Marx, Zhuangzi, and Psychology: Marxism from the Bottom Up

Marx, Zhuangzi, and Psychology: Marxism from the Bottom Up
I. The Top-Down Approach Is Outdated
Many enthusiasts of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism are immersed in, and accustomed to, top-down Marxism. As in 1917/1927/1949, the vanguard seizes the machinery of power at a critical historical moment, and great figures, heroes, and elites carry out sweeping reforms from the top down.
But those were particular manifestations in particular countries during particular historical periods.
A considerable number of Marxism-Leninism enthusiasts subscribe to heroism, or even have a Napoleon complex. Then there is elitism: the belief that people need to be enlightened and awakened. See my earlier article, “The Vanguard Is Not an Indoctrination Squad: Debate and Propaganda Do Not Matter That Much.”
II. We Will Remain for a Long Time in the Post-Imperialist Era Described by Mandel, Wallerstein, and Others
Its core features are:
a. Tiered exploitation and competition across the core, semi-periphery, and periphery: the United States, Europe, Japan, and South Korea; China; late-industrializing countries; and underdeveloped countries.
b. Central-bank Bonapartism: the economy and capital are concentrated in banks, which are backstopped by central banks. Central banks collect revenue through seigniorage and the inflation tax, and support Keynesianism and bureaucratism through low-interest money and control over government bond markets. Systemic phenomena include economic cycles driven by central-bank policy.
c. Kondratiev cycles accelerated by central banks.
d. Bureaucratism, which also exists under capitalism, where it is referred to as the principal-agent problem, insider control, governance problems, managerial opportunism, and so on—what Max Weber called administrative bureaucracy.
Marx and Lenin have never become outdated. Many of Lenin’s assessments in *Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism* are vividly unfolding before our eyes. See my earlier articles, “Central-Bank Bonapartism” and “The Outflow of Low-Interest Money and Central-Bank Bonapartism.”
Personally, I think that reaching the eve of communism, with polarization into the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and highly developed productive forces and capitalism, will take at least another two or three Kondratiev cycles, if not more—that is, more than 150 years. In other words, our generation will not live to see it.
But we can see some signs of this evolution: “Our Generation May Have Witnessed the High Point of the Petty Bourgeoisie.”
III. A Protracted War
By analogy with Mao’s *On Protracted War*.
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, there have been two views on communism. One is the theory of inevitable defeat: that Marxism and communism are utopian, with the failure of Soviet-style countries taken as ironclad proof. The other is the theory of quick victory: a very small minority believes that capitalism’s contradictions are difficult to overcome and that waves of workers’ revolutions and Bolshevik revolutions will keep coming.
Personally, however, I think that what these generations of ours face is a protracted war.
IV. As Ordinary People, We Will Long Have to Survive in the Cracks as Atomized Individuals in a Cyberpunk World
“Marx and Zhuangzi Offer a Philosophy for Ordinary People and Those Who Lie Flat”
What ordinary people need is a practical philosophy that guides individuals in surviving amid the cracks and alienation: a worldview, an outlook on life, a set of values, a philosophy of happiness and joy, and knowledge of mental hygiene. That is, drawing on Marx, Zhuangzi, and psychology to seek out and absorb the simple truth, goodness, and beauty found in an alienating, impoverished external environment, and to build connections with other people, the world, society, and history—nourishing the mind and allowing its innate wholeness to develop fully.