Academic Marxism

[roodzwijntje]

Comrades,

I wonder whether any of you on this board have any experience with "Academic Marxism". By this I mean a sort of Marxism stripped of its revolutionary praxis, merely of historical interest to some intellectuals. At my own university in Ghent, lip-service is being paid to Marxism. For example, some years ago I had a philosophy course in which there was a rough outline of the three basic components of Marxism, but typically, when this professor dealt with the dialectic, this was something "obscure" and "not relevant anymore", "lacking any empirical evidence" (he should have read Reason in Revolt!).
Also, there is this "world-system analysis" school of which Immanuel Wallerstein is the main theoretician, which to me also seems to be a highly academic exercise without much relevance to the struggle for socialism (according to him we just have to wait for the "final crisis" of the capitalist system). Along with Tony Negri's flawed ideas it is interesting though to see these 'revisionist' or "post-Marxist" tendencies gaining influence at the universities.

Any comments on that?

Interestingly, this academic kind of Marxism is really not something new, as becomes clear from the part in the book on Bolshevism . Below are some excerpts on "Legal Marxism".

Comradely,

roodzwijntje


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The growing influence of Marxist ideas among the intelligentsia produced a peculiar phenomenon. The striking successes of Marxist ideology in the struggle against Narodnism began to interest a layer of bourgeois intellectuals in the universities, who became fascinated with Marxism as a socio-historical theory, without ever really grasping its revolutionary class content. The young bourgeoisie was striving to find a voice of its own, to assert its own interests and provide a theoretical justification for the inevitability of capitalist development in Russia. Some of the ideas put forward by Marxism in the struggle against Narodnism were eagerly grasped by a section of the intellectual spokesmen of the bourgeoisie. For a short time, “Marxism” in a bowdlerised, academic form, enjoyed a certain vogue among “left” liberal professors.

(…)

Despite all the problems and overheads, the collaboration with the Legal Marxists was a useful and, in any case, unavoidable stage in the development of the movement in the early days. The great majority of those who flirted with Marxism in their youth later broke with the movement and passed over to the side of reaction. But at the time they played a useful role. Some, at least, appeared to have undergone a genuine conversion. But the majority soon recovered from their “socialist measles”. It was all too easy to explain away shortcomings in their mode of expression by the exigencies of legal work, the need to escape detection, arrest and so on. So long as the main tasks of the movement were of a more or less theoretical character, and directed mainly against the Narodnik enemies of the bourgeoisie, this collaboration, in fact, proceeded on a more or less satisfactory basis. It was a Legal Marxist—Struve—who wrote the manifesto of the first congress of the RSDLP!
Theirs was an anaemic and emasculated view of Marxism, a “decaffeinated” Marxism, lacking life, struggle and revolutionary vitality. Not accidentally, the Legal Marxists rejected dialectics in favour of Neo-Kantian philosophy. Despite its appearance of uniqueness, and the somewhat special role it played in the early days of the movement in Russia, the same kind of abstract, undialectical and essentially non-revolutionary “Marxism” regularly reappears in the rarefied atmosphere of the universities of all countries, at every stage in the development of the movement. They were, in fact, an early example of what later became known as “fellow travellers”. Despite their intellectual flirtation with Marxism, in their lifestyle and psychology they remained firmly rooted in an alien class. Many years later Struve was to sum up the mentality of the Legal Marxists in the following passage: “Socialism, to tell the truth, never aroused the slightest emotion in me, still less attraction… Socialism interested me mainly as an ideological force—which… could be directed either to the conquest of civil and political freedoms or against them.”

(…)

For the Legal Marxists the prospect of a socialist revolution was reduced to a hazy theoretical prospect sometime in the dim and distant future. Such a perspective was quite safe, and basically committed them to nothing. To them, the revolutionary aspect of Marxism seemed quite unreal, whereas the economic arguments about the inevitable victory of capitalism in Russia seemed pre-eminently practical.

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[turnoviseous]

Yeah, I totally agree with what you say. At my secondary school (I am only 17) we had to make a seminar for sociology about anything we wanted, the only restriction was that it should be somehow connected with sociology.

So I decided to present basical and some more complex marxist theories (It took me 4 school hours to do that, I wrote about 100 pages which fell to 3 main cathegories - dialectical materialism, historical materialism (into which I also included the labour theory of value when describing the capitalist mode of production) and the state (which should actually be, as much as I know, part of historical materialism, but I decided that it needs to be presented separately, because I got too deep into it, criticizing utopians, anarchists, I also presented Trotsky´s degenerated state theory, etc.)

My teacher said that she was astonished with my knowledge of marxism, bla bla, and that she thinks that marxism is generally a good idea, but she put forward some form of economic determinism of which you talk about.

comradely,

[proletarianrevo]

Comrades!
it is really funny sometimes how some phenomenas are international. I have experienced 'academic marxism' many many times!
The defenders of this 'theory' often thinks that Marx did a great analysis on the problems of capitalist society. But they have simply destroyed the revolutionary content of marxism. They said that 'it is a good analysis' and it has 'some elements', etc. But they always push the question of revolution and socialism into a secondary issue. In this way they always seeks to present marxism in a 'legal form' which is acceptable for the bourgios, because it is abstract and not revolutionary.

