The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 64
Most people think of Marxism as an economic theory or, perhaps, a social theory. This isn’t sufficient. Marxism, strange as it may sound, is a theology, the basis for a religion. This isn’t to say that Marxism or Communism is like a religion. It is to say that it literally is a religion. The basis of the Marxian theology is work, or, as they tend to have it, the work. You must do the work. The work is the basis of the Marxian theology in the same way that submission is the basis of Islam and atonement by grace through the sacrifice of Jesus as Christ is the basis of Christianity. In this groundbreaking episode of the New Discourses Podcast, James Lindsay dives into the Marxian literature, including the writings of Karl Marx himself, to show that Marxism should be thought of as a theology by clarifying how this theology works. Understanding the theological nature of Marxism will, in turn, shed considerable light on the theological nature of Wokeness. Join James for this intense, in-depth discussion.
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11 comments
Something feels off about James’ analysis here. Forgive me if I’m mischaracterizing the analysis, but James seems to be arguing that (young?) Marx is forwarding a whacky idealist ontology (perhaps even solipsism?) where mind creates all that is. For example, man has the idea of a house in his mind and realises it through work. Man thus ‘creates’ the world in a total sense. However, this reading seems to conflate both nature and culture and matter and form in my view.
Let’s credit Marx with accounting for the house as a cultural ‘object’ (which is to say a thing filled with meaning and bound by ‘rules’ ) created by mind and the form of the house itself as something created by mind mediated through work (and existing independently of mind once created). However, the matter of the house exists independently of the mind from the start.
I could be wrong, but I think James once rejected the idea that cultural vs natural objects is a valid dichotomy. Instead, everything is collapsed into the latter? Consequently. anyone erecting a social constructionist (idealist) account of cultural objects is forced into a whacky and hard to defend idealist (or even anti-realist) ontology where the mind creates the whole world? I wonder how fair this is.
Great podcast. A quibble: I don’t think Voegelin was Catholic (though he may have been a “Catholic” philosopher, in the sense that he had a Catholic worldview and was, I think, raised Catholic). He referred to himself as a “post-Reformation” Christian and directed that he be buried in accordance with the Lutheran rites.
Marx perhaps had something going for his ideas, seeing how persistent his ideas have become.
My biggest problem with Marx and most of the discussions about him as that he simply ignored or was not aware of much data that was essential to a better understanding of Man and society.
Man as a part and product of “nature” is widely acceptable as an idea but is incorrect. While this applies to the human body, it does not apply to Man, which is a collection of spiritual beings with greater creative potential than it is normally credited with.
Nature is a creation of “Man” done (or at least started) when he was still in his spiritual state and quite aware of what “he” was capable of. Christians speak of this stage of our development as “God.” Though this is technically incorrect, it has proved to be somewhat workable.
The above data were arrived at through an inspection of “spiritual memory” which has been accomplished by many different researchers using many different methods. But none of them were seen as particularly academically acceptable. In spite of this, their work was done, and their results are ignored at our peril.
Religion has run into problems here on Earth for various reasons. For one, it was to an extent imposed on us by beings that hid their true identities from us. And for another, it gave us (until now) no way to inspect the past through Spiritual Memory and thus test and/or correct our religious stories and other religious ideas. With the new procedures that are now available, those stories have , for the first time here, been inspected by independent researchers for possible test and correction.
Thus Marx came up with a set of ideas that are in some aspects correct and in other aspects terribly incorrect. A modern analog is the whole question of gender sweeping through the western world at this time. From the point of view of the spiritual being, both sex and gender are unimportant. But from the point of view of the woke, the hurt feelings caused by “sane” people reacting to odd gender assertions are not permissible, indicating, rather, the existence of some “systemic” problem.
There ARE “systemic” problems, but the woke, in ignoring the new work and findings, hang themselves with anti-capitalist concepts that don’t even begin to explain what’s really going on.
In my view, religions are needed in situations where the true facts seem impossible to arrive at. With the new work being done with Spiritual Memory (which work could be more loosely characterized as “psychic research”) more and more of these unattainable facts are being discovered, and the need for religions pushing the older dogmas that stipulate that we are condemned to a certain inferior level of awareness becomes less and less.
If wokeness simply attempts to replace older religions with a new one based on different interpretations of the same basic data, then it will not lead to any real social advancement.
