Why would you say he’s a bad political theorist? If we measure the success of a political theory by its ability to take, hold and exercise power Marxism is one of the most successful political ideologies in the world. Sure it never “beat” liberal capitalism but it came the closest of any other theory to challenging it.
Or are you doubting it’s accuracy more then its success?
If we measure the success of a political theory by its ability to take, hold and exercise power
The success of a political theory should be measured by its ability to improve quality of life. Taking power may be a prerequisite, but that alone is not success. Seeing the seizure of state power as an end in itself is a mistake that leads to an authoritarian dead end.
By your definition the billionaires and the politicians they back would be unsuccessful political actors as they’re making the quality of life worse for most people. I’d say they are very successful political actors, and that is the problem.
In my opinion politics is “war without bloodshed”. It is a means by which a group can accomplish certain goals that another group opposes.
One side could have a goal of improving the quality of life for the poor while the other could have a goal of improving it for the rich. Politics is what both sides do to try and accomplish there goals.
Political theory is like military theory in the sense that it lays out strategies to defeat the opposition and accomplish those goals. While a military theory is proven correct by winning a battle, a political theory can be proven correct by winning an election.
Politics is a means, not an end. The end/goal is determined by ideology , class position, self interest, racism etc.
You don’t have to adopt the ruling elites’ definition of success. You talk about politics being a means and not an end, but you still insist on calling winning an election success. If the end/goal is determined by ideology then so is the criteria for success, and my personal criteria for success is improving quality of life for as many people as possible. Winning an election can be a means to that end, but just seizing power does not by itself merit the political theory that enabled it. Fascism has proven quite capable of seizing power in liberal democracies with capitalist economies, but I would certainly not call that success.
A political theory being popular doesn’t mean it’s a good or inherently sound theory. For example, fascists have made the “immigrants are ruining our country” theory very common in the mainstream and people have latched on to it to explain their lived experience. Fascism is “challenging” classical liberalism pretty successfully. That doesn’t make it logically sound or a viable strategy.
The problem I have with Marx discussions are people cherry picking across his work. Some of it is philosophical, some is economic analysis and some is aspirational politics. Usually along the lines of “his theoretical economic framework is mostly sound in X case, therefore his political prognosis is correct”.
Marx was living in a certain time with certain quantifiable constraints and a specific lived perspective, writing on contemporary economic conditions. When I point that out I’m always met with “Well he didn’t need to know about [modern human cognitive research / studies on the specific limitations of earth’s resources / the scalability of technical surveillance & media distribution] to project its effects”.
I vehemently assert that our modern perspective fundamentally outmodes some of his base arguments.
As an example, Marx’s theory has important pieces built around his concept of Gattungswesen and it’s role in alienation of labor. The friction of that alienation can be traced to forces used to pacify labor. His work views it as something that, while malleable with biological aspects, is fundamental to the human experience.
That makes sense from a perspective of the mid 19th century, where phrenology was still a cutting edge science and opium was a crude panecea for most behavioral illness. But in the 21st century we’ve mapped the human genome & are delving into gene editing, are gaining an ever deeper biochemical understanding of the human brain, refining models of addiction, and incrementally advancing pharmaceutical treatment of neuroses. Humans are looking more and more like a solvable biological problem.
Marx assumes that one clear reason we cannot reach a stable society under capitalism is the sheer weight of labor discontent. But as of 2026, I’m of the opinion that we’re far closer to total pacification than liberation of the working class. If you can prescribe serenity to the ruling class while the masses clamor for biological contentment, your political prognosis wildly changes.
Theorists in Marx’s lineage will try to account for this (or similar arguments) by refining his theory to fit reality. But they do so with the prior bias of intending the inevitable victory of the proletariat. That’s not a sound foundation for constructing a theoretical framework and it makes these debates pointless and frustrating.
Precisely. He’s genius at certain things, but just because of that, doesn’t mean the other things he does are good or legitimate.
Communist manifesto was highly accessible, so are many popular texts that espouse simplistic and idealistic theories about the world, politics or not. That doesn’t mean they are accurate, useful, or pragmatic today, or even at the time of their conception.
Agreed that the issue with Marxists generally is their limited understanding of Marx and their vast over use and generalization of his theories, but that’s not exclusive to Marxists. Lots of followers of theories are complete morons and turn critique and insight into blind belief and rhetoric around which they then justify violence in the name of.
Marx ‘positive’ theory makes many social and psychological assumptions that are just… obviously untrue esp in regard to modern theorizing. At it’s heart he replies on a modification of the ‘noble savage’ myth, that there is some ‘true’ or ‘natural’ state of individual human living that is being ‘oppressed’ by ‘society’ and his political system will ‘liberate’ us from it… which when you start to think about that you see how ridiculous that is. But that conception was deeply popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, because everyone was still queuing off of Hobbes. Modern (post WW2) political theories don’t really by so much into any ‘state of nature’. Their idealizing is more of a calculus assuming society already must and will forever exist.
I am not too familiar with modern marxists re-workings of his theories to try and fit ‘reality’ but from what I’ve seen they still heavily borrow a lot of his assumptions about human nature being one way and ‘society/capitalism’ ‘corrupting’ it. They treat his work and their theories more like as if it were religious revelation, rather than taking a more pragmatic approach or one based in the more modern economic and social science understandings we have, maybe of which are only a generation or two old.
because his political theory is basically an outline. it’s not substantial. the communist manifesto is an 80 page pamphlet. it’s not a 1000 page detailed discourse.
how many people do you know who read Das Kapital? which is primarily an economic critique. you ever notice how communist manifesto doesn’t touch much on economic details and sort of hand waves about them idealistically?
