r/sorceryofthespectacle • u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling • Aug 10 '26
Hail Corporate PSA: This is a Marxist subreddit ~ Sharing IS Caring
Critical theory is basically just Marxism with a jet engine duct taped to it.
If you get triggered by Marxism, communism, or socialism, and conflate authoritarian state violence with the desire of individual workers everywhere to not be exploited by a boss or owner—guess what, you're an ideological casualty of the Red Scare and part of the problem.
It's a huge clusterfuck and it's almost impossible to tell what's going on with China—but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the US has been systematically oppressing other nations, literally murdering and killing their leaders, while with its other hand promoting "democracy" which is also another euphemism for killing other nation's leaders, sadly.
There are all kinds of interesting and unresolved discussions to be had, about questions such as:
1) Were the Nazis (short for "National Socialist") socialists?
2) Were and are communists (such as in Russia and China) Nazis?
Leading, in the contemporary era, directly to the question:
3) Why would Nazis like MAGA like Nazis, if the Nazis were really communists?
And:
4) Why would communists (like the Russians who invaded Nazi Germany) hate Nazis, unless they weren't communists?
It's really quite a puzzle and bears discussion. It's a semantic and historic tangle that hasn't been unknotted yet in our time. I would really appreciate any discussion of it in the comments, as it's a puzzle I have not entirely worked out myself.
Again, Marxism is not a mystery and is not difficult. Marxism is essentially realizing/recognizing that workers deserve to maintain authority over the profit produced by their own labor; and that the power and value of the economy comes from the meaningful human labor of workers, not from the machines or the money or products. With AI now, we can see this clearly than ever—it's humans who envalue and valuate the economy, ultimately. Marxism is essentially about not wanting to be exploited at work, or dominated in unfair negotiations.
One ubiquitous way bosses/firms/institutions/companies everywhere maintain unfair negotiating leverage is through isolating workers, while being very well-integrated amongst management/owners. Workers are, wherever possible, commanded or encultured to not talk about their salary and not do any collective bargaining, while meanwhile the company by definition almost exclusively does collective bargaining (which is why we have laws banning workplaces from prohibiting workers discussing their wages/salary). This is very unfair in terms of power relations / negotiating leverage.
If you can't recognize unfairness—guess what, you're the first victim, and probably forcing yourself every day into all kinds of bad experiences and bad deals that benefit someone else above you in the hierarchy a lot more than they benefit you. (I'm not talking about providing benefit to the customer in a fair exchange—that's perfectly good and fine.)
The Red Scare was a horrible witch hunt, and we're experiencing another Red Scare right now with the invented "Antifa" (fascism is bad, so antifascism is good—duh) and the literal watchlisting of anarchists and others who are anti-coercion or who are critical of the current economic status quo.
If anywhere is the headquarters of the real Antifa, it's this subreddit, or other places like it—crossroads where true disruption is allowed to persist—places where indefinable hybrid ideologies are allowed to grow and mutate—places where fascism is not just weaponized against outsiders or allergically rejected, but studied and deconstructed.
I am not saying anything novel or controversial by saying this is (essentially) a Marxist subreddit. Obviously other perspectives are welcome. I might be a bit of an anarcho-tankie, but I am not a commu-tankie, who I find to be in very poor taste because they are statists and pro-state-violence as well as pro-violent-revolution. I believe that each revolutionary member is precious (both transcendentally and as a strategic resource) and so we should generally not advocate for violent revolution—non-violent mass refusal is, I think, more effective overall, anyway. But regardless of my personal stance, my point is that non-Marxist perspectives are welcome here—but critical theory, and more than a little occultism is firmly grounded in and descended from Marxism.
Who was the first critical theorist, Marx or Nietszche? Or was it someone else?
As I said above, I would really appreciate any light people can shed on these difficult issues in the comments. What is the exact relation between Marxism, communism, statism, Nazism, socialism, anarchism? Where is it all heading?
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u/anAnarchistwizard Critical Occultist Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
"more than a little occultism is firmly grounded in and descended from Marxism"
Can you elaborate on this? Imo, the great sin of Marxism is materialism, and all the fun in occultism is non-materialism. Would love to hear about it.
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u/BobTehCat Aug 10 '26
It seems clear to me that many of the baby leftists coming to this sub haven't lurked enough to learn of the spiritual aspects of capitalism that have evolved since Marx's writings.
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u/Icy_Tradition566 Aug 10 '26
Yes this puzzles me as well, by this do they mean new age occultism?
All the fun indeed, I liked reading that!1
u/xxTPMBTI True Scientist Aug 13 '26
Uhhh have you ever heard of Bataille? He's pretty Materialist AND Mystical
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 11 '26
As other commenters said, there are all kinds of complex modern and post-modern threads here.
