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"people are less likely to read the original stuff, and it becomes clear that part of the original work is simply wrong"
(a) hexbear is running a Capital book club at this very moment (b) Marx was right.
Mighty Weinersmith, from a liberal perspective, deals a killing stroke to DSA's North Star caucus and possibly Pete Buttigieg types. I'm quaking in my boots
Marx was wrong about plenty of stuff. Socialism has largely developed in individual pre-industrial nations.
Socialism has largely stalled at social democracy in individual pre-industrial countries, unless they have then proceeded to rapidly industrialize. The only place where it is making significant material progress is that which has largely turned the power of the state towards the facilitation of the global market and stayed out of global affairs (I.e. China, Vietnam). While it certainly is AES, it is in fact following a more strictly economical orthodox historical Marxist path than previous iterations of ML or MLM thought.
Essentially, Marx is and was right, the problem is how can we get the places where the radicalized populations are also the industrial proletariat, essentially how do we solve Lenin's problem of the core and periphery. And in that column, since the collapse of the USSR, we have yet to actually see the real success of socialism and communism, a world not dominated by capitalist markets, and for that to truly happen, the global industrial proletariat has to become organized. Unfortunately, Trotsky was right (even if his other ideas, if implemented would have been suicidal for the USSR at the time).
Socialists have won great victories, the fact that 40 hour work week is even pretended to be standardized is a great victory for socialists, but the spoils continue to go towards the liberals, because progress is not going to be a straight line, but a constant struggle. What we do, for sure, know is that despite liberal pleading, this is not the best possible world, better and more humane outcomes and ways of organizing capital and labour are absolutely possible.
Socialism has largely stalled at social democracy in individual pre-industrial countries, unless they have then proceeded to rapidly industrialize
My point is that, in China for example, it was a peasant revolution in a (mostly) pre-industrial society rather than a proletarian revolution in an industrialized society. From what I've seen, Marx didn't consider peasants to have much revolutionary potential.
Correct, and it is because of that revolution that they entered the industrial age in control of their means of production and are now at the forefront of industry. Much like many largely nationalist revolutions before and after it, only this one occured under the banner of a Marxist party, rather than strictly national bourgeoisie. Similar revolutions occured across Asia, South America, and the Middle East, but in none were the contradictions quite as sharp as Vietnam, China, and Korea, which is where the nationalist militias of peasants were at the forefront of armed struggle and a Communist party came into state power.
Marx didn't consider European peasants to have revolutionary potential based on their reaction to the French Revolution. He largely did not deal with the class characteristics of Asia, which was much to his detriment, but he also didn't have a lot to go off of for them historically. It's not that Marx was wrong about them, Marx simply didn't address them. Near the end of his life, he certainly considered most nationalistic struggles against empire to be revolutionary regardless of class characteristic, a trait that would be carried over into Marxist-Leninism.