I said:
The style of orthodox Marxism is of course a guarantee that no one will
talk to you who is not already a true believer.
Doyle
That turn of phrase I recall from the old days of the sixties from the
philosopher, Eric Hoffer. Where Hoffer theorized the Marxist left as being
"true believers". Of course snippets of phrases hardly amount to some sort
of theory of anything.
* * *
I was not consciously invoking Eric Hoffer, whose "The True Believer," a tract
attacking, actually, working class radicalism in Hoffer's West Coast Longshoreman's
Union, although the phrase may have echoed since I read it 30 years ago. But I did
mean to attack dogmatic Marxists, who of course will deny thatthey are being dogmatic,
but who respond to any criticism of Marx, engels, Lenin, and sometimes Trotsky with a
porcupine response, and who think, moreover, that nothing that has happened since 1917
or pick your date, has raised any important questions about the validity of
traditional orthodox (what a phrase!) Marxism, or a style of rhetoric deriving mainly
from early 20th century Russia as refracted through a century of American sectarianism.
Louis Proyect is a proud defender of this pattern of behavior; he also regards me as
beneath contempt, a filthy right wing renegade, a nasty social democratic turncoat, a
class traitor and enemy of the people, who ought to crawl back to the Heritage
Foundation and stop exposing innocent young minds on the left to evil influences like
Hayek and G.A. Cohen. Isn't that right Louis?
