recipe for becoming a marx
- get job
- think “why do people just accept spending half of your life working some pointless job with no sign of conditions improving”
- somehow find lectures on socialism
- find /r/socialism
- hmmm maybe we should have worker coops that’d be swell
- find out that imperialism is a thing
- learn that amerika is the worst thing in the recorded history of humanity
- someone says china not bad
- wait what do you mean china not bad
- hang on maybe china really do be not bad
- whoa i think i may be a gommusim now
- permanently damage relationship with liberal family
- weep bitterly in a corner for three days and nights
- congratulations, you are now a marxism and will never feel comfortable in your country again
Very similar to my experience entering adulthood. Though I’ve managed to keep some relationships with family intact by low key converting them, my mom is a good example. She’s not big on politics but apparently she’s been talking to her coworkers about Cuba and communism because of me!
- wish family members were convertible
Epic marx moments
I “decided” to become a Marxist in the same way I “decided” to accept the laws of thermodynamics
I genuinely do not think I could put it into better words if I tried.
There was no decision.
It’s like Bertell Ollman warned: if you read Marx and understand historical and dialectical materialism, you will become a Marxist and accept HiMat as the most advanced scientific framework known to humans.
It can take a while to understand Marxism. But anyone who reads and understands Marxism and doesn’t become a Marxist is being wilfully ignorant.
They could understand and accept Marxism and still say, ‘Fuck workers, I’m in it for myself’. That’s one thing. But to understand and refuse to accept? It’s way beyond cognitive dissonance at that point.
Of course, I really mean ‘understand’ when I say ‘understand’. Skimming the Communist Manifesto might not be enough. I resisted it for a while but the more I read the harder it became to reject Marxism.
As for why I started to read Marx? A very patient Marxist asked me, over quite a long time, questions like:
- if-X-then-Y-
- can-that-be-solved-under-capitalism or
- what-conditions-are-necessary-for-Z
This made me challenge my own liberalism. They mentioned very little Marx, nor told me that Marx/ists had a better answer or what that answer might be. No jargon or explicit frameworks, and very few sources. It was enough to get me to apply a contradiction and class analysis to my own ideas until I realised the bottom had fallen out the box. At that point I needed to look somewhere else for answers. Then I was recommended Marxists texts until I could piece the world back together again.
Yes, this does involve and require brainwashing. As Mao said in a speech to Chinese students in Soviet Moscow, the brain must be washed clean of it’s bourgeois education (quoted in Roland Boer, Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners).
I always think about the CIA operatives who had to learn Marxism-Leninism and apply its principles in a counter-revolutionary way, to defeat Marxist movements.
We have to assume that these are intelligent people, that deep down they understand how brilliant Marxist thought is, understand class struggle, and still do everything they can to serve their capitalist masters. It’s deeply disturbing that they know the right path in a way that others aren’t, and still do the opposite for the money. Extremely soulless behavior.
Stories about euromerican soldiers and spies who were swayed in their beliefs by communist revolutionaries and decided to defect to or act on behalf of those nations instead of continuing to support brutality always warm my heart.
I grew up in USSR, and I was generally happy with my life there during Soviet times, and I lived through some really horrible shit during the collapse. That said, I was a kid at the time, and I didn’t really think about politics all that much. All I knew was that my life in a communist country was just fine, and that things got worse after we transitioned to capitalism.
My family moved around a lot after the collapse, and I got to live in a few different western countries. I saw incredible amounts of opulence contrasted with incredible poverty. It never sat right with me that some people should live on the street while others live like royalty.
As I got older, I reflected more on these things and it became clear to me that the capitalist model was fundamentally exploitative and unjust. Reading history I realized that Marxism-Leninism was the only ideology that provided a clear and consistent path away from capitalism.
I think that the theory that Marx and Engels built is fundamentally sound, and it lucidly explains material relationships within our society. Why things are the way they are makes perfect sense when seen through the Marxist lens. Marxism is not utopian, and its application provides real and tangible improvement in the quality of life for majority of the people. This is why I’m a Marxist.
I didn’t decide to be a Marxist. I became one when I learned more about the world and communism.
- a lifelong desire for justice
- bernie 2016 + chapo subreddit
- bernie 2020 + reading state and revolution
My family got hit very badly by the great recession. Everyone simply named “the crisis” as the responsible of the sudden increase of poverty around me, and being the curious person that I was at the time, I began to wonder: what exactly is that, and how did it happen?
That is how I stumbled upon the texts of a white-bearded German man, and the rest is history.
I used to be one of those stuck-up sinofash dudes with liberal tendencies, but in America. So I was bombarded by China bad. Then I discovered r/sino, and found genzedong through that. @JohannesAdams1212 was with me in the china evil subreddit, and he showed me here. I became a marxist a few months after joining genzedong.
Because propaganda about AES kept being debunked to me and it led me to realize that AES states are way better than I was led to believe
i’m still kinda ambiguous on the political spectrum. All I know is that only socialists and communists are actually active in my city and they are the only ones who provide services to society all
I’ll start with my background and material conditions, because of course that is pretty important.
