More on Marxism, Wokeism, and What They Do and Don't Have in Common

[The birth of Woke]

It was recently brought to my attention that a writer at the New Oxford Review took a critical look at my review of Mark Levin’s book.

That NOR article is behind a paywall. Here’s the bit about my review in the article:

Alexander Riley, in a review of Mark Levin’s recent bestseller American Marxism, charges the radio and television star with failing to understand his subject. Levin characterizes some left-wing hooligans in the United States as “Marxist anarchists,” thus glibly combining two movements that, historically, have been bitterly at odds. Riley, a Bucknell University sociology professor, writes, contra Levin, that “any competent Marxist understands that Marx’s worldview and that of the anarchists are fundamentally incompatible. Any serious critic of Marxism and anarchism should certainly know this, too” (Chronicles, Aug. 2022). Riley explains:

“The incompatibility of the two political philosophies — Marxism and anarchism — has to do with their opposite views on the organizational forms and composition of the revolutionary movements they desired. Marxists saw the organized industrial working class as the agent of revolution. The state was ultimately to be destroyed, but it would need to be operational for a time in the dictatorship of the proletariat until capitalist society had been wholly transformed. Anarchists rejected the centrality of the working class. They focused instead on “propagandists of the deed” drawn from the alienated middle class and underclass. These radicals would destroy capitalism not by seizing the factories and the state, but through violent uprising and terrorism. They championed spontaneity, while the Marxists preached party discipline and organization. Both philosophies fail when faced with the crude facts of reality, but a “Marxist anarchist” is a contradiction in terms.”

…Riley [is] right, of course…Levin is no scholar of Marxism. That much is clear from his book.

But Riley [is] wrong — about Marxism.

Yes, as Riley insists, Marxism and anarchism are theoretically different. In Japan in the 1920s, Bolsheviks (a species of hyper-statist Marxists) warred in the streets with anarchists, who rejected the need for a party to effect global revolution. Similar scenes played out in other countries, and not just between Bolsheviks and anarchists. Stalin had Trotsky murdered in Mexico City because Trotsky, a Menshevik-turned-Bolshevik who was Leninist to his core, was not sufficiently devoted, in Stalin’s view, to the Communist Party. And we often forget that Mao Tse-tung and his mortal enemy, Chiang Kai-shek, were both tutored by Soviets in the early days of the Chinese civil war. These distinctions are important to make in historical analysis.

And yet, I find Riley’s hairsplitting to be as disingenuous as it is fastidious. What Levin means by “Marxism” is something much bigger than chapter-and-verse from The German Ideology or Das Kapital. Levin’s understanding of “Marxism” is very close to The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels’s bombastic broadside that famously called on the workers of the world to overthrow the capitalist system and the governments that support it.

I wrote the response below and sent it in to the publication. Still waiting to see whether or not they’ll run it and in what form.

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Jason Morgan's account of my review of Mark Levin's book is uncharitable. He characterizes my review as "disingenuous." This word is synonymous with "dishonest," "deceitful," and "mendacious." Somehow, it would seem, he believes he's seen into my heart and discerned that I am dissimulating about something. But what? Is it that, despite my posturing to the contrary, I agree with Levin and Morgan that Marxism can mean whatever anyone would like it to mean?  On that point, at least, I can assure you there is no disingenuousness. I really do find that a fatuous and indefensible claim.

The content of Morgan's article shows that he is as poorly informed about Marxism, Wokeism, and their crucial differences as is Levin. It also shows that he couldn't have read my review carefully. The review describes the central such difference between the two and explains why it matters, and yet Morgan says not a word about that in his article.

It is true that both Marxism and Wokeism are revolutionary belief systems that look to overturn a given social order, or at least some parts of it. But Islamism and fascism also fit that definition. Indeed, so does early Christianity. Does Morgan think they are in principle indistinguishable from Marxism too? Things can be similar in many of their aspects and yet different in important ways. This is not a particularly "fastidious" point to make.

Marxism centers on a socioeconomic class analysis of inequality. All other forms of inequality are dependent on the only real form of inequality in Marxism, which has to do with social class position with respect to the means of production. Some classes control those means; some do not. This determines everything in Marxism.

Try to find this kind of class-centric analysis in the chief texts of Wokeism, in its messaging from its elite partisans, or in the slogans of its street troops. When class is considered by the Woke, it is just one more element of identity to be mixed in with all the others. The Woke faithful see class as no more important than race, sex, gender, or sexuality, and many of them are explicit that it is less important, for various unconvincing reasons.

Marxist analysis is rejected by the Woke elite, as I wrote in my review, because the last thing that elite wants is sustained critique of its economic domination of the rest of the society. Wokeism, which elevates the current crop of identity politics categories above class, allows them to pose as radicals and yet maintain their power, advocating nothing that harms their material position of dominance. The Woke elite are happy to repeat the mindless inanities of gender dysphoria and the endless charges of white supremacy, so long as this does not disturb their continued sales of their products and the concomitant growth of their political and cultural power.

