These claims towards orthodoxy are tired and tedious. The simple fact is that the past century and a half have produced such a wealth of Marxist approaches tactically, strategically, and methodologically. In a lecture, Etienne Balibar was able to show how three antagonistic threads of Marxist thought could be linked to aspects to the introduction of The German Ideology. The practice of a variety of Marxist parties and organizations gestures to the same fact. I think its come to the point in which we need to defend our arguments on something other than the long discredited notion of a orthodox or genuine interpretation of Marxism.
As a second note, I largely agree with the arguments put up by Dissenting Wren and other concerning the democratic party. I want to go back to the significant example of the Communist Party of the 1930's (aka the party before its collapse into the rather sad creature it has become today.) The party's influence wasn't tied to an attempt to reform the democratic party, but through its contributions to the militant self-organization of a variety of subaltern groups. The New Deal was largely an attempt to appropriate that energy, leading the the transformation of the Democratic Party in response to this threat (as well as the the threat contained in the idea of the Soviet Union....) I think that it's important to separate the ambiguously anti-racist popular front from the explicitly white supremacist New Deal. I should also note that the delegitimization of the party had a great deal to do with the acceptance of no strike deals during WWII. In effect, the party didn't reform the DP from within, but scared it from without.
My third note relates to the debate concerning the use of 'nature' in the work of Marx. Marx certainly makes reference to both the biological needs of the human body as well as the raw materials brought into social processes of production, but neither of these have anything to do with the kind of transcendental notion of 'nature' brought into the conversation around not liking boring music.
robert wood
>> He poses as a Marxist, but his basic approach is not Marxist.
>
> Some of Carrol's main influences are Moishe Postone, G.M. Tamas, and
> the Black Panthers.
>
> If those aren't "Marxist", well as the old man said, "je ne suis pas
> Marxiste."
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: Do you mean "aren't" or "are" ? I think the old man would stick
> to his original statement. If those three _are_ Marxist, pendant "je
> ne suis pas Marxiste". By the way, Carrol is also influenced by Ezra
> Pound.
>
> The Black Panthers were somewhat Marxoid, but not Marxist, even though
> "All Power to the People"comes from "All Power to the Soviets" and
> there was plank in their program for full employment. Carrol's
> reliance on Postone is one of the reasons I say he isn't Marxist.
> Postone is creative, but Marxism doesn't need creativity on the issues
> Postpone creates. Of course there is freedom of thought, but don't
> claim that in exercising such freedom you take Marx and Marxism along
> with you.
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