[lbo-talk] Marxists in the Post-Marxist Era: Liberalism or Populism, Hegemony or Survival

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Mon Sep 24 08:37:51 PDT 2007


On 9/23/07, Carl Remick <carlremick at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/22/07, andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > The Marxist left is no longer a force. Marxism, once a
> > name to conjure by, whether to inspire or to alarm, is
> > an irrelevancy. I underline that this fact does not
> > undermine the validity of the propositions of
> > historical materialism or of Marxian critiques of
> > capitalism as sociological economic-political-moral
> > theory. The theory is pretty much as true as ever. But
> > that's not the same as saying that Marxism is
> > something to be reckoned with politically. Nor is that
> > fact likely to change anytime in the foreseeable
> > future.
>
> I don't see how Marxism can remain viable as theory if it is spent as
> a political force.

Remaining Marxists today are not in a position to lead any revolution under the vanguard Marxist party, monopolizing leadership and excluding other forces who come from different political and intellectual traditions. That is a good thing. Marxists must accept the end of political monopoly, especially on the international level but also on the national level.

Marxists, however, may still make contributions to social change, even a social revolution, and they can make better contributions if they do not think of their goal as "winning others to our own ideas," i.e., converting non-Marxists to Marxism. Instead, try presenting the key insights of historical materialism to others, who are not and will never be historical materialists themselves, in such a way that they can make use of them in their struggle.

On 9/11/07, ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
> As long as we can somehow view another nation, group of people, what-
> have-you as "capitalist", then the gloves come off? And so what if
> this whole Marxist filter is exaggerated, out of context, or just
> plain wrong? It can always be corrected... or can it, if it is so
> axiomatic as it seems?

The standard of judgment shouldn't be, is what others are doing Marxist, good by the Marxist standard, or useful for Marxism? No one cares about such judgment, for most people in the world are not and will never be Marxists. The main international struggle today is US Hegemony or Human Survival, as Noam Chomsky says, and the main domestic struggle in many nations is Liberalism or Populism. A better thing to do is to offer concrete suggestions to others in resistance to liberalism and US hegemony, so that they can better understand and improve what they are doing, knowing that it is their right to adopt or reject such suggestions.

On 9/23/07, Michael Smith <mjs at smithbowen.net> wrote:
>
> On Sun, 2007-09-23 at 14:59 -0700, Chris Doss wrote:
> > I've yet to see any compelling evidence that class
> > struggle is the engine of history. It's a nice
> > theoretical framework though.
>
> Thought experiment: What would constitute
> "compelling evidence"?

Social revolution in the global North.

On 9/24/07, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I think the notion is a nice story because it
> represents History (TM) as a sort of moral
> battleground between good and evil.

When Marxism was the dominant ideology of resistance, it had a grand narrative of history, a cousin of the Christian narrative, in which "the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen" (Matt. 19:30), a narrative whose protagonist is the vanguard inspired by an eschatological vision.

Then, many Marxists, for good and bad reasons, had a crisis of faith, the crisis of which Khomeini took note, and they turned to a new myth, the myth of Western Liberal Democracy (TM) as the End of History, the myth of which Francis Fukuyama is the best known narrator. In short, they became liberals, whether or not they knew that they did.

Historical materialism as a social theory has become better, having shed the myth of History (TM); and yet, it has fewer adherents than before, and many of the remaining adherents are intellectuals who are not in a position to lead workers and farmers, estranged from them by income, education, secularism, and other dividers. Historical materialists must find a way to overcome this estrangement. -- Yoshie



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