Where have all the Marxists gone?

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bernice Bobs her Hair

Richard Posner offers the most interesting observation about liberalism in academia that I've seen in a while:

Professors in the 26 to 35 year-old age range are less liberal and more moderate (though not more conservative) than older professors, which I attribute to those youngsters' having reached maturity after the collapse of communism. It is thus no surprise that only 1 percent of the young professors describe themselves as "left radicals" or "left activists," compared to 17 percent of those aged 50 or older.

Comments

This is news to whom?

Posted by Rickm | January 2, 2008 5:15 PM

I'd be careful about how you phrase this. As someone in the academy now, I can say from anecdotal evidence that it really isn't a change in degree or kind, but a change, really, in nomenclature. And insofar as there may not be new ranks of self-described Marxists moving into academe, there is no dearth of people who are in practice socialists-- they are simply either savvy enough not to call themselves socialists, or they are under the impression that they are just your average social democrats, unaware of the historically radical stances they hold on politics. "America is growing more conservative" is an incredibly clumsy meme; it ignores or misses complexity everywhere. And that is as true in the specific as it is true in general. For as much as the political language of the left has been moderated, I would argue that the economic sensibility of young liberals hasn't been. All of these things, after all, depend on relative positioning. On this blog, I'm a radical. At school I'm one of a crowd.

I don't know, perhaps I've let myself drift a little far of field. Let me just cautioned you in saying that I wouldn't consider this a continuing movement but a minor realignment (a politically and pragmatically necessary one); don't expect that, over time, the academy will continue moving rightward and we'll have college campuses replete with Republicans. The ideological complexion of higher education is endemic, not the product of circumstance.

Posted by Freddie | January 2, 2008 5:28 PM

Any person in the 26-35 age bracket today was necessarily born in the early/mid-1970s to early-1980s timeframe. He or she has, at most, childhood memories of stagflation and mass social unrest, or none at all, and was flowering and seeking higher education at the time when modern information technology (and the modern Internet) were likewise coming of age.

Someone aged 50+, on the other hand, was born in the late-1950s or before and was more likely to have their perspective shaped by the large and radical social and economic transformations of the 1960s and 1970s.

All of that has got to factor into this analysis somewhere.

Posted by anony-mouse | January 2, 2008 6:06 PM

If Posner is using 26-35 year old professors as a reliable unit of analysis, then he really must be out of touch with the academy. How many 26 year old professors are there? 3 maybe? That age group of professors is going to be comprised of the most ambitious and precocious group relative to the population as a whole (the population being college professors).

Posted by Rickm | January 2, 2008 6:54 PM

RickM:
I don't know where McMegan or Posner thinks there is a 26 year old professor. If they are future professors are just finishing their doctorate at 26. At 26 they are just graduate assistants.

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | January 2, 2008 7:40 PM

Re. age, I don't know if they were included in the study--or if they count as "professors" exactly--but community colleges can have pretty young staff. I'd guess they're also less immersed in academia than their university counterparts, which may weigh on the study too.

Anyway, I think anony-mouse and Freddie are on the right path here. The country itself has swung to the left pretty heavily in the last 20 or 30 years, especially on social issues. Someone whose political identity was formed 30 or 40 years ago may regard his/herself as a radical, whereas someone younger may consider themselves a moderate, even if they hold similar or identical views. The difference has more to do w/ their frame of reference than their actual policy positions.

Posted by Matt | January 2, 2008 7:50 PM

First, just a note - I was a professor (Assistant, of course) at 28 and didn't think myself excessively young. But certainly most of that 26 to 35 group is likely to be over 30.

I hope that we've all learned at least some lasting lessons from the experiment with communism. People love to demonize colonialism/imperialism (which I'm not defending), but in terms of damage done, it doesn't remotely compare to the damage done by communism, which many academics ardently supported.

If only people had been a bit more logical and clear-headed, and had analysed the system carefully, perhaps we could have avoided that disaster. Academia gets few chances to make a major, lasting worldwide impact. But if it could have made it clear to people what a bizarrely bad system communism truely is - how inefficient and inevitably repressive it is under the best of circumstances - perhaps it wouldn't have spread as it did.

And what are academics doing today to make sure that young people don't fall for it again, even if, say, Hugo Chavez dresses it up as new and improved and "21st century"? If academics can't offer at least some protection from dangerously bad ideas, then what are they good for?

Posted by Ann | January 2, 2008 8:14 PM

People love to demonize colonialism/imperialism (which I'm not defending), but in terms of damage done, it doesn't remotely compare to the damage done by communism, which many academics ardently supported.

Well, I'm no fan of communism. But I certainly don't agree with that, in general. I think, though, that that's a bigger fight than I'm willing to engage in right now, and would probably derail the more specific question. I think the best thing to say in regard to a question like that is that the issues of parameters and definition and scope are so broad and mercurial that it's very difficult to have a meaningful discussion.

(I mean, for example, there isn't any question that World War I was a inter-imperialist war. So would you include all the death and devastation of WWI in the imperialist tally? I'd said absolutely, you'd have to. You might disagree. Or what nation constituted an imperialist/socialist country, whether you blame Vietnam on communism or the United States, etc. Those are the kind of issues that make such a broad argument difficult to have productively.)

Posted by Freddie | January 2, 2008 8:50 PM

"If academics can't offer at least some protection from dangerously bad ideas, then what are they good for?"

Well last I checked they have been vehemently against the current administration.

Posted by Rickm | January 2, 2008 9:44 PM

The fact that there are any Marxists left at all is the real surprise. How many times must a bad idea be refuted?

