tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-45324650664871428952008-04-04T11:35:00.000-05:002008-04-04T11:35:00.000-05:002008-04-04T11:35:00.000-05:00Pet Peeve: People who confuse Marxism as an intellectual toolset with Communist - a means of societal/economic organization.<BR/><BR/>Mark, in point of fact, using marxism as an analytical tool to discuss power dynamics between classes (i.e. a large company destroying thousands of jobs to take advantage of a tax break, or a sports team holding individual tax payers hostage for a stadium) or superstructure to structure interactions is a perfectly reasonable, common, and powerful technique. <BR/><BR/>I mean, heck, take the Frankfurt School so popular with those kids today - straight outta Marx. <BR/><BR/>Interesting side point - the denial of the existence of classes, or the opinion that their existence is wrong, is *actually* a sign of a communist. :)<BR/><BR/>Ok, I'm wildly off topic, it's just a huge pet peeve of mine that so many people say "marxist!" like it's a bad thing. Sure, let's reject one of the two major schools of thought of the last 200 years because of an associated, although mostly unreleated, applied technique of governance. Sounds good to me (I'm referring to Weber as my other, just for the curious).<BR/><BR/>By the way, I thought you kept your composure quite well. It's good to be upset when something like that happens, it is wrong and ignoring it or pretending it's ok just makes it worse.J Thatcherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11405593593220365471noreply@blogger.com