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I have been very influenced by Tamas' remarks about Thompson in his great essay Telling the Truth about class" < http://www.grundrisse.net/grundrisse22/tellingTheTruthAboutClass.htm>. the following excerpt is very interesting, I feel. comradely Gary "All versions of socialist endeavour can and should be classified into two principal kinds, one inaugurated by Rousseau, the other by Marx. The two have opposite visions of the social subject in need of liberation, and these visions have determined everything from rarefied epistemological positions concerning language and consciousness to social and political attitudes concerning wealth, culture, equality, sexuality and much else. It must be said at the outset that many, perhaps most socialists who have sincerely believed they were Marxists, have in fact been Rousseauists. Freud has eloquently described resistances to psychoanalysis; intuitive resistance to Marxism is no less widespread, even among socialists. It is emotionally and intellectually difficult to be a Marxist since it goes against the grain of moral indignation which is, of course, the main reason people become socialists. One of the greatest historians of the Left, E.P. Thompson, has synthesized what can be best said of class in the tradition of Rousseauian socialism which believes itself to be Marxian.1 The Making of the English Working Class is universally – and rightly – recognized to be a masterpiece. Its beauty, moral force and conceptual elegance originate in a few strikingly unusual articles of faith: (1) that the working class is a worthy cultural competitor of the ruling class; (2) that the Lebenswelt of the working class is socially and morally superior to that of its exploiters; (3) that regardless of the outcome of the class struggle, the autonomy and separateness of the working class is an intrinsic social value; (4) that the class itself is constituted by the autopoiesis of its rebellious political culture, including its re-interpretation of various traditions, as well as by technology, wage labour, commodity production and the rest. Whereas Karl Marx and Marxism aim at the abolition of the proletariat, Thompson aims at the apotheosis and triumphant survival of the proletariat. Thompson’s Rousseauian brand of Marxism triggered a sustained critique by Perry Anderson, one that is now half-forgotten but still extremely important. Although his terms are quite different from mine, Anderson sought to show that Thompson’s conviction that he was a Marxist was erroneous.2 Thompson had participated in a number of movements and intellectual adventures inspired by Marxism, and his fidelity to radical socialism – under twentieth-century circumstances – meant loyalty to Marxism’s revolutionary legacy. But Thompson had to ignore the Faustian-demonic encomium of capitalism inherent in Marx, and so he had to oppose ‘critical theory’, and then theory tout court.3 Anderson later described this decomposition of ‘Western Marxism’ – away from class to ‘the people’ – in conceptual terms,4 a diagnosis that has been proved right by events since." On Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 3:36 AM, Andrew Pollack via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > ***************************************************************** > > New at MIA: > https://www.marxists.org/archive/thompson-ep/1951/william-morris.htm > Thanks to Paul Flewers for transcribing this. > I'd be interested to hear from him and others with more knowledge of the > period in general and Thompson and/or Morris in particular, what they make > of this piece. > On the one hand it's an inspiring appeal for mass agitation on the > nonmaterial, morally and culturally uplifting features of socialism a la > Morris's dreams. > On the other it tries to minimize or deny Stalinist crimes, and thus makes > me wonder what Thompson in his post-Stalinist days made of Morris (and > whether his attachment to Morris helped him break from Stalinism). > _________________________________________________________ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/gary.maclennan1%40gmail.com > _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
