Recently I was skimming through some of the history of Marxism/Communism and different schools of Marxist/Communist thought that have arisen over the past 100 years, and it really reinforced to me the importance of re-establishing Socialism as the umbrella term under leftism.
For example, why does all of this need to be "Marxist"? I'm not saying it's True Leftist or even salvageable, but why does it need to be "Marxist" instead of its own type of leftism/Socialism? The core focus of actual Marxism is on "class" and economic/material conditions. Yet
these ideologies all reject that these are the primary issues in human society!Immediately after the Russian Revolution in the early 1920s, many Communist theorists rejected the strict
"materialist-economic" focus of orthodox Marxism and instead placed primacy on the the role of how culture and traditions shape society. I suppose we can say they had a
"cultural-economic" focus (or maybe "cultural-material").
Less concerned with economic analysis than earlier schools of Marxist thought, Western Marxism placed greater emphasis on the study of the cultural trends of capitalist society, deploying the more philosophical and subjective aspects of Marxism, and incorporating non-Marxist approaches to investigating culture and historical development.[2]
[...]
Perry Anderson notes that Western Marxism was born from the failure of proletarian revolutions in various advanced capitalist societies in Western Europe – Germany, Austria, Hungary and Italy – in the wake of the First World War.[11] He argues that the tradition represents a divorce between socialist theory and working-class practice that resulted from the defeat and stagnation of the Western working class after 1920.[12][13]
Western Marxism traces its origins to 1923, when György Lukács's History and Class Consciousness and Karl Korsch's Marxism and Philosophy were published.[1] In these books, Lukács and Korsch proffer a Marxism that underlines the Hegelian basis of Marx's thought. They argue that Marxism is not simply a theory of political economy that improves on its bourgeois predecessors, nor a scientific sociology, akin to the natural sciences. For them, Marxism is primarily a critique – a self-conscious transformation of society. They stipulate that Marxism does not make philosophy obsolete, as "vulgar" Marxism believes; instead Marxism preserves the truths of philosophy until their revolutionary transformation into reality.[14]
Their work was met with hostility by the Third International,[15] which saw Marxism as a universal science of history and nature.[14] Nonetheless, this style of Marxism was taken up by Germany's Frankfurt School in the 1930s.[1]
[...]
the theorists who downplay the primacy of economic analysis are considered Western Marxists. Where the base of the capitalist economy is the focus of earlier Marxists, the Western Marxists concentrate on the problems of superstructures,[18] as their attention centres on culture, philosophy, and art.[1]
[...]
While Engels saw dialectics as a universal and scientific law of nature, Western Marxists do not see Marxism as a general science, but solely as a theory of the cultural and historical structure of society.[14]
Many Western Marxists believe the philosophical key to Marxism is found in the works of the Young Marx, where his encounters with Hegel, the Young Hegelians and Ludwig Feuerbach reveal what they see as the humanist core of Marxist theory.[25] However, the structural Marxism of Louis Althusser, which attempts to purge Marxism of Hegelianism and humanism, also belongs to Western Marxism, as does the anti-Hegelianism of Galvano Della Volpe.[26]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_MarxismGrowing out of this, the famous "Frankfurt School" of "Critical Theory" placed even more emphasis on the cultural aspect and a much stronger critique on orthodox Marxism.
"With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from social structures and cultural assumptions than from individuals. It argues that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation.[1]
[...]
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy distinguishes between Critical Theory (capitalized) as the product of several generations of German philosophers and social theorists of the Frankfurt School on the one hand, and any philosophical approach that seeks emancipation for human beings and actively works to change society in accordance with human needs (usually called "critical theory", without capitalization) on the other. Philosophical approaches within this broader definition include feminism, critical race theory, and forms of postcolonialism.[7]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theoryhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_SchoolBy the Counterculture era, leftists elevated basically every issue to be equal or more important than the Marxist economic/class focus.
The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, abortion rights, gender roles and drug policy reforms.[1] Some see the New Left as an oppositional reaction to earlier Marxist and labor union movements for social justice that focused on dialectical materialism and social class, while others who used the term see the movement as a continuation and revitalization of traditional leftist goals.[2][3][4]
[...]
Herbert Marcuse, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory, is celebrated as the "Father of the New Left"[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_LeftWhile rejecting Marxist obsession with economics was good, it is no surprise that the usual suspects once again derailed leftism into pursuing the wrong things:
The German-Jewish critical theorist Herbert Marcuse is referred to as the "Father of the New Left". He rejected the theory of class struggle and the Marxist concern with labor. According to Leszek Kołakowski, Marcuse argued that since "all questions of material existence have been solved, moral commands and prohibitions are no longer relevant". He regarded the realization of man's erotic nature, or Eros, as the true liberation of humanity, which inspired the utopias of Jerry Rubin and others.[11] However, Marcuse also believed the concept of Logos, which involves one's reason, would absorb Eros over time as well.[12] Another prominent New Left thinker, Ernst Bloch, believed that socialism would prove the means for all human beings to become immortal and eventually create God.[13]
Then we have Critical Race Theory, which seems to take certain
methodological ideas from the original "Critical Theory" (hence the name). But its focus on race and society is a complete
ideological break with the materialist-economic focus of orthodox Marxism and the cultural-economic focus of "Western Marxism" and the original Critical Theory school.
