/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18962723]

How did Marxism become synonymous with anti-imperialism when Marx and Engels literally defended Western imperialism as the next stage of capitalist material development against inferior cultures that must be wiped out in order to create worldwide communism

[Anonymous No.18962849]

>>18962723
>How did Marxism become synonymous with anti-imperialism
it didnt though

[Anonymous No.18962864]

>>18962723
You’re confusing your Papa Smurfs

[Anonymous No.18962869]

>>18962723
Because of that crap know as Leninism.

[Anonymous No.18962921]

Was pretty much guranteed to happen. West just beat most to the industrial punch. Topic has way to much moralfaggotry attached to it from le both sides though.

[Anonymous No.18963094]

>>18962849
It absolutely is. How is it not?

[Anonymous No.18963168]

>>18962723
because the Western proletariat had a common interest with anti-imperialist bourgeois revolutions in the colonies. such revolutions enabled proper capitalist development in the colonies and struck the super profits of the metropolises that were used by them to keep the Western proletariat bourgeoisified and tamed.
you write about capitalist development, but what you're missing is that at the time of "anti-imperialism" colonial control was an obstacle for the development of capitalist industry, since the imperialists were interested mostly in extracting raw resources from the colonies and exporting finished products back. they also tended to depend on existing, pre-capitalist power structures to exercise their control, which further prevented any progressive transformation.

[Anonymous No.18963195]

>>18962723
>>18963168
well, and the most important common interest I forgot to mention was that the colonial proletariat, even if very undeveloped for the reasons already mentioned, might succeed in seizing power immediately on the back of the bourgeois revolution and then could link itself with advanced Western proletariat in order to be able to sustain dictatorship of the proletariat in the backwards colonial country where the class is still weak.

[Anonymous No.18963204]

>>18963168
CAPITAL FUCKING LETTERS NIGGER HAVE YOU HEARD OF THEM

[Anonymous No.18963257]

>>18962723
>inferior cultures that must be wiped out in order to create worldwide communism
Because the inferior cultures were already destroyed by WWI, so they moved onto the next stage.

[Anonymous No.18963311]

>>18962723
>when Marx and Engels literally defended Western imperialism as the next stage of capitalist material development against inferior cultures
That was colonialism not imperialism. It's true Marx did casually defend colonialism (e.g. in India) early on and Engels wrote about the Slavs being inferior. Marx early on thought western penetration of countries like India would move them rapidly into modernity... obviously that got kind of questionable as things developed and people like Lenin ended up claiming foreign investment into the third world wasn't progressive and caused them to not industrialize but just provide raw materials to industrialized countries. That was kind of a defendable position but by the second half of the 20th century obviously countries like South Korea than China proved it wrong.
"Imperialism" really took off after Marx was dead in the late 19th century with the arms race and penetration of Africa. Engels wrote some on the declining returns on military spending and crazy public budget which would be necessary but thought it wasn't sustainable.

>How did Marxism become synonymous with anti-imperialism
Well it wasn't. Japanese during WWII claimed to be fighting European imperialism in Asia. There were non-Marxist anti-imperialists but the Soviet Union was the one big super power after WWII who would support nationalist movements... so if you could talk that language you could get subsidized by Russia or China.

[Anonymous No.18963325]

>>18962723
Read Hilferding and Lenin.

Basically imperialism became a bourgeois meme and uncritical bourgeois leftists like Lenin reversed the locus of the contradiction in capital.

This predictively resulted in capitalist peasant revolutions controlled by nomenklatura.

Bourgeois marxists are ideological liberals not praxic self liberators. See Engels. Both for the argument and as an example.

[Anonymous No.18963399]

>>18962723
Interesting question. Many leftists today seem to defend non-white traditional cultures even though they are in complete antithesis with their egalitarian/atheist ideology. The hindu caste system with the priestly caste rulling society would be a good example.

[Anonymous No.18963442]

>>18963399
I'm mainly asking because leftists in the West are obsessed with "indigenous" land rights. Even Palestinians are borrowing their language. The protection of indigenous people and their land against imperialism is one of the most virulent leftist positions but it's at total odds with Marxism. Why would any Marxist care about pre-modern tribal ethnic groups? Why would any Marxist care about their claim to private property? If someone believes in communism then necessarily that means all states and borders would be abolished anyways, so why weep over the borders of Palestine or Shawnee tribes

[Anonymous No.18963454]

>>18963442
Marxists would especially hate islam and support wiping it from the planet.

