Re: capitalism/vietnam (fwd)

sixties@jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Fri, 26 Apr 1996 12:45:25 -0400

From: EDWARD P. MORGAN <epm2@lehigh.edu>
Subject: Re: capitalism/vietnam

Thanks to Tony Williams for responding to D. Eide in a manner that including
enough discussion of the 60s to merit inclusion in this list. As for Steve
Denney's query to Tony, if I can jump in, it seems Steve is confusing
Marxism-Leninism with Marxism as an analysis of the imperatives of capitalism
The question about M-L is still a valid one for Steve to pose to anyone with
some Marxist leanings, but it focuses on the application (or as some would
argue, mis-application) of Marxism to the Soviet experiment and other somewha
comparable models (like China), not on Marxism-as-analysis. To deny the
relevance of the latter, as some like D. Eide would do in his neo-conservative
views, is to deny that there are any functional links (not necessarily purely
causative ones) between capitalism and the diverse "targets" of 60s movements:
racial oppression, poverty, technocratic education, the Vietnam war, the
rat-race (Paul Goodman's "closed room"), consumption-driven materialism,
gender oppression, and ecocide. To deny these links is in my opinion, well, a
from of just that, denial; it also eliminates a long-established but many-
faceted theoretical framework for understanding and (helping to) explain many
things about today's world (cf. globalization, structural adjustment, neo-
liberalism and neo-conservatism).
Ted Morgan