Question about Marxist Analysis of Class Consciousness

[Neto]

1848, not 1948.

Yes, typo up there on my part. Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848, the same year that much of Europe erupted into revolutions. Marx died in 1883, long before the Russian revolution which happened in 1917.

1917 to 1920 was when they succeeded. Political unrest started building toward that point decades before that.

[Ken]

1848, not 1948.

Yes, typo up there on my part. Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848, the same year that much of Europe erupted into revolutions. Marx died in 1883, long before the Russian revolution which happened in 1917.

1917 to 1920 was when they succeeded. Political unrest started building toward that point decades before that.

My larger point is that Marx got a whole lot wrong. For example, he thought that the progress towards communism would follow a logical dialectic in which society would pass through industrial capitalism first and then workers would achieve "class consciousness" and mobilize in industrial capitalist societies like Britain, France, Germany, and the US. He didn't expect it to come first in Russia which was too rural, religious, and feudal. That was the whole "religion is the opiate of the people" thing. He was talking about places like rural Russia.

[barnhart]

My larger point is that Marx got a whole lot wrong. For example, he thought that the progress towards communism would follow a logical dialectic in which society would pass through industrial capitalism first and then workers would achieve "class consciousness" and mobilize in industrial capitalist societies like Britain, France, Germany, and the US. He didn't expect it to come first in Russia which was too rural, religious, and feudal. That was the whole "religion is the opiate of the people" thing. He was talking about places like rural Russia.

Movements like Stalinism, Maoism and Khmer Rouge could be labeled Marxist inspired rather than Marxist.

[joshuabgood]

Marxism is a lot like capitalism. In theory it works for everyone. In reality it never quite works. The purists always say it was never quite done right...if it was...it would work.

[Ken]

Marxism is a lot like capitalism. In theory it works for everyone. In reality it never quite works. The purists always say it was never quite done right...if it was...it would work.

Ironically you hear a lot of the same exact sentiment about Christianity. And why, for example, we have so many different splinter groups within Anabaptism and Christianity in general.

Everyone ELSE is just doing it a little bit wrong.

[Josh]

Comparing following Jesus to Marx’s satanic ideology is disgusting.

[Ken]

Comparing following Jesus to Marx’s satanic ideology is disgusting.

Yet you yourself belong to a church whose central premise (The One True Church Doctrine) is that everyone else is doing it wrong.

[Josh]

Comparing following Jesus to Marx’s satanic ideology is disgusting.

Yet you yourself belong to a church whose central premise (The One True Church Doctrine) is that everyone else is doing it wrong.

That is not the central premise of our church at all. However, following Jesus is indeed a narrow way, and there is a broad path that leads to destruction. We spend most of our time focused on what we need to do right, not what people outside of church are doing wrong.

[Ken]

Comparing following Jesus to Marx’s satanic ideology is disgusting.

Yet you yourself belong to a church whose central premise (The One True Church Doctrine) is that everyone else is doing it wrong.

That is not the central premise of our church at all. However, following Jesus is indeed a narrow way, and there is a broad path that leads to destruction. We spend most of our time focused on what we need to do right, not what people outside of church are doing wrong.

There are an estimated 2.2 billion Christians in the world. Your church has what? 25,000 members tops? So you represent roughly 0.001% of Christianity.

What percentage of those other 99.999% of Christians in the world does your church believe are also doing it right?

Hint...

“Outside the true organized Church of God [CGCM] the whole truth has never been found and neither will ever be found outside of it. God will not recognize any other church than His own organized Church; and therefore He will not reveal the whole truth to any other church or to any man who is not willing to be one with God through espousal with Him…”

-John Holdeman, Mirror of Truth, page 84.

[Neto]

Marxism is a lot like capitalism. In theory it works for everyone. In reality it never quite works. The purists always say it was never quite done right...if it was...it would work.

I tend to agree. That is, if Communism was done "right", it would work. (I think I was already saying this in HS, or at least by the time I was in the "Hippie Jesus People Movement".) But doing it right requires that EVERYONE is practicing the basic principles of the Jewish Law, which Jesus summed up in two. (Maybe God never intended for people to think that there were 10 Commandments. Jesus clarified that.)

I think that the reason Communism opposed Christianity so violently was that it was basically trying to get the Kingdom of God without God, without Jesus. (Without God, without Jesus, organized Christianity and Communism end up the same place - the power and riches all in the hands of a few.)