Ignore Anyone Who Says Marxism Is a Threat | Gary North

 
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Until you understand this fundamental principle, you will be easily beguiled by people who go around chanting a mantra: "Marxism, Marxism, Marxism." The mantra is nonsense if it is applied to modern Western society, the continent of Africa, India, and especially China.

Anyone who uses the word Marxism with respect to any movement that does not call for proletarian revolution is exposing his complete and utter ignorance of the writings of Marx and Engels. I don't care who he is. I don't care if he is your personal guru. If he says Marxism is on the rise, he doesn't know what he is talking about.

The biggest nonsense of all is something called cultural Marxism. There is no such thing as cultural Marxism. That idea was an invention of Antonio Gramsci in the 1930's. He was a self-professed Italian Communist who was fed up with Stalinism. He was convinced that there would never be a proletarian revolution in the West until Christianity and its cultural manifestations are wiped out. Then there can be a proletarian revolution. This is anti-Marxism. This is Hegelianism. This is what Marx spent decades writing against. It is a denial of the fundamental Marxist tenet, namely, that the mode of production is the basis of the superstructure of philosophy, culture, art, and what we call social institutions. Marxism places the mode of production at the center of social, economic, and historical analysis. If the mode of production is not central, then the philosophy is not Marxism. I have written against the idea of cultural Marxism here: "Cultural Marxism Is an Oxymoron".

Back in my adolescent years, the late 1950's, liberals had a slogan: "Conservatives see a Communist under every bed." The slogan was close to the truth. Today, conservatives still see Marxists under every bed. Every Left-wing movement, no matter who is behind it, is seen as Marxist. The fact of the matter is this: no modern movement is Marxist. Would-be Marxists may have done a little reading of Marx, and then they try to implement whatever their hobbyhorse reform is. This isn't Marxism. If it is not based on the rising up of industrial workers against the capitalist system, it isn't Marxism.

There are hardly any industrial workers left. They have become white-collar workers. The few industrial workers who are left on factory floors are being replaced by robots. The robots are not going to rise up against the capitalist class.

Marx was completely wrong about everything that he wrote about industrial workers. He didn't get anything right. He was wrong from start to finish. There was no proletarian revolution in the West after World War I. It didn't happen in the Great Depression. It surely didn't happen after World War II. The proletarians as a class have steadily disappeared. Capitalism is no longer primarily industrial. Anyway, that has been the case in the West. On mainland China, the economy is industrial. But the revolution came in China in 1949 when Mao's army defeated Chiang Kai-shek's army. China was a rural, feudal society. It never did get to the capitalist stage of production before the revolution. Neither did czarist Russia.

It is important that conservatives understand their enemy. The enemy is not Marxism. Marxism is dead. Conservatives who think they are fighting the good fight are in fact beating a dead horse. "Marxism, Marxism, Marxism," they cry. It's nonsense. You know you're dealing with somebody who has never read Marx and has never read a book analyzing Marxism who tells you that we are facing Marxism today. We are not.

It is important that you get your definitions right. If you don't get you definitions right, you will be easily misled. When you think Marxism, you had better think of these terms: the mode of production, class warfare, stages of historical development, proletarians as the vanguard of the future, the inevitable revolution of proletarians against the capitalist industrial class, ideas as the superstructure of society, and capitalism as urban.


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