Marx voted top thinker

From Science for the People
It is fascinating that Marx wins this philosophy vote, bravo in one way, but II find it significant that Kant isn't mentioned here, what to say of Hegel, or Hume. As much as I admire Marx, his theories don't work but are so brilliantly deft with the mix of ideology and theory that most never figure out the difficulties. Looking at Capital, such as it is, and Marx's disorganization and inability to complete his project, we see the flaws in his original project yielding to confusion. Marx wasn't actually a very good theorist.
BTW, these are not disillusioned reactionary remarks but a protest that noone can function on the left.
[ I should interject that my eonic model can do upgraded Marx models five ways and upside down, and do it better, but the inertia of the Marxism is too great to get a hearing]

The irony is that if you threw away the theory and took Marx on the surface, his critique of ideology remains as deep as ever, a true prophet of globalization. Those theories were very costly and cost the left the chance of socialism. Too many students who probe deeper into Marx realize none of it quite works, and drift away, soon replaced by the next set of beginners as they graduate out the back door. So I say this because the left is too confused to get its act together. The right is taking the system to the cleaners and noone can exert any leadership because they figure out a reasonable mix of praxis and theory.

It is, in any case, pointless to isolate one thinker from German Classical philosophy (Marx's terrain, behind the economics). It is a question of mastering the issues as a whole from Descartes to Kant and after. I fault Hegel, or the Hegelian generation, for displacing the Kantian foundation with a bunch of dubious dialectical metaphysics, which is indirectly present in Marxist theory, and which it is impossible to sort out.
Schopenhauer got one thing right: Hegel will confuse you, terminally.
Marxists are confused Hegelian stragglers.
Mesmerization happened three times, with Marx, then Engels, then Lenin.
Also, all the problems in Marx were pointed out in the 1890's, in many but not all, cases by early Marxists. Who remembers the Second International characters protesting Leninism? Like Kautsky. They had their problems, also, and I wouldn't try endorsing their views! But Marxists who grasp their history are rare, and it requires more than another blah blah commentary starting with Bauer/Fuerbach.
So, Marxism is a strange subject. What to do??

Kant is ridiculed now, in a truly silly age with philosophic pretensions, but all his 'dialectic of illusion' is thoroughly in evidence in the phase from Hegel onwards. It's not a very funny joke and Marx doesn't come out that brilliant.
To repair Marx, you have to start over.



In a message dated 7/14/2005 3:57:49 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, xx@...writes:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1528336,00.html?gusrc=rss

Marx voted top thinker

Charlotte Higgins
Thursday July 14, 2005
Guardian

In a shock result, Karl Marx has been voted the greatest ever philosopher following a poll by Melvyn Bragg's Radio 4 show In Our Time .

In the public's poll, which assessed 20 philosophers, Marx, author of the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, got 27.93% of the 30,000 votes. In second place came David Hume with 12.67%, followed by Ludwig Wittgenstein with 6.8%. Plato trailed in fifth place and Socrates at eighth.

Andrew Chitty, who, at Sussex University, teaches the UK's only MA in Marxist philosophy, said: "This shows that philosophy should take Marxism seriously. It is possible he won because Marxists organised a mass vote; they're much more organised than Hegelians, for instance.

"But I think it's more likely that people understand that in this increasingly capitalist world Marx gives us the best vision with which to understand that world. Marx talks about capital in a philosophical way - he's unique in that."




http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1528137,00.html