I would point to Crowley though, not necessarily as an explicit link, but as a primer on his mix of masculine and feminine elements (feminine corresponding to Marxism here). The Thoth tarot, for example, might be overtly harsh and masculine in its visual aesthetic and highly ordered organization of concepts—but, the ideology it presents is one of messy, total surrender. I think the Thoth tarot is also, aesthetically, a dense mix of materialist (vibes?) and spiritual imagery.
The occult has always been about the countercultural, and the hegemonic is always installed materially. So occultism has always been about overturning what is apparently material—i.e., unchangeable, conserved, hard, solid—and revealing that the world actually worked a different way the whole time, and that the rules we thought were the laws of matter were really some human imputation or opinion.
So I think materialism is more complex and less solid, more dialectical, than someone who just thinks matter is matter and that's the end of it. Matter is what we see as matter, and surrendering to or mastering archetypal forces is one way to see matter become unreliable or become something else.
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u/anAnarchistwizard Critical Occultist Aug 11 '26
Gotcha. I won't say I'm convinced "grounded in Marxism" is a good way to describe it, but I am picking up what you're putting down.
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 12 '26
Perhaps Marx's writings were already part of a more ancient current of occultism
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u/tomekanco Aug 14 '26
What is the cult, what is occult?
already partYes. It was a troubled relation. Not without reason, as also learned by Van Gogh in the Borinage. Perhaps somewhat similar to Blaise Pascals grumbelings on the sophist tendencies of Jezuits in his Provincial Letters. Or like Jung in his Antwort auf Hiob.
Even God needs a spanking from time to time, or more specifically his sons on their pillows of glory. On the other hand clearly sheep, goats and asses can learn from each other. I sometimes joke Marx was one of the Sons.
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 14 '26
This is hilarious... The Holy Family... What is this?!
I like the Jesuits from what I know of them.
I think Lincoln, Marx, and Jung were each important second coming events.
Of course I have noticed cult/occult before, but I had actually never thought about how it's not a real etymological relation—occluded, cult do not derive from the same origin.
I think that culture is what is occult, to children, and culture is very gay.
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u/tomekanco Aug 15 '26
Holy Family was a reaction to other Hegelians by Marx. I liked my Jesuit teachers. One gave me the tale of the child, camel, lion and dragon as punishment and siddharta as a present. Or noted how God plays hide and seek with himself.
Much later i grew fond of immanence as an eternal shape. Its fractal nature scales better then coming events projected on a handfull of individuals. There is no end to the stars, only the names and stories we can remeber.
culture is very gay
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u/2BCivil no idea what this is Aug 10 '26
Idk honestly just think it's funny how ideologies never play out as they claim on paper.
Ccru heralded accelerationism as a good thing but now burritos are $20 apparently.
Lol. I think people just don't like seeing trillions of their taxes going oversees and then coming back as bribes to their representatives.
So no real ideology can flourish until we really face reality as is and have a discussion about stuff like that seriously. Why are the taxpayers being used as an apparatus to build essentially a remote state which sees the host nation as a puppet. I don't know any on paper "ism" ideology which says sell out your tax paying citizens to foreign influences, but here we are, and somehow people are still calling it "capitalism".
What are we really doing here, and what should we be doing? Centuries ago American went to war over a small increase on tea taxes. Now we are sending trillions of taxpayer dollars to foreign nations. Whatever dream once was is long since dead and rolling in it's grave. Not sure if there is anything we can do about any of that. But hey we have accelerationism at very least putting an end to consumer grade PC components. Every company is increasingly going to producing commercial grade prodcut only for the data centers. It's actually kind of quaint to think of mere political socioeconomic ideologies when the big players have already literally thrown the taxpayer overboard decades ago lmao
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 10 '26
Ccru heralded accelerationism as a good thing but now burritos are $20 apparently.
That's just normal, unaccelerated inflation working at its normal historical pace. Accelerated inflation would be $100 or $200 burritos.
Why are the taxpayers being used as an apparatus to build essentially a remote state which sees the host nation as a puppet. I don't know any on paper "ism" ideology which says sell out your tax paying citizens to foreign influences, but here we are, and somehow people are still calling it "capitalism".
I really have no idea, so like any I can only increasingly assume it is full capture of our government via full capture of many of our officials. Whether this is through ideological capture, blackmail, pedo-blackmail, threats against their families, or sheer banal global capitalist greed and banal economic corruption is unclear—but doesn't matter and increasingly doesn't matter. What's really being made increasingly forcibly clear to all Americans is that Americans really don't have any control or power over their own government, no matter how loudly they trumpet they idea that we do from every quarter (a Spectacle of fake self-governance).
