[lbo-talk] Re: Religion & Body Counts

Jon Johanning jjohanning at igc.org
Wed Sep 24 07:43:51 PDT 2003


On Tuesday, September 23, 2003, at 02:49 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:


> This paragraph is pretty accurate -- there is an old wisecrack that
> wherever two marxists meet three tendencies form.

And the third one expels the first two!


> But it is _not_
> correct to use Marx's observation here, since he used it in specific
> reference to a really oddball group in France who called themselves
> "Marxists." It was a chance observation in a particular context, and it
> is distorting to call it a "pronouncment" as though he were laying down
> some abstract universal principle. He wasn't.

But what are the odds that if he were living through the period since his death, he wouldn't have made the same remark about most of the oddball groups that appropriated his name since then?

Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax



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