I grew/am finishing growing up pretty privileged. Still working class, to be sure, but you know. Straight, white, male, and never have had to worry about money issues. Progressive liberal single mother, worked hard to take care of me. She never had the time to really dive into the why and get a great understanding of it all, just meant the best for people and kind of that well-intentioned social Democrat type.
I had always been interested in how we organize our society, though. Liberalism/Social Democracy, which I had subscribed to until the Ukraine/Russia conflict, still left me with so many questions. I really had no understanding of the world around me.
A very small but impactful moment was when I was watching Bo Burnham’s Inside in 2021 and he sang a line about private property being inherently theft and neo-liberal fascists destroying the left and it was like “whoa. I’m a liberal. What’s wrong here?” It also didn’t help that I didn’t know the difference between personal and private property then, so it caused a lot of anxiety.
That kind of kick-started a little exploration into the real left and sticking my toes into some Second Thought. Watched all his videos, read some of the Manifesto, and got on Lemmygrad.
Since then, I’ve read State and Revolution, Blackshirts and Reds, watched tons of informational videos, and am getting into ‘What is to be Done?’
I am now a developing Marxist.
If anyone made it this far (apologies for taking up so much space, I don’t know how to do the spoiler thing), can you help me understand Dialectical/Historical Materialism a little more or recommend some reading? That’s really the only part of all of this I don’t understand fully, and I’m aware it’s one of the most important.
DiaMat/HiMat can be tough nut to crack. Once it’s cracked, though, Marxists texts, and the problems of liberalism, become a whole lot clearer. I’ll give my summary, but others may have other views.
spoiler
Essentially, it’s the study of change. According to the DiaMat worldview:
- there are no ‘things’, isolated from other ‘things’; there exist only relations and processes, and these are all internally connected
- from this it follows that every relation is a contradiction, a unity of opposites
- these opposites are identical and different at the same time – they are distinct, in a way, but one cannot exist without the other, and they interpenetrate each other
- quantitative changes lead to qualitative leaps (progress is not linear), and
- change is constant, because contradiction is everywhere, in all
thingsrelations, processes.
In sum: DiaMat studies how the struggle of contradictory opposites drives change. If the ‘relations’/‘processes’ bit throws you, try to think of something simple and analyse it in your head. Like a ball. It appears to be a thing, separate from other things.
But zoom in. The air pushes out while the rubber pushes in. Zoom in further, that rubber is imperfect, a mesh of tightly connected chemicals. There are tiny gaps, through which the air inside can slowly escape, meaning the air inside is connected – ‘internally’ related – to the air outside, even if the ball – seen as a ‘thing’ appears to be separate from that outside air.
A good way to understand DiaMat is to take some time to think about the above summary, then to read an example, then come back to the summary to see if you can identify the moves in the example. Then read another example and do the same thing again before delving into some of the theory.
If you want a good, concrete example, take a look at how Marx and Engels discuss the bourgeois and proletariat in the Communist Manifesto or read Marx, ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire’. If you’re up for a challenge, read the first 3 or 4 chapters of Capital to see how Marx applies DiaMat to explain the commodity.
For the theory, you might try:
- Lenin, ‘Three Sources and Component Parts of Marxism’,
- Engels, ‘Socialism: Utopian and Scientific’ (this includes extracts from his Anti-Duhring, and
- the Postface to the second German Edition of Capital, from and including the text ‘The European Messenger of St. Petersburg in an article dealing exclusively with the method of Das Kapital (May number, 1872, pp. 427–436), finds my method of inquiry severely realistic, but my method of presentation, unfortunately, German-dialectical.…’ (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm)
- Mao, ‘On Contradiction’.
- If you can find a copy, Bertell Ollman’s Dance of the Dialectic is good (he used to have a copy on his website, but I’ve not been able to find it for a long time; the paperback is easy to find and there a likely other versions on the internet) – As are Maurice Cornforth’s books on DiaMat and HiMat. These may be a better start. They’re excellent.
Carlos L Garrido recently put together a collection of texts on DiaMat for Midwestern Marx. It looks good. Could be worth a read. There’s also a good ‘Marx, Engels, Lenin, Historical Materialism’ collection from the Soviet Era. It’s rare in physical form, I think, but there are PDFs.
I would also add a book that helped me quite a bit with understanding diamat along side the things already mentioned, although I don’t know how valuable the examples are if you’re not familiar with some biology.
The Dialectical Biologist by Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin
Specifically the last chapter “Conclusion: Dialectics” is great because they go through the various aspects of dialectics with various biological (and some other) examples. A critical reading of this chapter with me analyzing the examples given and also trying to come up with my own really helped me.
Some essays like this one were also quite useful: https://redsails.org/what-is-dialectics/
Funnily enough, I just started The Ecological Rift by Foster, Clark, and York (MR Press), and I thought, this would be a good example of dialectical materialism. The preface states,
We have also benefited from the support of Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin, and from their dialectical approach to biology.
