[RD] What does Marxism offer?

[Mouthwash]

Everything I hear from Marxists and cultural Marxists (the microaggression crowd) seems to simply be a critique of society as it exists today. Sure, the the rich exploit the poor, but also white people are inherently privileged and racist by default, taking music or art from other cultures is oppressing them, and expecting your children to go to church or have a family consisting of a wife, husband and their children is a form of hatred against people who don't want to do that.

Literally everything American society rests upon is evil in the eyes of the new progressives. Elvis was inspired by African-American music, so that makes him complicit in the oppression of non-whites. Any permeation of Christianity into public life must be stopped, because it isn't fair to the non-Christians! The settlement of North America was an act of genocide and just as bad as the Holocaust.

But music is immeasurably better for what Elvis did, and the world is just as much better for the staggering wealth and opportunity that American settlers gave us. Even if you think that it wasn't worth depriving black musicians of recognition or brutalizing Native American tribes, millions of people have had their lives built by these things. Marxists in universities haven't given them anything but scorn.

Hey, you know why women have been seen as homemakers and men as breadwinners for as long as we've had civilization? Because that mode of organization is really, really effective. Categorizing people by biology or religion or even race isn't simply to exclude a perpetually oppressed caste of undesirables, it's to make a society function. Destroying an existing system is easy - what's not is building a workable system to replace it.

I want Marxists to answer: what are you giving people? How will they organize themselves after nationalism disappears, how will culture evolve after it is all apportioned to its originating group, how will children be raised after you destroy the nuclear family, what will they believe in when religion is refuted, how will resources be allocated without a market?

 

[Zkribbler]

Are there any Marxists here?

new progressives

I don't know how "new" they are. Marxism is a 19th-century philosophy.

 

[Mouthwash]

Are there any Marxists here?

There are indeed self-described Marxists, and I use 'cultural Marxist' to refer to those who think the patriarchy is a thing.

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

Marxism offers you the modern world where commoners are so free economically and legally, compared to the world prior Marxism influenced it. You can even call yourself a Marxist without being one and agitate for crazy ideas without being publically whipped.

 

[Synobun]

I don't think I've seen anyone you describe label themselves as Marxist. Why are these people Marxists, exactly?

 

[Mouthwash]

I don't think I've seen anyone you describe label themselves as Marxist. Why are these people Marxists, exactly?

You mean people I call cultural Marxists? Because their beliefs (outside of the economic sphere) seem wholly Marxist to me.

 

[demiurgenext]

In what sense are people who believe that the patriarchy is a thing cultural marxists? What does that term even mean? I see it bandied about regularly, and it appears to be simply 'something I don't like' just the same way as communist and fascist are attributed.

 

[Honor]

Everything I hear from Marxists and cultural Marxists (the microaggression crowd) seems to simply be a critique of society as it exists today. Sure, the the rich exploit the poor, but also white people are inherently privileged and racist by default, taking music or art from other cultures is oppressing them, and expecting your children to go to church or have a family consisting of a wife, husband and their children is a form of hatred against people who don't want to do that.

Literally everything American society rests upon is evil in the eyes of the new progressives. Elvis was inspired by African-American music, so that makes him complicit in the oppression of non-whites. Any permeation of Christianity into public life must be stopped, because it isn't fair to the non-Christians! The settlement of North America was an act of genocide and just as bad as the Holocaust.

But music is immeasurably better for what Elvis did, and the world is just as much better for the staggering wealth and opportunity that American settlers gave us. Even if you think that it wasn't worth depriving black musicians of recognition or brutalizing Native American tribes, millions of people have had their lives built by these things. Marxists in universities haven't given them anything but scorn.

Hey, you know why women have been seen as homemakers and men as breadwinners for as long as we've had civilization? Because that mode of organization is really, really effective. Categorizing people by biology or religion or even race isn't simply to exclude a perpetually oppressed caste of undesirables, it's to make a society function. Destroying an existing system is easy - what's not is building a workable system to replace it.

I want Marxists to answer: what are you giving people? How will they organize themselves after nationalism disappears, how will culture evolve after it is all apportioned to its originating group, how will children be raised after you destroy the nuclear family, what will they believe in when religion is refuted, how will resources be allocated without a market?

