I wonder whether sociobiology is the next (bad? good?) idea that will die in English departments?

My impression as an uninterested outsider is that Marx has been yesterday’s news in lit-crit for a long time, except for that Terry Eagleton guy, who’s a Catholic Marxist.  And as you suggested, Freud seems to be just some guy cited every once in a while by that guru of psychoanalysis, Lacan (whom I haven’t actually read, of course).

I do think you’re way off base about Marx’s relevance, though.  Sure, his and Engels’ theory of history was a pile of dialectical crap, but his critique of capitalism was and still is brilliant, and much of it was adopted by conservatives.  (Note that conservatism, whatever it is, is not classical liberalism.)

Look at the antebellum Southern conservative critique of the “free labor” system (what we call the free market).  Look at the anti-"industrialism" of the Southern Agrarians.  For those who don’t object to looking outside the US, look at the 19th-century French conservative critique of (classical) liberalism.  That one found its way into the Rerum Novarum, among other places.  A lot of this stuff—by no means all of it, but a lot—could have been written by Marxists: that is, the diagnosis, not the prescription.

It’s as a great diagnostician that conservatives should read Marx today.  For those independent conservatives who decline to worship the cash nexus on bended knee (and there seem to be fewer and fewer each year), old Karl is a must read.

I sometimes get chided for accepting Marx’s critiques, yet my acceptance of his critiques are confused with the acceptance his remedies, which I reject.

The knee-jerk anti-Marixist American can not accept a Marxian worldview, they insist on rejecting both Marx’s observations and his remedies, and can not separate the two.

Karl Marx saw the world as it is, but made a fundamental error in how to remedy the world of it’s problems; Marx was, naturally, a Marxist: meaning he rejected tradition and Tradition - in Europe, the Faith, and the Faith’s remedies.

Marxism is the “other side” of the Liberal coin; the “other other side” is what we would call “Capitalism”.  Both are nothing more than Radical Materialism.  Karl Marx, Adam Smith, and Thomas Jefferson, et al are all blood brothers, all part of the same gang, fighting one another.

The United State’s greatest rival was the Marxist USSR, not because they were opposites, but because they were competitors.

To Patrick Hall and Ploni Almoni: Marx’ critique of capitalism might be a good story with some conservative implications, but as mr. Zmirak implied, from the point of economics the story is false. The exploitation theory of capitalism is both false and evil: it justifies violence in confiscating the property of the ‘exploiters’. It rhetorically imposes strife where none existed before: in voluntary exchange.

Politically, Bismarck had his alliance against classical liberalism with the socialism of Ferdinand Lassalle. It didn’t end up conserving much of the German empire or conservative Prussian values.

Marxist theory might have influenced the American conservative movement (e.g. James Burnham). Maybe that’s why the movement ended up supporting a Trotskyist foreign policy of permanent revolution that competed with Stalinism during the Cold War, as Patrick Hall observed. I read an interview of U.S. voter who said she’s for the war in Iraq, because America needs the oil. As Marxists say, imperialism is the extension of capitalism, so if you want free markets, peace and prosperity, you must support aggressive war. How’s that for American conservatism?

False theories breed false policies.

MF, first of all it depends upon whom you define as “exploiters”; second of all, Bizmarckian Prussia was not “conservative”, ergo, there were no “conservative Prussian values” to conserve any longer.

The American conservative movement went on into Trotskyism because Americans lost their Old World conservative values, and adopted the Liberal values of the “Founding Fathers”.  It was an easy step from Thomas Jefferson to Leon Trotsky for American “conservatives”.  Karl Marx’s worldview was correct, the particular American you cited is not unusual - people support the war because they want the oil.

Once again, you are confusing the reality with the remedy.  Karl Marx’s reality is not dependent upon his remedies.  One can accept a Marxian reality without accepting Marxist remedies.  That is the conservative worldview.  Conservatives accept the materialistic reality of the atomistic individual, but deny that either Karl Marx or Adam Smith had a remedy.  Or even Ludwig von Mises.

Russell Kirk was not a conservative because he saw all technology as radically constructive, he was a conservative because he saw certain technologies as radically destructive.  It all depends upon how the technology affects the community; a conservative is one who wishes to conserve traditional community, something that is lost to the vast majority of atomicized Americans.

The question is: what caused Americans to lose their Old World conservative values?  The answer: the Wars - both the one Between the States and the Civil War(s), and the subsequent “Reconstruction”.  From that, modern, “Whig dominated”, America was formed, and may not ever be reclaimed.

