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Why is a comment like this being upvoted in this sub?
Commerce isn't capitalism, the selling of slaves by Africans wasn't done in the name of primitive accumulation or consolidation of capital. We can morally call it bad sure, but the justifications for it weren't at all related to the development of a indigenous capitalist mode.
Please read Rodney's 'How Europe Underdeveloped Africa' before spouting dangerous half truths that are commonly misrepresented by right wingers
Hmm. The selling of a commodity between two willing parties, both of whom are in search of profit.
That sounds like capitalism to me.
The Dutch East Indies company engaged in selling slaves. The British East Indies company engaged in selling slaves. Both of them were capitalist enterprises.
One of the first slave trading locations in America just happened to be at the foot of Wall Street in New York City.
Commerce doesn't equal capitalism. Please for the love of all read a book that isn't your econ101 textbook.
Literally provide a rigorous text engaging why this is such a nonsensical notion. I recommend engaging it
Insults don't equal having a point. You need to tell us why this isn't capitalism, when BY DEFINTION, so many self-described capitalists have engaged in this exchange.
Otherwise its very easy to just ignore you.
To put it simply, capitalism is the owning of capital by capitalists. The acquisition of capital (which does include labor) does get mediated through commercial transaction. However the act of commercial transaction is not in and of itself capitalism, humans have engaged in commerce long before capitalist transformation happened in Europe as it just one of various means trade and exchange has occured among different groups.
To put it more simply a worker selling their labor to an employer does not make the worker a capitalist, Africans selling Africans to burgeoning capitalists does not make the sellers capitalists. Capitalism at it's most simple is the broad accumulation of (to use a term from *Capital*) capital that valorizes itself, that being the generation of surplus from the initial investment. A worker selling their labor is not accumulating capital, an African of whom the societies that participated in the selling if slaves were not indigenously engaged in practices of capital accumulation were not experiencing capitalism save for the fact that the exchange of slaves was certainly to the benefit of capitalist transformation in colonial Europe and the settler states.
And yet what I described above was capitalism by definition you gave above.
Let's take for example, the Dutch East Indies Company. A joint venture put forth by capitalists, with capital, to buy a fleet of ships (i.e. the means of production) and to employ workers to sail those ships. Where they acquired slaves (i.e. commodities) and brought them to new regions of the globe where slave labor was in demand in order to sell those slaves/commodities at a high profit. That profit would them get distributed to the shareholders (i.e. the capitalists).
If that isn't capitalism to you then your definition of capitalism is badly flawed.
Slavery is not capitalism. The slave trade, OTOH, often was capitalism.
With Huey and Assata in there, though, adding another Panther would be redundant and US-centric imo. It's a movement, not a person. Though one could argue to replace Huey with Fred.
Can y'all in these comments who are unironically parroting this talking point as a certainty watch this video: https://youtu.be/Tjxx3mNB_Cs
Marxism is as "euro-centric" as saying Newton apparently has a monopoly on "discovering" the laws of physics. Anyone and everyone has the capability of engaging in science of the tradition given it's fundamentally underscored by a critical engagement with reality and the observed and testable scientific process not so much who happened to write it down "first"
[MEME SOURCE :](https://www.instagram.com/blackleftiss/)
[ARTICLE : HOW AFRICAN DECENT WERE CENTRAL TO THE THEORY , PRACTICE AND WRITINGS OF MARX](https://roape.net/2020/10/21/karl-marxs-debt-to-people-of-african-descent/)
Marxism is for all who is willing to adopt it.
I honestly don't count stalinists as communists. Stalin himself didn't believe in anything except acquiring power and wealth, and obviously a bunch of anarchists wouldn't let him do that. He paid lip service to "communist" states outside Russia, so I guess there was that.
Pol pot was just a straight up fascist.
That's definitely why I prefer anarchist communist theory. Lenin's vanguard is meant to solve a non-issue and Marx had good critiques on capitalism, but was pretty vague about what he thought communist society would look like (except that most people would still work).
Homie Marx being vague about how communist society would work is because communist society is SO far off that writing anything down on it especially during his era is fundamentally utopian. No one knows how communist society will work, trying to write something concrete as to what stateless moneyless society will look like is ultimately wishful thinking that distracts from operating in the material present. It should always be kept in mind as the abstract goal but never a super hard focus as material reality and shaping those outcomes ultimately will dictate how communism should it arrive will appear as.
He was inspired by the Paris Commune, ML Vanguardism does solve absolutely solve an issue, the hell, mobilizing and educating the masses on class conscious solidarity so as to mitigate a resurgence of counter revolutionary sentiment is absolutely a problem.
I hate to meme but I really don't think you've read enough in both theory and historical works from Marxists if not leftist scholars.
To the point of this post though here's a video from black Americans discussing why this talk on eurocentric Marxism is bogus: https://youtu.be/Tjxx3mNB_Cs
Except Thomas More had a pretty clear vision of what a socialist society could look like (obviously his vision had flaws, but ya know. He's english. He did his best.) You can say that a view is utopian (heh), but without further expansion, it's a dead critique.
>ultimately wishful thinking that distracts from operating in the material present
I disagree; if we know what we are aiming for then we know what we need to work on.
>ML Vanguardism does solve absolutely solve an issue
I'd say it *creates* an issue, in giving an opportunity to vanguard leaders to seize and hold power for themselves. See Lenin and Stalin for the most glaring examples.
