[lbo-talk] Michael Heinrich, David Harvey, and Slavoj Zizek in Brazil

[Wojtek S]

Just to follow up on this.  I do not see much value in Marx's social
science.  He had a few good observations but beyond that it was an
elaboration on the classical economic theory, which is a bunch of crap
- theology rather than science.  His unique value was subverting this
theology - the bourgeois propaganda used as "scientific" justification
of capitalist property relations whereas Marx used the same "science"
(or rather pseudo-science) to draw the exactly opposite conclusions -
that capitalist property relations are self-destructive and their
abrogation is imminent.  It is a very cleaver polemical device
consistent with Socratic methods - use your opponent's own assumptions
against his conclusions.   But it is not empirical science.

As I said before, Marx was just a face, a moniker if you will, for the
communist movement that did transform the world.  Without that
movement, he would be just an obscure 19th century philosopher that
few people today would know about it.

That is why I find philosophizing about Marx's ideas an utterly
unproductive pursuit, a leisure activity for those who can afford it.
Zizek is "marxist" in his polemical style that turns bourgeois ideas
on their head rather than in substance (i.e. producer of ideology that
legitimizes a powerful social moevemnt).

-- 
Wojtek

"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."