I am interested in politics, and even tho i am not a communist, i am interested in what can be learned from it and i also want to learn more about political ideologies as a whole, instead of speaking out of my ass whenever someone mentions communism and potentially say some bullshit. What do you think?
Edit: thanks for all the answers! I swear i read them all, i just don’t know how to answer to each of them, but thanks for all the recommendations!
Can you elaborate a bit more? What groups stand against Marx while claiming to adhere to his beliefs, in your view? I agree with the idea that many clash with Marx, but a gut feeling tells me we disagree on which groups.
My first comment apparently didn’t go through so if that somehow materializes it’s probably better than this one. But I dunno where it went.
I think honestly a lot of what he said has fallen on deaf ears. Marx was an internationalist, deeply suspicious of the state and anti-classist. Most socialists today have fallen prey to the modern nationalistic mindset. They want to defend their glorious socialist state and bad mouth the evil bad capitalist ones so much they have no desire to be allies with the working class anywhere else, they want to praise their bourgeoisie and denounce the ones they don’t like which is pretty much not what Marx was about. Modern socialists especially on lemmy here are more like national socialists, no pun intended, genuinely. Marx believed in the idea that a transitional government would form and become essentially obsolete. You might hear some socialists talk about this idea of a transitional government but that requires more suspicion and judgement on government than many of them are willing to do. The states continue to amass power all over the world and they often praise certain ones they have probably been conditioned to praise.
It’s important to note Marx lived in basically a different world than today, he couldn’t predict any of this. He’s also not god, he isn’t right about everything and often revised his own work. Socialists want to hang on his every word but as he said according to Engles “I myself am not a Marxist” in response to the growing movement in France.
Tl;dr - socialists today are more nationalistic and dogmatic than he would’ve ever liked to see.
There are a couple of problems I have with your critiques.
First, defense of existing socialism is not a neutral process. It’s done to protect socialist construction, warts and all, while it advances. This is not done uncritically, critique is generally not shared among the public as much as support is, because time has proven that imperialist bourgeoisie will exploit any disunity to turn workers against themselves. Breaking up unity is how the bourgeoisie maintains power.
Second, nationalism. The modern internationalism is very much in line with Marx, and recognizes the right of nations to self-determination. Internationalism begins with national sovereignty, which is why often reactionary countries are supported in national liberation movements when this improves the position of the international working class, such as the strong support for Palestine despite the resistance not being socialist (except for groups like the PFLP).
Finally, the withering of the state. The job of the dictatorship of the proletariat is to develop the means of production to a large scale, which is the basis of socialized production, and maintain rule of the proletariat, gradually collectivizing production and distribution. The goal isn’t to abolish government or administration, but instead what Marx called the state, which is not synonymous with how a classless administrative body would work.
That pretty much sums it up.
But there is basically 0 criticism of these states that declare themselves socialist. It’s all defense and national pride which is exactly what Marx wasn’t about. Regardless of what you believe and how it could be used against these movements, that’s not what Marx was about.
Personally I completely disagree. It’s like arguing to build a bridge you have to flood the river first, you’re making it more difficult. Marx never believed in anything about nations having self determination he believed states and borders were constructs.
I definitely agree about Palestine but there are other atrocities I won’t mention because people get really mad about them which are completely glossed over, ignored or even demonized because it will paint certain states in a certain light and cause that whole nationalistic mindset to rear it’s ugly head from certain groups here. So yeah they support Palestine but I’d argue it’s more about the adversary for a lot of these activists, not the workers themselves, or we’d have a lot different conversations appearing on lemmy.
People will be mad at me again but that’s not happening. Like I said, states across the world continue to amass power. This is just not something Marx would ever be in support of.
I’m speaking solely from the perspective of what he wrote he believed in not my personal beliefs so passerbyers don’t rage at me about this. Marx believed in the international socialist, workers uniting regardless of borders and was heavily against the concept of the state or borders as those are tools of the bourgeoisie. I think it really boils down to, if you find yourself championing a state or defending a state without also expressing criticism you’re not really embracing Marx.
You have a dogmatic view of nationalism, ironically. Nationalism, when resisting colonialism and imperialism, is progressive. The national struggle is a class struggle. Nationalism can easily turn into something reactionary when it is done to reinforce colonialism and imperialism as well. Marx absolutely did agree with this, evidenced by his support of the Polish nationalist movement for independence. The working class is an international class, but this does not mean they are without nations. To erase the national struggle is class reductionism.
As for socialist states, they have indeed been developing and growing. The development of the dictatorship of the proletariat is not something Marx opposed, you seem to fundamentally misunderstand Marx’s theory of the withering of the state in the transition from lower-stage communism to higher-stage communism. The economic basis of this is one where class struggle has ended, and in a world where imperialism is dominant socialist states cannot wither away entirely. They must react to the siege they exist in.