Marxism was egregiously wrong in many ways and its historical record is obscene. But the one thing it got right is what continues to draw some to it today. This same feature of Marxism is something that could be usefully consulted by many on the right, especially those with no economic perspective to speak of beyond the simplistic “free markets solve all problems” libertarianism of the mainstream GOP. What Marxism got right is this: Social classes exist, they some of the time have some common interests that conflict with the interests of other classes, and class inequality can, if allowed to grow too extreme, become a major social problem. Conservatives once widely recognized at least the last point. They also understood that an economic elite too widely separated from the rest of the society would inevitably exert a corrosive force on traditional institutions and systems of belief. This is certainly happening in the United States right now.   

Of course the Marxian 'solution' to the problem—communist revolution—is to be rejected. But too many on the right think this move then rules out of bounds any criticism of economic inequality. Levin and other high-profile figures on the media right use their line on “cultural Marxism” to insinuate just this. But any astute student of human societies knows that inequality is one of the central variables of concern in any society. Utopian perspectives that would claim we can and should eliminate it entirely, such as Marxism, are doomed to failure. But this is not to say that every degree of inequality is healthy and acceptable. Some forms of inequality are unavoidable; some are functional and productive. But when there are people (of all races, sexes, genders, sexualities, and so on) who have become so wealthy that they can effectively own the political system in a self-proclaimed democracy and move the entire culture with significant precision in the directions they desire, this is a problem.

Marxism recognizes that problem, and for that reason it has never gotten much purchase among the American corporate elite. Wokeism is typically so engrossed in denying human biology to assert the human ability to change sex at will and fretting about ignorant and ideologically poisonous narratives of race relations in American history (neither of which were distractions that concerned many Marxists) that it frequently overlooks that problem. It therefore presents dangers as an elite-promoted ideology that Marxism never could in this country.

Failing to recognize these differences consigns one to an inability to understand the nature of the fight the American right faces. What Morgan calls “fastidious” is in fact essential to a proper comprehension of what is to be done to defeat the Woke, non-Marxist revolution confronting us. I share his concern about the damage done to Christianity in this country by the unrelenting fire of Wokeism. But blithely hoping for religious revival is not a strategy. Defeating Wokeism will require accurately understanding it and building imperfect and cautious alliances with others—some of whom may find compelling a view of social class reasonably defined as Marxist—for the fight.  

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Hi all,

I’ve been at this project now for more than six months. Hardly seems possible, but I just checked the calendar and I believe that is the right math.

So, this is a note to you: Thank you.

I’m tremendously flattered by your interest in what I have to say about life, art, politics, death and I’m grateful that you read my ramblings. Every writer desires to be read (Lovecraft’s letter accompanying his submission to an editor notwithstanding) and thus owes a debt that cannot really be repaid to readers, however much the writer sometimes pretends not to recognize this (it’s part of the persona, you see…).

So that’s something I want to be sure to say and say again: THANK YOU.

Now, the other reason for this little note.

I finally got around to doing the technical stuff necessary to provide a paid subscription option.

What does a paid option mean?

It means it’s an option. At present, everything on this account remains open to all subscribers, paid or free. Even if I move at some currently unforeseen point to separating material here into paid and unpaid categories, I still plan to always make the great bulk of it available when it’s produced without cost to everyone interested in seeing it. I’m tremendously appreciative that you read this site and want to do everything I can to ensure you continue to be interested in doing so.

I am hopeful though, and I make so bold as to ask, that if you have a few extra dollars rattling around, you’ll consider kicking some of them my way to help make it more feasible for me to spend more time on this project.

Inevitably, and despite my deepest feelings about writing, I think at least a bit about possible material returns when I am allocating time to writing projects. I have two kids who eat and are in constant need of new clothes and a house in which things are constantly breaking down. Add to that the fact that, to my great regret, I do not have infinite time to dedicate to writing, and it emerges necessarily that sometimes the possibility of writing things for pay trumps writing things here. This is so even though I much prefer writing here precisely because it allows me more freedom to engage with the topics I find most interesting.

If I can generate some paid subscriptions, then, I can spend more time doing this writing, the writing I most care about, and the writing that I hope you find valuable. If I generate enough, I may even finally find enough time and energy to get around to dipping my toes into Podcast World, which is professionally speaking probably the last thing I should do, given my tendency to say things that get me into trouble, but YOLO, as I’ve heard they say.

I hope you’ll consider a paid subscription and, whatever your decision on that, I look forward to writing more for you as All Things Rhapsodical Phase II gets underway. Should you decide to “go paid,” you need only click the button below and it should lead you in the right direction.

Cheers, and thanks again! And very special thanks to those who have already switched to a paid subscription!

ATR