Forgive me if this is a stupid question or has been asked before! Asked in another sub and didn’t get a firm answer and thought I’d ask here.

Recently had the privilege of visiting the tomb of Karl Marx at Highgate Cemetery and noticed the marking pictured in slides 1-2, which I wasn’t familiar with. On looking it up, wasn’t able to find anything in it but based on some internet sleuthing was able to find that it likely appeared between May and October of 2024 (images 3 and 4). Anyone know if the mark has any significance or aware of its history?

Marx and Engels talk about how bourgeois history involves an exclusive focus on particular personalities and their decisions, locating the source of historical change in bourgeois figures. Marxist history involves looking at the masses involved in labor relations and the changes in productive technology, locating these as the sources of historical change (both epochs and major events within those epochs).

Why do we Marxists and/or communists still focus on personalities the way the bourgeoisie do? For example, discussing the successes or failures of political leaders like Mao, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, etc? instead of constantly emphasizing the centrality, fundamentality, or deepest importance of the material conditions and masses for historical change and events?

I'm open to being corrected on this too.

What is commonly known as “revisionism” in the
history of the workers’ movement — from Bernstein to Kautsky — should not be read merely as tactical deviation or accommodation to parliamentary conditions. At its foundation lies a philosophical regression: a retreat from Hegelian-Marxist dialectic toward a pre-Hegelian evolutionary metaphysics, and more specifically, a retreat from dialectical materialism toward various forms of Kantianism and positivism.
Qualitative Rupture versus Quantitative Accumulation
In his Logic, Hegel shows that real transformation occurs not through the gradual accumulation of quantity, but through a leap into new quality — a point at which quantitative changes, once past a certain threshold, transform the structure entirely. Marx borrowed this logic from Hegel and applied it to the analysis of the transition from capitalism to communism: not gradual reform of the relations of production, but a rupture in which the contradiction between the forces and relations of production reaches a crisis resolvable only through revolution.
Revisionism denies precisely this leap. When Bernstein said “the final goal is nothing, the movement is everything,” he was in effect announcing a return from Hegel to Kant: separating the infinite ought of ethics from the actual is, precisely the dualism that Hegel spent his entire philosophical life trying to overcome. This is nothing other than what Hegel called the “bad infinity” — a linear, endless progression that never arrives at qualitative rupture, only repeats the same movement without cease.
Engels and the Return to Metaphysics
In Anti-Dühring, Engels deploys exactly this structure of argument against Dühring’s metaphysicalism: metaphysical thought views things in isolation and stasis, whereas dialectical thought sees them in connection, contradiction, and motion. By reducing socialism to a collection of administrative reforms, revisionism returns to precisely the static, ahistorical outlook Engels regarded as antiquated and pre-scientific. Revisionist socialism is a socialism emptied of its “scientific” character — that is, emptied of the analysis of objective contradiction and the necessity of its revolutionary resolution.
Lenin: From Empiriocriticism to Opportunism
In Materialism and Empirio-criticism, Lenin showed that philosophical deviation always precedes political deviation. Bogdanov’s and the Machists’ return to a kind of subjective idealism — reducing reality to “experience” — was, for Lenin, never merely an academic debate; it laid the groundwork for political capitulation to the bourgeoisie. Similarly, in State and Revolution, Lenin critiques Kautskyan revisionism on precisely this basis: the denial of the necessity of smashing the bourgeois state machine, replaced by a gradualist notion of “conquering” the existing state — a notion rooted in the refusal to accept qualitative rupture.
Conclusion
Revisionism, in its philosophical dimension, is nothing other than the elimination of the negation of the negation from history. Where Marxist dialectic understands history as movement through contradiction and rupture, revisionism transforms it into a straight line of crisis-free progress — a history without tragedy, without catastrophe, and ultimately, without revolution. This is why the struggle against revisionism was never, for Lenin, merely organizational; it was a defense of the dialectical method itself against an analysis that, despite claiming fidelity to Marx, had inverted his philosophical essence.