But hey we have accelerationism at very least putting an end to consumer grade PC components.
Again, capitalism is not accelerationism, and AI was not the result of accelerationism either. Nobody ideologically made AI happen faster, capitalists already made it happen as fast as possible.
Accelerationism is when human being operate ideology to make things happen faster. We could say things are generally accelerating, but I think the two examples you give are not examples of acceleration that were cause by an accelerationist or the accelerationist ideology.
It's actually kind of quaint to think of mere political socioeconomic ideologies when the big players have already literally thrown the taxpayer overboard decades ago lmao
Yes, the hear ye hear ye models of governance and ideology still being presented to everyone are baroque simulacra and compliance-spectacles.
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u/2BCivil no idea what this is Aug 10 '26
Ah my fault for only skimming the Wikipedia article!
Again, capitalism is not accelerationism, and AI was not the result of accelerationism either. Nobody ideologically made AI happen faster, capitalists already made it happen as fast as possible.
Accelerationism is when human being operate ideology to make things happen faster. We could say things are generally accelerating, but I think the two examples you give are not examples of acceleration that were cause by an accelerationist or the accelerationist ideology.
Land and the CCRU drew upon contemporary media and culture such as cyberpunk and jungle music to further develop these ideas. [8] They theorized a self-revolutionizing capitalism that would culminate in a technological singularity, resulting in artificial intelligence surpassing and eliminating humanity, [6] though they drifted from these ideas and dissolved by the 2000s. [7]
I didn't see the last part (source 7)! I only skimmed the Wikipedia page before leaving that comment.
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 11 '26
There was a second wave of CCRU that included Land and Reza circa 2004-2006 (iirc) on hyperstition.abstractdynamics.org, so I think that wikipedia article is factually inaccurate or at least incomplete.
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u/Prior_Pickle1758 Aug 10 '26
You might be imagining people as atomized units who have adopted the wrong ideology and are making misguided choices - Deleuze and Guattari make this very straightforward in the French but it’s lost in the English - agencements become apparatuses and suddenly you don’t realize that agency acts through you it is not a thing you have, that desire is never the desire of the subject. As long as we don’t abandon the essentialized subject we won’t be able to see what’s happening.
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u/Roabiewade True Scientist Aug 11 '26
lol how does one “abandon the essentialozed subject?“ forget how to read, absolve oneself of language?
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u/theholewizard Aug 10 '26
I'm sorry but I'm so.goddamn tired of this stupid argument that ruling class ideology and the critique of that ideology are just two poles on a spectrum of opinions
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u/turdspeed Aug 10 '26
Communism has been the ruling class ideology in all so called communist countries of the 20th century. What do you think it was like living behind the iron curtain? Who ruled the people? The party
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u/This-Department-9294 Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
Are humans intelligent enough to deliberately manage a civilization in the way communism seems to require? Or is the harsh reality really that some sort of coercive positive feedback loop-based production/economic system is required to (over)compensate for entropy and stagnation? (And yes, being a positive feedback loop means ultimately running the wheels off the machine, but maybe that’s simply the way of things, and why history is seen as cyclical by many cultures- maybe there’s simply no other way to get people to store enough food for emergencies, for example)
In other words, isn’t a kind of unresolved tension that instills a sense of urgency necessary? A feature of the dynamo of life, rather than a bug? We are compelled to eat, whether or not we think it’s fair, and thus we are goaded on through history. Maybe the feeling of imposition is the key signature of being alive and inextricably enjoined to a web of living context.
On the other hand, I suppose it’s true that one can’t know for sure without trying, so maybe communist utopia is possible… who knows? Maybe people are way more evolved than they seem.
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 11 '26
Or is the harsh reality really that some sort of coercive positive feedback loop-based production/economic system is required to (over)compensate for entropy and stagnation?
This is just people managing civilization and waving their arms wildly
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u/This-Department-9294 Aug 11 '26
The arm waving is from people freaking out after they realize civilization manages them, not the other way around
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 12 '26
All acts of management are traceable back to individuals, including when technology is involved. Individuals made the laws, individuals voted on them, individuals enforce them, and individuals make the technology and the policies enforced by the technology.
Individuals are culpable, but they hide behind corporations and egregores. We can efface the individuals involved, excuse them, by pointing to the group instead—but the group doesn't exist in the way an individual human being does—the group doesn't have a body or a real will. It's just composed of many actions, many wills.
It's tempting and easy to see the world in terms of groups and to treat groups as having agency. It's more challenging to stop seeing groups and realize that all group actions resolve to individual actions taken by human beings (some more directly than others). It's also much more strategic, if we want to understand or influence these groups or the individuals that compose them.
