If Marx says revolutions come from material contradictions, not magic ideas, why did Marxists think vanguards, coups, or “class consciousness” can start one? Isn’t seizing the state to continue commodity production but harder just idealism/productivism in red paint, dialectically how is that supposed to lead to the abolition of capitalist wage-labor relations? Did no 20th century leader understand Marx?
>>18532045Marx was a cult leader for secularists.
>>18532045Marx thought of Communist as the successor to Classical Liberalism. Communists in the 20th century came from third world shitholes, which is why they were often associated with vanguardism. In a lot of cases it was actually just the old order but with a fresh coat of red paint
>>18532045>If Marx says revolutions come from material contradictions, not magic ideas, why did Marxists think vanguards, coups, or “class consciousness” can start one?I think the original idea was that the working class itself *is* the vanguard. And the working class needed its own party, which expresses the working class' own self-consciousness developing from its position in the economy. But this became confused a lot in practice because you ended up with a party running the government and focusing on productivism like you said without the average worker really having any input into what was going on. But it's also difficult to run a national economy around mass meetings and ideological struggle inside factories (that really happened though).It might be a stretch but think of Morena in Mexico:https://youtu.be/oshW9SIgevYBut not that much of a stretch. It started as a mass "movement" first and was taking over the country before they shifted into a "party" form, which they did when they deduced (correctly) that they could run and win the presidency (and did, twice). Also yeah there was a coup in Russia in 1917 but there were also armed battalions of revolutionary soldiers and workers stationed around Petrograd who could do that. A big portion of the navy. There are a lot of leftists in the U.S. or the U.K. though or some other places that is like "we need a party" and then they form some sect that has no effect at all.
Also in terms of "material conditions," Marx was really not so deterministic and he warned people about not reading him too dogmatically (he refused to call himself a "Marxist" as well). This is a crude, really oversimplified thing (although Stalinists also engage in it). "Marxism" is really more like a constraint-and-possibility analysis of historical action so there are material conditions that structure what's possible and what's not, but people do more or less whatever within those limitations and there are no determined outcomes. Like obviously you can't have a proletarian revolution without a proletariat, so you need a certain level of material development for that to happen (in theory). Socialist ideas also emerge from within a bourgeois capitalist society (in theory). That's my reading of it anyways.
>>18532045Marx also said Napoleon III would not engage in foreign ventures, the agriculture under his rule would stagnate and he would have to use the army against the peaseants. Marx said many things, doesn't mean they were right
>>18532045Revolutions don’t come from «material contradictions», they come from class conflict. Material contradictions in Marx’s analysis mean that 2 social groups have some irreconcilable conflict over a socio-economic aspect of the organization of production. By themselves there is no definite event that is meant to spark from these contradictions, they set up the possibility for a social revolution to come. Your framing is essentially saying «if revolutions come from social dissatisfaction, why is it that revolutionaries believe in attempting a coup»>>18532157Very rare and good post of someone who actually understands Marx
>>18532050Thank you
>>18532205>Very rare and good post of someone who actually understands MarxMaybe a little but thanks. Well I think a lot of "Marxists" and anti-Marxists wrestle with some kind of unified grand complete political vision of Marx, but that doesn't really exist. Also his theories changed over time because events would happen in ways he didn't anticipate in his own life. This just, like, blows people's minds though. Like either that means Marx was "wrong" (he was debunked!) or the people saying this about Marx are themselves anti-Marxist because they read too much of the Frankfurt School after the CIA bought them lunch.
>>18532205>someone who actually understands Marxkek, not even certified Marxists understand him. They spend their whole lives arguing about his true meaning.No one knew (that's different than understand) Marx better than the actual Russian Soviets. It still amounted to nothing, because:>contradictionsThere are no more contradictions between employers and employees than between buyers and sellers of any other products; it's just normal transaction where people seek the common ground for it to happen. The guy knew squat about economics and then it gotten worse.
>>18532231The grand unified version of Marx is how he's treated by the postmodernists though I think they're probably responding to the Marxists around them at the time who are now mostly forgotten.
>>18532281NTA but there are different takes on Marxism the same way there are different takes on any prominent thinker. Marx is hardly more problematic in this regard than, say, Kant.
That's just how they dialectically justify seizing power to others.To the communist, objective truth is not real.Dialogue to them is not a cooperative exercise in discovery and learning about truth, but a power struggle where one party tries to manipulate the other into doing their will.Their entire ethos, and all their rhetoric from Marx himself on, is based on this understanding that truth is only as real as a lie is effective at deception.The useful idiots might really believe in their propaganda, but the enlightened communist knows better.They know, that power is an end unto itself. To these ends, the utopia of "classless society" is a useful lie.
>>18532045> why did Marxists think vanguards, coups, or “class consciousness” can start oneThey don’t. Lenin was the one who came up with the idea that Vanguards can direct a revolution so that it accomplishes something other than simple violence