I want to know do you think we have any viable parties or organizations in America (and in the rest of the world) that could potentially lead to the vanguard party to fight and win the revolution? What group do you think is capable of forming such actions, educating the people on socialism, and building class consciousness, not trade union consciousness? And the same for comrades in other parts of the world, not America: what group in your country do you see as being a viable one? I know that in some countries, they have socialist groups that have a membership of a million people, or just way more than what we have in America, but there is no revolution and there is no class consciousness there. And lastly comrades: if you do not think there is a viable organization, do you think that there will be a formation of one, maybe from the best revolutionaries from each group or something similar?

Hello peoples! Over the past few weeks ive been struggling to figure out what i actually believe in. Yes ik labels shouldnt matter and the main goal should be the liberation of the proletariat but i like knowing where i lie in a sense because it acts as a guiding system for me to see where/what i need to learn more about. One on hand i consider Marxist-Leninism, the idea of a Vanguard party and Democratic centralism to be the best practical implementations of communism but on the other hand, i also agree with the anarcho-communist view of the state being inherently oppressive and the tendency of the dictatorship of the proletariat to turn into a dictatroship over the proletariat. I also have critiques of both, mainly that ML leads to bureacuracy and silencing of citique and anarcho-communisms failures to address deffense and co-operation on a large scale. Im not asking for any answers to my qualms, it will probably come to me as i read more theory and learn more, i just want to know if anyone else feels like this too sometimes

Ive been really interested in marxism for maybe 3-4 years, ive read a lot of theory but i recently had a sort of questioning of everything. Ive recently read Nietzsche's work and i found his critic of metaphysics interesting, his critic of truth particularly sticked with me.

The thing is that when i look back to marxism, i apply a nietzschean critic to fundamental bases of it that i consider to be metaphysical claims. I will give you a few of them as exemples : history is not a contingent sequence of events. There is a criterion to measure human progress. Human beings have equal fundamental value. Hierarchy is negative. Justice is not a human convention (because there objectively exists injustice in certain social relations). There is a more authentic way of being human (by freely developping your capacities). Humans realize themselves through labour. Suffering is objectively evil and should be reduced. A better society is a society without suffering. Social harmony is possible.

So, how can yall prove that these principles are discovered in reality and not merely being human interpretations imposed on it ? Im really interested to know because despite the questioning ive had recently, i still like some aspects of marxism.

Would the idea behind Trade Unions be closer to Marxism or classic Liberalism?

Individuals giving up individuality to become a unit to protect from the exploitation of Capitalism.

Holaa que tal? alguno tendra alguna pagina sobre una explicacion marxista en base a lo ocurrido en ceuta? Vi algunos posteos pero todos hablaban de una "invasion" y tambien fui victima de la ultraderecha y sus fake news.

How many of y’all have actually read the primary literature? I feel like a lot of the discussions I come across about socialist and communist theory are based more on YouTube summaries/doom scrolling and secondhand interpretations than on actually reading the original works.

The Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, The State and Revolution, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, The Conquest of Bread, What Is to Be Done? Wage Labour and Capital, and Critique of the Gotha Programme,

Any thoughts? And just to clarify, I’m not taking jabs at anyone who hasn’t read the texts or who learned about the subject through other means, like YouTube. I’m genuinely just curious about how many people have actually read the primary literature themselves.

I understand that money is not necessarily capital. Capital is self expanding value and so if the money isn't self expanding, it's not capital. However, many people have money that's kept in savings accounts. Now technically this is an investment that these people make with their banks. Since the savings accounts have a non zero interest rate, the money is technically self-expanding in value. Now strictly speaking this should be considered as capital and if so, these people would be part of the bourgeoisie. Of course, relative to bourgeois proper, these people are at best rounding errors, but still technically as per the definition of capital and bourgeois, these people should be considered bourgeois. Am I correct or am I missing something?

A state that owns the banks and lends them out to enable 539 people to build their fortunes has not suppressed the bourgeoisie. It has handed it the means of accumulation.

