Honestly, I agree we should leave this here. You’re not engaging Marx’s body of work, you’re engaging in quote-stacking to defend a position that directly contradicts Marxism as a scientific framework. That’s the same method religious radicals use: isolate passages, abstract them from their material context, and retrofit them to a preconceived conclusion.

Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Chairman Mao all have writings on this. Marxism is grounded in dialectical and historical materialism, which leads to the opposite conclusion from what you’re arguing. Your position remains idealist, you start from abstract values (“humanism,” “autonomy,” “dignity”) and then try to read Marx backward through them. Marxism starts from material production, class relations, and social practice.

Emancipation is not a “liberal value.” Liberal values emerge from capitalism and express its internal logic. The system cannot be separated from its so-called ideals. The purpose of a system is what it actually does. Liberalism historically produced slavery, imperialism, enclosure, colonial genocide, and modern wage exploitation. “Autonomy” and “self-determination” are structurally impossible under liberalism, they are not its values, they are ideological justifications. The marxist project is to explain this contradiction, not spiritually redeem it.

You also misrepresent what I said about the individual and collective with the “cogs in a machine” framing. That’s liberal projection. Marxism does not erase individuality, it shows that individuality is socially produced and materially conditioned. The collective is not merely a neutral tool; it is the necessary foundation for any real individual development. Liberalism inverts this by treating society as secondary to an abstract subject.

Marx inherits dialectics from Hegel, but he decisively breaks with Hegel’s reconciliation of the individual with the bourgeois state. Hegel attempts to philosophically justify modern society. Marxism locates contradiction in material production and aims at abolishing bourgeois society altogether.

Marxism is not liberal humanism completed. Liberalism is bourgeois ideology. Communism is not the realization of liberal autonomy; it is the abolition of the social relations that made liberal autonomy necessary as an abstraction.

The problem with what you’re saying is that what you are calling liberalism’s “humanist core” is not something that ever existed independently of class power. Individual autonomy and self-determination under liberalism were always conditional on property, status, and imperial position. From its very inception, liberalism expanded alongside chattel slavery, colonial conquest, and the super-exploitation of the global South. That is not an accident or a betrayal of liberal values; it is how those values were historically instantiated. What you describe as a “seed of humanism” was in practice a humanist façade, autonomy for those of means, domination for everyone else.

Because of this, removing private property from liberal values does not “complete” liberalism; it dissolves it. Liberalism without private property, hyper-individualism, and abstract rights is no longer liberalism at all. It is something qualitatively different. Marx does not take liberal values and try to realize them more consistently; he explains why they arise under capitalism, why they take the abstract form they do, and why they systematically fail. He critiques, he does not inherit. Marx holding liberalism to its own standards is a method of exposure, not an endorsement of those standards as foundational.

Saying Marx’s work has liberalism as its “basis” confuses historical sequence with theoretical grounding. Liberalism emerges historically after feudalism; that does not make feudal ideology the core of liberal thought. In the same way, Marxism emerges after liberal capitalism; that does not make liberal values its foundation. Marx’s starting point is not Enlightenment ideals but material production, class relations, and the contradictions of political economy. Liberal categories appear in his work because they are the dominant ideological forms of bourgeois society, not because they are his normative anchors.

On the individual: Marx does not abolish individuality, but neither does he center it the way liberalism does. In Marxism, the individual is always socially constituted, and their development is subordinate to and dependent on collective conditions. Every major communist thinker after Marx is explicit on this point: the collective is primary, and individual flourishing follows from transformed social relations. Liberalism inverts this, treating society as a constraint on an already-formed individual. That difference is structural.

Finally, on idealism versus materialism: acknowledging that liberalism arose from material conditions does not make it materialist. Feudalism also arose from material conditions; that does not make the divine right of kings or the Mandate of Heaven materialist doctrines. Liberalism remains idealist because it treats ideas like rights, autonomy, and citizenship as primary and self-justifying, rather than as historically specific expressions of material relations. Marx’s point that ideas can become a material force once they grip the masses presupposes it. Ideas act materially because they are rooted in material conditions, not because they float free as universal values.

Marx did not derive his ideas on emancipation from liberalism’s promises. He explained why those promises existed, why they were necessarily hollow under capitalism, and why a completely different social foundation was required to move beyond them. Liberalism is the object of Marx’s critique, not the core of his worldview.