[Anonymous No.18963458]

>>18963442
I've got a man with a plan

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913/03.htm

[Anonymous No.18963461]

>>18962723
Marxism evolved from a lot of things Marx believed. The dialectical thinking taken from Hegel remained.
This is why leaders in BLM can call themselves "trained Marxists." Because there are a lot of nameless and faceless academics that have evolved Marxism into the intersectional bullshittery you see today.

[Anonymous No.18963479]

>>18963442
Because the communists of today do not follow the basic 19th century polemics of Marx and Engels. They're informed by a novel school of Marxist thought, one ironically molded by neoliberal capitalists.

[Anonymous No.18963546]

>>18963442
>>18962723
Marx talks extensively about how labor can't be freed in a vaccuum.
Marx defends certain developments in so far as he recognizes Capitalism as an extremely dynamic productive system, but further asserts that its internal contradictions essentially get in it's own way e.g.the predictability of Capitalist crises in boom bust cycles. It isn't some moralistic white man's burden type stance about how less developed places need to be protected, it's more a statement of the unfeasability of extending that system in perpetuity.

Lenin is probably more associated with railing against this sort of thing, but I dont think it's a big departure like others in this thread have suggested. Rather, I think it follows from the observation that self determined populations will develop in more politically stable and productive ways, compared to development primarily for the benefit of foreign investors which tends to produce less substantial development that exist only so long as the whim of the imperial state.

[Anonymous No.18963971]

>>18962723
Nowadays Marxoids side with the Taliban to own the Western imperialists. What Marx would've think?

[Anonymous No.18964249]

>>18963442
you've got it: leftists are at odds with Marxism, that's just it. the confusion stems from the fact that a lot of them claim they're more or less in line with Marx, but then this is a circumstance already Lenin understood:
>Marx's doctrines are now undergoing the same fate which, more than once in the course of history, has befallen the doctrines of other revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes struggling for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes have invariably meted out to them relentless persecution, and received their teaching with the most savage hostility, most furious hatred, and a ruthless campaign of lies and slanders. After their death, however, attempts are usually made to turn them into harmless saints, canonising them, as it were, and investing their name with a certain halo by way of "consolation" to the oppressed classes, and with the object of duping them, while at the same time emasculating and vulgarising the real essence of their revolutionary theories and blunting their revolutionary edge. At the present time the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labour movement are co-operating in this work of adulterating Marxism. They omit, obliterate, and distort the revolutionary side of its teaching, its revolutionary soul, and push to the foreground and extol what is, or seems, acceptable to the bourgeoisie.

[Anonymous No.18964333]

>>18964249
cope

[Anonymous No.18964343]

>leftism is completely retarded
Yeah no shit.

[Anonymous No.18964634]

>>18962723
Because of Lenin, that’s literally the only reason

[Anonymous No.18964772]

Marxism has value as a label and tribe. It is more that than anything else. The result being that it's pretty fluid and can accommodate whatever else is trending or whatever else is needed (see China). The faithful will use it as they will.

[Anonymous No.18964994]

>>18963971
No they don't?

[Anonymous No.18965044]

>>18962723
Lenin is the source of everything that is bad about Marxism.

[Anonymous No.18965088]

>>18965044
Marxism is the source of everything that is bad about Marxism. Leninism is a major improvement.

[Anonymous No.18965133]

>>18962723
you are retarded. Imperialism has to be defeated for communism to succeed. The labor aristocracy profits from the exploitation of opressed nations. Thus, there won't be a revolution in imperialist countries until they are defeated by revolution in the oppressed nations.

>>18965044
without Lenin there wouldn't be any Marxism to speak of.

[Anonymous No.18965166]

>>18965133
All the biggest anti-imperialist strongholds in the world like India and China are free countries now but still haven’t initiated worldwide communism in the West so I guess that theory is out the window. The world is literally more capitalist today than it has ever been after all of those anti-imperialist revolutions, because it was never actually about opposing the West ideologically. They only wanted to be modern and Western on their terms.

[Anonymous No.18965188]

>>18965166
those are not anti-imperialist strongholds lol

[Anonymous No.18965193]

>>18965188
They were the biggest countries to reject imperialism in the 20th century and China is Marxist

[Anonymous No.18965208]

>>18965193
India rejected colonialism and is a fascist shithole ripe for revolution. China hasn't been marxist since Mao's death.

