Truly Marxian thinking, analysis, critique, dialectic, and dialectical praxis is blocked from functioning if it accepts any taboos, any "sacred cows", any "off-limits" topics, where its critical faculties are barred from entry. Yet, typical so-called "Marxians" today self-impose a whole slew of "articles of faith" and "privileged subjects", where, out of "political correctness" — or out of SOME KIND of "correctness" — their critical faculties fear to tread.
This has got to stop!
And, there is one principle of dialectic of which I wish to remind us all — myself included — at the outset, and continually ever after: if an opposition is able to come into existence, and to sustainedly remain in existence, then it must be because BOTH "sides" of that opposition LACK something of the practical truth.
Moreover, BOTH "sides" of such a sustained opposition must also HOLD something of the practical truth, that their OTHER side LACKS.
Based upon my observations of many Web lists, blogs, forums, and periodicals, "e-", and non-"e-", alike [albeit not likely a "representative sampling"], and also based upon my participation in practical-critical activities that shall remain unidentified here, I have gathered that today's typical leftist — in particular, the typical "Marxian" Left Communist, self-identified as such — fervently believes in a system of propositions that can be approximately rendered as below.
Some of these beliefs are open, others hidden.
The use of the triple quotes below signifies that the statements reproduced below are paraphrases of a large number of similar spoken and/or written discourses, rather than exact quotations of any single one of them.
The following propositions constitute a kind of compendium of the present residuum of '''Lenino-Stalinoid and Lenino-Trotskyoid Theses on "[Pseudo-]Revolutionary" State-Capitalism''', among the professedly anti-Leninist, anti-Stalinist, and anti-Trotskyist tendencies to which I will refer, herein, collectively, as "Abstract Left Communists", and as 'Can'tians'.
a '''The Socialist Revolution must look like the French Revolution of 1789, and/or the Bolshevik «coup d'état» of 1917'''.
b '''The concept of the existence of a "ruling class" in capitalist society is a valid part of the Marxian tradition, BUT it is wrong, and taboo, to ever think about, let alone to research, and to determine with any concrete specificity, the persons who constitute this class, their ideas, their actions, the[ir] [ruling-]class-for-itself strategy, their channels of activity, etc., etc. They are just abstract "personifications of capital", period!'''
c '''All efforts, by anyone, but, especially, by revolutionary socialists, to establish independent institutions of social welfare for and by the working class — e.g., the formation of producers' cooperatives, of networks of producers' and consumers' cooperatives, etc. — is ABSOLUTELY REFORMIST, and irrelevant, at best, to Socialism and to the development toward a Socialist Revolution.'''
'''Besides, it involves boring and unglamorous work, unfit for exciting, dashing, romantic, «debonaire», Che-Guevara-like revolutionaries such as ourselves, who should never "dirty their hands" with such practicalities!'''
'''We're too good for that kind of REAL WORK!'''
'''Besides, workers are only worth anything when they are fighting to bring us to power — dying to bring us to power. Short of that, they are nothing but boring, worthless, stupid, pathetic, and expendable grunts.'''
d '''Reform is the ABSOLUTE OPPOSITE of Revolution. Revolution is the ABSOLUTE OPPOSITE of Reform. There is no possible path from Reform to Revolution."There is no way from here to there". There is no way from Reform to Revolution. There is not now, nor has there ever been, nor can there ever be, any "mediation" between Reform and Revolution.''' [The Fundamental Axiom of Abstract Left Communist residual-Lenino-Stalinoid 'Can't-ianism']
e '''The working class can never come to embrace the concept, and the practices, of Socialism consciously, before creating it. The working class can only stumble into making the Socialist Revolution, walking "bass-ackwards" into their future, with their attention focused solely on immediate, "pork chop" concerns. We cannot "sell" the workers on Socialism. We have to trick them into it.'''