Slavoj Zizek, “Repeating Lenin”
The key question thus concerns the exact STATUS of this externality: is it simply the externality of an impartial “objective” scientist who, after studying history and establishing that, in the long run, the working class has a great future ahead, decides to join the winning side? So when Lenin says “The theory of Marx is all-powerful, because it is true,” everything depends on how we understand “truth” here: is it a neutral “objective knowledge,” or the truth of an engaged subject? Lenin’s wager — today, in our era of postmodern relativism, more actual than ever — is that universal truth and partisanship, the gesture of taking sides, are not only not mutually exclusive, but condition each other: in a concrete situation, its UNIVERSAL truth can only be articulated from a thoroughly PARTISAN position — truth is by definition one-sided. (This, of course, goes against the predominant doxa of compromise, of finding a middle path among the multitude of conflicting interests.) Why not, then, shamelessly and courageously ENDORSE the boring standard reproach according to which, Marxism is a “secularized religion,” with Lenin as the Messiah, etc.? Yes, assuming the proletarian standpoint IS EXACTLY like making a leap of faith and assuming a full subjective engagement for its Cause; yes, the “truth” of Marxism is perceptible only to those who accomplish this leap, NOT to any neutral observers. What the EXTERNALITY means here is that this truth is nonetheless UNIVERSAL, not just the “point-of-view” of a particular historical subject: “external” intellectuals are needed because the working class cannot immediately perceive ITS OWN PLACE within the social totality which enables it to accomplish its “mission” — this insight has to be mediated through an external element.
Bet this angered the nazbols, Zizek cultists and tankies. They hate it when you link Marxism with woke.
Finally, I got thru the 3+ hours on Marxism Theology. I took it in 1 hour blocks and went to bed at night. So, I woke up this morning (after hour 2) and all I could think of was Mark Zuckerberg. Go figure. I’ve written about tech ideology and the coming IT backbone. As well, thru each hour, I pondered Marxism vs. Christianity. I dunno how anyone can live and find peace these days without faith in God. Thank you, James. Awesome study here.
Is it just me, or is there a weird kind of similarity between Nietzsche (Zarathustra in particular) and Marx’ theories?
10 years ago or so, I became aware of the fact that my (Dutch) education, from primary school all the way to university had always been accompanied by quite deep socialist indoctrination. I can’t recall exactly what it was that opened my eyes but I think it was reading about the crusades.
Anyway. Love your work, James.
But what “theology” now actually controls the entire Western world and is being dramatized all over the world with potentially devastating results.
It is the “theology” of death based on the fact that our entire culture reduces human beings to the gross meat-body scale only.
The gross physical human body is, literally a death machine. It is not merely, in fact or as a result of some future conditions that it is going to die – it is (now, and from its beginnings patterned to die. Indeed, it intends to die, and even makes itself die. It progressively brings itself to death.
Thus, from the moment of its birth, the gross physical human body – in and of itself – is not about life, but about death. Therefore, to TRULY be about life requires a unique and profound disposition.
Having been born in gross physical body, you, in reaction to the perceived and conceived imposition of limited and threatening conditions, become bound to the gross point of view. of identification with the physical body in and of itself. As a result of that reactive gesture of identification, you are thereby bound to the natural program of the physical body, which is death itself. Consequently, you are reactively enacting a fear-based separate and separative life that is entirely about the disposition of death and the self-reinforcing reaction to the natural inevitability of death.
This “culture” of death which is in actuality an anti-culture, is not merely the result of some kind of philosophical “taste” for the idea of death. Mostly fundamentally, the”culture” of death arises from the universal act of identification with apparently separate existence, and, in particular with gross physical existence as the separate human physical body. The inevitable result of this separative act is that consciousness becomes identified with the patterned “program” of death and fails to generate or even allow for the possibility of any greater philosophy (suc h is of course the case with atheism).
What is required is a culture which allows for and promotes the transcendence of the gross physical body and therefore of death. In that case , a different kind of individual and collective human culture is made possible. That culture is the death-transcending culture of Life Itself. – which is , necessarily, a culture of Spiritual Practice, and, ultimately, of Divine Life Itself.
Unfortunately for all, it is that very culture of human, Spiritual, and Divine Life which has now been propagandized out of possibility by the dogma., or thoroughly reductionist point of view of scientific materialism, and everything that extends from that benighted point of view, including atheism.
Is there anywhere I can get transcripts of episodes?
Complicated stuff , James , and they do it on purpose. Thanks so much gor breaking it down. I really got the notion that their everyone has to be social man , if not , off to the gulag or death. That is why multi millions die under this ideology.
Thank you Jimbo