Marxism

[Shevek]

You are so wrong on so many levels. Marxism as an ideology and train of thought is more alive than ever. I am yet to meet a modern historian who has not totally been shaped by marxist modes of thought. Even if you are not a Communist, marxism has still probably shaped most academic and academic thinking people's mentalities.

Marxism is certainly not dead, but the Marxist focus on economic and class relations is not the dominant theoretical approach in history anymore. At least in Canadian and British history more attention is being paid to Gramsci (who I recognize was a Marxist), who embraced politics and the state not as a mere "superstructure" but a central way of managing class relations through hegemony. The most popular academics like David Harvey still accept the basic tenets of Marxist political economy, and they are the ones who tend to get mainstream attention. But at my university and beyond, there are plenty of historians who have been shaped far more by post-structuralism than Marxism, and their only engagement with Marxism is in refutation of it. In the field of social history, there are two big theorists - Gramsci and Foucault - and it's becoming more rare for recent scholarship to engage directly with Marx.

[cafolini]

Well I have met many non-Marxists. The stunted intellectuals you refer to are well represented by the late (Good choice Eric) Hobsbawm and a nasty piece of work he was. It seems to have escaped your notice that the last twenty to thirty years has seen the wholesale abandonment and destruction of Marxist governance which ruled many states by terror for two generations. Perhaps China is playing footsie with capitalism in order to extend the shelf life of its one-party crony state but that will fail and pop will go that mob. No doubt you would point to Cuba as a country where single party terror has worked wonders for literacy - not impressed pal. In desperation you might point to North Korea but that for its population is a prison. People always want to run away from Marxist states. Why?

Why?
A difficult question to accept an answer without the big stick that will make it convincing.

[julian94]

Marxism is an ideology that led to the slaughter of millions

Democracy is an ideology that led to the slaughter of hundreds of millions.

[Eiseabhal]

Aye right. That'll be the democracy of donaldduckdom then.

[islandclimber]

I prefer the democracy of daffyduckdom.

[julian94]

Aye right. That'll be the democracy of donaldduckdom then.

Nahhhh, it's simply called democracy. Would you believe that they killed this guy named Socrates?

[mal4mac]

If you point to non-Marxist states as having some features of Marxist states as somehow evidence for the health of Marxism this only emphasises the cloud-cuckoo nature of your beliefs. Having communal health systems for example can be achieved by nations that have no Marxist influence whatsoever on their political thinkers...

It's difficult to see how any left leaning party could have no Marxist influence. Take the UK Labour party (which started "communal health system" - the NHS.) It was certainly influenced by Marxism, indeed the Labour Party affiliated to the Second (Socialist) International in 1908. This was accepted by the International Bureau, supported by Lenin, who viewed the British Labour Party as representing “the first step on the part of the really proletarian organisations of Britain towards a conscious class policy and towards a socialist workers’ party.”

[JBI]

Marxism is certainly not dead, but the Marxist focus on economic and class relations is not the dominant theoretical approach in history anymore. At least in Canadian and British history more attention is being paid to Gramsci (who I recognize was a Marxist), who embraced politics and the state not as a mere "superstructure" but a central way of managing class relations through hegemony. The most popular academics like David Harvey still accept the basic tenets of Marxist political economy, and they are the ones who tend to get mainstream attention. But at my university and beyond, there are plenty of historians who have been shaped far more by post-structuralism than Marxism, and their only engagement with Marxism is in refutation of it. In the field of social history, there are two big theorists - Gramsci and Foucault - and it's becoming more rare for recent scholarship to engage directly with Marx.

Both Foucault and Gramsci are Marxist thinkers. They rely on the system and the top=down approach significantly. Hegemony is top-down.

[miyako73]

A subclass division/conflict within the middle class. The upper middle class has the exclusive chance and opportunity to be elite and those in the lower middle class has the particular misfortune that forces them to slide down to the class of the masses.

[Eiseabhal]

The question is, was the elimination of Aristotle a mere tiff between parasitic slave-owning intellectuals or was it a genuine progressive movement that the dialectic can show to have been a step towards that goal of Proletarian Dictatorship to which we and all the Marxist elite aspire. As with The French Revolution I believe it is too early to have a true historical verdict.

