>> "The Marxist knows where history *must* go. If the autonomous action of
the masses does go in this direction, it teaches the Marxist nothing; if it
goes somewhere else, it is a bad autonomy, or rather it is not an autonomy
at all, since if the masses are not directed towards the correct aims, this
is because they still remain under the influence of capitalism." [Cornelius
Castoriadis]
Castoriadis here defines "Marxism" as inherently involving this kind of
dogmatism ("knowing where history _must_ go"), right? But I'd bet that
Castoriadis used some Marxist concepts and theories nonetheless. But given
his definition of the term "Marxist," he didn't fit within that category.Of course, a lot of Marxists pull the same trick, i.e., using definitions to oppose their own Marx-influenced ideas to "dogmatic or orthodox Marxism" (the "Marxism of the Second or Third Internationals," the Marxism of those damned Trots, etc.) The latter are pretty much the same people as the ones that Castoriadis defines as "Marxist" above. One pen-pal, Mike Lebowitz, has a simple answer here. In his CAPITAL, Marx developed "laws of motion" of capital that worked inexorably, with iron necessity, and all that crap. But a key _premise_ (which was explicitly stated in CAPITAL)[*] was that the "autonomous action" of the working class didn't happen in a significant enough way to change those "laws." To my mind, the point was to say "if the working class doesn't resist capital, these are the results we'll see."[**] The premise also made Marx's whole enterprise easier: CAPITAL, as Mike points out, only concerns the "political economy of capital" and not the political economy of the working class or the political economy of the struggles of the two classes combined in a single system. The dogmatic Marxists (or the Marxists _per se_ as Castoriadis uses the word above) simply take the premise to be true, saying that Capital's "laws" _do_ work inexorably. Of course, there's good reason to drop the premise, in which case we have to examine how the interaction between those "laws" and "autonomous action" by the working class works out in practice. IMHO, that analysis would still be "Marxist" even if Castoriadis does not want it to be so. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. [*] Marx stated the premise in terms of the value of labor-power being taken as not being determined by working-class struggle. But in the book as a whole, it works out as saying that the "laws" of motion of the system aren't changed by working-class struggle. [**] In fact, if the working classes are too weak to resist, as seems to be the case these days, Marx's laws -- e.g., the "absolute general law of capitalist accumulation" (immiseration) -- is pretty predictive.
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