Why would you say he’s a bad political theorist? If we measure the success of a political theory by its ability to take, hold and exercise power Marxism is one of the most successful political ideologies in the world. Sure it never “beat” liberal capitalism but it came the closest of any other theory to challenging it.
Or are you doubting it’s accuracy more then its success?
The success of a political theory should be measured by its ability to improve quality of life. Taking power may be a prerequisite, but that alone is not success. Seeing the seizure of state power as an end in itself is a mistake that leads to an authoritarian dead end.
By your definition the billionaires and the politicians they back would be unsuccessful political actors as they’re making the quality of life worse for most people. I’d say they are very successful political actors, and that is the problem.
In my opinion politics is “war without bloodshed”. It is a means by which a group can accomplish certain goals that another group opposes.
One side could have a goal of improving the quality of life for the poor while the other could have a goal of improving it for the rich. Politics is what both sides do to try and accomplish there goals.
Political theory is like military theory in the sense that it lays out strategies to defeat the opposition and accomplish those goals. While a military theory is proven correct by winning a battle, a political theory can be proven correct by winning an election.
Politics is a means, not an end. The end/goal is determined by ideology , class position, self interest, racism etc.
You don’t have to adopt the ruling elites’ definition of success. You talk about politics being a means and not an end, but you still insist on calling winning an election success. If the end/goal is determined by ideology then so is the criteria for success, and my personal criteria for success is improving quality of life for as many people as possible. Winning an election can be a means to that end, but just seizing power does not by itself merit the political theory that enabled it. Fascism has proven quite capable of seizing power in liberal democracies with capitalist economies, but I would certainly not call that success.
A political theory being popular doesn’t mean it’s a good or inherently sound theory. For example, fascists have made the “immigrants are ruining our country” theory very common in the mainstream and people have latched on to it to explain their lived experience. Fascism is “challenging” classical liberalism pretty successfully. That doesn’t make it logically sound or a viable strategy.
The problem I have with Marx discussions are people cherry picking across his work. Some of it is philosophical, some is economic analysis and some is aspirational politics. Usually along the lines of “his theoretical economic framework is mostly sound in X case, therefore his political prognosis is correct”.
Marx was living in a certain time with certain quantifiable constraints and a specific lived perspective, writing on contemporary economic conditions. When I point that out I’m always met with “Well he didn’t need to know about [modern human cognitive research / studies on the specific limitations of earth’s resources / the scalability of technical surveillance & media distribution] to project its effects”.
I vehemently assert that our modern perspective fundamentally outmodes some of his base arguments.
As an example, Marx’s theory has important pieces built around his concept of Gattungswesen and it’s role in alienation of labor. The friction of that alienation can be traced to forces used to pacify labor. His work views it as something that, while malleable with biological aspects, is fundamental to the human experience.
That makes sense from a perspective of the mid 19th century, where phrenology was still a cutting edge science and opium was a crude panecea for most behavioral illness. But in the 21st century we’ve mapped the human genome & are delving into gene editing, are gaining an ever deeper biochemical understanding of the human brain, refining models of addiction, and incrementally advancing pharmaceutical treatment of neuroses. Humans are looking more and more like a solvable biological problem.
Marx assumes that one clear reason we cannot reach a stable society under capitalism is the sheer weight of labor discontent. But as of 2026, I’m of the opinion that we’re far closer to total pacification than liberation of the working class. If you can prescribe serenity to the ruling class while the masses clamor for biological contentment, your political prognosis wildly changes.
Theorists in Marx’s lineage will try to account for this (or similar arguments) by refining his theory to fit reality. But they do so with the prior bias of intending the inevitable victory of the proletariat. That’s not a sound foundation for constructing a theoretical framework and it makes these debates pointless and frustrating.
Precisely. He’s genius at certain things, but just because of that, doesn’t mean the other things he does are good or legitimate.
Communist manifesto was highly accessible, so are many popular texts that espouse simplistic and idealistic theories about the world, politics or not. That doesn’t mean they are accurate, useful, or pragmatic today, or even at the time of their conception.
Agreed that the issue with Marxists generally is their limited understanding of Marx and their vast over use and generalization of his theories, but that’s not exclusive to Marxists. Lots of followers of theories are complete morons and turn critique and insight into blind belief and rhetoric around which they then justify violence in the name of.
Marx ‘positive’ theory makes many social and psychological assumptions that are just… obviously untrue esp in regard to modern theorizing. At it’s heart he replies on a modification of the ‘noble savage’ myth, that there is some ‘true’ or ‘natural’ state of individual human living that is being ‘oppressed’ by ‘society’ and his political system will ‘liberate’ us from it… which when you start to think about that you see how ridiculous that is. But that conception was deeply popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, because everyone was still queuing off of Hobbes. Modern (post WW2) political theories don’t really by so much into any ‘state of nature’. Their idealizing is more of a calculus assuming society already must and will forever exist.
I am not too familiar with modern marxists re-workings of his theories to try and fit ‘reality’ but from what I’ve seen they still heavily borrow a lot of his assumptions about human nature being one way and ‘society/capitalism’ ‘corrupting’ it. They treat his work and their theories more like as if it were religious revelation, rather than taking a more pragmatic approach or one based in the more modern economic and social science understandings we have, maybe of which are only a generation or two old.
because his political theory is basically an outline. it’s not substantial. the communist manifesto is an 80 page pamphlet. it’s not a 1000 page detailed discourse.
how many people do you know who read Das Kapital? which is primarily an economic critique. you ever notice how communist manifesto doesn’t touch much on economic details and sort of hand waves about them idealistically?