marxism on wgn-fm

[Justin Schwartz]

States aren't social movements. "Marxism" in China, Viedtnam, and Laos too, 
is window dressing for state power. Cuba is more complex; there there may be 
a  measure of popular identification with the revolution. As far as the 
guerrillas in Colombia, give me a break. (You mighta lso add the Kurdish 
guerrillas in Turkey.) I am not so old--43--but I am old enough to remember 
when there were tens of millions of people organized into Marxist natioanl 
liberation forces around the world in virtually every poor nation; when the 
Communsit Parties of Western Europe counted for something, when many 
dissidents in the former EAst Bloc nations thought they were recovering 
Marxism. That's gone now: 1989 was the 1914 of Communism, putting paid to 
its claim to speak in Marx's name for the workers of the world. Your 
pathetic counterexamples prove my point. The workers will still organize and 
fight, and so far as the theory is true, their struggles will promote 
socialism. But Marxism is not a movement any more. It is just a theory. 
--jks


>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
> > Chris, Academic Marxism is the only kind that is left. The mass social
> > movement that called themselves Marxist are gone. The struggle is not
>gone,
> > and insofar as the (academic) theory is true, which it is to a
>considerable
> > degree, it correctly describes the struggle, but outside a few 
>backwaters,
> > the only serious social movement that still calls itself Marxist is the
> > Brazilian PT . . .


>
>There's some Guerillas in Columbia calling themselves Marxist as well as
>regimes in Cuba, Vietnam, China and North Korea using Marxism to legitimize
>their regimes.  These have all become distortions of Marx's origonal
>doctrine, but they claim the name.
>
>Joe R. Golowka
>JoeG at ieee.org
>Anarchist FAQ - http://www.anarchistfaq.org
>
>"The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a
>mode of human behavior; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, 
>by
>behaving differently" - Gustav Landauer
>

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