sometimes I feel I'm *too* into Marx. it's true, Marx was in fact wrong. Marx was wrong in many places, the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, his vulgar mechanistic materialism of historical materialism as well as the ableist asinine concept of the 'lumpenproletariat' ; not only is Marx wrong but he is also severely lacking in terms of further social critique, this was 2 centuries before people would seriously analytically think "hmmm, but what if like... black poor people have different issues to just poor people? what if like... there are intersections?". Marx never lays us out an example of what the FUCK to even do, defining communism in dialectical terms merely as the negation of capitalism, that's all well and good but Marx chief, WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!?! and this comes back to his vulgar materialism, for Marx history is already set in stone, capitalism WILL just become communism eventually due to the instability of capitalism and the OONLY thing that can happen when capital collapses, to Marx, is communism. "We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things" literally just means "communism is just whatever comes after capitalism by negating it"
so why do I take a clearly too orthodox Marxist perspective at times compared to most? I'd have to say it's because, frankly, most nobody on the left has actually read and or engaged with marx and just doesn't *get it*. Marx is a wall, he's not easy to read and even his easy works were written literally 150 years ago in old German that was then translated into victorian English that isn't easy to read at all. not only that, but these ideas are HUGE concepts to understand, and so people misunderstand them entirely through learning via the grape vine in the most watered down ways. the fundamentalism of returning to Marx is in contrast of the revisionism of later Soviet and Maoist thinkers who completely became the anti-thesis to Marx, where Marx says X they do Y, where Marx says abolish this they retain it with trappings of 'the revolution', and so a return to Marx to start over with a new line of Marxists is, to me, far more useful.
@CornishRepublicanArmy I like what you have to say, but I counter with this: with Marxism being so flawed, and later iterations of authoritarian communism often being simply opposition of marx's ideas exterior where most convenient, why can't we create new ideas that are separate and original from both of those. My anarchism is born of personal experience with some understanding of capitalistic systems. What, in your opinion, makes it necessary to understand marx to defend those positions?
@CornishRepublicanArmy I think that having a lot to say about something doesn't make someone necessarily correct about it. I agree that marx put forth a lot of good investigation and explanation into the mechanics, but if it's so opaque to modern readers, and so flawed in so many ways, what is gained from using that as a foundation rather than building something new for a modern generation?
@Anarkat it's not just a case of sheer volume, it's that mechanisically what Marx lays out in Capital in terms of the analysis of a commodity, his ideas on alienation, his ideas on the hegemonic nature of capital, historical forces as they have exsisted on the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (even if he then takes this in a deterministic way, the idea itself at it's base is solid). these aren't just the rantings of a madman, they're the basis for all leftwing thought that came after him, both libetarian and authoritarian. Marx has defined the left in the era after him, for better or for worse, and that's not just a case of some ideas having caught on as say with Mao, but because these ideas have a solid basis.
the illegibility of Marx is hardly a reason to throw the baby out with the bath water. I could easy sit down with enough time and transcribe Capital into modern English, and one of the things I do here on the fediverse is I take what I have learnt over the years through my deep investigations into theory and history and translate that for people who haven't the time, mental energy or understanding to sit down and crack open the life and times of Danton, State and Revolution, and even Capital I've broke down the analysis of the commodity before (the focus of chapter 1 of capital)
I do say we redefine the basis of leftwing thought for a new generation, I merely say that we tongue in cheek evoke the dialectic and synthesis something new out of the fundamental flaws of the old, and to do that first I must understand as much as I can. new doesn't mean better just as much as longdoesn't mean good either, the substance of what those things are is what the focus of our investigations ought to be. and while the new ideas are interesting and do tackle some great ideas, like say ecological sustainability, why good are those ideas when the mechanics of capital still exist in the end because nobody sat down to understand how M-C-M is the basis on which all exchange opperates? or how commodity production is the seed from which all capital grows, poising outwards once more like a weed no matter how much you thought you cut the plant back in your supposed 'revolution'. a full and total destruction requires a reading and integration of the good of Marx into it
@Anarkat I say we ought to make new ideas, but ideas still founded in that scientific socialism of Marx. the apple may be bruised, but the fruit isn't rotten to the core. it's important to understand the ideals of Marx and work off of those because, nobody else has EVER set out in as much detail what capitalism is in each and every detail and mechanistic part as Marx did in Capital. he was right as much as he was wrong, and those flaws can be changed with our hindsight to produce something new, it is up to us to do so through self education and further analysis and critique of all that exists. my Marxism isn't personal to me persay, but it's born out of years of being beaten the fuck down by society and investigating the one core question to it all 'why shit be like it do?', and that's what hegel, marx, lenin ect attempted to answer, and I wish to continue that line of thinking as much as I can