this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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"That isn't happening"
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/we-are-all-marxists-liberal-democrats-have-understood-the-communist-manifesto-better-than-communists/
Imo, a problem with Marx, is that tha the languaje he used lend itself to very broad interpretations, thus making it easy to absorb him into whatever ideology/plan/scheme.
People who like Stalin or Mao and in a lesser degree Trotsky and Lennin -which to whom we nowadays call commnunists- used his languaje to reaffirm their ideas. Even tho imo their ideoligical brand was quite a ways out of Marx.
He's a product of the structuralism which dominated the industrial era philosophy. It's incredibly obvious if you study political science even a little bit, and it's the easiest angle of criticism towards any orthodox theory of the era. Stalin and Mao are very much in that same modernist camp. That's why I just roll my eyes at internet communists who consider themselves well read because they have Marxist.org bookmarked. These are people who think the biggest problem with Jacobin is not enough fan service.
All this stuff is just laughably outdated. The most annoying part is that it has been updated to reflect more modern philosophy, but they never want to hear it. They see contemporary leftist thought as Marxist revisionism and just compromising with liberals, which is the worst sin imaginable.
People forget that Marx advocated for ruthless criticisim. As a rule whenever I read something and it peeks my interest, before I keep digging further I ask myself: Where's the catch here? Are they trying to sell me something? Who can actually benefit from this.
This simple scruttiny maybe won't reveal the holes in the idea, but it will lead you to things you can research, read contra-arguments and get a fuller and rounder idea of whatever you are reading. But sadly this is a skill that is getting loss, not because people can't intellectually do it, they just do not care or want to put the effort.