The evolution of socialist strategies
Or: “From Marx to the Neo-Rousseauians.”
The flowchart is from the end of Chapter 5 of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, summarizing the argument developed in that chapter.
Click the image to enlarge.
More excerpts are available at the Explaining Postmodernism page.
Tags: Explaining Postmodernism, left environmentalism, Lenin, Mao Zedong, Marxist Socialism, Rousseauian socialism
Marxism claimed to be a “science.” In science, when a theory doesn’t work out, when predictions made from that theory prove false again and again, the search begins for new explanations. But if you have a religious belief in the absolute truth of your theory and you want to believe it at all costs, you have to Move the Goal Posts.
As you showed in “Explaining Postmodernism”, many Marxists simply abandoned reason. Since the collapse of socialism, they no longer have a positive program. All that is left is their hatred of the capitalist system and their desire to destroy it. That leads to another line of action: Environmentalism.
A search for environmentalism+”social justice” yielded 898,000 hits. Van Jones, the Obama administration’s “Green Czar” who was forced to resign when his membership in radical organizations became known is just one of many.
Is there a place somewhere in most of those stages for:
Disregard the “values” [pl.] of human life;
Subordinate those values?
I’ve never seen anything ANYWHERE so hilariously fallacious. This is nothing but a direct attempt at discrediting the evolution of modern society (e.g. environmentalism - realising that traditional, wasteful Western industry/processes is unsupportable - and equality - i.e. the Civil Rights movement and Women’s Lib) are nothing more than “the latest trick those sneaky Reds are up to”.
Your analysis reminds me of Plato or Aristotle. You are a self-described philosopher, and not a historian or sociologist. You simply “think for a living”, and have somehow come up with the idea that “terrorism” is (implicitly) synonymous to “communism”. It is arrogant for you to talk outside of your field of expertise.
lol this is the worst post ever, seriously? If marx were alive today he would say that material conditions were not sufficient to enable socialism.
Notice how the internet HAS enabled some forms of socialism (piracy), now if and when that happens to matter and energy capitalism will evolve to the next level and marx will come back into vogue once again.
The future will be determined by technology and not ideology.