Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2000 09:53:53 -0400 (EDT)
From: Howard Hastings <hhasting-AT-osf1.gmu.edu>
Subject: Re: VS: PLC: Marxist Propaganda


On Mon, 10 Jul 2000 Boris.Vidovic-AT-sea.fi wrote:

> I have been following this discussion with a smile on my lips. Since I
> lived for 30 years in a country whose government called itself
> communist, Marxist and (when in a good mood and wanting to score some
> global PR points) socialist, I might have more experience with the
> subject than the rest of the people on the list.

Thanks for weighing in.
 
> So, as a straight male film theorist coming from a middle class
> background and having a degree in philosophy and comparative literature,
> and a person who always considered himself to be a leftist and Marxist,
> it's really nice to see the difference between 'my' Marxism and the
> variety one can find in the countries that never smelled the sweet smell
> of Marxism in action. And mind you, the country I lived in was often
> cited as an example of a successful implementation of Marxist ideas, a
> country where civil liberties were recognised and respected. At least in
> theory.

How are things in that country now that "Marxism" is gone?

> As a Marxist, I could never agree with the government of my country. One
> of the reasons is probably the fact that no one in my (or any other)
> 'Marxist' government ever read what Marx had actually written.

Interesting.  Every philosopher I have actually meet from an East Block
country says the same thing.  On the other hand, most of the non-degreed
people I have met from East Block countries say they never read any Marx.
(But you are not from an East Bloc country, right? You are from
Tito-land?) 

 Marxism
> is for me (as other Marxist philosophers have taught me) first of all a
> method of analysing social and political issues.

On this side of the former WEst/East divide, Marxism was foremost an
instrument for changing the world rather than just interpreting it--at
least that is how it is taught outside the academy.

 The global picture
> offered by Marxism is valid, but the details are often out of date, out
> of touch with the reality or simply wrong. 

Both Marx and Engels understood that capitalism and the world-historical
economy were changing, and that every country and region had its own
peculiarities which made it exceptional, and so understandable only in
terms of empirical analyses which took this particularity into account. 

Both also recognized that economic terms like "capitalism" and historical
periodizations were abstractions having no content apart from concrete
analyses.  They understood their theories to be as much a product of their
own time and as open to revision as any other kind of
"wissenschaftlich" theory.  If some Marxist ideals get frozen into
timeless truths in places where they become part of the legitimation of
a state apparatus, well, that should come as no surprise to any reader of
the German Ideology or the 18th Brumaire, among others.

It does seem to me, however, that the tendencies of capitalist development
do still follow Marx's analyses.  I believe he was the first to discern
the problem of over-accumulation and link this to business cycles of boom
and bust. Also, his theory of value still seems to explain pretty well
modern business trends like the location of labor-intensive work in 3rd
world countries, not to mention the development of "flexible" management
in first world countries.  Control of the work day is still a pretty big
issue worldwide, as is control over the production of profitable
knowledge and trained manpower, so then there is the connection he makes
between competition and the development and and control of technology, and 
his point about the speed of turnover of Capital, which seems especially
relevant to a wired global economy.  So it isn't just as a guide to
interpreting past history that Marxism seems useful.  For people who want
to understand how the new internet technology is re-organizing power at
national and international levels, how economic domination continues
through new forms within and between nations, Marx is still pretty
relevant.  For those who would oppose this domination effectively, he is
indispensable.

> I would add: every time any philosophy is put into practice, it ends up
> brutal. Try to put Plato's philosophy into practice and you'll get a
> perfect fascist state. Does that mean that Plato should have known
> better or that his works shouldn't be read at all? Of course not.
> Philosophy is ment to be read sum grano salis, not as an instruction for
> use. Of course, in such an 'application' of a philosophy it is always
> matter of using it for one's own ends. But just as it would be absurd to
> accuse Nietzsche for Nazism, it is just as absurd accusing Marx for
> Stalinism - although some Nietzsche's and Marx's statements could be
> understood as supporting Hitler's and Stalin's ends.

REasonable statements, though I would say that wherever we see nation
states participating in a global economy, we are also seeing philosophical
ideas put into practice.  That there is a difference between just thinking  
and praxis, such that we don't know what ideas mean to those who practice
them until we see them put into practice, is also a lesson of Marx. 

The point is not that we do not know what ideas mean until they are put
into practice. That would be an idealist position. Nor is it that ideas do 
not guide praxis. Rather the point is  that ideas are meaningless
independent of praxis, of their concrete development in the production and
reproduction of daily life. 

hh
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