Antifa thug with metal pipe gets knocked out.

I don't disagree with you re. militarism, but Marx was talking about something else. He was referring to the time when we stop talking and start shooting. If the US ever comes to that, even if 'my side' wins, it will be a huge disaster, and not just for America.

 

Was it Marx, or a Marxists making that claim?

Marxist scholarship in the US is very poor. Only one area of academia is worst than Marxist studies and that is U.S. Civil War History which is an embarrassing massive pile of garbage.

I have found that most critiques of Marxism are by persons that never actually read Capital Vol I. . I would advise anyone interested to watch Dr. David Harvey's 13 part video lectures on Vol. I. It is shockingly different from what Marxist critics claim. Admittedly, the book is tough to read so you can't be a p***y to get through it.

"One thing is certain and that is that I am not a Marxist"--Karl Marx, 1882.

 

It's in his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (written when he was a young man, several years before even The Manifesto): "The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism by weapons, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses." Source here.

No, few read Marx, including Marxists. I have to confess that I've never read Capital, not even Volume I. (I dipped in and out of it a long time ago, when I was a Marxist, but never ground through the whole thing. For one thing, it was a bit too abstract for me. And to tell the truth, I never met any Marxists who had read it ... maybe one or two.) I do think his and Engels writings on historical materialism are quite valuable -- and if I were smarter and had the time and energy I'd go back and take a close look at his critique of the capitalist economy .. if if if. But as it is, I rely on people like Bob Brenner, if you know of him, to tell me what Marxists are thinking about the economy nowadays. I don't know David Harvey ... I'll check him out.

I actually consider the Marxist movement a huge tragedy ... all those people dedicated to building a better world, willing to risk their lives for it ... and what did they end up with?

 

The same can be said of Christianity. Marxism is a response to the tragedy of capitalism as self sufficient people were forced into the cities to work in factories as wage slaves.

I have just finished re-reading Vol. I, and Vol. 2. Remember that only Vol. 1 was actually published by Marx, and only later Engels put together Vol. 2 and 3 posthumously. Vol. I is the best and, by the way, one can actually read Vol.1 chapters backwards--that is, last chapter first and to the first chapter last.

And by the way, that is a great quote showing the so called "materialistic" Marx commenting on the power of ideas, spirituality and...taxes. (The source is not copyrighted):

The larger overview of what Marx is doing with his critique....

Karl Marx turned Hegelianism on its head. Hegel was a philosophical Idealist, but his student, Marx, was a Historical Materialist ( The term "Dialectical Materialism" cannot be found in any of Marx's writings).

For Hegel, Truth descends from Heaven to Earth; for Marx, Truth ascends from Earth to Heaven. Marxism is a Christian heresy, not a non-Christian heresy.

 

What I find enduring in Marx is his understanding that human progress depends, ultimately, on the growth of the forces of production -- on human understanding of and control of nature generally. Because capitalism did that in a way that no previous society did -- because it was dynamic -- he understood its progressive side.

The problem arises when one tries to think of something to replace it. No one has, and this is not accidental. We've got to have the market.

However ... whether this will remain true into the distant future is another question. I think we're right on the cusp of an enormous leap in human capacities -- AI, genetic engineering, the knitting together of the world, first economically and then culturally -- this will transform everything. But of course the process is slow, uneven, bloody and will take generations.

 

Not true, there are alternatives such as the Nordic economic models, but which do not keep the American oligarchy in power. See American capitalism has failed us: We’re overworked, underemployed and more powerless than ever before: Denmark, Norway and Sweden are all thriving under democratic socialism. Why is it so difficult for us to embrace?