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To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can reach the person managing the list at [EMAIL PROTECTED] When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Marxism-Thaxis digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Kevin Brien's *Marx, Reason, and the Art of Freedom* (Jim Farmelant) 2. Re: More of the same : proletariat not simply working class ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) 3. Cornforth on diamat (Charles Brown) 4. More of the same : proletariat not simply working class (Charles Brown) 5. Re: Cornforth on diamat (Ralph Dumain) 6. Re: More of the same : what evidence for new class forces st... ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) 7. Re: More of the same : proletariat not simply working class ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) 8. Re: Cornforth on diamat ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:12:48 -0400 From: Jim Farmelant Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Kevin Brien's *Marx, Reason, and the Art of Freedom* To: [email protected],[EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain Recently, I received in the mail a copy of the new second edition of Kevin M. Brien's book, *Marx, Reason, and the Art of Freedom* (Humanity Books - Prometheus, 2006), from Professor Robert S. Cohen of Boston University. Now, while I am generally not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, the receipt of this book left me slightly bewildered. There was no letter or note of explanation enclosed with the book. Although a couple years ago, I did attempt to contact Professor Cohen at Ralph Dumain's request, my attempts to reach him had ended in failure. He doesn't do email. And a philosophy professor that I know there had attempted to contact him at my request, but that too ended in failure. So why would Professor Cohen now be sending me free books? And how did he get my home address? After all, my name does not appear in the phone book, and I have never posted my street address on the Internet. So I tried making contact with him. First I started with his official Boston University email address. But my emails to him immediately bounced back. He apparently still doesn't do email. I then tried his phone number at Boston University. Well, apparently he doesn't have an answering service either. I suppose when you are 82 years old, you are probably not going to bother with email and answering services, if you had never bothered with those things before. So, I next tried contacting the philosophy department at BU. I received a response back from the department's program coordinator. So I suggested that she forward my thanks (as well as my questions concerning how he got my home address) to Professor Cohen. Lo and behold, this past Friday, I received a phone call from the big man himself. He said that Kevin Brien was a former student of his, and that as a favor to him, he was mailing out copies of his book to people, whose names and addresses that Brien had forwarded to him. It was Professor Cohen's understanding that Kevin Brien had obtained access to the subscription lists of some leftwing publications. Well I subscribe to Monthly Review and Science & Society, and I l know from past experience that these publications do release their subscription lists to certain favored progressive organizations and people. So there was my answer. Anyway, I started to read the book itself. It is work on Marxist philosophy written from the standpoint of a humanistic Marxism. Professor Brien strongly defends the position that Marx's work from his youthful writings like the 1844 Paris Manuscripts to his most mature writings like Capital constitute a unity. In other words he rejects the contentions of the old Stalinists and the Althusserians that there is a fundamental disjunction between the young Marx and the more mature Marx. In fact he rejects the idea that there is a bifuracted Marxism: a 'positivist' Marxism versus a 'humanist' Marxism, a 'voluntarist' Marxism versus a 'determinist' Marxism, or a 'reductionist' Marxism versus an 'emergentist' Marxism. On the other hand, Brien does clearly opt for a Marxism that is humanist, that is volunatarist, and that is emergentist, so he might be charged with simply privilaging one Marxism over the other, while not really resolving the apparent bifurcation that exists within the Marxist tradition. Having said that, he does attempt to do justice to the views of those Marxists that one would not expect him to be particularly sympathetic with. While he is no Althusserian, he does see much that is valuable in Althusser's analysis of social structures, and he attempts to incorporate this into his own analysis of capitalist society. While Kevin Brien is certainly not an old fashion dialectical materialist, he does, unlike some other noted humanist Marxists like Lukacs, attempt a defense of Engel's belief in a dialectics of nature. In doing this, he draws heavily upon the work of the quantum physicist, David Bohm, especially Bohm's *Causality and Chance in Modern Physics*. That book, as I have noted elsewhere, represented an attempt by Bohm to provide an updated version of Engels' philosophy of nature in the light of modern physics. Brien suggests that Engels' dialectics of nature might provide a basis for for what he describes ass a "third-order heuristic for the ongoing dialectic of inquiry in the nonhuman natural sciences." While he does not see this as essential for Marxism, Brien believes this to constitute a reasonable extrapolation of Marx's method from the social to the natural sciences. Some other noteworthy features of the book include his drawing upon Bertell Ollman's work on dialectics, including his use of the notion of internal relations as that concept was developed and elaborated by Brand Blanshard. Brien goes out of his way to rebut the critiques that were made of this concept by the empiricist philosopher, Ernest Nagel. He also makes a limited engagement with analytical Marxism as represented by the work of Dan Little. Apparently, Little had critiqued some of Brien's ideas so this inspired him to answer Little. Brien embraces Little's depiction of Marx as an empirical social scientist (as presented in his *The Scientific Marx*) but argues contrary to most analytical Marxists, that Marx was a dialectial empirical social scientist. In this way, he attempts to incorporate into his own thinking what he regards as some