The challenge of Marxism: Part I
Quite a few people have recommended that I read the essay “The Challenge of Marxism” by Yoram Hazony, appearing in Quillette. It’s fascinating and it’s long.
I have mixed feelings about it, or at least parts of it. I agree with much of it, and I reach similarly pessimistic conclusions to Hazony about where we’re at right now and how influential and powerful Marxists (and/or far leftists, who are very much related) have become, especially within certain vital institutions such as education and the press. I agree with him that Marxism (and the far left) is on the ascendance, and has been for some time. Here’s Hazony on the purposely-confusing nomenclature:
Anti-Marxist liberals have labored under numerous disadvantages in the recent struggles to maintain control of liberal organizations. One is that they are often not confident they can use the term “Marxist” in good faith to describe those seeking to overthrow them. This is because their tormentors do not follow the precedent of the Communist Party, the Nazis, and various other political movements that branded themselves using a particular party name and issued an explicit manifesto to define it. Instead, they disorient their opponents by referring to their beliefs with a shifting vocabulary of terms, including “the Left,” “Progressivism,” “Social Justice,” “Anti-Racism,” “Anti-Fascism,” “Black Lives Matter,” “Critical Race Theory,” “Identity Politics,” “Political Correctness,” “Wokeness,” and more.
Marxists in this country were often underground long before these recent years, however. They were exceptionally active and yet many were clandestine in the 1930s, for example. Post WWII, the House (Un-American Activities Committee) and the Senate (Joe McCarthy) were hotly engaged in trying to root out secret Marxists and Communists in positions of power and influence in the US, and whatever you may think of the anti-Communists’ methods and their veracity, the truth is that a not-insignificant number of infiltrated and secret Marxists/Communists existed in government and in other walks of American life, even back then.
So this secrecy is not new.
What is new, I think, is that an entire major party is now controlled by such Marxists and far leftists. Some are pretending to be more moderate than they actually are, but some are pretty much “out” as being far left, such as Bernie Sanders and AOC, just to name two. They call themselves by a term that Hazony doesn’t list, “Democratic Socialists,” which is another screen term. I also believe that Barack Obama was one of the somewhat-hidden Marxists to come to power – and I say “somewhat-hidden” because even during his 2008 campaign there were plenty of hints of his far leftism, for those who cared to look.
Back to Hazony’s essay. Here’s why he uses the term “Marxist”:
But for present purposes…I will use the term “Marxist” in a broad sense to refer to any political or intellectual movement that is built upon Marx’s general framework as I’ve just described it [oppressor and oppressed groups, false consciousness, revolutionary reconstitution of society, and total disappearance of class antagonisms]. This includes the “Progressive” or “Anti-Racism” movement now advancing toward the conquest of liberalism in America and Britain. This movement uses racialist categories such as whites and people of color to describe the oppressors and the oppressed in our day. But it relies entirely on Marx’s general framework for its critique of liberalism and for its plan of action against the liberal political order. It is simply an updated Marxism.
Again, I somewhat agree and somewhat disagree. My disagreement centers on the fact that I believe that many modern-day far leftist activists are actually ignorant of some of these four stages and do not necessarily believe in them all, but are nevertheless 100% with the methods and program. Perhaps I’m being nitpicky, because in practical terms it hardly makes a difference. Calling them all “Marxists” has the advantage of showing the seriousness of the threat they present, but it also gives them the opportunity to deny the characterization as far-fetched and wildly conspiratorial.
Their leaders, however, are for the most part almost certainly quite aware of Marxism and its tenets (two of BLM’s founders call themselves “trained Marxists,” for example, and I believe that they are exactly that). It’s hardly just the leaders, either. But I think that nevertheless considerable numbers of the rank and file are not completely aware – although as I said, it may be a distinction without a difference.
I also think that quite a few Marxists/leftists today are not idealists and do not believe in the fourth premise Hazony lists: “total disappearance of class antagonism.” I believe that, instead, they plan to establish a new hierarchy of power and to replace the old oppressors and become the new oppressors as a kind of payback and in achievement of a power and control they feel they’ve earned and plan to maintain. Utopia will never come, but they’ll be in control, and that’s good enough.
I also agree with Hazony that Marxism and far leftsm have the sort of appeal the author describes:
This is the principal reason that Marxist ideas are so attractive. In every society, there will always be plenty of people who have reason to feel they’ve been oppressed or exploited. Some of these claims will be worthy of remedy and some less so. But virtually all of them are susceptible to a Marxist interpretation, which shows how they result from systematic oppression by the dominant classes, and justifies responding with outrage and violence.
