Marx was not god. We don't have to be fundamentalists, and pretend every thing he wrote, or predicted, was gospel. There are obviously parts of Marxist thought that are mostly discarded by people on the left who consider themselves partisan of the Marxist ideals, ideals of social justice without one class dominating another. That part is simple. The ideas of a relationship between base and superstructure, on one form or another, relative determinism and the like, have become incorporated into most theory taught nowadays. The great struggles over postcolonial thought are grounded from the outset in people who were inspired by Marxist thought, from cesaire to fanon to cabral on to Spivak and mbembe. Cineastes like sembene or hondo or gerrima.
I would have trouble finding a single theorist who doesn't work in and around Marxism, though for many communism became a nightmare, largely because it was so oppressive, not because it was Marxist (thinking of zizek here, or even Mudimbe, in his first novel).
It has been a long time since I wanted to examine the parts of marxism that were inspiring vs those to be discarded. Most clearly vanguardism was a problem, as were notions of determinism. The very best guide, for me, became Raymond Williams, still, and following him the Birmingham school. Not any serious thinking in my years, starting late 50s, seriously took communism as a continuation of Marxism, because in the 1950s and 60s stalin destroyed that tie. All the intellectuals of the 60s who had been communists gradually left for some version of socialism, or more radically trotskeyism or Maoism, at least for a while. After hungary and then czechslovakia, the community party in Europe had splintered and pink communism in Italy or socialism in most places, replaced it. later the left split, as it is now, between liberals and socialists, more or less, with most of the global south following the socialist ideals, with a few dictators on the left or right exceptions.
What is the resurrection of the red scare on the right really about?
Could it not be, as it typically was, a cover for authoritarianism and populism? And that movement in the interest of the Koch brothers and their like? Isn't that what gave us trump, along with all those east European dictators, the populist dictatorships in Nicaragua and the Philippines?
If I were to continue to enumerate autocracies, I'd have to be thinking about the great lakes rulers, including kagame, nkurunzima and kabila. But with this list, and the two above—nicaragua and phillippines, we start entering into a frame driven by globalized powers that have nothing to do with the older notions of industrial capitalism and communism. It is neoliberalism, with the vast enterprises driving with such force, that the state has become sidelined, reduced, irrelevant. At this point, the argument over Marxism has become merely historical. Think about one thing. China, the state most given to private enterprise, is still ruled by a so-called communist state. marx and mao, say, have absolutely nothing to do with that "communism."
We have to return, with derrida, to the spectre of Marxism, its ideals to organize the 99% and struggle for their interests to be represented, without returning to useless arguments and without being duped into imagining something called capitalism or communism is what we are really fighting over.
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
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: Saturday 5 May 2018 at 10:29
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Marx's Apologists Should Be Red in the Face - The Wall Street Journal.
Ken, since they are playing the numbers game we can certainly do that, too. Sometimes it is absolutely necessary to take stock.
But in the end, I appreciate your point that Marx' ideals would run counter to such regimes. Marx was super optimistic about the withering away of the state. Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Castro consolidated it beyond his wildest imagination. Whether or not they had a choice is open for debate.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
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