Immiseration, was Krugman on Marx

Tom Lehman uswa12 at lorainccc.edu
Fri Aug 14 11:55:10 PDT 1998


Dear Doyle and Brad,

Did Marx say or write about himself, " I am not a Marxist."

Sincerely, Tom

Doyle Saylor wrote:


> Hello everyone, and Hello Brad,
> I admit I got very impatient with you trying to stretch out there about
> Marx, and "Holy Writ". To me, there are interesting features in
> consciousness, and why people "believe" something, but I don't see what
> difference it makes to the current times to worry about whether or not
> some people who are Marxist have a belief set about what he says. All
> that matters in my opinion is that working people like myself are being
> pummelled by the economy in this rich country. When this reaches a
> certain stage, what most working people believe will become reality as
> far as the political stage is concerned. From an economic point of view
> there is a very limited resource in economics (such as the stock market)
> to describe the process of believing, and is not very useful to inject
> into discussions about the current state of affairs. But such things
> are important in other kinds of arenas, and I don't mean going over to
> the seminary to get their opinion about morality and belief. What I
> mean is that at some point where a field such as economics has it's
> limits, and other arenas can deepen things by bringing up something in a
> way that advances everyone's best interest, let it happen. To me you
> are only pointing at the idea the scientific historian Thomas Kuhn made
> in the sixties, that a paradigm can dominate everyone's thinking
> process. It is not a condemnation of Marxist that they like every human
> needs to find a stable place in their mind to go at the truths they see
> in the world.
> regards,
> Doyle Saylor



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list