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Help me debunk post-modernist Marxism in a college course
(lemmygrad.ml)
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That's a great way to explain it. (I can't open the link, though.) I've never thought of it in those terms but I get inordinately annoyed when I see it. I describe it as 'using Marx as if he were just another thinker'. But historical materialism offers a total worldview. You can't just chop and change. Well, you can and they do, in the east that you describe.
Often, it's: Foucault said X, Weber said Y, and Marx said Z, and here's how, together, they can help us understand ABC. Usually something relating to societal ills, colonialism, exploitation, etc – the authors' hearts tend to be in the right place.
But that's a big problem because if Marx is right (he is), he's incompatible with most of the 'critical' Western canon. He can't be synthesised with e.g. Weber or Foucault because their central assumptions are at odds with each others'.
Huh, looks like I linked it incorrectly. Here is the link plainly:
http://www.abstraktdergi.net/this-ruthless-criticism-of-all-that-exists-marxism-as-science/
It's an essay by J Moufawad-Paul on how Marxism's status as an attempt at a scientific understanding of political-economy is its very foundation and must be defended, both from self-professed "Marxists" who disparage this element as well as liberal academics who do just as you describe, treating it as merely another "lens" and functionally as a sort of rhetorical flavor and roleplay rather than a method to understand the world:
I do think Weber and Foucault are quite interesting and can be useful, but they do not hold the same ground that Marx and his successors do.
Thanks for this. I quite like JMP but I haven't read this essay. If that quote is anything to go by, I'll enjoy this one, too. I agree about Weber and Foucault; they can be useful, especially if they're read in light of a Marxist perspective.