“Marxist” is a word very often thrown around casually today, distanced and abstracted from it’s roots in proletarian revolution. It is often thrown in with “Analysis” as if the “Analysis” part in “Marxist Analysis” should be center stage. And you get the feeling, reading text after text, article after article, that it is being used primarily today by people with comfortable incomes, comfortable tenures at colleges, and comfortable positions as managers of culture boards. Intellectuals who have no intention of actually implementing the kind of revolution that Marx wrote about in his Communist Manifesto, they would not dare go up against black-clothed SWAT teams decked out from head to toe in: riot helmets, Mag-Lite bully clubs, stun guns, holsters, and bullet proof vests. Marxism instead becomes this kind of “chic” thinking and buzzword that marks you as a member of a kind of elite, a passcode into expensive wine tasting lounges. Because deep down everybody knows that we have passed from Capitalism into what James Burnham had called “Managerial Society.” Capitalism is really dead, but many comfortable salaried people like to pretend that it still exists, is still bad, and still has to be overthrown. But maybe with lipstick instead of guns.
Who is this Burnham? James Burnham was a former Trotskyist in the 1930’s, who became disillusioned with Trotskyism and Communism in general when he saw how rich the leaders in Stalin’s Russia -the “Managers” -as he called them, had gotten as a result of their “Managerial Revolution.” He became what many consider to be the “Father of the Neo-Conservatives” and influenced Orwell, so, I thought, this guy has got to be important in history. So I read his book, after hearing it being recommended and referred to on political podcasts about our current crisis in the world today.
So, pondering further and deeper on this "Managerial Revolution" book by James Burnham (and this has really got my mind up in a twist), though the man claimed to no longer be a Socialist, you can tell that he still had regrets, as of 1940, that, in his mind, the "true Socialist Revolution" of society being: 1. Run by the masses, 2. Classless, and 3. International, had not materialized. That, though the State would own the means of production, it would not be in the Workers' hands but in the hands of Managers (Technocrats) who would become the new ruling class. In pondering this further, I looked at our own society and asked myself what Burnham would say of today, when you have all these seeming "Capitalists" all around. What came to me is that in the West, Finance Capitalism is as free as all get out, but don't try and manufacture anything physical, outside of the rules, or try and invent a new mode of production with a new mode of energy. You'll get shut down so fast your head won't have time to spin.
He talks about this "Managerial Revolution" taking over the world in stages, wars, upsets, and gradual evolutions, like its bottom up, emergent, happenstance, and therefore unavoidable. He also does his damndest to dispel any notion that it is being directed from on high setting the stage for all the "anti-conspiracizing" you hear from so many Presidents, from G. Bush Jr to Obama, afterward. Setting the Neo-Con tone and agenda for the next eighty years. "Let us not engage in dangerous conspiracy theories." In so doing, I realized, he is as Marxist as all get out. What do I mean by that? In that he uses Marxist methods (Hegelian Dialecticism) as a means of explaining history. In other words: that it's "all happenstance, evolution, chance randomness producing deterministic results" and approaches the whole thing as if it's "Science."
And this is the Crux of this email that I am getting to:
Being a "Marxist" does not automatically make you a Communist. If it did, why did my high school teacher have to add a qualifier when he told me, years ago, "Scott, you tell Serban that Capitalist Pig-ism is not where it's at; you tell him that Marxist Communism is where it's at!"
Why did he have to add the qualifier?
Could there perhaps be another form of Communism? Or could it be possible to add the qualifier "Marxist" on the front of "Capitalist?" Yeah, you can say: "I'm a Marxist Capitalist because I believe in using the Dialectical Materialist, happenstance, evolution analysis of History to maximize my profits and find out what the best opportunities are going to be, using my trusty 'everything is just an accident,' er,'Science' filter."
And then that begs the question:
Could there also be a "Conspirommunist?" That is, a person who wants Communist reforms in society yet believes in explaining history as a series of planned, secretive, manipulations, believes that 911 was an Inside Job and was used by rich guys to accumulate even more power by using the fear of foreign enemies to sell foreign wars?
Yes, I like that: "Conspirommunist." Non-Marxist Communist. Someone who believes in equalizing society using non "Scientismist, happenstance, evolutionary, Darwin methods" of analyzing history. Using Conspiracy Theory to advance greater equality.
When I asked myself, “Why do so many on the Left today hate conspiracy theorists?” -This is the answer that came to me: Because they have been trained to look at history only as bottom-up, “emergent” “organic” but, deterministic, Sam Harris-style products of random probabilities. Because of the Material, and I stress that, aspect of that which is called “Marxism.”