Adam Smith was right and Karl Marx was wrong. Nothing could be plainer than that.

Posted by rwe | January 2, 2008 9:53 PM

I became an adjunct professor, or lecturer, or whatever my title was, at age 26. I had a Masters degree and was working on my Ph.D. dissertation, and I taught part time at an undergraduate institution near the University where I was studying. It's fairly common for Ph.D. students finishing their dissertations to do some adjunct work, and some get the title "Adjunct Professor" while others get the title "Lecturer" (depending on the school and department, and no doubt there are schools that have other titles for them as well).

Whatever the title, they function as faculty in the classroom, even if they don't have the service (committees, etc.) and research expectations of tenure-track professors.

Most 26 year-old adjuncts are the sort who are likely to get tenure-track positions in the future, so I guess it's reasonable to include them in a survey. OTOH, they aren't there yet, so maybe they shouldn't be included. Either way, they aren't a big chunk of the sample. Probably the most sensible way to deal with it is to be consistent and make it clear in the methodology description.

Posted by thoreau | January 2, 2008 11:01 PM

I became an adjunct professor, or lecturer, or whatever my title was, at age 26. I had a Masters degree and was working on my Ph.D. dissertation, and I taught part time at an undergraduate institution near the University where I was studying. It's fairly common for Ph.D. students finishing their dissertations to do some adjunct work, and some get the title "Adjunct Professor" while others get the title "Lecturer" (depending on the school and department, and no doubt there are schools that have other titles for them as well).

Whatever the title, they function as faculty in the classroom, even if they don't have the service (committees, etc.) and research expectations of tenure-track professors.

Most 26 year-old adjuncts are the sort who are likely to get tenure-track positions in the future, so I guess it's reasonable to include them in a survey. OTOH, they aren't there yet, so maybe they shouldn't be included. Either way, they aren't a big chunk of the sample. Probably the most sensible way to deal with it is to be consistent and make it clear in the methodology description.

Posted by thoreau | January 2, 2008 11:05 PM

I don't know where McMegan or Posner thinks there is a 26 year old professor.

Sure there are. Like some others in this thread, I got my first job (as an Asst Prof at a Top 20 school) when I was 27. It's not that unusual, and certainly there were younger people than me on the market, too. Many fields with a big technical component (like economics) will have snotnosed youngsters on the market pretty regularly.

Posted by academic | January 3, 2008 12:11 AM

thoreau and academic-

How old are you two now? From the data that I have seen, age demographics for professors have shifted. People are earning Ph.Ds and getting professorship jobs at a later age than they used to. Here is some data

Of course, on average, 1st year professors in the social sciences and humanities are older than those in the hard sciences. And there is no Marxist physics (I think). So, in fields where political ideology informs research and teaching to a greater degree, those in the academy tend to be older.

Posted by Rickm | January 3, 2008 12:21 AM

Also, the trend toward moderation in the academy among scholars in the humanities and social scientists can partly be explained by the findings of research being done, and where the hot new fields are. For example, a popular methodology or framework for studying history is postcolonialism. Now, postcolonialism is antithetical to Marxism in nearly every way. Nevertheless, it appeals to a certain personality type--a liberal intellectual who seeks to challenge the prevailing ideas of society. Yet, in order for a Marxist to be an 'activist', they must take another step after doing their research to challenge the status quo--meaning that not only must they critique the economic system of capitalism or class structure, but they must also advocate for an alternative. In short, Marxist activists are inveighing for a political change. The activism of postcolonialists is closely tied to their research. When, say, a scholar dissects the representations of Arabs in American culture, they are in effect being activists. They are agitating for something much less political or actual--they are merely trying to change people's minds. No further step is necessary, after the research is completed and disseminated, for a postcolonial scholar to be an activist.

A Walter LaFeber has to convince others that an alternative system is preferable to the one he critiques--an Edward Said merely needs to explain his viewpoint.

(I am in no way saying that LaFeber is a marxist, but you get my point)

Posted by Rickm | January 3, 2008 12:32 AM

Adam Smith was right and Karl Marx was wrong. Nothing could be plainer than that.

Sorry, but it depends. You have to separate the descriptive from the prescriptive. On the prescriptive front, I agree, Marx's solutions for the failures of capitalism have not held up, at all. But Marx was, among other things, an incredibly bright analyst of capitalism-- he was completely fascinated by it-- and I find many of his critiques of capitalism very trenchant. I mean, look, at its most basic point, that capitalism leaves vast swaths of humanity incapable of procuring the most basic elements of a comfortable life, well-- nothing could be plainer than that. The vast, vast majority of the world's people live in poverty. And as communism has disappeared (as you have said), that excuse for why has vanished. I am not a communist, or an anti-capitalist. But I am someone who has grown exceedingly tired of the fantasy that someday, the stars will open wide, and capitalism will suddenly unleash its bounty on the poor of the world. A rising tide doesn't raise all ships, in point of fact, and we're not going to tweak the capital gains tax and, hey presto, a minimal standard of living for all. I just wish enthusiastic capitalists would admit that they don't care about the poor, and stop pretending that our system is ever going to provide for them, in anything close to the current form. That, at least, has the benefit of intellectual honesty.

Posted by Freddie | January 3, 2008 12:38 AM

Well, Freddie, if you are going to raise the level of intellectual debate from rwe's glib comment, I am going to try and up the ante.

