> Date sent: Mon, 8 Dec 1997 12:06:37 -0800
> Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> From: James Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: re: dialectics, etc.
> Ricardo writes: >..."the production of subjects" is nothing new; it was
> tried, with very grievous consequences, by the Soviets. Che's "New Man" was
> a similar attempt. A more extreme example is Pol Pot's experiment, which
> should end all such talk about "producing" humans, "total innovations". <
>
> While I generally agree with what Louis said about this, I want to add an
> additional addendum:
What did Louis, that indispensable reporter of pen-l, say? Except for
his usual invectives, there was nothing to his remark.
> The idea of creating a "New Man" is very old. For example, Plato
> (pretending to be Socrates) wrote in his REPUBLIC about structuring a
> society that creates what he considers to be the very best men (and women)
> to be the Guardians of his ideal society. Since then, the idea of educating
> people to be better than they currently are (educating in the broadest
> sense of the word) has shown up on all spots of the ideological spectrum
> from Robert Owen's utopian socialism to the conservatives efforts to push
> "family values" (i.e. patriarchy and anti-abortion) in the schools.
>
> Marx's idea of the creation of the "New Man" is quite different. Whereas
> Plato asked the question about "who watches the watchers (Guardians)?" and
> came up with the idea that they should be educated, Marx asks "who educates
> the educators?" (in the THESES ON FEUERBACH). He rejects Owen and the like:
> their "doctrine necessarily arrives at dividing society into two parts, one
> of which is [seen as] superior to society" (thesis 3). Plato, Owen, and the
> like lord themselves over the masses, becoming the "condescending saviors"
> referred to in the Internationale.
Certainly, in saying "pretending" you don't mean he was
trying to deceive his readers?
> In Marx, as Hal Draper documents in KARL MARX'S THEORY OF REVOLUTION (4
> volumes), it is the workers who educate themselves. Capitalism propels them
> into situations where they have little choice but to self-organize and
> self-educate, creating themselves as potential replacements for the
> bourgeois rulers.
That's just what Marx hoped for, but the fact is that workers have
shown little inclination to "create themselves" into Marxists.
That's why Lenin wrote What is to be done?
> BTW, Pol Pot made no effort to create a "New Man." He just forced people to
> obey his crazy ideas. Rather than being an effort at education, it's more
> like Sukarno's slaughter of a million suspected communists in 1965 and his
> slaughter in East Timor since 1973 or so. (These dates seem wrong. I am
> sorry if my memory is fading.) The difference is the US never treated Pol
> Pot as an official ally so we heard about all his sins in the official
> "free press." (Pol Pot was an unofficial ally of the US after he was ousted
> from power, but that's a different issue.)
My short remark above in no way says that Pol Pot and Che were the
same, as Louis concluded. One would expect such a conclusion from
someone who has a purely emotional understanding of marxism, or
someone who is emotionally angry at me because they were proven wrong
in a previous debate.
ricardo
> in pen-l solidarity,
>
>
>
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>
> Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
> http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
> "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let
> people talk.)
> -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
>
>
