Article: 'Folk Marxism' is not exactly Peter, Paul and Mary
BY PETER BRONSON
ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Marxists ain't what they used to be. Once upon a time they would climb on the nearest orange crate and yell, "Workers of the world unite!" Now they don't even return calls.
I phoned the top Marxist at the University of Cincinnati to ask why he still believes in the most discredited political faith of the 20th century. No response.
I wanted to ask why anyone still teaches and preaches Marxism 20 years after it was hauled away to the ash heap of history. It's like having courses advocating Flat Earth Theory or lectures promoting slavery: Yes, it's still practiced in backward, remote corners of the planet, but nearly everyone now knows Marxism has caused as much misery and murder as Hitler.
But there it is on the UC Web site: Professor Marvin Berlowitz, director of the Urban Center for Peace Education and a "Marxist scholar."
He also made Page 61 of "The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America" by David Horowitz.
The Peace Center at UC is "a collective of left-wing professors who are intent on indoctrinating students in Marxist ideology," Horowitz wrote.
For all I know Berlowitz is a nice man who still drives the unsafe, obsolete Corvair of economic theories, and thinks Junior ROTC is a militaristic tool of capitalist imperialism. Whatever.
He doesn't sound as dangerous as the kooks, humbugs, ossified hippies and former Weather Underground bombers listed by Horowitz, who cling to campuses like tenured aphids on ivy.
The Peace Center promotes anti-war protests and offers a UC certificate in Peace Studies, which sounds as teddy-bear huggable as a Ph.D. in kindness or a master's in generosity.
But I also wanted to ask UC's top Marxist (is that an oxymoron?) about "The Retreat of Reason," by British writer Anthony Browne (www.civitas.org.uk). Browne says old economic Marxism has evolved into cultural or "folk Marxism," a "dogmatic, conformist and even bullying ideology" unpopularly known as political correctness.
Redistribution of wealth became redistribution of power, with a new dialectic: power is evil; powerlessness is virtue. "The PC analytical process enjoys the beauty of simplicity," Browne writes. "1. Identify the victim. 2. Support them and their interests irrespective of any other factors."
Oppressors can be police, corporations, the wealthy, Wal-Mart, white males and especially the U.S. military.
Victims are criminals, minorities, women, gays and even a Taliban leader who got a scholarship to Yale, because even though the Taliban abused women and gays, any "victim" of the U.S. military is a folk hero to cultural Marxists.
"People who transgress politically correct beliefs are seen not just as wrong, to be debated with," Browne writes, "but evil, to be condemned, silenced and spurned." Such as Harvard President Lawrence Summers, who was lynched by a PC faculty for wondering if women and men are different.
"Moral cowardice has led to intellectual dishonesty permeating and corrupting our public debates." So it's OK to print shocking photos of Abu Ghraib, but newspapers won't even print cartoons that offend Muslims.
What started out as "consideration to the more vulnerable members of society," Browne writes, became a new brand of bigotry - censorship in the name of mandatory groupthink: "You can't say that."
"There is a kind of soft totalitarianism," says Browne.
Marxism ain't what it used to be. It's only popular in North Korea, China, Cuba and on a campus near you. But why bother teaching it when it's a way of life?
ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Marxists ain't what they used to be. Once upon a time they would climb on the nearest orange crate and yell, "Workers of the world unite!" Now they don't even return calls.
I phoned the top Marxist at the University of Cincinnati to ask why he still believes in the most discredited political faith of the 20th century. No response.
I wanted to ask why anyone still teaches and preaches Marxism 20 years after it was hauled away to the ash heap of history. It's like having courses advocating Flat Earth Theory or lectures promoting slavery: Yes, it's still practiced in backward, remote corners of the planet, but nearly everyone now knows Marxism has caused as much misery and murder as Hitler.
But there it is on the UC Web site: Professor Marvin Berlowitz, director of the Urban Center for Peace Education and a "Marxist scholar."
He also made Page 61 of "The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America" by David Horowitz.
The Peace Center at UC is "a collective of left-wing professors who are intent on indoctrinating students in Marxist ideology," Horowitz wrote.
For all I know Berlowitz is a nice man who still drives the unsafe, obsolete Corvair of economic theories, and thinks Junior ROTC is a militaristic tool of capitalist imperialism. Whatever.
He doesn't sound as dangerous as the kooks, humbugs, ossified hippies and former Weather Underground bombers listed by Horowitz, who cling to campuses like tenured aphids on ivy.
The Peace Center promotes anti-war protests and offers a UC certificate in Peace Studies, which sounds as teddy-bear huggable as a Ph.D. in kindness or a master's in generosity.
