Has anyone in history made some valid criticism against Marxist ideology? And I’m not talking about the CIA propaganda no iPhone vuvuzela shit. But like, someone must’ve made some good point somewhere along the line?
I don’t want this to be a bash marxism thread. Just curious. Debates with people usually tend to incorporate the usual stuff that can be debunked easily.
There are plenty of valid criticisms in the social sciences, where you learn Marx and Engel along with all the other theorists. One of the main things they got wrong was that they thought the revolution would come from workers in the industrialized world, and of course that’s not what has ever happened. They also argue for an avant garde that would eventually hand power over to the people, which of course has also never happened. As far as I can see that’s what ends up being the major problem. The people who start the transition decide they want to stick around forever, and so it eventually becomes a game of who is closer to those in power.
The biggest criticism of course is that Marxist thought has never been successfully implemented long-term. I think it’s just not possible to do in large groups. If it worked well, we’d be using it. But it doesn’t really work well. Instead we’ve found that a hybrid form of managed capitalism, combined with an extensive social and environment safety net, seems to be the best way forward.
They argue that the vanguard (which is more from Lenin rather than Marx and Engels) is the most theoretically advanced segment of the proletariat who is able to guide the revolution to a productive end. After which the state will whither away as the material conditions for its existence change. This has been seen in history and to say otherwise is historical revisionism. We had state ministries of colonial affairs, and now we don’t because there’s no more colonies to administer.
I suspect you have a degree in social sciences where you learned that the USSR was paranoid Stalin killing everyone who disagreed with him or didn’t clap long enough, but I can turn that around in one question: you said, “The people who start the transition decide they want to stick around forever, and so it eventually becomes a game of who is closer to those in power.” But can you explain how the USSR was in a position where they could start this transition?
Is 3 generations not long-term? In a world where we focus on trimester figures, I think that’s pretty long term. Capitalism wasn’t established in a day either, it took wars, revolutions and centuries to destroy the old feudal order.