Marxist and Post-Marxist thought is often crouched in esoteric language. This is not surprising as it is based in an almost mystical line of thought in an almost magical framework. Using the language of Marxism, then, begs the question it asks, which is why it is important to describe it outside of its own loaded language. “Yuri Bezmenov’s Ghost” explains the esotericism of Marxist and Post-Marxist though in plain speak, which is quoted in full below due to the limitations of Twitter/X embeds.
Here is a “plain speak” of the esotericism you see in Marx & post-Marxism. This whole 🧵is doing it.
Once, there was a primordial state of unity consciousness. Divine sparks flowed freely without husks or hierarchies. This unity was instinctive and embryonic, like the Garden before the Fall.
Then, the rupture! The rupture arc begins when humanity reaches in too soon, grasping prematurely for knowledge or power without full vessel strength. This echoes the Tree of Knowledge in Genesis, where the grasp causes contraction and shattering. From this cosmic and historical fall, the false power center of the dominant order emerges. It fractures the whole into marginalized and alienated fragments, imposing profane hierarchies that veil the divine light.
The rupture manifests through many forms of disruption, not limited to one event like primitive accumulation. Primitive accumulation serves as a key modern example of initial dispossession, where resources, lands, and relations are seized to create inequalities. Broader ruptures include any structural violence, from ancient exiles to ongoing enclosures of class, race, gender, or ecology. From these, a false center crystallizes as the hegemonic core. This hegemonic core pretends to be natural and inevitable while sustaining itself through extraction and illusion.
Marginalization displaces people, ideas, and potentials to the periphery, treating them as excess or threat through exclusionary borders.
Alienation follows as estrangement severs individuals from their labor, communities, and essence, breeding isolation and transactional bonds.
Reification and commodity fetishism, termed kelipot in Kabbalah, harden living relations into inert things. Institutions and ideologies act as autonomous forces, trapping divine sparks of vitality, creativity, and justice in obscuring husks. This perpetuates alienation by making social dynamics seem like unavoidable laws. Hegemony and ideology maintain the false center by manufacturing consent through narratives, media, and culture. They erase the rupture’s origins and suppress dissent until sparks of truth, resistance, or unmet needs start to circulate and demand elevation.
It’s important to note that this is not Gnosticism. Unlike Gnosticism, which rejects the material world as inherently evil and irredeemable, this framework sees matter and history as fractured yet holy, containing redeemable sparks that humans can restore through active partnership with the divine.
The Elect awaken as those who gain clarity through suffering, insight, or revelation. They form a vanguard collective, not a hierarchical elite, acting as helpers to God in the redemptive drama. In the esoteric tradition at the point of Luria, they aid the divine self-repair after the Shevirah by gathering scattered sparks and mending the Godhead. This partnership makes them co-creators in the repair of the world (tikkun). They map the ruptures by tracing lines of disruption and marginalization. You will commonly see this as “doing the work.” They sift and elevate authentic sparks from the margins, converting traumas into moral charge for collective fuel. They forge a shared vessel through networks, assemblies, and theories that amplify these sparks without reification. They articulate a vision of reparation based on relational wholeness, equity, reciprocity, and ecological harmony.
Within theory, this important change of passive to active repair occurred between Hegel (passive) → Moses Hess (active)→ Marx (active) and perhaps the best single paper is Moses Hess’ 1843 work.