And I agree on Marxism’s flaws, big time. It’s the third one Hazony lists that’s especially troubling:
This brings us to the third failing of the Marxist framework. This is the notorious absence of a clear view as to what the underclass, having overthrown its oppressors and seized the state, is supposed to do with its newfound power. Marx is emphatic that once they have control of the state, the oppressed classes will be able to end oppression. But these claims appear to be unfounded. After all, we’ve said that the strength of the Marxist framework lies in its willingness to recognize that power relations do exist among classes and groups in every society, and that these can be oppressive and exploitative in every society. And if this is an empirical fact—as indeed it seems to be—then how will the Marxists who have overthrown liberalism be able use the state to obtain the total abolition of class antagonisms? At this point, Marx’s empiricist posture evaporates, and his framework becomes completely utopian.
Completely utopian – or revealed as completely cynical, as I’ve already noted.
When I began this essay I thought I’d be able to tackle it in one post. But no way; not even close. I’ve got much much more to say, and I’ve only just begun. So I plan to take up the rest in Part II, and there may even be a Part III. Please stay tuned.
[ADDENDUM: Part II can be found here.]
Many of the followers of “woke” SJW progressivism are motivated not by misguided utopian (and unrealizable) idealism, but by a lust for power and by the hatred they have absorbed from K-12 and the universities, as well as from the MSM. The old Leninist revolutionary dichotomy (Kto Kovo, Who Whom) has been borrowed by the “wokesters” and transformed into a new ideology of victimhood; whereas, for Marxists of old, the struggle was between the owners of the means of production and the workers, the new struggle is transformed, within Cultural Marxism, into a struggle between males and females, whites and “persons of color”, straights and gays, etc, with the former categories destined to be overthrown and replaced by a coalition of the formerly oppressed.
Neo,
revealed as completely cynical
Here are the Gang that Led Us into Iraq War Reunites to Support Joe Biden
In addition to the bodies piled up in the last century in the furtherance of this secular religion, it proceeds under the naive belief that human nature can be changed, even if totalitarian methods are used in the attempt. Then again they don’t teach actual history or civics anymore.
I wish this discussion had been available during Obama’s 2008 campaign. I was troubled then by the inclination of some (including FredHJr as I recall) who wanted to call out Obama as a Marxist.
I understood the motivation. I could tell Obama was of the far left by his history and his associations with Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright.
However, I thought calling Obama a Marxist was too much of a stretch since Obama wasn’t quoting from a copy of the Communist Manifesto in his wallet nor Mao’s Red Book in a jacket pocket. It would be easy for Obama to deny being a Marxist by saying he wasn’t in favor of nationalizing all corporations or abolishing private property, then mumble something about Sweden. Which would leave conservatives looking like updated versions of Joe McCarthy.
Well, Obamamania made the argument moot. Calling or not calling him a Marxist didn’t matter in 2008.
I like Hazony’s attempt to abstract Marxism into a template of oppressor/oppressed etc. Though I wonder if that template should be called Marxism.
Systemic Marxism?
Be careful with Hazony. Though you’re obviously thinking critically about what he’s written already!
This is a pretty thorough takedown of an anti-Enlightenment video he did several months ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMm7idvfn_o
I think anti-Enlightenment sentiment left or right is very dangerous.
***
I agree that one of the big problems we face in fighting cultural Marxism and postmodernism is that the far left has so much plausible deniability; a lot of leftists will claim that they do not truly hold the beliefs that they are obviously highly influenced by.
I agree that one of the big problems we face in fighting cultural Marxism and postmodernism is that the far left has so much plausible deniability; a lot of leftists will claim that they do not truly hold the beliefs that they are obviously highly influenced by.
shadow: Well said!
shadow:
I have great difficulty with his definition of enlightenment liberalism, and plan to discuss that in a subsequent post in the series.
There seems to be a tendency for us to EXPLAIN the psychology of people belonging to groups we consider evil, but we are rarely skeptical of our explanations, and it is rare that we try to consider alternative explanations or try to convince those who think that the evil comes from a different source.
For example, one common statement is that BLM/Antifa criminals lust for power. But what does this mean, and is it true? It may well be true for the leaders, but what about the rank-and-file cannon fodder? Do they all really think that come-the-revolution, they will wind up on top? Are they that delusional? It seems to me more likely that they enjoy doing violent things as part of a large group, and that this is the end in itself. But I’m not sure.
Another example: Hazony says,
“… the liberal custodians of many of these institutions—from the New York Times to Princeton University—have despaired of regaining control of them, and are instead adopting a policy of accommodation. That is, they are attempting to appease their Marxist employees by giving in to some of their demands in the hope of not being swept away entirely.”
