Saturday, October 30, 2004
Capitalism is not an ideology; it is economic system. As for Marxism, it is a critique of capitalism and its central tenants were first laid out by Marx some 150 years. These include, but are, by no means, limited to the following theses, declining rate of profit, the immiserization thesis, thesis, the labour theory of value, class consciousness, and proletariatization.
Now, contrary to popular belief, Marx did not leave a blue print as what principles a communist society should be built around and as a result it is fruitless to argue that what happened in the Soviet Union was perversion of Marx’s vision. Marx simply had no vision. The closest Marx every came to doing so was in the Communist Manifesto. There he listed 10 things that, as rule of thumb, would need to be done in order to help ease the transformation of the most advanced capitalist economies of the time. However, after the failure of the 1848 revolutions, the “mature” “scientific” Marx abandoned all such talk, saying he had little idea what the “cook shops” of the future would look like.
Another popular misconception popular among uneducated right wing buffoons is that Western Marxists where somehow beholden to the Soviet Union. The fact of the matter is that the term “New Left” dates back to the Soviet Union’s occupation of Hungary in 1956 and signifies the break Western Marxists made with the Soviet Union shortly thereafter.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was mushrooming interest Marxism throughout the Western world and this was reflected in the huge increase in the number of Marxist journals. In addition, among students there was an interest in Third Worldism and its various Marxist, particularly Maoist, manifestations.
However, at the same time as Marx’s popularity was on the raise, intellectual traditions especially those tied the emergence of the new social movements (e.g., French post structuralism) and America’s involvement in Vietnam (e.g., Chomskyian anarchism), began to supplant Marxism as the preferred form of leftist critique. By the time the Berlin wall fell, Marxism was on its last legs and among a great number of academics was no longer considered a “live” option. This trend continues unabated.
Marx’s death has spelt the end to the notion that there is a “live” alternative to capitalism. As Stephen Harper puts it, “Socialism as a true economic program and motivating faith is dead."
Now, contrary to popular belief, Marx did not leave a blue print as what principles a communist society should be built around and as a result it is fruitless to argue that what happened in the Soviet Union was perversion of Marx’s vision. Marx simply had no vision. The closest Marx every came to doing so was in the Communist Manifesto. There he listed 10 things that, as rule of thumb, would need to be done in order to help ease the transformation of the most advanced capitalist economies of the time. However, after the failure of the 1848 revolutions, the “mature” “scientific” Marx abandoned all such talk, saying he had little idea what the “cook shops” of the future would look like.
Another popular misconception popular among uneducated right wing buffoons is that Western Marxists where somehow beholden to the Soviet Union. The fact of the matter is that the term “New Left” dates back to the Soviet Union’s occupation of Hungary in 1956 and signifies the break Western Marxists made with the Soviet Union shortly thereafter.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was mushrooming interest Marxism throughout the Western world and this was reflected in the huge increase in the number of Marxist journals. In addition, among students there was an interest in Third Worldism and its various Marxist, particularly Maoist, manifestations.
However, at the same time as Marx’s popularity was on the raise, intellectual traditions especially those tied the emergence of the new social movements (e.g., French post structuralism) and America’s involvement in Vietnam (e.g., Chomskyian anarchism), began to supplant Marxism as the preferred form of leftist critique. By the time the Berlin wall fell, Marxism was on its last legs and among a great number of academics was no longer considered a “live” option. This trend continues unabated.
Marx’s death has spelt the end to the notion that there is a “live” alternative to capitalism. As Stephen Harper puts it, “Socialism as a true economic program and motivating faith is dead."
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