Marxism wins, I'm afraid

Marxism meets reality 

Although I'm not a Marxist, I must say that Brian Moseley's "Marxism versus Reality" is extremely bad. The author is otherwise unknown, but seems to have been a member or hang-around of the British libertarian socialist group Solidarity. At the very least, he uses a similar terminology.

The pamphlet was published in 1983 to "commemorate" the centenary of Marx' death. Most of the author's arguments are Anti-Marxism 101: What about Russia? Does the labour theory of value really make sense? Why can't the superstructure influence the base? And, honestly, what about Russia?

Yet, the author nevertheless comes up short in the end. Thus, while dropping Marx' theory of crisis, he never offers an alternative theory of his own. On the contrary, he believes that capitalism has overcome its crises, at least in the "advanced capitalist nations". And this in Britain in 1983! No crisis, huh? He also completely forgets the little detail about, shall we say, the less advanced capitalist nations. They are hardly even featured. Why is there a crisis *there*? "Class struggle" is between order-givers and order-takers, not capitalists and workers, most workers are on the same side as their bosses, and most workers do what they do completely voluntarily?! Well, at least in the advanced capitalist nations. For some reason, however, a revolution is just as impossible in the Third World, making everything look pretty bleak.

Somehow, this all sounds rather familiar. Yepp, it's really a restatement of the theories of Cornelius Castoriadis (a.k.a. Paul Cardan), who at least had the good graces of putting them forward about 20 years earlier, when they seemed to make *some* kind of sense (and even that, only barely). In 1983, they made no sense at all. "Marxism versus Reality" is Castoriadis on downers. In this battle with Reality, I'd say Marxism wins.

And now, sports...