Is it REALLY true that the liberal custodians are being completely insincere, and merely trying to hold onto their “phoney baloney jobs” (as Mel Brooks would say)? I think that most of the “custodians” really do believe what they say, but it is harder to explain this than to pull the “just appeasing” explanation out of one’s but.
There is no Marxism outside of the seminar room in this country and Barack Obama doesn’t know social theory from tiddlywinks. Understanding what’s going on in this country involves identifying the source of the hatred for non-exotic people with mundane employments. It isn’t Marxism.
Is it REALLY true that the liberal custodians are being completely insincere, and merely trying to hold onto their “phoney baloney jobs” (as Mel Brooks would say)? I think that most of the “custodians” really do believe what they say, but it is harder to explain this than to pull the “just appeasing” explanation out of one’s but.
They’re not the least bit insecure. They’re quite arrogant and think they can act with impunity.
Marx is emphatic that once they have control of the state, the oppressed classes will be able to end oppression. –Hazony
In college I took a class on Utopian Literature and there I read William Morris’s novel of a socialist utopia, “News from Nowhere,” taking place several decades after the mighty fist of the revolution has smashed capitalism in England. It was a sort of steampunk version of “Star Trek” — everyone is strong, healthy, happy and brimming with the desire to contribute to others without pay. To Morris it was obvious humanity would go this way, once oppression was ended.
_________________________________
When our desires are free [Morris] said we will need no schools or prisons
No Parliaments or leaders to coerce us with their laws
No property or money to raise false divisions
And there may be an end to the endlessness of wars
And work will be a sharing and work will be a pleasure
When the things we make are born out of beauty and of need
In a world made whole we can all be creators
not winners and losers in the game of Grab and Greed
–Leon Rosselson (Song for William Morris) “Bringing the News from Nowhere”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpBgNRlb9pQ
_________________________________
Even as a hippie looking into communes, I wasn’t persuaded by Morris’s fairy tale, though it would be pretty to think so.
huxley:
Just read your comment and I’m not familiar with the William Morris novel, but the question comes immediately to mind is that in reality the world does not generally give up sustenance without toil that is hard, taxing, and often tedious (and sometimes deadly/dangerous). Weather, disease, crop failures, accidents, predatory or just large animals, etc., are all ignored in the Morris world? Not implying that you didn’t realize this but who wouldn’t? Sorry, but unicorns don’t shower skittles for all to harvest.
Hazony notes that not even Marx himself could explain exactly why his new post-revolution society would not fall victim to the same class struggles that have, in Marx’s view, beset every other society since the world began. Anybody who pays any honest attention to history would see that it just doesn’t work that way — after the revolution, as my wise mother used to say, the formerly oppressed always become the oppressors. But today’s neo-Marxists, if that’s what they are, are extremely careful not to be honest in their attention to history.
What I found most alarming and depressing about Hazony’s piece was his argument that the fundamental principles of what he calls enlightenment liberalism lead inevitably and necessarily to gradual movement by liberals toward Marxism, and ultimately to the collapse of liberal democracy. He makes what seems to me to be a persuasive case, but my understanding of political philosophy is too uncertain to fully analyze his theory. I’m assuming that Neo will write about this part of his essay in one of her later posts, and, if I’m lucky, cheer me back up by showing how he’s wrong.
While today’s Progs are certainly *influenced* by Marxism, I’m not sure it’s useful to consider themselves as basically Marxist.
I think of Communism as a bastard child of the Enlightenment, whereas Fascism (especially in its Nazi flavor) is explicitly anti-Enlightenment.
IMO, the Progs are closer to the Fascist worldview than to that of the Marxists.
“Calling them all “Marxists” has the advantage of showing the seriousness of the threat they present, but it also gives them the opportunity to deny the characterization as far-fetched and wildly conspiratorial.”
Throw the lie back in their teeth just to establish the target zone, and then point our that their denial is composed only of moondrool and unicorn farts.
…in reality the world does not generally give up sustenance without toil that is hard, taxing, and often tedious (and sometimes deadly/dangerous).
om: William Morris came from a wealthy family, attended Oxford, was successful and multi-talented as an artist and ran in elite artistic circles. I think Morris felt everyone should have as fulfilling a life as he did and even if their work were humble they could still find satisfaction in it.
In one striking episode in “News from Nowhere” Morris describes an encounter with a clean-limbed young man whose sole fulfillment in life is to row people back and forth across a river. He loves it so much and he is offended that anyone might pay him.
Now that’s obviously silly in an everyday way, but anyone who has stuck with volunteer work knows such satisfaction is possible.
