no more than the Marx's subsumed sense of morality/justice in Marx's analysis for my point to stand.
"Cultural Marxism" is kind of a misnomer -- they'd be better off saying "left wing postmodernists" or "liberal cultural relativists" or something
Not a misnomer at all. Many who fall under the banner openly proclaim themselves Marxist, or subscribe to those ideas in their writings. For those who don't, there's still the matter of the homomorphisms between Marxism and Social Construction.
Socrates is a man, all men are mortal, not all mortals are Socrates.
I've not downvoted you, at least in this thread. HN doesn't let you downvote in threads you participate in.
"I can see similarities here, so I'll just call them the same thing"
Isn't that how it works, especially with ideologies and models?
Socrates is a man, all men are mortal, not all mortals are Socrates.
Yes, but I'm talking about specific principles, not just species membership. Socrates spoke greek. He lived in Athens. Not all mortals are Athenian, but Socrates surely was an Athenian. There is a specific problem when one deals with people as groups, as in race and class, in that one tends to throw individuals under the bus for not towing the line of the group. Historically, this can number in the tens of thousands or the tens of millions.
No. Ideologies are labels that have meanings, sometimes very specific meanings. And even though there are overlaps between some ideologies and others, conflating terms is still disingenuous and unhelpful.
Marx believed in profit-motive, to be sure. That doesn't make Marx a Capitalist. Calling all "collectivists" Marxists is similarly silly.
> Yes, but...
Your parent was making a comment about the flawed logic in your argument justifying your misuse of the term "Marxism", not your overall opinion on identity politics.
Your response is totally irrelevant to that criticism.
Economy and class are so central the Marx's philosophy that saying "Just s/<insert anything here>/class" doesn't make any sense. You can't just go into Capital and s/<insert anything here>/class and end up with anything that makes any sense. The entire analysis needs restructuring.
At some point, if Marxism is defined that way, you might as well just call any materialist philosophy "basically Marxist". Which is silly.
Tangentially, I've seen a lot of "so basically (cultural) Marxism" type comments lately about anything and everything left-leaning in the US. Something memetic is going on there.