Marxist Scholars Circle
WA Delegate: None.
Founder: 
The Revolutionary Headquarters of Marxist Scholar Vanguard
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Embassies: North Korea, The Communist Bloc, The Leftist Assembly, The Federation of Anarchist Communes, and Democratic Socialist Assembly.
Tags: Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Fascist, Communist, Democratic, Eco-Friendly, Egalitarian, Feminist, LGBT, Minuscule, Serious, and Socialist.
Marxist Scholars Circle contains 4 nations.
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The Most World Assembly Endorsements in Marxist Scholars Circle
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 | Nation | WA Category | Motto | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |  The Revolutionary Headquarters of Marxist Scholar Vanguard | Scandinavian Liberal Paradise | “Workers of the World, Unite!” | |
| 2. |  The People's Republic of Zulanka in MSC | Left-wing Utopia | “ˇHasta la Victoria Siempre!” | |
| 3. |  The Community of A Marxist Scholar Freien | Left-wing Utopia | “There is only one way and that is revolutionary terror” | |
| 4. |  The Democratic Republic of Dialectical metaRealism | Left-wing Utopia | “Emancipation from Capitalist Intersectionality!” |
Regional Happenings
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The Free Land of Revolutionary Theory departed this region for North Korea.
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The Free Land of Books and Bombs departed this region for Ouroboros.
- : The Revolutionary Headquarters of Marxist Scholar Vanguard arrived from Lazarus.
- : Regional Founder The Revolutionary Headquarters of Marxist Scholar Vanguard ceased to exist.
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The People's Republic of Nuevo Rivas of the region Socialist States of Oliviland proposed constructing embassies.
- : Embassy cancelled between The Internationale and Marxist Scholars Circle.
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The Democratic Republic of Democrats Republic of Carrotonia of the region United Left Alliance proposed constructing embassies.
- : The Revolutionary Headquarters of Marxist Scholar Vanguard arrived from Osiris.
- : Regional Founder The Revolutionary Headquarters of Marxist Scholar Vanguard ceased to exist.
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The Rzeczpospolita Społeczna of Slavic Bloodia of the region Velika Slavia proposed constructing embassies.
Marxist Scholars Circle Regional Message Board
Loading...I don't think that me playing with Kant will be of much interest here, so I will conclude, making a return towards Marxism.
I can't accept any such distinction. You are exchanging the distinction Kant makes in categorizing critical philosophy for a distinction that rests on subfields of philosophy, essentially adopting the standpoint of the division of labor within thought, of primary importance mostly in Anglo-Saxon philosophy, while on the other hand, Kant's philosophy is systematic and stands only as a unity. In any case, I think it is closer to being the other way around and you got it wrong.
Another disagreement. It is philosophy before Kant that, in my opinion, is dominated by idealism, with a few exceptions (Lucretius, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza). Philosophy after Kant, and especially after Marx, seems actually much closer to materialism (again, with exceptions, like existentialism). It is today, with the attempt to do metaphysics after Heidegger, which basically consists in a return to pre-Kantian metaphysics, that under the banner of "realism" idealism is making its comeback and exerting its domination. The enemies of materalism are not Kant and the German Idealists, but Plato and Descartes.
Is that a criticism though? Marx is distancing himself from Hegel, only to show his closeness to him. That is how this passage is to be read in its unity. Marx assures us that his "dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite". Anyone familiar with Hegel will be able to look beyond the appearance of that sentence and into its meaning. Marx continues by praising Hegel: "I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him". But it is another phrase of Marx that particularly captures my interest: "just as I was working at the first volume of “Das Kapital,” it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre Epigonoi who now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing’s time treated Spinoza, i.e., as a "dead dog". Marx is not just making an analogy between the critics of Hegel and Mendelssohn and between the treatment Spinoza and Hegel received. He is talking about Hegel in terms of Hegel, taking himself Hegel's position. One is struck to read in the Introduction of Hegel's Encyclopedia that: "Lessing said in his day that people treat Spinoza the way they treat a dead dog; one cannot say that in more recent times Spinozism, and speculative philosophy in general, are treated any better". The analogy is clear: Marx as Hegel, salvaging Hegel from what he saw but couldn't save himself from. The opposite where it properly belongs.
