I agree that liberalism has historically functioned as a facade for domination. But just as chemistry emerged from the quest of alchemy, Marxism identifies the germ of humanism within the chaff of the liberal state. I am not suggesting we complete liberalism, but that we realize its hollowed-out promises by stripping away its class-bound distortions. Just as liberalism sublated feudal honor into human dignity of the citizen, Marxism sublates the abstract citizen into the social individual. What is preserved isn’t always the core of the historical era, but what allows for the continual, universal, and material emancipation in ever widening circles from the political to the human. The extension of emancipation to all is his normative anchor.

Regarding the individual: simply inverting the liberal structure and placing the collective conditions where the individual used to be is a mechanical negation, not a dialectical synthesis. If the individual is merely subordinate to the collective conditions, alienation remains.

“The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances… forgets that it is men who change circumstances.” - Theses On Feuerbach

You cannot transform collective conditions without the development of individual class consciousness. These two are in a bidirectional, internal relationship. They sublate one another. The result is an association of free individuals who are conscious of their social nature, not cogs in a machine.

“Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man; communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being – a return accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development. This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.” - Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

You say that Marx’s guiding ideas were Hegelian, not liberal. But Hegel was the philosopher of the modern liberal subject. He didn’t seek to abolish the individual in favor of the collective; he sought to move the individual from an abstract freedom (the right to be left alone) to a concrete freedom (the power to act in a rational society). Marx is working within the tradition of human emancipation. He isn’t trying to subordinate the person to the collective; he is using Hegelian logic to find a material way to actually achieve the individual autonomy that Liberalism promised but could never deliver.

I am at peace with leaving the argument here: for Marx, the collective is the means, but the ‘complete return of man to himself’ is the end. To lose sight of that human end is to lose the very essence of the critique.

Low charisma brown woman from California fails to convince racist, mysogist country to vote for her.

I agree that the liberal state is a tool for class power and that formal equality is often just a mask for material exploitation.

When I say liberalism is the basis of Marx’s work, I am referring to its humanist core: the promise of individual autonomy and self-determination. With the exception of private property, the values you listed contain a seed of humanism that is currently restricted to a select few.

Nothing forces a value like autonomy to be contingent on private property. Marx shows that private property is exactly what prevents autonomy for the majority. By explaining why these values fail under capitalism, Marx is not dismissing them. He identifies the property relations that prevent human progress. He argues that to actually realize the individual rights liberalism promises, we must first abolish the class power used to protect them for the few.

Even more so, Marx took a core liberal value, the free development of the individual, and proved it is materially impossible to achieve under a system of private property. He analyzed liberalism by holding it to its own standards, showing that the very system it created could never fulfill the values it proclaimed. This is why I call it incomplete because it offers the legal form of freedom without the material content.

Marxism does not do away with the individual. It identifies the material conditions, the abolition of class, required for the individual to be truly autonomous. Marx does not throw away the promise of the Enlightenment. He offers the only material path to make it a reality for everyone.

P.S. I think treating liberal idealism and Marxist materialism as mutually exclusive is a bit non-dialectical. Liberalism was a material response to feudalism, not just a daydream. Likewise, Marx did not start from zero with a cold science of factories. He took the enlightenment goal of human dignity and used a materialist method to discover why that goal was being strangled. To Marx, ideas are themselves a material force once they have gripped the masses and formed a collective consciousness. To suggest Marx had no guiding ideas is just as one-sided as suggesting that liberal thinkers were fully divorced from the material world.

When I say liberal values are the ‘basis’ of Marx’s work, I am not suggesting he was a ‘liberal reformer.’ I am arguing that Marx’s work is a dialectical sublation of liberalism. He takes the some of the liberal achievements (rationalism, the end of feudal bondage, and the Labor Theory of Value) and shows that they can only be fully realized by moving beyond the capitalist mode of production. He doesn’t reject the ‘Individual’ out of hand; he rejects the liberal version of the individual (the abstract citizen) to make way for the real individual (the species-being).

Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen, and as an individual human being has become a species-being in his everyday life, in his particular work, and in his particular situation, only when man has recognized and organized his “own powers” as social powers, and, consequently, no longer separates social power from himself in the shape of political power, only then will human emancipation have been accomplished.

– On The Jewish Question

I don’t disagree with any of this and I’m not sure what I said that would have made you think I did.

Buses are useful because they can change based upon demand. If s neighborhood grows, more buses can be added. If a neighborhood shrinks, you can remove buses.

