If the class struggle is objectively real, and knowable by science, isn't it going to be perceived first and most deeply by the best social scientists? And under capitalism, aren't the best scientists going to come from those who are best educated, ie, the bourgeoisie?
A reason i read psychology books is to hopefully learn about how my id might break free from its chains and overwhelm me... I want to be Prepared...The intellect in the service of repression is a repressive intellect...(as logic & reason are said to be functions mainly of the brain's left** hemisphere that's probably where the Intellect resides... (***leftism = left hemisphere dominance ?)...
I’ve always enjoyed the clarity and the brutal simplicity of your critiques and questions. I wish intellectuals were more preoccupied with the very straightforward questions regarding their own existence as a class than the Marxology of the transformation problem or the Law of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, not to speak of the more recent idiocy of Intersectionality et cetera.
In my reading, however, Marx - in contrast to Marxism - is not so much a materialist as a historicist. He is terrible at what was later called Phenomenology; his linguistic-philosophical reflections in the German Ideology are awful („the thinking mind produces sounds that form words“). Consciousness, despite the triumphant exclamations to the contrary, was never explored. And yet, Marx never pretended he did. As you correctly say, that was his biggest shortcoming, as Marx never was a great theorist of „class“ to begin with (the manuscript of Capital ends with the unfinished chapter on class).
Thanks for highlighting this problem with such honestly. If anything, it should help us explain why even the best people with the noblest, most critical intentions against the ruling liberal-left order always end up defending that order.
Hi BC, always appreciate your posts. This one has inspired me to make comment.
– Do you think this critique (Gouldners) applies to Marxism outside the West, where it has been much more successful as a political form, as opposed to simply an intellectual one?
My instincts suggest that this is just the wrong way to approach the question i.e. not Marxist. Revolutions and states are successful for economic, political and military reasons, not because of the self-consistency of their ideological composition.
– Does Goulder's argument apply to figures such as Mao, or Pol Pot?
It seems to. Mao had extensive secondary education befitting a civil servant of any empire, Pol Pot was educated in French universities, etc.
Pompous empty-headed trivialities dressed up as profundities, as usual from Mr. Cryptofart...
All of this blathering can be answered with a few trite and obvious rebuttals.
The insights of the Marxist philosophy of revolution are not “””true””” merely from some contingent class standpoint, they are simply... true. As in true, regular dictionary definition, as in not false. Therefore these truths are capable of being comprehended by any rational mind that applies itself to understanding them. Class status notwithstanding. Just as no one’s class status prevents them from understanding how the law of gravity manifests in the trajectories of falling objects, no one’s class status is an absolute barrier to understanding that the origin of profit is surplus labor, etc.
Why do only a small section of the upper classes realize these truths? Because doing so requires concentrated study, yet also does not confer any personal advantage. Most of the upper classes don’t have time for wondering what the truth is; they’re too busy chasing personal advantage.
The dialectic is not some abstraction birthed in Marx’s head, so the contradiction you posit simply does not exist. Marx’s philosophy does not “originate” with Marx; it is merely him studying and writing down the actual movement of history. The origin of the Marx’s philosophy is the practice and theory of the working classes struggling for freedom and self-determination. So the premise of your whole article is wrong: it doesn’t originate in the upper classes.
Sure, the working and struggling masses who inspired Marx’s philosophy probably can’t verbalize everything involved in such an erudite fashion as Marx, replete with literary references and so on. But all that is merely a question of presentation and style. The substance of the philosophy is not a creation of Marx but a *discovery* by Marx. When one realizes this the need to throw out these silly gotchas disappears.
In the same way, Hegel’s dialectic has its origins in the French Revolution. So it is quite false to say that Hegelian philosophy is a child of the upper classes just because Hegel is upper-class.
Again, you seem to have forgotten that Marxist philosophy is *actually a true scientific description of the world*, while you seem to mistake it for a special genre of rhetoric that is particularly useful in rabble-rousing. If you understood that Marxism is not rhetoric but science.
