On Mar 16, 2007, at 1:56 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> Yes, just as Marxism has been a religion of left, right, center, and
> the apolitical.
Hmmm, pretty odd coming from the editor of MRZine, but that aside...
I suppose you could embrace some sort of liberal critique of "totalitarianism" and the left-meets-right-at-the-extremes version of the political spectrum, but in any sensible political taxonomy, Marxism is a doctrine of the left. It's egalitarian and radically democratic; the right is anti-egalitarian and often authoritarian. Marxism is opposed to mushy compromise (which is centrist). And it is, almost by definition, the opposite of apolitical; in fact, it annoys a lot of apolitical types because it insists on politicizing almost everything, like art and the mundanities of daily life.
I suppose you could also argue that some Marxists apply the doctrine in a catechistic way, which would make it a kind of religion - but coming from you, as an apologist for religion, that wouldn't be too credible as a critique. Ditto with Soviet-style state socialism; it became a rationale for domination, not liberation. But you could turn Marxism as a tool of analysis against that version of the doctrine: by virtue of their privileged access to power, the Soviet nomenklatura became a ruling class, with no democratic means in the political sphere to dislodge them. And, sometime in the 1970s or early 1980s, they decided it was time to go capitalist, and become a serious ruling class.
Doug