f '''It is good to "be for" Socialism, and to tell selected workers, vaguely, that we are "for" it, but it is never good to be specific, to speak or to write about Socialism in any detail, to spell out what the word means — e.g., to be specific about the concrete definition of Socialism as a new social relation of production, as a new kind of political-economic system, as a new system of human-social institutions, and as a system of new human-social institutions. [And: Make as few promises to the workers as possible, since you don't plan to keep any of them, once you're "in power"]. We'll work all of that out after the Revolution — after we "take state power". We will then have the power, via OUR "workers state", to force everyone — especially the workers — to behave in a "Socialist" way as we will THEN define it, a way which we will miraculously comprehend the day after the revolution [the day after we "take state power", i.e., after the workers "take state power", and hand it's apparatus of coercion over to us, to use against them]. Keep "Socialism" abstract — keep it as only the abstract negation of capitalism'''.
g '''Socialism is Nirvana-land. It is our "Promised-Land"! It is our Heaven. It is our Shangri-La! It is Kumbayah! Once we create Socialism / "take state power", and "crush the opposition" — of capitalists and capitalist-influenced workers alike — PEACE will dawn, and, classes gone, there'll be no conflicts among humans any more. Therefore, there is no need to think about Constitutions, Bills Of Citizen Rights and Responsibilities, Laws, and — especially — Checks and Balances on State Power — for a Socialist Society. Socialism makes them all irrelevant. The workers just have to do what we tell them — OR ELSE! — and they'll be just fine!'''
h '''It is not good for Socialists to talk much about democracy, since Revolution is not democratic'''.
i '''Socialism is brought about primarily by force of arms. Once the working class has overpowered the capitalist state [and handed "state power" over to us, to rule them], then it's just a matter of "doin' what comes natchrally" — the next steps are pre-programmed; they're in our genome [and phenome?].'''
'''Human behavior'll change AUTOMATICALLY!'''
'''No prior development of culture, institutions, and consciously-cultivated new human values is required.'''
'''Marx was an idiot to have spent most of his available life-time deeply studying, thinking about, and writing a theoretical [and immanent] critique of an ideology of capitalist society [of the ideological-science of "classical political economy"], that nobody can understand anyway!'''
'''Instead of writing a theoretical critique [and an «aufheben» negation of capital, not an abstract negation thereof], he should have spent his time as a activist — like us! — practically critiquing and concretely negating capital! Why, look how successful we activists are [as well as «debonaire»!]!'''
j '''Marx's theory is already fully developed. There is ABSOLUTELY NO NEED for us to add anything to it, let alone to continue his work from where he left off. That is just revisionist heresy. We need only to follow our Marxian traditions.'''
'''Everything that Marx said was right.'''
'''EXCEPT when he argued that non-violent, non-illegal revolution is the possible and preferred route to Socialism in nations where bourgeois democracy reaches the point of extending suffrage to the working class.'''
'''And EXCEPT where he argued, in Capital III., that worker-owned producer cooperatives, and joint-stock, capital-equity companies, constitute embryos of Socialist social relations of production, already growing up within the womb of Capitalist society.'''
'''Oh, and, yes — the "growth of the social forces of production" is bad for "The Environment", and is also "Productivist", so the fundamental principle of Marx's theory of social evolution and of social revolution is also wrong.'''
[de-ideologized translation of the last sentence: The growth of the social forces of production is, at this stage of capital accumulation, bad for the capital-value of the capitalist ruling class's core capital-property, e.g., petroleum industry fixed capital, etc., which faces 'techno-depreciation' thereby [e.g., from fusion power, etc. ]. That ruling class has, therefore, perverted the grass roots anti-pollution movement into a Neo-Malthusian, '''People Are Pollution''', pro-genocide ideology, attacking the living standards — and the very lives — of working classes worldwide, incessantly calling for "population reduction", and for reduction of working class living standards to "save the Planet" [i.e., to save the ruling class's POWER to rule], as a prelude to that accelerated global genocide. The "Marxian" "Left" then, obligingly, swallowed this new ruling-class-concocted ideology "hook, line, and sinker". For more on this world-historical fiasco — of the ruling class's "Earthist" duping of the "Left", see "Malady and Remedy: What's Wrong and What To Do About It" and "GS12 — Some Hypotheses Concerning the Lobby for Global Genocide: Who Funds, Hence Controls, the Ideology of 'Ecologism' and the "People Are Pollution", 'Humanocidal' Pseudo-Religion of 'Earthism'?"].'''
k '''"Materialist Dialectics" is a valid part of Marxian tradition, but Marxians should not think about what it is, become clear on, or precise about, its definition, or study it much — let alone consciously USE it!'''