Like Marx, it depends which Smith we are talking about. Indeed, many of the proscriptions in the Wealth of Nations are contradicted by Smith's earlier writings. His excoriations of corporations--a campaign that was somewhat informed by his virulent anti-imperialism--would place him on the far left in today's spectrum. Jonah Goldberg would probably call him a fascist. Check out Jennifer Pitts' 'A Turn to Empire'. She shows how Smith generalized agnosticism (really not different from the later Marx) informed his anti-imperialism and moral skepticism without succumbing to relativism. He really presaged Oakeshott.

Posted by Rickm | January 3, 2008 12:52 AM

Rickm-

I'm 30 now. I did the adjunct thing for a year and a half, until I turned 28 and finished my Ph.D. Then I spent 2 years as a postdoc, and did a bit of adjunct work in that time as well. I'm in my first year as an assistant professor now. Not a top 20 school, but a respected undergraduate institution in professional and technical fields.

Posted by thoreau | January 3, 2008 1:57 AM

"Not a top 20 school, but.."

'thoreau', maybe you should remember to ask: "top 20, to whom?"

Rickm--

could you do us the small favor of providing links?

Posted by MEH | January 3, 2008 3:00 AM

Freddie,

You're quite amusing. In reality, it's precisely those parts of the world that have most strongly embraced capitalism where poverty is the least problem, whereas those parts that never had it hold the vast majority of the world's poor.

Posted by Kirk Parker | January 3, 2008 3:55 AM

I'm certainly no socialist, but I'd say that's not entirely true. In percentage terms and severity I'm reasonably certain there's more poor people in Hong Kong than in Norway yet Hong Kong is more capitalist. There are factors like corruption and political stability to consider. Also resources-per-capita as Norway is rich in oil from the North Sea while not having anywhere near the population of Venezuela or Iran.

From what I've read if a nation has a relatively small population, a well-ran legal system, and minimal corruption it can manage as a social-democracy. This can be "improved" by having mineral resources like Norway or eliminating potential non-workers like with Sweden. (Sweden had a strong eugenics program and still has a very high abortion rate) Granted even in these cases there's a tendency to grow stagnant, but I don't think it'd be accurate to see Sweden or Norway as full of impoverished suffering beggars yearning for capitalism to save them.

Posted by Thomas R | January 3, 2008 6:48 AM

His excoriations of corporations--a campaign that was somewhat informed by his virulent anti-imperialism--would place him on the far left in today's spectrum.

In Smith's time, "corporations" referred to something different than they do in ours. He was looking at such entities as the East India Company -- quasi-governmental monopolies -- not Starbucks.

But Marx was, among other things, an incredibly bright analyst of capitalism-- he was completely fascinated by it-- and I find many of his critiques of capitalism very trenchant. I mean, look, at its most basic point, that capitalism leaves vast swaths of humanity incapable of procuring the most basic elements of a comfortable life, well-- nothing could be plainer than that.

Except for it being completely and utterly wrong, yes. Saying that capitalism leaves people poor is like saying that modern medicine "leaves" vast swaths of humanity incapable of surviving disease. Yes, large numbers of people around the world die of disease -- but modern medicine isn't to blame for that; the fact that those people don't have modern medicine is.

The vast, vast majority of the world's people live in poverty.

...but not because of capitalism, but because of the lack of capitalism.

And as communism has disappeared (as you have said), that excuse for why has vanished.

Communism qua communism has disappeared. The idea of a fully centrally planned economy exists in only a few isolated places around the world. But the notion that politicians and bureaucrats should manage a country's economy is unfortunately alive and well. Look at opposition to free trade. Look at the look of horror that flashes across a liberal's face at the mention of the word "unregulated." Look at the fact that Democratic presidential candidates this year are competing to who can more effectively nationalize 15% of the nation's economy. Look at the abomination that represents the recently-passed energy bill. And these events are in one of the most ideologically-capitalist countries in the world.

I am not a communist, or an anti-capitalist. But I am someone who has grown exceedingly tired of the fantasy that someday, the stars will open wide, and capitalism will suddenly unleash its bounty on the poor of the world. A rising tide doesn't raise all ships, in point of fact, and we're not going to tweak the capital gains tax and, hey presto, a minimal standard of living for all.

The problem is that this is empirically wrong. Capitalism has been raising the standard of living around the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall. China, of course, is nowhere near a laissez-faire economy -- but it's much closer to one than it was twenty years ago, and consequently, is far wealthier, with hundreds of millions of people being lifted out of poverty.

Posted by David Nieporent | January 3, 2008 8:59 AM

If Posner is using 26-35 year old professors as a reliable unit of analysis, then he really must be out of touch with the academy. How many 26 year old professors are there? 3 maybe? That age group of professors is going to be comprised of the most ambitious and precocious group relative to the population as a whole (the population being college professors).

In addition to all the people who have chimed in above, let's not forget that Posner is a lawyer (judge). Law professors start much younger than others.

(Although my sense is that this is becoming less true, as law schools look more towards interdisciplinary types who have PhDs.)

Posted by David Nieporent | January 3, 2008 9:01 AM

I mean, look, at its most basic point, that capitalism leaves vast swaths of humanity incapable of procuring the most basic elements of a comfortable life, well-- nothing could be plainer than that. The vast, vast majority of the world's people live in poverty.-Freddie

That's preposterous. Look at sub-Saharan Africa, for example. No one who looks carefully at the facts could say that their poverty is a result of "capitalism's failures". They've had civil wars, wars between countries, malaria and AIDS and disatrous flirtations with communism. There are a lot of reasons for their poverty, but capitalism ain't one of them.

