I really do hate the attitude that some people have that you’re not a “real Marxist” unless you work 18 hours a day slaving away in a factory somewhere, with no education, barely able to read and write. Like, what do they think the vanguard party is for? Not everyone has the luxury of education, and some people get an education and are well off, but understand that it is a great injustice that so many people are deprived of that, and try to make a difference.
Back breaking hard labor does not equal a communist. My dad is a butcher and it tore his body up and he’s a reactionary.
I had a second paragraph talking about the idea of “if education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor.” but I couldn’t really quite connect it back to the first paragraph, but I’d say “no education” is just about the least liberating it could possibly be.
With no education, it is difficult to even conceive that a different world is possible, and extremely easy to fall prey to word or number games.
Anecdotal, but I’ve been in or around a lot of different radical orgs over the years, and the core members tend to be over-educated downwardly-mobile, semi-proletarianized, precarious semi-professionals. Like adjunct professors or lab techs or anything-medical-tech or semi-permanent substitute teachers or etc. All these positions that either didn’t exist, or used to be much better, before neoliberalism. Just existing in that social layer really makes you deeply hostile to the entire system.
So yeah I guess my advice to young people is go ahead and get that PhD in environmental science you’re considering, and then work at the local water department for a few years until they sell the whole thing to Nestle or whatever, and then just see where your politics land.
Ruin your body so some guy on the internet will give you street cred, that’s a great idea!
Because no one with a college degree ends up being in a union, very big-brained take.
Petite bourgeoisie is whatever I don’t like the more I hate it the more petite it is
Hey my fellow radicals, it’s me, Federick Langley, your local Marxist revolutionary. Here’s a tip on how to bring about communism:
Are you a leftist in a position of higher social status? Do you have an annual income of over $100k or are you on track to get there? Are you pursuing higher education?
Quit! No true Marxist should ever be anywhere near a position of power or greater social influence. Work at an Amazon fulfillment center instead! The path to true leftist enlightenment is poverty and powerlessness. Only then can our beloved leader, radical communist Bernie Sanders, ever become president.
Cowabunga, hexbear! Federick Langley signing out!
Oh hey, big fan! Do you mind if I ask you a question? Me and the boys are going to go out and do some illicit activities in the name of the revolution soon, and we were thinking that we should let people know ahead of time what we’re doing, on all our socials, you know? That way as many people as possible can show up to help out, what do you think?
That’s exactly how to do it! In my long history of anti-american and antisemitic property damage, I have found that publicly announcing your activities ahead of time leads to much better turnout. Graham Platner and I have personally discussed this at great lengths.
Are you a leftist in a position of higher social status? Do you have an annual income of over $100k or are you on track to get there? Are you pursuing higher education?
Quit! No true Marxist should ever be anywhere near a position of power or greater social influence.
Shit, are you the one that’s been screaming this at me inside my head this whole time?
Colleges are largely liberal and most serious Marxist/socialist scholars are blacklisted (Parenti, Graeber, Lady Izdihar) but anyone who says “don’t go to college” is someone I don’t trust. College isn’t the only path to careers and isn’t the only place people learn. Community colleges offering welding and mechanic certifications are also just as legit as universities. That kind of elitism is toxic. But people who have the means to go do learn and usually become better humans because of it, even if from nothing else but osmosis and being around different groups of people. College liberals arts professors working as adjuncts at 4 different institutions simultaneously are not class enemies. There’s huge differences in degree from those to ivy professors spending all their time getting MIC grants for weapons research.
Ibrahim Traore has a geology degree. Xi Jinping has a degree in chemical engineering and further education in Marxist theory. Graeber had a degree in anthropology. Castro had a law degree. There’s a reason education is one of the first things socialists focus on after taking power.
Also “marxist professor” could mean they’re an econ ghoul who knows all about Marx in theory, but are not a Marxist themselves. There’s a lot of those.
Yeah, there’s a vast difference between community colleges and some shitty private university that’s full of nepos and legacies. Community colleges tend to be more working class due to not being outrageously expensive. Plus, you get a more representative societal slice. You have young people who are there to transfer to another university after getting their AA degree, you have middle-aged people (re)entering college to get a degree for career advancement, and so on. The professors at community colleges are a lot less dipshitty in terms of accommodating your schedule since the vast majority of community college students are working.
Also “marxist professor” could mean they’re an econ ghoul who knows all about Marx in theory, but are not a Marxist themselves. There’s a lot of those.
As a marxist who studied economics, I can assure you that there are almost no econ-professors who know anything about Marx at all. During my entire degree, I saw +/-5 pages about marx, which was given in a “history of economics”-course in a “Economics used to be shitty like this, but now, we have figured out the best way to model everything: the neoclassical way”-way. The fact that I even had a “history of economics”-course means that my university is considered quite heterodox and openminded compared to the standard situation in many econ)departments.
The rare marxist econmist you do see, is someone who I would consider very valuable, even if they’re not engaging with activism or party building. For example, Anwar Shaikh, produces extremely interesting stuff.
