File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1994/94-08-17.000, message 172


Date: Mon, 15 Aug 1994 10:31:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Marxism and academia


Since the Bitnet is basically E-Mail for professors, I'm not surprised that 
the discussion on Marxism has had so decidedly an academic character.

But nobody should be fooled into thinking that this discussion has much to 
do with the project that Marx initiated and that many of us persist in 
following despite all sorts of setbacks. Marx was basically a revolutionary. 
All of his mature writings are about the dynamics of capitalist society and 
call for its overthrow. In addition to his writings, Marx was a practical 
politician who tried to help organize the working-class in Europe into 
revolutionary parties. If he was alive today, he wouldn't be a tenured 
professor.

All the postings on this list that invoke the names of Althusser, Habermas, 
Gramsci et al are in the spirit of what Perry Anderson called Western 
Marxism. This is a university-based discipline which disunites theory and 
practice. Western Marxists tend to have no impact on the working-classes 
of their countries; their audience is the intellectual millieu of small-
circulation journals and academic conferences. Instead of scrutinising the 
economic laws of motion of capitalism as a mode of production in order to 
provide an analysis of the political machinery of the bourgeois state and 
how to overthrow it, the subject matter of Western Marxism is philosophy.

>From Lukacs to Althusser, Korsch to Colletti, there's a preponderance of 
philosophers in this school. In the time of the 2nd International, 
Luxemburg and Kautsky alike were contemptuous of 'professorial 
socialists' teaching in the universities, without party commitments. When 
the Frankfurt school was created, Marxist theory started its migration into 
academia. At the end of WWII, this migration was complete. Lukacs, 
Lefebvre, Goldmann, Korsch, Marcuse, Della Volpe, Adorno, Colletti and 
Althusser were full-time professors of philosophy.

27 years ago I was a graduate student of philosophy at the New School 
reading Nietzsche, Kant, Husserl and Hegel. As the Vietnam war 
intensified, I became convinced that philosophy had nothing to do with the 
problems of the real world, imperialist war especially.

I joined the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party in 1967 and was purged in 
1978 for having petty-bourgeois tendencies. You see, I was a computer 
programmer and didn't produce surplus value at the point of production.

I did my best to join the proletariat. I worked in a steel mill in Kansas City 
for a brief time and discovered that the political projections of the SWP 
leadership about 'radicalizing workers' was just an ultraleft fantasy.

Shortly after leaving the SWP, I helped to start an organization called 
Tecnica which sent volunteer programmers, engineers and other skilled 
technical people to work with the Sandinistas, the ANC, SWAPO and the 
Zimbabwean and Mozambiquean governments.

Throughout my close to thirty year involvement with Marxist politics, I 
have never lost sight of what Marxism is about: the abolition of capitalism. 
Of course, there are still some profound questions which beset Marxism. 
Among them are:

--How has capitalism been able to manage crises since the great 
depression; to what extent has this been the result of displacing 
exploitation into the third world?

--Why have the non-Stalinist parties based on the Leninist model turned 
into sects and cults, especially those of the Trotskyist variety?

--Is the planned economy a superior way of achieving progress, or is some 
market variant necessary?

>From time to time, these questions are dealt with in the Marxism list, but 
for the most part it seems like a bunch of professors quoting from their 
doctoral dissertations. Of course, I understand that one's dissertation means 
a whole lot to the author, but on broader society it just has no effect 
whatsoever.

In his "Considerations on Western Marxism", Perry Anderson called for a 
reunion between Marxist theory and practice. This task is as urgent as 
ever. Many battle-scarred veterans of "Marxism-Leninism", including ex-
CPers, ex-Trotskyists and ex-Maoists have begun to regroup in a formation 
called Committess of Correspondence. This organization seems to be in the 
spirit of the original Marxist project. It is anticapitalist and nonsectarian 
and has learned a lot from newer revolutionary movements that have 
broken from the "Marxist-Leninist" mold, including the Central American 
movements and the ANC. Although I once vowed to myself not to join any 
group that has less than 10,000 members, I might be tempted to make an 
exception in this case. At any rate, this seems to me to be the only 
profitable way to be engaged with Marxism: working with others in an 
organization to emancipate the working-class and save the planet.


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