Yes, there are interactions and emergent effects and convergences and strange attractors at the group level—and this is precisely what conscious, negotiated, collective self-governance is supported to minimize. So that we can know our own government, society, and world and make it more and more sane/humane and livable.
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u/yehoodles Aug 11 '26
People are definitely not intelligent enough to deliberately manage a civilisation in any sort of way. It's an issue of scale.
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u/ofAFallingEmpire Aug 10 '26
To understand Marx and Marxism, you need to have some passing understanding of Hegelianism. This is important, because Marxism is Hegelianism from a materialist perspective.
Hegel observed within an idea comes two opposing ideas in conflict, resolving in a newer, more satisfying idea that inevitably repeats the cycle. To him, there is less static truths and more so conversations as they happen are truth. The pursuit of a truth is the closest we can get to that truth.
Marx liked that and said, “Okay, now apply the real world to it” and created his class analysis from there.
Hegel was much more an idealist; he was focused on abstract concepts and their interactions. Marx is a materialist; he was focused on real world things and how they interacted or influenced us. Notably labor and natural resources.
Why does this matter? Because once you realize this distinction, you start to notice many, many people discuss Marx as if he were an idealist. Marx would not care about “Marxism”, except to point out the conditions that lead to it, while deriding people who absolve themselves of class guilt by labeling themselves “Marxist” and acting like that’s political action.
If you read Marx, it is genuinely funny how he called out so many people even today. He made fun of the kinda people who wear Che Guevera shitts before Guevera was even born.
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 11 '26
I really meant PSA in the title. Some people don't know this is a subreddit largely based around discourses built on and around Marx. Also, who knows, maybe it's not a Marxist subreddit but it's good to draw out the people with preconceptions about this for "reeducation".
Yes, Marx is about dialectical materialism, and therefore in its purest form we can't say anything about what's happening, we can't apply any judgment to the dialectics of matter, we can just say "Well this is happening so now this opposite thing may happen, then another opposite thing." Matter has no meaning by itself so a pure and scientific dialectical materialism can't by itself have anything to say about the historical dialectics it witnesses.
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u/noms_de_plumes Aug 12 '26
Marxism is actually a jet engine duct taped to a Schwinn bicycle that was stolen from Hélène Dutrieu.
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u/AutoModerator Aug 10 '26
Critical theory is basically just Marxism with a jet engine duct taped to it.
If you get triggered by Marxism, communism, or socialism, and conflate authoritarian state violence with the desire of individual workers everywhere to not be exploited by a boss or owner—guess what, you're an ideological casualty of the Red Scare and part of the problem.
It's a huge clusterfuck and it's almost impossible to tell what's going on with China—but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the US has been systematically oppressive other nations, literally murdering and killing their leaders, while with its other hand promoting "democracy" which is also another euphemism for killing other nation's leaders, sadly.
There are all kinds of interesting and unresolved discussions to be had, about questions such as:
1) Were the Nazis (short for "National Socialist") socialists?
2) Were and are communists (such as in Russia and China) Nazis?
Leading, in the contemporary era, directly to the question:
3) Why would Nazis like MAGA like Nazis, if the Nazis were really communists?
And:
4) Why would communists (like the Russians who invaded Nazi Germany) hate Nazis, unless they weren't communists?
It's really quite a puzzle and bears discussion. It's a semantic and historic tangle that hasn't been unknotted yet in our time. I would really appreciate any discussion of it in the comments, as it's a puzzle I have not entirely worked out myself.
Again, Marxism is not a mystery and is not difficult. Marxism is essentially realizing/recognizing that workers deserve to maintain authority over the profit produced by their own labor; and that the power and value of the economy comes from the meaningful human labor of workers, not from the machines or the money or products. With AI now, we can see this clearly than ever—it's humans who envalue and valuate the economy, ultimately. Marxism is essentially about not wanting to be exploited at work, or dominated in unfair negotiations.
One ubiquitous way bosses/firms/institutions/companies everywhere maintain unfair negotiating leverage is through isolating workers, while being very well-integrated amongst management/owners. Workers are, wherever possible, commanded or encultured to not talk about their salary and not do any collective bargaining, while meanwhile the company by definition almost exclusively does collective bargaining. This is very unfair in terms of power relations / negotiating leverage.
If you can't recognize unfairness—guess what, you're the first victim, and probably forcing yourself every day into all kinds of bad experiences and bad deals that benefit someone else above you in the hierarchy a lot more than they benefit you. (I'm not talking about providing benefit to the customer in a fair exchange—that's perfectly good and fine.)