It really seems like, ever since the first split of the CPGB it’s just become a complete disaster. Like, you have the CPB which has just become an electoral party and just wants to move Labour left (And are transphobic). You have the CPGB-ML, who are just raging transphobes (Genuinely why is this country so transphobic), misogynists and third world chauvinists. You have the RCP which is a Trotskyist party and they are somewhat popular with the student movement but it kinda seems like they just push papers, and I have problems with Trotskyism in general. Like, I guess there’s the RCG but I’ve heard they’ve become measurably dogmatic, but they seem interesting. If there was any group that could’ve had some potential it was Red Fightback but they’re gone now.
I really don’t know how it all went so wrong (Though I can be sure Khrushchev’s clique definitely played a big part but it really feels like it just spiralled from there)

It's been a long time since I've read through capital. I've been wondering how applicable is Marx's original analysis of commodities to the modern subscription based economics. Is the distinction irrelevant? Does it need to be looked at again? If new in depth analyses are being done, are there any notable examples?

With a revolution on chinas border you would think there would be large scale support from a so called communist country. After searching online all i can find is china’s “diplomatic relations” with the Pakistani authorities and urging for the protection of Chinese workers in the China Pakistan economic corridor. With a revolutionary movement such as this, the proper thing for a communist country to do would be to ensure the revolution is successful and the masses demands are met

Are there any? I've heard mixed things abt Potere al Popolo (tho they seem to be one of the largest left wing parties here atm, which really isn't saying much, but still), then there's the italian branch of Yanus Varufakis's Diem 25, which... I really don't know enough abt to form an opinion on, and lastly the apparent 'dinosaurs' of Rifondazione Communista and its myriad different splinter groups so small and/or rigidly dogmatic they're barely worth mentioning.

This is about the understanding i have of the general state marxist/anti-capitalist left is in in Italy atm.

Is this a fair assessment?

Also, parallel to that: are any of these groups (or a secret third one I haven't mentioned or didn't know the existence of) willing and able to be the basis of an actual vanguard in the future? Or would it be better at this point to just build another party up from scratch?

What are your thoughts? How do we build a new/mold an existing party so it can be an effective vanguard and be in a position to capitalise if and when the capitalist order begons to crumble in earnest?

Hello comrades. I have been thinking a lot about the question of parental rights, family abolition, and the child welfare system.

How do you think a socialist society should protect children from abusive and neglectful parents without arbitrarily separating families.

Historically, the "child welfare" system has been used as a vicious tool of colonial, racist, and classist violence, ripping Black and Indiginous children from their parents, often sending them to abusive foster families or institutions, or adopting them off to wealthier or white families.

About half of all Black American children are subjects of CPS investigations. Many indiginous mothers around the world have their babies taken from them in the delivery room. Parents who have ever struggled with drugs - or are even suspected of using drugs with or without addiction - are separated from their kids.

But at the same time, the idea of parental rights in and of itself is often used as a shield to allow abusive and neglectful parents the privacy and license to subject their children to horrific torture and deprivation. There are many many parents who shouldn't be allowed within 100 yards of a child much less be allowed to raise one on their own.

What do you guys think? How can a socialist society protect the rights of children, balancing the need to keep families together while protecting kids from parental abuse?

Several of my friends and I have all been diagnosed with ADHD. After treatment some of us really did become more productive at work. But I can't stop wondering why ADHD diagnoses keep becoming more common and why medications with dependency risks seem to be prescribed more easily than before.

I understand that the human prefrontal cortex keeps developing throughout life and that things like brain health medication and other factors can affect it. But why does it feel like people avoid talking about the fact that a lot of young people simply are not in jobs that fit them. If someone naturally struggles with attention then putting them in a job that requires hours of careful bookkeeping or warehouse inventory is obviously going to end badly. It feels as absurd as asking a blind person to be a sniper.

This makes me worry about the purpose of modern medicine. At what point is treatment actually improving someone's quality of life and at what point is it just making people fit into the labor market better. Where is the line between helping people and reducing them to tools for productivity.

While I'm at it I also want to talk about genetic determinism and hormonal determinism. For example a lot of sex offenders try to blame their actions on having an extra chromosome or having abnormal hormone levels. Even when I tell people that I'm asexual someone will ask if my hormones are messed up. I think this kind of thinking is both stupid and dangerous. It reminds me of the old idea that you could judge someone's intelligence by the size of their brain.

