>
>A professor at Northern Michigan College in 1959 had this term paper on
>Marx submitted which he suspected from the first page was plagiarized.
>The source became clear when the paper concluded by saying something
>like "But so far his thought has had no practical consequenses." It was
>plagiarized from a 1905 encyclopedia.
I'm not willing to bet the rest of my life on Marxism reviving in the foreseeable future. Besides, what makes you think it will be so good if it does? "Hegel says somewhere that history repeats itself. He forgot to add, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce."
>
>It would be better if the name of the movement was simply 'socialism"
>rather than "marxism," but given that we are caught with the name, it is
>a bit presumptuous to predice too certainly what the the future of the
>"marxist movement" will be.
>
I am not too certain of anything. But I am certain that there will not be, within the lifetimes of my greatgreat grandchildren, ant mass movement of workers identifying themselves as "Marxists" as I am that the United States is not suddenly going to seethe error of its ways, lay down its sword and shield, and begin making reparations to the poor and downtrodden of America and the world. MArxism is a great theory--that's all that's left of it.
Now, a socialist movement, that's something else. Last I checked there were still mass parties with working class support calling themselves socialist, though most of them weren't doing anything about it. "Socialism" is a term we are stuck with, for better or worse. "Marxism," fortunately not. At thepresent time, apart from a sort of academic branding (Liberal, libertarian, conservative, communitarian, postmodernist, MArxist, etc), the term has nopractical significance except to isolate the user from his intended audience, unless that audience is other self-identified Marxists.
jks
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