Episode 341 of RevolutionZ quotes: "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living" and with that claim from Marx asks whether today's movements should enrich the Marxist tradition as a viable and worthy heritage that only needs some modest contemporary refinements, or transcend it entirely as concepts and banners of dead generations that constrain our creativity.Why this topic now? As political tensions mount and movements for fundamental...
Episode 341 of RevolutionZ quotes: "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living" and with that claim from Marx asks whether today's movements should enrich the Marxist tradition as a viable and worthy heritage that only needs some modest contemporary refinements, or transcend it entirely as concepts and banners of dead generations that constrain our creativity.
Why this topic now? As political tensions mount and movements for fundamental change grow, young activists will be increasingly uged to take Marxist theory as their guiding framework. But do Marxist concepts provide the conceptual tools and organizational commitments we need to navigate current crises and in time create the revolutionized society most progressive movements desire?
This episode highlights "economism" -- which privileging economic analysis while inadequately addressing gender, race, ecology, and political dimensions of social life -- and also Marxist class analysis which fails to recognize how managers, professionals, and other empowered employees monopolize empowering tasks and decision-making positions to form a distinct class between capital and labor which can also rise to ruling status and has done just that in all past Marxist revolutions. Do conceptual blindspots explain why Marxist revolutions consistently elevate a new ruling elite over workers rather than creating genuine classlessness, or is the cause perverse leadership or external opposition. The episode also takes on what is called dialectics, historical materialism, the labor theory of value, and Marxism's views of and more often absence of vision for a better society.
The episode asks, does immersing in and advocating the whole Marxist tradition support or subvert our collective endeavors? If it does the latter, as the episode argues, then what must we enrich or transcend to do better? If it does the former, contrary to my observations, okay, immerse, learn the lingo, and carry on, but correct me too, please.
The episode is provocative and controversial, perhaps even a bit funny here and there. It invites listeners to critically examine inherited theory and consider what conceptual tools we truly need to build a more just and participatory world. It proposes some answers and it also urges those who disagree to make known their views. Some will say the episode's claims are ahistorical, over dramatic, exaggerated, or even delusional or worst of all a reactionary attempt to disarm movements. Fine, if any of that is the case, it should be pretty easy to demonstrate. I hope those who think so will attempt to do so.
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