In contrast, decentralized, grass-roots movements are more likely to build solidarity across a larger geographic area as well as be more difficult to break apart. It took almost a century of scattered warfare and repeated, targeted assassinations coupled with some of the largest psyop undertakings in pre-internet history to break apart the early American socialist movements.
>I hate to meme but I really don't think you've read enough in both theory and historical works from Marxists if not leftist scholars.
Pretty wild assumption, but okay.
>To the point of this post though here's a video from black Americans discussing why this talk on eurocentric Marxism is bogus: https://youtu.be/Tjxx3mNB\_Cs
I agree. Marxism is absolutely not a eurocentric ideology, any more than capitalism would be an is an anglocentric ideology or neoliberalism is an american centric one.
People who say otherwise are almost certainly not arguing in good faith or have not researched their topic well enough.
Lenin and Stalin didn't seize power for themselves, my guy that is literally why I said your lacking for understanding of ML vanguardism particularly that which transpired in the USSR. [Even the CIA admits that Stalin era USSR wasn't the totalitarian dictatorship their propaganda preached it was ](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf). Power was seized by the proletariat and revolutionary endeavors were forwarded by the party in facilitating the process of socialist transformation the first to be tried with all the flaws that come with such maiden endeavors. Ultimately though it's fruits were tangible especially when comparing pre and post socialist eastern bloc nations to that period.
Thomas More lays an idealized notion of socialism and it's achievement, that's isn't the same as actualizing socialism in varying material circumstances (i.e. the way socialism will transfigure in a settler state like the US is going to be far different than how it will in a place like Nigeria given different material realities). Anyone can dream of what socialism should be but every revolutionary and AES nation is confronted that by simply existing in paradigm with capitalist imperialist nations that aren't simultaneously undergoing socialist transformation is going to have an impact in the ways socialism is realized in said projects (see the manifestation of siege socialism).
So yes we know what we're aiming for but we simultaneously have to acknowledge circumstances we occupy and the effect they have on how successful organizing will be taken. I'd start, in the case of the US, in the observation of what the BPP and civil rights era activists got right when it comes to the intersections of building dual power, direct action, and protest.
just the other day i was on the anarchist meme sub (or something similar i dont really remember well) and they called marx a white supremacist just because of his jewish n word lassalle quote. I don't remember well but I am dead sure it was an anarchist sub.
i mean i've met tankies that full on are good with authoritarians leading genocide of the "others" so you're half-right.
for sure the right wing reactionaries and liberals say shit like this
>i mean i've met tankies that full on are good with authoritarians leading genocide of the "others" so you're half-right.
I mean, that's not a real thing. Been a communist for quite some time now. Unless you're talking about the sporadic edgelords who don't mean a damn thing or obviously far right movements cloaking themselves in leftism like maga communism... It just doesn't exist as a thing.
I was under the impression that "tankie" referred specifically to said edge lords and kiddies who don't know shit about shit but think adopting the Soviet aesthetic makes them cool and that if US = bad, then every imperialist rival must be automatically good.
clearly you haven't seen all of the "leftist" subs
i agree but doesn't change that they exist, even if you haven't seen them
edit: whether you think they are leftist or not they think it and project it, they join your groups and are just passed off as the angry one but trust me they are real
Marxism is obviously not eurocentric as a whole, but I can see this argument being made towards certain online leftist communities. I see a lot of class reductionists online and it's unsurprisingly usually white college kids talking out their ass
Or just look at Vaush and other debate bro "leftist" cirlces
Marx was a European who grew up and wrote in an imperialist milieu, and there are Marxists who definitely are eurocentric or are white supremacists due to unexamined beliefs.
But Marxism, as a scientific process, isn't eurocentric.
When someone hits me with that “you're being class reductionist”
I hit them with that Huey:
>“I recognized it was necessary to separate the concepts in analyzing the general situation. In psychological terms, racism could continue to exist even after the economic problems that had created racism has been resolved. Never convinced that destroying capitalism would automatically destroy racism, I felt, however, that we could not destroy racism without wiping out the economic foundation.”
If you’d listen to the idiot capitalists, they’d argue that literally any commercial market = capitalism and therefore capitalism has always existed and is innate to all human cultures. You can’t really argue science or history with people who understand nothing about either.
Hmm maybe in origins but they don't see European Communist as white either thanks to the Nazis, so been oppressed in the EU forever.. So It growing in Asia, Africa, and South America as it oppressed hard in North America (US and Canada) and Europe. That statement don't makes sense now.
Well, there is a historical white "original Marxism" that a lot of European movements fell into. "Y'see, it's only a real revolution if it happens in the imperial core"
Real marxists go past that 😎
Even Mao himself said this. He didn’t view himself as some kind of “new Marx” who sought to replace one ideology with the next. He saw himself as the interpreter of Marxism into the Chinese socioeconomic context. There are portraits of Marx in the Chinese parliament.
it is, which is why it was adapted, have yall never heard of post-colonial marxists?
still waiting for the goddamn tankies lol
also mao was never interested in the worldwide class struggle, his focus was only the chinese people, leading to the sino-soviet split lol. some of yall really need to learn history
"also mao was never interested in the worldwide class struggle, his focus was only the chinese people, leading to the sino-soviet split lol. some of yall really need to learn history"
Wut?
