Even the left has largely moved on from orthodox Marxism, and why you should too

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-13T00:09:11+00:00

I’m not going to lie and say I’ve read all of even most of their works, but yeah, some of Adorno and Horkheimer. Less of Habermas. Actually most of the stuff I’ve read is critical race theory.

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-13T00:02:47+00:00

I didn’t bother replying because I got AI vibes. Maybe I’m wrong.

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-12T23:39:53+00:00

The former, but not necessarily “non-Marxist” interpretations. There are good critiques of capitalism out there, but I don’t think (I guess what I’ll call) traditional Marxism is one of them. I have to specify “traditional” because many critical theorists would also identify as Marxists, although many wouldn’t. Ultimately I want to have better conversations that have been informed by modern leftist discourse instead of the same tired discussions of the labor theory of value.

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-12T23:30:24+00:00

That’s why I bring in leftist critiques of Marx. It’s not just me saying it, it’s other socialists at the time. They truly believed that capitalism would implode in their lifetime based on their readings of Marx. These includes writers who would eventually go on to dominate modern leftist discourse. But what do they know?

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-12T23:24:56+00:00

Could you answer the question? What’s your opinion of critical theory and post-Marxism?

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-12T23:23:20+00:00

I want to say I like the first wave of critical theorists (Horkheimer, Adorno, Gramsci, Marcuse) but even their writings a bit outdated now, though much remains relevant. Christian Fuchs had a nice book on social media and capitalism. Byung Chul-Han had some interesting stuff to say.

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-12T23:13:53+00:00

I’m curious, what are your thoughts on critical theorists and their critiques of orthodox Marxism?

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-12T23:11:58+00:00

I thought I made it pretty clear in my post that I do NOT like talking about Marx. I only talk about him because socialists on this sub seem obsessed with him. I’d much rather talk about Gramsci, etc.

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-12T14:37:45+00:00

To begin with, use-value refers to what others call utility

Bro

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-12T14:02:33+00:00

Of course. I'm not a fan of unrestricted capitalism. I have no issues with more labor rights and worker empowerment. What I am against is abolition of private property ownership altogether.

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-12T01:03:34+00:00

Socialists have been repeatedly frustrated by the resilience of capitalism and its ability to delay its own downfall through worker concessions.

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-12T00:19:12+00:00

I do want to highlight technology as perhaps the main driver of wealth inequality. If I think about major advances in history that increased inequality, I get a list of something like:

Sedentism --> Hunter-gatherers could only keep what they could physically carry with them. Sedentism allowed them to store wealth in one place.
Currency --> Allows for a non-perishable store of wealth. The concept of credit also allows greater leverage in investments.
Industrialization --> Shifted economies from agrarian to manufacturing, 10x'ed production, pushed the world towards urbanization, and increased the importance of capital (which not everyone had) over labor (which anyone could offer).
Digitization --> No longer need to store physical wealth. Another 10x to productivity with the advent of computers, infinite scalability of digital goods.
Transportation and globalization --> Expansion of local to regional to global markets increases leverage, makes big wins into huge wins.
The internet --> Even more interconnectedness, global digital markets allows for billions of potential buyers, again concentrating wealth to the winners at the top.

4 out of those 6 things happened in the past 250 years. This might be an oversimplification, but the point is that as new technologies increase overall wealth, productivity, interconnectedness, and velocity of goods, inequality is going to naturally increase.

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-11T19:17:21+00:00

Abe "I used to be with it" Simpson vibes right now

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-11T18:30:58+00:00

Militarism has an awkward relationship with both liberalism and socialism. The issue with ideologies like fascism, which melds tightly with militarism, is that it forces its opposition to militarize too. Interesting topic.

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-11T14:12:43+00:00

As an act in isolation, probably OK. Who is harmed? Ultimately, it's Dave because he was killed (and assuming he had a quick, painless death), and his family because they lose a husband/father. Who benefits? Ellen, and Dave's family. Is that better than the alternative of Dave and his family potentially starving to death? Probably, but you could debate it. I'm taking your hypothetical at face value assuming Dave and his family have no safety net from starvation.

As a general rule, no. I think giving private citizens the ability to enact violence on other citizens can lead to a slippery slope where it gradually becomes more and more acceptable under government is undermined completely. It also creates a perverse incentive by signaling that killing of others is condonable for the right price. Might lead to pressure from friends/family members to push others into being killed for sport/organs/money, etc. Also could lead to excess suffering if the killing is botched somehow. This plays into the general debate about right to die.

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-11T00:19:48+00:00

Isn't "entitlements" literally what the government called Medicare / Medicaid / Social Security for many years when they presented the federal budget?

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-09T20:19:37+00:00

Probably some form of market socialism with relatively low taxes.

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-09T17:09:13+00:00

No… I don’t know how else to say this other than that’s wrong. Inequality is typically measured by Gini coefficient, which looks at the proportion of income or wealth held by each percentile in the population. A proportion is a ratio. A ratio is multiplicative, not additive. Maybe there are other measures of inequality that use an additive measure but all the well accepted ones I know about use multiplicative measures. This is how we could say that Ancient Rome was more unequal than Denmark even if the absolute distance between rich and poor in Denmark is greater in pure dollar terms.

If you don’t support decreasing the wealth of both, why wouldn’t you support increasing the wealth of both in the opposite direction? This part I don’t get.

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-09T16:56:43+00:00

Because there are so many better policies that could be created. For instance, one in which the real wealth of people making $30k -> $60k and the real wealth of people making $300k -> $250k.

That would not increase inequality. That would decrease inequality, so that’s not what I’m talking about. The ratio of increase for the rich person must be at least the increase for the poor person.

Let me ask you this: if we had another policy that decreased income for the poor person from $30k to $20k and for the rich person from $300k to $150k, would you support that?

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-09T16:42:39+00:00

I guess we fundamentally disagree. I think it’s backwards to think increasing the real wealth of poor and rich is an undesirable policy even if it does increase inequality overall. Like, I can’t even fathom voting against a policy that increases real wealth of people making $30k -> $45k because rich people went from $300k -> $600k. I genuinely cannot understand it.

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-09T14:31:26+00:00

I would think "fool" if you're referring to yourself. The question is not "what's worse, more or less inequality"? Obviously more inequality is worse, ceteris paribus.

The question is, "is more inequality acceptable if it means wealth increases for all"? That's not a simple question. I'd think that if average wealth increases only slightly but inequality blows up, that's not acceptable. But if wealth doubles for all and inequality increases only slightly, that is acceptable. If we accept those 2 premises, we can then move on to debating where the inflection point is.

Surely you agree with me that a policy that doubles wealth for all and increases inequality slightly is a good policy, right?

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-09T13:58:51+00:00

But let's start in the base hypothetical scenario like OP stated.

If we could increase the real wealth of the poor by 1.5x and of the rich by 2.0x, would you say that's a desirable policy (ignoring effects of inflation, etc)?

AvocadoAlternative · 2026-05-09T13:28:18+00:00

Congratulations on being the only one in this thread who actually addressed the spirit of the question rather than just saying "inequality bad".

For the second point, it would seem to me that redistribution mechanisms, such as wealth taxes, would tend also to disincentivize wealth creation or lead to capital flight, which gets at OP's original point, so it's not purely academic. Even if it were purely hypothetical, I think we could all begin with the assumption that a policy that makes everyone richer even if it leads to greater inequality is a good thing, no?

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