Look at Uganda under Idi Amin or Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe. It's clear that these countries are evidence of socialism's failure. Where countries have liberalized markets their results have been much better. Consider Mauritius and Botswana, the freest economies in Africa, which have had several decades of robust growth.

Better still, study the Index of Economic Freedom and you'll see a remarkable correlation between economic freedom and prosperity. Then read Xavier Sala-I-Martin's article which shows how liberalization has helped to alleviate poverty and reduce global inequality.

So, once again I claim: Adam Smith was right and Karl Marx was wrong. Nothing could be plainer than that.

Posted by rwe | January 3, 2008 9:15 AM

Freddie observed, "I mean, look, at its most basic point, that capitalism leaves vast swaths of humanity incapable of procuring the most basic elements of a comfortable life, well-- nothing could be plainer than that. The vast, vast majority of the world's people live in poverty."

Yes, and the vast majority of those very poor people live under some form of socialism. There's one simple proof of the superiority of capitalism--no country with a free market and a stable government ever has a famine. Countries without these things have them with distressing regularity.

Posted by Alan Gunn | January 3, 2008 9:43 AM

Freddie,

I understand your skepticism that - as many of the other posters seem to be advocating - if we just spread capitalism everywhere, then all will be well and everyone will rise out of poverty. I believe there will always be some notion of poverty, even if our definition of it changes. But this isn't a "failure of capitalism".

These billions living in poverty were living in poverty before Adam Smith and Karl Marx ever wrote a word. The problem was there before capitalism, and the fact that it's not solving the problem fast enough doesn't mean it's harmful. I suspect that using the strong sense of the word Communism, rather than vague notions of socialism, Communism has done more to drive reasonably well-off people down into poverty, than Capitalism has.

In my mind, "solving poverty" goes right along with "solving death". It's laudable to keep fighting the bad thing, but to think that your system will win the battle, once and for all, seems like self-delusion to me. That doesn't mean we should abandon modern/western medicine, just because everyone still dies, nor should we abandon capitalism just because people are still poor somewhere.

Posted by Geoff | January 3, 2008 10:02 AM

"You're quite amusing. In reality, it's precisely those parts of the world that have most strongly embraced capitalism where poverty is the least problem, whereas those parts that never had it hold the vast majority of the world's poor.

Posted by Kirk Parker | January 3, 2008 3:55 AM"

While free markets are a pre-requisite, I'm not convinced that the relationship is as linear (more capitalist ---> wealthier) as you make it out here. On average, people in Korea and Japan are wealthier than people in much of Latin America (only Chile, Costa Rica and to a certain extent Argentina can compete). However, many of the regimes we regarded as rather statist in Cold War Latin Amerca were more open than in Korea and Japan. Korea's steel industry is government-owned and for years it had five-year plans. Park Chung Hee's economic policies were strongly influenced by his experience fighting in the Japanese imperial military. Japan's market is a lot freer on paper than in reality, due to the continuation of much of the connections between banks, firms and the state that go back to at least the 1920's and helped to make part of the basis of the fascist imperial state domestically. In addition, the non-tariff barriers to entry in Japan that protect it from foreign competition are staggering. While good economic policies need some form of capitalism as a basis to be successful, the simple idea that more capitalism necessarily leads to more wealth is rather weak. Look at what shock therapy did for the Russian economy in the 1990's.

Posted by Reality Man | January 3, 2008 10:17 AM

many of the regimes we regarded as rather statist in Cold War Latin Amerca were more open than in Korea and Japan. Korea's steel industry is government-owned and for years it had five-year plans.

Thank you! The term "capitalism" was useful in distinguishing the free-world economies from the pre-Deng Communist ones. These days, you need a much more complex vocabulary to look at these questions, one which recognizes the ways in which the current Japanese economy is more similar to the current Chinese economy than to the current American one.

Posted by brooksfoe | January 3, 2008 12:02 PM

Well, crap. I predictably got lured off the real topic and into a fairly generic "capitalism good or bad" argument. Oops.

Returning briefly to the topic at hand:

1. The age thing is a silly nit to pick. I suspect 26 was the youngest professor in their sample set, so that's where the cutoff begins. We're discussing percentages, so it doesn't really matter if there was only one or two 26 year old profs. As long as that 26-35 range had a good sized sample set, the fact that percentage wise it skews more moderate than over-50 profs is interesting data.

2. I suspect that the shift is more than just terminology. In my personal college experience, there were plenty of students and profs alike who might like to see some socialized medicine or higher taxes on the rich, but not many who would like to see the workers overthrow the property owners and create a new government.

3. Like Freddie says, that doesn't mean the colleges will soon be full of young Republicans. I suspect there is much in the nature of academia that lends itself to more liberal beliefs and attitudes. I just think the sort of radical change advocated by Marx and later the Soviets is treated with a bit more skepticism now.

4. As for "If academics can't offer at least some protection from dangerously bad ideas, then what are they good for?" Well, that's not what academia is for. Academics is about presenting you with the bad ideas and the good ones, showing you why the good ones are better, then giving you the freedom to come up with new ideas. It's generally intended as a permissive, rather that "protective" environment, as far as ideas go.

Posted by Geoff | January 3, 2008 12:19 PM

Geoff-

The age cutoff was not a silly thing to quibble with. For one, it suggests that Posner hasn't been near a History department for decades. Also, professors that are in the 26-30 age range are more likely to be professors of the sciences then they are of the humanities. This is going to skew the larger data about their political beliefs.