More than anything else William Morris was an artist and, as such, not the most reliable person for practical notions of how society should be run.
Furthermore, Morris was a great artist of his time. In addition to poetry and novels, Morris did fabulous work with textiles and design patterns. Which I love still. He was the main influence on the Arts and Crafts movement, which lives on today, for example, in Stickley furniture. Which I love too.
In San Francisco I lived a couple miles from the Stickley store and would try to pick up a piece when they had a sale.
A toast to William Morris!
The “challenge of Marxism”—call it what you want—is the challenge of decent people trying to withstand and counter the deployment of rampant, ruthless, laser-directed dishonesty (specifically non-stop slogans steeped in intentionally Orwellian terminology) backed up by intimidation, violence and the threat of violence to achieve political aims, i.e., tearing down a country’s institutions and dissolving (or IOW, “transforming”) society.
This is what the Democrats and their media helots have been doing for years.
A huge problem is that in many cases, basically decent people swallow the massive Orwellian sloganeering hook, line and sinker because it—DECEIVINGLY—APPEALS TO THEIR PURPORTED MORAL VALUES.
Moreover, Lee Smith (his new book, “The Permanent Coup”, just out) describes , among other things how the ploy has also infected the armed services:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/08/17/exclusive-excerpt-lee-smith-the-permanent-coup-how-enemies-foreign-and-domestic-targeted-the-american-president/amp/
H/T Powerline blog.
I am reading “The Long March” which is equally depressing. It is focused on Britain and BREXIT but the principle is the same. I can only read a chapter a day.
As with several other commenters, I don’t see that the “Marxist” label adds anything analytically. Today’s progressives don’t use Marxist terminology, don’t profess to be Marxists (with rare exceptions), don’t address Marxist concerns (gender and race far outweigh class in their analysis), don’t use a Marxist analytic framework (i.e., dialectical or historical materialism), and haven’t read Marx. So in what sense are they “Marxist”?
If it can be said that the goal of Marxists is to overthrow Western society (using whatever polemical aids, lies—even capital–at their disposal, e,g., “Social Justice”, “BLM”, “Affirmative Action”), then it is clear that the current Marxist strategy is to make it appear as though they are NOT Marxists, i.e., that they are anything but Marxists.
(Those BLM leaders who proudly flaunted their perversities, even as they extolled the utopia that is currently Venezuela, let the mask slip a bit. Seems that there’s no repercussions, though. Nope, nothing to worry about.)
One problem that Hazony might be having (I haven’t read him, though I’ve ready about him) is that what we’re talking about is the extreme perversion of messianism (which, face it, does lend itself to perversion); and he has a huge religio-ideological stake in defending messianism. I suspect this is what has led him to target the Enlightenment—or at least the anti-religious component to which it is susceptible, or which even underpins it—and its propensity to go off the rails.
Today’s progressives don’t use Marxist terminology, don’t profess to be Marxists (with rare exceptions), don’t address Marxist concerns (gender and race far outweigh class in their analysis), don’t use a Marxist analytic framework (i.e., dialectical or historical materialism), and haven’t read Marx. So in what sense are they “Marxist”?
y81: This bothers me too. One can bet that Bill Ayers knows his Marx, but few of his BLM/Antifa grandchildren.
Class struggle. From each according to his ability to each … according to his status as a victim. Law and politics as the super-structural apparatus of a deeper system of exploitation. A strong anti-theistic stance and even a hostility toward (non-theistic) metaphysical analysis as the basis for social solidarity claims. In general, things like that, found in the early Marx, rather than specifically in Kapital or Engels.
Ah, for the good old days, when 60s radicals were happy to tell you what they were up to. Here’s Larry Grathwohl, the FBI informer who successfully infiltrated the Weather Underground, describing a Weatherman recruiting college students:
_____________________________________
Rebel sauntered to the middle of the floor with both hands stuck in his back pockets. It was obvious that he had conducted many meetings before. He had a casual air about him that exuded confidence.
After looking over the audience for a moment, he began: “Okay, you want to know who we are. Who the Weathermen are. I’m here to tell you. We’re communists and we dig it.”
He pronounced the word “communists” slowly and distinctly, pausing to let the meaning take effect.
Then he began again: “Communists with a small ‘c’. We’re not part of the old Cornmunist Party of America. We take orders from nobody, but we support the Third-World people’s fight against U .S. imperialism. We support the people.”
–Larry Grathwohl, “Bringing Down America”, p.29.
David Foster:
Today’s leftists are explicitly anti-Enlightenment.
Marx was an idiot and Hazony is a typical intellectual who engages in shallow reason and thus flawed logic.
