3. The Communist Manifesto was a philosophical treatise over anything else, and critiquing the philosophy of Marx presents some pitfalls for modern conservatives/right-wingers. Marx’s ideas were deeply shaped by German philosophy, epistemology, and metaphysics traditions that also underpin a lot of conservative thought. Because of this shared inheritance, right-wing critics often hesitate to scrutinise the German school of philosophy too closely, or aspects of it employed by Marx specifically, for in doing so they risk destabilising the very foundations of their own worldview - faith, racial & cultural superiority, the origin of intuition, etcetera. The result is that Marx’s vulnerable conclusions become difficult to attack without collateral damage.
... I'm not sure if I should feel good or bad about half-sleeping through the German philosophers precisely due to how much of an utter chore they were to get through.
Eh, I'll blame the teacher. I stopped reading the materials and was still getting a solid B entirely through bullshitting everyone.
German philosophy changed how so-called intellectuals approached "truth" and "reality". Kant, for instance, argued that we never perceive the world “as it is,” but always through the categories of our own mind. Knowledge, in this framework, was never entirely empirical but always structured by abstract concepts. Hegel extended this logic to history itself, portraying the movement of the “World Spirit” through dialectical conflicts as the driving force of human development (this development being "freedom" is why this concept ended up taking root in America - look up the Transcendentalists).
So I am just gonna shoot straight from the hip, because I don't know what I'm technically drawing from here and I think someone can be gleaned from just posting my inner monologue... but I don't think Kant starting with the obvious truth that perception =/= reality doesn't get you to the destruction of empirical knowledge entirely. Something about this doesn't sit right.
This reliance on abstraction created a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it offered a grand and systematic vision of human life, appealing to thinkers who sought meaning beyond our senses, like the empiricists. On the other hand, it loosened philosophy’s tether to empirical evidence. Whether one embraced the Spirit, intuition, or national destiny, German thought often justified sweeping claims without demonstrable proof.
Again, shooting from the hip, the rest of what I say's gonna be this pretty much, but why do you need German bloviation to have a grand and systematic vision of human life? Maybe it's just me, maybe as time passes better arguments naturally came into being, but even without knowing everything you can still find ideas greater than the hand in front of your face... if I'm following correctly.
OK, I definitely want to collect all of this into a response proper. I don't know what's gonna result from this, but considering I came to philosophy very much not caring about any names, I feel like someone seeing this and possibly being able to translate this to someone else might make this a bit more... coherent maybe?
Marx inherited this philosophical tradition of abstraction, even as he tried to revise it. He “turned Hegel on his head,” (Marx criticising and reversing Hegel's system - his words) replacing Spirit with material conditions and economic forces. Yet he remained just as reliant on abstraction as his predecessors. (You also saw this in Nietzsche. He rejected Kantian moralism, despised Hegel’s "Spirit,” and ridiculed the heavy system-building of German metaphysicians. Still, he inherited their methods: reliance on abstraction, sweeping claims about history, and the use of intuition to grasp “truths” beyond empirical verification)
I'm getting problems with this that I gathered from psychology of all things. You don't
have to know everything to make an ideology. We used to congratulate that, it's why Socrates considered himself the smartest of all because he knew he knew nothing. The intellectual humility to admit you don't know is valuable.
One of his most notable assumptions concerned the precedent of hunter-gatherer societies. Marx argued that early humans cooperated collectively without the structures of state or civilisation, and from this he inferred that classless cooperation was both possible and historically natural. The problem, however, is that Marx imposed this reasoning rather than proving it. 19th century anthropology lacked the evidence to sustain such claims, and his conclusion functioned more as a philosophical assertion than an empirical observation, which means attacking it yields nothing because it creates a situation in which your counter-claim is just as valid as their initial claim because neither party can assert a point with absolute certainty. As an aside: you still see this trend in Left-oriented concepts today, such as arguing that homophobia is abnormal because homosexuality appears in nature, ergo homosexuality is natural and the aversion to it is unnatural - an assertion that only works if you have limited knowledge on the subject.
This just reeks of nonsense TBH. Not you, Marx. If you know anything about the naturalistic fallacy, you'd kind of understand that whether this is natural or not is completely irrelevant to whether it's right or wrong. You don't even need to attack much here, all you'd need to do is point out Marx is just asserting blindly, even if abstraction is justified, this is fully in the territory of just claiming shit to claim shit.
So herein lies the conservative's dilemma. To dismiss Marx for relying on abstractions would expose the same vulnerabilities in their own philosophy. Edmund Burke, for instance, grounded his defence of social hierarchy and tradition in the “wisdom of history,” an intuitive principle that requires no rational proof. Fichte, a contemporary of Hegel, elevated the nation to a metaphysical status, treating it as an almost spiritual essence rather than a political arrangement. Even later conservative uses of religion or natural law often rely on intuition and metaphysical certainty rather than empirical evidence.
I don't like this. I've read Burke, in addition to synopses of some colonial Southern philosophers. I don't see why they'd sink their own ship for this given tradition is, at the very least, something that for sure happened and for sure has data to explore. Calling it a complete abstraction just doesn't sit right given something like Chesterton's Fence as a premise.
Though this might be an issue of timespan. I get these notions from the philosophy in science, so that might be information some of these people didn't fully have.
Thus, if the Right were to attack Marx on the grounds that his arguments lack demonstrable precedent, they would, in effect, saw off the very branch on which they too are perched. Their own claims to God, nation, or tradition depend on the same kind of abstract scaffolding.
