Apr 6, 2023·edited Apr 6, 2023Liked by Benedict Cryptofash
Ok, now we're talking. My critique of you in "Theory, Ideology, and Critique" as well as in "Mastery vs. Students Supposed to Know" has officially come into question.
People are likely to refer you to the authors such as Popper or Schumpeter. I think the best way to critique Marxism is by immanent critique, not just these reductive dismissals. Of the most Marx-based anti-Marxists there are ones who focus on political application as opposed to critics who focus on the theory. Both are obviously essential. For me, they go (in no particular order)
Kolakowski's three volumes of Main Currents of Marxism
Fredric F. Bender's The Betrayal of Marxism
Paul Mattick's Anti-Bolshevik Communism (his "Theory as Critique" is a perfect companion to this next one)
Michael Heinrich's An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital
Moishe Postone's Time, Labor, and Social Domination
Non-Marxist indirect critiques that are absolutely fundamental to my own understanding: In philosophy: Being and Time and Totality and Infinity. In anthropology James Scott's Seeing Like A State.
In effect the value formers and German holocaustologists have turned Marxism into a giant inverted pyramid inserted into their own asshole with which they are able to practice Lutheranism and fight the "corruption" of the Church (reality), in the same way in which Germans destroyed Christianity after they first created it in Rome.
Please refer to the complete works of Glypticfille including the unpublished 4chan shitposting juvenalia & his mature critique of the Kraut "anti-Schmittian" Marxists in the twitter Nachlass, who think that one can defeat "the enemy" by means of otherworldly virtue, disorganized theoretical autism, Lutheranism basically, negation of the Roman "good work". The German anti-doer philosophical hebetude.
Michel Henry's "Marx: A Philosophy of Human Reality" and "From Communism to Capitalism: Theory of a Catastrophe" are works which sympathize greatly with Marx as a philosopher and submit Marxism as theoretical and political project to withering criticism.
Another interesting critique of, in particular, Marx’s labor theory of value can be found in Bichler & Nitzan’s Capital as Power: A Study of Order and Creorder. I think a PDF of this is available online. I can’t say I endorse the entirety of this volume - its discussion of what power actually is seems a bit incoherent to me - but I do think it does have some fundamentally accurate appraisals of the contradictions and elisions in the labor theory of value.
I very much look forward to this series of articles.
What do you make of modern "anti-left" Marxists such as Jehu? I remember an old blog post of his from almost a decade ago detailing many of the same sentiments in this substack.
For a clarification of the term “Marxism“ and its different readings in the East and West (both historically and systematically), this classic by old mate Ingo Elbe serves. It was originally published in Viewpoint, but don’t let that put you off. https://www.rote-ruhr-uni.com/cms/texte/Between-Marx-Marxism-and-Marxisms
"Why has Marxism, against its own theory, only won state power in less developed economies? Has conflict between the bourgeoisie and proletariat in fact been the decisive class struggle of the last two centuries, the engine of revolution? Does the revolutionary proletariat stand up as a historical-material phenomenon or did it emerge as a metaphor, only to be later backfilled with empirical content to conceal its romantic origins? Despite its recurring polemics to the contrary, is Marxism itself utopian?"
Amazing that you could be so succinct and so dead on in summarizing such a complex issue.
Maybe I'm just a retard, but isn't assuming from the start that the critique will only sharpen or demistify marxism while making sure to the reader that it will still be correct "in essence" a fool's errand? Like when some post-colonialist critics post colonialsim and only comes up with new bullshit to further obfiscate things or dunno like a company critiquing a CEO to only help him run the company better while ignoring the possibility of another CEO being a better maximizer of child labour?
Ok, now we're talking. My critique of you in "Theory, Ideology, and Critique" as well as in "Mastery vs. Students Supposed to Know" has officially come into question.
People are likely to refer you to the authors such as Popper or Schumpeter. I think the best way to critique Marxism is by immanent critique, not just these reductive dismissals. Of the most Marx-based anti-Marxists there are ones who focus on political application as opposed to critics who focus on the theory. Both are obviously essential. For me, they go (in no particular order)
Kolakowski's three volumes of Main Currents of Marxism
Fredric F. Bender's The Betrayal of Marxism
Paul Mattick's Anti-Bolshevik Communism (his "Theory as Critique" is a perfect companion to this next one)
Michael Heinrich's An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital
Moishe Postone's Time, Labor, and Social Domination
Non-Marxist indirect critiques that are absolutely fundamental to my own understanding: In philosophy: Being and Time and Totality and Infinity. In anthropology James Scott's Seeing Like A State.
In effect the value formers and German holocaustologists have turned Marxism into a giant inverted pyramid inserted into their own asshole with which they are able to practice Lutheranism and fight the "corruption" of the Church (reality), in the same way in which Germans destroyed Christianity after they first created it in Rome.
Please refer to the complete works of Glypticfille including the unpublished 4chan shitposting juvenalia & his mature critique of the Kraut "anti-Schmittian" Marxists in the twitter Nachlass, who think that one can defeat "the enemy" by means of otherworldly virtue, disorganized theoretical autism, Lutheranism basically, negation of the Roman "good work". The German anti-doer philosophical hebetude.
Michel Henry's "Marx: A Philosophy of Human Reality" and "From Communism to Capitalism: Theory of a Catastrophe" are works which sympathize greatly with Marx as a philosopher and submit Marxism as theoretical and political project to withering criticism.
Another interesting critique of, in particular, Marx’s labor theory of value can be found in Bichler & Nitzan’s Capital as Power: A Study of Order and Creorder. I think a PDF of this is available online. I can’t say I endorse the entirety of this volume - its discussion of what power actually is seems a bit incoherent to me - but I do think it does have some fundamentally accurate appraisals of the contradictions and elisions in the labor theory of value.
I very much look forward to this series of articles.
What do you make of modern "anti-left" Marxists such as Jehu? I remember an old blog post of his from almost a decade ago detailing many of the same sentiments in this substack.
For a clarification of the term “Marxism“ and its different readings in the East and West (both historically and systematically), this classic by old mate Ingo Elbe serves. It was originally published in Viewpoint, but don’t let that put you off. https://www.rote-ruhr-uni.com/cms/texte/Between-Marx-Marxism-and-Marxisms
WOW this paragraph really nails it --
"Why has Marxism, against its own theory, only won state power in less developed economies? Has conflict between the bourgeoisie and proletariat in fact been the decisive class struggle of the last two centuries, the engine of revolution? Does the revolutionary proletariat stand up as a historical-material phenomenon or did it emerge as a metaphor, only to be later backfilled with empirical content to conceal its romantic origins? Despite its recurring polemics to the contrary, is Marxism itself utopian?"
Amazing that you could be so succinct and so dead on in summarizing such a complex issue.
well if marxism has a bunch of innate contradictions then it ought to be thrown out.
See my posts "Anti-Engels" and "Feudalist Papers" for a full run-down of a "right-wing marxism" if you will.
A marxism that critiques itself, equals neo-feudalism.
Hey by the way I cannot seem to find our previous email exchanges. Can you email me at theorypleeb@gmail.com?
Maybe I'm just a retard, but isn't assuming from the start that the critique will only sharpen or demistify marxism while making sure to the reader that it will still be correct "in essence" a fool's errand? Like when some post-colonialist critics post colonialsim and only comes up with new bullshit to further obfiscate things or dunno like a company critiquing a CEO to only help him run the company better while ignoring the possibility of another CEO being a better maximizer of child labour?
IDK, you're probably right
Its biggest contradiction is with reality. Internal source? The occasions when Marx aspired to scientific work and paid attention to empirical data