Also I never said Marx didn’t have guiding ideas they just weren’t liberal they were Hegelian.

There’s been a subtle shift in the conversation that’s worth flagging first. The discussion started out about liberal values being the basis of Marx’s work, but it’s now sliding into talking about historical achievements that occurred under liberalism. Those aren’t the same thing, and conflating them is what’s causing the confusion. I’m hoping clarifying that distinction will put the discussion back on track.

Marx does argue that certain historical developments associated with the bourgeois revolutions were real and necessary. The end of feudal bondage is the clearest example. But this wasn’t the realization of a liberal value in the abstract; it was the result of changing material conditions and class struggle, specifically the rising power of the bourgeoisie. Private property rights functioned as the ideological and legal form that allowed those new relations to consolidate themselves. The “achievement” flows from material forces, not from liberal ideals being progressively fulfilled.

The same applies to rationalism and similar developments. Rationalized law, administration, and production emerge because capitalism requires them, not because liberalism is steadily perfecting its values. Marx analyzes these phenomena to explain how capitalism works and why it historically replaces feudalism, not to endorse the liberal worldview that accompanies them.

The labor theory of value isn’t a liberal achievement at all. Marx takes it from classical political economy as a scientific tool in order to expose exploitation and demonstrate the limits of capitalism. There is nothing there to be “fully realized” under communism; it’s a means of critique, not a value.

Yes, liberal democracy has to be overthrown for genuine human emancipation, that doesn’t mean Marxism is the fulfillment of liberalism. Liberal values are ideological expressions of bourgeois class power; the historical achievements associated with liberalism arise from material conditions and class struggle.

The core of Marx work is dialectical and historical materialism from which all his analysis flows which is directly at odds with the idealism at the core of liberalism from which it gets it’s values.

I wrote a full reply but realized none of it really matters until we get clarity on terms. What do you actually mean by liberal values, and which of those do you think are foundational to Marxism?

When I say liberal values, I mean things like: the primacy of private property; formal equality before the law regardless of material conditions; individual rights abstracted from real social relations; freedom of contract between unequal classes; the liberal state as a supposedly neutral arbiter standing above society; and “freedoms” of speech, press, and association that in practice follow ownership and class power, up to and including a legal system that treats rich and poor “equally” such as criminalizing both for sleeping under bridges. These are not accidental features of liberalism or it’s values but flow directly from its idealist foundations.

Liberalism begins from abstract ideas (rights, the individual, the citizen) and treats them as primary, as if they exist independently of history and material conditions. Marxism begins from the opposite direction: dialectical and historical materialism, which treats those liberal categories as historically specific social products tied to a particular mode of production. That is a fundamental theoretical clash.

Because of this, Marxism does not aim to complete or realize liberal values, but to explain why they arise under capitalism and why they cannot deliver real human emancipation. So before talking about “sublation” or continuity, we need to be clear whether liberalism is being treated as an ideal to be fulfilled, or as an ideological form to be scientifically analyzed and superseded.

That’s just because you lack understanding. Liberals are “treated as a monolith” because each individual on their own is irrelevant compared to the systems and superstructures they uphold. You’re stuck in the individualist view which is largely unhelpful for serious or proper political analysis which the jokes and memes then flow from.

Liberalism and “liberal values” are not the basis of Marx’s work at all, they are one of his main targets of critique. Marx doesn’t start from liberal individual rights and then argue they’re imperfectly realized. He argues those rights are themselves products of bourgeois society and function to mask class domination. Saying Marx supports “individual liberty” doesn’t make him a supporter of “liberal values”, because liberal liberty is abstract and formal, while Marx’s freedom is material and social. This second response just restates Marx’s view of the individual as socially produced, which is correct, but it is reinforcing Marx rejection of liberalism. Marx was never refining liberal values, he was explaining why they arise under capitalism and why they cannot deliver real human freedom.

Yes

Liberalism is all about individual “rights” and “freedoms”. Such as the right of the factory owner to exploit his workers or the freedom of the newspaper owner control the narrative. This is completely at odds with communism.

Imperialism

No. You just don’t know what the word means.

From their inception the “rules based” global order and international “law” were simply shields for the imperial cores worst excesses and sticks to beat states that refused to submit. There was no good in defending them they were simply more tools of imperialism.