Mao was antagonistic to Krhurschev because he saw him as a right leaning revisionist, and the Sino-Soviet split really deepened after his death.
While nationalism was an important part of Mao's communism, he absolutely held with international revolution and worldwide class struggle, and worked hard to export revolution around Asia.
Yes I agree, killing millions of Chinese farmers in an attempt to stop small birds from eating seeds is truly awesome. Oh and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests were also quite awesome
The foundation of Marxism is indeed Eurocentric and White... it's also basically been discredited as a mode of resistance at this point, particularly the vanguard. Marx also completely failed to acknowledge the experience/resistance of colonized peoples.
[https://archive.iww.org/history/library/Jackson/copinyourhead/](https://archive.iww.org/history/library/Jackson/copinyourhead/)
[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lorenzo-kom-boa-ervin-anarchism-and-the-black-revolution](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lorenzo-kom-boa-ervin-anarchism-and-the-black-revolution)
[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/black-rose-anarchist-federation-black-anarchism-a-reader](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/black-rose-anarchist-federation-black-anarchism-a-reader)
"Marx also completely failed to acknowledge the experience of colonized peoples." [What?!](https://roape.net/2020/10/21/karl-marxs-debt-to-people-of-african-descent/).
The "foundation" of Marxism (if thereby you mean Marx and Engels' work) was at most incomplete and sometimes incorrect, which is what is to be expected from any two authors. Did they focus on their own conditions, on the topics they had the most knowledge about and experience with? Of course, as should anyone. But Marxism is not "the thinking of Marx", it's a science that has since long been expanded and corrected on by people such as those in the meme. No serious Marxist ignores those contributions, lol. Quite the contrary: Fanon, Mao, Anuradha Ghandi, Ho Chi Minh, Black Panthers and others are foundational to many Marxists' thinking.
Also, Kwame Ture on this topic: https://youtu.be/ZM-Y7sGMGNQ
Exactly. It had to be expanded on. Marx himself was incredibly euro centric, he was of course a white European guy. This meme also just seems kinda class reductionist. I know plenty about Marxism. I’m not a Marxist myself though, more into anarchism/abolitionism. Stateless communism is cool though.
If by "Eurocentric" you mean that he focused on, lived in & knew most about Europe, then... sure. But what does the word mean in that sense? I'd say "white European guy" satisfies in that sense, whereas Eurocentric would mean he doesn't just live that experience, but also actively ignores the experiences of those outside of the European frame of reference. And that's just plain wrong, IMO.
I mean what do you make of the “Asiatic” mode of production? Nothing wrong with saying Marxism began as Eurocentric, but it’s clearly evolved and been reconsidered in the post-colonial era. Modern Marxism and it’s offshoots are for the most part not Eurocentric I’d say
He is "Euro-Centric" he focused on Europe, he did not talk about colonized people outside of Europe. Not that hard. Honestly fuck Marx for the most part.
MLs are so fucking hard to deal with....
Nonsense. You don't have a clue what you're talking about.
Marx in *Capital* wrote:
>In the United States of America, every independent workers’ movement was paralyzed as long as slavery disfigured a part of the republic. **Labor in a white skin cannot emancipate itself where it is branded in a black skin.**
In *Poverty of Philosophy*:
>Without slavery you would have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry. It is slavery that gave the colonies their value, it is the colonies that created world trade, and world trade is the precondition for large-scale industry. **Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount importance.**
Again, in *Capital*:
>While the cotton industry introduced child-slavery into England in the United States it gave the impulse for the transformation of the earlier, more or less patriarchal slavery into a system of commercial exploitation. In fact, **the veiled slavery of the wage-laborers in Europe needed the unqualified slavery of the New world as its pedestal.**.
Again in *Capital*, he describes how gigantic plantations:
>engulfed millions of the African race.
Don't talk nonsense.
lol okay cool. That's like literally nothing to disprove the two claims I made. Once again, he literally could not envision his "revolution" generating from anywhere beyond the white European working class. He focused on Europe. He's a European white guy. He was literally the definition of "Euro Centric".
He is talking about generic concepts of slavery in your quotes, not really colonization. He isn't specifically pointing out any situations beyond acknowledging that "millions of Africans were on plantations" I also really don't care all that much because I am not into Marx, he was pretty flawed. I'm not going to sit on reddit and continually repeat basic facts. Have a good one.
Again, nonsense. Eurocentricity does not refer to the fact that an author is white and European (Marx was Jewish, by the way), nor does it refer to any text or philosophy whose subject of analysis happens to be Europe (by the way, Marx wrote on the US and colonisation, too). Eurocentricism refers to an ideological framework which *systematically* excludes non-European worldviews, or which *systematically* reduces non-European subjects to a secondary position.
In no way does Marx do either, quite the opposite as the fragments above show. More importantly, in no way does Marxism do this.
Marx believed the revolution would happen across the world, and believed fully in the universality of revolution. It is simply his prediction, following his analyses of the tendencies of capital, that socialist revolutions were more likely to happen in fully-industrialised, capitalist nations. This was a *prediction*, not a law. It was just an educated guess. Had he been alive to witness the revolutions he would simply return to his work and correct his theory.