As example he asks;
Freedom rests upon societal consensus. Equality, other than in the rule of law is a chimera. The United States is the private property of its citizens. Noncitizens are subject to invitation by those citizens.
Besides student capacity, no other metric but merit is valid.
A track and field competition is first and foremost a physical contest that measures large muscle efficiency. Regardless of their internal feelings, physical biology is the only valid metric.
Perhaps ping pong contests between women and men who feel themselves to emotionally be a woman would be an exception.
“What I found most alarming and depressing about Hazony’s piece was his argument that the fundamental principles of what he calls enlightenment liberalism lead inevitably and necessa rily to gradual movement by liberals toward Marxism, and ultimately to the collapse of liberal democracy. He makes what seems to me to be a persuasive case…” Mrs Whatsit
It’s only persuasive until you dig deep into it. It’s not classical liberalism whose fundamental principles lead gradually to Marxism.
It’s rejection of belief in a beneficent creator. Once tenets that extend from a transcendent author are rejected, all that remains is personal opinion.
Nor does it matter whether there really is a creator. However large the consensus, inalienable i.e. non-rescindable rights can only exist with societal allegiance to principles that stand above men’s personal opinions.
Otherwise, rights are actually revocable privileges and one generation’s consensus of opinion can be amended/rescinded by a later generation’s consensus.
‘Yahweh’s’ freedom of speech is inalienable, mankind’s ‘rights’ rest upon transitory opinion.
“If there is no God, then everything is permitted” commonly attributed to Dostoevsky but accurate regardless of actual provenance.
Geoffrey Britain:
Don’t get ahead of me! 🙂 That’s in Part II.
Neo….”Today’s leftists are explicitly anti-Enlightenment.”
Agreed…this is why I think they are closer to the Fascist worldview than the Communist worldview.
Many of them have rejected traditional religion, but they are usually *not* atheists or agnostics of the scientific-materialist variety. Rather, they tend to follow a range of mystical beliefs: astrology, magical crystals, homeopathic medicine, a conscious Gaia….
Whether or not the Enlightenment and classical liberalism contain the seeds of our current troubles has been vigorously debated in Catholic and/or conservative intellectual circles for a long time. I’m not that interested in the question at this point. It’s enough for me to say the E&c.l. have produced enough good effects that I have no desire to repudiate them.
As for Marxism: while I think it’s reasonable to stick that tag on the various elements of contemporary leftism, I think it’s a mistake to think of it as a consciously organized thing. It’s more like a sort of vapor, or the mysterious communications among the members of a hive. It’s a whole lot of people thinking along the same lines, prodded by a smaller number in a position to influence them. E.g. academia. Arguably it’s a tactical error on Hazony’s part to call it Marxism, but part of the problem, the efficacy of the vapor, is that the thing has no one name, and the names it gives itself are generally intended to mislead.
And I think you’re right, Neo, that “they plan to establish a new hierarchy of power.” They believe they know how the world should be run and they are concerned with getting the power to do it right. I don’t think they see any “withering of the state” or any hippie anarchist dream coming, but rather the permanent technocratic rule of Smart People. And there is indeed an element of desire to punish those who are making it so difficult for them to achieve it.
Hazony ignores the fact that these Marxist revolutionaries are funded by wealthy foundations, investment bankers, CEOs, and other beneficiaries of the present government- investment bank – silicon valley triumvirate. For this reason, I think his analysis is completely flawed.
Today’s “trained Marxists” are and will continue to be tools of the wealthy. In this sense, they may become part of the ruling class but they will not bring about any sort of fundamental change. In fact, I think that is their goal rather than any kind of utopia.
We’re not blank slates. We have three hundred thousand years of largely successful evolution-tested instructions written on our brains that gave us a survival manual: reflexes and instincts and rules that we know work else we would not be here today. What we are now seeing are tough and smart people trying to take over the tribe using exactly the same deceit and artifice that our ancestors used repeatedly for thousands of generations. Zzzzzz. How could it be any different? As such, these faux Marxists are bonafide died-in-wool conservatives. As old as the hills. Alas, the new guys are the Enlightenment guys. These were the new ideas. These people—us—are the radical revolutionaries with the new ideas that brought our little tribe of great apes out of a half million years of mainly-agriculture, with intermittent starvation and freezing caves and sore feet and dying children and sick mothers and constant warfare, rape and death. Our problem is that we are stuck with the ancient neural machinery that yearns for the egalitarianism of the tribe and a strong dictator and it’s prohibitions on heresy and independent thought and action. We couldn’t have anything like freedom in our tribes. The present malware-left are stuck in time and seduced by our Darwinist past.
