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willow wrote

Marx seems a bit like a philosophical hammer: when all you have is Marx, you can't even imagine there might be other ways to approach a nail.

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train wrote

Definitely agree even as socialist. I think a lot of socialists tend to believe "dictatorship of the prolitariate" simply means something along the lines of "power to the people". But I don't think that's really the case and it's not like Marx is gospel.

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ziq wrote

like any cult, the true meaning of things is only revealed to those in the upper echelons, once they're too invested to back out

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MHC wrote

What do you mean by "entryist"?

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ziq wrote

it's someone who pretends to be something else in order to spread propaganda for their true beliefs

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hirao wrote

How can you claim to be an anti-capitalist without first reading Marx? There's no better study of capitalism. Of course read Kropotkin and Bakunin too, but you must read Marx to truly understand what we're up against.

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ziq wrote

His understanding of capitalism was fundamentally flawed since he believed capitalism could "evolve" into communism and that actually existing communism was "primitive communism" while non-existing "communism" (state capitalism) was "real" communism. He was wrong in so many ways.

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hirao wrote (edited )

I think you have a poor understanding of Marx to be honest.

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ziq wrote

It can often seem like that to someone who is indoctrinated in his cult.

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hirao wrote

I'm literally being downvoted for saying we should read Marx before rejecting him.

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ziq wrote (edited )

Marx didn't invent the idea of being against capitalism and his theories aren't the be all, end all of anti-capitalist thought. Every attempt to actualize his theory resulted in Marxists building capitalism where it had barely existed before. Since Marxism requires an advanced capitalist state before it can be attempted, Marxists set about turning their largely decentralized agrarian societies into centralized capitalist behemoths with a strong state and monopoly on violence. These states are now far too capitalist and hierarchical to be liberated from authority without a catastrophic collapse of global capitalism. When this collapse happens, it'll be far too late to salvage much of anything due to the environmental destruction decades of capitalism brings.

A lot of anarchists consider Marxism to be backdoor capitalism since it ultimately only succeeded in building these giant capitalist nation states (Russia, China, etc).

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