Posted by Rickm | January 3, 2008 12:42 PM

Freddie,

Have you ever lived in a third world county? Not just visited - but lived? From your comments I don't think you understand just how badly some countries are governed.

Kleptocracy is not Capitalism.

Posted by Jmo | January 3, 2008 12:59 PM

I mean, for example, there isn't any question that World War I was a inter-imperialist war. So would you include all the death and devastation of WWI in the imperialist tally? I'd said absolutely, you'd have to. You might disagree. Or what nation constituted an imperialist/socialist country, whether you blame Vietnam on communism or the United States, etc. Those are the kind of issues that make such a broad argument difficult to have productively.

Freddie, I don't know what you mean by "inter-imperialist war", but WWII was mainly a war between competing versions of collectivism. The main Allied nations (France, UK, and USA) became pretty tilted toward some form of democratic socialism in the 30's. They were attacked by more vicious collectivists called Nazis/fascists/whatever the Japanese called it, and eventually Soviet Communism got pulled in - and it was the Soviet/German part of the war that ran up most of the body count, including tens of millions of dead Russian civilians.

Aside from that, Marxism has at least a share of the responsibility for the creation of Fascism and Nazism in the first place. Not only did it make collectivism socially respectable, but Mussolini started out as a socialist, and "Nazi" is just short for "National Socialist" in German. Mussolini and Hitler were aiming towards different goals than Lenin and Stalin claimed to be, but they all wound up using very similar methods (more extreme in the case of Communism), to achieve similar results of absolute national domination by self-anointed rulers who lived in luxury stolen from the productive classes.

Aside from that, WWII would probably have been much shorter and less nasty if Stalin hadn't gutted the Russian officer corps, damaged Russian industry and agriculture, and been such a damned fool in trusting Hitler. In WWI, the Germans didn't even think about invading deep into Russia, they were quite satisfied just to push the borders a few miles west and hold them there. In WWII, Hitler was able to pull a lot more force out of the west to attack Russia with, but I don't think it would have been enough if Russia hadn't been weakened from the top. A Czarist Russia would have happily agreed to carve up Poland with Hitler, but wouldn't have trusted him to stop there - and remember that in the context of invading Czarist Russia, even being another Napoleon isn't good enough...

Posted by markm | January 3, 2008 1:19 PM

Academics is about presenting you with the bad ideas and the good ones, showing you why the good ones are better

Fine, but the point of the original question is: Marxist academics have taken the (really) bad ones and tried to convince us that they're actually the good ones. In at least a few cases, this has been done in an oppressive, rather than permissive, environment.

What good is academia if, rather than sorting good from bad, it instead cluelessly trumpets bad and demonizes good, and punishes students who disagree?

Posted by Rob Lyman | January 3, 2008 1:26 PM

markm-
ZOMFG!!!!!!1

I had no idea that the word 'Nazi' is short for 'National Socialist' in German. Really. That means that the Nazi's must have been hippies!!!!11

Posted by Rickm | January 3, 2008 1:27 PM

Rob Lyman-

The term Marxism, in an academic setting, has an entirely different meaning than how it is commonly understood in the public sphere. Marxist analysis is a framework or paradigm for studying the world. Most often it takes the form of class analysis, cf. Beyond Eurocentrism by Peter Gran. To opine that academic Marxism is necessarily a 'really bad idea' because of the USSR is as silly as saying that Hobbesian analysis is a really bad idea because of Henry VIII.

And really, I have never met an academic who punishes their students for disagreeing with them.

Posted by Rickm | January 3, 2008 1:32 PM

To opine that academic Marxism is necessarily a 'really bad idea' because of the USSR is as silly as saying that Hobbesian analysis is a really bad idea because of Henry VIII.

I had in mind academics who are overly (and often publicly) friendly to the USSR, OBL, Saddam, Chavez, etc. (because they are hostile to the "imperialist" U.S.), not those who think Marx is an interesting way to read literature. Sorry if that wasn't clear

I have never met an academic who punishes their students for disagreeing with them

I've never met a Black Panther, but I don't deny that they exist.

Posted by Rob Lyman | January 3, 2008 2:15 PM

Well, for one, I have never met an academic, or read one, who was friendly to OBL or Saddam. I must be reading the wrong ones!

As I said, I also never met an academic who punishes their students for disagreeing with them. I also have never heard of a instance where this happened. Oh wait I did. It was at Temple University--a student claimed that the allegedly left-wing professors discriminated against him because he was a conservative. Oh WAIT! It turns out the student was just a moron and couldn't hack it in grad school.

I should also add that I have spent my entire adult life in academia.

Posted by Rickm | January 3, 2008 2:23 PM

Well, for one, I have never met an academic, or read one, who was friendly to OBL or Saddam. I must be reading the wrong ones!

So, yes to overly friendly reactions to the USSR and Chavez, then? Is it safe to say that, at the very least, support for the USSR qualifies as a "bad idea," and shows a failure on the part of those who supported it to successfully sort bad from good?

I should also add that I have spent my entire adult life in academia.

Is that intended to bolster your credibility? :)

Seriously, there are many stories from many sources. Maybe they are out of context or fabricated or exaggerated or what have you. Maybe we should believe none of them whatsoever, or at the very least be highly skeptical. Maybe all of the complaining students are morons who can't hack it in the purely meritocratic and infinitely just world of the American university. But if you "haven't heard" of these things, then you really do live the cloistered life of the ivory-tower stereotype.

