Wishful thinking by Justin Schwartz 12 February 2002 15:44 UTC
> >CB: No, no, Justin, I'm the one wishing in this thread. I'm putting forth a >utopian socialism. Engels has turned into his opposite. Charles, I didn't know you had it in you. ^^^^^^^ CB: I hope you don't mean what I'm thinking you mean. ^^^^^ > >But seriously, I only meant that because Marxism is true, it has a tendency >to fulfill itself. But there can be countervailing influences to this >tendency. How this struggle will come out in the end is difficult to say. >But I don't think you can count out a revival of Marxism, because its >truths are confirmed everyday, say in Argentina. I mean the people in >Argentina may be foreclosed from becoming Marxists or communists en masse >today because of the specific anti-communist institutions that capitalism >has built up in response to the SU and the first wave of socialist >revolutions. But what about an Argentine depression in the next generation >, when anti-communist institutions have faded, and people have no >anti-communist trends like today. Didn't someone say something about what happens when history repeats itself the second time? ^^^^^^ CB: The same person, in an essay on Lincoln, also noted in a development of that idea that comedy is superior to tragedy. That's why when I first came on these lists I proposed a Party of a new type, a Detroit Cabaret, a Boston Tea Party for today. A Mardi Gras of the People, is what the Ole man called it. Don't miss out on the fun, Justin. You've got your Ma Rainey tapes. ^^^^ >Marxism will seem like an amazinginly accurate description of what is >happening to them. So, it is hard to count out Marxist revival forever , as >you do. I think what is novel in my position is that I do not deny the substantial truth content of historical materialism; but the truth may not be enough. Someone also said something about the philosophers merely interpreting the world in various way. jks ^^^^^^^^ CB: Someone also said the rational is actual. But that the truth may not be enough is not what we are discussing. That's the inevitability argument. That one sort of puts the burden of proof on me. We are discussing the opposite end of things. Is no Marxism inevitable ? That's your claim , and the burden of proof is on you , as to why something that is so true, will not come true. I didn't say it being objectively true is enough. Certainly it will take practical critical, that is revolutionary, activity. Changing the world ( 13th thesis on Feuerbach) takes practical critical ( revolutionary) activity ( First thesis on Feuerbach). Declaring that Marxism is dead underminds people's enthusiam for taking practical critical activity to change the world. There is a subjective component to Marxism. Exactly in the First Thesis on Feuerbach , Marx indicates that past materialisms, including, Feuerbach's had been contemplative and not active, not subjective. The active side had been developed by idealism. In other words, the enthusiasm for acting was dominated by idealism. Marx distinguishes his materialism from those before in adding practical critical _activity_ and revolutionary elan to objective contemplation. Only this combination can change the world. I'm pretty sure I sent you my paper on "Activist Materialism and the End of Philosophy" when we were in the Committees of Correspondence, and we were corresponding :>) I Thesis on Feuerbach The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism - that of Feuerbach included - is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism -- which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity. Hence, in "Das Wesen des Christenthums", he regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and fixed only in its dirty-judaical manifestation. Hence he does not grasp the significance of "revolutionary", of "practical-critical", activity.
