ChatGTP – The 6-point list

What follows is all ChatGTP

“The 6-point list doesn’t come directly from a single source—it’s a synthesis of ideas grounded in Marxist theory, historical revolutionary movements, and organizing principles from figures like Rosa Luxemburg, Antonio Gramsci, and Paulo Freire, combined with insights from contemporary social movements.

Here’s how these points connect to broader traditions:

1. Expose Their Weaknesses: Rooted in Marx’s analysis of the capitalist system’s reliance on labor (the labor theory of value). The concept that the ruling class depends on the consent and participation of the working masses has been central to Marxist and anarchist organizing.

2. Create Shared Experience: Draws from Gramsci’s idea of the “war of position,” where the struggle for hegemony involves creating counter-institutions and shared spaces of solidarity, as well as the lived experience of organizing.

3. Tell Stories of Struggle and Victory: Acknowledges the role of ideology and narrative in movements, heavily influenced by Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Luxemburg’s focus on revolutionary spontaneity and hope.

4. Unmask Division Tactics: Deeply tied to Marxist analysis of false consciousness and how ideological systems obscure class interests. Frantz Fanon and critical race theorists expand on this by addressing divisions along racial and cultural lines.

5. Bring the Oppression Close: Inspired by strategies of community organizing (e.g., Saul Alinsky) and revolutionary praxis. Making systemic oppression concrete and personal has been key to many successful movements, from union struggles to decolonization efforts.

6. Celebrate Prefiguration: Comes from anarchist traditions of “prefigurative politics,” where movements model the society they wish to create (e.g., the Paris Commune, Occupy Wall Street assemblies).

So while it’s not from a single text, it builds on a lineage of revolutionary thinking and organizing practices. What strikes you most from this list?

Monograph 11 – Marxism without Marx 

Onto the next and final paragraph in the same section, Sociometry, Sociology and Scientific Socialism.  (p.21)

Sociometry did not develop in a vacuum; many generations of social philosophers have anticipated and formulated a number of the hypotheses which I have brought to a clearer formulation and empirical test. However, I do not have any illusions as to my importance, I am fully aware that sociometry might have come into existence without me, just like sociology would have come into existence in France without Comte, and Marxism in Germany and Russia without Marx. (Moreno, 1979, p. 21)

Continue reading “Monograph 11 – Marxism without Marx “

Marx in “Who Shall Survive?” 07 – Social Science

The section, Sociometry, Sociology and Scientific Socialism opens (page 12):

In the last hundred and fifty years three main currents of social thought developed, sociology, scientific socialism and sociometry, each related to a different geographic and cultural area: sociology to France, socialism to Germany-Russia, and sociometry to the USA.

Moreno is honouring Marxism by referring to “scientific socialism”. Moreno sees himself in this tradition of developing a third science, one that relates to humans. Continue reading “Marx in “Who Shall Survive?” 07 – Social Science”

Marx in “Who Shall Survive?” 04 – Unity of Humankind

The next mention of Marx is in the section called Social and  Organic Unity of Mankind. I’m taking the thesis implied in this title as the first point for discussion. Then I address the section where Moreno references Marx about Christianity. The section opens with the famous lines:

A truly therapeutic procedure cannot have less an objective
than the whole of mankind. But no adequate therapy can be
prescribed as long as mankind is not a unity in some fashion and as long as its organization remains unknown.

Continue reading “Marx in “Who Shall Survive?” 04 – Unity of Humankind”

Marx in Who Shall Survive? 02 – Human agency

… spontaneity-creativity [is the] propelling force in human progress, beyond and independent from … socio-economic motives…

(Moreno, 1978; xiv, xv)

This is from the same paragraph in Who Shall Survive? I used as the basis for my last post. The passage asks question: What is the propelling force in human progress?

Marx and Moreno differ. Moreno is adamant it is  spontaneity-creativity.  He implies that for Marx it is socio-economic motives. Continue reading “Marx in Who Shall Survive? 02 – Human agency”

The First Mention of Marxism in “Who Shall Survive?”

The first time Moreno mentions Marx in Who Shall Survive?, is in the Preludes of the Sociometric Movement (1978; xiv, xv)

The advent of sociometry cannot be understood without appraising my presociometric background and the historic-ideological setting in the Western world, during and after the First World War. Marxism and psychoanalysis, the two opposites, each had spent their theoretic bolt, the one with Nikolai Lenin’s “State and Revolution” (1917), the other with Sigmund Freud’s “Civilization and Its Discontents” (1929). The two opposites had one thing in common: they both rejected religion, they both disavowed he idea of a community which is based on spontaneous love, un-selfishness and sainthood, on positive goodness and naive cooperativeness. I took a position contradictory to both, the side of positive religion.

To summarise: Moreno makes it clear he is not creating his work in a vacuum. Freud and Marx are the ideological setting in the Western world, during and after the First World War. Moreno says “The two opposites had one thing in common: they both rejected religion”. Moreno took the side of positive religion. Continue reading “The First Mention of Marxism in “Who Shall Survive?””