Materialist discourse in academia during the age of late marxism

Abstract

C hronicling the last decades of the twentieth century, a future historian of ideas (or worker on cultural practices) might describe ours as the Age of Late Marxism, characterized by the plight of the socialist states created during the Age of High Marxism and by the concomitant institutionalization of materialist discourse in American academia. 1 Some states have thrown out the Communist party, which has prudendy changed its name to Socialism (the party of Economic Democracy). All have turned to the capitalist West for economic aid and business investments (once dubbed tools of Western international exploitation). Cynicism regarding Marx's teachings had long existed even among the outwardly Marxist Nomenklatura-with the exception of some members of the intelligentsia, who still hoped for a better and (always) future socialism which would salvage the (always) potentially benefic ideas of the founding father. But by the 1980s, Marx and his discourse had become the of frequently scatological folkloric humor. In the West, Socialist and Social Democratic parties have fallen back on various forms of the capitalist Welfare State; and while still defending some socialist ideas, they have accepted fundamental capitalist structures and reconsidered many economic assumptions of the Early Marxist Age. 2 Sweden, which had experimented with an advanced version of the Welfare State, suffers from an economic and cultural stagnation made more remarkable by the world's most humanely controlled citizenry's failure to achieve social contentment. 3 In the once-socialist lands, intellectuals read subversive writers like Karl Popper, Gary Becker, Ludwig yon Mises, F. A. Hayek, James Buchanan, Rose Wilder Lane, Murray Rothbard, David Friedman, Robert Nozick, HansHermann Hoppe, Isabel Paterson, Ayn Rand, and Tibor Machan. 4 Professors of economics and at least one Noble prize winner advocate the marketplace--a euphemism for Professors with marketable nonacademic skills complain that socialism defrauded them of their lives by stopping them from using their abilities, becoming rich, and enjoying the material world. An academician, become Minister of Finance, chides Americans for their ignorance of the ethical and economic principles of capitalism. The greatest genuinely proletarian leader of the twentieth century calls on exploitative Western corporations for investments, s Marx's discourse is being expunged from the classrooms, the work place, and the political arena; and materialist academicians, who form the bulk of the profession, face mass dismissals. 6 With the thawing of censorship, the full