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Yes, another top level comment about The Origins of Woke from me, in the same thread on the same week. But this is about something else. I had an epiphany while reading the book.
I've wondered for many years why Marxism is more socially acceptable than racism when it's responsible for even more deaths than the Holocaust. It's because companies are (de facto) legally required to fire racists, but they're not required to fire Marxists. In fact, firing a Marxist for merely being Marxist would be illegal in California.
California has a state law against firing people for their political beliefs, but it didn't protect James Damore, who was fired in compliance with the law against creating a hostile work environment for protected groups.
It all adds up.
I would question Marxism being more socially acceptable than racism. Maybe in a blue tribe bubble, but there’s also bubbles which are the opposite.
I think the real question, instead, is ‘why are the blue tribe pinkos’, and that’s because 1) the Soviet Union spent decades and millions of dollars on infiltrating the western intelligentsia and 2) because Marxism is just uniquely designed to appeal to intellectuals lacking in specific knowledge, particularly intellectuals who don’t themselves work very hard. That’s what Marx was, basically, and it’s more or less an oversystematization of the view of someone in that position- workers(who produce things) work for owner-men who provide access to capital, so wouldn’t it make more sense to just do away with the owner-men and have the workers as a collective own the capital? That’s a nice idea, if you’ve never been on either side of that relationship. And if you have it’s probably tough to explain how the workers benefit from not owning their own capital. And, you know, the blue tribe mostly does things which might be valuable, but which are at remove from actual production. Hence Marxism feels true to an HR lady or a college professor or a journalist in a way it doesn’t to a mechanic or a farmer or a plumber.
This doesn't really account for Marxism being extremely popular with manual laborers in Europe for decades.
You're probably already familiar with the Orwell quote but for those who might not be, in 1936 George Orwell declared that "socialism draws toward it with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist and feminist in England."
Which would suggest that socialism has not fundamentally changed it's 'magnetic force' over the last century away from manual labor and toward the sandal-wearers, sex-maniacs, and fruit-juice drinkers it continues attracting today.
The Marxist parties (communist and social democratic together) commanded a solid majority of working class support in most European countries up through the middle of the 20th century.
Double posting but your response seemed to be, frankly, in bad faith. By all means put up a quote from a prominent early 20th century socialist that purports it's a magnetic force for every lugnut, troglodyte, hardheaded, menial laboring, 9 to 5, factory man in England or at least some data on party registration by demography. "But ackshually it was working class" has negative probative value. Better not to have responded at all.
The mining and industrial regions in the northern UK have been called the Red Wall because they consistently voted Labour for so long, until within the past decade.
There's also the similar 'Red Belt' in France, centered around the former heavy industry heart of the country, which voted for a long time not only socialist, but communist.
Wedding, the one-time working class slum of Berlin was known as 'Red Wedding' in the interwar years, because it was a communist stronghold.
In Spain, in 1934, several thousand socialist-communist miners stormed the city of Oviedo, torched a bunch of churches, shot a dozen priests, declared a 'soviet republic,' and fought the army for two weeks to protest the entry of a right-wing party into the government.
(1) Calling the British Labour party a "Marxist" party is stretching the word absurdly far. Yes, they were social democratic. Yes, social democracy was partly inspired by Marxist ideas. That doesn't make the British Labour party into a Marxist party. The Communist Party of Great Britain never won more than a few seats in Britain.
(2) "Extremely popular" is a vague phrase, but unless you mean just "popular by the standards of communist parties," I wouldn't say that French communism was "extremely popular" among the working classes of France. A single region where they did well in municipal elections doesn't prove that. Nor a single communist electoral stronghold in Berlin. Similarly for Czechoslovak communism, which you didn't mention but which did have some electoral success in competitive elections.
Nobody is disputing that there were working-class communists and that communists had some electoral successes in Europe. That's a fine motte to retreat to. However, the original claim was "This doesn't really account for Marxism being extremely popular with manual laborers in Europe for decades." (emphasis added) Can you defend that claim?
Labour was an explicitly socialist party for decades. The plank calling for the socialization of industry/property was only removed, I think in the 80s or 90s. The communists didn't think they were hardcore enough and wanted violent revolution now, but that doesn't change the party's ideals in its early years. This was even more true of the Second International parties on the continent like the SPD, the SFIO, and especially the PSOE. Do you deny those parties were very popular with the working classes of their respective countries?
I said "marxism" not "communism" and explicitly identified both the social democratic and comintern-affiliated communist parties, because it's true that the latter alone never commanded a majority of working class support in European countries. Though they still did pretty good. The PCF got 15% of the vote in national elections France in 1936 (calling the red belt 'a single region' underrates it. It was the French equivalent of communists dominating the US industrial regions in the great lakes in the 50s). The KPD got 17% of the vote in Germany in 1932, especially from unemployed workers.
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