I agree with your critique of "Marxism" -- but as for the ratio of male to female Marxists, I don't know that this is anything more than a reflection of the general ratio of males to females in any political/economic/historic discussion. For cultural reasons, women are not encouraged or supported in their efforts to take part in these kinds of discussions. You will notice that even in the lefty magz, like the Nation, women are routinely asked to handle women's issues, (like birth control, domestic violence, etc.) but seldom asked to comment on more general topics.
Joanna
Jurriaan Bendien wrote:
what obliges people to change the system? Marx took for granted the
general antipathy of the socialist and communist movements of his day toward capitalism.
Jim,
I agree with the substance of what you say. But in your last sentence, I am inclined to think this ignores that it isn't "pretty obvious" for many working class people. My own opinion is that what Marx did was perfectly valid even if imperfect, the problem is not with marx but with Marxism, and specifically the culture of Marxism. Male Marxists outnumber female Marxists 10 to 1, just as an indication. What I like about Louis Proyect and PEN-L is an attempt to foster alternatives to a boring, alienating and stultifying Marxist culture, where people just engage in bile and nasty polemics. In my whole life, I befriended only one Marxist who really supported me at a personal level when I needed it. Sectarian stupidity by Marxists wasted part of my life. Most Marxists I experienced might have been brilliant thinkers, but were not significant as human beings. As a socialist, I support Marx but reject Marxism, because Marxism seeks to impose an ideology on the working class, and the end of that story is just a new elite and not a universalising liberating process. That explains my heterodoxy.
We change the system by changing the way we live and what we do, and encouraging others to do it to, in a direction which makes us all stronger. We invent new cultures and defend them against bourgeois parasitism.
Jurriaan