Now, reading Edgar Allen Poe, it is cementing my thoughts further on this subject. "Conspiracy Theorist" is a slur word. it is not because they are Lefty, or believe in Lefty things, like Black Lives Matter or Women or Trans or Gays getting equality. No...It is because of their primary method of history that they have been taught in school. That, if you are a young person, and care about the status of underprivileged people, then they will funnel you through the Hegelian Dialectical filter on their circuit board, and you’ll be spat forth as a cardboard cut out who calls himself/herself a Marxist. The Brutalist architecture of colleges today, with it’s cold slabs of concrete and twisted metal nothing’s that pass for “modern art” will reinforce the cold Material side of “Marxist.” Architecture designed to suck out the soul.
That's right. Marxism is NOT a political ideology anymore nor should it be understood as an "ought to be" on the "ought" side of Hume's Guillotine, but as an "Is" on the "Is" side. Marxism is now a method of analysis. That's why it's so often used as a qualifier put before "Communist."
Being anti-Conspiracist isn't only an auxiliary appendage that comes with the package called "Marxism." It is the very core of Marxism. If it wasn’t the core at the beginning, when Karl Marx and Engels made their Marks and Angles on history, it has certainly become that, through the ever-expanding overuse of “Marxist” on a label for everything, from what determines “flesh color” on paint tubes to revisionist analyses of Shakespeare or even The Bible. If there was once a way to advance an agenda of greater equality and well being that was popularly termed “Left” that could countenance the ideas of dark secretive cabals opposing that, which must be overcome (like the NeoCons justifying their wars because of false flag terror events and lies), then there isn’t now. That’s been changed. The Academic Left and the Left of Center media has all but branded any kind of conspiracy idea as “Right Wing.”
The reason is simple: “Marxism” is heavily tied to Academia in the West. A vast majority of Academics seem to identify as “Marxist” on one way or another, and the label and title has so divorced itself from it’s original, strict “proletarian revolution” idea and moved into abstract corners of culture criticism. But Academia is allied strongly with Baconian and Aristotlean “Science” in an almost “What if Kepler had a computer and an Excel Spreadsheet…Would he tabulate the movement of the planets and then say ‘Da Da! Empirical, Statistical Studies and New Science shows that the Ptolomaic Model is right after all!” ?
Would he say that? No, because Kepler was a better person than that and that would be most disrespectful of me if I DID say that. But I will say this: Somebody else, at that same time, a much more mediocre mind, would look at the data that Kepler used, run it through the algorithm, tabulate it so exactly, and then put out a study. Then a cadre of even more mediocre minds would publish it in Forbes, Business Insider, or Scientific American and the article would be “debunking” and “fact-checking” Kepler’s groundbreaking new idea borne of his creative genius. Their title would read thus: “No, Kepler did not reinvent astronomy.” And their subtitle would read: “Computer models confirm that the Ptolomaic Model is correct after all.” Such is the state of our science today. And so, “Marxists,” being grounded in the Humanities and NOT hard Sciences, defer to “The Science” that we “must all trust, because “Marxism” originally billed itself as a “Science-based” attempt at analyzing history and human relations. But today it defers and lends authority to a “Science” that is as dyed in the wool conservative as all get-out. Why should you care about Women’s Rights and Economic Reparations for Black Americans if you believe that “fossil fuels” are the best we can do, but “we have to get off of them” because of “carbon emissions” and “humanity is about to go extinct anyway?” If we have no future, as so many Experts are telling us, then why act as if we have a future to fight for? It is a contradiction.
But if you believe that Scarcity is Artificial instead of Real, and that alternative forms of energy flux density HAVE existed and been suppressed by a cabal (in other words, if you think like Lyndon LaRouche), than it IS possible to entertain a progressive future. Then you DO have a reason to fight for things like Women’s Rights and Economic Reparations for Black Americans And an ever expanding pie of wealth, created by an abundance of energy density flux through society thanks to things like: Cold Fusion, Zero Point Energy, Asteroid Mining, Molten Salt Thorium Reactors, and Sea Salt Batteries, would make that kind of wealth creation possible to spread around!
But…”That’s just pie in the sky,” “fringe science” and “conspiracy theory.” So say the self-appointed “experts” hired by the Oligarchs.
I've never read Burnham's "Managerial Revolution" but from what I've head about it conservatives like it because he convinces them socialism is inherently bureaucratic -- or something like that. Seems to me that for the nascent Soviet Union to survive the civil war, industrial as quickly as possible to be able defend itself against what they all knew was coming, and actually beat the for more advanced Nazi war machine they had to have a very strong centrally planned economy. That this huge bureaucracy couldn't adapt in the postwar decades to different circumstances was an enormous, tragic failure. No doubt bureaucratization is and remains a challenge in the management of our complex societies. Stalin talked about it, so does Xi Jinping today.
Cynthia Chung devotes a chapter to Burnham in her new book a copy of which I only just received a few days ago, haven't had the chance to read it yet. Really curious on her take.
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Best regards,
Andrea Salvatore Buffa