Marxism, good, bad, both?

Political, cultural, religious? There are many, and often times history moves unexpectedly and randomly and has less to do with the socioeconomic structure/arrangement of society than politics or powerful individuals.

The problem with Marxism is that it tends to view all human interactions as an accurate reflection of an individual's or group's own socioeconomic interest, rather than as what may be perhaps a political interest or less 'rational' religious/cultural one. But this is all speaking very generally (and I won't pretend to be an expert of Marxism, but one can spot its general flaws quite easily).

Oh look, a blatant lie.

Last time I was here I was involved in a discussion about mental health and the nature of mental illness. I got fed up with the abuse thrown my way by someone fixated on the medical model.

You're arguing that politics, culture and religion have nothing to do with power and class? Really?

And here we have it - work or starve is free choice in Rambo's world.

No but they can and do act as independent variables rather than as a derivative of the socioeconomic 'base' of society (as Marx would have it).

Another chief problem with Marxism is its messianic element, in fact one could argue that Marxism itself is more of a moral tirade against the (real or perceived) injustices of the day rather than a sober and accurate reflection on real historical processes.

This wasn't the last time I was here. So you're a liar.

Gremlin is not a fellow anti-capitalist. He appears to be pro-free market capitalism. So another lie. I then got fed up with the inability of pro-free market advocates to engage in any kind of debate.

You owe me an apology.

Yes, everyone must exert labour, this is one of Marx's arguments. However, if we have a situation where the minority own or control the access to the things we need to live and others just own their labour power, then it cannot be argued that the person who owns no material resources is entering into wage labour freely.

How do they act independently? Give an example.

Go on then...

wtf has legal capacity got to do with anything?

Errr, no its not. If the choice is wage labour or starve, its quite obvious its not a free choice.

Well, to put in crude terms, Marxism holds that the political/cultural/religious configuration of a country is dependent on the economic arrangement, and simply serves the interests of the ruling class, and only shifts as production relations change and so on (historical materialism). The theory is just too monocausal and in any given historical event, other factors such as politics, culture and religion obviously interact and are not fully dependent on the 'social processes'.

I guess the key example would be the Soviet Union itself. The Soviet Union, as the premier Marxist state during the 20th century, was supposed to be the product of worker radicalism, but was actually a regime founded by a small group of fanatical (and overwhelmingly aristocratic) ideologues, in an overwhelmingly peasant country. Thus, the Soviet Union, as a single-party dictatorship, professing to be a socialist state, was not actually the product or a reflection of Russia's 'true' social processes and was instead something else - ideas and politics (operating independently) were the chief factors. The same could be said of any kind of extreme polity or religious state where independent ideas count for more than social processes.

The idea of Marxism as a kind of religion operating in secular guise is not really new - wasn't it propounded by Raymond Aron in his The Opium of the Intectualls? I think Igal Halfin makes a similar point in his From Darkness to Light, but in any case it might be asking a bit much for me to reproduce the entire argument here, but I think it is pretty much spot on, since Marxism holds that humanity would find salvation in classless, socialist society, and so far history has proved this to be wrong.

No, this is a common misunderstanding of Marx. What Marx actually argued was that these exist as a dynamic process, a dialectic. The economic arrangements, the politics, the culture and religion are all intertwined.

Not heard of either of them, so I can't comment.

You think starvation isn't objective? Really? That's your argument?

It's a tricky one, I guess it's a 'chicken or egg' argument as to what came first - politics, culture, religion or economics? But I still think Marxism is too monocausal in that it gives almost absolute primacy to social processes and arranges them in a kind of escalating continuum starting from classical, to feudalism, to capitalism, to socialism.

I don't mean to cop-out by quoting random historians/figures. But it is undeniable than Marxism has a strong messianic element, that humanity would find salvation in classless, socialist society, with all antagonisms and divisions overcome. It is positively utopian. Obviously this is a huge flaw because the classless utopia hasn't come round yet and there's no sign of it now or in the foreseeable future. Marx was playing a dangerous game by basically predicting the course of human history; my whole contention (I guess) is that history moves more randomly and is not governed by some 'rational' logic.

It's basically black and white to say whether Marxism is either 'good' or 'bad', since Marxism is a theory of history as much as it is a political programme/ideology. Personally I'm not partial to it as a political idea.