>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/05/00 06:37AM >>>
>>> "Embarkadero" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 10/05 5:44 AM >>>
What value, then, is marxism
to a discussion of the Crash?
1. All the dynamics that have led to this point have
occurred within the historical epoch of capitalism.
2. The operation of these prodigious forces of production
are described poetically in the Commuist Manifesto.
3. The crash is inherently capitalist - it could not have
happened under feudalism, for example - which makes a
critique of capitalism vital to an understanding of the
crash.
4. The best and most thorough critique of capitalism is that
presented by Karl Marx.
5. Marx's critique also suggests an alternative way of
living together, called communism.
6. The most relevant point of all of this is that the crash
and the destruction of the planet cannot be halted within
the framework of private property relations.
7. It is because this point is disputed by some list members
that we have to debate with them. If they accepted it and we
could go on to talking about what a classless world without
private property would look like then we wouldn't have to
debate it with them.
8. Finally, some other list members still insist that the
bureaucratic, statist, capitalism that was leninist
bolshevism, which was and still is responsible for massive
environmental degradation is a true practical expression of
Marx's thought. They need to be shown that they're wrong.
9. OK one more: if I'm wrong on the last point I'll give up
defending something called marxism, but the other essential
points here will still be the same for me.
(((((((((((((
CB: This summary and reasoning is very cogent to the issues on this thread, although I
disagree with 9.
I don't want to initiate a debate on the empirical evidence regarding # 9. I want to
point out that if there has never been a Marxist revolution yet, Marx's theory of
socialist reovoluton becomes more and more taxed as time goes by , by Marx's main
epistemological principles as expressed in the Theses on Feuerbach, in that there Marx
says that the test of theory is practice ,and the thing is to not only interpret the
world , but change it. In other words, without the Russian Revolution and its incident
revolutions ( China, explosion of national liberation revolutions in colonies after
WWII) , Marxism has not changed the world, begins to become suspected of
scholasticism, i.e. nice sounding words, that don't work in practice. We would
probably not even be talking about Marx, if it had not been for Leninism and the
Russian Revolution. He would be an obscure, crackpot, oddball.
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