“RACE MARXISM” AS LIBERAL SCAM

A LAME MEME GETS WORSE

I suppose I’ve made something of a modest “side hustle” taking pot shots at the increasingly popular meme that “woke” generally or Critical Race Theory (CRT) specifically is a form of Marxism/communism. Since my original critique of this conceit, not quite a year ago, such discourse have spread far and wide. Amazingly ill-informed people constantly regurgitate this nonsense, throwing around terms and concepts which they obviously have at best only the most superficial understanding -- if indeed even that. Obviously, I won’t repeat those prior arguments (see for instance, here and here), but I’ve recently on a couple of occasions heard the formulae distilled so precisely and ludicrously, that I couldn’t resist having a little mocking fun at the expense of such people.

As background for those new to my little side hustle, here, on several occasions I’ve made the point that all this woke/CRT stuff is the natural expression of liberalism; it is a more evolved form, but the logical outcome of liberalism’s own commitments. (For a lengthier discussion, see The Managerial Class on Trial; I’ve provided a more concise version of the argument in A Plea for Time in the Phenotype Wars.)

Given that context, it is interesting how many of the people making this silly “race Marxism” argument are themselves liberals. It’s almost as though they’re trying to pull a little sleight of hand on you: “Don’t look at us, it’s those Marxists, over there; it’s their fault!” Of course, that includes some who call themselves “conservatives,” though of course in U.S. political discourse “conservative” is often a euphemism for something like “classical liberal.” Of course, conservatives in something like the original, semantically distinctive sense of the word, like Paul Gottfried, observe that this managerial liberalism has nothing to do with Marxism or communism. Just saying.

So, recently I’ve heard a couple commentators explicitly state some version of: this woke stuff is just Marxism with class switched out for race. In past comments on the topic, giving the commentators the benefit of the doubt, I’ve aimed at nuanced rebuttals of the argument. And that was of course in response to other relatively nuanced expressions of the position. However, if one’s going to put it that crudely, and ludicrously – cool. I’m happy to respond to that foolishness on its own level. And, let’s be honest, a lot of the more relatively nuanced expressions are largely ornamental displays for purposes of camouflaging a commitment to this simplistic version of the position.

To start, then, let’s be clear: the relevance to Marxism of class and class conflict is not the celebration, or even merely observation, of the existence of class divisions characterizing society. The analysis of this conflict was functional for Marx as part of a theory or strategy for transcending class conflict divided society. Class is defined for Marx in relation to the mode of production. The production of such classes entailed differences in power. The means to eliminate such power differential was that all of humanity partake of the same relation to the mode of production. His communism, often characterized as a classless society, might just as accurately be described as a one class society. Everyone is part of the same class, because sharing the same relation to the mode of production, and that’s why class conflict and class-based power differences would be eliminated in communism.

Now, however plausible, or implausible, you may find that prospect, it’s at least practically conceivable. It probably would be more plausible in something like a Yeoman republic than the kind of mass, industrial social-factory often suggested in Marx’s idea of communism. That world would simply be the breeding ground for conditions to further entrench managerial class rule. Which, as I’ve observed on numerous occasions (for example, see here) might be the Freudian repressed of the Marxist id: i.e., that which is doomed to endlessly return, because it expresses the true (concealed) nature of Marxism. Though, in fairness, there are some scattered comments in Marx’s work suggesting that the one class society might withdraw from industrialism into a more arcadian future: "hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, and criticize after dinner." So, maybe he was leaning more toward a Yeoman republic than some give him credit.

Again, though, however plausible you consider his vision of communism as a one class society, it is at least theoretically possible, and vaguely conceivable. Given though that this society liberated from class conflict is the telos of Marx’s project, what can it possibly mean to swap out class for race? Is the idea that we’re going to overcome racial conflict by becoming one single race? And, if so, why? Is race supposed to have displaced class as the fundamental social conflict? As I’ve pointed out before, for Marx and Marxist informed communists, such a proposition is not merely heresy, it is bourgeois deviationism, requiring swift and severe correction (see here).

