04.03.2011., petak
National Secretary SLP of America, Robert Bills,
on the question:
DEFANGING MARX
„I am not familiar with Peter Singer's book on Marx, thought a quick cheeck to the Internet informs me it dates from 1980. I am, however, familiar with other efforts to „defang“Marx by characterizing him as just another idle philosopher and stripping him of his revolutionary credentials. Those efforts date back to at least the 1960s and emanate primarily from acadeemic and Social democrat sources. Eric Fromm, among others, comes to mind. Lately they even come out of Roman Catholic Church, which has inplicintly endorsed the views expressed in the Jesuit newspaper, La civilta' Cattolica, by a professor of philosophy at a European Catholic University.
The article is not available in English, as far as I know, but The Times of London summed it up on October 22. as fallows:
L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, said yesterday that Marx early critiques of capitalism had highlighted the 'social alienation' felt by the 'large part of humanity' that remained excluded, even now, from economic and political decision-making. Georg Sans , a German born professor of the history of contemporary philosophy at the pontifical Gregorian Universiti, wrote in a article that Marx's work remained especially relevant today as mankind was seeking 'a new harmony' between its needs and the natural environment. Hi also said that Marx's theories may help to explain the endurung issue of income inequality whithin capitalist societies. 'We have to ask ouselves, with Marx, whether the form of alienation of which he spoke have their origin in the capitalist system,' Professor Sans wrote. 'If money as such does not multiply on its own, how are we to explain the accumaulation of wealth in the hand of few?'“
But the better part of The Times summary was in what followed:
Professor Sans argue that Marx's intellectual legacy was marred by the misappriation of his work by the communist regimes of the 20th century. 'It is not exaggeration to say that nothing has damaged the interests of Marx the philosopher more than Marxism', he said.
„This“, the Times went on, „overturns a century of Catholic hostility to his creed. Two years ago Benedict XVI singled out out marxism as one of the great scourges of the moder age. The Marxist system, where it foun its way into government, not only left a sad heritage of economic and ecological destruction, buat also a painful destruction of the human spirit,' he told an audience in Brazil.
Then again the Pope has been busy reapprising modern capitalism. Bendict's latest encyclical, Charity in Truth, offers a direct response to the recession, arguing that global capitalism has lost its way and that Church teachings can help to restore economic health by focusing on justice for the weak and closer regulation of the market.“
All of this is unmitigated nonsense, of course, and only serves to underscore the fundamentally immoral and opportunistic nature of the Roman Catholic Church.
While it is certainly true that Marx's ideas were misappropriated by the „Communist“ and, for that matter, Social Democratic regimes of 20th Century, it is equally disingenuouse to contend „that nothing has domaged the intersts of Marx the philosdopher more than Marxism,“ by which it is meant to suggest that the misappropriation of Marx's „philosophical“ ideas somehow did not extend to the social, economic and political institutions erected by the former Soviet Union and other so- called socijalist regimes.
At the same time, the contentions also comprise a clear-cut case of confession and
avoidance on part of the Church and all others who have supported the capitalist system all along. If capitalism alienates and concentrates wealth to the detriment of society as a whole, which it obiously does, then its cheerleaders and apologists, among which the Church has filled a prominent and vociferous role, share in that responsability. What the Church would argue, of course, is that capitalism has anti-social effects only because it is not governed by Roman Catholic precepts of morality, etc., which evidently do not include bearing false witness against one's neighbor, as the Church surely has against Karl Marx.
The simple truth is that Marx cannot be divided into two separate and independant part and that his observations on the cruel effects of capitalism-the philosophical half-flow from and are inestricably connected to his scientific dissection of how the capitalism works. Capitalism creates „social alienation“ and leads to „the accomulation of wealth in the hand of few“, percisely because it is a class-divided society in which the means of life are monopolized by a few and that the working-class majority are exploited throught the wages syste,exatly as Marx described in Capital and others works.
What all this does, ofcourse, is reduce Marx from a scientist who got at the root of „alienation“and the concetration of wealth,etc., to a mere observer of the effects-to a „philosopher“ who somehow get it right while gitting it wrong, i.e., by drawing correct conclusions from false and erroneouse premises.
When your enemies start to prise you, look out! When they do that, it is absolutely certain that they are up to no good. The Singer, the Fromms (and Social Democrat generally), the „Communists“- and now the Catholic Church-all „missapropriate“ Marx, each for their own special reasons.
We are all familiar with Marx's observation that“ The philosophers have only interpret the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.“ The anti-Marxists, i.e., those who would divide Marx agaist himself, have no interest in changing the world in any fundamental way. The SLP does, and defending Marx agaist those who would co-opt him for their own anty-revolutionary purpose is one of the most impotant task we of the SLP have to perform.“
www.slp.org
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