[Anonymous No.18965226]

>>18965208
>India
>Fascist
Based. Its so funny seeing commies argue that the third world would support communism because of "exploitation" when that isn't even the case. Most of them are turning towards conservatism and fascism. They're gonna shoah you kikes :)

[Anonymous No.18965229]

>>18965208
that's my point, where are all the revolutions in imperialist countries after all the revolutions occurred in "oppressed" nations? They already happened in the 20th century. The only argument left as to why socialism hasn't arrived yet from retard leftists like yourself is simply that people are still oppressed and have no agency to do anything about it, clearly proven wrong since the biggest countries are independent from the West anyways

[Anonymous No.18965260]

>>18965229
>where are all the revolutions in imperialist countries after all the revolutions occurred in "oppressed" nations?
imperialism didn't end after a couple of revolutions, retard.

And no one is independent from the west, except maybe DPRK though they depend on China probably.

[Anonymous No.18965314]

>>18965208
kek hey everyone look at this maotist retard and laugh

[Anonymous No.18965448]

>>18963399
Do Indian communists defend the caste system? I somehow doubt that. If we're talking about Marxists here, but I imagine there are liberals who look at people like in India as "noble savages" and with other Orientalist tropes or would see the solution in "representation" of different castes.

https://youtu.be/DYE5EyGHqPk

>>18965229
Americans tend to have no idea about this but the first real victims of neoliberal ideology were Latin Americans, post-Soviet Russia, and Southeast Asia. The Russian and Asian crises of the 90s alone are sufficient grounds to charge financial speculators with war crimes with untold numbers of dead and immiserated people. But the fact that capital is now devouring its own home countries is a sign that they cannot do anything else. The profitability of Western capitalism is at an all-time low, with the snazzy tech shit like Google or Facebook covering up this absolute disaster.

This is why the PRC will continue to be the most interesting country to watch, as they provide an alternative that the rest of the world has never seen. Being subjugated by Western powers might bring some advancements in technology, but also comes at a cost of becoming their bitch and entangled in their problems. But with China today, it's different. No longer does the third world necessarily have to be downstream of what happens in the West. The rise of China alone has potentially sent a fatal shock to Western capital that assumed that every country to join the WTO would eventually lose their national sovereignty in favor of being the bitch of Wall Street and the City of London.

This is why rightoid populists are actually right on the money in a way, as one of their biggest goals is to take down China so the U.S. can survive or at least be rejuvenated by a shared national goal of total war. Defeating China in a war wouldn't do jackshit for the U.S. working class, but it does point out a very important concept in that U.S. imperialism provides the stability for Americans to endlessly debate culture war issues, but is also under severe threat. Imagine what happens when the petrodollar system begins to fail or has to share space with the ruble or yuan.

Basically, I want to point out that ignoring the transfer of the locus of Western imperialism from the British and French to the Americans leads Americans to believe weird shit that has no place in reality as long as they ignore their own globe-spanning empire. The elephant in the room for the capitalist West has always been the countries they tried to colonize or subjugate, and that region of the world is now being empowered in a way that has never been seen before. Naturally, they have their own contradictions, but the effect of the recent decades have signaled a real shift in global power that Westerners still can't seem to grasp.

[Anonymous No.18965518]

>>18965229
Also, while I'm here, I think it's obvious that this is happening, but those antagonisms are occurring at the higher levels and doesn't mean much in our day to day. What I see with my own eyes is the crisis of my own nation-state I reside in, specifically the contradiction between capital and democracy that leads to the government's capture by capital. So the empire is collapsing in places I've never seen or heard of, and for me it means less food in the local market and more homeless around me.

And lest we forget, both world wars were waged by its partakers mainly to either gain or maintain colonial empires. The stability of the West domestically is predicated on its ability to maintain a system that shifts the majority of the world's resources and labor to power the lifestyles of Westerners, Japanese, and South Koreans. This is the grand antagonism of the world ever since the 19th century that has waxed and waned, and the tortuous shifts in that led to two world wars which resulted in the deaths of 100+ million people, and the next global conflict could take a billion lives in the first half hour.

But even if that doesn't happen, you're still going to face deteriorating living conditions and intensifying exploitation which will push more and more people to seek answers, and some of them will find answers in the historical experience of the class struggle. What do you think is to be done?

[Anonymous No.18965636]

>>18965133
>without Lenin there wouldn't be any Marxism to speak of.
And I guess without the communist party there would be no new china.

