[OPE] "Parasitism"

Jerry,

You can make words mean what you want them to mean, but at least for Marx the concept of exploitation is more inclusive than parasitism, i.e. parasitism is a specific form of exploitation. The reason why vulgar Marxism is vulgar, is because it fails to understand why particular conceptual distinctions are important.

As I mentioned before at times, I think the problem is not limited to authoritarianism and dogmatism - you strike that sort of thing in any political movement, it's not specific to marxism. The specific problem is a concern with orthodoxy when, in reality, the claimed orthodoxy is not orthodox at all. Spectacularly, one is often better off with Marx's own idea, than with the "orthodox" misrepresentation of it.

I think you want to have it both ways - you want Marx on your side when it suits you, and declare Marx irrelevant when it suits you. But I think that is precisely the problem with so-called "Marxism". I think it is better just to be a socialist or a communist and not impute to Marx things which are not due to him anyway.

You argue it makes no sense so say "If it was true that all capitalists were simply parasites, then capitalism would have been overthrown long ago." I think it does makes sense, because when parasitism is publicly clearly visible it usually does not last very long. I recall how the Trotskyists argued that the Soviet bureaucracy was simply "parasitic" - but it wasn't, the management function was in good part a productive function, and that helps explain why it persisted, and why there was so much cooperation from workers to "build socialism".

I agree that "If we want better solutions we have to come up with them ourselves and not look simply to what a long dead revolutionary from another period in capitalist history had to say and write." Question is only whether we learn anything from history, if we try to make "a long dead revolutionary" say things he didn't say anyway.

Jurriaan

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Received on Mon Jan 26 13:39:06 2009