Marxism as Theory and movement

JBrown72073 at cs.com JBrown72073 at cs.com
Fri May 10 14:04:24 PDT 2002



>Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 10:07:52 -0700 (PDT)
>eric dorkin <eric_dorkin at yahoo.com> wrote:


>Help me out here, and I am not being a smart ass. But, isn't the point
behind "marxism" >that it is inevitable? And if so, isn;t the issue a matter or "when," not "if?"
>thanks

Not Marxism, but class struggle (which after all was going on around them at the time Marx & Engels were writing). Here's my non-scholarly, simplistic, non-post-modern take: They thought that through working together in large-scale production it would dawn on people that the profiteering owners weren't necessary to the production of the things humans want and need, and were in fact were causing a lot of misery. Eventually people would have had enough. It's an unfair caricature of their claim--though a common attack--to say they are determinist / inevitablist. One gets tired of writing in the subjunctive, no? From what I've read, they thought people are the actors in history, but no, if we don't try to change things, thinking and analyzing and rolling with the punches at least as vigorously as our opponents, things will not necessarily change. Otherwise, why bother with all the analysis and struggle? Que sera sera.


> I thought that capitalism was inevitable, just not the final point of
scoial equilibrium. >Moreover, I though that it was not final because of the ever strengthing class strife >between Capitalists and Proletaria. And that a no class strata society would be final. my >bad.

Final, hmm. There is that little thing about the unfair division of labor between men and women. All hitherto existing society and all that... no danger of history coming to a screeching halt.

Jenny Brown



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