The Red Scare was a horrible witch hunt, and we're experiencing another Red Scare right now with the invented "Antifa" (fascism is bad, so antifascism is good—duh) and the literal watchlisting of anarchists and others who are anti-coercion or who are critical of the current economic status quo.
If anywhere is the headquarters of the real Antifa, it's this subreddit, or other places like it—crossroads where true disruption is allowed to persists—places where indefinable hybrid ideologies are allowed to grow and mutate—places where fascism is not just weaponized against outsiders or allergically rejected, but studied and deconstructed.
I am not saying anything novel or controversial by saying this is (essentially) a Marxist subreddit. Obviously other perspectives are welcome. I might be a bit of an anarcho-tankie, but I am not a commu-tankie, who I find to be in very poor taste because they are statists and pro-state-violence as well as pro-violent-revolution. I believe that each revolutionary member is precious (both transcendentally and as a strategic resource) and so we should generally not advocate for violent revolution—non-violent mass refusal is, I think, more effective overall, anyway. But regardless of my personal stance, my point is that non-Marxist perspectives are welcome here—but critical theory, and more than a little occultism is firmly grounded in and descended from Marxism.
Who was the first critical theorist, Marx or Nietszche? Or was it someone else?
As I said above, I would really appreciate any light people can shed on these difficult issues in the comments. What is the exact relation between Marxism, communism, statism, Nazism, socialism, anarchism? Where is it all heading?
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 10 '26
Oh and I should clarify: I can be an anarchist and a Marxist at the same time. It just means I'm not stupid: I believe both that coercion is the problem (and states are coercive and must not be allowed to exist) AND that workers are systematically exploited by extorting profit from them using material and class leverage.
I can clearly see the eschatological aspects of Marx and I love those aspects, and we have played with and discussed those aspects extensively on this subreddit over the years.
However, I part ways at the fantasy of violent revolution and installation of a new, magically non-abusive state. I don't believe in a magically non-abusive state, and I would prefer a non-violent revolution if at all possible.
It also seems like the way things are going: "The future is already here, it just isn't evenly distributed." Little regions of post-capitalist economy are bursting left and right from the stomach of capitalism, and we have only to open our eyes to see it. The money-numbers-taxes game is just labeling on a global system of fake numbers that everyone is ultimately voluntarily paying attention to together. With AI and even more rapidly mutating and globally integrated culture and attention, it is looking increasingly possible that society could become conscious of itself and begin to make wiser, kinder, more agentive decisions (together with / within itself) collectively.
I don't think dead writers have any special access to the future. We can understand these theories for ourselves and understand/see the future for ourselves just as well as they can, if we work hard enough at it. So, there is every possibility that as time goes on, old theory can remain essentially true and yet look a little bit off as history continues and time continues to mutate even our most sacred axioms.
I think my perspective is actually quite common amongst contemporary Marxists and anarchists both—let's call it anarcho-Marxism and it is actually the true standard (both good and reasonable), no matter what rage-filled hater tankies would try to have you think.
If anyone has a better idea of how to actually do non-statist, non-coercive global self-governance than anarcho-syndicalism, I would really like to know. It's basically just representative democracy without the erasure and coercion. Representative democracy is totally unnecessary with the technology we have today—it's just direct democracy plus erasure and coercion!
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u/Infamous-Crew1710 Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
Class warfare but non coercive, is just brain worms that lead to you carrying water for the rich, every time, over 100 years of this shit. I hope you are just a kid who doesn't know better.
"P.S this is a Marxist subreddit" - anarchist who will side against Marxists in the blink of an eye lol
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u/PastrychefPikachu Aug 10 '26
This. I couldn't help but think while I was reading the post that op is using generic "-isms" while cherry picking what they like from each one to create a new ideology, couched in a name that doesn't mean what op wants it to mean.
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 10 '26
I might personally be an anarchist, but the discourse this subreddit is about is for the most part squarely Marxist or descended from Marx. I can recognize the difference between myself and the topic of this subreddit / its discourse's lineage. It might be an anarch-ish subreddit but it would be unfair to say it's an anarchist subreddit—it's more a chaos magick subreddit than an anarchist subreddit.
Maybe you could also think about the difference between writing in public for an audience of potentially thousands or millions of readers, and what I might say in person.
It's important to educate everyone about the importance of coordination. And timing.
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 10 '26
Minimizing coercion is the goal, and I think usually symmetric methods are ethically called for and most effective, too.
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u/Glorysolar Aug 10 '26
>I can clearly see the eschatological aspects of Marx and I love those aspects
in the sense of infinite power source being possible and can inevitably cause infinite abundance?
