File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-03-25.232, message 96


Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 17:31:07 +0000
From: Antonio Mota <motant-AT-geocities.com>
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: Marx was not an economic determinist


Austin:

You said I was attacking you. Well, first I was not "attacking you" but
rather criticising your positions and mostly your methods. We probably
read the same books, independent of the languages in wich they are
translated. The key issue here is how one interpret these books. One has
to think about what he reads, and draw conclusions upon that, preferebly
conclusions that one can apply to our daily realitys, not only
theoretical conclusions. You don't do that, you only read the books and
repeat what they say. So, Marx was not a Dialetic Materialist because in
none of theyr works appear the expression "dialetic materialism".

Please note that I'm not implying that you are stupid and you can't
think about what you read. On the contrary, you can use the material you
read for your own purposes, i.e., you invert the process. Instead of
reaching conclusions based on what you read you have allready the
conclusions made, and go back looking for data that support your
allready made conclusions.

It's not, however, a original method. It's the current method of
"disproof" used for many currents. For example, one says "Stalin is a
mass murderer" and then proceed "OK, let's find out about how many
people have died in one historical period" and then say "you see, there
was 1 million deads, so that make Stalin a mass murderer" (or 7, or 15
or 60 million, the number does not interest for they because the
conclusion is the same).

The same thing with anti-comunists. Giving a direct link that exists in
real life experience between comunism marxism and leninism, when they
want to attac comunism for inside what will they do? Not attack comunism
but instead say "Comunism? Yes! Marxism? Yes! But well, Stalin no, he
was not Marxist, no way". And where there are enough people conviced of
that, they proceed. "Well, now that we think of that, Lenin too was not
a great marxist, I mean maybe in theory but in the pratic, look what it
lead to." And going on, "and Engels, he was never a marxist, one speaks
about historical materialism and the other about dialectical
materialism, how can that be the same thing? No way..." By the end they
can finaly say "We are the pure Marxists because we attend only to what
he wrote himself. All the others that actually tryed to put marxism in
practic were only corrupting his thinking." 

So the conclusion (not mine, offcourse) is that Marx was a good guy
indeed but only for theorethical study, not for apply in real life.

Regards.
Antonio Mota


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