Okay that’s fine to believe. But again I’m talking about Marx. He was never supportive of nationalism he was specifically internationalist and simultaneously believed states and borders were bourgeoisie constructs. So trying to claim he is supportive of those just is not true. It’s absurd to say he agreed with that, he didn’t support the Polish nationalist movement because it was nationalist. He supported a revolution that would break up the Russian dominance.
So if your nationalist support is to a very large, rich and established nation. He wouldn’t support that.
I’m not erasing a national struggle. The socialists I’m speaking of tend to be of some of the richest nations on the planet who are supporting their continued growth in one way or another. That is not a revolutionary faction working to undo the dominance of a powerful state. He would not support that.
As for the second part of what you said I think this is exactly where Marx conversations end because he lived in such a different world, the idea of these structures existing wasn’t something he would be familiar with. What his opinions are on these fronts is never going to be clear. But the idea that he would ever support a powerful state is pretty inaccurate. There’s also the whole side that the reason you have Leninism and Stalinism is because Marx didn’t really talk about the structure of a state or outline what it would look like. He believed it would come about naturally. So once you start talking about the actual structure, what makes a socialist state and if you can say it is a socialist state that Marx would support you’re stepping away from Marx and moving towards more modern socialist thinkers which is a more broad conversation and leans away from what I’m talking about.
No, you’re fundamentally incorrect about Marx’s position, and you’re butchering mine. Marx, like the Marxists that took after him, understood the national struggle as a struggle for sovereignty, the basis of which is in internationalism. Internationalism and nationalism are not contradictory, nor did I or Marx ever say that Marx supported the Polish because they were nationalist. This is reductive, as is collapsing the entire working class into one without nations. Marx did not see nations as bourgeois constructs, in fact he explicitly stated that communism would bring about the end of exploitation of nation by nation, not just man by man.
Lenin developed the national question further, as did Stalin. However, the basis of the national question as Marxists understand it today, as one where internationalism can only exist in practice between sovereign nations, and that therefore the quest for sovereignty is a progressive struggle, was with Marx from the onset, hence why he supported Poland against Russia, not just for the sake of Russian revolution but also for Polish independence. The same again happened with Marx supporting the freeing of the Statesian slaves.
As for Marx, he never bothered charting what a socialist state would look like, correct, but he always supported the dictatorship of the proletariat, the absolute rule of the working class against reactionary classes. This is a historically necessary process, one where he made the famous quote:
This isn’t because Marx was a marvel villain, but was because he supported the absolute power of the working class as a historically necessary process.
The point isn’t simply that Marx disliked nationalism and I am not saying nationalism is the opposite of internationalism. It isn’t that supporting any state automatically makes someone anti-socialist. It’s that Marx’s idea of the state is tied directly to class antagonism. The state isn’t a neutral entity.
So when a socialist or their movement makes defending its nation a political end in itself I think Marx would view a problem there. If the state is a byproduct of class struggle then preserving and legitimizing that state without criticism will create the exact relationship Marx thought socialism was meant to overcome. The question is what class relations exist, who exercises control and whether the political institution themselves are being transformed or merely preserved. This applies not just to socialists from the US and Chinese socialists, I’m speaking of most nations we’d consider rich; basically all of Europe, Russia. I’m saying loyalty to these nations and being uncritical of them is against what Marx’s internationalist and antistate theory was about. But that is where you’ll find most of these people talking about socialism.
Marx frames the proletariat movement as international and calls for workers from all countries to unite. So when I talk about modern socialists adopting a nationalist/socialist mindset, I’m not saying that any form of national identity is inherently anti-Marxist. I’m talking specifically about defending the state and its national interests over criticizing the class relations that exist within it. All of these countries have immense wealth disparity and private institutions especially in the manufacturing, tech, retail which in Marx’s time were the major institutions he was talking to when he talked about the workers, they were the ones being exploited and in these nations that is still happening. So being defensive and nationalistic about them is not the type of nationalism he would support as they are upholding what he’s against. That is what I am talking about when I say how most socialists have embraced a more nationalist/socialist mindset.
States and nations are not the same thing, and I think you are confusing me and Marx by conflating the two. Nations are historically constituted, stable communies of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and culture. Nations seek sovereignty, through the establishment of a state in their interests. The abolition of the state can only be done once a nation is sovereign, and this is intrinsically tied to the class struggle between workers and the bourgeoisie.
Secondly, regarding private ownership within socialism. The economic basis of markets is in decentralized production. The economic basis of social production and distribution is large, centralized production. Trying to force one into the other forces antagonistic contradictions. The very same contradiction that gives rise to the proletariat taking power through revolution, the centralization of markets creating a new economic basis for social production, also works against socialist construction if this economic base does not exist yet and a socialist state dogmatically collectivizes even decentralized production. This is the basis for the marketization that exists in socialist countries in secondary and underdeveloped industries.