Letter to the Editors from the August 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard
Closed-minded academics
Dear Editors,
It is infuriating to listen to those sociologists and similar ‘social scientists’, particularly the contributors Professor Laurie Taylor has on his Thinking Allowed programme (BBC Radio 4). These academic circles define the world in a multitude of classes, minutiae of people’s behaviour and so on. They publish books etc on post-communist societies and countries, which reinforce the view that communism has existed. These learned intellectuals stick to the accepted view that communism equals totalitarian state government with central control by a ruling elite. In their lazy thinking that’s it and any advance can only be to liberal democracy or, if they are a little radical, to social democracy.
These so-called intellectuals have never bothered to address what is communism/socialism. They don’t seem willing to make the effort to find what Marx and others meant in defining communism/socialism. Because they are part of the intellectual establishment and its output of publications reinforcing stereotypes, they effectively lie or at least mislead about the real meaning.
These people give legitimacy to the view that communism/socialism has existed and is now replaced with a better system. They obfuscate the definition of Marxism on the grounds that we have moved on to the better system of ‘democracy’ but they also misrepresent even this. How do we attack these closed-minded academics and get them to try original thought to their convoluted and erroneous conclusions?
Stuart Gibson,
Wimborne, Dorset
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