Since Marxism is not a theory about natural phenomena that could and would exist with or without human existence and intervention, if there were no social movement to go with "Marxism as a school of philosophy" ("historical materialism"), it would die as a theory relevant in the real world, and "historical materialism" would indeed fully become merely an object of cultural studies or a Campy Found Object (that it already is probably in the minds of a number of non-Marxist LBO-talkers).
At 4:24 PM -0800 2/9/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>>>as a _movement_ Marxism has collapsed.. . . This is not going to change.
>>
>>How do you know?
>
>You mistake who has the burden of proof here.
The burden of proof is on those who make predictions -- in this case, yourself: "This is not going to change." Were I to say, "Marxism will be an essential part of a vibrant left-wing social movement on the offensive worldwide in X years," or even simply, "Socialism shall eventually triumph," yes, the burden of proof would be on me, but that is not the case here. I'm not approaching the question as if a social scientific observer of political trends would, standing outside the field of social forces under observation, or a gambler placing bets would, evaluating which horse looks like it's gonna win. I'm addressing it as a political activist committed to working on a project of social transformation, so my choice of project, as well as others', is of necessity not descriptive but performative, that is to say, I'm not betting on a horse in a game -- I'm a member of a horse in _the_ game from which there is no exit. I may or may not be a member of the horse that will win, but I won't know that unless I do my part in the running. Besides, there may not be even much of "choice" involved here. I may sometimes "feel" as if I've "chosen" Marxism, but the sense of "choice" is illusory. More accurately, I just grew into it or it grew onto me, haphazardly.
At 4:24 PM -0800 2/9/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>the kind of defeat Marxism has suffered
By the time I came into some kind of "political consciousness," and more so by the time I got around to acquiring enough theoretical equipment to analyze what sort of political disposition I had, Marxism and all other left-wing social movements were at their nadir. Since then, I've seen political prospects for the left of many sorts improve. :-> Those who lived through the sixties (and the thirties and early forties) probably cannot help but experience the present as a comedown. My (and probably Miles') generation's experience is, in contrast, that of being born at the bottom and climbing up tooth and nail, with no illusion. I've never personally "lived" Marxism as an essential element of a mass movement on the rise, so, for me, no loss is involved -- only a painstaking advance from zero.
At 4:24 PM -0800 2/9/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>Pandora's box is open. The troubles are loose. Have you anything to
>offer but idle hope?
A paradigm change doesn't happen in the absence of a new paradigm to replace the old. The day I will cease to regard Marxism as my political project will be the day I will have already "chosen" some other project, whether I will realize it or not immediately. I have looked at other theories and projects that exist now (in various states of vigor and decay) -- anarchism, Islamism, social democracy, liberation theology, social ecology, participatory economics, etc. -- and none looks to me as good as what a repaired and renovated Marxism can offer.
At 4:24 PM -0800 2/9/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>if it were to come back in two hundred or five hundred years, there
>is absolutely no reason to think that i t would come back in any
>form that would be recognizable to you.
I don't see any problem in that. Why should a future Marxism be necessarily recognizable to me? Wouldn't it be un-Marxist/un-historical-materialist to expect it to be?
At 4:24 PM -0800 2/9/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>But Marxism as a movement, hammers and sickles, red flags and
>banners of Marx and Lenin, workers singing The Internationale --
>that's over.
At 6:28 PM -0800 2/9/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>an ideology taht took a spoecific organizational form with a kind of
>vocabulary
At 6:28 PM -0800 2/9/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>under their old names, with all their apparatus intact
In my opinion, Marxism doesn't have to come with "hammers and sickles, red flags and banners of Marx and Lenin, workers singing The Internationale" at all. We can affectionately consign venerable icons to a Museum of Soviet Nostalgia -- indeed objects of cultural studies*. Organizational forms naturally change according to the demands of each epoch. As for the vocabulary of class struggles, some terms will remain, others will disappear, yet others will be given new meanings, and new ones will emerge.
At 9:47 AM -0600 2/8/03, Carrol Cox wrote:
>Incidentally, I think Justin is wrong in saying that Marxism was a
>movement. The _movement_ was communism, and that movement has
>_never_ been confined to marxists alone -- or even to communists
>alone. I don't think that movement is dead, and I think persons of
>many different "personal" isms will continue to be central even to
>that movement.
Today, I look at Venezuela with Chavez and Bolivarians, for instance, and see Marxism alive and kicking. Marxists and Marxism as a social theory exist in the Bolivarian movement, though most likely the majority of poor Bolivarians have never read a page of _Capital_, much as the majority of rank-and-file non-communists and even many communists involved in anti-colonial struggles and the like in the past probably didn't have any time for reading Marx, et al (if they were literate at all).
Postscript: * Even some old icons are sometimes given new lives and meanings. E.g., activists singing and playing "Bella Ciao" -- a song of Italian Partisans in the Resistance -- in Genoa in 2001: <ftp://italy.indymedia.org/genoa/bellaciao/bellaciao.mpg>.
Cf. Bella Ciao: <http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/dictionary/dict_b1.shtml#bellaciao>, <http://www.grscotland.net/resources/o_bella_ciao.mp3>, <http://www.chumba.com/_download.htm#Anchor-The-45817>, & <http://www.chumbawamba.tv/media/Chumbawamba-Bella_Ciao.mp3>. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>