On Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:53:24 -0400 c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> writes:
> CB: What Carrol has a "fetish" for is presenting his anti-Marxist
> ideas "Marxism" ( including especially the oh so typical petit
> bourgeois intellectual's characterization of rigorous adherence to
> the
> fundamental ideas of Marx's science as "religion"). Carrol does
> not present "what Marx stood for" in his posts to this list. His
> "endorsement" of Robinson is corroboration that she was not a
> Marxist. Half-Keynesian and half-Marxist is not Marxist. "Marxian"
> is
> not "Marxist". Picking up parts of Marx's theory and rejecting
> major
> aspects , like dialectics and the labor theory of value, is not
> Marxism. Marxism doesn't work like that as much as many left
> intellectuals wish it did, wish that they could pick out their
> favorite parts and leave out what they don't like. It is like
> using
> part of Darwin's/Mendel's thesis, but leaving out important parts,
> and still claiming to be advocating Darwinism.
As the Socialist Barbarian pointed out, this in fact is what biologists have done with Darwin. In fact Darwin didn't even have Mendel's theory of inheritance to work with but had to cook up one of his own, which turned out to be quite wrong. (And it took biologists quite some time to fit together Darwinism with Mendelian genetics anyway). Also, Darwin, to the end, continued to subscribe to certain Lamarckian ideas, which have long since been discarded by biologists. What Darwin would have considered to be Darwinism is not necessarily what most contemporary biologists would consider Darwinism to be now a days.
Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math ____________________________________________________________ Groupon™ Official Site 1 ridiculously huge coupon a day. Get 50-90% off your city's best! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/4e25618e2e8c2a2449st04vuc