Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1996 21:50:36 -0700
Subject: Re: Marxism: Raw Meat and Lumpy Potatoes Questions?


LeoCasey-AT-aol.com wrote:
> 
> I don't think it is really this necessary to jump all over the newcomer Mark
> Adkins; maybe he is just imitating Snoop Doggy Doug Henwood without realizing
> he is adopting a truculent, second rate version of Internet provocation. Yes,
> his questions are far too general and broad-reaching to be all discussed in
> any depth, but they are also not irrelevant -- in some ways they go straight
> to the core of the relevance of the Marxian project. Why not pick up specific
> elements are discuss them?
> 
> For example, it is all very well and good to suggest that he reads Engels
> "Socialism, Utopian and Scientific", since anyone who wants to grapple with
> the meaning of the tradition certainly should be aware of the fundamental
> "founding" texts. But the implicit suggestion that the basic formula in that
> text (Marxism = non-utopian science) is adequate to the task of defining the
> Marxist tradition is, I am afraid, highly questionable. Indeed, I would
> suggest that the way in which Marx and Engels (and most later Marxists)
> defined the economic and political relations of communism, as an association
> of direct producers and as direct democracy, are rather utopian. Both
> elements of the definition have the utopian element of insisting upon the
> supercession of mediated, indirect social relations (the market,
> representative democracy), and upon the creation of direct, transparent
> social relations. This utopian element has some rather important consequences
> for the subsequent problems in the development of a Marxian politics.
> 
> Nor is it particularily illuminating, I think, to throw out the old hoary
> opposition of reformist and revolutionary (conveniently ignoring how
> thoroughly orthodox, in a Marxian sense, the Second International at its
> origins was), especially when revolutionary is understood as fealty to the
> total transformation envisioned by the most utopian elements of the Marxian
> tradition. If one wants to hold to these oppositions, intellectual honesty
> should compel us to admit that there are not exactly universally held, and
> that many find them to be of little utility. Their invocation resolves
> nothing.
> 
> One of the more interesting issues in the study of the Marxist tradtion is
> what happens between Marx's undeniably democratic intentions, however
> utopian, and the various attempts at implementing these intentions. This
> issue can not be resolved by reference to Marx's democratic intentions,
> because the way in which Marx conceptualizes Marxism may be very much part of
> the problem.
> 
>      --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

I dare say that this is not jumping all over Mark.  He had a series of important 
questions.  OK, he had a lifetime of important questions; but so do the rest of us.  Like 
me, he appears to have a limited aquaintance with Marx and is looking to learn more.  I 
can only speak for myself, of course, but I feel the critical place to start answering 
these questions in with the primary and secondary texts, not an electronic collection of 
people who know alot and pretend that they know more even when they don't (and I do count 
myself among that group).

Your caveat about disagreements within the Marxist camp is well taken; I don't believe it 
has been as strongly stated in this thread.  It certainly should be, even given only the 
analytical-dialectical distinction within Marxism.  Hugh, too, raises this point.  But 
the series of questions Mark posted simply isn't useful for this medium.  The only 
feasible response is the reading list that he got.
-- 
Yours &c.,

Jeff Johnson				  "Amicus Socrates, amicus Plato,
Graduate Student, Political Science		sed magis amica veritas."
University of Wisconsin--Madison	 	              --Aristotle



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