I also 'only' go to secondary school, but in here you can smell it already! And all the university students I now (who arent marxists) are influenced by such idears....

comradely greeting
Andreas, denmark - roskilde

[John Stalker]

Same problem, comrades, same problem. The thing that vexes me with the "explanations" and "elaborations" of modern sociologists and historians is when they say that Marx's works are not contemporary and do not fit into modern age! That really hits the spot.
   The one who criticises Marx, hasn't actually read him. They talk about economic determinism, whilst Marx explained that he does not put down everything to economics.
   And the thing with the revolution, well, you cannot but expect more than this because it would be foolish to think that the burgeois' ideological superstructure will allow ideas of their downfall. But still, the vexation rises when professors 30 years older than me have knowledge of an infantile (ideological conception).
   The conceptions, or should we call them, misconceptions, of the history of Russia are atrocious. Stalin the communist, Stalin the Leninist,...

[turnoviseous]

Looks like I left out one important thing in my post.

The very teacher also wanted to know what I want to study after secondary school (my secondary school is concentrated on computer science) and I said that I know that I won´t go studying sociology.

I really despise modern sociological streams. What a bunch of confused crap.

[roodzwijntje]

Hey turnoviseous!

I have some leftist friends who study sociology and they say that all in all, their courses are not that bad because these tend to be focused on the historical part, so Marx' contribution to sociology is paid much attention to. Of course, in Slovenia this may not be the case, I rely on my sources here in Belgium.
In any case, it's interesting to compare Marx to e.g. Max Weber. As for modern sociology, I don't know much about that...

Whatever we study, we will always have to educate ourselves in the present education system. If I would believe everything they say in e.g. my courses on theatre in the Soviet Union, well, then I would pretty much end up in being an anti-Bolshevik (this professor of mine confuses the revolutionary spirit after 1917 with the Stalinist counter-revolution) . Man, professors can be so confused and particularly dishonest: sometimes they talk about things they don't know anything about, and that's when it becomes interesting to intervene in class and to agitate among your fellow students... ;)

[turnoviseous]

Hey,

I´ ve heard pretty same things about sociological study here in slovenia. I have been thinking a lot about what I should go studying and I think I will continue with computer science. Also study of computer science can´t really be SO ideologically biased :).

Anyway, what do you study, history or something like that?

I partly agree with you when you say that we must educate in our education system. But, this is not totally true however, I would say we must formally educate ourselves in our education system (so we get a job), because from my praxis I know that most of good knowledge is the one you get from outside the school, especially my knowledge of marxism has nothing to do with present education system.

You won´t believe it, but I know a really good case of it. A father of my friend has made only 4 clases of primary school. But he was lucky because at the time he was searching for a job, there was still Stalinism in Yugoslavia and so he got the job in the local "commune".

But he was interested in electronics and he has studied it on his own later when he got the job and has really learned a lot of the stuff, nowadays he is fixing TV´s and other electrical devices.

On the other hand it can be 100% clear that this guy would have no chance of studying electronics in present capitalist education system with only 4 grades of primary school. But this is another subject...

comradely,

[hina]

comrades
it is really nice after reading that kind of disscusion because in our daily life people are afraid of the name of philosophy.
i think that after joining yfis i really experienced the real philosophy of life.
you can live without this philosophy but you can not find the real meaning of life.
it helps in every day life to manage every thing.

[turnoviseous]

Hey hina,

Welcome to the boards. I hope you enjoy it here.

comradely,

[roodzwijntje]

Hi turnoviseous,

You said some weeks ago:

I´ ve heard pretty same things about sociological study here in slovenia. I have been thinking a lot about what I should go studying and I think I will continue with computer science. Also study of computer science can´t really be SO ideologically biased . Anyway, what do you study, history or something like that?

Yeah, some years ago, when I had to choose what to study after secondary school, for some time I considered computer science too, but the mathematics scared me too much!! So I chose Germanic Philology (English and Dutch linguistics and literature), which was all in all - in hindsight - a bit disappointing : too boring professors 'lecturing', too big classes (so no interaction). Luckily in our last two years we are able to choose some courses as we like (even outside our faculty), so I took courses like 'world-system analysis' and 'theory of international relations', very interesting (although my professor is a nationally known figure fooling the masses with his naïve 'international law' rhetoric on television during the Iraq crisis!).
By the way, to come back to computer science, well, this will of course not be so ideologically based as the 'soft' sciences, but then even in this domain there is this Linux versus Microsoft discussion - an interesting one.

But hey, this personal discussion gets a bit too much like a chatbox, isn't it? :)

All the best,

and welcome to hina too!

[trot2003]

The theories of academic marxists tend to be useless because of their purely negative purpose, i.e. to discredit marxism.  On the other hand, people doing management theory have to be constructive, because their job is to develop methods for companies to be successful within the capitalist system.  They actually need ideas that work, not bullshit.  I have a book that purports to be on the cutting edge of management theory, "The Fifth Discipline", by Peter M. Senge (MIT).  I would recommend this book to anyone with a basic marxist knowledge.  Some passages in the book almost have a "Reason in Revolt" flavour, and other passages have a mystical flavour.  He might reveal all the political prejudices of a bourgeois intellectual, but don't get put off immediately.  The book describes, with the aid of diagrams (arrows and loops), several generic structures that serve as templates for a whole range of phenomena.  The basic building blocks for these structures are balancing processes, reinforcing processes, and delays.  These structures are illustrated in specific examples (including real business stories).   I think that the simple diagrams and templates provided there would be a good setting to explain a lot of marxist theory as clearly as possible, although that was certainly NOT Mr. Senge's intention.