What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Razgovory]

If you look at the background of American socialists and Marxists in the late 19th and early 20th century, it's a very mixed group in terms of education and background.  Many didn't finish high school and many worked low level industrial or trade jobs.  Some did have more middle-class backgrounds but a typical example would be someone like Gene Debs who worked as a clerk in his father's grocery store but also was a high school drop out who worked as a laborer in a rail yard.  The idea of a typical Marxist as an upper middle class academic in a university is really importing late 20th century stereotypes back into an earlier period.  There weren't very many Marxists at Harvard or Yale in 1900.  You'd be more likely to find them in small Midwestern cities with petit bourgeois or working class background, or among the ranks of European and Jewish immigrants in the big eastern cities working in the garment trades or related businesses.

This also raises the question of what is means to be Marxist; Marxism-Leninism was mostly unknown outside Russian circles until 1919 and even after that was only one tendency of Marxist influence thought.

I didn't think Eugene Debs was a Marxist.  There were certainly non-Marxist socialists, but who had but a student has the time or inclination to wade through Das Kapital?  I couldn't help but notice that most of the Bolshevik leaders came to Marx not through the factory but through the class room.  It seems that the Marxists were for workers, at least in rhetoric, but not workers themselves.  Workers certainly adopted radical politics, but especially before the Russian revolution they took other paths such as anarchism and syndicalism.  

[Valmy]

I didn't think Eugene Debs was a Marxist.  There were certainly non-Marxist socialists, but who had but a student has the time or inclination to wade through Das Kapital?  I couldn't help but notice that most of the Bolshevik leaders came to Marx not through the factory but through the class room.  It seems that the Marxists were for workers, at least in rhetoric, but not workers themselves.  Workers certainly adopted radical politics, but especially before the Russian revolution they took other paths such as anarchism and syndicalism. 

Ok. 

But you don't need wealth or go to a classroom to be a Marxist if you would like to be one. I just handed you the entire library of Marxism for free in multiple languages.

Why are we having this conversation anyway? We haven't had a Marxist on this board in years.

[celedhring]

I don't know. I'm thinking of Spain's most influential Marxist (Pablo Iglesias, founder of our Socialist party) and he famously came from a destitute family. He had little education but apprenticed as a typist, became a labor organizer, and ultimately became pals with Paul Lafargue (Marx's son-in-law), who was in Spain as an agent of the International.

Obviously at some point or another if you were a labor organizer in the mid-late XIXth century you had to interface with someone educated to learn about Marxism, but it seems disingenous to me to attempt to paint it as an ideology of the elites.

[crazy canuck]

Labor unions are to labor what corporations are to capital. They both exist to serve a specific function for a specific group of people and both are often counterproductive due to a focus on short-term results.

Yeah, both are subject to short term pressures, and both are capable of great things if they can overcome that problem.

[Norgy]

Why are we having this conversation anyway? We haven't had a Marxist on this board in years.

 

[Norgy]

I didn't think Eugene Debs was a Marxist.  There were certainly non-Marxist socialists

He was. Yes there were.
Can we end this circle of arguments now?

There is a difference between Marxist thought and Marxist-Leninist thought with a vanguard of the revolution of intellectuals. I think you may be confusing them.
Even conservative historians are prone to materialism and some degree of class analysis.

And let us not forget Karl Marx first and foremost was a historian. He analysed recent events, like the 1848 failed revolutions, using Hegelian dialectics and what I would call a heap of historical evidence.

The Communist Manifesto is just a small part of his work.

And why the fuck are you all of a sudden on a Marxist witch hunt?

[Razgovory]

I don't know. I'm thinking of Spain's most influential Marxist (Pablo Iglesias, founder of our Socialist party) and he famously came from a destitute family. He had little education but apprenticed as a typist, became a labor organizer, and ultimately became pals with Paul Lafargue (Marx's son-in-law), who was in Spain as an agent of the International.

