I see John Somerville wrote a number of books on Marxism. I don't think
Novack ever mentioned him, and I do not remember ever hearing of him
elsewhere or running across his work. A superficial scan of the article on
line didn't impress me as contributing to any particular ongoing debate
within the Marxist movement, but rather seemed have the purpose of offering
a general academic description of basic dialectical materialist ideas to US
readers, kind of like a Marxist philosophy 101 lecture. Of course, how
much he actually grasped of Marxist philosophy and its method, which parts
of Marxism he emphasized, who he was directing his writing at, and whether
his perspective was revolutionary or just academic or what - would take
some critical analysis, which of course would reflect the particular trend
within Marxism of the critic as much as it would investigate
Somerville. That of course is the nature of criticism - we often reveal
more about ourselves than what we are critiquing, don't we? Anyway, two
quick questions: is this article typical of Somerville's work? And what
was his political orientation?
I have visited the website the Somerville article is on before, by Paul
Ballantyne. Terrific stuff. He studied under Charles W. Tolman, a
Marxist-influenced writer and teacher who I have only read a few articles
by, but could learn much from. Apropos to our discussion on emergence,
Paul's work has much to offer, and wallah! he has the Novikoff paper on
integrative levels on his site, which I have just run off, and will read
soon.
- Steve
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