Was: "Re: I have deleted my posts on "artifical dementia" from the Marxmail
archives"
Tom - It seems to me that you have with this note, implicitly accepted the
charge proffered by Charles.
1. I think that is wise, since it is transparently true. It is not a charge
made by either Stuart Jefferies ('Grand Hotel Abyss'); or by Perry Andersen
('Considerations on Western marxism").
But it is made by Mike Watson (
https://jacobin.com/2024/06/frankfurt-school-marcuse-adorno-theory )
2. You then argue that well - Rightists also attacked the man. . . basically
concluding that this somehow vindicates him. Isn't that the sense here?
This seems to be a very slippery slope since so many persons/objects of attack
by the Rightists are not based on much.
3. Anderson, who I respect for his work on Absolutism, although quite seriously
disagree with on several points (including that of Trotsky for sure) - has some
cogent summaries of the whole Frankfurt School, including Marcuse. Marcuse was,
says Anderson, one of the 'Western Marxists' who as a body "No matter how
otherwise heteroclite, they share one fundamental emblem: a common and latent
pessimism".; Ibid p. 88 (London 1979 edition).
It would of course, not be Anderson - without at least one show-off word out of
the ordinary (Heteroclite: Deviating from ordinary forms or rules; irregular;
anomalous; abnormal).
A longer note on him right now would only be superficial. Might possibly tackle
his absurd conception of Freudianism into Marxian politics at another time.
On another topic that has entered the somewhat 'octopus'-tentacled path of this
strand - was the notion of changes in Marx's writings. Certainly Marx evolved
in my view. But I do not know that he actually changed concepts/theories. He
certainly deepened his and Engels' original thoughts.
He returned to his earlier notions of alienation with far greater depth - not
turning his back on them. In my view anyway. I had a little chat with Mark B
about this, and I think one area he did somewhat change was on the business of
the 'Asiatic Mode of Production'. He in his notebooks on Ethnology was making
the case that indeed there was a period of feudalism in India. He did not
recant the AMP as far as I can tell. It was simply pushed back in historical
time. But that is on me to show separately in almost completed writing.
H
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