I tried a few years ago to humor the “left” on their historical project, albeit I walked into a hornet’s nest full of sectarianism, mostly coming out with more questions than answers. A lot of those people might have had noble intentions but it was always skewed by distractions towards cultural issues, which as much they tried to keep it mainly about class, it just didn’t seem possible to ignore the elephant in the room, which the “right” paraded out from under their noses, kind of like fish bait. Of course upon further inspection it seems there was a lot more to criticize than just surface level concerns. Marxist socialism, for all its worth, also has metaphysical and historical problems as well.
After the war, the USSR unfolded in the sense that after the dictatorship of the proletarian the state should have went away (if all went to plan, which it didn’t) and mostly just went about making reform after reform to adapt to the material conditions of within and without the nation state, thus ended up bogging itself down in bureaucracy so much that dissolving the state just wasn’t possible and thus nothing important (after at least two decades in) actually happened. This kind of backs up the Weberian interpretation of how things really went down. Of course with so many antagonisms existing abroad the whole project could never fully be realized due to the insistence of the original theory of socialism being so tied to Karl Marx’s ideology. Maybe emulating Saint-Simon or something might have saved them, although there’s really never been a model of socialism that would be workable by the lefts current standards because it would ultimately be labeled “reactionary” or “regressive”. C’est la vie…Of course, the very concept of the state "abolishing itself" is insane for the same reasons an anarcho capitalist federation is insane. Power abhors a vacuum. Even if you created a "new Soviet man" everywhere, who wouldn't try to seize power, all you've done is a created a race of Do-Dos waiting to be conquered, as someone said to me recently.
The metaphysical problem with Marxist socialism was its insistence on hyper determinism and materialism which, if taken to its extreme, ends up condemning people to living their lives like puppets and shuts down any semblance of cognition that people are essentially automatons without a “life force” and while it’s eerily similar to Calvinism both systems tend to operate in the same dreadful manner that makes the worst excesses of hyper Authoritarian monarchs come off as childish or idealistic and or fanciful. I’m all for supporting anything that improves the lives of workers and the unfortunate souls that live in poverty but not allowing anyone to seek out their own destiny is very dire and nihilistic, and I don’t think that even a Marxist with the best intentions would even let them do it collectively (in the sense that every group can choose where they go, mentally, physically or politically on their own volition) if we’re towing the party line with Marx and Lenin. Almost all Marxism in practice has had Leninist overtones. Pure “orthodox” Marxism is still theoretical, just as much as stateless capitalism would necessarily be, almost all existing states have either had at least a small welfare system if almost purely capitalist or have had to open their markets to the rest of the world if socialist, if not immediately but eventually.
After the war, the USSR unfolded in the sense that after the dictatorship of the proletarian the state should have went away (if all went to plan, which it didn’t) and mostly just went about making reform after reform to adapt to the material conditions of within and without the nation state, thus ended up bogging itself down in bureaucracy so much that dissolving the state just wasn’t possible and thus nothing important (after at least two decades in) actually happened. This kind of backs up the Weberian interpretation of how things really went down. Of course with so many antagonisms existing abroad the whole project could never fully be realized due to the insistence of the original theory of socialism being so tied to Karl Marx’s ideology. Maybe emulating Saint-Simon or something might have saved them, although there’s really never been a model of socialism that would be workable by the lefts current standards because it would ultimately be labeled “reactionary” or “regressive”. C’est la vie…Of course, the very concept of the state "abolishing itself" is insane for the same reasons an anarcho capitalist federation is insane. Power abhors a vacuum. Even if you created a "new Soviet man" everywhere, who wouldn't try to seize power, all you've done is a created a race of Do-Dos waiting to be conquered, as someone said to me recently.
The metaphysical problem with Marxist socialism was its insistence on hyper determinism and materialism which, if taken to its extreme, ends up condemning people to living their lives like puppets and shuts down any semblance of cognition that people are essentially automatons without a “life force” and while it’s eerily similar to Calvinism both systems tend to operate in the same dreadful manner that makes the worst excesses of hyper Authoritarian monarchs come off as childish or idealistic and or fanciful. I’m all for supporting anything that improves the lives of workers and the unfortunate souls that live in poverty but not allowing anyone to seek out their own destiny is very dire and nihilistic, and I don’t think that even a Marxist with the best intentions would even let them do it collectively (in the sense that every group can choose where they go, mentally, physically or politically on their own volition) if we’re towing the party line with Marx and Lenin. Almost all Marxism in practice has had Leninist overtones. Pure “orthodox” Marxism is still theoretical, just as much as stateless capitalism would necessarily be, almost all existing states have either had at least a small welfare system if almost purely capitalist or have had to open their markets to the rest of the world if socialist, if not immediately but eventually.
