Re: [Marxism] Tony Judt: Marxism Resurgent?

["Louis Godena" <louis.godena@xxxxxxxxx>]

Well, two thoughts.  First, all major ideologies are "totalizing"; that is,
they provide a comprehensive, all-embracing structure through which its
adherents view and explain the world.   Judt and others like him are fooling
themselves if they believe that the variety of humanistic liberalism to
which they subscribe is any less of a "totality" than say, fascism or
communism or islam.   The issue for me is the class context in which such
totalities play out. Does the totalitarianism of Marxism properly lead to
the liquidation of the exploiting class and the destruction of private
property and the state?   Does it facilitate the realization of the full
potential of each individual (other than exploiters or misanthropes)?
Yes?  Then, I am for it.  Of course, Marxism is a form of
"totalitarianism".   The annhilation of the exploiting class (not to mention
the work of building socialism) is a frightfully difficult and arduous
task.  It can only be seriously contemplated within the context of
totalitarain methods employed by both sides (they will certainly be used by
our opponents).

Secondly, as capitalism itself evolves naturally and inevitably into
fascism,  attitudes toward "totalitarianism" itself will likely mature.  It
may in the long run even be seen as something ordinary, even good (this was
true during the early reign of regimes as disparate as Pinochet, Pol Pot,
Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Stalin and Suharto).   Many of us nod credulously
when we are told by various scholars, journalists and politicians that "9/11
changed everything" and that we must accept (if not outwardly embrace) some
of the early trappings of "totalitarianism" such as increased police
surveillance, detention for unspecified lengths, invasive searches and
"unlawful" seizures, and the like.   Given that capitalism is always
pregnant with the fetus of fascism, and the likelihood that this beast will
emerge full blown at some advanced stage of capitalist development, it is
probable that the "totalitarian" canard will be overplayed to the point of
rendering the people deaf to the entreaties of its authors.   Then, the
choice may be clear enough between the "totality" of fascism and that of its
opposite, that the merits of both can then, in the minds of the
people, decide the issue.

Louis G


On 9/3/06, Sayan Bhattacharyya <ok.president+marxmail@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 9/2/06, Louis Godena <louis.godena@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > In short, the world appears to be entering upon a new cycle, one with
> which
> > our nineteenth-century forebears were familiar but of which we in the
> West
> > have no recent experience. In the coming years, as visible disparities
> of
> > wealth increase and struggles over the terms of trade, the location of
> > employment, and the control of scarce natural resources all become more
> > acute, we are likely to hear more, not less, about inequality,
> injustice,
> > unfairness, and exploitation—at home but especially abroad. And thus, as
> we
> > lose sight of communism (already in Eastern Europe you have to be
> > thirty-five years old to have any adult memory of a Communist regime),
> the
> > moral appeal of some refurbished version of Marxism is likely to grow.
>
> > Full:
> > http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19302
>
> The entire article was very interesting. But what do you think of the
> last two paragraphs:
>
> "In the early years of this new century we thus find ourselves facing
> two opposite and yet curiously similar fantasies. The first fantasy,
> most familiar to Americans but on offer in every advanced country, is
> the smug, irenic insistence by commentators, politicians, and experts
> that today's policy consensus—lacking any clear alternative—is the
> condition of every well-managed modern democracy and will last
> indefinitely; that those who oppose it are either misinformed or else
> malevolent and in either case doomed to irrelevance. The second
> fantasy is the belief that Marxism has an intellectual and political
> future: not merely in spite of communism's collapse but because of it.
> Hitherto found only at the international "periphery" and in the
> margins of academia, this renewed faith in Marxism—at least as an
> analytical tool if not a political prognostication—is now once again,
> largely for want of competition, the common currency of international
> protest movements.
>
> "The similarity, of course, consists in a common failure to learn from
> the past—and a symbiotic interdependence, since it is the myopia of
> the first that lends spurious credibility to the arguments of the
> second. Those who cheer the triumph of the market and the retreat of
> the state, who would have us celebrate the unregulated scope for
> economic initiative in today's "flat" world, have forgotten what
> happened the last time we passed this way. They are in for a rude
> shock (though, if the past is a reliable guide, probably at someone
> else's expense). As for those who dream of rerunning the Marxist tape,
> digitally remastered and free of irritating Communist scratches, they
> would be well-advised to ask sooner rather than later just what it is
> about all-embracing "systems" of thought that leads inexorably to
> all-embracing "systems" of rule."
>
> How should we respond to this criticism, namely that Marxism is a
> totalising philosophy and hence inevitably will lead to
> totalitarianism in practice? We need to be prepared to counter this
> criticism.
>
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