Background: Here’s a good summary of the Magness/Makovi paper on the influence of politics on Marx’s reputation. Aside from the cheap-shot responses by many of those outraged by the paper, there’s an intriguing philosophical inversion at work among the Outraged.
Marx himself argued that the world develops with “iron necessity” in a strict causal priority: (1) economic conditions give rise to (2) political revolutions, and then afterwards (3) ideological constructions legitimate. That is, material conditions are sub-structure, and the rest is super-structure.
The Magness/Makovi findings suggest that the trajectory of Marxism was instead: (1) political activists’ successes which then simultaneously caused (2a) a kind of ideological legitimation of Marx for some intellectuals and (2b) economics changes in the nations where the political activists were successful.
Now we turn to those who are Outraged by the Magess/Makovi paper. They dislike intensely the suggestion that Marx’s reputation is largely based on political-success factors rather than intellectual-truth factors. Which means the Outraged want to believe: (1) The intellectual truth of Marxism convinced intellectuals. Some of those intellectuals then (2) became political activists. Those political activists then transformed or struggled to transform (3) the economic conditions in various countries.
So while Marx argued that causation is Economics>Politics>Ideas, the Outraged want Ideas>Politics>Economics. That is their brand of neo-Marxism wants to retain the spirit of Marx but reverse his causal theory.
Interestingly, by putting Ideas first they’re also going back to Hegelian causation. The wags have for generations said that materialist Marx turned idealist Hegel on his head, and now the Outraged are in turn turning Marx on his head and turning him into a quasi-Hegelian.
Related:
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the Philosophers, Explained series.
Violent Politics: Lesson of Marxist Philosophy in the Open College series.