I suppose we could say CRT is
"cultural-race" focused--with culture shaping our perceptions of "race" and these cultural views shaping society. National Socialism is
"race-culture" focused--with innate biological factors shaping culture, and hence society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theoryRelatedly, "Intersectionality" places economic factors as merely one of many factors shaping society (and often one of the factors of comparatively lesser importance to activists applying intersectonality). Critical Race Theorists (and National Socialists) argue racism/race is the most important form of tribalistic oppression in their application of intersectionality.
When applied to politics/social justice, intersectionality is a Socialist mentality which has no logical reason to remain connected to Marxist thought. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IntersectionalityPresent-day orthodox Marxists argue that all forms of tribalism are ultimately derived from "classism"/economic factors (even racism is just an "illusion" to distract from classism, somehow). I suppose "cultural-economic Marxists" (like those of the original Critical Theory/Frankfurt School) would make some convoluted explanation of how "classism" and other forms of tribalism all have some complex cross-pollination and try to "critique" their way to untangling these complexities? Lol.
I'm sure plenty of Intersectionality activists and academic theorists do not see themselves as connected with Marxism/Communism, but Intersectionality is just one aspect of leftism/Socialism, so these individuals nevertheless often draw inspiration from pre-existing Communist ideas, since they know of no other source for leftist attitudes beyond intersectionality/anti-tribalist critque. Rightists also try to tie them to Communism by basically grouping all social justice activism under the umbrella of "Cultural Marxism"--even though 21-century social justice advocates have completely diverged from actual Marxism, and even the Frankfurt School (who are supposedly the originators of "Cultural Marxism") themselves had rejected many of orthodox Marxism's core ideas!
----
Again, why does all of the stuff listed above need to be "Marxist"? Especially Critical Race Theory/Intersectionality, which are basically "race-culture" focused (instead of "materialist-economic" or "cultural-economic" focused), just like National Socialism!
Do modern empiricists call themselves "Aristotelians"? They may give homage to him for putting certain attitudes into words, but they don't feel the need to elevate him to godhood where all their own (very divergent) philosophical developments are required to be mere shadows of his own. Instead, they all fall under the umbrella of empiricism; with many empiricist philosophers being in ideological disagreement with one another and essentially all of them moving well beyond a strict adherence to Aristotle's original ideas.
What is badly needed is to restrict the meaning of Marxism to just "orthodox Marxism" (the pure theory of Marx/Engels) and Communism (i.e. Marxist-Leninism and other closely-related political movements which tried to be strict in their adherence to orthodox Marxism).
All these other things that are considered sub-types of Marxism/Communism, "Marxist schools of thought", leftist movements with practical elements that are derailed by Marxist-influenced intellectual fops and their beloved Marxist abstractions, etc., need to be liberated from their constraints and just allowed to be types of Socialism. People think that Socialism _needs_ to be Marxist, and hence they shoe-horn Marxist theory, constructs, and general framing into everything.
Socialism does not need to be Marxist. Even most of what has been called "Marxism" for the past 100 years has become thoroughly un-Marxist in character.I guess with the political success of the USSR, Socialist-sympathetic intellectuals desperately tried to keep (ostensibly non-Communist) developments of Socialism hanging on to Communism by a thread...? Or stupid academic traditionalism compelled intellectuals who were inspired by Marx to want to claim their (ostensibly non-Marxist) critiques and reformulations of Socialism as the "successor" to Marx, or whatever?
I don't know, but the obsession for Socialist theorists to carry water for Marxism is just so absurd. As Hitler said, he came to liberate Socialism from Marxism. Imagine if Critical Race Theory was liberated from its unnecessary Marxist baggage. If it were to be reclassified based on its ideological characteristics alone, it would group closer to National Socialism than Marxism. At the very least, there would be little stopping Critical Race Theory from logically evolving towards the True Left/National Socialism if the threads needlessly tying it down to Marxism were severed.
Even the cultural-economic schools of Socialist critique could likely give useful insights for us to use, if they stopped being held back by a stupid 19th-century philosophy which has long outlived any usefulness... Instead of trying to conform themselves to Marx's overly-academic analyses and shoe-horn in his endless constructs, they could just exist as fresh forms of Socialism.
Why does critiquing things (along lines very different from Marx) need to be "Marxist"? Is doing geometry
ideologically Pythagorean?
As I mentioned before, even Stalinism by the 1920s rejected the strict internationalist focus of orthodox Marxism. While Stalinism didn't acknowledge any breaks from Communism, Socialism with Chinese Characteristics acknowledged certain breaks, despite functionally barely being "Communist" at all. (If we were to reclassify it, its state control of reproduction and centrally-directed economy would place it far closer to National Socialism than to actual Communism). The various political movements lumped under "African Socialism", "Arab Socialism", "Third World Socialism", and others, have also broken with Marxism in key ways, which is at least acknowledged by calling these ideologies simply Socialism. Juche managed to break with Communism/Marxism completely.
But the various intellectual movements--which have far more ideological flexibility than political regimes--which should have been able to distance themselves from Marxism the most have not. How absurd.They are all poisoned by the (very incorrect) convention of placing Socialism as a mere derivative of Communism/Marxism, rather than Marxist Socialism/Communism being merely one type of a wide variety of possible Socialist schools of thought.
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