'''Also, «Natur» and «Geist» are ABSOLUTELY DIFFERENT, forming a radical dualism, so there is no historical "Dialectic of Nature" before Man.'''
'''The idea that there is was just Engels's folly. Marx rejected the idea.'''
'''Anyway, dialectical thinking — whatever that is — is of no help to making the Socialist Revolution — to "taking state power".'''
'''Dialectics is just Pure Theory, for "Academics" only, and Nothing Else.'''
l '''Socialism is a "socio-ontological reductionism", i.e., it is the ABSOLUTE ABOLITION [abstract negation] of all previous human-social relations of production — of the Capital-Relation, of the Money-Relation, and of the Commodity-Relation.
'''Socialism is a simple return to the simple use-value with which it all began.'''
'''The entire historical development of "the exchange-value" [Marx] was just a detour, a digression, an error, a useless waste of human life and of human time.'''
'''Socialism is just a neo-Luddite Back-To-Nature-ism.'''
Now, any one of these propositions, by itself, would vastly diminish the probability that any individual, believing in the truth of that proposition, could contribute consciously and deliberately to a successful — actually Socialist — Social Revolution.
But an individual, embracing, in fervent belief, all, or any substantial part, of these propositions, is almost guaranteed to be a positive brake upon any process of Socialist Revolutionary Development which such an individual might confront, or in the midst of which such an individual might one day awaken.
Such a person could not even recognize Socialist Revolutionary opportunity if it was staring them in the face, let alone have any inkling of how to appropriate such opportunity if some one else pointed it out, and, somehow, convinced them that it was, in [F]ACT, such an opportunity.
The conception of "Strategic, Class-For-Itself, Revolutionary Socialist Praxis" set forth beginning here is this observer-participant's attempt to provide a supercession of the self-defeating and self-vitiating ideology captured in the propositions stated above.
There is ABSOLUTELY NO DOUBT that this attempt can be improved-upon by others.
Karl Marx — unlike some today, who self-apply the "Marxian" label — was not a mechanistic materialist or, even worse, an [abstract] 'Matterist', [pseudo-]opposing abstract "Matter" to abstract "Idea" and to abstract "Idea-ism".
Were not Marx's main meme far beyond mere 'Matterism', he would never have devoted the bulk of his life's effort to the immanent critique of the capitalist ideological-science of [classical] political economy.
In Marx's view, on the contrary, the "idea-objects" constructed by humans, the socio-cultural "memes", "ideological" and "scientific"; the historically and dialectically self-developing "meme-pool" of humanity as a whole, the "human phenome", were part of the concrete, '''[psycho-]historical material''' — indeed, crucially important parts thereof [although Marx did not use some of the terms used in the last sentence].
After all, "[capital-]value" — the fundamental entity of Marx's entire, immanent critique of political economy — is not a physical object, nor is it an external, exo-somatic, pre-human-nature-al substance, but is a human, 'psyche-ic' construct, a society-wide inter-subjective projection upon external, human-[nature-]made physical objects [and upon external, pre-human-nature-made physical objects], one which would cease to exist in the world of external human object[ification]s/artifacts if human subjects were to vanish, and one which would not come into existence as such, as capital-value, if only a single human subject-ivity projected it outward onto human artifacts, but which exists only as a dominant-collective, cultural projection / '''value-system'''.
The Theses of Feuerbach — situated at the very origins of Marx's unique breakthrough in the history of the human phenome — make the importance of "idea-matter", and of human inter-subjectivity, to the Socialist Revolutionary Process, and to Marx's entire science of '''[psycho-]historical material-ism"', of the historical "materiality" of the "collective-psyche-ic", and of the centrality of the "phenomic" vis-a-vis the genomic in human history, abundantly clear [at least for those who have "ears to hear"].
A couple of key quotes from the Grundrisse should also assist in reminding some here of the key role that the self-development of the human phenome plays in the world-historical process leading to the socialist revolution, per Marx:
"The recognition of the products as its own, and the judgement that its separation from the conditions of its realization is improper — forcibly imposed — is an enormous awareness, itself the product of the mode of production resting on capital, and as much the knell of its doom as, with the slave's awareness that HE CANNOT BE THE PROPERTY OF ANOTHER, with his consciousness of himself as a person, the existence of slavery becomes a merely artificial, vegetative existence, and ceases to be able to prevail as the basis of production".
