Musings on Right Wing Know Nothing Nonsense About Marxism

One of the, in my opinion, most nonsensical pieces of bullshit slung by right wing demagogues and ideologues these days, demagogues and ideologues who exhibit little if any knowledge about real historical Marxism, is their nonsensical whinging about "Marxist garbage" as one "commentator" so ahistorically put it.

First off, there is no debate today as to whether, as Karl Marx and his followers contended, that economic factors matter. They do as Adam Smith and almost every economist I know of also argues today. Most of us everywhere and at every time, have to work. Case closed. The debate is over whether, as again many contemporary economists contend, Marxist and non-Marxist, that economic factors matter more than any other factors. Not everyone agrees with this in the intellectual and academic worlds. Max Weber, argued, for instance, that economics was primary but that political and cultural factors also mattered. I would argue that economics, politics, culture, demography, and geography matter though not all equally, at every time, and in every place.

Second, many, of course, see Marxism and socialism as synonyms for redistribution of economic capital or resources. In reality, however, redistribution has been around as long as humans. Hunter-gatherers redistributed collected and hunted goods to everyone. Big men, chiefs, and monarchs redistributed economic goods to themselves thanks to their political and cultural-ideological power (god made us rich and powerful and wants us to be rich and powerful). The capitalists of the NFL redistribute talent to the poor at each and every draft and share revenue and those who watch such circuses love it. Redistribution, in other words, has been around long before there was a Marxism or a socialism. Usually, as history shows, most redistribution goes from poor to rich.

Third, I don't know, other than a small minority, anyone who still believes another contention of Marx, namely, that after a necessary period of capitalism the core nation world, the rich countries of the planet, or at least one nation in the core nation world, will evolve or develop communism and that as a result the state will wither away, a notion that should send right wing anti-statists into fits of orgasmic ecstasy. I know more people who still believe the equally utopian bullshite that oligarchic capitalism trickles down to everyone and that laissez faire liberal capitalism, free market capitalism, has given us the best of all possible worlds.

Speaking of bullshite, there has always been and there still is a lot of that around. The prevalence of bizarre conspiracy theories like those associated with a pizza place in Washington, DC (latter day bizarre blood libel) and much of the anti-vaxxer meets anti-state nonsense out there shows that quite clearly.