I agree it's reasonable to view BLM as a leaderless social movement, and that the existence of people who claim to speak for it is a bit suspicious. But the original point I was responding to was that neo-Marxism is some sort of wacky label that isn't justified by anything, and that labelling BLM as neo-Marxist is a sort of unjustified smear that's designed to bait conservatives. To address this point, it's not necessary to actually win the argument that BLM is a Marxist movement, only to point out why people might genuinely believe it without having been baited into it. And I think the fact that the people who own the websites and claim to speak for the movement say they're Marxists is sufficient to make that a justifiable claim, even if it may be debatable and certainly not the full story.
You're right that Marx didn't explicitly identify his work as being about identity politics. However, Marx wasn't really a student of economics in the way modern economists would recognize. He showed very little interest in the mechanics of how business worked, to the extent that when his friend Engels invited him to visit one of his factories Marx declined. In fact, I believe there's no evidence Marx ever actually spent time in places where the working classes utilized the means of production, even though his entire philosophy revolved around them. Marx viewed capital almost exclusively through the lens of class struggle. Capital was something that some people had lots of because they oppressed other people, and it really wasn't much more complicated than that. In particular his world view had nothing in it that justified the existence of capitalists - he assigned zero value to their role as coordinators and planners.
A part of your argument is that some of these attributes could apply to "right wing anti-semites" and you mention Nazis in a few places. I actually believe the Nazis were not right wing at all, for example if you read their propaganda magazine (Signal) it is basically a standard socialist critique of western culture, which they called imperialism, naturally, and obviously the party called itself the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. However last time I made that argument on HN I got slapped by dang so let's put that to one side here, as it's apparently taboo.
W.R.T. short term vs long term goals. Yes, it's true, Marx was a much longer term thinker than the current crop of neo-Marxists. He had a sweeping view of human history and was happy to make long-range predictions about the inevitability of revolution. There's nothing like that anywhere in the (supposedly) neo-Marxist philosophy. However, I think a critic of Marx would observe that his long term plans were extremely vague. Marx was big on criticism of capitalism and short on detail about communism which is one reason for the enduring popularity of "regime X wasn't really communism" as an argument. The Communist Manifesto was about as close as it got, and that boiled down to a bunch of bullet points that could be enumerated in 60 seconds flat. It was a long way from a real plan. It's more than the new Left have (right now), but not much more.
At any rate, to say it again, the point here is not really to thrash out what Marxism is or isn't. The point is, there are sufficient parallels that even if you disagree with the argument it's obvious why plenty of people make it. It's not like this idea was just invented out of nothing for nefarious reasons. People who conspicuously subscribe to BLM/feminist/new left thinking describe the world in very similar ways to how Marx did, are invariably voting for policies closer to his policies, and some of them literally say "we are Marxists". That's sufficient for the arguments to be made in good faith even if they're wrong.
I agree it's reasonable to view BLM as a leaderless social movement, and that the existence of people who claim to speak for it is a bit suspicious. But the original point I was responding to was that neo-Marxism is some sort of wacky label that isn't justified by anything, and that labelling BLM as neo-Marxist is a sort of unjustified smear that's designed to bait conservatives. To address this point, it's not necessary to actually win the argument that BLM is a Marxist movement, only to point out why people might genuinely believe it without having been baited into it. And I think the fact that the people who own the websites and claim to speak for the movement say they're Marxists is sufficient to make that a justifiable claim, even if it may be debatable and certainly not the full story.
You're right that Marx didn't explicitly identify his work as being about identity politics. However, Marx wasn't really a student of economics in the way modern economists would recognize. He showed very little interest in the mechanics of how business worked, to the extent that when his friend Engels invited him to visit one of his factories Marx declined. In fact, I believe there's no evidence Marx ever actually spent time in places where the working classes utilized the means of production, even though his entire philosophy revolved around them. Marx viewed capital almost exclusively through the lens of class struggle. Capital was something that some people had lots of because they oppressed other people, and it really wasn't much more complicated than that. In particular his world view had nothing in it that justified the existence of capitalists - he assigned zero value to their role as coordinators and planners.
A part of your argument is that some of these attributes could apply to "right wing anti-semites" and you mention Nazis in a few places. I actually believe the Nazis were not right wing at all, for example if you read their propaganda magazine (Signal) it is basically a standard socialist critique of western culture, which they called imperialism, naturally, and obviously the party called itself the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. However last time I made that argument on HN I got slapped by dang so let's put that to one side here, as it's apparently taboo.
W.R.T. short term vs long term goals. Yes, it's true, Marx was a much longer term thinker than the current crop of neo-Marxists. He had a sweeping view of human history and was happy to make long-range predictions about the inevitability of revolution. There's nothing like that anywhere in the (supposedly) neo-Marxist philosophy. However, I think a critic of Marx would observe that his long term plans were extremely vague. Marx was big on criticism of capitalism and short on detail about communism which is one reason for the enduring popularity of "regime X wasn't really communism" as an argument. The Communist Manifesto was about as close as it got, and that boiled down to a bunch of bullet points that could be enumerated in 60 seconds flat. It was a long way from a real plan. It's more than the new Left have (right now), but not much more.
At any rate, to say it again, the point here is not really to thrash out what Marxism is or isn't. The point is, there are sufficient parallels that even if you disagree with the argument it's obvious why plenty of people make it. It's not like this idea was just invented out of nothing for nefarious reasons. People who conspicuously subscribe to BLM/feminist/new left thinking describe the world in very similar ways to how Marx did, are invariably voting for policies closer to his policies, and some of them literally say "we are Marxists". That's sufficient for the arguments to be made in good faith even if they're wrong.