Posted by Rob Lyman | January 3, 2008 2:33 PM

I've heard of these stories, but I've never heard of a substantiated one. I don't think that is a failure of my part, rather, I think it is because the stories are false, fabricated or blown up. Regardless, the burden of proof is on th accuser.

The accusations of those from David Horowitz and his ilk are directed at the academy. If one is insulated from society, and immured in the academy, how could being an 'ivory-tower stereotype' mean that one would never encounter unwarranted discrimination inside the tower itself?

Posted by Rickm | January 3, 2008 2:40 PM

I've heard of these stories, but I've never heard of a substantiated one.

"I've never heard X" and "I don't believe X" are quite different statements.

Regardless, the burden of proof is on th accuser.

No disagreement here. Still, forgive me for thinking that someone in, say, Ward Churchill's class might have suffered a tad were had he to taken a contrarian line on a paper for class. Maybe that's unfair to Churchill, but it strikes me as unlikely that someone who make such bizarre and intemperate statements in public is entirely even-handed in private.

Posted by Rob Lyman | January 3, 2008 3:07 PM

I had in mind academics who are overly (and often publicly) friendly to the USSR, OBL, Saddam, Chavez, etc. (because they are hostile to the "imperialist" U.S.), not those who think Marx is an interesting way to read literature.-Rob Lyman

Rob Lyman's comments above are very astute. I just wanted to comment on this. Not only do the Marxists have bad economic and political ideas, but they have bad literary ideas as well. Indeed, Marxist literary intepretation is even worse than Marxist economics.

How does a Marxist academic read Shakespeare? Well, he reads it as a story of class conflict, of course. Hamlet? A noble but indecisive young man torn by loyalty to his father, his own sense of morality, and a penchant for debilitating ratiocination? No, class conflict. Othello? A man of great virtue but a fiery temper that leads him to a terrible crime, due to the dissimulations of a monstrous villain? No, class conflict. The sonnets? About love and life? No, class conflict.

What could be more tedious or more stupid? Give me Allan Bloom or Harold Bloom. Give me anybody but a damned Marxist (or postmodernist, or radical feminist for that matter). They have nothing interesting to say.

Posted by rwe | January 3, 2008 3:28 PM

In fairness, I think Marxist or postmodernist or feminist interpretation of literature are all boring and monochromatic by themselves, or in overly large doses, but if seen as one of a number of different ways of reading, they can add interest and depth.

Put another way, class conflict may be an interesting alternative way to read Shakespeare. It's boring if that's all you do, but it may bring insights that you'd miss if you reject it out of hand.

Posted by Rob Lyman | January 3, 2008 3:37 PM

"Marxist literary intepretation is even worse than Marxist economics"

Wow! That's saying a lot.

According to the book Hungry Ghosts by Jasper Becker, the crop failures that led to the Great Leap famine in China were largely due to Mao trying to apply Marxist class conflict rules to agriculture. For instance, if you plant rice too close to wheat the two plants will compete because they're from different classes, but no matter how close you plant rice to other rice, the plants will work together and help each other because they're part of the same class. So, the easy way to get 6 times the rice harvest is to plant it 6 times as close together.

Since the idea was based on the 'science' of Marxism, Mao forced it on all of China at once (and even forced Tibet to try to grow rice and wheat). When the rice was planted so close together, it rotted and the harvest failed, but record strong harvests were reported to make Mao's idea look good. When the tax collectors came for their share of the harvest, they took every last grain they could find, on the theory that the people had more but were hiding it.

Between 10 and 30 million people died in just a few years, thanks to that effort to apply Marx's way of viewing politics into other areas. Maybe Marx had an interesting way to look at politics, but his economic ideas were ridiculous and deadly.

Posted by Ann | January 3, 2008 4:12 PM

Re: Granted even in these cases there's a tendency to grow stagnant, but I don't think it'd be accurate to see Sweden or Norway as full of impoverished suffering beggars yearning for capitalism to save them.

Sweden and Norway are also avowedly capitalist countries in the one way that matters: the means of production is largely in private hands. People (usually demagogues on the right) confuse social programs intended to ameliorate Capitalism's failures and excesses with Socialism. That's wrong. Socialism is the public ownership of the means of production.

Also, how does Sweden eliminate potential non-workers? Abortion and birth control are fairly random after all. Once upon a time though Sweden was noted for its sorcerers and mystics; perhaps they still have some and they advise women who have conceived lazy workers-to-be of this fact and send them to abortion clinics?

Re: But the notion that politicians and bureaucrats should manage a country's economy is unfortunately alive and well. Look at opposition to free trade.

Invariably the actions of the state will effect the economy, in major ways even. So the question "How will this policy effect the economy" is a legitimate one to ask. Rightwingers ask it too.

Re: Look at the fact that Democratic presidential candidates this year are competing to who can more effectively nationalize 15% of the nation's economy.

I assume you mean healthcare. No candidate is proposing that it be nationalized. Dennis Kucinich has proposed that health inusrance be natuonalized. That's it. Please quit disseminating lurid untruths.

Re: Adam Smith was right and Karl Marx was wrong.

True enough. But Smith was not a pure libertarian capitalist either. Let alone a Social Darwinist. He actually supported public programs to improve the life of the poor. For that matter even Fredrich Hayek supported some form of universal healthcare.

Re: Not only did it make collectivism socially respectable

Collectivism had been socially respectable for centuries, if not millennia. Check out ancient Sparta and the admiration it enjoyed in antiquity. And recall too that the early Christians "held all things in common" and monastic communities practiced communism (small "c") all through the Middle Ages.

Re: "Nazi" is just short for "National Socialist" in German.

