File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/97-02-10.192, message 35


Date: 25 Jan 97 03:00:03 EST
From: Chris Burford <100423.2040-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: M-TH: Trust


In the way Jerry states it, I would have to agree:

>>
Marxists must, therefore, hold themselves and each other to a higher
standard precisely because Marxism is not a theory alone but also requires
praxis. When Marxists engage in certain extreme forms of conduct which
violate basic socialist principles, it endangers the credibility of those
Marxists and makes effective political work difficult or impossible.
<<

This phenomenon would apply to any group of people wishing 
consciously to preserve a good reputation in a community, and implies
codes of honour which might be enforced formally at times, but even
if not enforced formally, might work through informally, because
each person has to calculate how much their own credibility is 
affected by association with another individual. The very fact that
test cases are fought our and won by one side or the other, is part
of the process whereby these influences permeate in their effects.

As far as Marxists are concerned, Jerry's formula here suggests 
that these phenomena might apply not only in a consciously
vanguard, democratic-centralist marxist organisation, but could
gradually spread within a network of marxists who are in 
communication with one another even while having some important
differences of political principle.






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