For Marx and Marxist communists (do these liberal critics acknowledge the existence or credibility of any other kind of communism?), class conflict is the core conflict because it derives from the mode of production, which is at any moment an historical expression of the materialist dialectic. How on earth are we supposed to presume that race is determined by relation to the mode of production? Obviously that is preposterous. So, in swapping out class for race, you’re not just downplaying class conflict, reducing the relevance of the mode of production, you’re throwing out historical materialism itself.

What is left to make this “race Marxism” Marxist at all, beyond finding scattered textual references in which theorists or activists do (or did) call themselves Marxists? I’ve addressed the silliness of that ploy elsewhere (here). Just for a moment, though, to humor such people, let’s pretend that by some remarkable feat of mental gymnastics, Marx – if he’d been smarter – would have recognized that the real historical manifestation of dialectical materialism was not class, but race. Racial conflict, not class conflict, was the fundamental social conflict and itself somehow a product of the mode of production.

I’ve no doubt that somewhere such mental gymnastics have been engaged. That though only brings us back to the fact that the Marxist telos was not social analysis but social liberation. So how would Marx’s liberatory strategy apply in this remarkable new understanding of historical materialism? We’re going to be freed from this fundamental social scourge of racial conflict through all becoming one race? Try to get your head around how preposterous such a proposition really is.

Even if we had rampant interracial reproduction – which we don’t – even that wouldn’t produce a single race. In fact, it might even make more difficult such a project. If you had clearly stable and separate races, at least in theory, you could identify some portion of all the genetic markers for different races and imagine a world in which everyone shared the same proportion of all those markers, from each race. Though it would seem that such a project would require a managerial class technocracy which put to shame that implied in Marx’s industrial version of communism.

Now, talk about plausibility. How on earth could even the most dictatorial, technocratic managerial class regime possibly get all these racial markers, in such refined proportionality, into the genome of every human being? It minimally presumes at least one entire generation, which is one hundred percent artificially generated with complexly edited, uniform gametes. Or, failing that, a universally dictatorial and mind bogglingly calibrated selective breeding program. Certainly, we lack either the technology or the social manipulation methods necessary to corral such fundamental human instincts, even for a single generation.

But, even if in some dystopian future such means become available, biological history wouldn’t end. The differing conditions under which different populations lived – geography, climate, whatever – would continue to act as selective pressures for the inevitable genetic mutations which would arise. Such a one race solution would ultimately be dependent upon the control, or better erasure of human mating practices, and probably impulses, permanently.

This sounds less like human liberation than human elimination. Marx’s communism (whether the industrial or Yeoman version) may be of farfetched plausibility; this uni-racial project though is utterly ludicrous in practice, and speciocide in theory. More to the point, at every level this racialist project stands in stark contradiction to Marxism as social analysis, philosophical telos, and liberatory strategy.

Though, of course, the real punchline in all of this is that most theorists of “woke” or CRT do not advocate some one race solution to racial conflict. Instead, they want to defend, shelter, protect, and preserve what they conceive as subaltern racial groups. They’re far more likely to be segregationists than race blending eugenicists. Fine, but if the operative conceit is that racial conflict replaces class conflict as the fundamental social conflict, how does racial segregation contribute to this imaginary reconstructed Marx’s aspiration of human liberation through a raceless or one race society? What in fact does any of this have to do with Marxism, with historical materialism, with communism as a universalist transcending of society’s fundamental conflict?

Of course, nothing.

Again, remember, it’s not for nothing that it is liberals who are promoting this race Marxism nonsense. Repeating this nonsense contributes to the hegemony of liberalism — with its logical culmination in managerial liberalism — by helping liberals deflect attention and responsibility for their unleashing of the spatialist unconstrained vision, with its positive feedback loop socially driving us away from grounding in nature and reality. Of course, my claim is that all this is an inevitable part of the phenotype wars. If though you want to contribute to the conditions for a soft landing in the coming arc in that spiral, it’s probably a good idea not to succumb to the ideology of those who got you here. Again, just saying.

For new readers, who have no idea what that last sentence was about, you might want to read my new book, A Plea for Time in the Phenotype Wars.

And those who want to keep up on the latest goings-on at this substack (a brand new series is about to begin!), if you haven’t yet, please…

And if you know of others keen to explore these sort of ideas, kindly…

Be seeing you!