Frank
|
As an item on the intellectual agenda, Marxism is scarcely even a joke. … Marxism is a fearful social—and police—problem, but so is the drug trade. It is a fearsome political problem, but so is Islamic fundamentalism. But an intellectual problem Marxism is not, any more than the drug trade or Islamic fundamentalism.
Marx himself, unlike his millions of devotees, knew perfectly well what his rubbishy improvisations about "dialectic" etc. are worth. In 1857 he had made certain statements in print about the course of the Indian Mutiny, then going on, and he writes to Engels about these as follows: "It's possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way." This quotation is from p. 152, Vol. 40 (!), of the Collected Works, (Lawrence and Wishart). It should be pasted over every door in every Arts faculty in the Western World. (Except that it is, alas, a little late for that.)
David Stove
|