ABSTRACT
In the time of the Second International, Marxists made liberal use in their debates of the distinction between vulgar and true Marxism. Westerners continue to believe in Marxism or Marxism-Leninism because no other doctrine allows for belief in "another world" on this earth and not far away. The oscillation between a dogmatic use which relegates Marxism to the past and a critical use which keeps it alive in the present is also to be found in economics. This critique of human alienation in the process of production belongs to the Marxist Vulgate, but it is just as much a part of the spiritualist or religious reaction against the productivist society. The Vulgate involves the condemnation of the market per se and a bias towards collective ownership of the means of production. In the final analysis, the Marxist Vulgate tends to merge into "the myth of the Left".