Obviously at some point or another if you were a labor organizer in the mid-late XIXth century you had to interface with someone educated to learn about Marxism, but it seems disingenous to me to attempt to paint it as an ideology of the elites.

It's not for the top elites, but the lower level elites who would like to replace the top guys.  Marxism, with it's obscure jargon and statistics, appeals to people who like weird jargon and statistics: bureaucrats, professionals, clerks, etc.  Those professions hadn't been closed off to people without the proper credentials as much as they are now, but they are still elites.

[Razgovory]

I didn't think Eugene Debs was a Marxist.  There were certainly non-Marxist socialists

He was. Yes there were.
Can we end this circle of arguments now?

There is a difference between Marxist thought and Marxist-Leninist thought with a vanguard of the revolution of intellectuals. I think you may be confusing them.
Even conservative historians are prone to materialism and some degree of class analysis.

And let us not forget Karl Marx first and foremost was a historian. He analysed recent events, like the 1848 failed revolutions, using Hegelian dialectics and what I would call a heap of historical evidence.

The Communist Manifesto is just a small part of his work.

And why the fuck are you all of a sudden on a Marxist witch hunt?

I am not on a witch-hunt and I don't think that Marxists have the monopoly on materialism or class analysis.  I said I wasn't wealthy enough to be a Marxist.  This is not to mean I can't afford to read books by Marx, but to mean that it's adherents tend to be better educated and wealthier than I am.  Like you.

[Norgy]

There are libraries. Surely some have "Das Kapital".

[Sheilbh]

There were certainly non-Marxist socialists, but who had but a student has the time or inclination to wade through Das Kapital?  I couldn't help but notice that most of the Bolshevik leaders came to Marx not through the factory but through the class room.  It seems that the Marxists were for workers, at least in rhetoric, but not workers themselves. 

I think Russia is a particular case.

The class room for most of the Bolsheviks was Siberia - which was grad school for the malcontents of the Russian Empire. But also you could apply this to literally every movement in Russia because of the class structures and history there. The leadership of the SRs, for example.

But I think you keep gliding between having appeal to workers and having leaders who are workers. So even in the Russian case the Bolshevik base was the factory and the soviets that declared in the revolution. That was their source of power in Petrograd during the revolution compared to the other groups they were fighting against like the SRs.

Workers certainly adopted radical politics, but especially before the Russian revolution they took other paths such as anarchism and syndicalism. 

No-one disagrees with that. It's your line of argument that workers adopted radical politics except for Marxism - which just isn't true. I take Gups' and others points on the SPD but it was a party that emerged from Marxist thought and was very influenced by it - it was also the largest political party in Europe overwhelmingly with a working class base.

I think you're applying a post-60s/professional-managerial class style characterisation of Marxism and Marxists to the past in a way that's really anachronistic.

[Razgovory]

I think you're applying a post-60s/professional-managerial class style characterisation of Marxism and Marxists to the past in a way that's really anachronistic.

I am, but I don't think it is entirely off.  The Marxists of Russia were a minority, the SRs were the big party of socialists.  Even in Petrograd where the Bolsheviks took power, they weren't taking power on the back of Marxist slogans, but rather slogans about land distribution and peace.  Land redistribution programs they never intended honor, of course.  Were the workers that supported them Marxist?  I don't know know, but I doubt many of them had a good grasp of the Hegelian Dialect.  That was for the educated party members.  As the workers (and certainly the sailors), rebelled against the Bolsheviks they probably weren't fully on board with Marxism.

[Norgy]

I think you are expecting a lot from illiterate Russian sailors and peasants.
Hence the Leninism.

Say what you will, he saw that if a revolution was to happen, it needed people like him. Or just him.

Having read Marx, I'd say any worker in the 19th or 20th century would have had a hard time making sense of any of it.
It's like the cool kids in 80s that had read Ayn Rand and knew what the world needed. More of the same.