By ‘liberal values,’ I’m referring to the core Enlightenment goals of individual autonomy (Descartes), secularism and rationalism (Spinoza), labor theory of value (Locke/Smith/Ricardo) and universal human rights (Kant). Marx rejected the liberal state, private property, and the capitalist mode of production. But I’d argue he did so because he believed they were obstacles to those very values. Who is an individual when you’ve been commodified?

By socializing production, the individual doesn’t dissolve into the collective; but the material security is created for the individual to freely development themselves and provide to a social order.

Marxism is also in favor the individual and their liberty, but not the liberty to dispossess another of those liberties. He doesn’t see the individual as a natural object, but a creation of social and historical conditions. By destroying the class system, it liberates the individual to pursue their aims when they wish.

[I]n communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

For Marx, the ‘Individual’ is not a finished product to be protected from society, but a potential to be realized through an equitable society.

PS… Dig your username

“Liberalism is a word that means different things to different people, especially from country to country.”

Liberal values are the basis of Marx’s work. He, rightly in my opinion, thinks the liberal state cannot bring about those values for all people.

I don’t deny that coercive relationships exist… but I’m talking about “roots” like tool usage and cooperation in communal animals such as primates. It relates to the context of property ownership because animals mark their territory and use violence to enforce it. Hence why property as a concept is fundamentally violent.

Object ownership isn’t as fundamentally violent the way I see it.

I’m not exactly sure what you’re saying other than land ownership started as violent and tools were shared in small tribal collectives. This seems muddied to me. I don’t think small tribal bands protecting territory or sharing tools with their own tribe translates to a modern rental contract. There is no reason to believe that the origins of those behaviors should trump the reality of how these systems function today.

Today, object ownership allows a person to claim authority over an object that is in someone else’s hands. An ISP can remotely disable a modem. Or a manufacturer software-locks a tractor. This is territorial dominance.

In primitive societies, everyone had access to the tools that allowed them to function and survive. Today, you can be excluded from those tools. The exclusion is the violence.

Renting an object grants someone else the legal right to “mark territory”. This is not like a person letting another tribe member use the communal tool they just finished with. Those tools were communal and not private property. Renting an object is part of a fleet of tools you don’t use or plan to use. They protect that profit stream like a pack of chimpanzees patrolling their territory and evicting intruders with violence. modern owners can rip a tool from your hands by locking you out remotely by executing a script.

TBF One could also argue that …

Are you making this argument? Should I spend time addressing it?

Renting objects on the other hand is rooted in mutual benefit. Tool creation and use being separate skills creates a natural opportunity for cooperation.

Up to a point. If I rent a modem from my ISP, I eventually meet and then exceed the value of the modem. If you rent a $60 modem for $15 a month, you have fully compensated the ISP for the tool by the fourth month. Every payment after that is no longer a trade for someone’s labor; it is a fee because someone else holds the title to the hardware. A mutual arrangement would recognize that once your payments cover the cost of the tool and its maintenance, the ownership should shift to you. , This stops being cooperation.

Rental of land is unique because land ownership is made by drwing line on a map and drawing up a contract with the state. Equipment rental is the product of labor that has transformed natural resources into something people can use.

1. They are willing to work for less than a normal American living wage. This reduces the amount that an American can work for for the same job. Globalists love this.
2. They bring and establish a different culture eroding a way of life that is considered American.

Those are two things I think someone might say about immigrants. Additionally, there’s general disdain for the poor and many immigrants come here to escape worse poverty.

Poor… And not normal poor, but wartime poor. It was invented by Heinz to sell beans in England.

Capitalism, (needlessly) increases competition for resources, access to markets, and even results in fierce competition over abstract things.

Because there is an increased competition for resources, resource hoarding increases as well. Managed release of those resources along with who deserves access to those resources is a political endeavor. Not at the level of the state, but when you end up having a laissiz-faire system, there is no state to prevent hoarding of necessities. And now a situation can emerge where one company hoards a necessary resource and manages its release to some and not others. They will have become the state.

They missed these things to become managers and bosses. The nominal increase in pay was so that they could secure a decent retirement and put their kids through college. One day, they hope their kids can do the same while at the same time telling them they shouldn’t.

Was it worth it? I don’t know, but it’s not as easy as the meme makes it sound.

God dammit Donut!

One of my favorite podcasters (C. Derek Varn) finished his podcasts reminding his listeners to “Protect Your Peace”. There are several ways of doing this. This post is one way. Minneapolis is doing it a different way.