BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?

Subject: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Acorn4
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 11:13 AM

During the eighties various groups of a Marxist persuasion were prophesying the collapse of capitalism. Now this has happened where are they all?

Marx was, of course, above all an economist who defined the inevitability of the trade cycle.

Did they all turn from red to green or even blue, become government ministers or even merchant bankers?

Particularly aimed at UK this one, but may have wider world relevance!

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Eric the Viking
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 11:36 AM

They probably gave up since the only chance to turn the tide when the tories were kicked out was thrown away by Blair and co.

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Stu
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 12:49 PM

Yoo-hoo!

I'm over here.

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Goose Gander
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 01:31 PM

There in academia, driving late model cars and living in comfortable suburbs.

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Goose Gander
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 01:59 PM

I should have said, "There, in academia - driving late model cars and living in comfortable suburbs."

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 02:11 PM

Or you could have said, "They're in academia, driving late model cars..."

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: gnu
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 02:15 PM

They're academics, driving their comfortable cars and living in suburbs, lately.

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Goose Gander
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 02:20 PM

Over there, in the suburbs. That's where they are.

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Goose Gander
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 02:21 PM

Where have all the Marxists gone, long time passing?
Where have all the Marxists gone, long time ago?
Where have all the Marxists gone?
Taken endowed chairs, everyone.
When will the Revolution come?
When will the Revolution come?

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Cool Beans
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 02:27 PM

Gone to hedge funds, every one.
When will they ever learn?

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Cllr
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 02:38 PM

going out with spencerists?
Cllr

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 02:39 PM

Haven't heard of one since the 1930s. I don't think any are left in the wild. Habitat where they could survive has disappeared.

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: john f weldon
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 03:38 PM

There were lots in the 60's. One thing they complained about was not enough Marxist professors! One told me that he was very open-minded, and could accept the idea of one non-Marxist prof for each Marxist. (Try to extend that to every political ideology, and you soon run into logical problems.)

Weird how people change: Jerry Rubin used to say he'd die for the revolution. He became a capitalist, and died jaywalking.

All over the place folks are having their own "Road to Damascus" experiences. Atheist Christians, Christian Jews, Anglican Bhuddists, Christopher Hitchens, Capitalist Marxists and now a rash of Marxist Capitalists.

I change, but really slowly. At the current rate, I'll be a right-winger by 3745 Anno Domini.

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 04:30 PM

Gone to Groucho, every one...?

Kitty

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 06:48 PM

I think I am heading steadily more that way.

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Acorn4
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 07:05 PM

The one incident I do vividly remember from this era is the pub I went into at the time had a group of anarchists who announced that they were off to a meeting to draw up a constitution.

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Bobert
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 07:34 PM

Marxism is alive and doing quite well, thank you...

The recent economic events have pushed it back into favor... Of course, we can no longer use the term Marxism because it had been completely demonized but the rich no longer feel so comfy... And some will be going to jail...

Commie Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 08:06 PM

Ah- Bobertism!

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Bobert
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 08:16 PM

Well, Q... I don't know about Bobertism 'cause I has allreadyy psiied off evertyone here at one time or another...

I think Marxism needs a team of good, smart, young ad-men (and women) to come up with a new and improved "ism" for these times...

I mean, can you see the commercials at the SuperBowl???

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 08:20 PM

Nobody wants to be considered a Marxist because the two most visible "Marxist" heads of state in the world are both buffoons. Who the hell wants to be thought of as being a philosophical compatriot of Hugo Chavez or Kim Jong-il? They're doing for Marxism what George W. Bush did for Republicanism.

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Bobert
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 08:24 PM

Hugo ain't doin' as bad at the US media propaganda machine is tellin'... Kim-bo, however, is definately very messed up and really is clueless about Marxism... He, however, is very much into Kim-ism...

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Suffet
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 10:23 PM

Where have all the Marxists gone? Try URPE. And please call them Marxians.

--- Steve

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Goose Gander
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 11:55 PM

Funny thing about Karl Marx, his theory required capitalism BEFORE socialism . . . but the major marxist revolutions all occurred in agrarian, pre-industrial societies. Hence Marxist-Leninism, the 'vanguard party' and all that nonesense because the Slavs were too stupid to know what's good for them, blah blah blah . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Peace
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 02:07 AM

They have gone to New Jersey. That's what I heard, anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Claymore
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 04:10 AM

Back in the early 70's I thought that Television would destroy Marxism, since it gave the dispossed a chance to look at how the other half lived (those old enough will remember the Kitchen Debate).

Now I think I was half right... in that the destroyer of Marxism was a TV screen... called a monitor...

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: akenaton
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 06:20 AM

Most have become disillusioned as they come to realise all organisation of humanity will ultimately end in failure!

Does anyone think there may be a "third way"?
Does anyone think?
Do we really care?
Are we prepared to lose the comfort blanket that Capitalism used to provide for the middle class?
Do we want to survive as a species?

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Bobert
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 07:08 AM

What's up, Claymore???

Always good to see ya' here in Mudville... How the commies doing in Jefferson County??? lol...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 01:38 PM

A timely contribution to this from veteran Marxist Eric Hobsbawm in today's Guardian Socialism has failed. Now capitalism is bankrupt. So what comes next?

"...The test of a progressive policy is not private but public, not just rising income and consumption for individuals, but widening the opportunities and what Amartya Sen calls the "capabilities" of all through collective action. But that means, it must mean, public non-profit initiative, even if only in redistributing private accumulation. Public decisions aimed at collective social improvement from which all human lives should gain...."

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 02:04 PM

Recently, there has been speculation (fantasy?) about growing a mammoth (or whatever) from DNA that has been preserved in permafrost etc.).
Recently, in England a body sealed in a lead-lined coffin was exhumed and sampled for DNA of the Spanish Flu Virus (BBC News program).

Following up on this fantasy, if Marx's body is well-preserved, maybe he could be reconstituted.
Than he might write something for these times, perhaps "The New Capitalism and it's Potential for Profits and Success."

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 02:12 PM

They are here, underground. The Revolutionary Communist Party is active.
There are small splinter groups everywhere and not noticed or acknowledged by those
who are outside of that loop.

Most academics are not as polemical as some of you have suggested. There is a difference between being a Marxist historian and a Marxist per se. Remember that Marx was an economist first. The application of Marxism in the Soviet Union changed it a lot.

The death of Marxism has been greatly exaggerated.

Subject: RE: BS: Where Have All the Marxists Gone?
From: Goose Gander
Date: 10 Apr 09 - 03:17 PM

That is correct, Stringsinger, and I'll make a distinction between a solid scholar like Eugene Genovese who writes from a marxist perspective and those poor souls passing out pamphlets at music festivals.