Re: [Marxism] On Marxism's failure in the USA

[Fred Zaman <agent.redstone@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- On Sun, 3/22/09, Mark Lause <markalause@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

From: Mark Lause <markalause@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Marxism] On Marxism's failure in the USA
To: "agent redstone" <agent.redstone@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sunday, March 22, 2009, 1:54 PM

n short, Marxism failed in the United States by not being Marxist.  Makes sense.

What then has been being built here for decades--or attempted?  We all
see this through the light of what we've been exposed to.  I've always
seen the American version of Marxism as leaning very heavily towards a
kind of Positivism--an abiding religious faith that you have a
scientific grasp on the way the world works.  As with other faiths,
the faith is seen as a virtue in itself and defined primarily through
an institution.

ML

Mark,
I agree with your view of US Marxism past. What Americaâs âNew Marxian 
Timesâ endeavors to show is that there is an Althusserian version of 
historical 
materialism operating in the nationâs political underground thatâs grounded 
on the 
Constitution and the American political system, which indeed must be brought 
into the light if class struggle in the US is to be correctly discerned and 
responded 
to democratically.

Is this postulated US version of historical materialism âMarxismâ? The 
answer to 
this question depends on what one accepts as being Marxist. In my upcoming 
essay, the introduction to which is given below, an Althusserian-type Marxism 
can be demonstrated in the history of American capitalism, circa 1650 to the 
present and beyond into the future; whose unseen political dynamics operates at 
the level of the nationâs political unconscious--through which conservative, 
communitarian, liberal, and libertarian underground currents of political 
ideology 
continuously flow. These underground currents, as shown in the essay, have 
interpellated Americaâs upper, lower, and middle classes, continuously 
throughout American history.

Marxismâs failure as a political movement in the United States, considered in 
this 
light, is due to Marxismâs failure to understand, in sufficient depth 
theoretically, 
the US political system--whose theoretical understanding can be greatly 
facilitated by correctly applying Althusserian political theory--which I 
believe 
Iâve done in this essay.

FZ
----------------


PREAMBLE: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect 
Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common 
defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to 
ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the 
United States of America.

1 Introduction
This essayâs Althusserian theory of the United Statesâ political system is 
that of a 
âDemocratically Interpellated Republicâ whose democratically elected, 
representative government is constitutionally grounded on class based, 
political 
ideology; whose constitution is the political foundation of class war waged 
behind 
the scenes by capitalists against the lower classes: socially, economically, 
and 
politically. Voting here, to here engage an Althusserian concept, is the 
institutionalized âinterpellationâ of a democratic republicâs 
representative 
government. In a Democratically Interpellated Republic, both the people and the 
representatives they elect to govern have been interpellated by political 
ideology. 
The exemplar here is the United States of America, the âNew Marxian Timesâ 
of 
which is thus Althusserian in character (Elliot 2006; Ferretter 2006; Montag 
2003).

Democratic interpellation is here a political process, operating in the 
nationâs 
collective unconscious, wherein society votes on and calls to order the 
political 
ideology considered to best govern the United States. The ideologies that in 
Americaâs New Marxian Times politically drive the nationâs democratic 
interpellationâideologies conservative, communitarian, liberal, and 
libertarianâ
are the source of the historically ongoing, constitutionally informed, elite 
versus 
populist, âWar of the Classesâ declared famously by the early twentieth 
century 
writer and socialist Jack London (1905). Conservatives today, greatly concerned 
about the so called âsocialistâ agenda of the Obama administration, are 
crying 
âclass warâ as if it were a new thing in America. The theory of the 
Democratically 
Interpellated Republic of the United States (DIRUS) presented here, however, 
shows that class war has been continuously waged ever since colonial daysâby 
American capitalists. In the theory of DIRUS, as an acronym in Latin, are the 
conspiratorial actions of United States capitalists, conducted unconsciously 
behind the scenes, relentless in a class war whose effects on the lives of 
those in 
the under classes are dire, awful, terrible, cruel and fierce.

Philosophically Americaâs War of the Classes, the opponents of which 
currently 
are predominantly conservative Republican and liberal Democratic, adhere to 
diametrically opposed philosophical views of liberty: the conservativesâ 
positive 
liberty (the philosopherâs âfreedom toâ) and the liberalsâ negative 
liberty (the 
philosopherâs âfreedom fromâ). The more conservative, elitist upper 
classes of the 
Republican party seek to secure the Blessings of Liberty they regard as most 
fundamentalâthe constitutional basis for the conservative positive philosophy 
of 
âfreedom toâ; while the more liberal, populist lower classes of the 
Democratic 
party seek to promote the general Welfare they regard equally fundamentalâthe 
constitutional basis for the liberal negative philosophy of âfreedom from.â
Â


      
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