Marx agrees with that in the Holy Family. Althusser adds on it, saying that nominalism is not only the beginning of materialism, but materialism itself.
Class politics are a means to an end too, however. Why do "identity politics" stand as secondary to it and thus, in waiting?
That is one of Bhaskar's major distinctions. He calls it the epistemic fallacy. According to Bhaskar, one of the major problems with modern philosophy is a failure to make a distinction between ontology and epistemology. Now, that said, I think that Kant did understand the difference. However, it has often been glossed over by later philosophers.
IMO, no philosophy is really a unity. Philosophers, as humans, generally make many intellectual turns throughout their lives. That was true with Kant. It was also true with Bhaskar.
Aristotelian philosophy, which was dominant before Kant (and, to an extent, after him, as well), had both idealist and realist elements. However, he abandoned most of the strict idealism of Plato, especially regarding the theory of essences.
The early Marx, yes. The later Marx, not so much. For instance, Capital and the Grundrisse show how far Marx had moved away from Hegel. Later on, Engels was even moving toward an institutional approach to scientific socialism (wißenschaftlicher Sozialismus).
The problem with Althusser's claim is that, among the scholastic theologians, Ockham was not a materialist.
The goal of class politics is emancipation from capitalism and the capitalist world-system (Wallerstein). What is the goal of identity politics? (Edit: My own answer is that the goal of identity politics is class politics.)
Sharing from NK's RMB:
March 8th, International Women's Day!
North Korea is a revolutionary Marxist region and as so, it's also Feminist region. We recognize that liberation of all people's (and especially women) is dependant on smashing the for profit capitalist economy and establishing a public, democratically controlled and planned people's economy.
Women bare the brunt of the economic exploitation under this system by the societal implications of child rearing, household cleaning and often maintenance. The "patriarchy" or superstructure of this economy puts women in an inferior position in economic matters having to clear these and many other hurdles before equal footing with men is considered possible.
The exploitation of women in health care and education is world renowned, where we do the most important jobs in the world for mediocre pay.
Revolutionary regards;
Veronica Ming, founder of North Korea
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Women hold up half the sky! - Mao Tse-tung
Apologies for the late reply!
Just to be clear, I'm not a Third Worldist, I'm trying to give a more charitable view of Third Worldists in replying here for the sake of discussion and further education.
I'm definitely sympathetic to criticism of Western Marxism, but isn't it somewhat idealist itself to point towards ideological defects as the main things that have held Western Marxism back from effecting substantial change rather than something in the base that serves as a material basis for issues there? The latter is part what I find compelling about Third Worldists, at least in introducing people to these concepts.
I don't see them as rejecting Marx's statement necessarily. I see their focus as giving Marxist political economy an update to reflect what they see as reality now. The conclusions that some may draw from that lead to views like what you mention but there's more nuance to them than that suggests. In groups like the Blekingegade Gang I see not an abandonment of the struggle but a different direction taken with a different emphasis than conventional political work we've seen in the West.
What I'm interested in regarding Gramsci in this context is his concept of cultural imperialism you mentioned previously.
I think this piece might be a good introduction to contemporary perspectives on imperialism. It's approachable (to me at least) but very comprehensive. I recommend John Smith's Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century if you'd like to read more from a similar view.
Global Commodity Chains and the New Imperialism
https://monthlyreview.org/2019/03/01/global-commodity-chains-and-the-new-imperialism/
No problem. We are all busy.
Honestly, I had a somewhat more charitable view of Third Worldism before I started watching Jason Unruhe. I know that he is not very popular with many other Third Worldists. Some of them have even accused him of plagiarism. (I am not in a position to judge the accuracy of that claim.) Unruhe seems to have a favorable view of right-wing governments, like Russia, Turkey, and Iran. He is even a political analyst for the Iranian government's English-language TV channel. It seems to be intentionally mimicking BBC News. Unruhe has also had other Third Worldists host his YouTube show (when he has been on vacation). They all appeared to share Unruhe's right-wing sympathies. It seems to me that he places his authoritarianism (a tankie for the sake of being a tankie) ahead of any Leftism. Now, again, I realize that not all Third Worldists agree with Unruhe. However, they all appear to question (without any evidence I have seen) any dialectical potential in the West. To me, that is a direct contradiction to Marx's internationalism.
