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Introduction: Neo-Marxism
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12646 |
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Section : |
Modern Thought
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| Issue
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6 / 1987 |
292 Words |
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Editor
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This month's Currents in Modern Thought section features five articles on Marxism and one on communist autobiographies, all of which explore the continued relevance of Marxist thought. The question underlying most of these essays is: what part of Marx's historical worldview and social analysis remains valid for our time? All the authors agree that much of Marx's thinking, especially about economic question, seems dated today.
The labor theory of value and the increasing pauperization of the working class are concepts that betray their Victorian antiquity. Moreover, Marx's future classless society has demonstrably more to do with French utopian novels than clinical observation or reasonable inferences drawn from historical patterns.
Despite the obsolescence of many of Marx's teachings, his reputation remains high, not only among the Soviet nomenklatura, but, even more significantly, among American, British, Italian, and West German intellectuals. With increasing frequency, academic societies, such as the Organization of American Historians, choose to be led by professing Marxists and even Marxism-Leninists. Our goal is not to condemn but to try to understand the attraction of Marxism for contemporary intellectuals, academics, and others. What is it that makes Marxism or Marxist identification compelling for Western intellectuals, even for those who have abandoned much of the core of Marx's own social analysis? Why do people who, in some cases, have only a nodding acquaintance with Marx's theory of dialectical materialism and who, in other cases, reject most of the details of his economics, nonetheless describe themselves as Marxists?
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