On 12/2/06, John Gulick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>The dialectic of capital-wage labor is indeed what makes capitalism what it
>is, and it is therefore the primary contradiction at the level of theory,
>but that theory does not imply that people can or must organize themselves
>in practice along the line of the primary contradiction which is an
>abstraction. In reality, all social movements under capitalism --
>including successful revolutionary ones -- have been cross-class movements,
>with more or less eclectic sources of influence (from religion to
>feminism), and they always will be and should be. Theoretical tools
>developed in the Marxist tradition can merely help us understand and
>participate in social movements better than without them. In short, the
>tools are not meant for purifying cross-class movements into a movement of,
>by, and for "the proletariat" in the abstract.
>So, Stan is right to reject the "doctrine" in question, except that I do
>not think that's a doctrine inherent in the Marxist tradition, though
>indeed it probably is the one that governs Marxist-Leninist organizations
>in the USA, none of which I have ever joined.
Gulick writes:
This is precisely my reaction to what Stan wrote -- except your formulation
is much more pithy and powerful than what I composed, so I won't even bother
posting it. Frankly, I am very surprised that someone of Stan's intellectual
acumen in effect conflates Marxist theory and M-L sects, and is prone to
dismissing the former because of the irrelevance of the latter. I guess this
is what happens when one's education in Marxist theory is closely associated
with (if not directly derived from) one's involvement with M-L sects and one
takes the notion of praxis too literally: the baby is in perpetual danger of
being tossed out with the bathwater.
There are better varieties of Marxist theory (which, it should be
noted, Stan does not dismiss wholesale) than the one that binds
Marxist-Leninist organizations, but those better varieties have no
practical, let alone organizational, expression whatsoever and remain
merely schools of thought in the USA. Stan is a practical man, so
that's what he is -- in my opinion rightly -- dissatisfied with, I
think.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
