> SA: As for Marxism, let's be honest. Classical Marxism was very simplistic.
> I have unbounded admiration for Erik Olin Wright's much more sophisticated
> "Marxist" theory of contradictory class locations, but its practical import
> leads to something like, "The People, Yes!" Precisely because classical
> Marxism was so simplistic it had to be revised almost immediately once the
> Marxist parties had won some initial success
>
> Somebody: Exactly. What really existing Marxism hasn't ended up becoming
> populist itself? Peace, land, and bread is a populist demand. Pure
> scientific Marxism is for propaganda sects and academics. In reality the
> connection between Marxism and the working class is a theoretical one. We've
> had too many counter-revolutions led by workers and revolutions led by
> military officers and guerrilla armies to conclude otherwise.
>
> The problem here is that SA's critique of Classical Marxism - and I'd love
to know when and where and who this is - is fundamentally idealist and
anachronistic. There was nothing simplistic about classical Marxism's
politics, it was by far the most sophisticated game going given the state of
the regional and global transition to capitalism. That doesn't mean that it
was able to deal with the complexity and multiply diverse power relations in
Europe and North America at the time but by comparison to what then-active
political organization and theory were they simplistic? Utilitarians?
Jeffersonians? Republicans? Agrarians?
Second, classical Marxism didn't need revision as a result of its ideological simplicity, it needed revision because it was materialist in character and the material conditions of struggle changed, wildly, so it changed through internal and external struggle. Again, this doesn't mean that Second International Marxism encompassed everything or got everything right at the level of ideology or praxis but SA's argument strikes me as flush with deeply anachronistic and disembodied 20/20 hindsight.
Third, Somebody's position - and, to my surprise, Marv's - appears to me to conflate theoretical understanding and real world practice. Its not an internal criticism of a political program to say that its pragmatic activities in a world within which it is not hegemonic ends up being "impure". In real world practice real world political organizations have to make problematic and/or contradictory coalitions and/or are only able to grow by means of impurity. Much of this conversation seems to ignore the relationship between theory, practice and struggle under changing conditions.
I am not saying Marxist movements or leadership has been rooted in exceptional or magnificent analysis or that these movements and leaders have made decisions consistent with their theoretical commitments when there's been space to do so... but this conversation is skirting all of this historical and material stuff to a very great extent. (I'm also not saying that Labour Parties have always been Marxist or that folks claiming the Marxist mantle have always actually been so.)