These statement don't actually mean anything. The world moves on without you. Nobody is critical. Marxism as I stated is just a shorthand for dialectical materialism. If marx didn't write it someone else would have combined those things. What matters is what you do with dialectical materialism and I don't see how anything Lenin was doing was dialectical or materialist. His vanguardism is just an exercise in professional revolutionaries trying to justify themselves.

[Anonymous No.18965672]

>>18965448
>Do Indian communists defend the caste system?
In as much as Indian Communism amounts to a means by which the Brahmin can retain control over the other castes by using the Shudra as a hammer, yes, absolutely. Indian Communism is a passtime of the Brahmin caste. In an alternate reality we could see something in India like what the CCP does, whereby Communism in India is fundamentally identical to Hindutva, but doesn't have the pretenses of Democracy holding it back from just openly calling for the mass conversion of Muslims at swordpoint. The Jati/Varna system is ackthyuyually just the first step towards Socialism, therefore go do Puja at your local temple oh btw Marx is a daeva.

>Imagine what happens when the petrodollar system begins to fail or has to share space with the ruble or yuan.
Won't happen, the ruble is worthless. The same people who own Russia own the US, and while they do own China, the leash is far longer out of necessity. Russia is a complete paper tiger. A better question is what happens when they (and you know who they are) move back to Europe and try to solidify their rule in the Old World after abandoning the New. A new Byzantium in Jerusalem. Your problem is thinking that "US Imperialism" is at all tied to the US. It isn't. You know who it's tied to, anon.

[Anonymous No.18965788]

>>18965636
Lenin was foremost a revolutionary who just took Marxism as his framework. Communism was secondary

>>18965448
>>18965518
didn't read you're the worst poster on this board

[Anonymous No.18965840]

>read Capital
>realize Marx's political economy is one thing, and all the things people usually mean by "Marxism" are another, and they're either implicit or not there at all

I'm starting to wonder whether "Marxism" really means "German-Jewish socialism as it gelled around 1900, not necessarily around Marx's ideas, plus later Leninism." The explicit and doctrinaire elements of Lenin's thought seem a lot closer to what most reasonably people mean when they say Marxism. It doesn't seem to me like Marx got around to either macro-analyses of capital, on the level of political theory and geopolitics, or to specific historical analyses and prognostications (aside from his dislike of Tsarist Russia).

The early Marx seems like an eclectic Young Hegelian and the political economist Marx just seems like a "dialectical" economic theorist. Didn't it take Luxemburg and Lenin to even extend Marx's analyses of capitalism to their "imperialist" implications? He didn't do that. And it seems like mostly Lenin who developed implicit or latent strands of Marx's thought into a full-blown blanquist revolutionary worldview.

But everything in 20th century Marxism flows from those two things, the implicit "Marxist" geopolitics of the imperialism critique and the explicit political theology of Lenin's revolutionary theory. Would Marx even recognize his own heirs or the meta-geopolitical course actually followed by revolutions in the 20th century? Maybe I'm too immersed in Capital but it seems to me he would be like "I just wanted to do autistic political economy, what the fuck is going on here, why are dirty illiterate Russians claiming to be my chief representatives."

[Anonymous No.18965879]

>>18965840
what do I read before kapital? my brain is literally not made for thinking in economics.
also i think lenin was more influenced by sorel

[Anonymous No.18966311]

>>18965672
The Indian caste system wasn't popular for 2000 years before British rule when they patched a bunch of old shit together in order subjugate people.

[Anonymous No.18966399]

>>18965672
>The Jati/Varna system is ackthyuyually just the first step towards Socialism, therefore go do Puja at your local temple oh btw Marx is a daeva.
Structural difficulty. If you keep digging there, you may trigger an identity crisis and endanger the founding principles of India -- which incidentally reproduces a division of labor that is justified and frozen by the caste system of Hinduism. In other words, the class elements are hidden by socially/politically/religiously constructed identities.

The decentralized political authority too, which is conducive to creating many religions, as well as feudal nobles and merchants, to help the weak authority to govern the local regions. But their existence tends to divide more than unite.

>>18965788
That's okay. Thanks for replying anyways. Thinking of this quote... I challenge each of you to do the same.

[Anonymous No.18966408]

>>18962723
Hijacking a marx therad, should I read the capital or the manifesto first? Are they basically arguing about the same thing at different levels of complexity?

[Anonymous No.18966661]

>>18966408
Neither start with these

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm