Why does Marxism refuse to die?

Marxism as a means to understand and explain how human societies come to exist and are organised has a lot to attract it. Marxism as a political project, i.e. as a porgamme of change towards 'how things should be' as opposed to 'why things are the way they are' has been less successful. We're at the high water-mark of capitalism right now but we should be a little humble about that, plenty of self-confident and thriving civilisations in the past have become mere history.

Not to mention the developement of high capitalism may well be building the foundations for a post-capitalist system.

Marx was an immensely important economist and philosopher whose ideas have been adopted by capitalists so as to better preserve capitalism itself; his crisis theory describes the tendency of capitalism to lurch from crisis to crisis as the capital owners attempt to keep a greater share of the profits, thus depriving workers of the necessary means to consume the goods in the very first place and causing a crisis in demand. This was a central contradiction at the heart of capitalism, and you don't need to be a Marxist to recognise that this was immensely important in the development of Keynesian economics as an attempt to smooth out such lurches in the business cycle. In the post-2008 crash, where the failure to step in would have destroyed the economy.

This thread has talked a lot about the Soviet Union. It is insulting to say that Marxists cannot also condemn such barbarism. Take Rosa Luxembourg, for instance. Or literally any anarcho-communist. To call someone a 'Marxist', like calling someone a 'Capitalist' or a 'Keynesian' entails a huge amount of variability within it; those who would call themselves Marxists form a broad, chaotic and internally divided group. This is for a good reason - Marxism is bloody complicated. Professors dedicate their whole lives to understanding it, with all of its complicated Hegelian links. Now, to address the point about the Soviet Union more directly. Ideologies all have had bloody consequences. Christianity led to the Crusades, a horrific series of events. But to dismiss Christianity as a whole because of its barbaric consequences would be absurd, because there are certain elements we can take from it without necessarily believing in the whole thing. The same is true of Marxism; some of his ideas are extremely useful. Others are not, and can be used to justify the most evil and hideous forms of authoritarianism. But the fact that some of his ideas are bad does not justify totally dismissing him as an economic and philosophical thinker. To do so would be the most crude and dogmatic form of stupidity.

Some have stated that we can learn nothing useful from Marxism. I have vastly oversimplified crisis theory above. But where his ideas really shine are on his critique of capitalism. He exposed it as a wasteful, alienating system that degrades and dehumanises the individual through utterly monotonous work. This is not to say that he thought it was all bad; he described it as 'dynamic'. But dynamic as in a lifeless robot. I'm going to link a Yanis Varoufakis article because I have become bored.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/20/yanis-varoufakis-marx-crisis-communist-manifesto

Post capitalist system has another name :

https://theamericansun.com/2018/12/16/pissearth-2025/amp/?fbclid=IwAR0CFhRiBzOClyCq_7hqek7UxAEGqhJozd1QNDRpAzC9JczaBvzjQv46Sgw&__twitter_impression=true

Thanks for this. It's been a while since I picked up my books though I'm quite a fan of Alex Callinicos's Resources of Critique. I'd agree that aspects of Marxism can be hard going to the unfamiliar and Marxist economic theory (in the narrow sense) isn't exactly fun, but for me the core idea in Marx is easy. We started out as (primitive) 'communists' in the form of (relatively) egalitarian hunter gatherers, technological developments led to a series of societal changes which have divided labour, divided resources, divided power. Now we have slums and billionaires.

Can i get a TLDR before I attemp to read that -___-

Also said post-capitalist to imply it wasn't nececerily a communist post cap system

Tthe erosion of borders, traditional family units, religion: no more bigotry- we will all be materialistic individuals pursuing our own interests with an apparently benevolent government paying the bill as almost everything is done by automation now.

Basically liberal utopia. You can pump yourself full of now legal drugs and the state will pay to get you detoxed. You can abandon your kids and the state will look after them. You can do whatever you please so long as it does not directly harm anyone else (aside from abortion obviously which you can get whenever you want) :, As others have noted its strikingly Similar to Ian Banks’s ‘’Culture’ faction.

Basically what I said here:,

P*** Earth (named after the P*** Christ work of modern ‘Art’ , is:

That first paragraph sounds good to me lol. I can spend my days climbing and landscaping the moors with others, do a bit of science and philosophising. All whilst socialising with other poeple free from economic alienation. Maybe find a partner and have some children, teach them how to climb and be happy.

A: I think this is of course an illusion put forward by a cynical other ethnic group who do the reverse policies in their own homeland. Human nature and finite resources show this to be a dangerous pipe dream.

B: even if this was sincere or/ and possible, it would not be the paradise you think it would be. To a African tribesman, we live lives of unimagineable luxury and comfort yet are we happier? Why do we commit so many more suicides? Struggle and suffering are an integral part of what it means to be human, and if we can’t live as as humans then we will simply not live at all.

