Word: marxisms
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...convergence theory, in the words of Kremlinologist Bertram Wolfe, is "vulgar Marxism." It posits a fundamentalist belief in economic determinism that Marx himself would probably have disavowed. It ignores or underrates the role played by traditions, value systems and even national characteristics in deciding the future of societies. The concepts that people have of national characteristics, of course, are often mere caricatures, but they generally contain some truth, of a subtler variety than meets the eye. The American devotion to individualism and freedom can be exaggerated; yet the Lockean principles of individual liberty and ordered freedom that underlie...
...voters, even the tiny Communist Party -which went from four to 14 seats -downplayed dogma and emphasized inflation, air pollution and the need for more dobuita (gutter lids) in the streets. The Socialists, by comparison, trotted out unfamiliar, underfinanced candidates whose chief ideological equipment was a militant 19th century Marxism. Foreign policy? The Socialists demanded "unarmed neutrality" so loudly that voters identified the party with the antiwar students who tore up Tokyo last October. Domestic policy? The Socialists called for nationalization of industry -just as employers were handing out the biggest year-end bonuses in Japan's history...
Dogmatic Purity. Japan's Socialists never followed the lead of Britain's Labor Party and Germany's Social Democrats. Once, both European parties exerted little appeal to anyone but blue-collar workers. Eventually, both discarded doctrinaire Marxism and set out to build national followings. The main characteristic of Japan's Socialists, however, is what West German Socialist Scholar Gebhard Hielscher calls an "almost hysterical emphasis on retaining theoretical purity." Adds Hielscher: "Ordinary people simply aren't interested in such performances...
...lives in Brussels and edits the militantly leftist weekly La Gauche (circ. 5,000), has written a number of books. His most recent is a two-volume work titled Marxist Economic Theory. Critics both in the U.S. and abroad have praised the book's fresh, undoctrinaire approach to Marxism, and the Economist felt that "no student can afford to ignore this very important work." Mandel's ideas may clash with American beliefs, but there is something absurd in the whole Mc-Carran Act notion that the U.S. must be protected from dangerous alien contamination by keeping out certain...
...stylish arguments which plagued that generation are talked out: Nin's temparament embraces Freud, despairs about America, succumbs to the disasters of World War II, and staves off the temptations of Marxism, even as she manages to repair her sensitivity. A remarkable scene in Caresse Crosby's Virginia house involves Dali, Henry Miller, and Nin shouting confusedly at the dinner table; another describes the exhaustion of New York literary society, drunken parties, jazz. The endeavor to write almost seems to subside before the need to simply go on. Even though she was eventually driven to publish her own works...