unpacking modern Marxism -- Re: Cryptocurrency: The Breaking Point and Death of Keynes

[Zenaan Harkness]

Unpacking modern Marxism, for those who've ever felt "done over"
and/or would like to get a handle on some tools to turn the tables:

   Exposing The Challenge Of Marxism
   Yoram Hazony via Quillette.com,
   https://quillette.com/2020/08/16/the-challenge-of-marxism/
   https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/exposing-challenge-marxism

      … IV. The flaws that make Marxism fatal

      … while Marxism proposes an empirical investigation of the power
relations among classes or groups, it simply assumes that wherever one
discovers a relationship between a more powerful group and a weaker
one, that relation will be one of oppressor and oppressed. This makes
it seem as if every hierarchical relationship is just another version
of the horrific exploitation of black slaves by Virginia plantation
owners before the Civil War. But in most cases, hierarchical
relationships are not enslavement. Thus, while it is true that kings
have normally been more powerful than their subjects, employers more
powerful than their employees, and parents more powerful than their
children, these have not necessarily been straightforward relations of
oppressor and oppressed. Much more common are mixed relationships, in
which both the stronger and the weaker receive certain benefits, and
in which both can also point to hardships that must be endured in
order to maintain it.

      The fact that the Marxist framework presupposes a relationship
of oppressor and oppressed leads to the second great difficulty, which
is the assumption that every society is so exploitative that it must
be heading toward the overthrow of the dominant class or group. But if
it is possible for weaker groups to benefit from their position, and
not just to be oppressed by it, then we have arrived at the
possibility of a conservative society: One in which there is a
dominant class or loyalty group (or coalition of groups), which seeks
to balance the benefits and the burdens of the existing order so as to
avoid actual oppression. In such a case, the overthrow and destruction
of the dominant group may not be necessary. Indeed, when considering
the likely consequences of a revolutionary reconstitution of
society—often including not only civil war, but foreign invasion as
the political order collapses—most groups in a conservative society
may well prefer to preserve the existing order, or to largely preserve
it, rather than to endure Marx’s alternative.

      This brings us to the third failing of the Marxist framework.
This is the notorious absence of a clear view as to what the
underclass, having overthrown its oppressors and seized the state, is
supposed to do with its newfound power. Marx is emphatic that once
they have control of the state, the oppressed classes will be able to
end oppression. But these claims appear to be unfounded. After all,
we’ve said that the strength of the Marxist framework lies in its
willingness to recognize that power relations do exist among classes
and groups in every society, and that these can be oppressive and
exploitative in every society. And if this is an empirical fact—as
indeed it seems to be—then how will the Marxists who have overthrown
liberalism be able use the state to obtain the total abolition of
class antagonisms? At this point, Marx’s empiricist posture
evaporates, and his framework becomes completely utopian.

      When liberals and conservatives talk about Marxism being
“nothing but a big lie,” this is what they mean. The Marxist goal of
seizing the state and using it to eliminate all oppression is an empty
promise. Marx did not know how the state could actually bring this
about, and neither have any of his followers. In fact, we now have
many historical cases in which Marxists have seized the state: In
Russia and Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, and Cambodia, Cuba and
Venezuela. But nowhere has the Marxists’ attempt at a “revolutionary
reconstitution of society” by the state been anything other than a
parade of horrors. In every case, the Marxists themselves form a new
class or group, using the power of the state to exploit and oppress
other classes in the most extreme ways—up to and including repeated
recourse to murdering millions of their own people. Yet for all this,
utopia never comes and oppression never ends.

      Marxist society, like all other societies, consists of classes
and groups arranged in a hierarchical order. But the aim of
reconstituting society and the assertion that the state is responsible
for achieving this feat makes the Marxist state much more aggressive,
and more willing to resort to coercion and bloodshed, than the liberal
regime it seeks to replace.

      ...