This small essay by Janine Brodie called “Power and Politics” has several other issues, but their most frustrating one is their outright DISMISSAL of Marxist class analysis for the stupidest reasons. Economic determinism? I guess if you yearned to softly dismiss marx by misrepresenting him.
God I fucking hate poli sci majors.
The previous page:
The next one:
I’m not the brightest crayon in the box but is it just me or does Doctor Brodie somehow make politics and power some sort of vague, unsolvable mystery? Like fr I don’t want just an echochamber of nodding heads plz help am I in the wrong?
I need help putting words to my issues with it.
For liberals, the “problem” with marxism is that Marxism ignores the superstructure of society and only looks at the base. They will then point to the existence and influence of the superstructure as a refutation of Marxism.
I have literally never seen a liberal ever even comprehend the idea that the superstructure of a society is shaped by its base. That is what Marxism actually is. Do they think Marx did not understand gender, racial or religious discrimination? Or course he did. He talks at lenght about these things.
Some of Marx and Engel’s most famous texts, like “the origin of private property, the state and family”, for example, studies the emergence of the patriarchy.
But he does so from a material standpoint. That is what grounds his analysis at every point.
We must understand that the value of the Marxist philosophical project is that it is never content to simply accept the existence of things as they are by relying on notions of some “human nature”, “god”, or any such ideological nonsense.
It is similar to how you cannot truly understand how computers work, in all of their intricacies, without understanding how a transistor works. Liberals are people who refuse to acknowledge the transistor. For them, their computer is the magic box which dispenses treats.