gabor@qantel.UUCP (Gabor Fencsik@ex2642) (04/02/85)
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Richard,
reading your weekly diamat lessons has brought back fond memories of my years
in Moscow and my old Marxism-Leninism teacher (whose main claim to fame was
that Stalin himself once threw a briefcase at him, and he lived to tell us
about it). All the stuff about the dialectic of the acorn and the oak tree
is truly first class. Nevertheless, -
1. To the extent Marxism is a science, it must be judged on the basis of
the falsifiable predictions it makes that are a) true and b) non-trivial
(rhetorical sweep and moral superiority do not count). The record of Marxism
in generating such predictions is dismal.
This is not to say that Marx, as an astute political observer, has not
foreseen a great many political and economic developments (in fact, the
Communist Manifesto paints a remarkably precise picture, in 1848, of the
world as it was going to be in 1914). What is at issue here is the
predictive power of the theory he left behind.
Rejecting such criteria for the truth of the theory inevitably leads to
the 'voodoo Marxism' of Lukacs who stated (I am translating from memory):
'Assuming, for the sake of the argument, that all of the factual
assertions of Marxism are proven false, the dialectical method will
still stand as the supreme ... etc.'
2. I agree that Sowell's book is worth reading even though I find it far
too charitable, especially with regard to the alleged democratic
sentiments of Marx. In fact his published writings and private
correspondence reek of contempt for democracy, non-violent
solutions, compromise, pluralism or a minimum tolerance for the
convictions of others.
3. In closing, here is a quote from Sowell that applies to a number of
Marxists I have known (most have outgrown it in time):
'Despite the massive intellectual feat that Marx's Capital represents, the
Marxian contribution to economics can be readily summarized as virtually
zero ... Capital was a detour into a blind alley, however historic it may
be as the centerpiece of a worldwide political movement. What is said and
done in its name is said and done largely by people who have never read
through it, much less followed its labyrinthine reasoning from its
arbitrary postulates to its empirically false conclusions. Instead, the
massive volumes of Capital have become a quasi-magic touchstone - a source
of assurance that somewhere and somehow a genius "proved" capitalism to
be wrong and doomed, even if the specifics of this proof are unknown to
those who take their certitude from it.'
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Gabor Fencsik {dual,nsc,intelca,proper}!qantel!gabor