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PARTISAN REVIEW
the progressive character of British rule was made by an Indian
patriot and jurist addressing his British colleagues:
Yes, you gave us law and justice, roads, public hygiene and
hospitals, museums, parks and much else. But you took away
what we now value much more, our sense of self-respect.
It is not necessary to pursue the question any further here to
determine whether this value was always indigenous to Indian cul–
ture or whether it, too, had been imbibed from the Western tradi–
tion.
If
its roots were truly native to the local culture, why had it
taken so long to come to flower under British rule? It is sufficient to
develop a sense of historical sophistication among students so that
they realize that the moral imperatives of our own time cannot be
automatically applied outside the specific historical context that limit
the viable political and cultural possibilities of the past. One may
recite the much misunderstood phrase of Marx about changing the
present world instead of interpreting it. But Marx would have
scorned the idea that the past could ever be changed by present day
moral edicts or interpretations. Not even God can change the past!
Almost all of the old courses in Western Culture or Civilization
or the new courses proposed to replace them list Marx and Engels's
Communist Manifesto
as a core text. And this is as it should be. With–
out an understanding of the theory and practice of Marxism and the
history of movements allegedly based on it, the modern age and cul–
ture would be no more intelligible than the Middle Ages without a
knowledge of Christianity. Presumably when the student sections
are oriented to the study of "class" in the analysis of ideas, values,
and traditions, the
Communist Manifesto
and other writings will throw
some light on it. But as valuable as his insights are, Marx's theory of
class is the weakest aspect of his sociological analysis . Only his
theory of economic value is weaker. To evaluate Marx and his
claims properly - and scientifically as he hoped they would be–
would require at least some familiarity with the writings of his crit–
ics-classical, Keynesian, Hayekian. Students are and should be re–
quired to read Marx. But should not a supplementary reading list
contain
suggestions
of some works critical of Marx? I do not know
what is the case with other tracks of the new Stanford CIV course,
but there is not a single work critical of Marx listed in the "Europe
and the Americas" track.
After all, history itself has been guilty of
lese-Marxism!
Capital–
ism for all its recurrent crises has not collapsed. Its working class has
