To which Wojtek S. responds:
>Max, but that is the version of Marxism corporate media have been
>manufacturing. It has little to do with what Marx actually wrote. I think
>his use of the logic of the market to dispute some of the more populist
>conceptions of capitalist exchange (namely based on the notion of
>'unfairness') is a case in point.
It isn't just the corporate media that rewrote Marxism. The rewriting started with the German Social Democratic Party (folks like Kautsky, though some would say Engels started it). The rewriting really went full-steam ahead when the Bolsheviks found themselves in charge of an embattled (surrounded) largely peasant economy and people like Stalin started to try to harness Marxism to spur industrial development and to maintain the party's political monopoly. It went further with people like Mao. (One could accuse Trotsky of rewriting too, but my feeling is that he was always conscious of his innovations to classical Marxism.)
In some ways, the bourgeois media's rewrite and the stalinists' rewrite meshed well with each other, reinforcing the popular image of "Marxism."
As for the connection of the CP's Marxism and the Popular Front's populism, it's important to note that the CP's Marxism was heavily stalinized. It compromises its brand of Marxism by bringing in a lot of populism (including patriotism), which also got them a much larger number of members and fellow-travellers. Sometimes the PF involved an alliance with the middle classes against the workers, as in the Spanish Civil War.
While I largely agree with Wojtek's statement of what Marxism is, I'd like to add a few points about Max's list:
>> By Marxian I mean the categorical rejection of the institutions of
markets,
It should be stressed that Marx's mature theory (i.e., CAPITAL) rejects capitalism much more than it does markets. Also, Lenin accepted markets for the NEP, while Trotsky wrote some stuff about how they might be used under socialism (according to Perry Anderson). This suggests that the "rejection of markets" is not _absolute_, i.e., categorical. But of course, Marx would clearly favor the ultimate elimination of markets, favoring democracy over markets, because the latter represent the realm of commodity fetishism.
>>capital,
This is more accurate: if by "capital," we mean the social relations of domination, alienation, and exploitation inherent in capitalism (rather than factories & machines), Marx wanted to abolish it.
>> bourgeois democracy,
Yes, but it should be remembered that Marx favored the deepening of democracy, rejecting bourgeois democracy because it wasn't democratic enough. Look at Marx's writings on the Paris Commune.
>>religion,
there's a great little article by Michael Lowy on Marx & Engels' attitude toward religion in the current issue of SCIENCE & SOCIETY (vol. 62, no. 1, N.H.[*] Spring 1998). In addition, it should be stressed that Marx started out hanging around with the hard-core atheists of the "Young Hegelians." They thought that society could be saved by abolishing religion. Marx criticized them and ended up quite different from that, seeing the abolition of societal alienation as a precondition to the abolition of religion. He didn't see religion as the enemy, though he wasn't personally relgious. The Young Hegelian attitude was later accepted by the stalinists, who tended to make Marxism into a secular state religion.
>> and nation-states
Marx wasn't as much in favor of abolishing nation-states as much as thought that capitalism was undermining them. Given the anti-patriotic attitudes of capital, workers needed to unite internationally. (sound familiar?) Marx opposed national_ism_, something that was beginning to become a major force only toward the end of his life. I would also guess that he would be willing to forgive the nationalism of oppressed nations, though would always be trying to inject the class dimension of politics that the nationalists avoid. (see his writings on the Irish question.)
Wojtek, your letter to DOLLARS & SENSE spells your name differently. Is it a typo or is there more than one spelling?
[*] Northern Hemisphere. As Dave Laibman himself points out, vol. 62(1) came out during the S.H.'s Fall.
Jim Devine jdevine at popmail.lmu.edu & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html "The only cause of depression is prosperity." -- Clement Juglar.