A modern economy circulating products and services throughout the world doesn’t need money or sovereign countries (national currencies) to be successful. Today, we’ve the scientific knowledge and technological skills to convert our natural and artificial resources into daily, life-sustaining deliverables: food, housing, education, healthcare, infrastructure, employment, and other important demands. What we lack is unity, a global framework built upon fair and humane laws and safe and healthy industrial practices. I hypothesize that humanity can end poverty and reduce pollution by abandoning wealth and property rights, and instead adopt and implement an advanced resource management system built to provide “universal protections for all”. Replacing traditional political barriers altogether, this type of approach, which I named facts-based representation, allows us a better way to govern ourselves and our communities. In other words, collective decision-making processes based on the latest information that, in turn, improve the outcomes impacting our everyday personal and professional lives.
First of all, what exactly do you think is a “utopian socialist”? What do you think was the basis for Marx to differentiate himself from them? I’m curious about your answer here because your brief comment about “utopian socialism” being “able to appeal” to the “simple truth” of socialism is cryptic, but smells tantalizingly of some serious crazy.
Let me come back to that, but regarding the rest of it, I gather that when you say “value-based” you are using the word value in the sense of “a person's principles or standards of behavior; one's judgment of what is important in life.” With that said I am trying to make sense of what you think it means for a theory to be “the consciousness of the proletariat”.
Can the consciousness of the proletariat not be “value-based” as in based on principles and judgements as to what is important?
Can the consciousness of the proletariat not consist of “simple truths”?
Is there, to you, a sense in which Marxism (“the consciousness of the proletariat” if you must) is false, or not accurately portraying reality?
Because this is the only way I can make sense of your comment:
You think Marxism is not actually true; it is rather, as I put it before “”””true”””” in some mysterious way only as the “consciousness of the proletariat” (ie not actually true, but perhaps closer to the rabble-rousing rhetoric I mentioned before, that is, useful) but not as “simple truth”. And a utopian socialist is someone who makes the faux pas of actually believing that their theory is simply a true portrayal of reality, with not caveats?
If the class struggle is objectively real, and knowable by science, isn't it going to be perceived first and most deeply by the best social scientists? And under capitalism, aren't the best scientists going to come from those who are best educated, ie, the bourgeoisie?
A reason i read psychology books is to hopefully learn about how my id might break free from its chains and overwhelm me... I want to be Prepared...The intellect in the service of repression is a repressive intellect...(as logic & reason are said to be functions mainly of the brain's left** hemisphere that's probably where the Intellect resides... (***leftism = left hemisphere dominance ?)...
I’ve always enjoyed the clarity and the brutal simplicity of your critiques and questions. I wish intellectuals were more preoccupied with the very straightforward questions regarding their own existence as a class than the Marxology of the transformation problem or the Law of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, not to speak of the more recent idiocy of Intersectionality et cetera.
In my reading, however, Marx - in contrast to Marxism - is not so much a materialist as a historicist. He is terrible at what was later called Phenomenology; his linguistic-philosophical reflections in the German Ideology are awful („the thinking mind produces sounds that form words“). Consciousness, despite the triumphant exclamations to the contrary, was never explored. And yet, Marx never pretended he did. As you correctly say, that was his biggest shortcoming, as Marx never was a great theorist of „class“ to begin with (the manuscript of Capital ends with the unfinished chapter on class).
Thanks for highlighting this problem with such honestly. If anything, it should help us explain why even the best people with the noblest, most critical intentions against the ruling liberal-left order always end up defending that order.
Hi BC, always appreciate your posts. This one has inspired me to make comment.
– Do you think this critique (Gouldners) applies to Marxism outside the West, where it has been much more successful as a political form, as opposed to simply an intellectual one?
My instincts suggest that this is just the wrong way to approach the question i.e. not Marxist. Revolutions and states are successful for economic, political and military reasons, not because of the self-consistency of their ideological composition.
– Does Goulder's argument apply to figures such as Mao, or Pol Pot?
It seems to. Mao had extensive secondary education befitting a civil servant of any empire, Pol Pot was educated in French universities, etc.
