I just finished reading an article published today by a write named David Josef Volodzko. He's written for various mainstream publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Bloomberg, as well as a few lesser known ones (details here: https://substack.com/@volodzko). I completely understand if no one here has heard of him- until recently, neither had I. He caught my attention a while back over some other subject and I've been following his substack ever since. His substack is focused primarily on writing about communism, fascism and radical movements. The article he published today on his substack is titled "You might be a Marxist if...", which after a bit of thought I decided wouldn't make the best title for a thread- some people might automatically assume that they couldn't possibly be Marxists and thus my thread wouldn't be worth reading.
I myself don't consider myself to be a Marxist and while I appreciate a lot of what David says on Marx and Marxist thought, he seems to be more fond of Marx and his work than I am. If I had to label myself as something, I think that democratic socialist has a better ring to it, but that doesn't mean that I can't appreciate the work of various people on the right wing side of politics, especially when it comes to criticizing government over reach such as a lot of things that happened during the alleged Covid "pandemic". Alright, with all that said, I'll now quote a bit of David's article from its introduction and from its conclusion and see if it elicits a constructive comment or 2...
**
On Wednesday, I published an interview with Freddie deBoer in which we discussed his new book, How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement, which you should read. Among other things, it explains why social reform stalls, how it can succeed and why the Black Lives Matter movement was a failure. One reader, Edward Lothman, commented:
To which deBoer himself replied:
Hi there, Edward. I began to write a reply but it was getting a bit long, so I decided to make a post of it and here we are. I hear what you’re saying about supporting an ideology that has killed countless millions. But it has been counted! This week, I interviewed Elizabeth Spalding, chair of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, who noted communism has killed over 100 million people and explained the breakdown. I’ll publish that interview soon and I hope you enjoy the discussion.
That said, I think you may be confusing Marxism with communism. More precisely, with Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism or other violent forms of communism. Not all communism is violent and not all Marxism is communist. In fact, I would go so far as to say most folks are Marxist, in a certain sense, because Marxist ideas have become so deeply embedded in society that people not only embrace them without recognizing them as such, they even view some as common sense. But it wasn’t always this way.
Strictly speaking, Marxism is a method of socio-economic analysis. Let’s consider a few of its major themes that are mostly taken as “well, duh” statements today.
First, there’s the materialist conception of history. Marxist theory considers material conditions to be the primary drivers of change. Our economic base, or the way production is organized in society, largely determines what Marxists call the superstructure—the social, political and ideological aspects of our world. If you change the way production is organized, you change the superstructure.
Consider the Agricultural Revolution. Around 10,000 BCE, humans went from nomadic hunting and gathering to farming and domesticating animals. That’s a change in the means of production. People then began to form permanent settlements, which became the first cities, allowing the development of complex societies. As agricultural surplus grew, the haves and have-nots became more distinct. This accumulation of wealth had to be protected, which led to the development of centralized governance and the rise of kings and armies. This gave way to great wars, which left corpses in dense urban environments, and some early faiths evolved essentially as funeral services with built-in purity rites. Urban hygiene, basically. Later, this was symbolized as spiritual cleanliness.
By the way, that last bit about early faiths was my master’s thesis.
So the means of productions changed and, as a result, we got urbanization, social stratification, political centralization, early monarchic rule and organized religious groups. So yeah, one could definitely say the superstructure changed.
[snip]
Yes, Marx used his analysis to advocate for communism, but you can absolutely use Marxist analysis without doing so. In fact, I dare say one can understand the modern world without being Marxist at least to some extent. Sure, you can say that despite the pervasiveness of Marxist thinking, it’s an oversimplification to suggest everyone is a Marxist simply because we all traffic in Marxist thought. But even if we reflexively reject the term, which seems a bit silly to me, we cannot avoid the influence of his work.
On a deeper level, you could also say that we not only use Marxist analysis, but we often use it for the same end. Not communism, but the hope for a collective well-being that shapes the horizon of our aspirations. In this light, perhaps, even if we reject communism, we still see our world through the lens he crafted and are bound by a vision he preached of a just and equitable world and, in that way, we are all Marxists.
