Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Marx’s Apologists Should Be Red in the Face - The Wall Street Journal.

This kind of attack on marx is typical of the red scare anti-communist movement from the 19^th century on through the 20^th. derrida distinguished between marx and Marxism, or what the various movements made of marx. To equate a figure like stalin with Marxist thought is abusive of history. Stalin is responsible for Stalinism. That he came on the heels of a Marxist revolution doesn't mean that the totalitarian regime he engineering, the purges, the statism, the "revolution in one state," in short the repressive regime, had anything to do with an ideology that conceived of the state "withering away" as the bourgeoisie was converted—not slaughtered—to a class with higher consciousness.

Every one of the reproaches of Marxism is built on this false connection of authoritarian abuse. It really strikes me as a playground level of thought, and it always amazed me that my students would parrot the conflation of Marxist thought and anticommunist propaganda.

There is really a core to this that needs to be reasserted. Marx built his political activism on the idea of mobilizing the working classes, and attempting to put the interests of the working class, the 99% we'd say in this country, above those of the 1% who ruled and imposed their ideology on the rest of society. A simple notion that is replicated again and again. a simple notion of a just society, deflected by pieces like this wall st. editorial.

 

I don't think we should begin to accept it by acknowledging that the killings and dictatorships of regimes like cambodia's or china's embody the ideals or even ideas articulated by marx. The answer is not that Marxism is responsible for fewer deaths than the conquistadores, but that marx's ideals would run counter to such regimes that represented an abuse of marx's thought.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Friday 4 May 2018 at 15:41
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>, usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Marx's Apologists Should Be Red in the Face - The Wall Street Journal.

 

Did Marx kill more persons than  the British, Italian,  Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch and German conquistadores and colonizers?

 

Half of the population of Libya was killed by the Italians and one third of Namibia by the Germans.

 

Has anyone  been able to count the dead in the Americas?

 

 

 

Professor Gloria Emeagwali

 

     

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: Friday, May 4, 2018 3:16 PM
To: dialogue
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Marx's Apologists Should Be Red in the Face - The Wall Street Journal.

 

 

Marx's Apologists Should Be Red in the Face

https://www.wsj.com/articles/marxs-apologists-should-be-red-in-the-face-1525388258?emailToken=69af803fd97ea75ec123106c910678036BMQwzeNBOcT5Pf7a%2FgoMcxMQuoeXzI4QsOgRs6x8SxXO%2BAhHYuVP4%2FfE2mgVNEEx0JOLcySTHtc87tLCnh6z8FnMy%2BvM2Q2H%2FU%2Bk5McyYo%3D

Download the Wall Street Journal app here: WSJ.

 

 

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.