[lbo-talk] The Pomo Marx & Engels

jfisher at pop.igc.org jfisher at pop.igc.org
Wed Aug 4 09:37:49 PDT 2004


On Aug 4, 2004, at 10:48 AM, snit snat wrote:


>>At 11:23 AM 8/4/2004, Chris Doss wrote:


>>When did Marxism claim to be a theory of everything?
There is a Marxist analysis of celestial mechanics? A Marxist entomology?


>There's a qualifier after the comma. It's typical to refer to Marx as a
"grand theorist" doing "grand theory." This, in the context of what occured later, was indeed, an attempt to provide a theory of society, as opposed to a theory of macro economics or micro economics or a sociology of the family or a society of the economy or a theory of citizenship -- all more specialized attempts to theorize specific aspects of social life where social life has been cut up into spheres: politics, markets, civil society. blah blah blah.

===

what frustrated me is that the article is underpinned by the same tired old anti-communist lingo: (a) utopianism and (b) totalitarianism.

sure, we're all opposed to totalitarianism, but in this context anti-totalitarianism is a shibboleth. to question the ongoing usefulness of the concept -- or to hint that it might have its own dark side (hello? mccarthy? working class as fascist mob in potentia? etc. etc.) -- is tantamount to embracing totalitarianism as an ideology. poppycock. talk about political correctness.

on the other hand, we also get the old saw about how marxism would be great if only human beings were as inherently good as it presumes they are. but they are not, and so we need law and order, not peace, love, and understanding:

< clip > In the New Jerusalem, when the multitude governs itself directly, there will be no more rights because there will be no more wrongs. But anyone more respectful than Messrs. Hardt and Negri of fact, including the facts of history and of human nature, knows that we will never live in such a heaven; that every attempt to bring it down to earth has ended in catastrophe; and that the only hope of humanity lies not in love, but in justice. </ clip >

um . . . doesn't that sound like a threat?

and one hardly needs to underline the moral idiocy of that last sentence, coming as it does after a tirade about blinkers wrt totalitarianism. totalitarianism is dead! long live the leviathan!

j

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