So I used to be really into Alan Watts, Terrence Mckenna, and Taoism/zen type of stuff back when I was 15. I was wondering if anyone has tried to combine that sort of stuff with Marxism and Communism? I know Marxism is usually not focused on religion but I have met a good deal of Marxist who are Buddhist.
You can always just take the parts you like and ignore any supernatural elements.
That’s pretty much what I’m doing. I was just wondering if anyone has actually done a good analysis of Taoist philosophy from a Marxist perspective.
I would say it is almost impossible that this has not already been done in China’s marxist academia. There are a ton of strains of thought that have not been embraced by the mainstream in Chinese marxism but exist nontheless as niche fields. But you would need to be able to know how to look for and read Chinese specialist academic literature on the subject.
The guy from rev left is into that kind of stuff he’s done some episodes on it
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I’m a Marxist Buddhist, and unfortunately I don’t know of anyone, although some like Bhikku Bodhi have written about the communistic, communitarian, and revolutionary parts of the Buddha’s teachings.
Tangentially related but a wonderful book that critiques the liberal buddhist / mindfulness movement, is the book McMindfulness. It’s basically an updated version of Marx’s holy family: a critique of idealism in religion.
It doesn’t address Marxism specifically, but the book The Tao of Science is really interesting. It relates Taoist and other Eastern philosophical concepts to the modern scientific principles that Marxism is predicated on.
