What socialist tendency do you think Marx and Engels would most identify with if they were alive today?

None of the above exactly, but they would organise mainly with serious anarchists - in hindsight.

I would hope they would see the practical faults of the strategy of the progressive centralisation of capital into the hands of the state, and takeover of the capitalist state (whether by election or force).

The basic game is still the same really - work out how to build social influence, and how that social influence can be used to further a break with capital (both practically and ideologically). Its just now we have 150+ years of failure to draw from.

left-communism of course

Left-communism when the russian revolution went down maybe. Today I'm not so sure they'd still adhere to leftcom orthodoxy (as I personally feel it kind of got stuck in the 30s). I could picture them among the broader ultra-left for sure but I dunno if putting them into a camp would help, anachronistic as it is. If they were still alive we wouldn't have MLism in the first place etc.

anarcho-jonthomism

probably Marx and Engels would split over this question

The SPGB

They would have joined one of the many trot organizations/fronts because they were cynical bastards.

Marx would cringe at "Marxism" and go to the bar with Engels and Stirner to rethink his life. Maybe they'd all come up with a new matrix of ideas given the strange nature of capitalism these days (as we should be doing).

None of the above.

Marx would probably be in academia, another Chomsky-like observer, writing obscure professional papers that be Jstor protected which workers wouldn't be able to access while Engels would be another George Soros businessman type, mixing with the fox hunting elite while slumming it on the side.

who gives a shit?

So much this

Marx would be the editor of Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed.

Hmm, I doubt it very much

If you go by his actual and stated politics? Prolly a radical socialdemocrat.

He would clearly become the third Dupont.

Posadaists. Flying saucers are proof of aliens with advanced technology - ergo communist. Provoke nuclear war to force comrade aliens to invade and save us, etc. (wibble... froth...)

Engels had some kind of shitty politics. He probably would fall in with the Kautskyites/Leninists.

Marx has always struck me as the more "left" of the two.

Marx and Engels would probably be their own unique brand of thought. However, I would bet that it would end up being close to Libertarian Marxism (Luxembourgism, Council Communism, etc.) or an evolutionary socialism (Kautsky, Bernstein, etc.). These approaches were the mainstream Marxism before Lenin hijacked it.

Clearly both Marx and Engels would be Bureaucratic Collectivists.

I think Marx would be a self-styled socialist.

A hand maiden to Daniel De Leon? An elevator operator for Joey Stalin? Some old dude in a library waering shabby clothes?

Im thinking this thread should be moved to libcommunity very soon.

Being the only two humans still alive after nearly 200 years but having gone completely insane decades ago, they would be the immortal god-emperors of their own religion/world-wide dictatorship, perhaps like Jonestown cult socialism or scientology.

Fuckin' hell man. I haven't heard of this Jonestown stuff yet, and when I looked it up... I'm fucking shocked and horrified.

The part that I never understand, that communism by definition, should be about destroying all cults and leadership, using our critical judgement instead of the instinct of the herd. And yet, we saw over the 20th century the rise of "socialism" that was little else than a worship of new Divine Leaders and turning the whole idea of communism into a lining up to the instruction of the Leader and their church, the Party. These poor fuckers in the Jonestown cult, along with madness of the USSR, China, North Korea, Cambodia, etc. are the most vivid example of how destructive the herd mentality is, and against the entire point of coming together. I can see the whole idea of murmuring a single book for your entire life, splitting the world in to vast number enemies and a very few friends, the creeping paranoia when stuck in the messianic "liberation" and holy spirit righteousness.

I know this was all back in 1978, but to be honest, seeing how things turned out in the last 200 years or so, and the fact that we made very little progress to become, as a society rational, critical, and clear-headed, I'm really not convinced that I would see any movement away from the current social conditions to something remotely, truly communistic. There's a lot of lagging with ideas and society in general. Even the Enlightenment's train of ideas has not touched most part of the human race really, perhaps they never will. If Marx "reincarnate" somehow today, I would say that he would just probably give it up, and would go for heavy boozing, given how optimist he was most of the time about an imminent revolution. Probably the entire 20th century history would depress him deeply.

Hmm. Not really, I think. Looking at it historically, Marx & Engels would have been horrified at what became of the Second International. It should be recalled that Marx tore strips off the first program of the Social Democratic Party in Germany and Engels was doing battle against Right wing tendencies in the International. World War I would, I think, have caused them to go with Lenin and Luxemburg into abandoning the Parliamentary road. They would therefore have supported the Russian Revolution.

Given the authoritarian and Machiavellian way in which Marx & Engels are on record as having acted, I don't think they would have blanched at the Red Terror and the way in which the Bolshevik Party fought the Civil War. Therefore, they would have stayed the course in Lenin's lifetime. Stalin's nationalism, however, would have put them off very badly - and they would have seen through his dishonesty in enshrining the Menshevik theory of social revolution outside Russia, despite it being disproven in Russia.

So, they would have broken to the Left from Stalin, but I don't think we have enough information to judge whether they would have gone with Trotsky, with the more authoritarian of the Left Communists, or along some unique course of their own. I think we can safely dismiss the idea that they would have gone with the SPGB. That group has always been more a monument than a movement and, for good or ill, Marx & Engels were interested in building a movement.

Particularly in that it was Russian (Slavic) nationalism. Perhaps German nationalism would have been more acceptable to them.

Devrim

" I think we can safely dismiss the idea that they would have gone with the SPGB. That group has always been more a monument than a movement and, for good or ill, Marx & Engels were interested in building a movement."

We would have failed him on the membership knowledge test for supporting labour-time vouchers instead of free access!!!

But why should you repeat that old cliche?

Council Communists Anton Pannekoek and Paul Mattick had a close working relationship with the SPGB's companion party the WSPUS, who published their articles. The other companion parties in Canada and in Australia had their fair share of involvement in the union movement. The SPGB has had to address specific historical events and has changed its emphasis and approach on a number of issues, even if its core principles rightly remain unchanged.

Did not Marx and Engels not demonstrate their own lack of movement by declining to re-work the Communist Manifesto on the grounds it had now become a historical document and should not be updated. They were also well capable of demolishing a movement when they saw it no longer fit for purpose such as switching the 1st International to New York to ensure its demise. There was no replacement ready.

Personally, i think Marx would be doing what he did for much of his life...studying and writing theory and engaging in journalism. I doubt he would join any group but would be endeavouring to influence all with articles and correspondence and debates. I think he most likely would have been at the recent Peoples Assembly as an independent, pushing an unpopular analysis of the recession and exposing all the Keynesians present at it for being charlatans .

I always wonder though if he'd ever get a regular job...a lecturer or professorship at some uni.

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