— Karl Marx, Grundrisse, translated by Martin Nicolaus, published by Penguin (1973), page 463
Elsewhere in the Grundrisse, in several places, Marx makes clear the role, in his view, of the global experiences, increasingly, within the capitalist epoch, of aperiodic episodes of self-contracting social reproduction — "crises" — in preparing the consciousness of the labor-power-selling[/-alienating] class — increasingly, tendentially the majority of the human population — and of global human society as a whole, for the supercession of the global capital-relation:
"The global market then, again, forms the presupposition of the whole as well as its substratum. Crises are then the general intimation which points beyond the presupposition, and the urge which drives towards the adoption of a new historic form."
— Ibid. , pages 227-228
The upshot of all of this is the realization that work, by the truly-Marxian advocates of socialism, directly upon the global human phenome — their work of the dialectical, immanent critique of ideologies and of ideological sciences — resides at the very core of Marxian praxis.
That this supposedly "abstract" work is the essence of the true "concrete" for humanity, and for socialist praxis, is a core realization of Marxian theory.
This work is necessary to prepare the ground — to prepare the human capability to create — the socialist, revolutionary transition out of capitalist society.
The socialist revolution is not created by driving around in trucks, and waving rifles in the air.
Remember, we tried that in the German Revolution of 1918!It didn't work!
Such ritual praxis, including the cant-like repetition of the incantation "all power to the workers' councils", fails to conjure the socialist revolution.
Such ritual, such incantation — that is the 'pseudo-concrete'.
The praxis which fetishizes those rituals and incantations is the TRULY abstract pseudo-praxis of the 'Can'tians'.
What I am calling for, most clearly in the final section of this three-part text, is a return to — is a CONTINUATION of — the really-concrete, socialist praxis that Marx himself engaged; that Marx himself began, left incomplete upon his death, and expected that his followers would continue, and surpass.
It involves — in part — not only a continuation of the dialectical, immanent critique of capital's "economics", but also of all of the other dimensions of the capital-ideology-pervaded phenome of modern humanity, such as those defined by Marx in his earliest outlines of his and Engel's projected life's work, including critiques of Morals, of Law and of Jurisprudence, of Politics, and of the various extant ideologies of Psychology, Anthropology, and Sociology, but also of modern "Natural" Science and Mathematics.
The entire terrain of the human phenome must be contested by the movement of the transcendence of the capital-relation-of-production, and the forces of that transcendence must achieve increasing legitimacy and popular acceptance as the legitimacy of the capital-regime itself becomes increasingly self-de-legitimized, in the wake of the immanent global crises of contracted social reproduction, and of the global wars and global genocides which follow close upon them, that are endemic to the social dominance of the capital-relation.
This CRUCIALLY involves OPEN and DETAILED discussion — even if primarily in «samizdat» forms and forums — of the scientifically-projected nature, and of the immanently-projected nature of the fundamental social relation of production of socialist society — of WHY it will work; of HOW it will work; of what it offers in SOLUTION and in BENEFIT beyond the capitals-system, INCLUDING ESPECIALLY of HOW it protects and advances civil liberties, and human freedom in general, and MORE....
Those who wait for a future day when "the revolution" will descend suddenly "from heaven", and for a sudden wave of enlightenment to then sweep the world-wide working class, magically implanting in them the solutions to all of the above-listed, and other, crucial issues — issues never before asked, or studied — and who expect the working class to then proceed to create all of the new institutions of socialism, from nothing, from no antecendent development, and, MOREOVER, who expect the majority working class to recognize their tiny cult of "left communists" — one having inhabited only the fringes of the left intellectual ghettos up until then, and having never cultivated relationships, let alone institutional seedlings, among the rest of the working class previously — to recognize their cult as the true counselor of communist revolution, are dwelling in a Peter Pan Never-Never-Land far more delusional than even that of the "Rapturist" cults of today's "fundamentalist" pseudo-Christianity ['Christi-inanity']!
Now, just how "concrete" is that?
