[lbo-talk] Re: Sexuality Under Seige or So What Else is New?

Dennis Redmond dredmond at efn.org
Sat Jul 31 16:15:48 PDT 2004



> But didn't [Marx] predict that by now capitalism would have
> self-destructed? It seems he was a good analyzer, but a poor
> prognosticator.

Nope. In the heat of the 1848 uprisings, Marx thought the Revolution was nigh. It wasn't - so he spent the rest of his life constructing theories of capitalism. "The Communist Manifesto" is a great diagnosis of political/cultural crisis, but it's not really a theory of society.

Ironically, most of the ten concrete demands raised at the end the Manifesto - taxing the rich, state-run central banks, and free public education, etc. - have been realized.


> I think his analysis is fine, but I still do not see the benefit of
> replacing one hierarchy
> with another when one of the problems is hierarchical arrangements in the
> first place.

The theory and critique of capital is very different from the hierarchical movements which claimed to be following/incarnating Marx, theocracy-style. Dialectics, especially in its post-Adorno phase, recognizes no hierarchies. Adorno: "...solely as a micrology does it [dialectics] employ macrological means." (Negative Dialectics, 40, my translation). The small, insignificant, most transient of things are often more important than the grand narratives of Geopolitics and Capital.

-- DRR



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