Marxism’s own dialectic guarantees that dogma and opposition emerge within it

Evidence

Since its inception, Marxism has meant to some a critical scientific system, a way of understanding, comprehending, and affecting history. The way in which Trotsky expressed his own excitement about Marxism underscores this point: “The important thing … is to see clearly. One can say of communism, above all, that it gives more clarity. We must liberate man from all that prevents his seeing.” The history of Marxist thought and Marxist organizations, however, has been more ambiguous. Concomitant with this presumed clarity, this way of seeing, was the emergence of its corrosives, its oppositions. The nature of change argued in Marxism, the dialectic, would lead one to anticipate just such oppositions to occur in Marxism. Specifically with the appearances of political dogma, historical certainty, and epistemological variations on empiricism, the history of Marxist thinkers has confirmed this expectation. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 978

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Cutting-edge Marxism in this period grew by self-critique of its own orthodoxy — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 603