[lit-ideas] Re: Five Years Ago

  • From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006 10:59:46 -0700

Lawrence wrote:

But back to your quibble: does the term "Root Cause" really fit Qutb's place
in Islamism?  Well, let's look at how Mike intended the term "root cause."
He didn't specify, but I took him to be using the old Leftist idea that
Capitalism causes proletarian revolutions, and the "so-called" Islamist
unrest is at root just such an one.

It's really tiresome that you persist in conflating 'Leftist' with 'Marxist.'
Moreover, few Marxists (and they were the fringe) after the early 1940s
believed in this sort of simplistic historical inevitability. (Classic Marxists
believed that the revolution of the proletariat could only take place in highly
industrialized nations where there were sharp worker/capitalist distinctions;
that the Revolution first took place in marginally industrialized Russia
revealed the problem with this 'scientific' claim.)

Robert Paul
Reed College


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