James Lindsay Doesn’t Understand Marxism (#79)

The Sensible Socialist

In this episode Kevin talks to Breht O’Shea of Rev Left Radio to talk about anti-communist pseudo-intellectual James Lindsay’s misunderstandings, bad faith takes, and overall hilariously juvenile perspective on Marxism. Lindsay rose to prominence in the Grievance Studies affair, but has since moved on to criticism Critical Race Theory and Marxism, just the latest in a long line of anti-communist “intellectuals” who either haven’t actually read Marx or only read Marx for the purposes of discrediting and misrepresenting his views and the philosophical and political tradition that followed his work.

Lindsay appears to be wholly ideologically motivated, and since gaining notoriety from the grievous study affair, has used his new platform to criticize identity-based ideology as simply a new form of Marxism. Lindsay is an anti-communist who pretends, having “read” Marx, Gramsci, Marcuse, Luckas, and others, to be able to tie it all back to the failed ideas of Marx himself. The truth is, Lindsay either doesn’t understand Marx and the tradition of Marxian thought, or more likely, he has never read Marx without any purpose other than to discredit him. James Lindsay provides merely the most recent example of a common trope in the liberal west – the bad faith takes on Marxism.

No more is this evident than on a recent post on Lindsay’s “New Discourses” podcast in which he, admittedly without any preparation, attempts to show how modern identity politics is just – as he calls it – identity Marxism. Breht and Kevin go through the first part of this and take it apart piece by piece.

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