File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1994/marxism.Jul12-Aug17.94, message 368


Date: Sun, 14 Aug 1994 10:01:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: Philip Goldstein <pgold-AT-strauss.udel.edu>
Subject: Re: trotsky's marxism


	I agree with Alex Trotter's position, "I would
continue to say that the "mature" work can be rightly criticized for
tendencies that were subsequently taken up by Marxists, with baleful
effects (the exaltation of the dignity of labor chief among them)." We 
can and should reread Marx but, to cope with Stalinism, communism, etc., 
we can't simply say that the Stalinists got him wrong or that we have 
finally found the true Marx, the enlightened Marx. The reason is that our 
need to distinguish him from the Stalinists is our peculiar modern 
dilemma and not a necessary feature of a "true" Marx. What's more, there 
is something mistaken about the assumption that every reading besides 
ours has gotten Marx wrong. On the other hand, if we admit that some of 
the followers may have gotten Marx right, at least in part, then we have 
to face the consequences of their reading. This position, which I could 
attribute to Habermas, means that, in light of those consequences, we 
should critique Marx, separating the good and the bad, but this too is a 
modern reading, not the "true" Marx. If we admit that the followers had 
legitimate things to say, then, we have to construct a tradition which we 
call Marxism and which takes into account the various positions of the 
various followers. Here too we face the same dilemma: do we evaluate the 
tradition in light of what the real Marx says, or do we evaluate the 
tradition in terms of our present situation? I say the latter on the 
grounds that, as Foucault says, a scientific field does not define itself 
by the words of its founder, whereas a religion does. Marx is not the 
father; his followers, his errant sons. Marxism is a genuine tradition 
embedded in all sorts of institutions and growing in diverse ways. 
Philip Goldstein


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