Pompous empty-headed trivialities dressed up as profundities, as usual from Mr. Cryptofart...
All of this blathering can be answered with a few trite and obvious rebuttals.
The insights of the Marxist philosophy of revolution are not “””true””” merely from some contingent class standpoint, they are simply... true. As in true, regular dictionary definition, as in not false. Therefore these truths are capable of being comprehended by any rational mind that applies itself to understanding them. Class status notwithstanding. Just as no one’s class status prevents them from understanding how the law of gravity manifests in the trajectories of falling objects, no one’s class status is an absolute barrier to understanding that the origin of profit is surplus labor, etc.
Why do only a small section of the upper classes realize these truths? Because doing so requires concentrated study, yet also does not confer any personal advantage. Most of the upper classes don’t have time for wondering what the truth is; they’re too busy chasing personal advantage.
The dialectic is not some abstraction birthed in Marx’s head, so the contradiction you posit simply does not exist. Marx’s philosophy does not “originate” with Marx; it is merely him studying and writing down the actual movement of history. The origin of the Marx’s philosophy is the practice and theory of the working classes struggling for freedom and self-determination. So the premise of your whole article is wrong: it doesn’t originate in the upper classes.
Sure, the working and struggling masses who inspired Marx’s philosophy probably can’t verbalize everything involved in such an erudite fashion as Marx, replete with literary references and so on. But all that is merely a question of presentation and style. The substance of the philosophy is not a creation of Marx but a *discovery* by Marx. When one realizes this the need to throw out these silly gotchas disappears.
In the same way, Hegel’s dialectic has its origins in the French Revolution. So it is quite false to say that Hegelian philosophy is a child of the upper classes just because Hegel is upper-class.
Again, you seem to have forgotten that Marxist philosophy is *actually a true scientific description of the world*, while you seem to mistake it for a special genre of rhetoric that is particularly useful in rabble-rousing. If you understood that Marxism is not rhetoric but science.
A modern economy circulating products and services throughout the world doesn’t need money or sovereign countries (national currencies) to be successful. Today, we’ve the scientific knowledge and technological skills to convert our natural and artificial resources into daily, life-sustaining deliverables: food, housing, education, healthcare, infrastructure, employment, and other important demands. What we lack is unity, a global framework built upon fair and humane laws and safe and healthy industrial practices. I hypothesize that humanity can end poverty and reduce pollution by abandoning wealth and property rights, and instead adopt and implement an advanced resource management system built to provide “universal protections for all”. Replacing traditional political barriers altogether, this type of approach, which I named facts-based representation, allows us a better way to govern ourselves and our communities. In other words, collective decision-making processes based on the latest information that, in turn, improve the outcomes impacting our everyday personal and professional lives.
#ScientificSocialism
First of all, what exactly do you think is a “utopian socialist”? What do you think was the basis for Marx to differentiate himself from them? I’m curious about your answer here because your brief comment about “utopian socialism” being “able to appeal” to the “simple truth” of socialism is cryptic, but smells tantalizingly of some serious crazy.
Let me come back to that, but regarding the rest of it, I gather that when you say “value-based” you are using the word value in the sense of “a person's principles or standards of behavior; one's judgment of what is important in life.” With that said I am trying to make sense of what you think it means for a theory to be “the consciousness of the proletariat”.
Can the consciousness of the proletariat not be “value-based” as in based on principles and judgements as to what is important?
Can the consciousness of the proletariat not consist of “simple truths”?
Is there, to you, a sense in which Marxism (“the consciousness of the proletariat” if you must) is false, or not accurately portraying reality?
Because this is the only way I can make sense of your comment:
You think Marxism is not actually true; it is rather, as I put it before “”””true”””” in some mysterious way only as the “consciousness of the proletariat” (ie not actually true, but perhaps closer to the rabble-rousing rhetoric I mentioned before, that is, useful) but not as “simple truth”. And a utopian socialist is someone who makes the faux pas of actually believing that their theory is simply a true portrayal of reality, with not caveats?