Allwebco Web Templates · Build your own toolbar · Financial Data · Audio, Fonts, Clipart
powered by
bravenet.com
|
|
OML Archives-
Subject: Re: Reich and Marx - Tue, 12 Mar 1996 15:59:15 -0500
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 15:59:15 -0500
From: ccaruso@sas.upenn.edu (Christopher G Caruso)
Message-Id: <199603122042.PAA28843@mail2.sas.upenn.edu>
Subject: Re: Reich and Marx
To: orgonomy@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Sender: owner-orgonomy@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Nick Totton wrote:
>
> Thanks, Chris, for helping me out with Chris's request for further info on
> Marxist economics. What a clear and concise account! It's often not recognised
> how much Reich was influenced by Marx - not only in his earlier life, but right
> through, in his ideas about 'work democracy'.
>
> Chris, the reason I sent a copy to your p[ersonal; address as well as the list
> was as a courtesy, in case you weren't following the list at that moment.
>
> Regards
>
> Nick Totton
>
It is true that Reich was hugely influenced by Marx. Later in his
life, he was disgusted with Marxists (I think mostly because he believed
that the masses had chosen Hitler over him and was massively disappointed
after all of the work he had done), and took a rather naive view of
American democracy (including the anti-Communist hysteria).
However, his ideas remained. In his letters to Neill, they speak of
Reich's "work-democracy" as a form of socialism, and Reich continued
to praise Lenin as a misunderstood genius. And, even when Reich,
in later editions of his books, changed all of the Marxist language into
more neutral wordings, his ideas remained the same. He was still arguing
a fundamentally Marxist point, but chose to do it in jargon-free
"neutral" words.
That is why the strongly right-leaning tendencies of Ellsworth Baker and
the early ACO seem so odd to me.
Even more than Reich's expressly political views (such as work-
democracy), there is a structural similarity to the contours of both
Reich's and Marx's thought: Marx's "dialectical thinking" and Reich's
"functional thinking" share important similarities, for instance in their
material focus and their emphasis of the relationship of opposites. Has
their been any scholarship in this point?
--
Chris Caruso Check out: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~ccaruso/
ccaruso@sas.upenn.edu http://www.igc.org/fair/
Philadelphia, PA USA http://www.mcs.com/~jdav/league.html
--- from list orgonomy@lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Many thanks for Geocities providing this free space
Get your own Free Home Page
bravenet.com