[qcnguy]

Left wing philosophy did not start and end with Marx. Leftists who pretend 1900s era leftism is somehow the True Left are annoying. He was just one in a series of extremely far left thinkers.

Most people with a good historical education would point to the original leftists being the Jacobins. That's where we get the terms left and right from. But you could also argue that even Jesus Christ was a leftist by the standards of his day, and we just struggle to see it because politics as we know it now didn't exist back then. He wasn't a fan of capitalism! The Bible says he preached peace and then went in with some followers and beat up market traders for no better reason than he thought trade shouldn't be allowed around temples (or we can infer he didn't like markets and traders in general, but having cast himself as a religious figure he had no excuse to rail against it in non-religious places).

> Both parties abandoned class-based politics in favor of cultural appeals.

Yes they did because Marxist thought is wrong and destructive. It should have never been adopted at all but after lots of evidence in the 20th century most people did give it up. The notion of "class" is a poor description of reality. Marxism always had trouble classifying small business owners. They do manual physical labor, so should be working class, but they are also capitalists. He would have been baffled by the ramen eating startup grinders of today. Marxism has no way to properly incorporate this basic and common fact into its thinking. Or, he probably wouldn't be baffled really, because if you read a biography of him it's clear he hardly ever left his study and was uninterested in exploring the real world outside of books and newspapers. His friend Engels invited him to visit a factory Engles owned, and Marx refused, despite supposedly fighting for the factory workers.

[jonway]

> The notion of "class" is a poor description of reality. Marxism always had trouble classifying small business owners. They do manual physical labor, so should be working class, but they are also capitalists.

Not even in the least. There’s a lot to critique in Marx and Engels but there is much written about Marx’s theory of alienation. He would say “The best form of work is unalienated labor.”

A person working, developing and feeling connected to the fruits of their labor, fulfilling the needs of his society is exactly what he prescribed.

[qcnguy]

But "alienation" is a concept Marx made up and that only he used. Nobody talks about that today and you don't find talk of "alienation" even in very Marxist institutions like unions because it doesn't mean anything concrete.

> A person working, developing and feeling connected to the fruits of their labor, fulfilling the needs of his society is exactly what he prescribed.

So if a rich CEO feels connected to the fruits of his extensive labor, he's not a capitalist and should be left alone during the revolution of the proletariat then? Somehow none of the people who put communism into practice got that memo.

Yeah, sorry, trying to find any sense in Marxism is a waste of time. The man was a very poor thinker. People who view him as insightful tend to conflate quantity with quality. He wrote lots of books, therefore he must be smart and have something to contribute. The man's theories don't describe the real world correctly, let alone successfully predict what happens if people act on his advice. Not even if you allow him to invent his own non-existent emotions and states of being like alienation.

[jonway]

I’m definitely not a Marx expert, but: No no no.

Marx being such an obscure figure with little impact on the course of modern history, it doesn’t surprise me that you never got a chance to read it, but alienation is definitely “talked about”, the critique of capitalism is part and parcel of Marx specifically, the material conditions of workers play HEAVILY into it. He didn’t just emerge from some cottage with this idea, he was observing the Industrial Revolution.

If the bourgeoisie CEO (capital owner?) feels connected to the fruit of his labor it makes a difference for their material conditions, but has no bearing on capitalist-or-not.

In an economics setting you’ll talk more about the labor theory of value and so forth, alienation of the aristocracy wasn’t the thrust of the work. Your example could maybe point at the idea of “golden handcuffs”, however the classic Yes Men prank on the WTO is more the reality ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK9Cs_UcTEE )

This is all of course a point of curiosity alone, since the rare encounters with Marx are restricted to philosophy, economics, history, political science, sociology and advanced psychology programs.