[lbo-talk] query: from anarchist to marxist???

c b cb31450 at gmail.com
Tue Oct 18 13:28:18 PDT 2011


"Marxism" is even less precise than "anarchism."

^^^^^ CB: That would be news to Marx. _Capital_, The Manifesto etc. are very precise. Marx claims the precision of a natural science. I guess this is Carrol's dialectical pedagogy: State something exactly wrong to provoke a statement of what is correct.

^^^^

If Marxism is taken as a critique of capitalism, then it is wrong to associate it with any particular ploitical position.

^^^^^^ CB: Marxism is , of course, not only critique of capitalism ( _Capital_) ,but a theory of practical-critical , or revolutionary, activity , to guide the working class in burying capitalism, and initiating class-less society. It is also materialist dialectics which has implications for philosophy of science and worldview, atheism, etc.

^^^^^^^

And if "socialism" is a political position, then there is no necessary relation to Marxism. And in fact this turns out to be the empirical fact. I would guess that most socialists are _not_ Marxists. And if anarchism is a political position, then there is no necessary contradiction between it and Marxism. If Fredy Perlman wasn't a Marxist, then I don't know who is. And he was an anarchist, member of Black and Red, the name of which alone undercuts the contrast being worried in this thread.

Carrol



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