[Buddha-l] Buddhism and Marxism: where the twain could meet

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Op Do, 21 september, 2006 20:25, schreef Richard Hayes:
> On Thursday 21 September 2006 10:41, Richard Hayes wrote:
>
>> IIn fact, it's almost axiomatic
>> that a Western Buddhist will have a leftist orientation.
>
> Some of you might be interested in a new book by Kevin M. Brien,
> <cite>Marx,
> Reason, and the Art of Freedom</cite>. In this revised second edition,
> Brien
> has an appendix on Marxism and Buddhism in which he argues that not only
> are
> Marxism and Buddhism fully compatible, but each complements the other. He
> quotes a fellow with the title the Dalai Lama, who says that in his view
> the
> failure of the Soviet Union was not the failure of Marxism but the failure
> of
> totalitarianism. If one could have Marxism without totalitarianism---and
> why
> not?---then one could have a Marxist economy that is fully in keeping with
> the main social principles of Buddhism. So argues the Dalai Lama and
> Professor Brien. I have not yet read the book carefully, but I find myself
> quite intrigued at the outset and hope to learn from it. (My Marxist
> theory
> has become a bit rusty of late, so I look forward to this refresher
> course.)
>
> Quick, somebody had better report me in to Fox news. I might be another
> one of
> those fellows that Bill O'Reilly talks about so obsessively: a radical
> leftist professor corrupting the minds of our nation's youth with all
> kinds
> of weird ideas drawn from Eastern mysticism and other suspicious
> non-Christian sources.
>
>
'Marxsm' doesn't necessarliy coincide with 'left'. Marx thought that his
Hegelian 'scientific' socialism was an inveitable fase in history,
succeding the bourgeois capitalist fase. Lenin already had to skip this,
because Russia had even not entered the capitalist fase in 1917. So for
Lenin socialism was not necessary, but just possible and had to be made. I
think that Buddhism would be more comfortable with the utopian socialism,
for which Marx felt nothing but disdain.
I leftist thinker which has left us with much interesting thoughts that
could help with a further development of Buddhism is Pierre Bourdieu. His
critique of capitalism is a.o. the utilism of right. Capitalism is said to
be the best because it generates more money and goods then other systems.
Bourdieu argues that this economic field is only one among other fields
that are important to human life.

erik