tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch) (10/08/85)
In article <28200136@inmet.UUCP> janw@inmet.UUCP writes: >There is Marxist ideology; there is also Marxist method - far >from infallible, but sometimes enlightening. > > Consider this: what is the basic tenet of Marxist sociology ? It is >that ideology is an expression of class interest. Applied to statist >ideology, *including modern Marxism*, this reads : it is the express- >ion of self-interest of the New Class of bureaucracy and allied social >groups (of which your jackass instructor was one of the lowliest >representatives). In other words: they play Good Shepherd, and they >*believe it*, but they are really out to fleece you. The M-L philosophy from Progress Publishers may put it this way, but that's pretty crude to my sense. Sounds more like a justification for crude state behavior than an analysis of reality. A more realistic and historical maxim for ideology, still Marxist, is that ideology is the publicly expressed history and pattern of compromises and bargains between classes. Hegemony = force + consent, as Gramsci would put it. I'd think that the only time ideology would be an expression of class interest untainted by compromise and vague language is when the social order is based on lots of force and little consent. Doesn't that describe the whole period, from say 1900 to 1960 or so, in most of Central and Eastern Europe? Given that history, is the crudification of Marxism into a raw justification for force very surprising? Sad, yes; surprising, maybe not. > Taxes are not collected to pay for "social needs": "social >needs" are discovered to justify taxes. True or false, this is >what the Marxist method leads to. Does Jan mean here that whether a declaration of "social need" reflects a real social need is just a matter of blind luck or political corruption? I disagree. The legitimacy of most officially Marxist governments rests not on a democratic vote, but precisely on the fulfillment of some set of social needs. If these social needs (a fair set is shared almost worldwide between Marxists [and some of them are very oldfashioned to my eyes]) aren't met, than calls for revolution are justified in the official ideology. That's in part why the more sneaky and corrupt Marxist states hide information measuring the fulfillment of social needs -- it's a dangerous subject. And that's in part why democratic states like the US reveal information about social needs -- it's not a dangerous subject. > (The term "New Class" in the above sense was coined by Milovan >Djilas in a book by the same title . The author is a Marxist, >but ex-Communist ; he used to be the leading theoretician of Com- >munist Yugoslavia, then became one of its convicts). It should be noted that this "New Class" has nothing to do with the Western discussion of "new class", i.e. a technical-professional class. > Unfortunately, few Marxists read Marx; they don't suspect, for >instance, that the main propositions of the 1st volume of Das Ka- >pital (on which their whole case is built) are retracted in the >3d volume. > Jan Wasilewsky Isn't it the reverse, Jan, since the 1st volume was written AFTER the 3d volume? The 3d volume was just a set of notes edited and published by Engels. :-) (really, I don't care. What difference does it make to the value or lack thereof of Marxist ideas? I'm not a great fan of most M economics anyhow.) Tony Wuersch {amd,amdcad}!cae780!ubvax!tonyw