File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1994/marxism.Jul12-Aug17.94, message 287


Date: Mon, 8 Aug 1994 07:20:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: Philip Goldstein <pgold-AT-strauss.udel.edu>
Subject: Re: marxism-leninism/stalinism


	Chris Nagle asks me " I wonder what Phil
Goldstein's point is in attempting to draw close, meaningful(?)
connections between Marx and Stalin...can you explain your
motivation, Phil?  Your concerns sound much more reminiscent of
_Masters of Deceit_ than _Hegemony and Socialist Strategy." I don't know 
_Masters of Deceit_, but I have read a number of texts, especially those 
by theorists of totalitarianism, which draw this connection. As I said in 
my last note, I consider the relationship right wing, but I think that 
LaClau and Mouffe restate this right-wing argument in order to defend 
their Gramscian Marxism or postMarxism. In  general, I think that the 
reception of a theorist tells us something about what his theory means. 
Therefore Marx does not stand above his "vulgar" interpreters and 
represent the timeless truths of an untested philosophy. I also think 
that, As Althusser says, Marxism is a scientific field which evolves. We 
can, therefore, ask what the lessons of the communist experience are for 
Marxist theory because we assume that it is implicated in that 
experience. 
Philip Goldstein


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