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On Mayday of all days such a characterization of Marxism as the extreme on a 1D number line of political responses to urbanization feels simplistic. Of the inf
by thwest 14y ago
On Mayday of all days such a characterization of Marxism as the extreme on a 1D number line of political responses to urbanization feels simplistic.
Of the infinitude of academic distinctions of Marx's writing to be raised here, the distinction between "political Marxism" and "analytical Marxism" seems fruitful. For the purposes of this distinction, political Marxism would be the set of writings embedded in the political climate of Marx's age, The Manifesto, etc. The politics that resulted from these writings bloomed initially, but as the mantle was passed through Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky the politics became increasingly fraught with problems (being gentle here.)
Analytical Marxism for me is limited to _Capital_. Marx proceeds analytically, taking the rich tradition of political economy to heart. Ricardo and Adam Smith are addressed directly. Marx attempts no emotional arguments here, no appeals for solidarity or revolution. Instead, the ideals of capitalism (e.g. exchanges between individuals are mutually beneficial) are taken as true, and Marx attempts to create a framework for analyzing the structural forces that result from this economic mode.
_Capital_ provides a set of analytical tools that are timeless and non-dogmatic. A great example is the exploration of how the relative prices of various commodities are set (Marx suggests it is emergent behavior). _Capital_ also takes on such problems such as the contradiction between exchange value and use value, and how the investor's and producer's perspective on exchanging commodities and money differs. These are problems many writers wave away as non-problems by maintaining a myopic focus on individual exchanges.
_Capital Vol.1_ Text http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/
A crash course youtube of Marxist analysis http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0
All of David Harvey's supplemental materials to _Capital_ are highly recommended: http://davidharvey.org/reading-capital/ http://davidharvey.org/reading-capital/
Another text you might be particularly interested in is _The Making of the English Working Class_ by E.P. Thompson, which expounds a humanist perspective on the migration from farm to factory in England.
- _delirium 14y agoOh that part I don't really disagree with. I was meaning to point to revolutionary uprisings as a fairly extreme reaction, which I associated with Marxism, but I suppose I meant the revolutionary left in general. Perhaps I should've used a less loaded word than "extreme"; I was just looking for a way to characterize the strength of the backlash that was stronger than the milder backlash that produced the reformist social-democratic parties. I do think that the urban discontent and associated political ferment from the mid-19th through early 20th centuries was at least largely in response to industrialization (if I recall, even Marx says something like that, which is why he didn't think a communist revolution in a pre-industrial country like Russia was likely or sensible). In a certain methodological sense a lot of people are Marxist, I suppose, even who don't use the term, so I agree he's been very influential. For example, Jared Diamond is sometimes called a neo-Marxist in the non-political sense, because that materialist way of looking at history (as the product of broad structural forces) is traced back to Marx.