Marx myths and Legends

A new website on Marx myths and Legends
is a welcome addition to the generally stale Marx propaganda visible in the various listserves. However, (quite apart from the egregious question of being lambasted by the current conservative liberal bashers now rampant) one can ask if anyone can clarify the issues at this stage. Trying to get rid of the Marx myths generally seems to mean bashing Engels and the Second Internationale and getting back to the 'real' Marx. The problem is that noone can find the problems in Marx himself. The problem with Marx is that his brilliant pieces tend to induce an awe which prevents critical thought. This disguises that fact that while his journalism, praxis and general 'course of motion through capitalist society' contains peak moments of extreme brilliance, his theories don't work and are really botched numbers. Endless amount of ink is spilled on the dialectic, historical materialism, etc, but the true source inspiration seems never to resurface. This situation debilitates the progressive left, socialist, or not.

Anyway, interesting website.

Marx Myths & Legends
Introduction
A critical reading of the work of Karl Marx now requires us to lay to one side the myths and legends which have obscured his ideas over the past one hundred and twenty years- distortions and misinterpretations to which perhaps no thinker has been more prone. In one sense, this is not difficult, because there is enough of his writing preserved, albeit in translation, for any of us to read Marx in his own words. Most however have been unwilling or unable to do this. The fifty volumes of the Marx-Engels Collected Works are forbidding, and when beginning as one almost inevitably does, with the received wisdom surrounding Marx’s name, there is much to discourage a reader from seriously taking on the task of understanding Marx. The aim of this project is thus to begin to challenge some of those myths in order to clear the way for a fresh reading of Marx that will hopefully be less prone to the distortions, misunderstandings and blatant falsehoods that have so far surrounded Marx. We believe that what Marx had to say remains of considerable relevance to an understanding of problems we face today, but that a reading of Marx now must maintain a critical caution which does not merely reproduce received ideas- positive or negative- about Marx’s work