Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: $Revision: 1.6.2.16 $; site inmet.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!bbnccv!inmet!janw From: janw@inmet.UUCP Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: Re: Health Care, Wonderful Market fo Message-ID: <28200136@inmet.UUCP> Date: Tue, 1-Oct-85 06:22:00 EDT Article-I.D.: inmet.28200136 Posted: Tue Oct 1 06:22:00 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 5-Oct-85 08:09:57 EDT References: <1764@psuvax1.UUCP> Lines: 37 Nf-ID: #R:psuvax1:-176400:inmet:28200136:000:1784 Nf-From: inmet!janw Oct 1 06:22:00 1985 [mcgeer@ucbvax] > I really don't know much about sociology, since the only college course on > the subject that I attended began with the instructor saying that you had > to be a Marxist to be a sociologist. Well, that was that. I didn't hear > the rest of the lecture. Marxism is like smallpox: the only thing you want to > learn about it is how to stamp it out. Anyway... Well... if you dipped deeper you might find some truth in it. There is Marxist ideology; there is also Marxist method - far from infallible, but sometimes enlightening. Consider this: what is the basic tenet of Marxist sociology ? It is that ideology is an expression of class interest. Applied to statist ideology, *including modern Marxism*, this reads : it is the express- ion of self-interest of the New Class of bureaucracy and allied social groups (of which your jackass instructor was one of the lowliest representatives). In other words: they play Good Shepherd, and they *believe it*, but they are really out to fleece you. Taxes are not collected to pay for "social needs": "social needs" are discovered to justify taxes. True or false, this is what the Marxist method leads to. (The term "New Class" in the above sense was coined by Milovan Djilas in a book by the same title . The author is a Marxist, but ex-Communist ; he used to be the leading theoretician of Com- munist Yugoslavia, then became one of its convicts). Unfortunately, few Marxists read Marx; they don't suspect, for instance, that the main propositions of the 1st volume of Das Ka- pital (on which their whole case is built) are retracted in the 3d volume. Your smallpox comparison is uncannily apt: the vaccine is made of the *same bug that causes the disease*. Jan Wasilewsky