File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1994/94-08-28.000, message 36


Date: Tue, 16 Aug 1994 13:23:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: Marxism and academia


Every generation of left-leaning professors seems compelled to "rescue" the 
humanistic kernel of Marxism from the outdated Hegelian metaphysics 
which contained it.

While some of these attempts to rescue Marxism may seem fresh to you, 
they are just warmed-over dishes to revolutionaries of my generation.

Just turn to Sidney Hook's "Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx", 
written in 1933, and you'll find the same kinds of arguments against 
'orthodox' Marxism that show up in this list constantly. Hook was strongly 
influenced by Korsch and Lukacs and, like them, tried to purge Marxism of 
its dialectical materialist component. Now as it turned out, Lukacs 
remained trapped in the Stalinist apparatus, Korsch quit politics and even 
repudiated Marxism in the 1950's and Hook became a conservative 
Republican. So, if the goal is to retain the humanist essence of Marxism, 
maybe the moral of the story is to stick with the orthodox version after all.

But I don't think it's smart to take this approach. When things go bad in 
history--Stalinism in the USSR, Pol Pot in Cambodia, etc.--the best way to 
make sense of these events is to look at history rather than ideas. Marx was 
rather clear about the primacy of the material world over ideas. "Western 
Marxists" turn everything on it's head. Rather than using the Marxist 
method of examining the underlying social and economic relationships of a 
given society at a given time in history, they focus on ideology.

To explain Stalin, they look for 'bad ideas' in Lenin or Engels or Marx or 
Hegel, etc., etc. This is typical of the method of scholars within the ivory 
towers of academia. Intellectual history is a worthwhile pursuit, and I 
wouldn't mind being paid to do that for a living. I envy all of you: summers 
off, academic conferences, sleeping late, etc.

But real Marxists, in other words people who are trying to put an end to 
capitalism, need to study the real, material world in order to figure out a 
way to change it. Like Marx or Lenin, they spend lots of time poring 
over economic statistics and the like. If  you want to get a handle on how to 
beat back Reaganism, Bushism and Clintonism, you're better off reading 
material from the Bureau of Labor Statistics rather than Althusser or 
Habermas.


On Tue, 16 Aug 1994, Andy Daitsman wrote:

> Louis,
>  
> I humbly suggest that you are missing the point.  Like you say, Marx was a
> communist.  Unfortunately for your position, however, he was also a "some kind
> of a post-Hegelian philosopher."  In fact, his communism developed precisely
> out of his philosophical investigations, his ability to "stand Hegel on
> his head."
>  


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