Marxism has been dealt a severe blow by what has happened in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but it is not certain that one can write it off as a whole yet.

Eastern Europeans are people who have lived under the banner of equality and then suddenly the main slogan has become efficiency.  Under the “equality” period less efficient sectors of the economy were often sustained by the few efficient ones, and this was practiced to such an extreme that the conditions of the system to function were weakened and then annihilited.  The few efficient sectors of the economy bled under the inefficient ones.

On the other hand, the more modern “efficiency” system is doing something similar, since efficiency stands for short-term profit and nothing else.  It has become “inefficient” to sustain institutions such as educational ones, hospitals, public transportation, etc., and what is happening is that an increasingly less educated and unhealthy society is expected to be more and more efficient.  For example, Hungary was a wunderkind some years back, it is now a complete economic disaster. (Interestingly in most of Eastern Europe the GDP has doubled in recent years, without a noticeable increase in living standards.)

So in both cases the system seems to be eating away its own existential conditions.  The situation has even generated nostalgia for the old days in some cases.

I think there has also been a marked shift between what equality means to the left in the last decades.  The European social democratic left who some decades ago campaigned for a progressive tax system, better publicly financed institutions, etc. (whatever we think of these goals), is qualitatively very different from the pro-immigration, pro-feminist, etc. left of nowadays.  The latter is also strongly pro-neo-capitalist, albeit its loyalty to the system is wrapped in equality clothing.  Immigration decreases wages, and puts employees in a weaker bargaining position.  Feminism seeks to exploit the short term profit from women’s laber at the expense of the long term benefits of raising decent families, etc. and one could go on and on.

English departments were largely a creation of the late 19th century for those unable (either intellectually or financially) to secure a classical education.  Matthew Arnold, for example, supported them to convey culture (via translation) to the masses.  English departments are symptoms of the “dumbing down” of the traditional British curriculum.

“I sometimes get chided for accepting Marx’s critiques, yet my acceptance of his critiques are confused with the acceptance his remedies, which I reject.” ~Patrick Hall

I’ve seen the same thing.  Folks like Marx, Chomsky and even the Ralph Naders of the world often have devastating in their analysis of problems.  Were they fall flat is in their proposed solutions.  I suppose that shouldn’t be surprising.  It doesn’t take a genius to tell you your house is on fire, but you should be very careful about suggestions to douse it with gasoline.

I think it is interesting that the Iraqi oil has been brought up in the comments here.  I find it very un-conservative free market to liberate the Iraqis oil from them by force.  It is more communist in that the assumption is that it is not their oil to openly sell on the market but our oil.  What our liberating Iraqi or Iranian oil does is counter to what the free market would prefer because it decreases competition rather than increases it.  When oil is in fewer hands and there are less competitors than we pay more for it.

Marx is very actual even today, if we take the ‘’trouble’’ to read him carefully and without prejudice.

Patrick Hall: you say that Americans support the war because they want oil. In this case, someone has made an error. Either those who thought that they could bring Americans cheap oil erred because the war has made Americans poorer and they can’t afford the oil anymore. In this case Americans have been betrayed by their rules who weren’t efficient enough to steal oil for them.

In the other case, somebody wanted the war for other reasons but to sell it to the people, gave the impression that it would lead to cheaper gasoline. In this case Americans have been betrayed by their notion that aggressive wars lead to material well-being. This is the false notion that imperialism is necessary to capitalism.

By cultivating this kind of Marxist doctrine, conservatives have encouraged Americans to support waging war. War isn’t really supportive of conservative values. The point with libertarian theory is that war isn’t really an extension of capitalism, it’s basically just entertainment. First comes the wealth, and then it is possible that some use their capitalist wealth for sinful purposes, pillaging the earth. But that is entertainment, nonetheless, and doesn’t bring material wealth. Just like the war in Iraq.

About Bismarck: I see that you have accepted the Marxist position that anyone who didn’t really bring about what you expect isn’t really a conservative, despite their intentions. Old World conservative values (Catholicism?) before the free-mason ‘Founding Fathers’ sounds like a myth to me. Equal to the original communism of the state of nature.

