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18 Theses on Aristocratic Marxism
(redsails.org)
Is this just Western Marxism with more steps?
well it seems to consist of a few hundred thousand fewer words
This hugely rubs me the wrong way. What is this stuff?
You probably should read Really Existing Fascism to get where she's coming from.
I actually looked at this recently and this lets on quite nice but i currently have no time to read the text. Can you dumb down why this makes the other text less sounding like an ultra?
It draws a lot on Losurdo's book on Nietzsche, and looks at the history of the 20th century from a philosophical lens where Marx lays the foundation of internationalist, anti-fascist struggle, while Nietzsche is the philosopher whose ideas are the foundations of fascism itself. It argues that Nietzsche provides a very strong alternative to Marxism for the ruling class, a model for maintaining power and rank order for eternity, as opposed to Marxist dialectics which hold that history is in motion and nothing is eternal. Then if you look at the category of "Aristocratic Marxism" as referring to Marxists that absorbed an unhealthy amount of influence from Nietzsche's aristocratic, austere, and anti-egalitarian thought, the OP is basically elaborating some more specific criticisms of that category. I think in practical terms, the category of "Aristocratic Marxists" intersects a lot with what Losurdo would call Western Marxists (though it's not a complete overlap).
I'm not familiar with Spinoza or criticism of Spinoza so I can't really comment on that side of the OP.
Now I begin to understand. Tyvm! o7
I really recommend you read Really Existing Fascism but there's also some lectures from Daniel Tutt that are based on Losurdo's Nietzsche: The Aristocratic Rebel as well as his own book. I think they're pretty good and you can just listen to them to get an idea of where this kind of criticism is coming from.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Frome is generally a really good marxist writer (they are very much anti-western-marxist, very much a materialist and has an excellent article in defense of "tankies") though sometimes their writing can be a bit dense for me as I do not have a background in philosophy. I have not read this article before and after the first read I definitely need to re-read this given the author's generally excellent insights elsewhere. They usually deepen my dialectical materialist understanding further.
For example I really like:
https://redsails.org/the-problem-of-recognition-in-transitional-states/
Though this is not by Frome I can potentially see parallels in terms of learning - this article helped me better understand "identity politics" and to use it better:
https://redsails.org/on-identitarianism-a-defense-of-a-strawman/
The parallel here would be to develop our understanding of how we consider moralism (amongst other things) as marxists. I do need to re-read the article more deeply though.
Maybe because writer goes on about something that’s not well defined?
I think it's pretty clear that she's mostly talking about the PoMo critical theory crowd that borrows a lot from Nietzsche's aristocratic thought.
I think probably starting off with an example could help, with people unfamiliar with that type of crowd. It's not like "oh my god i cannot believe the author would do that" thing, but probably would clarify a bit.
Deleuze, Foucault, and Zizek
I agree it would've been helpful to name them directly right off the bat, but she does name Foucault in the article!
That's fair.
Doesn’t Aristocracy literally mean highest class/bourgeois .
Nietzsche was not a social theorist but a poet, a rebel and innovator. His aristocracy was neither of birth nor of purse; it was of the spirit. In that respect Nietzsche was an anarchist, and all true anarchists were aristocrats.
- Emma Goldman, Minorities versus Majorities
this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2025
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