@Dnaxy Yes I feel that strongly too – particularly the longing “for the egalitarianism of the tribe and a strong dictator and it’s prohibitions on heresy and independent thought and action.” Collective regression acted out in what Nietzsche characterised as a Dionysian frenzy. I find Jordan Peterson’s critique of this postmodern form of Marxism or whatever we want to call it, valuable because it includes the deeper, darker layers of human nature that analysis at the level of Enlightenment reason fails to take seriously enough.
In my sociology class in the eighties, we referred to this sort of thing as Conflict Theory. So I agree that labeling it as a type of Marxism is unnecessary, although I note that the modern form of this type of ‘Critical Theory’ seems to go out of its way to sharpen the dichotomies between in- and out-groups beyond what the older ‘Conflict Theory’ did.
Neo, I look forward to your analysis of Hazony’s idea. It will be interesting to compare it with Dreher’s take, as I notice that the same article has also crossed his desk of late.
This is the notorious absence of a clear view as to what the underclass, having overthrown its oppressors and seized the state, is supposed to do with its newfound power.
Clear as a bell. After Lenin got to the top, using the energy of the peasants to whom he promised ‘the land’, he used his well-organized thugs to suppress the peasants, ‘collectivize’ the land, exploit the peasants and rule by imperial diktat.
Whether
So… Ingsoc?
How many times must someone be shown to be wrong before it’s accepted that that individual should be ignored?
How many nations that followed Marxist ideology, produced that “worker’s paradise” predicted by Marx, or produced ANYTHING that he predicted would unfold?
(And it’s not just the USSR; think the Eastern Bloc, Cuba, China, N.Korea, etc).
How many nations that followed Marxist ideology produced a standard of living for their citizenry that eliminated waiting in line for food, food rationing, product shortages of all types, etc.?
Why does none of the above matter for those who insist that Marxism is the way forward??
There must be something (amiss?) about the human psyche that is drawn to an ideology that has a perfect record of total failure (not to mention the estimated 100,000,000 million killed in pursuit of and implementation of this ideology).
It sort of reminds my of how popular Paul Ehrlich (author of “The Population Bomb,” in 1968) was – and STILL IS !! in some circles; a modern day Malthusian.
He was all over TV, magazines etc., for several years, treated like some god like mystic because he described how, within 30 years or so, billions would starve to death.
What drew the “intellectual” class, the media, etc., to this guy? Why was a gloom and doomer given so much credence? After all, his ENTIRE thesis was speculation and, oh yea, all wrong.
And to this day !!! this phony baloney BS artist is dragged out of the his sewer to pontificate about something or other, despite his 1000000000% perfect record over 50 years !! of being totally wrong.
But Marx has him beat; Marx has been shown to be wrong since 1867; 133 years of perfect “wrong-ness.”
I can only surmise – aside from the “useful idiots” who mindlessly follow anybody or any ideology that promises to provide solutions to society’s ills despite them having a perfect record of failure – that the “intellectual” or educated proponents of Marxism are provided a way to stand out from the crowd, a way to gain some sort of “authority” or acclaim, a way to demonstrate , especially to their peers, that they belong to an “enlightened” or superior class of thinkers; the self-anointed intellectual elites. It provides them a way to separate themselves from the unwashed masses.
Of course, it also means that if the ideology they promote is implemented, they assume they will be provided a seat at the table of govt. of sorts, with all the personal and financial privileges that entails.
Privileges that they will deny – by law and by force – to the average citizen (see Cuba, USSR, E.Germany, etc.).
Honestly, there has to be a way to begin deportation of those who really hate the USA .
After all, if they really hate the USA as they do, they should be happy to leave and live in those heaven on earth paradises, like Cuba and Venezuela..
I include in this bunch several members of Congress; we know who they are.
( Pelosi should be deported to live in a tent in the streets of SF, so she can enjoy, up close and personal, the fruits of the policies she supports; I would make sure she gets a free supply of needles, drugs and booze, but I would not allow her access to her $10 pints of ice cream. Don’t want her to get privileges denied the other street denizens of that city. )
Unfortunately the US Constitution can be used as a subversive tool, a suicide document , to overthrow our Constitutional Republic.
The left and the demokrats (but I repeat myself), and a good portion of the voters are willing to this.
And do not think it cannot happen here in the USA.
It seems to me the average foot soldier of the Left, and by that I mean both antifa street thugs and internet scolds, is ignorant to the actual tenets of Marxism. They simply operate on their base impulses–they view themselves as “abnormals” and instead of working to uplift themselves, they strive to make others who they view as “normals” as miserable as they are. They derive what tiny bit of satisfaction they get out of life from seeing people who were formerly happy and content suffer. Their drive to “spread the misery around” happens to mesh nicely with the formal goals of Marxism.
