Hacker Read top | best | new | newcomments | leaders | about | bookmarklet login

Maybe "Neo-Marxist" is a better label then.


sort by: page size:

Nitpick, but this man doesn't really seem to understand what "Marxism" means.

Calling it "Marxist" doesn't make it untrue.

Ironically, "Marxist" is also a classic motte-and-bailey word.

He didn't call "marxists nihilsts" it seems he said "neo-marxists" are, which is fitting in my opinion.

The video is short, it's good to hear alternative opinions that challenge your own.


Are neo-marxists not marxists? I talk with actual marxists and not a single one has used this terminology, so this really smells like something made up just so claims like the above can be made. It doesn't seem like a good-faith attempt to understand the positions of the "neo-Marxist professors." In my read of Jordan Peterson's stuff, there's a lot of that going on: claiming misconstrued context or playing semantic games to avoid the heart of the matter that his point of view is just not substantiated.

The video is short, it's good to hear alternative opinions that challenge your own.

Its good to hear alternative opinions that are well formed, even-keeled, and evidenced. To use an extreme example, I do not need to hear an opinion about how the Earth is flat or maybe white nationalism would be a good thing. Right of the bat, I'm told that these "neo-Marxist" professors are dangerous and encouraged to enter a moral panic about nihilism being taught to kids. That doesn't seem like its going to be a good and informative argument.


But that "cultural marxism" label might be neither very cultural nor particularly marxist does not mean that what it labels isn't for the most part senseless bunk either. Oh, and marxism does happen to be more popular in academia than it deserves, too.

He calls people "postmodern marxist's" which is rather contradictory.

When did "neo-marxism" become a slur? Did people just stick "neo" in the front for no reason? Are there people who refer to themselves as "neo-marxists" or is it just some word that goes next to "postmodernism" and "third wave feminism" as words that make people mad but have been completely detached from their actual meaning.

"Marxism" is actually really out of style in modern left leaning academic and social justice activism circles, since it focuses on exactly one axis of oppression.


Marxism is the "we're almost there, just keep trying" of political theories.

He's mixing up "Marxists" with "everyone other than anarcho-capitalists". Again. It's a depressingly common mistake.

That's actually not true. What is "neo Marxism"? As I understand it, it is the application of Marixist class theory to other non-class power structures. However I have seen nor have been able to find any evidence that this is an actually existing group that has grown out of Marxism. Furthermore, postmodernism denies the very structures in the materialist understanding of history which is essential to Marxism. So how are they compatible? These and other issues are discussed in my post and in the article I linked therein.

There's simply no evidence for it; Peterson's confusion is his own and I hope that others do not follow him on this and instead choose to do their own research into philosophy.


Isn't that called Marxism?

Too marxist for HN I'm afraid. Something of a shame, as it makes an interesting point.

What is 'post-modernist neo-Marxist ideology'? Isn't that just what Jordan Peterson calls things he doesn't like even though he admits to having never read any Marx?

"Trained Marxist" might as well mean college graduate these days.

What's Marxist about it, then?

You question the phrase "late stage capitalists" and use the phrase "cultural marxists"? Shoo.

Marxists who aren't concerned with orthodoxy generally self-identify as "Socialists" rather than Marxists, even -- perhaps especially, given the degree to which Marxism as a label has become associated with Leninism and its descendants -- their approach to socialism generally follows Marx as opposed to other socialist thinkers.

The comment you replied to was perhaps a bit confused, but there's plenty of non-Marxist socialism out there.

Marx is kind of overrated anyway. (And, of course, 'Marxism' is being thrown around as a general accusation a lot. Just like 'neoliberalism' was a popular slur.)

next

Legal | privacy