Introduction:
Today we’re going to be talking about why Marxism ruins everyone’s thoughts, people’s ideology, and why is it so dangerous for society? Now, I want to make it very clear that we’re not going to be doing a direct critique of Marx’s philosophy, his ideas, his concepts, but rather we’re going to be discussing the impact that Marxist (neo-Marxist) thought has on today’s society, because I think that a lot of situations that has happened in recent months, recent weeks, and in fact, in society as a whole, has been becoming more Marxist.
What is Marxism:
Marxism is the prioritisation of the class over the individual
Josh’s summary of the discussion
So first of all, what is Marxism? Or what is Neo Marxism? Now, of course, you can turn to the Communist Manifesto and say “yeah, that’s Marxist,” you can turn to a lot of these different works of Marx say, well, that’s Marxist. The truth is, it is a very, very broad theory and it’s very difficult to reduce it to one single concept, there’s Marxian economics, history and, there’s a lot of different ways in which he approaches different concepts. However, perhaps the best way to summarize or at least how it is being applied today is that Marxism is the prioritisation of the class over the individual, what we saw so commonly in in the Marxist countries of the Soviet Union, and in extension, China as well. What we saw in these countries is indeed the fact that people view class struggle as the main, overriding structure in psychology or religion or economics, or politics. It’s this idea of the class over the individual, you’re judging others by their class; the class is what makes you who you are, and that people are approaching life through the lens of class.
First Problem of Marxism: The Group over the Individual
The first problem of how Marxist thought has gotten into society is the idea that one’s class or one’s group is more important than the individual. And this is very commonly seen in the recent Black Lives Matter Protests, their slogans “all cops are B#*stards” or “the police system is institutionally racist.” What you notice is that these large generalizations of certain systems and classes devalue the importance of the individual moral framework, the intrinsic moral value of the individual and his ability to make moral decision making.
Now, this is not a complete discussion about Black Lives Matter. That’s not my goal of this article, I think that the Black Lives Matter protests did indeed bring racist problems to the forefront. And I think that that is important as well. However, there are certain areas of that movement which have been hijacked, I would say this fundamental idea of racial equality has indeed been hijacked by extremists, and extreme Marxists at times, to sneak in their Marxist ideology to twist people away from viewing everyone as individual people with moral worth, then, indeed, are looking at people as an entire group. And that is a very dangerous thing to do.
A good illustration for why this is wrong. If we look at this idea of an institution being more valuable than the individual, what we then see is that the certain people who carry out racism aren’t actually racist in themselves, but are racist because of the system. People are racist, not because of who they are, not because they have moral responsibility for their actions, but rather, because they have been placed in a class which is in its nature racist. Now, of course, that leads to very, very big problem, someone racially abuses me or racially insults me, then well, suddenly it is not really the person’s fault, he doesn’t have that moral responsibility, he doesn’t bear the full weight of the responsibility of the action, rather, it is given to him by the society that he is in.
I’m not arguing that people aren’t influenced by their backgrounds or groups, it is very clear that people, no matter what the situations are in, have to take responsibility for their actions, and we have to judge everyone as people with intrinsic moral worth and moral decision making capability. Such that everyone has responsibility for their actions, you cannot judge someone by the group that they are in, you cannot say this person is bad, this person is going against the system, this person committing crimes, just because he is part of a certain group, which was seen so clearly in Soviet Russia or Maoist China where they said, oh, this person is part of the bourgeoisie, this person is a “Capitalist Roader”, that means he must be wrong. And to me, that just sounds like another form of racism and inequality, which is something which we should be working against.
So in fact, I think what we noticed is that one of the main problems, as we’ve said, is that it views the group as more important than the individual. And by doing that, in fighting against the so called oppression of the bourgeoisie or of a certain group, no matter what situation we’re approaching it, it actually creates another discriminatory group as well.
Notice:
If you want to see more of my critiques of how Marxist thought is twisting society, feel free to check out my video where I elaborate on this in more depth (here). Where I talk about other problems like how Marxism fundamentally misrepresents human psychology and how it is judgemental.
I hope you enjoyed this, see you soon.
Apologetics for All 