I just think that many Western Marxists took an unfortunate turn toward idealism. That culminated in the Frankfurt School and, more recently, with post-Marxism.
I am all for continuously updating scientific socialism. However, why focus on the Third World (unless one lives in the Third World)?
Throughout all the turns I have made in my life, since 1968, I have always appreciated his theory of cultural hegemony.
Mark
I can understand not liking Third Worldism if you take Unruhe as representative of it! I had sort of the opposite experience as you since I didn't know of Third Worldism at all before I knew of him. I didn't respect the tendency as a whole for a long time after and engaged with other Third Worldist authors (like Cope as I mentioned) to sort of challenge myself. Reading them I quickly understood that my prior conceptions of Third Worldism were very limited and colored by Unruhe. There really is more diversity and nuance in Third Worldism than people just saying the West is worthless or fetishizing movements in the periphery.
Third Worldists do rely on hard data about discrepancies in trade, wages, etc. to back up their positions. While their analysis is not quite as rigorous as others already discussed and the conclusions they make from this data can (and should) be challenged, I don't see their work as intrinsically any more opposed to internationalism than Marx or Engels' own analysis of the labor aristocracy. I understand that recognizing these hidden hierarchies and forms of exploitation (like with racism or sexism) can be challenging, particularly for those who benefit from them. It can get even more divisive when there's a positive element involved in their deconstruction (ex: promoting black power against racism, affirming trans folks' genders while working towards abolishing gender, etc.). But I utterly reject what I see as the alternative, basically just a variation of the "color-blind" class-reductionist approach, of choosing essentially opportunism or what sounds good to the ear over a sober understanding of the world we live in.
To clarify, my point wasn't necessarily that I disagree Western Marxism took an idealist turn. I don't mean to dismiss the importance of theory and strategy in the course of a socialist project either, of course there can be more or less effective lines in a given situation. What I'm objecting to is the emphasis on the ideas some folks have over the material circumstances surrounding them. I just don't think it's entirely convincing as a Marxist or materialist to point to such subjective factors like ideological issues as primary faults behind failures of the left in the West for example.
The majority of the working class is in the periphery now. Inquiry into their circumstances and how they differ from our own will become more and more important for contemporary Marxists in the West for this reason alone. When we consider how global economic changes have led to this situation and how those trends effect us (workers in the West) as well this focus becomes less a curiosity and more relevant regardless of any personal connection one might have to the Third World.
I had engaged with the work of other Third Worldists before Unruhe. However, I suppose that Unruhe's knee-jerk right-wing authoritarianism put a bad taste in my mouth. Even so, I disliked the emphasis on the Third World even before watching Unruhe's commentaries.
Sure, but I think it makes more sense to use the work of, for instance, Kimberlé Crenshaw or Patricia Hill Collins, two of the seminal figures in intersectional theory. As I see it, intersectionality develops a sophisticated, nuanced, multidimensional approach to the capitalist world-system (borrowing from Wallerstein) without falling into the dualism of developing vis-ŕ-vis developed countries. Certainly, relative degrees of development can be considered as one axis (or, as I call it, a single intersectional thoroughfare) of the matrix of domination (Collins' term), but there are many other axes as well. To me, Third Worldism gets caught up in a simplistic economism, which both Marx and, especially, Engels, were moving away from toward the ends of their careers. There is more to capitalism than development.
Yes, I think that the contrast between the core and the periphery, in the dependency theories, allows for greater sophistication than Third Worldism. To me, however, much of academic Marxism (of which I have been a part since 1980) has been so captivated by the Freudianism of the Frankfurt School and, more recently, the quasi-Lacanianism (poststructural Freudianism) of scholars such as Žižek that I wonder if academic Marxism, to which I have been committed, is, at this point, even redeemable.
Hey, I like this place.
Since we are a relatively small region, could we sponsor a reasonably scholarly debate on some subject? We could invite members of regions in which we have embassies (and perhaps others, too). It may attract more people to our region.
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