I don’t have much regard for the teaching of literature. What sealed that opinion was a discussion I read on how to talk knowingly about literary works one had never read. Apparently it is an important skill for lecturers to master. That being the case it is hardly surprising they are unwilling or unable to identify authors whose ideas have been signposts rather than culs-de-sac in the development of a modern understanding of reality. They should stop being pretentious and insincere and recognise that much of what exists now is defined in idioms which are wholly opaque to non-specialists and that they should instead focus on great literature for its own sake. If literature students themselves should learn anything at all it should be that their opinion of say the veracity of anthropogenic global warming or whether WTC7 could have collapsed in the way it did without assistance have no inherent value whatsoever since they have not learnt anything of the science which would underpin such a debate, but that on the other hand they might be able to write a book or a play which other people would enjoy.

Whatever you think of Marx, most mainstream or neoclassical economics is a load of
rubbish anyway, so it is not like it is that bad a reflection on him that its priests
don’t think much of him..

Analyze free markets and you’ll find Freudian [inner desires] liberalism.

Deep thought(s) for the day since we’re on philosophy, which is good since we’re not
passed it we just *imagine we are thinking ‘scientifically’ exclusively via the inferior
philosophers such as freud, marx, hegel etc. sloughed off on us in english, and pol.
sci., or econimics classes. (Quote): “Perhaps those disciplines have come to prize a scientistic ethos that drives away unruly thinkers. Or maybe they simply progress by sloughing off the past.” (end
quote.) That is the right question i.e. WHY? Those thinkers or 1/2 thinkers or 3/4
thinkers only came up with derivatives of truth, their own ‘certain’ take, angle or
slant on something larger or whole. What’s the fascination or are we simply being
dis-informed on purpose, accidently on purpose via the aggressive mimicry of a culture
not our own? It would simply be natural for another culture to do that if ensconced
within a larger culture; it’s normal how the natural world works. Thus is the larger
culture stupid? Huh? Say what? The mimicry would become the smaller culture’s lever,
as it were or control stick to survive, endure, prevail (i.e. take over). But I had
better keep silent, shhh I don’t want to be ‘anti’ anything, and “bad.” So I’ll leave you with a
quote from an actual philosopher I suspect almost on a par with Aristotle, whose name I
won’t mention because he’s been ostracized by the powers that be, he’s “bad”, or could be
too accurate, not “good” for the larger culture if allowed to become mainstream given
the needs of the smaller culture. So I’ll be quiet ‘shh’ (we’re in church) and leave you
with an appropriate quote: “Silence is only an unspeaking that corresponds as framing.”
Shh, hey you, this is a library pipe-down. Please your betters are at work here. It’s
for your own “good.” HOWEVER nonetheless it could be good if the smaller culture - like
it likes to imagine itself (it’s part of their cultural programming) were enormously
superior to the larger culture or the culture at large. Sadly they’re in too many ways
actually inferior and things go way DOWN hill with their hands on the reins. Like water
draining down their culture more like a 1/3 truth always finds and pools at its lowest
point. That’s ‘their’ truth. It’s why their culture itself NEVER led to a civilization
and never will because it can’t support it alone.

How is it that Freud is not taught in psychology departments, Marx is not taught in economics, and Hegel is hardly taught in philosophy?

Jeez, I dunno.  For the same reason that Ptolemy isn’t taught in astronomy departments?

Seamus, true enough… ‘dated’?  Janov ought to be the focus in psychology depts.,
Rothbard in economics, & Heidegger in philosophy. Ain’t been in college in a long time
but i’m guessing, how come they’re ‘ignored’? And how come they don’t make it into the
English or policitical sci. depts. of ‘higher’ ed? Why aren’t they allowed to at least
*also become mainstream? Probably because education is the greatest thing since the
wheel except now it’s about ‘control’… and thus propaganda. AT least Ptolemy was
honest in his mistakes, no? Was that your point?

Wow, Mr. Zmirak, you’ve finally found a topic that does not lead to Puritans, neo-Nazis,
libertarians, etc., etc., getting into a fist-fight over who can slander you with the
most impudence!  Congratulations!

In grad school at UVA, I was in a class to which a very prominent historian assigned the task of reading a new synthesis of his subfield.  When the day came to discuss the book, he enthused that it was “a great book.” He continued by noting that, “I don’t agree with a word it says,” but he added that his judgement that the book was entirely wrong did not affect his evaluation of it as “great.”

So in history, too, an “interesting reading” of the materials often is prized above verisimilitude.  I didn’t much respect the historian’s appraisals of other scholars’ works after that.  Of course, hearing him hold forth as he had led me to doubt that his own work could be relied on as anything other than an attempt to be “interesting,” too.