From my mid-twenties I couldn't see any evidence of a Bolshevik-style revolution anywhere in the world. Politics was put on a back-burner while marriage, family and career took centre stage. My preoccupations in these decades was physics, artificial intelligence, computer science, telecoms design and so on.
In my sixties my curiosity resumed. I've had time to come to terms with Marxism, to engage with the volumes of Capital, the many books on Marxist economics, and to investigate what Marx actually wrote and believed. I documented this journey through the posts below.
My final conclusions? Marx's methodology is good, his sociology is correct. He's not in the business of peddling self-serving illusions about the way societies work. He lacks, however, a good theory of human nature, which leads him astray as regards the concept of communism. He underestimated how successful capitalism turned out to be and the myriad ways it can successfully address many human needs. Revolution is indeed off the agenda; capitalism is actually threatened by its relentless drive to total automation.
We need to integrate into Marx's general approach what has subsequently been learned about human beings: their material drives, their psychology and their differences, to develop a more profound and truthful sociology.
My summary view: "From Marxism to nihilism (via sociobiology)".
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Here are my posts on Marxist theory:
- Workers, slaves, androids - and agency
- Why Marxism refuses to die
- Simple Reproduction in an Abstract Capitalist Society
- Expanded Reproduction in an Abstract Capitalist Society
- Blue Labour - so disappointing
- Paul Mason and PostCapitalism
- On the Corbyn New Left
- Communism would be like - what?
- And this is the best you could do?
- Revolution back on the agenda?
- "What Is Orthodox Marxism?"
- Marx on Slavery
- Marx and the Universal Basic Income (UBI)
- 1917-2017: the collapse of the revolutionary left
- "They dismiss the last workers from their fully automated factories"
- Total automation under capitalism?
- Marx: "Right about capitalism, wrong about socialism"
- Q. "How do I get into Marxism?"
- "The United Socialist States of Europe"
- Why Marxists should embrace Capitalism
- "The Socialist System" - János Kornai
- Leon Trotsky on communism
- Perry Anderson on Western Marxism and Hegemony
- Perry Anderson's Marxism.
- Advanced AI is indistinguishable from slavery
- No communism without abundance
- Michael Roberts: Total Automation under Capitalism
- "The Limits to Capital" by David Harvey (2007)
- Michael Roberts on Keynesianism & the modern left
- The Law of Accumulation - and competition
- Socialist Revolution in the 21st Century
- May Day review of "Marx 200" by Michael Roberts
- The ties that bind
- Capitalism with total automation? In principle, sure
- The reification/ossification of theory: Samir Amin
- The Virus of Marxism
- Capitalism is hard to get started
- The Simulation of Communism (story)
- When Keynes comes to town
- The LTOV including rent answers critics
- The relative autonomy of the petty bourgeoisie
- The Communist Party of Britain
- Modelling total automation under capitalism (a progress report)
- Five questions on the last days of capitalism
- Capitalism incompatible with total automation/slavery
- Lenin 2017: Slavoj Zizek
- The misunderstandings of eusociality
- Beyond capitalism: is this the best we can hope for?
- From Marxism to nihilism (via sociobiology)