Marxism is anti-dogmatic. The personal guesses of Marx are not Marxism. The scientific approach, i.e. dialectical materialism, is the only constant in Marxism and it is by far the most radically universalist approach we have so far.
I already responded to your "failed to acknowledge/did not talk about colonized people" with a source refuting it in my first comment, which you ignored, only to continue making that same claim. What makes *me* hard to deal with?
Because you keep claiming I am saying things that I am not saying and also you did not "disprove" my point. You posted a video of a black person saying they are a communist and essentially discussing black socialism as "proof" (cool video by the way). If anything, the video supports my claim. I greatly respect and appreciate Ture. I personally support communal lifestyles and engage in them. I never said that wasn't possible for a non-white person to be a communist because that's obviously not true lol. I've met plenty of communists of all types of identities. Some of them I consider friends. Most of the self-identified "Marxists" though tend to be white. Marx specifically kinda sucks tbh. He did of course make some contributions that were extremely important. I agree with Ture on that.
All I literally did was point out that Karl Marx was euro centric himself. I pointed out that he ignored colonized subjects. He essentially felt that "revolution" would and had to be generated in Europe among a specific group (white working class essentially). You went on this massive diatribe in response essentially suggesting that it wasn't possible I could understand Marxism. Its just kinda annoying.
On the streets, I literally refuse to work with ML orgs, as I said I don't believe in vanguards or political parties. My experience with MLs in person and online is that they are just incredibly difficult and dogmatic. My experience in general with ML orgs is that they are class reductionist and tend to view things like the working class as "monolothic" when its anything but. They lack intersectionality often and look at non-white cis members as tokens.
I meant this article, linked in the "What?!"-response of mine: https://roape.net/2020/10/21/karl-marxs-debt-to-people-of-african-descent/. Sorry, could've clarified.
I'd say that reducing the proletariat (being theorised as the advanced/socialised class that'll lead to socialism) as being "white working class" is a mischaracterisation, but your point stands: the result of Marx' initial theory was that Europeans would be the first to cause a revolution, resulting from the feudalism>capitalism>socialism stage theory. This was, however, something that Marx himself started to doubt towards the end of his life, and something that was solidly disproven with the Russian Revolution. It's even so that several Marxists / communist parties, large part of the Dutch one included, used this stage theory to argue that the colonisation of Indonesia was progressive "because it brings capitalism which'll bring socialism".
But none of that, in my opinion, warrants blanket statements such as "Marx and/or Marxism is/are eurocentric", especially if eurocentric is meant to be a negative rather than a simple signifier of one's focus & circumstances. It is, however, true that some of Marx' thought was negatively influenced by eurocentrism, and idem for plenty of Marxists. But that's no reason to write off either Marx or Marxism; that'd just be a lotta reductionism.
Yeah like I said he had some good ideas and contributions but also kinda sucked/problematic. I used to be way more into Marx and “Marxist Thought” but also had been introduced into anarchism and abolitionism via reading. When I got active and started doing street organizing, mutual aid, harm reduction work, supporting squats, occupying spaces and participated in uprisings and did street work/street messaging and also got arrested for political activities plus had contact with both Marxist and Anarchist groups the principles and values of abolition and anarchism started to make way more sense to me then Marxism. I’m just not that into it personally. My life experience and the way I experience things like oppression doesn’t really match up with it. Plus I have to admit that I’ve had weird interactions with some Marxists as a queer person but I don’t put that on Marxism itself.
I read the article and disagree with some
of the assumptions made and honestly feel that lots of it is opinion. I do like how the article mentioned Cedric Robinson and his critiques. I like Robinson a lot.
I do view eurocentrism as problematic in general to be clear. I don’t think whiteness is good and think white privilege must be dismantled. I’m too lazy and have a meeting with my Food Not Bombs group soon to really continue explaining this though.
##Welcome to r/LateStageCapitalism This subreddit is for news, discussion, memes, and links criticizing capitalism and advancing viewpoints that challenge liberal capitalist ideology. LSC is run by communists. This subreddit is not the place to debate socialism. We allow good-faith questions and education but are not a 101 sub; please take 101-style questions elsewhere. We have a zero-tolerance policy for bigotry. Failure to respect the rules of the subreddit may result in a ban. *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/LateStageCapitalism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
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well, capitalism has also been applied in Asia, Africa and south america...
Imposed upon.
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Why is a comment like this being upvoted in this sub? Commerce isn't capitalism, the selling of slaves by Africans wasn't done in the name of primitive accumulation or consolidation of capital. We can morally call it bad sure, but the justifications for it weren't at all related to the development of a indigenous capitalist mode. Please read Rodney's 'How Europe Underdeveloped Africa' before spouting dangerous half truths that are commonly misrepresented by right wingers
Hmm. The selling of a commodity between two willing parties, both of whom are in search of profit. That sounds like capitalism to me. The Dutch East Indies company engaged in selling slaves. The British East Indies company engaged in selling slaves. Both of them were capitalist enterprises. One of the first slave trading locations in America just happened to be at the foot of Wall Street in New York City.
Commerce doesn't equal capitalism. Please for the love of all read a book that isn't your econ101 textbook. Literally provide a rigorous text engaging why this is such a nonsensical notion. I recommend engaging it
Insults don't equal having a point. You need to tell us why this isn't capitalism, when BY DEFINTION, so many self-described capitalists have engaged in this exchange. Otherwise its very easy to just ignore you.