The previous two Parts of this piece sought to recall to your mind the self-vitiating beliefs of the 'Can'tians' of Abstract Left Communism — despite their heritage of a real movement for the supercession of that increasingly self-destructive, and humanity-destructive, system of social relations of human-social [self-re-]production which is decadence-phase, terminal, totalitarian [State-]Capitalism.
Those Parts also sought to recall to your mind the fundamental import, per Marxian theory, of the '''human phenome''' of intersubjective values, including of ETHICAL values, of beliefs, of ideologies, and of sciences, in the process of social self-revolution.
These recollections were aimed at demonstrating, to your satisfaction, that the Abstract Left Communists' 'Can'tian' ideology has converted those 'Can'tians' into a tendency EVEN MORE BANKRUPT than global Capitalism — now in the moment of the greatest global bankruptcy in its history, both literally and figuratively — in terms of offering any concrete counsel to humanity about the resumption, and the sustained continuation, of globally, qualo-quantitatively self-expanding human-social reproduction.
The aim of this third and final Part I's to offer some propositions in refutation, and in supercession, of the 'Can'tians' propositions, as set forth in Part I — new 'uni-theses' that point in the direction of the revolutionary transition to a society founded upon a new, social[ist] social relation of production, capable of ending the present tail-spin of contracting human-«species» global social self-re-production, and of sustainedly restoring, and accelerating, the ontologically expanding, qualo-quantitatively self-expanding social self-re-production of humanity.
Its aim is to define a truly Socialist Praxis — one which is '''Class-For-Itself''', rather than merely '''Class-In-Itself''', and which is '''Strategic''', rather than merely desperate, reactive, SUB-tactical, spasmodic, spasmic, spastic, and suicidal.
That proposition-by-proposition supercession is the content of the rest of Part III, below.
NOTE: The propositions below have the same letter designations as the propositions in Part I, but each is also marked with double-primes. Marking these letters with single primes, in this idiom, would signify merely a "contra-thesis" to the "thesis" presented in the original, "unprimed" proposition. The double prime marking signifies our effort to craft the content of the propositions below as "syn-theses", or "uni-theses", each one critiquing, but also partially embracing/conserving the valid content of, both the original, "unprimed", "thesis" proposition, and its "single-primed" "contra-thesis", even though that "contra-thesis" is not made explicit herein.
a'' The socialist revolution will look more like the revolution that overthrew pure-state-bureaucratic [proto-national-supercorporation] proto-state-capitalism in Russia and Eastern Europe, than it will look like the Jacobin/Bollshevik coups that installed [State-]Capitalism. All of these revolutions failed. The Revolutions of 1987-1990 collapsed, and the U.S./U.K.-led counter-revolution ushered in hybrid, proto-'''Fascist''', Private-/State-Capitalism in Russia. We should study the failures of all of these revolutions, as well as their hints at the ways to success.
b'' Real socialists study the members, the ideologies, and the moves of the capitalist ruling class continually, and in the greatest possible detail, as a core practice of Socialist strategy-formation.
c'' The socialist movement — to have any chance of success when revolutionary "windows of opportunity" open, and to have anything useful and compassionate to say, and to concretely offer, to fellow workers, in the long interim — must have, as a core component of its praxis, the development of institutions that promote the interim welfare, as well as the eventual Socialist ascendancy, of the social producers, in the process of their self-overcoming as labor-power-sellers/-alienators [as wage-laborers and as salaried workers].
In this regard, real Socialists can learn lessons from «Hamas», and from «Hezbhollah», etc.
These organizations, despite their vicious, re-medieval ideologies, gain adherents, and widespread public adherence, due largely, not to their vicious and suicidal violentism, but to their extensive development of social welfare infrastructure to serve their hyper-oppressed constituencies.
I do not advocate primarily passive welfare infrastructures, however.
Taking the lead from Marx's commentary on the embryonic emergences of socialist social relations of production within the womb of the capital-relation, in volume III. of Capital, and elsewhere, I would advocate critiquing and advancing models of praxis like that of the Mondragon producers' cooperatives conglomerate, which, despite the kinds of shortcomings that Marx, and others, anticipated, has advanced to the level of a national — and even multi-national — worker owned and worker managed institution, potentially providing an expanding opportunity for new-culture-forming experiences of worker managed, economic-democratic governance of production and reproduction which, I hold, will be crucial to a successful Socialist, Revolutionary transformation of global [state-]capitalist society, when the opportunity for that transformation arrives.
