Dear Mark,
*I* was assuming you didn't intend the very obvious syllogism of your
original argument: exploitation is bad; Marxism is opposed to exploitation;
therefore Marxism is correct.
In Marx's own terms, it doesn't much matter whether the old boy could have
anticipated the consequences of his theses: 'objectivity' is a favourite
Marxian buzzword, and those who live by distorted notions of what's
objective should be allowed to die decently by them. For the record, I *do*
hold KM responsible for Lenin, Stalin, et al. The megalomaniac
pseudo-scientism of even basic Marxist economic theory is tailor-made for
use as an all-encompassing ideology, and the precedents of organised
religion, the wild offshoots of French Revolutionary philosophy, and indeed
the exploitative consequences of nascent pro-capitalist propaganda were not
only there to see but are actually referred to fulsomely by Marx himself.
The fact is, Marx set his own thought up as having an 'objective' value
over, above, & to some extent divorced from the very notion of morality, so
the idea that he was just a brilliant intellectual philanthropist concerned
with relieving the misery of the poor and overworked doesn't hold water.
This is the crux of the continuing problem with Marxist thought - the way
well-meaning people, yourself included it would seem, attribute some moral
value to a system which is self-avowedly amoral, just because it declares
itself to be on the side of the oppressed. It's worth noting that the Church
has been doing the same thing for even longer, and I doubt that many people
on the BritPo list would have much truck with that.
I think it's also a sad indication of how polarised, not to say Manichean,
this argument has become that you could assume I am not opposed to social &
economic injustice just because I will not fall down and worship Marx.
All the best Phil
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Mark Weiss wrote:
You're answering someone else. I was not defending Marxism beyond first
principles. I was very careful not to propose a means to the end or to
support history's horrors. The end, I think, is clear, however, and I can't
see why striving for some sort of economic equality would necessarily lead
to Stalin.
What I was proposing is a compassionate understanding of the anguish that
causes people to be leftists. I do wonder if academic leftists in the UK
are as monolithic a group as you seem to think. Perhaps they are--I have no
idea.
The key sentence in my earlier post was "That [the Marxist solution] didn't
work for a whole complex of reasons doesn't make the impulse to change what
one finds intolerable--what one ought to find intolerable--worthy of
scorn." In my neophyte's fervor I thought that I was being angry, not
patronizing, but you can read as you wish. Remember that all I had to go on
was your words.
Incidentally, going back to those words, do you really think that Marx
himself is responsible for all those miseries?
At 11:26 AM 7/5/2000 +0100, you wrote:
>Dear All,
>I'm tempted to leave it at that after Alan B's touching affirmation and
Mark
>W's conversion to irony, but I've just spent 2 hours travelling on a bus
>through one of England's most economically-exploited & underdeveloped areas
>(in which I live & work), planning my response, so here goes...
>
>Mark - You approach your subject with all the patronising fervour of a
>newly-graduated economics teacher addressing a refractory first-year. I
>don't need this, really. I have no difficulty appreciating that
exploitation
>exists (in the UK we tend to favour Bangladeshis rather than Mexicans) and
>having first read Marx at age 13 I know full well that his starting-point
>was a horror of the conditions that made such exploitation economically
>necessary to capitalism as he saw it. However, you know & I know that
>Marxism doesn't stop there. It purports to offer a total package of
>revolutionary change which would affect the slightest detail of the way in
>which it's possible to live (see Peter Riley's posts _passim_) This is
where
>the discussion-strand on 'the totality of relations' came in, the big
>questions in my view being (1) who has the right to decide what such a
>totality consists in, and (2) what happens when something comes along that
>falls outside this ? We already have plentiful evidence in the dismal
annals
>of 20th century practical Marxism to indicate the answers, and alongside
>this a continuing culture of academic leftism that insists that all this
was
>merely the product of bureaucratic mistakes and evil individuals, the
>underlying theory being pure and sound. Rubbish ! When I was a Marxist
>(yes, and it lasted for about 20 years !) it was generally agreed that the
>highest form of theory was Praxis, i.e. what people actually _do_. Quod
>erat demonstrandum.
>
>Henry (le Facteur de la Verite) - I'm with you on antiismism, but I'd be
>inclined to go easy on the sneers at the middle-classes: I suspect that
most
>denizens of this List would qualify.
>
>Oh, and Dave B - you are Dave Spart of "Private Eye" and I claim my £200.
>
>Cheers Phil
>
>
>
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