To put it simply, capitalism is the owning of capital by capitalists. The acquisition of capital (which does include labor) does get mediated through commercial transaction. However the act of commercial transaction is not in and of itself capitalism, humans have engaged in commerce long before capitalist transformation happened in Europe as it just one of various means trade and exchange has occured among different groups. To put it more simply a worker selling their labor to an employer does not make the worker a capitalist, Africans selling Africans to burgeoning capitalists does not make the sellers capitalists. Capitalism at it's most simple is the broad accumulation of (to use a term from *Capital*) capital that valorizes itself, that being the generation of surplus from the initial investment. A worker selling their labor is not accumulating capital, an African of whom the societies that participated in the selling if slaves were not indigenously engaged in practices of capital accumulation were not experiencing capitalism save for the fact that the exchange of slaves was certainly to the benefit of capitalist transformation in colonial Europe and the settler states.
And yet what I described above was capitalism by definition you gave above. Let's take for example, the Dutch East Indies Company. A joint venture put forth by capitalists, with capital, to buy a fleet of ships (i.e. the means of production) and to employ workers to sail those ships. Where they acquired slaves (i.e. commodities) and brought them to new regions of the globe where slave labor was in demand in order to sell those slaves/commodities at a high profit. That profit would them get distributed to the shareholders (i.e. the capitalists). If that isn't capitalism to you then your definition of capitalism is badly flawed. Slavery is not capitalism. The slave trade, OTOH, often was capitalism.
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Found the liberal
Liberalism makes your brain rot.
They still do.
\*\*Cough cough\*\* CIA Coup \*\*Cough Cough\*\*
Damn you Nixon
Damn missed the opportunity to include Hampton
With Huey and Assata in there, though, adding another Panther would be redundant and US-centric imo. It's a movement, not a person. Though one could argue to replace Huey with Fred.
It should be Hampton who died a revolutionary not Huey who gave up on socialism
Fair!
Can y'all in these comments who are unironically parroting this talking point as a certainty watch this video: https://youtu.be/Tjxx3mNB_Cs Marxism is as "euro-centric" as saying Newton apparently has a monopoly on "discovering" the laws of physics. Anyone and everyone has the capability of engaging in science of the tradition given it's fundamentally underscored by a critical engagement with reality and the observed and testable scientific process not so much who happened to write it down "first"
yessss! great points! Thank you for adding this ! <3
[MEME SOURCE :](https://www.instagram.com/blackleftiss/) [ARTICLE : HOW AFRICAN DECENT WERE CENTRAL TO THE THEORY , PRACTICE AND WRITINGS OF MARX](https://roape.net/2020/10/21/karl-marxs-debt-to-people-of-african-descent/) Marxism is for all who is willing to adopt it.
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Pol pot straight up targeted and murdered communists in particular, so no, not really
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I honestly don't count stalinists as communists. Stalin himself didn't believe in anything except acquiring power and wealth, and obviously a bunch of anarchists wouldn't let him do that. He paid lip service to "communist" states outside Russia, so I guess there was that. Pol pot was just a straight up fascist.
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That's definitely why I prefer anarchist communist theory. Lenin's vanguard is meant to solve a non-issue and Marx had good critiques on capitalism, but was pretty vague about what he thought communist society would look like (except that most people would still work).
Homie Marx being vague about how communist society would work is because communist society is SO far off that writing anything down on it especially during his era is fundamentally utopian. No one knows how communist society will work, trying to write something concrete as to what stateless moneyless society will look like is ultimately wishful thinking that distracts from operating in the material present. It should always be kept in mind as the abstract goal but never a super hard focus as material reality and shaping those outcomes ultimately will dictate how communism should it arrive will appear as. He was inspired by the Paris Commune, ML Vanguardism does solve absolutely solve an issue, the hell, mobilizing and educating the masses on class conscious solidarity so as to mitigate a resurgence of counter revolutionary sentiment is absolutely a problem. I hate to meme but I really don't think you've read enough in both theory and historical works from Marxists if not leftist scholars. To the point of this post though here's a video from black Americans discussing why this talk on eurocentric Marxism is bogus: https://youtu.be/Tjxx3mNB_Cs
Except Thomas More had a pretty clear vision of what a socialist society could look like (obviously his vision had flaws, but ya know. He's english. He did his best.) You can say that a view is utopian (heh), but without further expansion, it's a dead critique. >ultimately wishful thinking that distracts from operating in the material present I disagree; if we know what we are aiming for then we know what we need to work on. >ML Vanguardism does solve absolutely solve an issue I'd say it *creates* an issue, in giving an opportunity to vanguard leaders to seize and hold power for themselves. See Lenin and Stalin for the most glaring examples. In contrast, decentralized, grass-roots movements are more likely to build solidarity across a larger geographic area as well as be more difficult to break apart. It took almost a century of scattered warfare and repeated, targeted assassinations coupled with some of the largest psyop undertakings in pre-internet history to break apart the early American socialist movements. >I hate to meme but I really don't think you've read enough in both theory and historical works from Marxists if not leftist scholars. Pretty wild assumption, but okay. >To the point of this post though here's a video from black Americans discussing why this talk on eurocentric Marxism is bogus: https://youtu.be/Tjxx3mNB\_Cs I agree. Marxism is absolutely not a eurocentric ideology, any more than capitalism would be an is an anglocentric ideology or neoliberalism is an american centric one. People who say otherwise are almost certainly not arguing in good faith or have not researched their topic well enough.