The Nazis were no more "socialist" than their early predecessor reich was Holy, Roman or an Empire. "Socialist" was added to the party name as boob bait for German bubbas. They sent real socialists to the camps in droves.

Posted by JonF | January 3, 2008 6:20 PM

Have you ever lived in a third world county? - Jmo

I spent 3 years living in Togo. It was a staunchly capitalist ally of France and the US throughout the Cold War. Next door were Benin and Ghana. Both spent significant periods as "socialist" (whatever that meant in an African context) countries tilting towards the Soviet bloc.

The standards of living in the three countries were largely indistinguishable.

Posted by brooksfoe | January 3, 2008 7:03 PM

According to the book Hungry Ghosts by Jasper Becker, the crop failures that led to the Great Leap famine in China were largely due to Mao trying to apply Marxist class conflict rules to agriculture.

Man! That's almost as crazy as trying to apply the "science" of free market competition to public education.

Posted by brooksfoe | January 3, 2008 7:05 PM

Brooksfoe - Would you really call Togo a capitalist country? From what I've been able to gather it looks more like what Marx would have called Feudalism. Eyadema Gnassingbe was a king in all but name - right down to trying to pass his kingdom to his son.

In your estimation - what keeps poor countries poor? I'm sure you can see firsthand how the move from comunism to capitalism in Vietnam has helped lift millions out of poverty. Why does it work for Vietnam and not for Ghana?

Posted by Jmo | January 3, 2008 8:00 PM

Still, forgive me for thinking that someone in, say, Ward Churchill's class might have suffered a tad were had he to taken a contrarian line on a paper for class.

Churchill is a clown, but living as I do in Boulder, I never heard a single instance of students complaining about how they were treated by him. His most ardent defenders were students. Of course, there may be some who hated him and didn't speak up, but I don't recall seeing that in the special 735-part coverage of the controversy by the Rocky Mountain news.

However, there were several people who said he's intentionally provocative and self-important, so I'm sure that came out in class as well.

Posted by Derek Scruggs | January 3, 2008 8:16 PM

Derek-

That won't stop anti-scholars from painting Ward Churchill's editorial as representative for all of academia.

Posted by Rickm | January 3, 2008 9:04 PM

Rickm - Nor did revelations of him being a fraud prevent his academic supporters from defending him. Your point?

Posted by Oligonicella | January 4, 2008 8:44 AM

The measure of a Marxist isn't their candor in admitting discipleship to that ideology.

The measure is the degree of their adherence to the actual tenets of that ideology.

Posted by geekWithA.45 | January 4, 2008 8:47 AM

Jmo, capitalism has been great for Vietnam. For a lot of reasons, West African countries were and aren't positioned to reap those benefits in the same ways. One reason is tribalism and inadequate governance: there is a deficit of the governance and law and order you need to set up a business. Paradoxically, in both China and Vietnam, Communism, while economically devastating, also built a relatively uniform national system which provides the governing "floor" one needs for investment, and hence laid the groundwork for successful capitalism.

Nobody smart would advocate a return to socialism in Africa. But it's totally wrong to ascribe African countries' failure to develop entirely, or even primarily, to socialism. Few African countries tried socialism; all African countries are poor. That said, Ghana and Benin have now achieved a reasonable level of competent governance and have been giving capitalism a consistent go for 15 years or so, and it's bearing fruit -- growth rates of 5% or so. Though in East Asia, you'd expect to see 7 or 8 percent growth at a similar level of development. African countries start with big handicaps.

Posted by brooksfoe | January 4, 2008 9:32 AM

"I mean, look, at its most basic point, that capitalism leaves vast swaths of humanity incapable of procuring the most basic elements of a comfortable life, well-- nothing could be plainer than that. The vast, vast majority of the world's people live in poverty"

Freddy, nonsense. The vast majority of the world's poor didn't live under capitalism. Now with the Reagan/Thatcher era and world-wide reform they have got a taste and their boats are rising. Still they are a long way from capitalism unfortunately.

First thing Gandi did for India was cripple her with socialism. Most of the african continent, most of Asia, most Muslim countries all when socialist and communist. Latin America isn't truly capitalistic. Even the most capitalistic countries there only recently switched to the winning team and only partially. To the extent they switched they succeeded.

Even where the systems have become more capitalistic it takes time for their societies to amass capital. Wage rates are directly related to capital accumulation in a society and not labor unions or any other socialist metric.

Capital means: tools, buildings, roads, electric, human capital (skills/education), educational institutions, corporate structure, etc.

I suggest you read Thomas Sowell book Marxism and couple of his other books, plus some Milton Freedman to get a start on living with the reality instead of the socialist/Marxist spin.

Posted by Anon | January 4, 2008 10:00 AM

"Sweden and Norway are also avowedly capitalist countries in the one way that matters: the means of production is largely in private hands. People (usually demagogues on the right) confuse social programs intended to ameliorate Capitalism's failures and excesses with Socialism. That's wrong. Socialism is the public ownership of the means of production."

If the government tells the owners who they can hire and fire, what must be included in employee compensation, and how to run the factory, and claims whatever percentage of the sales or profits it desires for itself in taxes, it becomes questionable whether the factory is really owned by the private "owners" or by the government.

Posted by markm | January 4, 2008 11:53 AM

I think the first post by Freddie hit it.

Its just a historical ignorance and resulting use of new terms. They may think they're moderates but they act, and have opinions, like socialists... They're greens and think they are the center while everyone else is a Bush bot fascist.... Re: same old socialist bs...