These people love, love, love this state of lockdown due to covid. They derive pleasure, while sitting alone and childless, through the knowledge that families can’t go on summer vacations and that some working stiff can’t enjoy a beer at the bar with his friends at the end of the day.
Yoram Hazony: Contortionist.
https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=21119
https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=18094
Not going to defeat Progressivism with a topical application of Special Pleading Big Brained Progressivism Lite.
Fire and Sword, however…
Neo
I also believe that Barack Obama was one of the somewhat-hidden Marxists to come to power – and I say “somewhat-hidden” because even during his 2008 campaign there were plenty of hints of his far leftism, for those who cared to look.
Look no further than Dreams from My Father. (page 57) From his time at Occidental:
In Dreams, Obama tells of attending Socialist conferences in NYC. No Libertarian or Conservative conferences, though.
“…somewhat…”
Just a wee bit? A teensy tad?
Something to ponder…
After all,
“I can no more disown [“GODDAMN AMERICA” Reverend Wright] than I can disown my white grandmother”…..
(Well, no, of course not.)
File under: “Ohhhhh the pathos…..” (Then again, who will be the next one that gets thrown under the bus?…)
As a more-than-casual observer of politics in Africa since independence (the sixties), I have been lucky to be in the right place to see “socialism”, “Marxism”, whatever you want to call it, tried in several different countries that were throwing off colonial domination and trying to govern themselves.
Dahomey in the mid-seventies tried to become a Marxist paradise, but they floundered in the throes of poverty that was not alleviated by sucking up to the North Koreans and Chinese, who were great at talking big talk of socialist/Marxist revolution, but really had little to share other than poverty.
A more revealing opportunity was sitting with Julius Nyerere and discussing “Ujamaa,” his vision of African socialism, during an afternoon press tour I was able to attend in one of the ujamaa villages he had brought into existence. (“Jamaa” is the Swahili word for “family” — Nyerere’s attempt to put an African name on a European political-economic ideology. Ujamaa really means “familyhood”, to give you an idea of its anodyne perniciousness.)
Nyerere had a good education in UK and liked to be known as Mwalimu — “teacher”. He had a lot of good qualities and recognized the many hardships his young nation would face when the Union Jack was lowered and the new flag of Tanganyika was raised in December 1961. (It later joined with Zanzibar to become Tanzania.)
Here in this ujamaa village, he explained, people were gathered from all over the country (so tribalism was diluted) and given the opportunity to perform whatever tasks they wanted to do, and their needs — education, health care, housing (sound like AOC?) — were taken care of by the government.
“But wouldn’t many/most of them aspire to work in the village office rather than the fields?” I asked. “Some would, others would prefer to be in the fields. There would be work for everyone,” he professed.
It all sounded so idyllic. I could almost see the unicorns prancing through the village streets.
Ujamaa was a failure almost from the outset. Country folk who were transported to the ujamaa villages appreciated the schools and health clinics, but old social practices like women leaving the fields to raise children cut into the labor pool. And urban folk who were moved into ujamaa villages wanted to return to the cities, even though they were unemployed, rather than stay on the farm. Government coercion was common and agriculture production plummeted. And the damned unicorns never showed up.
I never got to talk to Nyerere in the eighties. I would have liked to do so, but I had long since left Tanzania when he stepped down in 1985. I really believe, if ever there was a time and a place for socialism to have worked, it was Tanzania in 1973. Yet it did not. Adam Smith had told us all we needed to know. Mwalimu Nyerere was a wise and self-effacing man — rare in African leadership — but he didn’t understand the reality of his own people. Upon his departure, Tanzania was one of the poorest countries in the world. Churchill’s comment about “Socialism being the philosophy of failure” was proved accurate.
Communism and all of its progeny and related idiot … idiotologies fail because of a misreading of the underlying philosophy in Hegel’s dialectic as expressed in Marx’s dialectic materialism. What?? Easy. The dialectic goes: “thesis, antithesis, synthesis”, while realty goes “thesis, antithesis, prosthesis.”(/snark) Those who are attracted and attached to Marx’s nonsense are incompetent to successfully perform the simplest tasks in the real world. Notice that killing large numbers of one’s political enemies isn’t included in any definition of success, since their goal is to rule the world, not to preside over a slaughterhouse.
F:
Very interesting story.
“I also think that quite a few Marxists/leftists today are not idealists and do not believe in the fourth premise Hazony lists: “total disappearance of class antagonism.” I believe that, instead, they plan to establish a new hierarchy of power and to replace the old oppressors and become the new oppressors as a kind of payback and in achievement of a power and control they feel they’ve earned and plan to maintain. Utopia will never come, but they’ll be in control, and that’s good enough.”