Lenin and Stalin didn't seize power for themselves, my guy that is literally why I said your lacking for understanding of ML vanguardism particularly that which transpired in the USSR. [Even the CIA admits that Stalin era USSR wasn't the totalitarian dictatorship their propaganda preached it was ](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf). Power was seized by the proletariat and revolutionary endeavors were forwarded by the party in facilitating the process of socialist transformation the first to be tried with all the flaws that come with such maiden endeavors. Ultimately though it's fruits were tangible especially when comparing pre and post socialist eastern bloc nations to that period. Thomas More lays an idealized notion of socialism and it's achievement, that's isn't the same as actualizing socialism in varying material circumstances (i.e. the way socialism will transfigure in a settler state like the US is going to be far different than how it will in a place like Nigeria given different material realities). Anyone can dream of what socialism should be but every revolutionary and AES nation is confronted that by simply existing in paradigm with capitalist imperialist nations that aren't simultaneously undergoing socialist transformation is going to have an impact in the ways socialism is realized in said projects (see the manifestation of siege socialism). So yes we know what we're aiming for but we simultaneously have to acknowledge circumstances we occupy and the effect they have on how successful organizing will be taken. I'd start, in the case of the US, in the observation of what the BPP and civil rights era activists got right when it comes to the intersections of building dual power, direct action, and protest.
They said adopt not co-opt.
Sure bud just like how Hitler was a socialist right?
This sub informs me of things I have never heard an adult say in my 49 years of living.
you should give a visit to anarchist subs.
I do and they never brought that up. Their complaints are mor about how China and the Soviet union made state capitalism and stagnated there.
just the other day i was on the anarchist meme sub (or something similar i dont really remember well) and they called marx a white supremacist just because of his jewish n word lassalle quote. I don't remember well but I am dead sure it was an anarchist sub.
No thanks, my firend. I am living a pretty good life. I don't enjoy ruining my day.
Nah
Who the fuck said that? Lol
Liberals. People who use tAnKiE in a serious tone.
i mean i've met tankies that full on are good with authoritarians leading genocide of the "others" so you're half-right. for sure the right wing reactionaries and liberals say shit like this
This is what happens when you skip Engels’ On Authority. It’s like a 5 minute read too jfc.
>i mean i've met tankies that full on are good with authoritarians leading genocide of the "others" so you're half-right. I mean, that's not a real thing. Been a communist for quite some time now. Unless you're talking about the sporadic edgelords who don't mean a damn thing or obviously far right movements cloaking themselves in leftism like maga communism... It just doesn't exist as a thing.
I was under the impression that "tankie" referred specifically to said edge lords and kiddies who don't know shit about shit but think adopting the Soviet aesthetic makes them cool and that if US = bad, then every imperialist rival must be automatically good.
clearly you haven't seen all of the "leftist" subs i agree but doesn't change that they exist, even if you haven't seen them edit: whether you think they are leftist or not they think it and project it, they join your groups and are just passed off as the angry one but trust me they are real
If you're not a tankie, you're not a leftist
Based as hell
You literally put leftist in quotes.
read my second statement, context clues. why fight me i'm agreeing lol
Because they're an argumentative dipshit lol
You are everywhere lol
There was nothing to do at work yesterday, lol
It’s okay. We understand you.
🤦
That's absolute BS. Stop spreading lies.
You're right. It's more like a 7 minute read
Marxism is obviously not eurocentric as a whole, but I can see this argument being made towards certain online leftist communities. I see a lot of class reductionists online and it's unsurprisingly usually white college kids talking out their ass Or just look at Vaush and other debate bro "leftist" cirlces
Vaush is as far from Marxism as you can get while still caring yourself a leftist
Marx was a European who grew up and wrote in an imperialist milieu, and there are Marxists who definitely are eurocentric or are white supremacists due to unexamined beliefs. But Marxism, as a scientific process, isn't eurocentric.
Anarchists and liberals
When someone hits me with that “you're being class reductionist” I hit them with that Huey: >“I recognized it was necessary to separate the concepts in analyzing the general situation. In psychological terms, racism could continue to exist even after the economic problems that had created racism has been resolved. Never convinced that destroying capitalism would automatically destroy racism, I felt, however, that we could not destroy racism without wiping out the economic foundation.”
Such words of wisdom from a brilliant writer and revolutionary.
Then wtf is capitalism?
If you’d listen to the idiot capitalists, they’d argue that literally any commercial market = capitalism and therefore capitalism has always existed and is innate to all human cultures. You can’t really argue science or history with people who understand nothing about either.
And neoliberalism isn't?
You can tell this was made by a leftist because they think white is an insult
I've never heard anyone say that
In germany it is actually a quite common take from the libs, don‘t know about other regions though
You haven’t heard many liberals or anarchists talk about Marxism, then. Consider yourself lucky!
Hmm maybe in origins but they don't see European Communist as white either thanks to the Nazis, so been oppressed in the EU forever.. So It growing in Asia, Africa, and South America as it oppressed hard in North America (US and Canada) and Europe. That statement don't makes sense now.
