“What was Karl Marx's greatest error? Was it his desire to abolish the family, abolish personal property, abolish religion, or is it the entire dialectical materialism philosophy?”

I replied approximately as follows --

“This question seems to be infected with the lies about Marx’s views spread by those who hope to block as many as possible from ever learning of Marx’s real views, and also with the ideologies [secular religions] concocted by the sadistic, socio-pathic, power-addicted, absolute-power-corrupted Leninoid, Trotskyoid, Stalinoid, Maoid, etc. fraudsters and mass murderers, who falsely claim the mantle of Marx.

First of all, the term “abolish” is, in the context of translations to English of Marx’s work, typically a mis-translation of the German word “aufheben”, which does NOT mean suppression by police-state coercion, but which means the combined self-transformation, self-elevation, and self-conservation of a given social formation.

Moreover, Marx never proposed to “abolish” the family. He thought that the family would transform itself in response to changes in the social relations of social reproduction, away from capital as the main social relation of social reproduction.

He thought that mystified, contra-empirical ideologies, e.g., religions, would also change and, in part, dissolve, naturally, with the change in the social relations of social reproduction, away from the “mystifying” capital-relation.

Marx NEVER sought to “abolish” personal property. He foresaw a possible future in which the means of society-[re]production would cease to be private property, and would become, instead, social property, utilized and administered democratically. The questioner here appears to be confusing Marx’s views with the views of ANTI-Marxian “MarxISTS” like, e.g., Pol Pot. Remember what Marx himself said about “MarxISTS”:

‘‘‘As for myself, I am not a Marxist.’’’

In my view the main error in Marx’s work/strategy is that he did not live long enough -- or give sufficient priority, while he yet lived -- to developing a detailed hypothesis as to the constitution of the core social relation of social self-reproduction at the heart of the “lawful” successor system to the social system centered upon the capital-relation as dominant social relation of society-[re]production.

This helped to leave room for the ideological perversion of Marx’s work, arising from the underdeveloped semi-periphery of the core capitals-system, in the form of totalitarian, mass-murdering, bureaucratic state-capitalism, disguised as Marxian “socialism” or “communism”, in the ideologies of the various, semi-peripheral, mass-murderous Lenino-Stalinoid, Lenino-Trotskyoid, and Stalino-Maoid nation-state police-state dictatorships.

This query calls to my mind the findings, so far, of a group that is relentlessly carrying forward Marx’s -- unfinished -- work [by which I do NOT mean the state-bureaucratic ruling-class, dictatorial perversions of the Leninist, Trotskyist, Stalinist, Maoist, ..., Castroist, and Unist state-CAPITALIST ideologues, fraudsters, and mass murderers] in the four key domains which Marx and Engels were not able to bring to fruition before their deaths.

Those unfinished domains of Marxian theory and practice include:

(1) that of the detailed nature and justification of the Marxian dialectic method;

(2) that of the dialectic of Nature, and of the Marxian, immanent, critique of the ideology that pervasively compromises the modern sciences, including, not just the economic and other social sciences, but the natural sciences and mathematics as well;

(3) that of the detailed nature of the liberatory, Political-ECONOMIC-DEMOCRATIC society which is the “lawful” higher successor system to the present, [State-]Capitalist system;

(4) that of the detailed causation-dynamics of the ever-worsening catastrophic global economic depression-crises, wars, and genocides that advise us all of the growing need for us to transcend [state-]capitalism, by creating that successor system, of grass roots Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY.

That group is Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [see www.dialectics.info ].”

Regards,

Miguel