From: glevy-AT-acnet.pratt.edu
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 09:25:02 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Orthodoxy


Re Walter Daum's comments:

I don't have Lukacs work in front of me (along with a few thousand other 
works it is in storage in CT), however, I think that this term 
historically refers more to revolutionary politics than method 
(although, obviously, method and politics are connected). The following 
entry on Kautsky by Patrick Goode from Tom Bottomore ed. _A Dictionary of 
Marxist Thought_ (1st edition, p. 249) may be of interest:

"He [Kautsky] ... defended Marxist 'orthodoxy' against the 'revisionists' 
... initially on a specific issue, the agrarian question (in __Die 
Agrarfrage_, 1899), and then, in more general terms, against Bernstein."

Since the time of Kautsky, I believe that the expression "orthodoxy" has 
been used by those Marxists who wish to stress the [alleged] continuity of 
the works of Marx, Engels, most of Kautsky (and some other German Social 
Democrats like W. Liebnecht), Plekhanov, Lenin (and Trotskyists, of 
course, include Trotsky; Maoists include Stalin and Mao, etc.). However, 
regardless of its origins, I believe its continued use today is too 
suggestive of dogmatism and religious interpretations of Marx and other 
so-called "orthodox Marxists." It also fails to sufficiently identify the 
discontinuities in thought among the "orthodox Marxists."

Jerry 


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