**
Full article:
You might be a Marxist if... | volodzko.substack.com
I myself don't consider myself to be a Marxist and while I appreciate a lot of what David says on Marx and Marxist thought, he seems to be more fond of Marx and his work than I am. If I had to label myself as something, I think that democratic socialist has a better ring to it, but that doesn't mean that I can't appreciate the work of various people on the right wing side of politics, especially when it comes to criticizing government over reach such as a lot of things that happened during the alleged Covid "pandemic". Alright, with all that said, I'll now quote a bit of David's article from its introduction and from its conclusion and see if it elicits a constructive comment or 2...
**
On Wednesday, I published an interview with Freddie deBoer in which we discussed his new book, How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement, which you should read. Among other things, it explains why social reform stalls, how it can succeed and why the Black Lives Matter movement was a failure. One reader, Edward Lothman, commented:
I wonder how a person can be “a Marxist and a sharp writer” at the same time. Seems impossible to me. Anyone with brains knows that system has not and will not work - ever. It flies in the face of human nature, and is solely responsible itself for the killing of countless millions of people.
To which deBoer himself replied:
Eat shit.
Hi there, Edward. I began to write a reply but it was getting a bit long, so I decided to make a post of it and here we are. I hear what you’re saying about supporting an ideology that has killed countless millions. But it has been counted! This week, I interviewed Elizabeth Spalding, chair of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, who noted communism has killed over 100 million people and explained the breakdown. I’ll publish that interview soon and I hope you enjoy the discussion.
That said, I think you may be confusing Marxism with communism. More precisely, with Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism or other violent forms of communism. Not all communism is violent and not all Marxism is communist. In fact, I would go so far as to say most folks are Marxist, in a certain sense, because Marxist ideas have become so deeply embedded in society that people not only embrace them without recognizing them as such, they even view some as common sense. But it wasn’t always this way.
Strictly speaking, Marxism is a method of socio-economic analysis. Let’s consider a few of its major themes that are mostly taken as “well, duh” statements today.
First, there’s the materialist conception of history. Marxist theory considers material conditions to be the primary drivers of change. Our economic base, or the way production is organized in society, largely determines what Marxists call the superstructure—the social, political and ideological aspects of our world. If you change the way production is organized, you change the superstructure.
Consider the Agricultural Revolution. Around 10,000 BCE, humans went from nomadic hunting and gathering to farming and domesticating animals. That’s a change in the means of production. People then began to form permanent settlements, which became the first cities, allowing the development of complex societies. As agricultural surplus grew, the haves and have-nots became more distinct. This accumulation of wealth had to be protected, which led to the development of centralized governance and the rise of kings and armies. This gave way to great wars, which left corpses in dense urban environments, and some early faiths evolved essentially as funeral services with built-in purity rites. Urban hygiene, basically. Later, this was symbolized as spiritual cleanliness.
By the way, that last bit about early faiths was my master’s thesis.
So the means of productions changed and, as a result, we got urbanization, social stratification, political centralization, early monarchic rule and organized religious groups. So yeah, one could definitely say the superstructure changed.
[snip]
Yes, Marx used his analysis to advocate for communism, but you can absolutely use Marxist analysis without doing so. In fact, I dare say one can understand the modern world without being Marxist at least to some extent. Sure, you can say that despite the pervasiveness of Marxist thinking, it’s an oversimplification to suggest everyone is a Marxist simply because we all traffic in Marxist thought. But even if we reflexively reject the term, which seems a bit silly to me, we cannot avoid the influence of his work.
On a deeper level, you could also say that we not only use Marxist analysis, but we often use it for the same end. Not communism, but the hope for a collective well-being that shapes the horizon of our aspirations. In this light, perhaps, even if we reject communism, we still see our world through the lens he crafted and are bound by a vision he preached of a just and equitable world and, in that way, we are all Marxists.
**
Full article:
You might be a Marxist if... | volodzko.substack.com
