Date: Mon, 06 Oct 1997 12:59:07 -0400
From: tombrown@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (Thomas F Brown)
Subject: Re: Marxian Theory: Continuing Validities
To: socgrad@csf.colorado.edu
Message-id: <199710061659.MAA25375@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu>
References: <1.5.4.16.19971006065442.3747f83e@pop.uvm.edu>
>Your out of hand dismissal of the points that TR makes regarding the continuing
>validity of Marxist theory is confusing and smacks "dilletantish".  Perhaps you
>could 'attempt' to dispute each point one by one....

It's difficult to make a closely-argued refutation of such a loosely-
constructed, normatively biased argument. At any rate, I have no interest
in shooting down the notion that Marxian theory is relevant. I am
sympathetic to that perspective. 

My concern is that for Marxian theory to continue to have any intellectual
impact, it's necessary to move beyond sloganeering and broad assertions
based on a crude reification of the social order. Even more important,
I worry that the kind of crude, politicking Marxism that TR's post
represented will only alienate the audience and degrade yet further
sociology's reputation in the world at large.

>If you attempt to do so, I think you will find them fairly difficult to shoot
>down.   Just for starters how can you disagree with the fact that capitalism
>creates unemployment yet at the same time creates a HUGE surplus?  Structural
>unemployment is a global phenomena and is built into the very fabric of the
>capitalist world-system.

Yes, so what? The assertion begs the question, in that it assumes
structural employment to begin with. Without capitalism, the notion
of structural employment is meaningless.

>It (sic)  not only creates massive dislocation, in
>addition it creates and maintains undeniable/unexcusable inequality for regions
>throughout the world.

Capitalism also raises the economic standards of living wherever it is 
implemented. I am not making this observation as a defender of capitalism.
But for every crude truism one can raise from a Marxist perspective, it
is just as easy to raise an equally crude counter-truism from a libertarian
perspective.

Personally, I find both Marxism and Libertarianism to be quite powerful
theories, and I also find them both to be laughably irrelevant utopian 
political programs.