It is difficult to do justice to this paper, which I have at this moment in time only been able to read for its main themes.
But it seems to me to miss one of the concepts that resurfaces from time to time in the writings of Marx and Engels - that of testamentary executor. Sometimes a progressive movement fails only to have its ideas implemented, yes in distorted form by another agent.
Yes, Marx never gave his assent to any movement that defined itself as "Marxist". The claim in the Communist Manifesto is one that one should set up no sectarian principles with which to shape or guide the movement. Rather it claims to be a method of analysing what is actually going on in front of our eyes, and to put this at the service of progressive social forces, in the context of class struggle.
The paradox is that while Marxism recedes as a conscious movement, within only 10 years of the fall of the Berlin wall, there is increasingly open criticism of capitalism by name, and increasing, admittedly often backhanded, interest in Marx. As long as Capitalism exists it is likely that people will want to think about the critique by one of its most trenchant critics. And although many are determined to find a classless solution to overcome the present glaring inequalities, even discussion of this is likely to have a different value to people in different social classes and strata. The more rigorous the critical analysis, the more it is likely to appeal to the conscious working people.
Besides the fact that the world is coming up against its limits of sustainable development requires capitalism increasingly to analyse itself as an overall social system - which is part of the essence of the marxist claim to insight into the fundamental workings - that the private ownership of the means of production is in fact a legal fiction for what is a complex social process, and the humble commodity contains within itself a whole society. Money is a social relationship.
Perhaps we do not have to be conscious marxists if the urgency of developments are such that everyone has to address them in a more profound way. Marx did not think so.
But to the extent that some of us wish to approach these questions through a marxist tradition, my own choice is that we should honour three fundamental features of the marxian approach - this is at a very high level of generality
1. "dialectical materialism" even though Marx did not use the word
2. "historical materialism" ditto, and with the modification that we are talking about probabilities and not a rigidly deterministic historical sequence.
3. the law of value.
I know Justin disagrees with me about some of these things, and so does David Schweickart, whose book I also regard as very significant. But we do not have to be card carrying members of the same organisation, and perhaps there does not have to be a marxist organisation at all. We have extremely powerful and flexible networking capabilities.
Regards
Chris Burford
London