Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 21:49:42 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: On the Longevity of Marxism


Carrol,

>Doug writes, ". . .or Marxism will die as an intellectual tradition and a
>political movement. It's near death already, thanks in no small part to a
>boneheaded dogmatism and an almost limitless capacity for self-deception."
>
>The evidence Doug summarizes here in the phrases "boneheaded dogmatism"
>and "capacity for self-deception," while quite correct, does not support
>his suggested conclusion. Marxism has in a sense "died"  several times
>already, and undoubtedly faces future deaths as well, but as long as
>capitalism last, marxism will always rise again. Also I think the causal
>relationships are not so clearcut as Doug suggests here.
>
>When the world's working classes are in retreat, marxism tends to turn
>boneheaded and self-deceiving, and then it is too easy to mistake the
>effect for the cause, as I think Doug does in this post. During such
>periods those who consider themselves marxists struggle primarily (to
>wrench a sentence by T. S. Eliot from its context) not in the hope of
>triumphing but merely to keep certain hopes and possibilities alive. When
>conditions do change (and there is little we can do to bring that
>necessary change about), I think you will find that a very few marxists
>will go a long ways.
>
>When over 90 years ago Trotsky argued that there would be no more Father
>Gapons (have I got that name correct), and Lenin accused Trotsky of being
>a blowhard, claiming that there must in fact be many more Father Gapons, I
>think he was making the point I try to make here in claiming that there is
>little we can do to bring about the changes which will provide for a
>"rebirth" of marxism: for that we must depend on the potential Father
>Gapons scattered through the working class.
>
>One other word on something Justin said in one of his posts, about being
>red-baited out of the anti-Gulf War movement. Something like that may have
>happened to me a few weeks ago. I read in the local paper that there had
>been a peace demonstration at the Normal City Hall, led by some students,
>the spokesperson for the demonstration saying they had held it there
>rather than on campus because they wished to reach out to "the community."
>I looked up his e-mail address and posted him, mentioning the various
>community groups (unions, central-america solidarity people, the black
>community) that I could link him to, and forwarded to him some of the
>posts on the Gulf situation that appeared on the marxism lists. I never
>got a response of any sort. I don't know why, but if it was on the basis
>of some sort of anti-communism, he would have gotten a surprise had the
>situation not cooled off in the Gulf and activity had continued, he would
>have found that every time he turned a corner he would have met either me
>or my wife or someone we had worked with closely in the last 20 years --
>even in all the churches that include any anti-war sentiment (Mennonite,
>Unitarian, some local Catholics). I doubt that the situation in
>Bloomington/Normal is all that unique: I think it is the case all over the
>nation that there remain scattered men and women who have ties to marxism,
>and who would unite local struggles regionally and nationally were
>politics to "heat up."
>
>What the Spoons marxism lists clearly do, despite the high proportion of
>bullshit on them, is generate a web of acquaintanceship which could be a
>very powerful force some day.

In principle, I agree that marxism will rise again as long as capitalism
exists. However, "a boneheaded dogmatism and an almost limitless capacity
for self-deception" that Doug decries are *real obstacles* for those of us
interested in generating "a web of acquaintanceship" that you speak of. I
say this because I am now thinking of unsubbing. I haven't decided yet, but
for me to get into dialogues + debates (which are after all one of the main
points of subbing to a list like this), I need interlocutors who do not
suffer from "an almost limitless capacity for self-deception" at the very
least.

Yoshie




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