Re: Which Marxism? (fwd)

On Wed, 9 Jun 1999, elson wrote:

>I'm not sure what you mean by "Marx has been proven wrong."  Was Marx wrong
>on this particular issue?  Yes.

This is the point, elson: Marx can only be wrong about things he actually
said or predicted or that can be reasonably inferred from his writings. At
this point, I don't believe you have actually read Marx. Your Marxism
appears to be drawn from second and third hand textbook accounts.

>The bulk of his work does not suggest that he thought that capitalism as
>a social system would create a stratified structure of inequality at the
>interstate level.

By definition capitalism creates a global economically stratified system.
And it is through colonialism that capitalism globalizes itself. This is
one of Marx's central arguments. Just read the Communist Manifesto. It's
all right there.

>Further, was Marx correct about everything he wrote about?  No.  Was
>Marx a great guy?  Of course.

Completely unnecessary statement. So everybody is wrong about some things.
This goes without saying. What is at issue is whether Marx said something
that was wrong. I submit that in answering such questions we stick with
what Marx said or what can be reasonable inferred from his work. I am not
obligated to ideologically balance my defense of Marx by pointing out
flaws irrelevant to this discussion.

>Warren does represent an orthodox Marxist perspective or genre, and has
>certainly been described as part of that genre in reviews of his work.  That
>is, there is a significant literature behind him.

By people of your persuasion, evidently. But those who obviously know more
about the subject have taken a different position. I will stick with these
other judgments in lieu of any cogent argument from you.

>You may not agree with these interpretations of Marx.  But they are
>hardly strawdogs.  If they were, people, including Petras, would not
>have responded.

First, *your* arguments are the strawmen I have been talking about (I
assume you have included your "interpretation" among these interpretors of
Marx). Second, if you had read Petras' critique of Warren you would know
that he was not responding because Warren presented a serious challenge to
the body of theory about imperialism. His critique is, along with being a
demolition of Warren's views, dismissive of Warren's method and
conclusions. The critique does not have the tone of engagement with a
serious scholar, but rather the hallmarks of an intellectual spanking.

You have made a false argument here. Think about it: people didn't produce
a mountain of critiques of the Bell Curve because they believed that
Murray and Herrnstein actually presented a strong scientific argument.

Andy