Now. Raz.
I am no expert.
But I feel you are barking up the wrong tree here. Marxist students in some campus aren't the problem.

The hugely bigly orange man in the White House is.
He is, as an analogy, czar Nicholas II. Clueless and with sycophants as advisers. Some say JD Vance "nailed it" when he said Europe is decreasing the freedom of speech.

I would disagree. Look at what happens at your universities.
While I'd only enter "gender identity studies" at gunpoint, I believe that in a civilised society, we discuss, we move the debate forward, we end up in compromise, then a new thing comes up, and we do it the same way.

Man, I've really gotten soft after 50, haven't I.

VIVA LA REVOLUCION! 

[Josquius]

Don't underestimate 19th century workers intelligence.

Worth noting education tended to be pretty restricted based on wealth so quite a lot of people who if born in our time could have made a good shot at going to top universities and getting top jobs, ended up in t'mill instead.

This probably describes a fair few of the early Labour MPs

Though I do suppose they would then give a filtered down version for their peers. But even then I expect they were better at grasping these things than a lot of modern people as they didn't have reality TV to just plonk themselves in front of.

I guess it helped too back then that people didn't all have main character syndrome. They were a lot more willing to/capable of recognising when someone amongst them had a good head on his shoulders.

Marx was definitely popular amongst working class people in Britain at least. Do I need to post some miners banners?

[Sheilbh]

In Britain the utopian socialist strand is too strong. So even the most Marx-aligned/inspired groups in the 19th century would still have at least one Christian socialist and almost certainly William Morris

[Razgovory]

I think you are expecting a lot from illiterate Russian sailors and peasants.
Hence the Leninism.

Say what you will, he saw that if a revolution was to happen, it needed people like him. Or just him.

Having read Marx, I'd say any worker in the 19th or 20th century would have had a hard time making sense of any of it.
It's like the cool kids in 80s that had read Ayn Rand and knew what the world needed. More of the same.

Now. Raz.
I am no expert.
But I feel you are barking up the wrong tree here. Marxist students in some campus aren't the problem.

The hugely bigly orange man in the White House is.
He is, as an analogy, czar Nicholas II. Clueless and with sycophants as advisers. Some say JD Vance "nailed it" when he said Europe is decreasing the freedom of speech.

I would disagree. Look at what happens at your universities.
While I'd only enter "gender identity studies" at gunpoint, I believe that in a civilised society, we discuss, we move the debate forward, we end up in compromise, then a new thing comes up, and we do it the same way.

Man, I've really gotten soft after 50, haven't I.

VIVA LA REVOLUCION! 

The czar was already tossed out by the time Lenin showed up.  It certainly didn't need him and the whole thing would have better off if the Kaiser dropped Lenin and his crew in the ocean rather take him to Russia.

You raise two interesting points, first the Universities and free speech.  Josq posted something where in Britain a women was tossed in jail for 10 months for a tweet.  The majority of Britons were either cool with it or wanted a longer sentence.  I get the impression that these are the same people who are unhappy that Palestine Action was proscribed.  I don't think it dawns on them this is basically the same issue.  In the US we typically don't toss people in jail for posting unpopular things on the internet, so it does seem weird to us.  The issue with US universities is fairly similar, the people who complained about Trump threatening free speech at Elite institutions were the same ones that were fine with deplatforming speakers they didn't like.  Oex and Jake were saying some nasty things 10 years ago when they where arguing the need to fire administrators in Missouri for offensive pranks (someone had thrown some cotton balls on the ground and protesters demanded that the President of the University be fired for this terrible affront) in the name of making the minority students feel safe.  It was very striking for me to see them do a 180 on more recent campus protesters that made other minority students feel unsafe.  They were hardly alone.

The other thing you posted about Marxist students.  That isn't the problem per se', but rather their social class is what Trumpism is rebelling against.  The failure of the professionals is why we have Trump.