of the valid insights of analytical Marxists like Little, while remaining true to his own dialectical, humanist Marxism. This is sort of the same tac that he had taken with Althusser. Curiously enough, he makes no mention at all of people like G.A. Cohen, Jon Elster, or E.O. Wright, people who are much better known analytical Marxists than Dan Little. Another noteworthy feature of the second edition, is his attempt to find common ground between Marxism and Buddhism. Apparently, in the time following the writing and publication of the first edition of this book, Professor Brien has become deeply interested in Buddhist thought, and is now obsessed with reconciling Marxism with Buddhism. As he points out, Marxism and Buddhism do share a number of things in common. Both modes of thought are non-theistic in character, and both systems as naturalistic. Here, Brien makes the argument that one can have a spirituality without theism, citing Buddhism as a prime example of a nontheistic spirituality. He then goes on to argue that Marxism is compatible with a nontheistic spirituality and that in fact Buddhism and Marxism both share the objective of trying to lead man into living a non-alienated existence, He recognizes that there are definite distinctions between the ways that Buddhists have traditionally attempted to attain this goal and the ways that Marxists have approached it. But he suggests that the Marxist and Buddhist approaches may be more complementary than antagonistic. ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:01:58 EDT From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] More of the same : proletariat not simply working class To: [email protected] Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" This is the one statement I disagree with. I see no evidence of this at all. Why not spontaneously fascist, gangsterish, opportunist, cannonfodderish, passive? >Further it is the most poverty stricken sector of the proletariat that is >truly communistic in its spontaneous class striving. Comment I accept disagreements. People who demand something to eat, housing, education, transportation, even if they have no money to pay for these things, are spontaneously demanding means of subsistence outside the law of buying and selling of their labor as a precondition to eating. That is my meaning. An instance of this that shocked America was the evidence in the wake of the hurricanes that uprooted a million or more people. World wide the most poverty stricken - a huge section of humanity living off of less than 5 dollars a day are demanding socially necessary means of life in a scattered and haphazard way. It is the role of communist to make this unconscious spontaneous striving a conscious political force. Melvin P. ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 10:04:09 -0400 From: "Charles Brown" Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Cornforth on diamat To: "'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and the thinkers he inspired'" Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ralph Dumain : Furthermore, while Cornforth's class analysis of the history of philosophy may be broadly correct (though it is micro-incorrect in failing to account for the subjective self-understanding of positivists and pragmatists), his reduction of the contrast between Marxism and bourgeois philosophy to "two camps" is Stalinist through and through. Not only is he wrong about the nature of the Stalinist camp, but he is wrong about the relationship of Marxist to non-Marxist philosophies. In practice, he treats Marxist philosophy as a system opposed to other systems, though he denies doing so. Like most philosophers influenced by diamat--in this period, especially--he was very good at exposing both the social roots and the idealist blinders of bourgeois philosophy--i.e., at exercising the negative, critical function of Marxist philosophy--but diamat as a constructive philosophy remained primitive, underdeveloped, stagnant, locked into formulas and authorities. This is the tragedy of the whole tradition. Others have endlessly criticized the logical structure of diamat over the past century. One could toss off hundreds of names. The first that pop into my mind are Scanlan, Norman, and 'Rosa Lichtenstein'. There are some who have argued that bad logic works to the advantage of bad ideology--Popper, for example, and now 'Rosa'. However, there remains more to be said about this, even at this late date. It is especially relevant for recalibrating the relations among intellectual traditions, my larger project. ^^^^^^^ CB: These all sound like exercises of a negative critical function as well. Where is an affirmative critique or an exercise of synthesis in materialist dialectics or whatever the proper name for Marxist dialectics is ? The synthetic development of Marxist dialectics would come out of the revolutionary practice, as in actual revolutions in the SU and progeny, no ? ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 10:40:05 -0400 From: "Charles Brown" Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] More of the same : proletariat not simply working class To: "'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and the thinkers he inspired'" Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Waistline2 ________________________________ Again why fight a straw man and not speak to the issue and material presented? Melvin P. ^^^^^^ CB: What straw man ? ^^^^^ CB: I'm not the CPUSA, so why should I address your criticisms of the CPUSA. Send it to the CPUSA if you want a response. I did address part of the material you presented. What is the evidence of the new class you speak of ? Your response did not present evidence of said class, though you labelled what you said "empirical evidence". MP: Sorry if I gave you the impression that I thought your were the Communist Party USA. I do recognize that you are an individual rather than a political formation. Actually I presented the empirical evidence. ^^^ CB: Point out the empirical evidence you presented ? ^^^^^^ You simply disagree. That is OK. ^^^^ CB: I disagree that you presented empirical evidence of the new class you speak of. ^^^^^ Qualitative changes in the mode of production means new class by definition and/or new forms of the laboring class. ^^^^ CB: To me this is circular or begging the question ( in the technical sense; "begging the question" doesn't mean saying something that just "begs" that a certain question be asked, but