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Help me debunk post-modernist Marxism in a college course (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 2 years ago by heavytf2@lemmygrad.ml to c/comradeship@lemmygrad.ml

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Hello! This is my first post on Lemmygrad.

I have a lesson from my Literature Theory class in college about Marxist analysis. It has some stuff about "British Cultural Materialism", "American New Historicism" and calls Simone de Beauvoir a Marxist among other things. I have a basic understanding of ML theory, though not enough to properly counter what is being said here.

The lesson is in PDF form, but I formatted it to Markdown and uploaded it to PrivateBin, here. I will also attach a screenshot showing the final questions regarding the lesson.

What points are there to be made against what is written there? It often feels like idealism and the lesson itself is filled with pseudo-Marxists.

Thank you comrades!

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[–] heavytf2@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 years ago (4 children)

My intentions was to find out if this is accurate to Marxist theory, as educational institutions only show Marxism as a very negative ideology, from what I heard. It had basic mentions of dialectical materialism and kind of felt accurate when it came to basic Marxist terms, but I just felt skeptical about it.

[–] GarbageShootAlt@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Sometimes it's better to just wait and observe for a bit. In most subjects, if Marx is even brought up, it is in a pluralistic but not necessarily negative light. This also works as a means of undermining it, but that's as a biproduct of liberal ideology rather than an agenda as such.

Red bashing is a thing in philosophy, history, and poli-sci. Econ just ignores him and literary and sociological courses tend to have a positive view.

[–] redtea@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

That's a great way to explain it. (I can't open the link, though.) I've never thought of it in those terms but I get inordinately annoyed when I see it. I describe it as 'using Marx as if he were just another thinker'. But historical materialism offers a total worldview. You can't just chop and change. Well, you can and they do, in the east that you describe.

Often, it's: Foucault said X, Weber said Y, and Marx said Z, and here's how, together, they can help us understand ABC. Usually something relating to societal ills, colonialism, exploitation, etc – the authors' hearts tend to be in the right place.

But that's a big problem because if Marx is right (he is), he's incompatible with most of the 'critical' Western canon. He can't be synthesised with e.g. Weber or Foucault because their central assumptions are at odds with each others'.

[–] GarbageShootAlt@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Huh, looks like I linked it incorrectly. Here is the link plainly:

http://www.abstraktdergi.net/this-ruthless-criticism-of-all-that-exists-marxism-as-science/

It's an essay by J Moufawad-Paul on how Marxism's status as an attempt at a scientific understanding of political-economy is its very foundation and must be defended, both from self-professed "Marxists" who disparage this element as well as liberal academics who do just as you describe, treating it as merely another "lens" and functionally as a sort of rhetorical flavor and roleplay rather than a method to understand the world:

My position, however, which is the position of multiple revolutionary movements and the great world historical revolutions, is that we cannot be ecumenical. Whereas today’s chic critical theorists uphold a variety of post-Marxist European theoretical tendencies so as to dismiss and castigate Marx, I uphold Marxism to castigate these theoretical tendencies. I am not claiming, to be clear, that we cannot borrow from some of the insights of these tendencies but only that, as tendencies, they are theoretically inferior to Marxism regardless of the latter’s purported flaws. Weheliye [a "post-Marxist" academic] reduces every European theoretical tendency to the same state of “white European thinkers [who] are granted a carte blanche” but, in this reduction, misses a key point: it is only the Marxist tendency that can account for and surmount this carte blanche, thus necessarily generating theoretical offspring critical of its erroneous aspects, because of what it is: a science.

That is, the reason why those of us who are committed to Marxism can and should uphold this commitment in the face of other theoretical tendencies is because the theoretical trajectory initiated by Marx and Engels, which goes by the name of historical materialism, was one that was scientific. Unlike the so-called “radical” theories generated by or drawn upon its discontents, historical materialism is not a mere quirk of the humanities based on some academic’s thoughts about reality translated into an intriguing terminological set. Rather it is a natural explanation of natural phenomena that has generated a truth procedure and thus falls within the gamut of science. And it is precisely this claim that has made Marxism the scapegoat of those theories that, from their very inception, have also sought to destabilize and usurp the very conception of a historical/social science.

I do think Weber and Foucault are quite interesting and can be useful, but they do not hold the same ground that Marx and his successors do.

[–] redtea@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 2 years ago

Thanks for this. I quite like JMP but I haven't read this essay. If that quote is anything to go by, I'll enjoy this one, too. I agree about Weber and Foucault; they can be useful, especially if they're read in light of a Marxist perspective.