A Marxist publication of revolutionary strategy, history, and critique - dedicated to the advancement of scientific socialism. From the fields to the stars! đđ«
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The anarchist Mikhail Bakuninâboth a political rival of Marx in the First International and translator of the first Russian edition of Capital, Vol. Iâonce mocked the intellectualism of his Marxist opponents by quipping âwe have too many ideas and not enough actionâ.
Today the situation seems to be the opposite. Direct action after direct action, dedicated leftists put their bodies on the line without anything resembling a convincing vision of a better world. This is no one individualâs failure, but an inevitable result of the collapse of working-class power and socialist politics in the late 20th century. Communismâthe vision of humanity emancipated from class societyâis generally disregarded as a fantasy, or even as undesirable in principle. At best it is the silent God of a negative theology, a desperate mantra of abstract negation with no plausible hope to be found in the existing tendencies of capitalist society. Consigned by post-structuralism and marginalist economics to an obsolete micro-niche in humanities departments, academic marxismâeven on the rare occasion it can genuinely help us understand the worldâis as detached from the goal of classless society on paper as it is in reality. A leftist politics this disoriented is about as likely to achieve basic democratic reforms as it is to implement a world socialist republic.
To orient ourselves in a direction towards universal human emancipation, we must rebuild the approach of scientific socialism. While the term âscientific socialismâ has historically become synonymous with Soviet state ideologyâand if the name Lysenko rings any bells, the most rankly opportunistic pseudoscienceâwe believe that it is a concept worth upholding. Peddling ideological snake oil to a desperate public does nothing to change the world and advance humanity. Abstract ideals about the way things ought to be do not suffice when the agents of capitalâthe capitalists, their state, their ideologuesâuse all scientific means at their disposal. Marx and Engels created scientific socialism to argue for a socialism based in reasonâa socialism with a rigorous analysis of both existing material conditions and history, with an eye towards how to use the best of humanityâs capacities to transform the world. They developed their ideas through critique and deliberation with the socialists of their time who had internalized capitalist ideology or failed to make their visions politically possible. In this process, Marx and Engels developed not only a Marxist political strategy, but also a materialist conception of history thatâif used properlyâis a weapon for the proletariat in its struggle for communism.
Therefore it is necessary for Marxists of all backgrounds and skills to develop intellectual institutions independent of academia, wherein communists can develop their vision, strategy, and overall critique of capitalist society. Cosmonaut aims to be one of (what should be) many different platforms of debate, where scientific socialists can develop an analysis of history, critique the prevailing ideological âcommon senseâ of our time, and conceive a programmatic communist politics relevant to our circumstance.
