Vanishing Marxism on LBO-talk

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>>I might use the term historical materialist instead as it means the
>>same thing as Marxism to me, but that's unfortunately two words, and
>>it probably sounds like just a school of philosophy to most people
>>(if they know what it means at all).
>
>That's my point. That's all that's left of it: a social theory, a 
>school of philosophy. Marxism means a movement. That doesn't exist 
>anymore.
>
>jks

Even if Marxism could now be nothing but a social theory, I would 
still value it more than other social theories because of its 
analytical powers, but the way I see it, Marxism in the United States 
today is both more than a social theory that it surely also is among 
other things and much less than a mass movement that it was.

At 12:31 AM -0600 2/8/03, Carrol Cox wrote:
>principled

What we care about after all is not the name but the content of 
politics.  Principled internal debates on the left are absolutely 
necessary, but internal debates, much less principled ones, can't 
happen without a sense that (A) either there already exists a sort of 
left to which debate participants belong one way or another or (B) 
debate participants are involved in a project to create such a left 
to which they will belong one way or another.  (A) is not the case 
today on LBO-talk and in US politics in general (hence much of 
criticism of this or that part of left-wing theory and practice is 
external to the object of criticism).  (B) might become the case, and 
if it does, Marxism as a social theory will likely have a role to 
play, though it will not be the same role that it did in the past and 
may still do in some nations.
-- 
Yoshie

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