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.