"The Parody of Flexodox Marxism:
Why Orthodox Marxism is Needed to End Inequality For All"

Stephen Tumino

The paper argues that among all contesting social theories now, only
Orthodox Marxism has been able to produce an integrated knowledge of
the existing social totality and provide lines of praxis that will
lead to building a society free from necessity. Like all other modes
and forms of political theory, however, the very theoretical identity
of Orthodox Marxism is itself contested.  Orthodox Marxism has become
a test-case of the "radical" today.  Yet, what passes for orthodoxy
on the left is a parody of orthodoxy which hybridizes its central
concepts and renders them into flexodox simulations.  What the parody
of Marxism today basically does is make class struggle a rhetorical
"invention" of Marx(ists) analogous to the bourgeois "rights"
politics and erases the need for a global theory of social change.

The paper will outline a short polemical map of contestation over
Orthodox Marxism now in order to argue for its effectivity in
bringing about a new society based not on human rights but on freedom
from necessity.

The paper argues that to know contemporary society--and to be able to
act on such knowledge--one has to first of all know what makes the
existing social totality.  The dominant social totality is based on
inequality--not just inequality of power but inequality of economic
access. This systematic inequality cannot be explained by gender,
race, sexuality, disability, ethnicity, or nationality.  These are
all secondary contradictions and are all determined by the
fundamental contradiction of capitalism which is inscribed in the
relation of capital and labor.  All modes of Marxism now explain
social inequalities primarily on the basis of these secondary
contradictions and in doing so legitimate capitalism.