The establishment vs Uber

[FireIceTalon]

Then it is like a hobby, and you are just as likely to get bad source information as you are to get good. You said before you were pursuing political science, and therefore I guess I assumed you were studying the Marxian perspective to some depth.

I discovered Marx and Engles in a early philosophy class I took in my second semester at community college. We covered a variety of thinkers that ranged the political spectrum. We covered conservative thinkers all the way from Hobbes, to Edmund Burke, to even Ayn Rand. Plenty of leftist thinkers as well from Mill, to Rawls, to Marx/Engels and some of the Anarchists.

Going into the class I was not a Marxist yet and knew little about him or his theory, but I was already somewhat sympathetic to the ideals of socialism so I was already starting to become 'class conscious'. When we covered Marx toward the end of that semester his work fascinated me and I found that his theory reflected much of what I saw in society. Of course, Marx was just a small piece of what I learned in that class, but his work stood out and made the most sense to me, and so I began to further study and inquire about it outside the classroom since my interest was sparked. And I am still studying and learning about it. In later classes, Marx was also covered on occasion, so I guess your assumption was/is correct to some extent, but most of my learning of the theory has been outside the classroom.

Admittedly, I have slacked lately, just because school and work eat up most of my time now, and the little free time I do have I have been playing D3 expansion, heh (life cant always be serious now, can it?). For a while though, I was pretty engulfed in studying it. I guess for now I just need some downtime. There is a ton of books I want to get my hands on though, so many I do not even know where to begin. Engels book "Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State" is pretty high on my list.

You can take it from me. When Schumpter said Marxism had become like a religion, he did not mean it as a troll. He meant it in the sense that in his day, as it is now, adherents recite the dogma without any understanding.

It is true that there are some "Marxists" that misconstrue the framework and blindly use it in dogmatic ways because they are more interested in being "right" than trying to understand the world we live in. That being said, Marxism isn't a dogmatic framework, and in fact, it is very anti-dogmatic. Phil Gasper touches on this topic well, in my opinion. The problem is not Marxism, but the incompetent individual who misunderstands it and thus misuses it when trying to understand a particular event in history. More on that below.

They take it on faith, without any intellectual digestion. You are so put off by the suggestion that anything might be wrong with a Marxian ideology, you refuse to "open" your mind to ideas that might challenge your extreme worldview (up there at the north pole).

But Marxism isn't even an ideology at all. It is a methodolgy, and in fact it is useful for explaining how ideology itself is shaped in relation to the society. It isn't used to conjure up utopian fantasies (nor should it be), nor should it be used in an ideological sense as that would make the framework deterministic and compromise what it should be used for - its explanatory power. I see this pretty commonly in "Academic Marxism", which is just another vulgarization of the framework that has little merit, because of its 'Ivory Tower' attitude and isolation from genuine, real-world class struggles. I am pretty sure that I have also stated in the past that one can be pro-capitalist, and still accept and use the Marxist framework as a legitimate mode of analysis for understanding the real world (however odd that may be).

I don't think I've ever said the Marxist system is infallible, perfect and the be all end all. If it were, it would not have changed, grown, and developed over the years as it has, because it wouldn't have needed to. But at the same time, that certainly doesn't make it a religion. As I explained in the above paragraph it can and has been improperly used. However, is there anything in the physical world that scientists could observe that would make them doubt the validity of the scientific method? You would be hard pressed to find one. This applies to Marxism and its adherents also. That doesn't make Marxism a religion - that just makes it a sturdy and valid system of thought that can, has, and will adapt itself and its applications to the changes in society (because it must do so). 'Academic Marxists' generally come across as elitist and are often far removed from the framework they claim allegiance to, but we don't discard the entire framework because of that. Just as we don't discard the theory of evolution because of Nazi scientists or other proponents of social darwinism.

At the end of the day, Marxism isn't perfect, and like any other mode of thought, it can be misconstrued and misused. By the same token, it isn't a religion by any stretch of the imagination, and it has proved itself to be a resilient, useful and valid theoretical framework, and will continue to be so regardless of how much its opponents (and sometimes, its proponents!) try to shoot holes in it, discredit it, or vulgarize it for whatever reason they fancy. The theory has absolutely been through the wringer and then some, and yet it has come out unscathed.

To me, and I suspect to your college professors, you have just enough knowledge of Marxism to be frustrating.

Not sure what you mean by this, in particular the frustrating part.

Lastly, I would like to say I don't think the Marxist viewpoint is "extreme". Extreme would imply that it is ideological, and the framework itself by its nature, is anti-ideological. Rather, the targets of its analysis, are often extreme. It is "radical" perhaps, in that the materialist conception of history is a very different way of looking at the world and its historical development then in more standardized and orthodox methods. But radical and extreme need not mean the same thing.