this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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I think you need to do a bit more reading into the history of socialism in the real world if you walked away with the idea that Marxism is "tainted by authoritarians," and not that Marxism has worked in real life, and was demonized by capitalist society for posing an alternative in the real world.
Further, he was also revolutionary, not reformist, though you may have misspoke there.
Marxism itself wasn’t necessarily tainted, but his ideas of socialism and communism definitely had a social stain associated with them. So by association it had a black mark.
I think it’s pretty clear that we haven’t seen it for what it was supposed to be, when it was weaponized by authoritarians and then attacked by capitalists. It’s supposed to be a grand thing of the people coming together, not stained in blood.
I think you may have misread what I said there about the reformist part. His ideas were revolutionary for the time, but many of the ideas could be applied by reformist.
Again, I will restate: I think you need to do a bit more reading into the history of socialism in the real world if you walked away with the idea that Marxism is “tainted by authoritarians,” and not that Marxism has worked in real life, and was demonized by capitalist society for posing an alternative in the real world. The USSR, PRC, Cuba, etc are examples of socialism working in the real world. Marxism was not "weaponized by authoritarians," capitalists have attacked and slandered existing socialist systems because they pose a viable alternative.
Marxism is not about "the people coming together." Ir's a theory of social change, and it fully acknowledges the role of revolution against the ruling classes. Marx and Engles were slandered as "authoritarians" for their views as well.
Marxism wasn't just novel, it was literally revolutionary, as in pro-revolution.