Date: Fri, 12 Aug 1994 14:25:52 -0400 (EDT) From: Stephen Grossman <SGROSSMAN-AT-umassd.edu> Subject: Re: PDM Date: Fri, 12 Aug 1994 01:56:48 -0400 (EDT) From: ReDionysus-AT-aol.com Subject: PDM >I guess I'm pretty much a Praxis Marxist, and get the odd >feeling that anyone who isn't has just missed the point of Marx. Assuming that Praxis is action with an end or purpose, I agree. I recall an academic Marxist philosopher telling me that dialectics is merely theory and not practice. I much prefer Mao's superior philosophical understanding that, "Communists the world over are wiser than the bourgeoisie....they understand dialectics and they can see further." Considering that Mao had a certain amount of success in a profoundly difficult situation, his comment should be considered as profoundly practical. And in _Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism_, "One of the important reasons for the great victories won by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and other Marxist Parties lies in the fact that in their policy, in all their activities[!], Marxist parties are guided by the method of materialist dialectics." In contrast, anti-theory Pragmatists would agree with Zbigniew's Brzezinski's 1967 claim that "Communism is dead....It is increasingly fragmented by conflicts." Poor Zbig! Even tho he was, at that time, part of the US State Dept's Policy [hah!] Planning [hah! hah!] Council, with its presumably vast resources, he just didn't get it. And, wonderful irony, all this fool had to have done was to have read, in the 1964 _NYT_[!], a comment from Mao's _theoretical_ journal, _Hongki_, "Unity, struggle or even splits, and a new unity on a new basis-such is the dialectics of the development of the international working-class movement." I agree with Stalin's recognition that, "Dialectics is the soul of Marxism." Stalin lamented "that disease of narrow empiricism and unprincipled practicalism [Pragmatism] which has not infrequently caused certain 'Bolsheviks' to degenerate and abandon the cause of the revolution." ------------------
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005