A Quote by Roger Scruton
The Marxist theory of ideology is extremely contentious, not least because it is tied to socio-economic hypotheses that are no longer believable.
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Killing the private property-that was the center of the Marxist economy and Marxist ideology. That was the center of the Lenin ideology.
As far as social-economic theory is concerned, I am still a Marxist
The silence of the Left, or the exclusive focus of the Left, on America's alleged crimes over the past half-century, the disdainful sneering at America's deplorable 'Cold War mentality' - none of this has to be reassessed in light of the evidence of genocides that surpassed Hitler's, all in the name of a Marxist ideology. An ideology that doesn't need to be reassessed. As if it was maybe just an accident that Marxist-Leninist regimes turned totalitarian and genocidal. No connection there.
Liberalism makes this mistake in regard to private property and Marxism makes it in regard to socialized property... The Marxist illusion is partly derived from a romantic conception of human nature... It assumes that the socialization of property will eliminate human egotism... The development of a managerial class in Russia, combing economic with political power, is an historic refutation of the Marxist theory.
There are many hypotheses in physics of almost comparable brillance and elegance that have been rejected because they did not survive such a confrontation with experiment. In my view, the human condition would be greatly improved if such confrontations and willingness to reject hypotheses were a regular part of our social, political, economic, religious and cultural lives.
What good does it do to remain tied to an ideology if you don't achieve anything by it? I have an ideology myself - you can't work in a vacuum; you have to have faith in something.
Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology because it cabbages up one's mind. You see it a lot with T.V. preachers (many have minds made of cabbage) but it can also happen with political ideology. When you're young it's easy to drift into loyalties and when you announce that you're a loyal member and you start shouting the orthodox ideology out, what you're doing is pounding it in, pounding it in, and you're gradually ruining your mind. So you want to be very, very careful of this ideology. It's a big danger.
Unlike physics, for example, such parts of the bare bones of economic theory as are expressible in mathematical form are extremely easy compared with the economic interpretation of the complex and incompletely known facts of experience, and lead one a very little way towards establishing useful results.
Radical socio-economic transformation is a policy of the ANC. As a leader of the ANC, you have to implement the policy. When I talk about radical socio-economic transformation, it's not my thing; it's an ANC policy.
It is necessary to master Marxist theory and apply it, master it for the sole purpose of applying it. If you can apply the Marxist-Leninist viewpoint in elucidating one or two practical problems, you should be commended and credited with some achievement.
We have won on the Arlov, Kursk, Belgorod, and Kharkov grounds. We won because the country was being defended not only by the army but by the entire Soviet people. The Socialist economy, Soviet political structure, and Marxist-Leninist ideology proved their unarguable excellence against the Fascist economy, Fascist political structure, and Fascist ideology of Germany.
For Marx, 'pure' economic theory, that is economic theory which abstracts from a specific social structure, is impossible.
Every non-Marxist economic theory that treats human and non-human productive inputs as interchangeable assumes that the dehumanisation of human labour is complete. But if it could ever be completed, the result would be the end of capitalism as a system capable of creating and distributing value.
My interest in economics has always been in the whole corpus of economic theory, the interrelationships between the various fields of theory and their relevance for the formulation of economic policy.
I spent part of my college years in a Marxist commune. I was not a Marxist. I wasn't even pretending to be one. I was a Marxist-in-law.
I think ideology is toxic, all ideology. It's not that there are good ones and bad ones. All ideology is toxic, because ideology is a kind of insult to the gift of human free thinking.
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