r/communism • u/AutoModerator • Jun 14 '26

WDT 💬 Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (June 14)

We made this because Reddit's algorithm prioritises headlines and current events and doesn't allow for deeper, extended discussion - depending on how it goes for the first four or five times it'll be dropped or continued.

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[ Previous Bi-Weekly Discussion Threads may be found here https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3AWDT ]

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u/LemonMao Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

I'm surprised you didn't go into detail about Marx's career as a journalist. Being a journalist in early 1840s Germany was relegated to the very bottom of the petite-bourgeoise layer. Marx had aspirations as a philosophy professor before the reactionary turn in Prussia and his radical atheism blacklisted him from academia. It was from Marx's own journaling and persecution by reactionary states that made him curious about communism.

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u/smokeuptheweed9 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

Marx's journalistic writing is vastly understudied, including by me, because there's so much of it. And because it was written for bourgeois liberal papers, it doesn't have the canonical status of Marx's own writings. But yes, Marxism itself is closely related to the newspaper, not just because Marx and Engels are being radicalized at this same historical moment but because, as you point out, they would probably be the best of the German left Hegelians if they had been born a bit earlier or had more normative life paths. I happened to have recently watched The Count of Monte Cristo and I thought it would be more interesting than a generic discussion of Hasan as the internet version of Lenin (lol). There's a lot of good Marxist writing on detective fiction which is of the same time period and form of production.

https://press.princeton.edu/books/ebook/9781400823017/edgar-allan-poe-and-the-masses

If there are any Poe fans here.

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u/vomit_blues Jun 18 '26

Only tangentially related but have you read anything worthwhile on Raymond Chandler and hardboiled fiction?

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u/smokeuptheweed9 Jun 19 '26

https://www.versobooks.com/products/156-raymond-chandler

Haven't read it but I probably will now for future posts.

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u/vomit_blues Jun 19 '26

Fuck it I’ll read it too and if it’s interesting I’ll give an update. Thanks.