I never claimed that modern Russia is progressive, socialist, or something to be defended. I am a communist; Russia today is a capitalist oligarchy. Russia being imperialist and if I support them are separate questions.

Imperialism is not “when a country invades” or “when a big country has bad politics.” Imperialism refers to a specific stage of capitalism characterized by monopoly capital, finance capital dominance, export of capital, and systemic exploitation of dependent nations. By that definition, Russia today does not function as an imperialist power in the same way the US or the rest of the imperial core does. This is a simple statement of facts, not an endorsement.

Pointing to the Russian Empire’s historical expansion is irrelevant to whether the Russian Federation in the 21st century is imperialist. History alone does not determine a country’s position in the current global capitalist system. By that logic, nearly every existing state would be “imperialist” forever and the term would be rendered useless for meaningful analysis.

Likewise, saying Russia “mirrors” the US ignores material reality. The US sits at the core of global finance, enforces dollar hegemony, maintains hundreds of overseas bases, and systematically dominates entire regions. Russia does not occupy that structural position (even if they may wish to). You can criticize Russian nationalism or militarism without flattening all distinctions or redefining imperialism into a catch all for when big countries do bad things or when invasions.

Not true. Starlink are in a very low orbit and regularly (1 or 2 a day) will simply burn up themselves as they fall out of orbit.

Not to be mean, but I think you’re approaching this from a place of pretty immense privilege, where it’s possible to sidestep the fact that the “stability” and social care you’re talking about are materially predicated on the largest, most advanced, and most comprehensive immiseration machine in human history, currently headed by the US and enforced by its hunting dogs.

I understand what you’re saying about intent, but I think you’re putting far too much weight on intent and far too little on material outcomes. From the perspective of people in the periphery, whether harm is done out of malice, fear, or ignorance doesn’t change the harm itself. The status quo imposed by the imperial core is anything but neutral; it is actively sustained through extraction, coercion, and violence, regardless of how polite or well-meaning its defenders may be.

The claim that Liberal voters “aren’t thinking about” neocolonialism doesn’t really mitigate anything. Apathy and ignorance aren’t accidental flaws of the system, they’re systematically reinforced. Liberal politics trains people to narrow their moral horizon to national borders and to treat global suffering as unfortunate but external. Wanting stability at home while refusing to interrogate how that stability is financed is still a political choice, even if it feels passive or unavoidable.

I’m about to make an inflammatory comparison, and before it’s taken the wrong way I want to be clear that I’m not calling you, or Liberal voters, Nazis of any kind.

What I’m pointing to is a similar moral logic to the “clean Wehrmacht,” but applied to liberalism: the idea that all the real harm belongs to the obvious villains, while those who uphold the same system in a more moderate, respectable way are merely ignorant, apolitical, or trying their best. That framing launders responsibility. It treats liberal participation as an unfortunate accident rather than a core function.

From the standpoint of those who live with the consequences of your stability, calling it “misguided but not bad” reads as a refusal to take structural violence seriously.

I am talking about how the status quo of the entirety of the imperial core is built on and sustained by the pillaging and superxploitation of the periphery through imperialism and neocolonialism.

The status quo is bad if you view us of the periphery as equal humans whose suffering matters the same as you.

What party line? It’s the truth? He’s in the Epstein files begging to go “party” on the island. He hit multiple nazi salutes on camera. It’s not a line it’s a statement of fact Elon Musk is a nazi pedophile.

Bad faith is when people point out my idol is fucking evil.

I never said you lied about being to China that’s impossible for me to know. You are lieing about China and how everything is like here however. Please try to do less strawmen you ignorant bastard.

Lmao I was right you don’t know shit. I sincerely hope you either reflect and become a better person or follow your leader lmao.

“verifiably true” just like “social credit score” and Winnie the pooh being banned completely from China.

Chauvinist losers like you used to try harder. I hope you reflect on yourself and become a better person.

Believe it or don’t you chauvinist ass doesn’t change the reality. I talk politics online and in person with everyone from DiDi drivers to friends and family to small talk with strangers. I and my parents have seen our hometown go from desperate poverty to a semi affluent area with good connections to nearby major cities. You are an arrogant loser who talks with such authority with an understanding thinner than a sheet of paper. The vast majority of Chinese people support/trust the government even western institutionsbseebthat and put it at 70-95%. So take your uneducated vendetta and fuck off.