I think you just bundled up quite a few things you cannot relate to and created an imaginary strawman. Presenting these as discussion points could be more productive instead of starting the conversation off with a boogeyman label. - i.e. as it is, anyone replying to any of your points would automatically assume the role of a "cultural Marxist", from at least an emotional perspective, as perceived at least by yourself.

This makes, at the very least, myself, reluctant to reply to the thread, even though I can see where you are coming from, but would offer an alternative perspective.

 

[Perfection]

The question I have is not what Marxism can offer, but what it can deliver.

 

[Mouthwash]

In what sense are people who believe that the patriarchy is a thing cultural marxists? What does that term even mean? I see it bandied about regularly, and it appears to be simply 'something I don't like' just the same way as communist and fascist are attributed.

I think you just bundled up quite a few things you cannot relate to and created an imaginary strawman. In my humble opinion, presenting these as discussion points could be more productive instead of starting the conversation off with a boogeyman label. - i.e. as it is, anyone replying to any of your points would automatically assume the role of a "cultural Marxist", from at least an emotional perspective, as perceived by yourself.

This makes, at the very least, myself, reluctant to reply to the thread, even though I can see where you are coming from, but would offer an alternative perspective.

I know of no 'official' way to label those people, but I think their views are quintessentially Marxist. They think that our society's methods of categorizing people are designed to exclude a whole segment of the population from the same opportunities.

The question I have is not what Marxism can offer, but what it can deliver.

Marxism will never get off the ground if it doesn't offer something in place of what it destroys.

 

[Senethro]

I think there are better terms that could be used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School#Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory

 

[Honor]

I just made a graph to better illustrate what I think is going on with you disagreeing with "cultural Marxists":

You are in Zone 1 or 3, and you dislike/don't get people from Zones 2 and 4.

 

[Mouthwash]

Um. I get the feeling that's supposed to mean something?

 

[Honor]

Um. I get the feeling that's supposed to mean something?

In summary: You are culturally programmed for competition (Zones 1 and 3). You may be emotionally adapted to it, too (Zone 1). So you will not get why people are acting outside the parameters of the reality that you are experiencing.

Note that the bottom part of Zones 3 and 4 will contain a lot of broken people in the United States.

 

[Honor]

And to answer your original question, while ignoring your opening post, Marxism offers less Competition.

 

[Mouthwash]

So your response to my question is to apply an idiosyncratic and unasked for psychological profile to me?

 

[Honor]

So your response to my question is to apply an idiosyncratic and unasked for psychological profile to me?

That was not my intention at all. This is not about you. It is a framework. A simple one. One cannot talk about what Marxism offers without talking about Competition. Coincidentally, my framework also happens to explain why you don't care much for Marxism.

 

[El_Machinae]

To be fair, the OP is conflating two things that might not deserve to be conflated. But I won't deny that there's an extremist wing to the progressives, one that doesn't seem to offer any actual progress, merely pain. I really, really like the term 'Regressive Left', and I mourn its abuse as a term, since it will be meaningless by the time I actually want to use it.

I don't think that Marxism offers much, but I've been less-than-impressed by the majority of Marxists I have interacted with. But it does allow the creation of a moral framework that allows some wealth redistribution, which is a good thing insofar as there are certain instances of a capitalist economy where wealth redistribution becomes necessary - not only from a human suffering perspective, but also from a sustainable-growth perspective.

The Regressive Left is annoying, I'll grant. But the Progressive Left has done a lot of good in the world. If you look back through two centuries, you can see a LOT of instances where we're glad that the liberals won their cultural victory. I view the Regressive Left as part of an idea-generating machine, where they notice injustices, and we then mull them to see which ones have fruit. And then we decide to also push for the ones where they're correct. Conservatives perform a similar function, where they note the negative effects from previous efforts and then warn about the negative effects of current efforts. And that way we trundle forwards slightly more informed than we could have been without this two-pronged analysis.

 

[Lexicus]

The question I have is not what Marxism can offer, but what it can deliver.

That's why I cannibalized the useful parts of Marxism while discarding the dogma.

 

[metalhead]

Everything I hear from Marxists and cultural Marxists (the microaggression crowd) seems to simply be a critique of society as it exists today. Sure, the the rich exploit the poor, but also white people are inherently privileged and racist by default, taking music or art from other cultures is oppressing them, and expecting your children to go to church or have a family consisting of a wife, husband and their children is a form of hatred against people who don't want to do that.

Your persistent strawmanning in opening posts rather betrays the pretense that you actually care about having an open dialogue.