Posted by Thomass | January 4, 2008 1:11 PM

So there's no fool like an old fool. Dog bites man.

I spent the first half of my adult life in top five universities, first as grad student, then postdoc, then professor (at 28) before leaving academia in my forties.

Leftist silliness is rampant, even (especially?) in top-tier universities. It's muted in the hard sciences, where to be parochial I suspect people are considerably brighter (no one fails to cut it in psychology and goes into physics), but it's there, in the atmosphere, because it defines what's fashionable and what isn't.

The social sciences and humanities seemed chock-a-block with those adhering to various degrees to Marxist ideology.

It's heartening to learn that the long dark night of leftist infestation in academia may finally be passing, or at least abating a bit.

Posted by Occam's Beard | January 4, 2008 1:26 PM

The saddest part of Marxism is that it is vibrantly alive in different guises, such as in fighting global warming. The basic failure of Marxist doctrine to help people achieve what it claims, time after time, place after place, has not yet put to rest the idea it shouldn't be tried again. Look at John Edwards' rhetoric...

The one Great Idea Marx had was to die. Unfortunately, it came to him late in life.

The rest of his work is a crock written by an poorly informed man, rightfully ignored by most hard thinkers (and angry for it), who lived on the dole provided by friends and useful idiots. Marx was not the first but probably one of the most pernicious results of substituting self-esteem for objective thought.

Posted by Harry Schell | January 4, 2008 2:11 PM

According to IQ and the Wealth of Nations, the average population intelligence of a nation is almost as important--if not more so--than the economic system. More here.

Even so, socialism is clearly for those more strongly emotional than rational. The resulting poverty (except where plentiful oil supports the welfare state) is predictable, from the neglect of basic market rules by socialist planners.

Posted by Al Fin | January 4, 2008 2:26 PM

Let us get back to why so-called "Marxism" has lost so much of its allure is comparion to the days when millions carried, waived and perhaps even read a "Little Red Book" containing the "thoughts" of one of history's most infamous mass murderers.

Quite simply, there is no draft now, no need to pretend sympathy to Communism to rationalize the poltroon impulse. Cowardice is no longer the handmaiden of treason.

Posted by Lou Gots | January 4, 2008 2:26 PM

Thank Cthulhu the old pinkos are dying off. I just wish we could speed up the process.

Posted by Dr. Kenneth Noisewater | January 4, 2008 3:05 PM

I've worked with a fair number of Russians over the years and unless they were over 40 they never worked in a Communist state. They may have some memories of it but all their adult working lives were in a free market system. You've got basically the same thing with more 'moderate' professors - their impulses for government control are the same but they're too young to call it Marxism or to identify that way.

Posted by bigdogdaddy | January 4, 2008 3:20 PM

The collapse of communismn in fact entails the collapse of communism in theory, i.e historical material with its emphasis on class struggle. And with the collapse of the historical materialism we also, somewhat surprisingly, gain the collapse of philosophical historicism. Or to put the matter somewhat more prosaically; the Zietgeist is dead.

Posted by John Bleck | January 5, 2008 2:15 AM

A couple interesting points presented earlier:

"Well, crap. I predictably got lured off the real topic and into a fairly generic "capitalism good or bad" argument. Oops."

"Academics is about presenting you with the bad ideas and the good ones, showing you why the good ones are better, then giving you the freedom to come up with new ideas."

Generic or not the arguments here have been quite educational. But I'm left wondering if that freedom to come up with new ideas can really be counted on. It's hard to imagine the kind of insightful and educational back and forth banter above is typical of today's Academy classroom if for no other reason than the lecture system is designed to inhibit that. Clearly the people here are educated and have formed their arguments in a way that a student couldn't (that's why they are a student) but perhaps this gives some insight to a different classroom model of presenting the facts and which are better. Counting on professors to present opposing arguments as open and inclusive as those here seems to me to be asking too much of any individual.

Posted by Boyd | January 5, 2008 11:38 AM

Economic communism is essentially dead.

Cultural communism, as posited by Antonio Gramsci, seems to have peaked. Gramsci emphasized taking control of cultural institutions such as the media, the academy, churches, political parties, and courts as the proper way to achieve Socialist Utopia, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the destruction of the family and social values. Gramsci did not quite explain how taking over the power structures would end up with the proletariat in charge, but logic was never a Socialist strong point in any of its manifestations.

The perceived decline of academic Socialism as described in this article, the actual decline of the Socialist media that has been recently documented, and the fragmentation of the Episcopal Church lead me to believe that the Gramscian version of totalitarianism is now in serious decline. But I thought that the collapse of the Soviet Union from corruption and inefficiency was the end point of a bad experiment, and it was not. What next? The struggle will probably never end - fortunately.

Posted by Iago | January 5, 2008 10:09 PM

Re: If the government tells the owners who they can hire and fire, what must be included in employee compensation, and how to run the factory, and claims whatever percentage of the sales or profits it desires for itself in taxes, it becomes questionable whether the factory is really owned by the private "owners" or by the government.

Taurine byproduct! The government will always tell employers who they may not hire (children or illegal aliens for example) and unless you want to bring back slavery the government is also going to be telling you, at a minimum, that you must pay your workers. I have no patience for this sort of absolutist thinking. When you live in a community there will be always be some community regulation you have to obey. Always, period. Would you argue that the fact you have to have indoor plumbing and a sewer hookup in any populated area means that you do not own your house? Just because you own something does not mean you have unlimited freedom with that something.

Posted by JonF | January 6, 2008 7:14 PM