My statement was not meant in a religious sense, though I understand how it was interpreted as such. I am merely saying that the cultural and economic structures seem to have an effect on reigning doxa.
My question is how you come to make sense of the world without using a sort of theoretical method. You seem to imply a belief that there are just facts out there, directly accessible, which are the basis of historical materialism. But Marx points out in the Grundrisse that these facts, while being the determinate conditions of abstraction, require the abstraction to make sense of them. If the USSR did not escape the "sins" of modernity--a statement that seems accurate--an understanding of its failure to escape the logic of commodity production and extraction of surplus value, would seem to require a theoretical understanding. Merely stating these facts doesn't enlighten anyone as to why this course of events occured. Factional infighting, and other contingent processes, seem to also be excuses rather than explanations. Am Aug 5, 2009 um 12:25 AM schrieb Mark Lause: > Geoffrey Wildanger<edwardgeoff...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> If you want to know how we come to make sense of the world around >> us-- >> or, rather, how that world around us works around and in us--it seems >> it might be important to care about the things that Marx, Lenin, >> Trotsky and others said about it. >> > > Aside from this being a fundamentally religious argument, you are > implying that if we care about those things, we should close our eyes > really, really tight when we face discomforting realities and wish > really, really hard. > > Maybe click the heels of our ruby red slippers together... > > The starting point for historical materialism are the material > realities we face, not abstract wishes. In fact, the difference > between these approaches formed the fulcrum on which Marx and Engels, > in later days, distinguished their arguments from those earlier, > utopian socialists (not entirely accurately, though...but that's a > different story). > > Indeed, it could be argued that projecting everything on how things > worked or should work or will work eventually in the USSR was no more > realistic than doing the same about New Harmony. The starting point > might well be a decent, ethical preference for socialism over > capitalism, but neither gets you far in and of itself. Moreover, in > the case of the Soviet Union (or China), you're dealing with a modern > State that does the same sort of unsavory things modern States do. > > ML > > ________________________________________________ > YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu > Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/ > marxism/edwardgeoffrey%40gmail.com Geoffrey Wildanger edwardgeoff...@gmail.com ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