But I also wanted to ask UC's top Marxist (is that an oxymoron?) about "The Retreat of Reason," by British writer Anthony Browne (www.civitas.org.uk). Browne says old economic Marxism has evolved into cultural or "folk Marxism," a "dogmatic, conformist and even bullying ideology" unpopularly known as political correctness.
Redistribution of wealth became redistribution of power, with a new dialectic: power is evil; powerlessness is virtue. "The PC analytical process enjoys the beauty of simplicity," Browne writes. "1. Identify the victim. 2. Support them and their interests irrespective of any other factors."
Oppressors can be police, corporations, the wealthy, Wal-Mart, white males and especially the U.S. military.
Victims are criminals, minorities, women, gays and even a Taliban leader who got a scholarship to Yale, because even though the Taliban abused women and gays, any "victim" of the U.S. military is a folk hero to cultural Marxists.
"People who transgress politically correct beliefs are seen not just as wrong, to be debated with," Browne writes, "but evil, to be condemned, silenced and spurned." Such as Harvard President Lawrence Summers, who was lynched by a PC faculty for wondering if women and men are different.
"Moral cowardice has led to intellectual dishonesty permeating and corrupting our public debates." So it's OK to print shocking photos of Abu Ghraib, but newspapers won't even print cartoons that offend Muslims.
What started out as "consideration to the more vulnerable members of society," Browne writes, became a new brand of bigotry - censorship in the name of mandatory groupthink: "You can't say that."
"There is a kind of soft totalitarianism," says Browne.
Marxism ain't what it used to be. It's only popular in North Korea, China, Cuba and on a campus near you. But why bother teaching it when it's a way of life?
8 Comments:
Hello! I am attempting to read the Communist Manifesto myself, the Penguin Classics version with a very long introduction by Gareth Stedman Jones. Although I have not finished reading even this introduction yet, it goes through the reasons for Marx's shift from the Young Hegelians to attempting a critique of political economy. I am not sure exactly what Marxism is, but I am learning what it was intended for and why it was invented. I think, also, that you do not know exactly what it is (it takes one to know one) and are confusing it with the historical political practise of communism. The reason of Marx's importance, Gareth writes, is that it continues to depict and critique capitalism. Is that not a valid reason to teach it? After all, even people who are thorough capitalists can disagree regarding what it is and how it should be done, opening up a space in which critique is necessary.
Regarding the rest of your post, I do not believe that Mr Summers merely wondered about a difference - it may help your argument if you represented accurately what he actually said.
"I think, also, that you do not know exactly what it is (it takes one to know one) and are confusing it with the historical political practise of communism."
Do you find it at all interesting that "the historical political practice of communism" was the most common interpretation of Marxism or at least the one that won out? The assertion that true Marxism has never been tried is a tired one. Moreover, Marx was wrong about everything that mattered incuding the supposed inability of capitalist economies to correct abuses.
I use Marx in my teaching and research because (1) his thoughts on epistemology and, especially, the complex relationship between ideas and their social context anticipated those of later thinkers, and have since been incorporated into much mainstream philosophy of social science, and (2) he developed some particularly insightful and rather useful models for investigating societies that existed before capitalism. Marx's work is thus every bit as important as that of Darwin's. We ignore his body of work at our own peril if we're interested in understanding variation in socioeconomic forms, as well as the "deep history" of human social arrangements.
People who condemn Marx as a "flat earthist" whose ideas are dead and/or want to purge him from college curricula have no understanding of intellectual history and are a threat to liberal learning in the best sense of that term. Ironically, it is they who politicize the classroom, not Marx's defenders. But what do I know-- I'm one of Mr. Horowitz's dangerous professors, a danger to myself and your children.
Thank goodness for the Dangerous Professors in the U.S.! If it were not for them, the entire population of American would be a pile of blind, dumb, propogandized consumers doped up on corporate blather from the likes of scum bags ala Horowitz. How long do parasites like you survive anyway?
This post has been removed by the author.
Dear Leggs,
Careful, your intellectualism is showing. Your comment deserves an award for its profundity. I believe I will erect a statue in your honor tomorrow. What shall I engrave on the plaque? Hmm...I know! How about, "Leggs puts foots in mouf."
With all good intentions,
CC
Marx should not be 'purged' but he should be dethroned. So he developed some useful models for investigating societies. Good! use the models and in the same breath mention to your students that Marx had some crackpot economic ideas that deserve not forgiveness but scorn. Puhlease... Marx being EVERY bit as important as Darwin??
John-- Marx isn't on a throne; he's one thinker among many. And does the "crackpottedness" of his ideas lie exclusively in Marx's original formulations, or in the formulations of those who sought to apply them? And isn't the fact that we're still debating and demonizing both Marx and Darwin an indicator of their comparable historical importance? Thanks for your advice about how to teach Marx, but I think American university students deserve a bit better...
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