Do you believe it enough to act on it ?
>
>The last question is the right one for a pragmatist. Yes, I do.
>
>
>^^^^^^^^^
>
>CB: Would seem to me that you pragmatist should give credit to Marx as
>having developed this before the pragmatist philosophers.
As you know I give full credit to Marx for this thought, and have developed the idea at length in print. See my The Paradox of Ideology, Canad, J. Phil. 1993.
Pragmatism and Marxism are twin children of Hegel. I'm planning a paper on this for a panel in honor of Sidney Hook's early pragmatic Marxsima t the Am Phil Assn meetings at Christmas.
> In general , the liberal and skeptical attacks on Marxism as dogmatic
Not mine!
>
>CB: On this you should acknowledge more often than you do that your
>liberal ideology contemplates the need for permanent repression and use of
>force and Marxism does not. Whereas , the general impression you give is
>that somehow your theory is less repressive than Marxism's theory.
I never attempted to give this impression. Perhaps you confuse my loathing and contempt for Stalinist totalitarianism with a view of Marxism as repressive. I think that Stalinism and its bastard scions, Khrushchevism and Brezhnevism are considerably further from Marx than liberalism is.
I think that traditional Marxist ideas about doingw ith the state and law are a pipe dream. I also think that the simplistic equation of thge state and law with force and repression is failing of the Bolshevik tradition, one that contributed to the rise of Stalinism. There is a good dael in Marxsim that is more nuanced, see here especially the thought of Gramsci.
In general much of the law--most of the law--has nothing to do with force or repression. A lot of it just enables people to do things, such as make contracts, get married, own property (personal as well as prodictive) and the like. Much of the rest of it involves ways iof resolving disputes so as to avoid force and repression.
>
>Marxism is closer to left anarchism than liberalism.
Not a selling point, in my view.
<Marxism has more faith than liberalism in the ability of people to live
without a state repressive apparatus.
>
>Marxism aims to abolish the state and Liberalism does not !
>
Quite right, one more reason I am not a MArxist.
jks
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