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this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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It remains true that arguments against Marx are overwhelmingly based on fabrications, or from red scare nonsense. I cannot tell you how many times I still see the mud pie argument despite it being disproven in the opening pages of Capital.
I think you’re spot on, Marx specifically has a lot of connotations the general, uninformed public is terrified of.
I remember when I had to read it for a class the first time and the vibes in the room was exactly like you’re opening some of book of sin. I was scared of a book, as a college student at the time. Then we actually started reading it, and it was like “wow this guy gets the issues of the system”.
While I personally have agreements and some disagreements with Marx, I think he helped give me a lot of solid ideas that the system itself could be reformed and reforged.
I think it’s a shame that his ideas had carried a public taint to them for so long, due to several authoritarians co-opting his message. I have no clue why it’s not required high school reading at this point, since I feel it’d go a long ways towards helping more people get curious about improving and changing the system for the better.
I think you need to do a bit more reading into the history of socialism in the real world if you walked away with the idea that Marxism is "tainted by authoritarians," and not that Marxism has worked in real life, and was demonized by capitalist society for posing an alternative in the real world.
Further, he was also revolutionary, not reformist, though you may have misspoke there.
Marxism itself wasn’t necessarily tainted, but his ideas of socialism and communism definitely had a social stain associated with them. So by association it had a black mark.
I think it’s pretty clear that we haven’t seen it for what it was supposed to be, when it was weaponized by authoritarians and then attacked by capitalists. It’s supposed to be a grand thing of the people coming together, not stained in blood.
I think you may have misread what I said there about the reformist part. His ideas were revolutionary for the time, but many of the ideas could be applied by reformist.
Again, I will restate: I think you need to do a bit more reading into the history of socialism in the real world if you walked away with the idea that Marxism is “tainted by authoritarians,” and not that Marxism has worked in real life, and was demonized by capitalist society for posing an alternative in the real world. The USSR, PRC, Cuba, etc are examples of socialism working in the real world. Marxism was not "weaponized by authoritarians," capitalists have attacked and slandered existing socialist systems because they pose a viable alternative.
Marxism is not about "the people coming together." Ir's a theory of social change, and it fully acknowledges the role of revolution against the ruling classes. Marx and Engles were slandered as "authoritarians" for their views as well.
Marxism wasn't just novel, it was literally revolutionary, as in pro-revolution.
Bro didn't read the book
What do you mean? A reformed and reforged system is a new system.
I could give you a multi-hour long breakdown of my views but something tells you’re not interested in a long-form dialogue here.
Marxists do not advocate reforming capitalism, but overthrowing it and transitioning to socialism. That's the big thing there.
I think his ideas can reform a capitalist system. It’s probably one of many ways his ideas get off the ground. The big thing was changing the system, it’s not necessarily all about how you get there.
At a fundamental level, class struggle and the theory of the state means the working class must overwhelm the capitalist class, and this cannot be done within the framework of existing, bourgeois society. That's why all lasting socialist states have come through revolution.
The problem is that a capitalist system will not allow itself to be reformed in this way, as the "reforms" that Marx poses are antithetical to the very foundation of capitalism.
To give some accessible examples; you can't house homeless people or give people healthcare and higher education because homelessness and debt is a whip to keep the workers working for whatever wage and conditions are offered by a capital owner. You can't deconstruct racism because it was invented in the first place to keep the working class at war with itself rather than struggling against the conditions set by the ruling class. You can't stop imperialism because infinite growth requires infinite and unrestricted expansion into new territories.
The system of capitalism manufactures its own required conditions through cruelty and social inequality (and yet, it's these very things that lead to resistance), and without those necessary components the whole system collapses. The ruling class will not allow this to happen, because this system serves their material interests, and thus fundamental change cannot happen until the working class; whose material interests are directly opposed to those of the ruling class; is in power. The ruling class will pay lip service and the occasional half-measure in order to obscure this reality and make "reformism" seem possible, but 1) that is all they will do especially in the absence of a real threat to their power and 2) they will always eventually claw back even the smallest and hardest-fought of crumbs. Crumbs are good and all but there comes a point where our energy is better spent fighting for the whole cake.
While we might point to some Socialist experiments that succumbed to needless authoritarianism (for example, Romania), This is a view that looks at 20th century socialism, and collapses the experiences of these places. Just the former eastern bloc, for instance, is far more diverse, socially, and politically, than westerners often caricature it as.
The aforementioned example of Romania, with its horrific treatment of women, vs the comparatively very modern East Germany with its state-owned gay bars are in many respects, world apart. Collapsing these places with a blanket term of "authoritarian" and waving it away as all just an unfortunate shame, is unhelpful at best, and actively anti-intellectual at worst.