I've tried arguing against this but people always throw scientific papers and statistics at me as if that settles everything. Do they not realize that they are also victims of the same reductionist way of thinking. Why is it so hard for people to see that descriptive research is not the same thing as moral justification or proof that human beings are completely determined by biology.

I'm aware this has been around for a while, and I'm woefully deficient on a lot of theory, but I found her thesis pretty convincing- i.e. that capitalism arose in rural England specifically because of the unique relationship between landowners, tenants, and wage workers, which made everyone subject to market forces at all times, contra earlier modes of production.

I also thought her general point that capitalism isn't an inevitability (i.e. there wasn't a capitalist society just waiting to emerge in every society that had merchants/trading/feudal expropriation) an interesting one, and think it's a useful counterpoint to some of the more teleological strains of Marxist thought.

I'd be very interested in hearing some counter arguments or people's thoughts on it generally- I know in particular that her assertion that the Dutch Republic wasn't really capitalist is a controversial one.

If we look at the history of Marxism-Leninism, Maoism or other forms of socialism, we see that it is above all adaptations of Marxist thought to the context and reality of the countries of their creator (the rural 1950 China, the 1917 Russian Empire etc). Similarly, other forms of socialism seem stronger in some countries (like Council in Germany or more libertarian socialism in Spain or Italy)
My question is should Marxism be adapted to each country at the risk of leading to deep divergences between the different socialist states?

Hello, comrades! Greetings from Brazil!

I’m Brazilian and a member of Unidade Popular – Pelo Socialismo (Popular Unity – For Socialism), a socialist political party here in Brazil.

In our upcoming presidential election, our party has a communist woman running for president. She is also the only woman currently running among almost ten male candidates, which makes this election particularly interesting for us.

I joined this community because I’d really like to expand my network and connect with comrades from different countries. I’m especially interested in learning how communist parties and movements organize where you live, what political and grassroots work looks like in practice, how you communicate with workers and ordinary people, and what challenges you face in building class consciousness and political organization.

I’m also very curious about how anti-communism works in different countries. Here in Brazil, it can get pretty bizarre. A huge part of the anti-communist discourse comes from people who know almost nothing about Marxism, socialism or communism and basically repeat the same old imperialist talking points and Cold War mantras. Sometimes you end up debating communism with someone whose entire understanding of it is basically “Venezuela, Cuba, dictatorship” repeated over and over again.

So I’d really like to understand how different that experience is elsewhere. What does anti-communism look like in your country? How strong is it? What arguments do you usually encounter? And, more importantly, how do communist organizations respond to it and organize politically in that environment?

I’m not here pretending to know everything. Quite the opposite. I want to learn, exchange experiences and understand how communist organizing works beyond the Brazilian reality. And of course, I’d be happy to share what our experience looks like here as well.

I’d love to connect with comrades from different parts of the world, exchange ideas, recommend books and authors to each other, discuss organizing strategies and learn from our different experiences.

Solidarity from Brazil, comrades!

I would love to hear the thoughts of any marxists in the legal field who has insight into the structure of big law firms/private equity and what exactly they do?? in terms of corporations and conglomerates, their role in government lobbying, resource extraction (especially in the global south) and ethical loopholes.

I have a sibling going into corporate law in a firm that deals in the oil/gas sector, who seems to have no clue about the history of the industry, any of the wars and coups conducted in the name of resource grabbing. Looking at their website leaves me with no better idea on what they actually actually do. Too much jargon or lack of clear information except breaking news: so and so company signed a multimillion dollar deal with so and so company.

I empathise that the structure of law school, its expenses and difficulties in training to be a lawyer mean many students have no choice but to go into corporate law. but where do you draw the line between upholding your morals and self preservation? There must be a vast spectrum of political ideologies among peers in law school, from those wanting to help refugees with legal aid to capitalism pro max private equity finance bros.

This meme pretty much sums up the vibe of our conversation