goodbetterbestbested

You guessed wrong, he responded.

Occasional and whispered little asides to your date during a movie are fine. Talking at a normal volume (for outside) through the whole damn thing is not.

How do you have such good English? You use idioms and slang in your comments that I wouldn't imagine anyone but an American, or someone who lived here a long time, would use.

Here's the portion of the article that discusses your apparent lack of attention to Marx:

The problems begin when Robinson turns his attention to Karl Marx, who he introduces as a thinker who “can’t be ignored.” After recognizing the force of Marx’s writings on capitalism and economics, Robinson disappointingly drudges up accusations against Marx from Marx’s nineteenth-century anarchist contemporaries.

The accusations include claims that Marx had “authoritarian tendencies.” Where? When? Robinson doesn’t say. Marxists have “had too little regard for the importance of individual liberty.” This is certainly true for Stalinism, but it’s hardly a fair picture of the rich democratic-socialist tradition inspired by Marx.

And the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Robinson writes, was right to worry that Marx and other socialists had become “fanatics of state power.” This is a bizarre claim, considering Marx spent his life running from state authorities in Germany and never lived to see a socialist state for which he could be fanatical.

Robinson’s accusations against Marx go beyond establishing some critical distance from an important thinker. They play into destructive anti-socialist tropes that are as common as they are unwarranted.

Contrary to the claims of Robinson, Proudhon, and others, Marx was a committed small-d democrat. Marx was so committed to democracy that in The Communist Manifesto, he and Friedrich Engels argued that the struggle and realization of a democratic society were the key to the achievement of socialism: “[T]he first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.”

Marx’s successors in the socialist parties of Europe in the late nineteenth century were no less democratic in their politics. In fact, they were the main organizers for movements to extend suffrage to all, to defend and expand civil liberties, and to build unions and organs of democratic control in the workplace.

Robinson’s attempted takedown of Marx therefore does an injustice to a committed democratic socialist, to many who identify as Marxists, and — most troubling — to young socialists looking for political direction. New socialists’ political development will benefit enormously from taking Marx and the Marxist tradition seriously and incorporating it into their newfound democratic socialism.

Robinson also throws his hat in with the tradition of “libertarian socialism.” Libertarian socialists “hate government and capitalism alike,” according to Robinson. It is a tradition that “commits itself unwaveringly to a set of respectable principles and compromises neither its radical socialism nor its radical libertarianism.”

What this really amounts to for Robinson personally, however, beyond an understandable desire to reject the authoritarian socialist experiments of the twentieth century, is unclear. If what Robinson wants is a credible alternative to authoritarian socialism, he does not need to reject Marxism. Marxists from Rosa Luxemburg to Ralph Miliband and Michael Harrington have maintained a clear-eyed criticism of Stalinism and its ideological brethren without embracing a hazy notion of “libertarian socialism.”

Nathan, long-time reader, first time commenter. I love your work, but...

I have noticed the same thing as Jacobin. I understand that your political education came mostly from the Chomsky/Orwell camp, which spends almost as much time denigrating Marxism as it does denigrating capitalism.

As someone who spends so much time and effort reading and pillorying bad conservative books, you really, really need set aside some time and effort to brush up on Marx beyond a surface-level understanding + what his critics have said about him.

You owe it to yourself and your readers. Learning about Marx through Chomsky and Orwell is not enough. You should engage seriously with the Marxist tradition that includes Marx and many thinkers who followed him, including but not limited to Lenin, Gramsci, Bordiga, and Mao.

Don't be afraid it will make your brand of politics less palatable. Read what they actually said and why they said it. Marx has been vilified for almost 2 centuries and it appears that you still have some of that "liberal hangover" to recover from with regard to Marxist ideas, since you spent time in your book repeating and reinforcing liberal ideas about Marx.

(Forgive me if I'm not correct in thinking you haven't closely read these authors, but your writing about Marxism--and perhaps even more, the absence of Marxist analysis from your writing--gives one that impression.)

I've read a lot of NJR's stuff and (in the absence of an answer from NJR himself) I'm pretty sure it's because he simply hasn't engaged with Marxism all that much beyond a surface level.

Which, for someone who does the dirty work and spends so much time reading many terrible right-wing books in order to pillory them, and wishes to be a left authority, seems like he should get around to doing.

NJR's political education comes from the Chomsky and Orwell camp, which denigrates Marxism, but he really ought to engage with it on its own merits instead of only through its critics. I'm almost positive he simply hasn't seriously engaged with the Marxist tradition due to Chomsky and Orwell's influence.