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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

the transformation of marxism « Previous | |Next »
April 14, 2006

Paul Edward Gottfried's book, The Strange Death of Marxism, describes how Marxism as an economic theory has lost its appeal, even among the Left, since the Second World War. It argues that today's leftists no longer advocate nationalization of the economy and anti-capitalist theories. In fact, they hardly care about economics at all, but focus on changing the moral and cultural foundations of Western society. This shift, Gottfried argues in this text, originated with the Frankfurt School, a group of originally German Marxist philosophers who settled in the United States in the 1930s, where they came to dominate liberal thinking, not so much by advocating anti-capitalist economic reform but rather by propagating social engineering.

The Frankfurt School propagated social engineering.? Surely they criticized it in the form of instrumental reason.

Gottfried's argument is that the multicultural orientation of the contemporary European Left has little to do with Marxism as an economic-historical theory.The inner city electorate of the multicultural orientation in Australia is hostile to the traditional moral and cultural values of the old Left's former electorate, with its conservative social attitudes that are marked by their opposition to multiculturalism and their defense of national cultural identity. The Old Left never really challenged the traditional, almost Victorian social and moral behaviour of their blue-collar voters and supporters.

Gottfried argues that the shift from economics to culture means the death of Marxism, because Marxism is an economic theory. Why so?

Surely Marxism, rather than dying because it focused on culture not economics, only shifted its emphasis. But we do need to talk in terms of a post-Marxist Left. The multicultural orientation of this Left and has little or nothing to do with Marxism as an economic-historical theory--and it was formed in oppsotion to the Althusserian conception of marxism as science.

Does a post--marxist left in Australia owe a great deal to American social engineering and pluralist ideology and to the spread of American thought and political culture to Australia?

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 08:21 PM | | Comments (2)
Comments

Comments

"Marxism as an economic theory has lost its appeal, even among the Left"

That's very true, and especially among the Left if this link is anything to go by:
http://weekbyweek7.blogspot.com/2006/03/socialists-defend-religion-high-on.html

Carl,
Though the lobby groups representing large corporations have been spectacularly successful in having their policy agenda implemented by governments, maybe Marxism will return as the effects of the Workchoices legislation work themselves out in the community?

That legislation represents a dramatic shift in the power from employees to corporations--there by confirming the class struggle thesis of Marxism. Weaker rights become reform. Entitlements that can be signed away at the stroke of a pen are protected by law.

Working-class identity is still strong ago and people are becoming increasingly sceptical of the power that corporations wield. We do think there is too much inequality, that it's getting worse and something needs to be be done about it.

Are these not classic Marxist themes?