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No true Scotsman, capitalist edition
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2026
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He says this twice in TonF. The first time he says it is in the second Thesis:
The last, most famous line is a conclusion drawn from this. You can nit pick this semantically or whatever, but semantics aren't Marxist.
It is what he is saying. Like I get your point that because capitalism creates two opposed classes, one which creates value through labor, and another that exploits that labor for their own benefit, that capitalism creates not just the possibility for the oppressed class to not just overthrow the power of the ruling class, but, because the working class is the vast, vast majority, we create a more just and democratic society. Where, for for the first time in history, the ruling class would be the vast mass of people, where cooperation and solidarity is our objective interest, which carries within it the possibility of abolition of class antagonism.
But you are going to have to provide something more substantive on your theory of individuals as pseudo-subjects. I'm not confused about this. I think you're being overly mechanical, and dismissing my point without evidence. It seems like you're just chucking subjectivity out the window, and giving into determinism. There is a deterministic element to Marxism, the world dictates the limits and possibilities, but people change it. I really don't buy what your selling here, and you're not supporting your argument, on this very load-bearing point.
I'm not getting rid of goals. To me the goal is to determine what is happening here and now, and make predictions and plans based in concretion. Marx's theories about "communist society" are concrete enough to believe, but they are still very abstract and impossible to relate to directly. They change nothing on their own.
I'm not trying to disprove them. But I don't see how something in the far flung future defines us, and you aren't convincing me. To me its a very idealist attitude that isn't based in people's direct experience since it isn't an absolute given that we experience the central contradictions of capitalism directly. The vast majority of people are unconvinced of it, and you can't even convince me, a Marxist. If all you are gonna do is tell me I'm wrong without acknowledging a single point that I've made, and I don't mean just quoting and debunking, but actually addressing, then thanks for your time.
I see a lot of people fixated on a future that doesn't exist, and not really communists, who often are quite practical, even if it isn't as practical as I would like. But lots of socialists and new people joining our movements, I don't think the over emphasis on what comes way in the future is helpful. These people have to get out of their idealisms and into actual work. Communists balance this in practice, but emphasize the idealized in definition. New communists tend to learn axioms before learning about their own communities, which is exactly backwards, and not what Marxism teaches us.
In neither of these quotes does he say this. I can’t even imagine how you got this from what you quoted. And if he did, all the worse for it, because this does not hold up at all.
I don’t care if semantics are or aren’t “Marxist”; you need to get into semantics if you want to analyze the meaning of a sentence. There’s no nit pick, Marx isn’t saying anything close to this.
You can’t just smuggle in the concept of justice. Wrt democracy, Engels said that the communist aim of overcoming the state also implies the overcoming of democracy. Wrt Marxism, democracy is not some virtue to be maximized nor does communism have anything to do with the concept of justice.
Oy vey. How could you misread my words so completely?
Here is where semantics would come in handy.
It’s just been established that you didn’t actually read what I said with any attention so this isn’t a very big issue for me.
Anyways, this is Marxism 101. This grand calculus is what justifies everything (you see this in the draft ch.6 of Capital quote). Without this view, what justifies the call for global proletarian revolt? Within Marxism there is no universal (real) justice or morality, so it cannot derive legitimacy from this; it can’t be immediate self-interest, because Marx wasn’t a proletarian (why not side with the bourgeoisie?). Who’s to say this world we know nothing about will be “better”? Who’s to say the global terror won’t backfire tremendously and lead to a world far worse than the one against which people revolted? Capitalism contains contradictions? Why don’t we work to alleviate them as much as possible? If you think about this for two seconds you realize there is no other option than that Marxism relies on the image of the future communist society/the historical necessity it traces from capitalism to it for the legitimacy of communism as a movement. If that’s idealist, then Marxism is idealist. This is the backbone of the movement, this is what defines it.
I don’t think so. You didn’t seem to either: “The ‘comprehension’ of ‘communist society’ does not even reach the level of contemplating single individuals! Only an abstract civil society. So it does not even reach the level of bourgeois materialism, it’s not scientific, its pre-modern conception.”
“Since we can’t possibly imagine what those experiences will be in ‘communist society’ we can’t imagine a communist individual existing in that society.”
“while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic” (The German Ideology).
Thanks for the discussion.