Many of the modern anticapitalists and marxists in the western world are aging out. Parenti is currently suffering from Dementia and Wolff is in his eighties and can't go on forever. Who comes next?
Many of the modern anticapitalists and marxists in the western world are aging out. Parenti is currently suffering from Dementia and Wolff is in his eighties and can't go on forever. Who comes next?
Essentially do you see any big modern marxist public figures coming in as the "old guard" ages out? Who?
For anticapitalist content from Turtle Island, I think we need to start looking for and platforming more Black and Indigenous decolonial content creators. Ones who can take the lessons from the past and apply them to the conditions of the here and now. There are already many people like this on TikTok. Personally I wouldn't put too much trust in big Twitch streamers, but that's just my take.
I actually think that with the internet and everything, we will gradually move away from "big thinkers". Sure, there will still be people producing decent theory, but i just can't see in the current world a russian revolution like scenario when whole shifts at factories would meet up to read Marx.
I believe we will move towards a sort of "crowdsourced" theory where the main theoretical line is born organically out of continuos communication and discussion until we eventually get to a point where most contradictions and disagreements are solved. At that point the "big thinker" and his work will be one of many inputs, and not some sort of ideological hegemon.
Sort of like it is happening on here. We didn't read the same stuff, but with time the community shaped itself to a point where we substantially agree with each other on pretty much everything.
Two people in this thread say that with the internet, we can move away from "big public figures"/"big thinkers". While I appreciate this optimism, it just sounds very anti-authoritarian, and I quote from Engels On Authority:
Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority.
There are anti-government and anti-"big corp/business" tendencies in the US/West, which I will call "anti-authority" for now. The essense of "anti-authority" in capitalist countries is anti-capitalism, or anti-"dictatorship of the bourgeoisie", but there is a gap in this logic that stops people from turning into marxists right away, as they might instead become anarchists. This gap in logic will not be closed just by having everyone have access to free information through the internet, as there is too much information to digest, and imperialists will also interfere with the propagation of marxist ideology.
"Anti-authoritarian" sentiments do have positive outcomes, like decentralized technologies (think internet, bittorrent, p2p, fediverse etc.), the open source software movement, but these only serve as tools, they are the means and not the end.
I think with mass literacy, bilingual normalcy and now the internet that we're reaching a point where "big public figures" are less desirable. There is even some problems with trying too hard to have some, as we all know a couple internet celebrities who might as well be astroturfed feds co-opting these roles. Maybe the prolewiki is the next big Marxist.
More of just barks & make beliefs, the US system is doomed to no avail but here we are watching it all crumble.
It will only get worse with the economic warfare, Repression/Regression/Chaos/Divide/Disorder.The 4th Reich is a fitting name, they keep destroying progressive movements from the inside anyway.
To What End really, honestly don't want to know the answer to this question but you gotta ask yourself was it worth it?Check out Ben Norton & Radhika Desai's work and a recently discovered one for more context:
- https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/
- https://geopoliticaleconomy.org/
- https://youtube.com/@GeopoliticalEconomyReport
- https://youtube.com/@InternationalManifesto
- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/geopolitical-economy-report/id1621947548
- https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/geopolitical-economy-report/3024316
- https://realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast/
- https://youtube.com/@RealProgressives
- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/macro-n-cheese/id1453085489
- https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/macro-n-cheese/3759825
Decolonised history by Historicly & Deep-State by Aaron Good:
- https://www.historicly.net/
- https://youtube.com/@Historicly
- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/historicly/id1435086194
- https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/4013392
- https://americanexception.com/
- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/american-exception/id1617469345
- https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/american-exception/3905903
Edit:
Added links & more contentBreht, Allison, and you, Comrade.
Well I do.
But just a though.. is open source marxist?