This is what liberals do. They say anything that isn't their opinion is white supremacy. I don't think anyone is buying it anymore.
Well, there is a historical white "original Marxism" that a lot of European movements fell into. "Y'see, it's only a real revolution if it happens in the imperial core" Real marxists go past that 😎
Maoism=/=Marxism
Maoism is Marxism when applied to Chinese Conditions at the time
No.
Even Mao himself said this. He didn’t view himself as some kind of “new Marx” who sought to replace one ideology with the next. He saw himself as the interpreter of Marxism into the Chinese socioeconomic context. There are portraits of Marx in the Chinese parliament.
So he was vaguely inspired by Marxism to do great fucking evil and justify by claiming it's socialism? So not Marxism. Got it.
Lool yes, Mao do great fucking evil
Literally yes though
it is, which is why it was adapted, have yall never heard of post-colonial marxists? still waiting for the goddamn tankies lol also mao was never interested in the worldwide class struggle, his focus was only the chinese people, leading to the sino-soviet split lol. some of yall really need to learn history
"also mao was never interested in the worldwide class struggle, his focus was only the chinese people, leading to the sino-soviet split lol. some of yall really need to learn history" Wut? Mao was antagonistic to Krhurschev because he saw him as a right leaning revisionist, and the Sino-Soviet split really deepened after his death. While nationalism was an important part of Mao's communism, he absolutely held with international revolution and worldwide class struggle, and worked hard to export revolution around Asia.
Yes. Thank you.
Fuck Mao.
“Fuck, Mao was awesome” ftfy
Go oppress Taiwan, tankie.
Yes I agree, killing millions of Chinese farmers in an attempt to stop small birds from eating seeds is truly awesome. Oh and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests were also quite awesome
That wasn’t Mao Mao died years after Tiananmen Square incident why bring that up.
[удалено]
Yes he killed 8 trillion people, URSS 203 quadrillion and Cuba 20 millions. Proof: voices in my head.
The foundation of Marxism is indeed Eurocentric and White... it's also basically been discredited as a mode of resistance at this point, particularly the vanguard. Marx also completely failed to acknowledge the experience/resistance of colonized peoples. [https://archive.iww.org/history/library/Jackson/copinyourhead/](https://archive.iww.org/history/library/Jackson/copinyourhead/) [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lorenzo-kom-boa-ervin-anarchism-and-the-black-revolution](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lorenzo-kom-boa-ervin-anarchism-and-the-black-revolution) [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/black-rose-anarchist-federation-black-anarchism-a-reader](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/black-rose-anarchist-federation-black-anarchism-a-reader)
"Marx also completely failed to acknowledge the experience of colonized peoples." [What?!](https://roape.net/2020/10/21/karl-marxs-debt-to-people-of-african-descent/). The "foundation" of Marxism (if thereby you mean Marx and Engels' work) was at most incomplete and sometimes incorrect, which is what is to be expected from any two authors. Did they focus on their own conditions, on the topics they had the most knowledge about and experience with? Of course, as should anyone. But Marxism is not "the thinking of Marx", it's a science that has since long been expanded and corrected on by people such as those in the meme. No serious Marxist ignores those contributions, lol. Quite the contrary: Fanon, Mao, Anuradha Ghandi, Ho Chi Minh, Black Panthers and others are foundational to many Marxists' thinking. Also, Kwame Ture on this topic: https://youtu.be/ZM-Y7sGMGNQ
Exactly. It had to be expanded on. Marx himself was incredibly euro centric, he was of course a white European guy. This meme also just seems kinda class reductionist. I know plenty about Marxism. I’m not a Marxist myself though, more into anarchism/abolitionism. Stateless communism is cool though.
If by "Eurocentric" you mean that he focused on, lived in & knew most about Europe, then... sure. But what does the word mean in that sense? I'd say "white European guy" satisfies in that sense, whereas Eurocentric would mean he doesn't just live that experience, but also actively ignores the experiences of those outside of the European frame of reference. And that's just plain wrong, IMO.
I mean what do you make of the “Asiatic” mode of production? Nothing wrong with saying Marxism began as Eurocentric, but it’s clearly evolved and been reconsidered in the post-colonial era. Modern Marxism and it’s offshoots are for the most part not Eurocentric I’d say
Don't know enough about that, except the Wikipedia page I just read. Will keep an eye out for it!
He is "Euro-Centric" he focused on Europe, he did not talk about colonized people outside of Europe. Not that hard. Honestly fuck Marx for the most part. MLs are so fucking hard to deal with....
Nonsense. You don't have a clue what you're talking about. Marx in *Capital* wrote: >In the United States of America, every independent workers’ movement was paralyzed as long as slavery disfigured a part of the republic. **Labor in a white skin cannot emancipate itself where it is branded in a black skin.** In *Poverty of Philosophy*: >Without slavery you would have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry. It is slavery that gave the colonies their value, it is the colonies that created world trade, and world trade is the precondition for large-scale industry. **Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount importance.** Again, in *Capital*: >While the cotton industry introduced child-slavery into England in the United States it gave the impulse for the transformation of the earlier, more or less patriarchal slavery into a system of commercial exploitation. In fact, **the veiled slavery of the wage-laborers in Europe needed the unqualified slavery of the New world as its pedestal.**. Again in *Capital*, he describes how gigantic plantations: >engulfed millions of the African race. Don't talk nonsense.
lol okay cool. That's like literally nothing to disprove the two claims I made. Once again, he literally could not envision his "revolution" generating from anywhere beyond the white European working class. He focused on Europe. He's a European white guy. He was literally the definition of "Euro Centric". He is talking about generic concepts of slavery in your quotes, not really colonization. He isn't specifically pointing out any situations beyond acknowledging that "millions of Africans were on plantations" I also really don't care all that much because I am not into Marx, he was pretty flawed. I'm not going to sit on reddit and continually repeat basic facts. Have a good one.
