In a message dated 6/24/00 3:08:17 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
writes:
<< I thought Lou's post was (perhaps unusually?) quite free from moral
outrage. I share his purely intellectual outrage at sloppy thinking -- and
it is certainly sloppy thinking to foist a concept of "inevitability" on the
*totality* of Marx's thought, quotation-mongering aside. >>
I agree that Louis' comment was cool, level-headed, reasonable, and
sensible,w hether or not one agreed with its substance.
But for Carroll, it's odd to hear the idea of supporting an interpretation
with text caricatured as "quotation mongering"--is that how you taught your
students to read Milton? I think it is quite plausible to read Marx as an
inevitabilist. That is just taking him at his word at crucial points. Of
course he is not altogether consistent, so the reading is not required. But
the statements he makes that support it have to be accounted for. Personally,
I think he was more inevitabilist than not, and that our currect rejection of
that doctrine is a salutary departure from an erroneous theoetical commitment
of his. --jks