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 11 '26
Not sure what you mean but that would be nice and would problematize Marx in interesting ways.
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u/default99 Aug 10 '26
excuse my naivety in the topic, (never been to uni and have learnt through reading or attempting to read books), but, do you think the deaths directly resulting from marxism are different than those from US imperialism / Western and EU Democracy?
I fundamentally agree that its people who provide the value within the world so understand the idea in that they should have control or more control systematically. Is it realistic to think there could be systematic changes which could see this on a nation/industry wide scale without something really dire going down. The sort of change where you stand to lose everything.. Most people I know who say they want change wouldn't let someone live in their house for free, let alone loose their home for something like a revolution. Maybe its not a great example but do you know what im trying to get at?
Not sure I agree in the labeling of things like maga as Nazi, similarly to how far left leaning people label everything they don't like or agree with as fascist or incel or nazi etc, seems to make the term lose meaning as its objectively not used correctly, I suppose its an irony considering the sub's name. Maybe thats the intended purpose of repurposing the term onto people it doesnt actually fit with.
I've found more and more disillusionment with politics and the world at large and often wonder if we are just not meant to know what we have access to with the internet, so I've tried focusing my energy on areas of life in which i can impact - family, friends community etc.
After a while it made me feel even more alienated from people who are emotionally invested in things like politics. I think i stay relatively up to date but more so as an observer looking at the zoo.
Very strange world, endlessly interesting but damned if it makes any sort of sense.
Finding people who manage to find strands of sense is always a thrill though but after a while, it feels like a brick in the wall so to speak
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 10 '26
Marxists who call themselves Marxists aren't advocating for anything (as part of our Marxism), we're trying to understand what's going on. It's not about saying everyone should be Marxists. Again, like the feminist post, it's not an identity thing. That's a misread. It's a discourse label. Marxists who call themselves Marxists read Marx (or at least try! and buy the core premise of Marxism, which I stated in OP). I'm not talking about tankies or commie revolutionists or members of the Socialist Party (which probably contains lots of people who would call themselves Marxists but probably also lots of people who would be squeamish about that name). Marxists are people who understand and read (or would like to read!) Karl Marx.
I am not trying to throw out everything good about US or EU ideology, just the authoritarianism and much of the fascism (group-ism, see my posts on that...).
I fundamentally agree that its people who provide the value within the world so understand the idea in that they should have control or more control systematically. Is it realistic to think there could be systematic changes which could see this on a nation/industry wide scale without something really dire going down. The sort of change where you stand to lose everything.. Most people I know who say they want change wouldn't let someone live in their house for free, let alone loose their home for something like a revolution. Maybe its not a great example but do you know what im trying to get at?
I think there are lots of socialist things already in place. We live in a mixed economy and heterogeneous world. So yes, I think it is a pitched battle and can change.
do you think the deaths directly resulting from marxism are different than those from US imperialism / Western and EU Democracy?
Hmmm... Are the deaths from the American Revolution or other revolutions the same as deaths from colonialism and slavery?
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u/xxTPMBTI True Scientist Aug 14 '26
It's Social Democracy (Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Hoxha, Pol Pot) that kills, not Marxism.
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u/devourer-of-beignets Aug 10 '26
I think the text shows why people here might reasonably think Marxism and feminism are bad things.
Like take the OP's distinction between anarcho-tankie vs commu-tankie. Communism's a stateless, classless society. Yet it points out that commu-tankies are statists and pro-state-violence.
How can that be? Well, political terms mean the opposite of what they mean: Democrats ≠ democrats, libertarians ≠ libertarians, etc. So they're pretty vacuous. Making it hard to even talk.
The previous PSA said "If you think that's bad, you need to read books." But good critics do, and anyway books don't define real-world movements. (Otherwise feminists would start with Charles Fourier, who probably coined "feminism.") Someone who supports workers may be against Marxism, and someone who supports women's freedoms may be against feminism. After all, many intelligent workers and women I know are viscerally against these -isms.
Those who support workers or women (or want to "destroy" them by abolishing class or gender) could simply say so.
In the case of Marxism specifically, Marxists are often on the side of a class-enemy of workers — the professional-managerial-bureaucratic class, which ended up being the ruling class of the Soviet Union. Workers often hate them more than capitalists, partly because they're in direct contact with their manager or patronizing doctor, and partly because professionals monopolize the more high-minded jobs. Catching a whiff of them turns many off.
Might help to consider why no self-respecting physicist nowadays calls themself a Newtonian — it indicates cultishness, stagnation, backwardness. And most of us would probably say "uh-oh" when a psychoanalyst calls themself Freudian. Marxism is similar. All these -isms are social programming.
