Based on my understanding (which isn’t much, please mention any additional things I missed) Marx believed that the “proletariat” (the workers) were being abused by the “bourgeois” (the owners) in the capitalist system, and that the proletariat should seize control of the state and the means of production (“dictatorship of the proletariat”), and that the end goal was a stateless, classless society where everyone was equal, and that the state would “wither away”.
As we all know, a perfect communist society was never achieved, and that the state never ended up withering away for any of them.
How would Marx react to the Soviet Union under Stalin and his purges, Khrushchev to his denouncing of Stalinism and brutal crushings of protests in the Warsaw Pact states, to Gorbachev and his “glasnost and perestroika” reforms?
How would Marx react to the communist states that took power in Latin America, Africa, and Asia? Would he be happy that a communist state was able to compete with the capitalist U.S. in terms of global dominance, twice (Soviet Union during the Cold War, PRC in the modern day)?
Note: I am neither procommunist or anticommunist. I think that some if Marx’s ideas were quite good (everyone should be equal, classless society, etc.) but others not so much (history tells us what happens when there is a “dictatorship of the proletariat”, the state never withers away like Marx imagines it would, as power corrupts all)
It’s important to understand that 20th century communist states weren’t just “communist” (there’s no such ideology as communism); they were Marxist-Leninist, which despite the name is a rebranding of Bolshevism by Stalin. “Socialist” and “communist” are incredibly broad terms, and the idea that communist = implementing Marx’s ideas is so reductive as to be just wrong. Now Marx’s opinion would likely vary depending on time and place, but at least he’d probably condemn Stalin’s USSR as an authoritarian hellhole. Beyond that I have no idea, but many Marxists who were contemporary to the things you describe condemned them and many others supported them, so we can’t make a realistic guess without projecting our own values on him. Basically what you’re asking is analogous to “what would Adam Smith think about the current state of the US;” it’s something we can speculate about but generally isn’t as salient a point as seem to you think it is.
PS: I suspect you don’t know much about Marx’s ideas, so you should start from there. First, the dictatorship of the proletariat isn’t necessarily an actual dictatorship (that’s not how the term is used by Marx).
If he spawned in during the cold war he would probably denounce them. The bourgeoisie wasn’t removed, just replaced and the proletariat kept in chains. At least in the Soviet Union 🤷
You should ask on .ml for just for the lulz
He would probably react by finding a relative of one of his long-dead rich friends or family, and try to convince them to fund his next treatise on the stage that happens after communism (aka, buy him more beer)
I know better than to get in any prolong discussion on Lemmy about Karl Marx but it’s worth saying that he would’ve probably been a lot more delighted with Chinese communism (educated peasant uprising) than Russian (unguided peasant revolt taken over by urban intellectual minority), although neither really fit in with his deterministic view of history which said that nations needed a period of liberal capitalism before Communism could be achieved, and he obviously predicted Western Europe would be the nexus for this change.
He would almost certainly support them based on his support for the deeply flawed paris commune. The communist experiments of the cold war were absolutely not perfect and I am certain Marx would have opinions about their exact natures but it is doubtless he would support them. If he could put up with proudhonist he can put up with anything.
I don’t think Marx would be as revered by the “communists” (emphasis on the quotation marks) as much as current timeline had he lived longer.
It’s easy to idolize dead people, after all, they can’t denounce your movement from the grave.
I mean, you can see this with both PRC and ROC reveres 孫中山 (Sun Yat-sen) as the 國父 founder of the country, but… imagine if he lived longer…
Maybe there wouldn’t be a civil war? Maybe CCP still wins and then Sun Yat-sen is not idolized within PRC in this new timeline… who knows?
We don’t really have a magical brain-scan of them to recreate a simulation of their brains, so its really just speculation.
But I don’t think Marx and Stalin would be on the same side. Perhaps there might not been a dictator Stalin, if Marx was alive. What’s for certain is that there would be a huge butterfly effect.
Judging by his behavior during the First International, I reckon he would have approved of Lenin’s vanguard and applauded the rise of the Stalinist empire.
Doesn’t basically every political philosopher hate the governments built off their philosophies?
I think if he were honest with himself he would see that what he got wasn’t what he had envisioned in any of the countries that claimed to be communist/socialist. But they were his team so he would publicly support them. You can sell his stance as an evolvement of the theory rather than admitting mistakes. Not too dissimilar from the way the PRC sells its version of communism to its people: communism “with Chinese characteristics.”
Chances are though that he would have perished in one of the purges happening in whichever communist country he would have chosen to reside in. He would have enough clout to niggle at leadership openly about stuff going wrong and eventually be would deliver the straw that broke his camel’s back. He would be mind-holed and his legacy rectified so he wouldn’t be the lighthouse of the movement that he could only become because he died early. And he didn’t starve millions. And communism would become the thing created by the people through an arduous march and not a system dreamed up by some German philosophers.
I think if he were honest with himself he would see that what he got wasn’t what he had envisioned in any of the countries that claimed to be communist/socialist.
I mean… obviously? Bolshevik theory (which is what all future socialist/“socialist” states would adopt) was their own take on Marxism with a lot of original thought. That’s where the authoritarianism comes from, and it’s not like the Bolsheviks were trying to hide it. Odds are Marx would denounce the Bolsheviks as heretics.
You’re citing my text but cutting off just before the point I was trying to make. I think be would still side with the people who claim to follow his ideology (yes, piss poor efforts objectively speaking but that’s irrelevant to him because he would prefer them over the folks entrenched in capitalism on the other side).
Ideologs are a dangerous breed because they are surprisingly flexible under realpolitik conditions when the alternative is having to admit defeat. Or in Marx’s case admitting that his ideas didn’t work or the fact that they didn’t work as intended cost the lives of millions. Surely he wouldn’t like Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China and well apoortioned crticism thereof (or of the GDR or wherever) would have eventually spent his good will capital (pun intended) with the local leadership and he would end up in a gulag or erased from history. Karl-Marx-Stadt would have been renamed sooner.
You’re citing my text but cutting off just before the point I was trying to make.
Yes, because my point is that your point doesn’t make sense.
I think be would still side with the people who claim to follow his ideology
Why…? That’s not how leftwing politics worked, ever, and it’s not like there has ever been a shortage of leftwing criticism of Leninism and Stalinism.
r in Marx’s case admitting that his ideas didn’t work or the fact that they didn’t work as intended cost the lives of millions.
Yeah that’s my point: They’re not his ideas; they’re their ideas. Lenin for example, aside from being an authoritarian dickhead, was an intellectual juggernaut and a lot of his ideas would be baked into the foundation of the Soviet Union. What you’re presenting here is a false dichotomy.
You can sell his stance as an evolvement of the theory rather than admitting mistakes.
I dunno, that sounds an awful lot like “reform” to me.