Fair, I could have been off base with that last comment. He was talked about quite a bit in my philosophy degree, and I know was also discussed in religion classes, sociology, and even a little bit in business to the point that one of my business major friends was reading Capital. But he was completely uninterested in the “social or moral” content, and wanted only to know what as said about “the economy”. So I know it happens where some majors are exposed, maybe think they know a lot about Marx, but don’t engage with his work in any meaningful context or in a very deep manner.
To be fair, while ignoring the social content is ridiculous, a central element of Marxism is that it doesn’t base itself on moral arguments, however morally passionate its authors obviously are.
Sure. They just pretty explicitly rejected the idea of reading anything else because they weren’t interested in what people interpreted form his work or anything. Like reading Marx was pure and appropriate to their finance degree, but reading anything based on his work was not because then it entered the forbidden realm of politics.
That person should really be encouraged to keep reading Marx, you cannot not learn anything from it :)
Liberals are obsessed with aesthetics huh
Go to Circle K, get yourself two hot dogs
Eat half of one and throw the other out
Stay hungry
stop fetishizing poverty, the more classes we have allies across, the better.
Of course they’re a Maoist. I think there are Maoists who are in many respects very cool, but for some reason in the west it attracts some of the most annoying people, and I can only imagine a Maoist having this level of anti-intellectualism among nominal Marxists. I guess rarely it comes up with the more chauvinist Stalin fans who just do strawman Stakhanovism unironically, but even they usually aren’t this bad (in this respect, they are much worse in other respects).
Edit: So I know Mao said some things that, especially removed from the context of where and why he said them, feed into that anti-intellectual attitude, but he was also literally a teacher and said even after the revolution that that was how he wanted to be remembered. He obviously smoked a large portion of the intelligentsia following the Hundred Flowers campaign*, but the campaign only took place because of his strong belief in the importance of education and the development of socialist theory, something he believed in for all of his life.
*I’m not saying this to weigh in on whether he was right or wrong here, but for understanding trends in his attitudes
in my experience, a depressing number of western maoists haven’t actually read mao, and it shows.
There’s a weird phenomenon that happens to western maoists outside the Black radical tradition where they somehow transmute themselves into a kind of reverse Left Communism, where instead of despising the global south and AES they attempt to universalize historical conditions in the global south and apply them to the imperial core
Creating these bizarre expectations where apparently if we play our cards right a “peasants revolution” could totally be imminent in the United States
Really? Not even reading the Little Red Book and calling it theory? I admit that I haven’t met many self-identified Maoists myself, mostly I just read what they write.
You’re in for a fun time when you run into a Maoist who’s apparently only read Combat Liberalism.
As bleak as that would be, I genuinely think I could work with that. Combat Liberalism puts a huge emphasis on intellectual integrity, which is necessary for disabusing someone of things like the OOP.
*Only read the title of combat liberalism
Only read Combat Liberalism and constantly tries to get everyone to read it even though their audience has no chance of understanding it (just like them!).
my encounters with those people have admitadly been few, as well as superficial, so i might not be the best judge.
it’s just, that in my experience, they at times tend to be more about the vibe of maoism, than the actual substance. i was bringing up stuff from on practice during organisational stuff for some work my org did together with some local maoists and some of them gave the impression of not being familiar with the text, which left me somewhat shocked, lmao
i don’t live in that place anymore, so maybe they’ve since gotten better, idk
a lot of them are Gonzaloists
Socialism is when you’re destitute and unable to live a life of dignity
TIL Engels wasn’t a Marxist
This is a common Maoist position. Not even just imperial core Maoists. Maoists from India to the Philippines often say the same thing: academics is petty bourgeois, drop out and do armed revolution / organize an industry.
They have a bit of a point (academia can co-opt you into the greater liberal project) but are mostly just telling their most committed members to be less rich and flexible professionally which seems counterproductive to me.
Also Marxism isn’t a moral framework; being a worker isn’t “better” than being a capitalist or a renter. It’s en economical analysis.
The issue with renters and capitalists is when they fight to uphold capitalism, which some workers absolutely do as well.
Literally the best thing you could do as a Marxist, objectively, would be to become a billionaire and use the tools of the oligarchy to spread class consciousness to workers & finance Marxist political parties.
The only reason there are no good billionaires is that they instead prop up fascism to poison the politicla discourse away from class consciousness. But apart from that (and other things like their ecological impact, fighting unions, promoting capitalism etc) they’re no worse morally than a worker
Literally the best thing you could do as a Marxist, objectively, would be to become a billionaire
Nobody becomes a billionaire without a severely criminal level of depriving other people of the wealth they generate.
You can maybe (with a lot of luck) become a tycoon with wealth in the millions or tens of millions and propagate a model that funds revolutionary orgs. But if you’re making a career out of exploiting people for the lofty purposes of someday maybe ending exploitation, what are you doing?
one would think one would have an idea this shit been tried 200 years ago and 100 years ago and 50 years ago.
