Date: Sun, 14 Aug 1994 00:09:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alex Trotter <uburoi-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: trotsky's marxism



Concerning djones's latest post on this subject, I wasn't aware that the 
pre-1850 works of Marx are the only ones taught in universities these 
days. Can others on the list vouch for this?  
	I think the "philosophical" early works of Marx are important 
because in them he makes clear that labor encompasses only one part of 
human activity, and communism is not reduced to the liberation of labor. 
This early vision never entirely left Marx, and coexisted--a bit 
incongruously--with the "revolutionary reformism" he expressed in 
_Capital_ and in his political activities in the International. Very late 
in his life, his work represented more of a *return* to the themes that 
had taken his interest in his youth, as I've already mentioned in the 
posts about his _Ethnological Notebooks_. 
	Marx can perhaps be rescued from culpability in the rise of state 
capitalism (though even there, not entirely: he is well known to have 
defended the military exploits of governments, such as those of the U.S. 
federal gov't. in the Civil War and the Prussian state in the 1870 war 
with France, that he deemed "historically progressive"), but it's harder 
to do it for Marx-ism. Indeed, it's difficult to determine just what 
Marx-ism is. Marx himself wouldn't identify with it. Where does that 
leave us?
	Students of Marx (more broadly, of revolution) should by all 
means read as much of him as possible, from all periods, but 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).

--AT

BTW, does the _Grundrisse_ qualify as an "early" work?