I remain your comrade and admirer,
Leon Trotsky

I can't find in Ennison's post any reference to the British Labour Party or the UK NHS. But let us assume he was referring to that, even if there were people influenced by Marx in that Party post WWII (There were of course) the party was a mass party containing a wide variety of people, many of whom were motivated by Christianity rather than Marx and many who were seeking pragmatic answers to social problems. The idea of communal health systems contains things like the provision of clean drinking water, something that the Tory Party was good at providing in major UK cities long before the Labour Party actually existed. The opinion of a mummy on the British Labour Party is not important.

[ennison]

Taing dhuit Eiseabhal s bliadhna Mhath ur dhuit nuair a thigeas i. Like the ref to the mummy. The Marxists just lurv their pharaohs.

[Shevek]

Both Foucault and Gramsci are Marxist thinkers. They rely on the system and the top=down approach significantly. Hegemony is top-down.

Foucault a Marxist? I cannot see how Foucault could be considered a Marxist thinker. Foucault's system of power, not to mention Gramsci's, is much different than the orthodox Marxist approach. You can use Foucault and Gramsci to study top-down power relations, but to Foucault, power is not contained to domination. People in Foucault's account are the active participants, "vehicles," in power relations and so studying the forces of economy and state are not sufficient to fully understand power. Plus treatment of the top-down forces themselves are a lot different between Marx and Foucault. Marx theorized the state as an apparatus of control, whereas Foucault abandoned theorizing _the_ state altogether preferring to look at power relations rather than just institutional structures. As for Gramsci, the idea of hegemony through persuasion is something novel to Marxist thinking that does allow for investigation of grassroots developments. Resistance is key to hegemony, as there is also counter-hegemony, so no Gramscian will get the full story by restricting themselves to top-down forces.

[JBI]

From Foucault's mouth - I'm very proud that some people think that I'm a danger for the intellectual health of students. When people start thinking of health in intellectual activities, I think there is something wrong. In their opinion I am a dangerous man, since I am a crypto-Marxist, an irrationalist, a nihilist.

Seriously though, just because you diverge does not mean you are rooted in this sort of thought. It is impossible to get away from Marxism.

[OrphanPip]

Foucault's ideas are not strictly Marxist, but they do build out of a Continental philosophical tradition that Marx was a part of. Gramsci is a Marxist, and I find it difficult to separate him from Marxism.

Even if Foucault is not a Marxist, his ideas have been appropriated to an extent by Marxist critics working in Cultural Studies, and several New Historicists combine Marxist ideas with Foucauldian post-structuralism. My own MA thesis combines Marxist theory of the novel (drawing on Michael McKeon's dialectical approach to the genre) with a New Historicist concern for social context, they simply work well together because they share much of the same philosophical basis.

[prendrelemick]

Well I have met many non-Marxists. The stunted intellectuals you refer to are well represented by the late (Good choice Eric) Hobsbawm and a nasty piece of work he was. It seems to have escaped your notice that the last twenty to thirty years has seen the wholesale abandonment and destruction of Marxist governance which ruled many states by terror for two generations. Perhaps China is playing footsie with capitalism in order to extend the shelf life of its one-party crony state but that will fail and pop will go that mob. No doubt you would point to Cuba as a country where single party terror has worked wonders for literacy - not impressed pal. In desperation you might point to North Korea but that for its population is a prison. People always want to run away from Marxist states. Why?

Why - because they are run by Uber-Capitalists

I don't think Marx can be blamed for any tyranical state. He was about exactly the opposite, He was about "We the People" just like America. The People ruled by The People for the benefit of The People. He thought that capitalism was not the best option to achieve this as it is basicly flawed and could not last. The fatal flaw of Capitalism as he saw it, was that capital flowed from the poor to the rich, and this cannot go on indefinitetly. He was an admirer of the progress achieved by Capitalism though. It's a system that gets things done.

There is some thought that his predictions about Capitalism are coming home to roost at last, easy credit (so the poor can continue to enrich the capitalist) and the advent of global wide trading (so there are more poor to enrich the capitalist) has put off the evil day, but can it much longer?