You've raised some important issues there. Firstly, to respond to (A), any Marxist system rests upon the assumption that there isn't any scarcity. I accept that this may sound a little far fetched, but automation and artificial intelligence have immense potential to do a huge amount of stuff without the need for a substantial labour force. Capitalism's tendency for producing a vast array of service jobs should not be underestimated, but the simple fact is that such technological developments allow capital owners to keep quite incredible profit margins without the need to employ workers.
Given the tendency of capitalism to concentrate wealth (in the absence of unionisation, which by necessity wouldn't occur without any workers) we will arrive at a situation of immense inequality, where the class division between the workers and the bourgeoisie has reached quite extraordinary levels; these two groups will be utterly alien to one another (you can link this to a bit of one-nation conservatism as well!). Given such a situation, there will be high levels of unemployment, and those who are employed will experience job dissatisfaction as their jobs are essentially meaningless without providing any sort of fulfillment - society will be faced with a fundamental choice to take such transformative technologies into public ownership or continue with the subjugation of the nation state to the whims of an absurdly wealthy capitalist elite. This situation I don't think is a pipe dream, though I think there are problems with the transition Marx predicted from socialism (state manages means of production) to communism (there is no state). As I said earlier, there are some cool ideas, but undoubtedly problems.

A: I think this is of course an illusion put forward by a cynical other ethnic group who do the reverse policies in their own homeland. Human nature and finite resources show this to be a dangerous pipe dream.

B: even if this was sincere or/ and possible, it would not be the paradise you think it would be. To a African tribesman, we live lives of unimagineable luxury and comfort yet are we happier? Why do we commit so many more suicides? Struggle and suffering are an integral part of what it means to be human, and if we can’t live as as humans then we will simply not live at all.

The end goal of being able to ‘climb mountains and philosophise’ (aka do jack **** is simply not an important or worthwhile moral good as defending ones faith, family or/and heritage)

Revolutions require high social trust which can only come from homogeneous groups , plus they require a collective leadership and defining moral principles which a nihilistic, anarcho communist mob simply do not posses. This is why among other reasons the anarchists were annihilated by the fascists in Spain. In the 30s.

For Jews, not for Goyim.

In the same way that under Islam, lying is forbidden except in the use of Taqiya where it is permitted if you are reviving non Muslims for the benefit of Islam

Marxism is not a popular political ideology in Britain but why does it refuse to die? What exactly is so attractive about it that keeps its flame burning?

“Two things are infinite: the universe, and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the former”

Albert Einstein

Marxism is the main ideology behind left-wing and liberal politics. Communism is entirely based on Marxism. Feminism is entirely based Marxism. Socialism is entirely based on Marxism. All these aformentioned ideologies are more so alive today than they were back in the mid 1800s when Marxism was birthed. They keep Marxism alive.

Well all life is suffering, but yeah I think on the whole it would be a better less alienating existence. I also didn't say it was possible, it was a thought experiment (which you carried out) in a world where it was possible.

The whole point is to be able to live a life more akin to an african bush man. So not sure how this counteracts anything. Arguably the premise of marxism is there is an innocent state of humanity, found in our hunter getherer ancestors( who were primitive communists), and the goal of politics and economic development is to engineer a world where we can live like that again, but with all the machinery and complexity of a modern economy.

I think you are also making the mistake of thinking there is a garden of eden to escape back to. Suicide, death and illness have always been a thing. We are the product of an indifferent universe after all.

Many communists were born Jews. All of them without one single exception upon adopting communism renounced their beliefs in G_d and Judaism.

Why does my scenario exclude morality, faith and family? Climbing a mountain is like poetry. It is good for it's own sake and it is actions like this that is fundamentally human and can have useful spill over effects. Your beloved Nazis were big on mountaineers lol, it's very ubermench.

There would still be a place for morality, as there would still be moral questions and issues to solve. We would still get ill, there would still be scientific enquiry, there would still be sport, there would be a whole heap of human activity which includes questions of how we relate to each other.

I also specifically said I would probably have children as well. I don't where you get this idea that people only have children when have to sell their labour to live. Where as with how things are now, I just can't cope with the prospect of having to raise a child alongside all the alienating **** and then having to put them through it.

It wasn't just the anarchists who were defeated by the fascists.

I’m speaking abput jews genetically who are a distinct group and as such behave differently and to their own advantage. Whilst, as with any group there are outliers most Jews whether conservative , liberal or communist favour similar policies which are harmful to the west and beneficial for their own. Many of the earliest Zionists were secular communists- the USSR was one if the first to recognise Israel.