At 01:49 PM 6/18/97 -0700, you wrote: >Recently Karl wrote: > >KARL: Robert there is no such political philosophy as >marxism-leninism. However there is a political philosophy called >Leninism of which Stalnism and Trotskyism are varieties. Leninism is >clearly not a form of marxism. At most it is a form of marxist >revisionism that has succeeded in twisting marxism into forms that >suits its ends. Now Leninism may be validly described as a form of >religion but hardly marxism. > >COMMENT: This sounds like some ideological Alice-in-Wonderland discourse >that upstages Shawgi Tell's Marxist-Leninists by far. At the very least >there have been groups for some time in Canada and elsewhere that have >called themselves Marxist-Leninists and whatever one may think of it >they have a political philosophyy and a political party through which the >disseminate their views. The term Marxism-Leninism was also used commonly >in the USSR as a term to describe the offical political philosophhy. In fact I >used a text written by a group of authors and edited by Dutt that was entitled >FUNDAMENTALS OF MARXISSM-LENISM. Maoists who thought that theUSSR oriented >communist party was not marxist-leninist often spoke of >marxism-leninism-mao-tse-tung thought; ironically when they ran as a party they > ran as COMMUNIST PARTY( Marxist-Leninist). I am not sure whether the >group Shawgi is involved with are offspring of this tendency or not. >As for Leninism clearly not being a form of Marxism, I pass. No doubt bad >Christians aren't really Christians either. Karl must have some echt Marxism >in mind. > Cheers, Ken Hanly My comment: Debates on "ideological purity" generally are but hogwash, but the issue gains some currency when the so-called managerial ideologies are concerned. Managerial ideologies are forms of corporate religion or legitimating myths that are ostensibly based on scientific theories, but they are a selective hodge podge of simplified version of those theories mixed with common sense rules of thumbs, anecdotes and what not, crafted to provide guidance to managerial personnel. In order to successfully do so, a managerial ideology must: create a sense of direction or higher purpose, provide an illusion that something extraordinary or radically different from some nondescript "past practices" is being done, but at the same time the existing managerial practices values and beliefs remain essentially unchanged, and gives a legitmacy to the position of the manager in the hierarchy (for a discussion see Andrzej Huczynski, _Management gurus: what makes them and how to become one_, London:1996). The so called "Marxism-Leninism" was in fact such a managerial ideology, a sort of Clifton notes on Marx selectively picked and adapted to the needs of Russian indistrialization project (Alexander Gerschenkron, _Relative Backwardness in a Historical Perspective_). The same holds for Mao Tse tung and his "golden thoughts" collected in "red books" freely distributed all over the world by the Chinese during the late 1960s. In that capacity, these managrial ideologies were no different from the psycho-babble offered by the human relation school, TQM, or the new buzzword -- "trust." The idiocy of such managerial ideologies in no way reflect the contents of the scientific theories from which they were derived. wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233