I suppose I'd shoot back with your little challenge... the proof of tradition at the very least is that it happened and is a known and clear reference point. That doesn't make it 100% right, but you can argue a traditional something that lasts establishes itself as something that existed for a purpose and whose purpose must be understood if one is to refute it. I'm reminded of why the null position exists conceptually in science.
Yet Marx’s resilience does not rest only on philosophy, as you pointed out. In other threads in which I've spoke about Marx, I try once or twice to bring up subversion being a virtue in later theorists and how they successfully re-defined words to mean something else and get those who wear them as a badge to go along with the new definition. Due to the left's infiltration of academia they now have a monopoly on any and all critiques of liberalism, as right-wing ones would probably get you censured at best.
I was going one step further actually. A lot of the (actual) far-right ultimately pull a Marx on economics, and Sargon recently shoved his foot in his mouth in particular trying to overstate his critiques of James Lindsay and accidentally pulling Marxist thoughts in the process. I don't know if this is true subversion or not though, but it is very annoying to see some people go full horseshoe without realizing it and doing exactly what they want in getting people to want to throw out all liberalism.
As you explain it (or as I understand your explaining of it) in the mid-19th century, he charged liberalism with having failed its promises of freedom and equality (based on his differing and abstract view of how society was now structured - materialist motives, bourgeoisie, etcetera) casting communism as the necessary “upgrade” I.E. "Liberalism 2.0." He reduced individual rights to tools of class protection; economic equality =/= political equality ergo not really equal at all; asserted Liberalism couldn't sort its own contradictions (he used slavery in the USA for this point); Liberalism's individualism was a tool meant to isolate and fracture community, thus making any sort of pushback or union under a common cause implausible; and finally he equated the mere existence of capitalism as proof of Liberalism's hypocrisy. (if it weren't so late I'd go collect the extracts for these, I may do it tomorrow because Observer is correct on this)
I wasn't going into this much detail but you pretty much got it. I only wanted to talk about the frame here of communism as Liberalism 2.0, but you got the whole damn Mona Lisa too.
Critics of communism, especially in universities, often concede to Marx’s framing and declare liberalism as having “failed” and to propose the terms of its improvement.
This, in and of itself, is not bad. This is so generic of a statement it should be owned by no ideology and that's part of my point, depending on how you want to call failure here. (I view liberalism as a car with its keys stolen. It won't turn on but it's not really broken or failing either, cue my mucho autismo on that.)
Even anti-communist arguments frequently operate within Marxist categories, unintentionally reinforcing his dominance in the intellectual debate. Using terms like "capitalist" or arguing its virtues leave people content enough to not push for a revolution, thus conceding that the capitalism as a system is just to reinforce the status quo of the elites. Also conceding to Marx's criticisms of Liberalism is allowing Marx to define the rules in which an ideologies success or failure is determined.
Here's where the critics trip over themselves ideologically. While I'm fine with conceding capitalism as a term borne of necessity, it's also developed enough to get past the Marxist assertion as well. Fair question, at what point does a term cease to be the domain of it's coiner?
This dynamic has had real consequences, as you've observed, due to how using Marx's framing is implicit support of his concepts and helps keep them alive. That's a really good point you've made. Since the cultural theories of Antonio Gramsci built on Marx’s critique to reshape how Western societies understood power, culture, and resistance. In doing so, they helped shift the terms of political conversation in ways that critics of communism still struggle to reverse. Thus, even where communism was politically defeated, its logic often remained embedded in the discourse. (I would also like to point out the existence of Post-Structuralism and Critical Theory, as well as the entire field of psychology, for keeping Marx's ideas alive - but that's neither here nor there)
I do not look askance at postmodernism bashing. We all hate kiddie diddlers. My issue is more that no one seems to have "owned" this. With no one owning this, no one's fully decided to stand as a competing theory to Marx, cue loads of problems incoming.
The deeper problem is not merely Marxism but the German philosophical tradition itself. Both Marxists and conservatives inherited an intellectual framework that privileged abstraction over empirical demonstration. Whether it was Hegel’s World Spirit, Marx’s historical materialism, or Burke’s intuitive defence of tradition, these systems shared a common weakness: they constructed vast conclusions on foundations that were not verifiable in practice.
I kind of wonder if the problem isn't that this was done but perhaps that the people doing it failed to properly delineate they were abstracting. Something about this framing just hasn't sat well with me and I'm not sure I've addressed it myself.
In the end, the challenge of critiquing Marx lies not only in the strength of his arguments but in the philosophical soil from which they grew. German philosophy’s reliance on metaphysical concepts and abstractions gave Marx both his intellectual tools and his vulnerabilities. But since those same tools are also wielded by conservatives to defend race, God, or nation, attacking Marx too forcefully threatens to dismantle their own claims as well. What emerges is a paradox: the very intellectual tradition that empowered both Marxism and conservatism also prevents either side from striking a decisive philosophical blow against the other.
Maybe it's me, but I don't rightly care. I want something that works, so you're presenting me with a basket of eggs in an omelet competition. To me at least, tradition has a measure, but not complete, proof of itself due to surviving. It's not a
good argument, it's not a
strong argument, but it is in fact an argument that I think stands apart from anything Kant touched simply by virtue of it being more evidentiary than them... I think...
I liked doing this BTW. I worry sometimes about my brain getting a bit weak with a lack of exercise since this was a daily thing in college and when YouTube comments were still free, but this kind of deep dive shit is kinda my jam.
