You can't keep a good man down--Karl Marx in news stories lately

[socialist_n_TN]

7. Well they like PART of what Marx has to tell them........

They like the part about how the capitalist system can be used to funnel wealth upwards. Kind of like the former Trotskyists who used Trotsky's internationalist principles to turn capitalism into a global, unified phenomena instead doing the same for the working class. As an aside, if there were a Hell, there would be a special place in it for these degenerate Trots.

The problem is that Marx and Engel's system is intergrated and objective historically. Which means you CAN'T take just part of it and ignore the rest. Yes, because of uneven developement, it might appear that only part of the system would hold true when you look at it as a random historical snapshot. But when you look at it as a "movie" rather than a snapshot, you can see that eventually ALL of the Marxist system is taking place. INCLUDING the part that these "half-Marxists" don't like and don't believe in.

And to answer you question about your observations, it IS somewhat cyclical. We do see this resurgence of Marxist thought every few decades. The last time was in the 60s/70s in the anti-Vietnam war movement when the focus was on the imperialist facet of Marxist thought. Before that it was the 30s and the rise in working class consciousness that led to the union movement. I think that the focus now is more like the focus in the 30s with the added codicil that capitalism can't be "reformed" into working for the rest of us.