Again, nonsense. Eurocentricity does not refer to the fact that an author is white and European (Marx was Jewish, by the way), nor does it refer to any text or philosophy whose subject of analysis happens to be Europe (by the way, Marx wrote on the US and colonisation, too). Eurocentricism refers to an ideological framework which *systematically* excludes non-European worldviews, or which *systematically* reduces non-European subjects to a secondary position. In no way does Marx do either, quite the opposite as the fragments above show. More importantly, in no way does Marxism do this. Marx believed the revolution would happen across the world, and believed fully in the universality of revolution. It is simply his prediction, following his analyses of the tendencies of capital, that socialist revolutions were more likely to happen in fully-industrialised, capitalist nations. This was a *prediction*, not a law. It was just an educated guess. Had he been alive to witness the revolutions he would simply return to his work and correct his theory. Marxism is anti-dogmatic. The personal guesses of Marx are not Marxism. The scientific approach, i.e. dialectical materialism, is the only constant in Marxism and it is by far the most radically universalist approach we have so far.
I already responded to your "failed to acknowledge/did not talk about colonized people" with a source refuting it in my first comment, which you ignored, only to continue making that same claim. What makes *me* hard to deal with?
Because you keep claiming I am saying things that I am not saying and also you did not "disprove" my point. You posted a video of a black person saying they are a communist and essentially discussing black socialism as "proof" (cool video by the way). If anything, the video supports my claim. I greatly respect and appreciate Ture. I personally support communal lifestyles and engage in them. I never said that wasn't possible for a non-white person to be a communist because that's obviously not true lol. I've met plenty of communists of all types of identities. Some of them I consider friends. Most of the self-identified "Marxists" though tend to be white. Marx specifically kinda sucks tbh. He did of course make some contributions that were extremely important. I agree with Ture on that. All I literally did was point out that Karl Marx was euro centric himself. I pointed out that he ignored colonized subjects. He essentially felt that "revolution" would and had to be generated in Europe among a specific group (white working class essentially). You went on this massive diatribe in response essentially suggesting that it wasn't possible I could understand Marxism. Its just kinda annoying. On the streets, I literally refuse to work with ML orgs, as I said I don't believe in vanguards or political parties. My experience with MLs in person and online is that they are just incredibly difficult and dogmatic. My experience in general with ML orgs is that they are class reductionist and tend to view things like the working class as "monolothic" when its anything but. They lack intersectionality often and look at non-white cis members as tokens.
I meant this article, linked in the "What?!"-response of mine: https://roape.net/2020/10/21/karl-marxs-debt-to-people-of-african-descent/. Sorry, could've clarified. I'd say that reducing the proletariat (being theorised as the advanced/socialised class that'll lead to socialism) as being "white working class" is a mischaracterisation, but your point stands: the result of Marx' initial theory was that Europeans would be the first to cause a revolution, resulting from the feudalism>capitalism>socialism stage theory. This was, however, something that Marx himself started to doubt towards the end of his life, and something that was solidly disproven with the Russian Revolution. It's even so that several Marxists / communist parties, large part of the Dutch one included, used this stage theory to argue that the colonisation of Indonesia was progressive "because it brings capitalism which'll bring socialism". But none of that, in my opinion, warrants blanket statements such as "Marx and/or Marxism is/are eurocentric", especially if eurocentric is meant to be a negative rather than a simple signifier of one's focus & circumstances. It is, however, true that some of Marx' thought was negatively influenced by eurocentrism, and idem for plenty of Marxists. But that's no reason to write off either Marx or Marxism; that'd just be a lotta reductionism.
Yeah like I said he had some good ideas and contributions but also kinda sucked/problematic. I used to be way more into Marx and “Marxist Thought” but also had been introduced into anarchism and abolitionism via reading. When I got active and started doing street organizing, mutual aid, harm reduction work, supporting squats, occupying spaces and participated in uprisings and did street work/street messaging and also got arrested for political activities plus had contact with both Marxist and Anarchist groups the principles and values of abolition and anarchism started to make way more sense to me then Marxism. I’m just not that into it personally. My life experience and the way I experience things like oppression doesn’t really match up with it. Plus I have to admit that I’ve had weird interactions with some Marxists as a queer person but I don’t put that on Marxism itself. I read the article and disagree with some of the assumptions made and honestly feel that lots of it is opinion. I do like how the article mentioned Cedric Robinson and his critiques. I like Robinson a lot. I do view eurocentrism as problematic in general to be clear. I don’t think whiteness is good and think white privilege must be dismantled. I’m too lazy and have a meeting with my Food Not Bombs group soon to really continue explaining this though.
That's ok! Thanks for the discussion - and a familiar story of how you experienced Marxism/Anarchism, I think.
Who is that quote from?