Marxism as an Evolving System

This post will make a bit more sense if you’ve read the preceding one.

A Few Strengths of Marxism’s Meta-Ideology

As a system of thought, Marxism has a number of remarkable and laudable aspects.

First, it knits together social technologies at every level, carefully considering how they fit together.

Second, with mystical love it considers how these social technologies, called ideology as a whole, should consider and respond to all international developments. They want to know how to think. The incredibly tedious task of how minor doctrine responds to minor political occurrences is their bread and butter.

Third, Marxism has a truly global scope which makes all international events of personal importance. You care about an uprising in some godforsaken hamlet on the other side of the world not just because those are your comrades, but also because your success or failure depends on theirs.

Liberal capitalism can see that an election or natural event will have knock-on effects to industries in which one has invested, but their ability is not as strong as the Marxist ability to see global-local-personal connections. I do not have a name for this ability other than global economic systems thinking.

Fourth, they have a wonderful consideration of the Marxist system of thought as a whole and how it should evolve.

Fifth, and related to the first few points, their ideology is a thoroughly modern one. They cared about electricity, would have cared about computing, cared about economics. It is a religion of the industrial age, and that’s a glorious thing.

In fact these days it feels rather steampunk. So retro, much Nikola Tesla.

Sixth, who you are, your thought and feelings, depends on where you come from, your class. Your very interests, they argued, are determined by your economic class. This argument (which I will consider in more depth elsewhere) makes the grand course of history personal, as Christianity makes abstract metaphysics personal. The marvelous way Marxism places dry economics in your very psyche is underappreciated.

And you work out your salvation in fear and trembling. As Czeslaw Milosz pointed out, the intellectual feared that work outside the Marxist paradigm would be consigned to the dustbin of history. Ideally Marxism evolves as a system of thought - Hegel, remember - and so your had to contribute to this flow of history or be left in an evolutionary dead end.

Seventh, they pioneered radical movements under extreme pressure, and their discipine and techniques must be admired.

Eighth, they were without any prejudice toward race and nationality (in theory anyway, in practice the Russians were the master race of the Soviet Union). The God That Failed shows how attractive this was to oppressed minorities.

One or Two Downsides, Skipping the People-Dying Bits

All of this is offset by Marxism’s calcification and inability really to consider any viewpoints outside their own, by their infuriating bureaucratic language, extreme use of jargon, and nasty attitude toward anyone who did not hail from a proletarian family.

(You’ll note I’m skipping the whole Gulag Archipelago thing, and am taking an academic approach)