I see this as well and I find it especially disturbing. They seem to bypass the “disappearance of class antagonism” and go straight to tyranny. Why would Martin Luther King longed for people to “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” be something that “inspires debate” these days? Why was “There is only one race, the human race” banned at some California universities? California professors were instructed not to say ‘America is the land of opportunity.’
Today’s leftists are explicitly anti-Enlightenment.
neo: Which is why Noam Chomsky, for all his faults, isn’t all-aboard with the New Leftist Order. Chomsky identifies himself as part of the Enlightenment Project and remembers when censorship worked against the Left.
–“Noam Chomsky: Free Speech Is Crucial For The Left” (Jun 19, 2020)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwojLDxOWGA
Chomsky doesn’t look well, but he is 91.
To F:
“…….but he didn’t understand the reality of his own people……”
If Tanzania had been a “one off,” failure of a Marxist regime, one could claim as you did that “he” did not understand his own people.
But the fact remains that EVERY time Marxism has been implemented , anywhere on earth, and applied to a wide variety of cultures over a hundred year period, it has produced suffering , shortages of all goods, repression and overall really bad results.
One can only conclude that it is the philosophy of Marxism that is inherently flawed, because it assumes that basic human behavior is itself flawed and therefore requires the imposition (typically via coercion) by Marxist ideologues of the proper incentives to create the perfect society.
I believe it was Lenin (Trotsky?) who said that Russia was not the best place to implement Marxism because it was too agrarian and not sufficiently industrialized.
If this is so, then consider East Germany in 1945; it was the perfect place to show how Marxism could produce the heaven-on-earth, workers paradise. After all Germany had a long tradition of accomplishments in industry, science and engineering, a capable work force and admirable work ethic.
Further, it was literally starting from the ground up; there was no need to remove the shackles of capitalism.
I don’t think it failed there because its leaders did not understand their people.
At the most basic level, the proponents of Marxism have contempt for the average citizen; they abhor the choices a free people make and the opinions they hold. (Think “fly over country,” the “deplorables” ).
Thus the Marxists are compelled to re-order society (i.e., human behavior) and impose upon the citizenry the proper thinking and behavior.
The inequality of outcomes in a free society is used by Marxists as an example of the evils of capitalism. Yet , the fact that Marxist policies will reduce the entire citizenry to living in penury and produce a govt. of , by and for the ruling elites does not deter these ideologues at all.
Why?
Because they literally hate the average person and they believe they have a right to absolute power.
Look at the polices the communist AOC or the Brooklyn Communist Bernie Sanders wish to implement. It would put hundreds of thousands of people out of work; imagine the hardships this would produce.
And take note, AOC and Sanders could not give a flying F what hardships the citizenry would have to endure; all that matters to them is having absolute power.
Leftists / Marxists are truly evil people; and we have many of them right now vying for power here in the USA.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read Hayek’s discussion of “collectivism,” but I think that term could accurately describe all of the left-wing groups; philosophies, including communism, socialism, critical race and gender theory, identity politics, etc. All involve central direction, planning, and decision-making by “experts” or the “woke,” and posit that the collective — regardless of whether the focus is on the nation, class, race, sex, gender, or sexual orientation, etc. — is more important than the individual, and that we are defined by our group; don’t dare think you can think for yourself.
huxley
But today’s BLM and Antifa are following the program and embracing the same goals as the SDS offshoot the Weathermen wrote in “Prairie Fire!” A manifesto co-written by Bill Ayers himself in the early ‘70s.
While it can be downloaded online for free, there is a long and longer comment/review about “Prairie Fire!” up at Amazon.com. It was written during, and often critiques, the Obama years.
Same playbook? Not an accident. More like shared conviction.
A commenter “bruce” at JoNova’s science blog takes Hazony to task, lashing him with some critical links in reply:
I don’t know. Walzer has indeed been masterful, but this was long ago, mostly. And Cato Institute? Too often a muddling around the edges place, and libertarians today? Don’t make me laugh. Such are my prejudices. YMMV.
Harzony’s essay is interesting (I read it before reading yours), but it is quite deficient when it comes to Marx.
Harzony reduces Marx to the idea of class conflict. Whether his ideas are correct or incorrect, there is much more in Marx than “the dominant class oppresses the weaker class.” Marx is full of ideas about how classes arrive and how capitalist society’s internal dynamics will lead it into a non-capitalist future. And while Marx’s vision of the socialist future is vague and utopian, it does exist.
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