rather affirming by assertion rather than with supportive evidence). Why , because what we, you and I are disputing, is whether or not this particular revolution in the instruments of production, the CAD/CAM , cyber, robot, computer, etc. revolution _is_ a revolution in the instruments that triggers a rev. in the property relations. For Marx, not every rev in the instruments of production _in capitalism_ results in a socialist rev. The radical rearrangement of production from the Fordist assembly line revolution in the instruments of production, did not result in a successful rev in property relations ( though the Russian Rev and progeny may be attributed to that). This current qualitative change in the instruments and organization of technological production _may_ result in another run at revolutionizing property relations, but it has not yet. ^^^^ Manufacture means a manufacturing class, industrial means industrial class and post industrial means post industrial classes or new class or new forms of class. ^^^^^ CB: These are technical classes. Class is defined based on ownership. Manufacturing working class, industrial working class, were both wage laborers. The capitalist manufacturing class, and capitalist industrial class were capitalists. The wage-labor/capital remains the same throughout capitalism, the relationship as analyzed by Marx in _Capital_. Technical revs don't all result in new classes. Also, to have a new working class would imply a new capitalist class. ^^^^^^ Like slavery means a slave class or the slave form of a class and feudalism means serf or a new class in relations to the previously existing mode of production and so on. ^^^^ CB: Correct. And all through the different technical developments of capitalism there remains a capitalist class and a working class, in a capitalist/wagelabor relation. ^^^^^^^ The material presented goes back to the previous discussion of the meaning of class antagonism and why the wage struggle is not the meaning of class struggle. ^^^^ CB: Struggle over the size of the wage is a reform struggle. It is not the "meaning" of the class struggle in the sense that the ultimate end of Marxist conscious working class struggle is to overthrow capitalist/wagelabor _relalations_ , not just maximize wages. ^^^^^^ It is the proletariat - rather than simply the concept of the working class, that is truly revolutionary. The autoworkers as an industrial form of the class are not revolutionary at all as a part of the working class in their identity as a decaying class fragment. ^^^^^^^ CB: You'll have to argue this more. The other segments of the working class which I believe you are designating as the proletariat , are not so evidently not decaying, or decaying less than the autoworkers. ^^^^^^ This dialectic - of decay of class fragments, is nothing new and Marx of course speaks to it clearly in the Communist Manifesto. ^^^^ CB: Where specifically ? ^^^^^ Fragments of Capital - (as a historically evolved social power), enter into antagonism with itself on the basis of the advance of the productive forces and this social power called capital is a class thing or assume a material form and expresses called class. The working class as the new class of the industrial revolution is only revolutionary as a working class until a certain change takes place that begins to drive sections of the working class and the capitalist into antagonism with the advance of industry. It is the proletariat - not the working class, that is truly revolutionary. ^^^^^ CB: Is this you or Marx ? ^^^^^^^ Further it is the most poverty stricken sector of the proletariat that is truly communistic in its spontaneous class striving. ^^^^ CB: They are more fed up with the system, for obvious reasons, but I don't know that they are more communistic. ^^^^^^^^^ The autoworkers fight and must fight, to exist and continue existing as auto workers, as an aspect of their self identity as a class sector. Consciousness cannot change the boundary of this material relations. It is only to the degree that a section of this sector - class fragment, of workers, can step outside the logic of what makes them auto workers that they can enter into the fight generated on the basis of the spontaneous logic of the communist proletariat that is already demanding socially necessary means of life outside the value relations or even if they have no money. ^^^^^ CB; Yea, but they are only getting pittance, plus a lot of them are getting thrown into prison and jail, where they are fed "for free". Plus, they do not have some communist theory or consciousness behind their "demands". They are not organizing themselves consciously ( or at all), they don't have new class consciousness. Spontaneity won't get it. Lenin's ideas on this are still valid for any new communist class, they must be class conscious to carry out revolutionary tasks. ^^^^^^^ He is the new dynamic that most communists are having trouble grasping and disagree with. Some believe the working class is truly revolutionary, although their is no evidence - as you like to state, to prove this historically. Melvin P. ^^^^ CB: In the capitalist mode of production , Marx's position that the working class is the only potentially revolutionary class is still valid. That the working class is the only potentially revolutionary class does not mean at all that a working class at any given time or place is _actually_ revolutionary. Marx's position is not that the working class is automatically actually revolutionary, but that it is the "job" of Marxist partisans of the working class to bring working class and socialist and revolutionary conscious to actuate that revolutionary potential. Right now we partisans are not having much success in the U.S. ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 10:49:36 -0400 From: Ralph Dumain Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Cornforth on diamat To: Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed See the latest entry in my Emergence Blog for specific references alluded to in my previous discussion of Cornforth: http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/emergence-blog.html I've alluded time and time again to the Norman-Sayers debate on dialectics. I retrieved my review of 1995 and made it into a web page: === message truncated === --------------------------------- Sneak preview the all-new Yahoo.com. It's not radically different. Just radically better. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