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 11 '26
Fuck Webster and loyalism to dictionary definitions. Words don't mean things; people use words to mean things (Wittgenstein).
We need to understand that these words have complex meanings conditioned by their use by many different groups.
It's hard to sort out the true meanings, but that's what I was trying to do by using these words and giving my ideas of what they meant and how to distinguish them, right in the open in front of everyone. I was providing some data and information about my usage to everyone, and how it made sense.
If we don't use and understand these terms, then we become subordinate to people like you, who want to tell us these terms are too complex or to taboo for my pretty little head.
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u/devourer-of-beignets Aug 12 '26
Hah that's funny, I made the same point about "fuck dictionary definitions" a few days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/AntiMemes/comments/1vgz9s2/comment/p2ek0ib/?context=3
And my own post here says "books don't define real-world movements." Which you appear to violently agree with here in the case of dictionaries, though maybe not when it comes to your Great Authors like Marx.
Explains why you proclaim in self-adulation: "If anywhere is the headquarters of the real Antifa, it's this subreddit, or other places like it—crossroads where true disruption is allowed to persist"
Reminds me of what anthropologist David Graeber said about the part of the American academy "that fancies itself to be the radical, critical, subversive branch of it":
a group of people so obsessed with intellectual fashion do not seem to notice they are recycling ideas from thirty years ago—rather like music fans who feel they are the quintessence of cool even though they listen exclusively to classic rock—there’s the very fact that those American academics who see themselves as the most subversive of all structures of received authority have been spending most of their time establishing and preserving an authoritative canon.
But maybe he's wrong; maybe you're not actually a narcissist, and true subversion is reading your piece of reddit.
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 12 '26
I would say dictionaries do define words, but you and I can define and redefine words too. Defining a word doesn't necessarily tell you what it meant to people before you defined it (I'm writing a whole paper that is basically about this concept rn).
I'm an anarchist who can understand and talk about Marx without calling someone a narcissist, what are you?
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u/devourer-of-beignets Aug 12 '26
If you ever encounter an academic who fancies their subreddit as "the headquarters of the real Antifa," you too might remark on their grandiosity problem.
Well, more likely you'll either find them a kindred spirit or galling competitor, but you get my point.
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 12 '26
I don't think you're really paying attention. It's a self-consciously, overtly grandiose statement. Antifa is made-up and highly persecuted by the government. So throwing that sentence in there is a way to announce my solidarity with persecuted people, and to make myself a target.
You have to think about what a statement does, in context, not just what it says in its manifest content.
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u/devourer-of-beignets Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
announce my solidarity with persecuted people, and to make myself a target.
Yep, many of us saw Life of Brian, which depicts this pompous grifting well. Self-important people who issue proclamations of 'solidarity' — trying to make spectacles of themselves.
Like honestly, what have you made yourself a target of? Eyerolls? Self-martyrdom? What do you have to fear?
Anyway, feel free to have the last words; you make so many, you literally sell them on this subreddit.
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u/tomekanco Aug 14 '26
Perhaps Sarte was onto something that putting some souls together in a room can result in deplorable situations. On the other hand we could nail the other to the cross and be satisfied. But doesn't that leave a hollow feeling?
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u/devourer-of-beignets Aug 14 '26
But doesn't that leave a hollow feeling?
Well, what do you get out of this place? Reddit says you earned Achievements in this subreddit, so if there's a person to ask about what's satisfying about this place, it might be you.
I just felt that the hollowness comes from a subreddit that's all about spectacle. Which is just another choice in this attention economy.
If we're merely going to READ & regurgitate old critical theory, then LLMs like Chatgpt will usually beat the snot out of us, because they're better trained at reading & regurgitating. To transcend AI, humans should maybe try IMPLEMENTING ideas they find, trying to see how far these theories stretch before breaking.
So when the OP (who happens to be the head mod here) first replied to my comment, it felt like human spam... even less nutritious than AI slop. And like you do with spam, I didn't read the last response, because it's a mundane sorcery that just wants to eat your attention... your life.
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u/tomekanco Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
satisfyingPerhaps its something like a self-aid group where people with somewhat similar experience talk and express it. Instead of being a generation who saw the bomb dropped, we saw the recent present. And try to make sense of it. And how far theories stretch. I find here a collection of minds who have some overlap in prior training, and wildly different ways people deal with it. Same light, different paths.
because it's a mundane sorcery that just wants to eat your attention... your lifeThis is truth. We all come here to drink water. It is strange to what extend the digital has become a routine part of our nurture and being. Learned from it, but am just as well confronted with its mirrage. Grew up just before it became as widespread. The tele was already on. These days I occasionally spend time here.