It sounds like others have found Lewis and Lewontin helpful, too. Might have to add them to my list after working through Foster and Burnett.
Sometimes I like to work forwards, starting with the oldest author and reading chronologically. There’s nothing quite like seeing the debate unfold like that. But when I’m shorter on time or the subject is less familiar, I like to work backwards as the examples of more modern writers can be easier to get on with; and reading the previous work with some background knowledge can make the task a bit easier.
I’ll have to check out The Ecological Rift then.
I think Levins and Lewontin are definitely worth checking out, especially for dialectical views of biology but also other related natural sciences and their applications. They also contrast their dialectical view to the traditional reductionist views and conceptions of the discussed topics but the focus is still on the dialectics.
Yes, in my experience, the level of previous background knowledge is the key in determining which strategy (chronological or not) is better suited to the study of a subject. Without knowing the historical and social context of an author or work it can be difficult to properly analyze and contextualize it. That’s when reading some secondary sources from more modern writers can serve as a great starting point. Once I have a better understanding of the context, reading the oldest or primary sources is much more productive. Knowing where that threshold lies just takes some experience.
One thing I find very useful is when the more modern authors directly cite and include paragraphs or explanations from the older authors (which is quite common is Marxist writing). It helps directly with the contextualization and provides a list of works for further reading.
In addition to what redtea said, you can read Stalin’s dialectical and historical materialism, and 5 essays of mao’s on philosophy (collection by flpress). If you feel like a deep dive into dialectics in general and are willing to listen to a lot of podcasts, go through the backlogs of revolutionary left radio, and you’ll find a lot of dialectics stuff.
You know what, I remember now, listening to Rev Left Radio and Proles of the Round Table. Both have some great stuff on dialectics that really helped me get my head around some of the trickier concepts.
My development was similar to everyone else’s but I’d add that I was always questioning the disparity between rich and poor since I was very young, why we had to pay for food and water and housing, why the people with money don’t help. Why charities exist but there being a lack of progress.
Why, when my mom has been working since she was a toddler, wasn’t she rich like everyone said she’d be. I mean, hard work pays off, right? While I’ve always had a comfortable life, you’d think we’d be rolling in dough with how long my mom has been a labourer.
I also looked at my own privileges and want others to have it and more. There’s the fury that has grown with the knowledge of solutions to the problems we have and yet nobody wants to go through with it. My fury at the complacency of the people around me, especially family. My opposition to the “fuck you, I got mine” attitude that permeates.
I grew up learning that the word “communism” was bad but never knowing why (except Holodomor, I guess), and yet all my values lined up with it. Reeducation is a big one for me, trying to undo all the damage created by a red-scare propagandized education system.
From a young age I started questioning why I have such a comfortable life despite not working very hard while other people worked their asses off and lived in poverty. In my teenage years, I went through the atheist -> “skeptic” -> chud pipeline. Even during that time I suspected that the chuds were wrong and I drifted towards “progressive” liberalism, but that still didn’t make sense. I eventually got drawn into breadtube by a pedophilic NATO stan before the 2020 election. I found out what tankies are and discovered that they are correct.
A philosophy YouTuber I really liked at the time (that I now consider worse than trash, read below) made a video and then a stream about Marx, he taught me about the falling rate of profit, inevitability of socialism etc, unfortunately he is very flawed, he is some flavor of leftcom and refutes completely Stalin, considering brezhnev better than him (💀)
Then I discovered hakim and genzedong (on reddit, back then) and leninism made a lot of sense to me, the necessity of a strong state during siege socialism, the necessity for radical measures ettc, in the end, all is good what ends good.
That YouTuber is really bad, like he praises the EU and the Euro (that subjugated and empoverished Italy) and he is pro Ukraine, glad I distanced myself about 2 years ago.
I still need to read my theory, so far I’ve read:
ABC of communism (💀)
Chunks of the manifesto
Wage labor and capital
Some of Lenin’s works
Some Mao
And a plethora of articles and essays
Edit: per i miei compagni Italiani, provate a indovinare di chi sto parlando nel primo paragrafo
Have you thought about reading Gramsci?
I have his selected readings, it’s just a question of adhd impeding me from reading long stuff, i could try reading some of his letters or his shorter essays though, a friend of mine said they’re interesting
Nice one. I’ve only read a few snippets, but thought you might be able to enjoy his works in the ordinary language – or did you go for a translation?
I have his selected readings in Italian, my friend is translating some of his niche letters in English for a group of friends he has, maybe i could ask him for the translation and upload that on prolewiki library
A mix of unemployment through an entire year (2013), already having similar personal standards, and my aunt marrying a Russian (ironically, he’s now far-right) who said he missed the USSR and how life was there. Also, one of my former bosses gave me a copy of The Communist Manifesto and I liked it. Then I read the first The Capital volume. I suppose it was a gradual proccess and somewhat instinctive in my case - I basically figured out Communism is, logically, the best possible system for people like me.