We should say to workers like those in South Korea, recently, who were burned to death by the police [hopefully, before they are murdered], and to others, thinking of repeating what the dead did, in their enraged response to those horrific murders:
"If you make hopeless, solution-less frontal assaults upon the armed institutions of the ruling class, you're going to get yourself killed, or maimed, and killed or maimed with little if any legacy of benefit to your fellow human beings."
"Instead, join our Party — or, if you don't agree with our definition of Socialism — join another, or form your own, and work for Socialism, i.e., for a solution to your/our "social problem", in a way that does have a chance to succeed."
"Join the work for Socialism, and also work in our, or another, producers' cooperative, where there will be some, at least, immediate relief, relief that also builds your Socialist future, and the future of your family, and of your fellow workers in general."
d'' There is a path of the social reform of capitalism that becomes the path of the social-revolutionary transcendence of the real subsumption of human society by the ['essence-ially' anti-social] capital-relation, and that irrupts, at first, the formal subsumption, and, at length, the real subsumption, of the capital-relation, and of all earlier-emerged social relations of production — the subsumption of human society as a whole — by the social[ist] social relation of production.
The central task of '''socialist social science''', and of 'socialist strategics', is to find that path, and to keep the real movement on that path. Those who refuse to seek that path, or who deny the possibility of its existence, are mere utopians, or mere 'Can'tians', respectively.
e'' The global working class must come to hold, rationally, and emotionally, that a clearly defined, political-economic-democratic, civil-libertarian, non-statist, anti-bureaucratic Socialism is the solution to the presently-unfolding, life-or-death global crisis of the human «species», in its majority, or in its very-large minority, BEFORE a successful global socialist revolution can be achieved.
The global working class cannot be "tricked" into Socialism, though it may be "tricked" into a totalitarian, state-capitalist, omni-genocidal Hell-On-Earth nightmare, if the real Socialists fail.
f'' The positive fulfillment of proposition e'', above, requires the clearest possible, scientific, rational, emotional, passionate advocacy, and worldwide propagation, of a clear and detailed definition of Socialism, even if largely via «samizdat» media.
g'' Human conflicts will persist, and even emerge in ontologically unprecedented new forms, within the Socialist epoch.
These conflicts must be faced, and prepared for, by real Socialists, in advance.
The democratic management of these conflicts requires a juridical framework of individual and communal, constitutional rights and responsibilities, of legislation, and of the rule of law, which does not abstractly negate, but which, instead, dialectically, «aufheben» negates, the juridical heritage of social-justice-science/-ideology from the bourgeois epoch, and from all previous epochs of human social formation.
h'' There are many possible pitfalls that can sink a revolutionary movement below the threshold of democracy, and ruin its outcome after a promising beginning — all the way from mob rule violations of minority rights, to military junta coups, or [other] one-party coups. The prevalence of these pitfalls makes it all the more crucial to debate and to develop democratic standards, norms of due process, and expectations for the revolutionary process, in advance of the irruption of the emergenc[e]y phases of that process.
i'' Military force, coercive force of arms alone, cannot impose a new, subsuming social relation of production. To be viable, a revolutionary, new social relation of production must have already gestated, for a significant duration, within the "womb" of its predecessor as subsuming social relation of production, and the "pre-natal" pre-development of that new subsuming social relation of production must be, and must have been, supported by the growth of the social forces of production, to a qualo-quantitative level beyond what the old subsuming social relation of production can "contain".
Those who rely on "force of arms" and "["workers' "-]state coercion" to impose their version of "[pseudo-]socialism", simply betray their lack of any interest in, or understanding about, superceding the prevailing social relation of production, the «Kapital»-relation.
The real movement of such individuals is, at most, to accelerate the '''[political-]economic law of motion of modern, «Kapital»-relation-based society''' [Marx, Capital I., Preface; Engels, Anti-Duhring], to its ultimate destiny and final, terminal "dynamical attractor", namely Totalitarian/Multi-Genocidal STATE-Capitalism, which is not a supercession of the «Kapital»-relation at all, but rather, the actualization of the final historical, horrific, humanocidal essence of the social relation of production called «Kapital».
