I’ve just finished a Marxist book club reading series, including Lenin and Marx and Rosa and several others.
My original studies were on anarchism. Graeber, Chomsky, lots of Anarchist Library articles.
My new studies are Postmodernists. Foucoult, Derrida, Marcusa, etc.
First things first:
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I think Marxists are way too proud of themselves and what they call science. I find Marxism useful but little more than a nice to discuss academic theory. I find serious flaws with it, and am annoyed that so many people seem to identify so strongly with it. In that way im very much in agreement with anarchists and postmodernists. The other thing is that Marxist-Leninism was infiltrated and defeated by capitalism many many times now, and sometimes even without its defeat it led to dystopia. I’m just not excited about this ideology at all, and I think it’s become a bit cringe to continue down this path. Capitalism and state is stronger today than it’s ever been. I think this has lived past its valid era.
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I think anarchism has a lot more truth and wisdom, but is not very powerful. I am unsure how to bring about this kind of society, which is true communism. It seems it will always devolve into a retelling of Marxist stages of history, feudalism, monarchism, capitalism. However I do think there are ways to prevent this if people are mass educated and localities are armed to prevent domination. But also, we live in a day of nukes, and I’ve never read an anarchist treaties on how to manage the nuclear arsenal anarchically. The more you organize anarchism though, the less it’s anarchism. I also worry about how much this turns into vigilantism and mob violence.
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I agree a lot with postmodernists, the concept of truth and morality since learning all the atheist rhetoric in my 20s are very vague to me. Understanding cultural truth, media power, the disparity of grand narratives, the collusion of the Everyman with the system (rather than it being purely a class duality) is “true” to me. However, even more so than #1 or #2 this very much lacks a revolutionary theory.
Then there’s the infighting. When you read the literature everyone “proves” each other wrong and shows how their “revolutionary vision” is impossible and not worth doing. People in socialist theory argue so strongly about such vague ideas. People really think that they are looking to achieve a thing called socialism, but I don’t think they will ever be satisfied with any system they find themselves in. They set impossible goals and then yell at the clouds that it hasn’t been obtained.
Sorry that’s my rant, I also am yelling at the clouds at my own intellectual defeat. I kinda feel like the best we can do is a kind of nihilism and intentional community.
It is very easy to get discouraged with various ideologies as they are often based in the abstract and therefore hard to apply to the real world. With that said I'll give you a slice of my own thinking / research on the matter. At a high abstract level, I think most economies needs to be more socially owned instead of privately owned and more market based rather than command based. Some possible theories and policies to help bring this change about are Mutualism and Georgism.
Mutualism encourages the concepts of mutual aid, workplace democracy and self management(cooperatives), and dual power. Dual power is essentially building alternative institutions to the ones that already exist in society until they can eventually supplant the existing institutions. Direct Action also plays a big role in anarchism in general and therefore Mutualism.
Also some georgism inspired policies such as a UBI and a Land Value Tax to be good starting points as far as policy as they are policies that could redistribute wealth from capitalists(1%) to the people.
There is obviously a lot more to unpack especially relating to Mutualism. Interestingly, there is a service built with the principles of mutual aid and direct action built and administered by @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com called AI Horde.
The underlying principles of direct action, mutual aid, and to a lesser degree dual power are ones that be implemented in your own life and are good places to focus your research in my opinion.
I also think that mutualism is the best theory. My Marxist friend would tell you that capitalism will just incorporate your work into its superstructure though.
Another cool Gerogism-inspired policy is common ownership self-assessed tax (COST), which can be used to collectivize the means of production while maintaining decentralized control of it.
In terms of direct action, we should just starting building postcapitalism now with venture communes of worker coops, and implement policies we want in the venture communes. This would even help with reformism because it would bring economic power to the movement, which could be turned into political power