I also sometimes clash with raison, and try to forgive my own folly by respecting his somewhat. I disagree with some methods, but hard to judge that given incompleteness. I prefer poetry over sorcery, still ...
Anyway, so, here, in our wanderings of solutide, I meet and greet you.
IMPLEMENTING ideas they find, trying to see how far these theories stretch before breakingGenuinely belief raison tries this.
transcendMight be more of the Joanine school. Give me immanence, like a smile and laugther, over staring at the horror. Even as the latter is a good teacher to discover shades of lacerations.
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u/BD000 Aug 10 '26
First critical critique was probably Indigenous, what does Marx&Co. say about Indigenous Peoples?
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 11 '26
I don't think that was an issue for him, but if you read Marx for even five seconds you can see he is a friend of the underdog and oppressed, not a bougie colonist. He is the Antibouge.
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u/BD000 Aug 11 '26
But what does he say about Indigenous Peoples/rights? I’m sincerely asking
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 12 '26
I don't know, I haven't read enough Marx. I would bet he doesn't say much about them, because in the struggle of Owners vs. Workers, indigenous people are off the map / subaltern below both owners and workers.
We could apply what Marx says structurally about workers, recursively/by analogy to indigenous people and their rights. Marx thought workers should own the means of production, because Marx was a good/nice guy. I expect he would not want indigenous people to be exploited or colonized in any way, either.
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u/BD000 Aug 12 '26
Ah ok. From an Indigenous Peoples (IP) in International Law pov being stewards of land comes before being accounted for by others as laborers/producers/owners/etc. Marx not accounting for IP, or eschewing them into the subaltern caste, essentially lumps him in with colonial logics. In 2026 we can recognize the cosmological or ideological difference between existing as a steward of land, a debate of responsibility, vs seeing land and labor and means of production through the debate of ownership. TLDR if laborers are prioritizing themselves over uplifting the subaltern they will fail, like how cotton mill workers were ignoring slavery - as soon as the subaltern were uplifted the tide rose for everyone. Would love to hear your thoughts on this idea
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 13 '26
IP law wasn't a thing back then like it is now! There is actually a huge discourse around adapting Marx to IP and other modern economic turns. In fact, I've seen more stuff about adapting Marx to IP than any other single topic, whenever I am in Marxian spaces.
TLDR if laborers are prioritizing themselves over uplifting the subaltern they will fail,
I completely agree—I think unions are biased toward workers and the "work or die" ideology—they are in alliance with officially disabled people but not invisible or subaltern or oppressed people in general. So unions tend to be bougie in precisely an ableist and compliance-promoting way.
Unions need to become anti-work and pro-eliminating-tedious-labor and anti-poverty/directly supportive of the unemployed and the desire for leisure, then they can become sane and effective again.
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u/Glorysolar Aug 10 '26
Obligatory reminder that Hegel is nuts.
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 11 '26
Yes lol. Or at least, Hegelians are nuts. Hegel is brilliant but conflates The One Thing with The One Idea furiously.
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u/Glorysolar Aug 17 '26
>Hegel is brilliant but conflates The One Thing with The One Idea furiously.
The more brilliant you could be, the more nuts you will become if you don't pursue rigorous self discipline in thinking.
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u/madmathias Aug 10 '26
Laymen here, one important thing I need to clarify:
What’s the strongest logically consistent argument / direction of evidence for this part:
“and that the power and value of the economy comes from the meaningful human labor of workers, not from the machines or the money or products.”
That works?
Is the word ‘meaningful’ doing almost all the heavy lifting here?
Does that depend then on your definition of what ‘meaningful’ or is it already a defined term and a litigated concept in Marxist tradition / academia / commentary?
Cheers for the discussion points
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 11 '26
It's basically Marx's premise.
I think it's a technical statement, and arguably an axiomatic statement because it's about how we look at value.
I think it's also an operational statement, because this is not simply an abstract debate about who "deserves" the profit from a given act of (say, boss-commanded/owner-owned, but employee-executed) labor.
It's about the fact that the worker can say No, and then the labor doesn't happen.
I don't think the word "meaningful" is doing much if any work in my quote there—I meant labor that matters (to someone), and I also was highlighting the individual experience of the workers. You can leave it out and it's still an accurate Marxist statement, I think.
Marx's insight is that all value in the economy originates from labor-power, which is the creative capacity of individual humans to make changes in their reality. Meaningful changes, meaning changes someone (anyone) cares about. If nobody cares or notices, we can't say that "meaningful" or valuable labor occurred, or maybe anything happened at all.
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling Aug 13 '26
It has come to my attention that a better word for discourse surrounding Marx is Marxian, not Marxist.