For exegesis and analysis of Marx's and Engels's writings on this issue, see The Political-Economic Law Of Motion of Modern, Capital-based Society — The 'Socio-Taxis' Toward [State-]Capitalist Totalitarianism as 'Political-Economic Attractor'
j'' Marx's theory is in as much need of immanent critique, and of self-«aufheben» dialectical negation — a negation which preserves and well as elevates and transcends its object/operand — as any science, perhaps more so, because Marx's work represents a higher, "psycho-historical dialectical" «Genos» of science.
Moreover, Marx only lived to complete a tiny fraction of the work he and Engels had outlined for themselves, and that Marx saw as "foundationally" necessary to the revolutionary movement within capitalist society.
Those who have tried to freeze Marxian theory into a perfectly final and completed catechism, have also been those most susceptible to duping by the "psy-op" ideological traps of the core ruling class.
The plutocratic core, the ruling elite of the capitalist ruling class, understands Marx far better than do such "Marxians", and is well on its way to preventing, and to undoing, the formation of the historical conditions that would precipitate the actualization of Marx's predictions, and thereby destroy the power of that ruling elite.
That elite accomplishes this undoing, in part, by steering the "orthodox" "Marxian" "Left" into the service of the genocidal — really, the "humanocidal" — plans of that elite.
That elite is willing to incur any level of the destruction of humanity that it believes to be necessary to preserve its power.
The "Marxian" "Left" — by allowing itself to be suckered-in to promoting that ruling elite's "People Are Pollution" Neo-/Pseudo-Religion of Neo-Malthusian "Earthism", and that elite's Lower working class Living Standards "Green-ism", "Global Warming", "Peak Oil", "Small is Beautiful", "Zero Economic Growth", "Zero Population Growth", "Back to Nature", etc., etc. — has been witlessly pressed into the service of that elite's mass-murderous plans.
k'' The amount of lip-service paid to "dialectics" by the pseudo-Marxians described herein is in inverse proportion to the degree to which they have entered upon the'''dialectical operations stage of human adult cognitive development'''.
These pseudo-Marxians easily swallow the Lukacsian, neo-Christian, neo-Kantian, and neo-'Can't-ian' radical dualism of «Geist» versus «Natur», not realizing that the essence of dialectic is the overthrow of every fallacious radical [exo-]dualism that plagues the human mind.
Thus, they cannot grasp the actuality, and the continuity, of a historical dialectic of nature / natural history prior to human-natural history, with the historical dialectic of human nature / of human natural history — of the human outgrowth, stage, and zone of nature's self-development — and cannot understand the very meaning of the «Genos» of [sentential] "subject-ivity", or "agent-hood", in either its pre-human «species», or in its human «species».
Except for reverent references out of a sense of "tradition", these 'Can't-ians' are sub-dialectical, through-and-through!
l'' Being 'sub-dialecticals' through-and-through, these 'Can't-ians' can't imagine a dialectical, determinate negation — i.e., an «aufheben» negation — of the principal "human-social-relations-of-production" that have emerged so far in human [PRE-]history, namely, the «Kapital»-relation, the Money-relation, and the Commodity-relation. They can only imagine the Absolute Abolition — the Abstract Negation — of this pre-social-ist social-relations-of-production ontology.
Hence, they can never make a convincing, practical case for the vast benefits of socialism vis-a-vis [especially late, state-]capitalism, or even come to a clear definition of what socialist society necessarily IS, and of how, in detail, it necessarily must FUNCTION.
They thus abandon themselves, at best, to irrational, pious hoping that the working class will some day accidentally stumble into making a Socialist Revolution, "bass-ackwards", and discover what "socialism" really means in the process of creating it, starting from as little conception of what "socialism" is as these pseudo-Marxians have to begin with — without a "map", without a "mental template", and without a "compass".
This is a recipe for — at best — the sustained triumph of ruling-class-controlled, totalitarian, multi-genocidal state-capitalism if there ever was one!
For more on the «aufheben» negation of the «Kapital»-relation, and of the other, earlier-emerged social relations of production based upon "the exchange-value", see "Political Economic Democracy".