Hi Sabri, I think I know where you are coming from.
> As I told Jurriaan once in private, in my view, "western > rationality" is about horse trading, since it reduces human > interactions to deals and bargaining. When you adhere to "western > rationality", you design "mechanisms" to induce others to do what > you want them to do, if you can, of course. Yes, we discussed this a bit off-list, but as you know I disagree. I cannot give all the arguments now, but let's just make ten quick points: 1) "The West" does not exist culturally, it is an ideological fiction or geographic reference, an ideological concept which hides the reality of imperialist accumulation. In order to understand this, you should study the history of geographical mapping, the production of geographical maps. Then you will see "the West" is an ideological fiction. 2) "Western rationality" is a Weberian ideal type and not an objective reality, which suffers from the pitfalls of all ideal types - the use of ideal types, insofar as they have a use, is in a different area, in socialist politics. 3) "Western Rationality" contains many different forms of reasoning and values, and does not lead to just one style of behaviour, in other words it covers a host of sins and scientific advances, some of which socialists ought to defend, others to discard. 4) Capitalist markets, as Marx explains, have an objective, mind-independent logic of its own, to which we choose to conform or not to conform, but, and this is the crux of it, the fact that we may be forced to conform to it, to obtain access to goods and services, in other words behind the realm of choice is the real of necessity, we have to "adjust" our behaviour to market forces in accordance with the operation of the law of value, which makes sale at price of production the basic condition of supply and access to goods and services. 5) Ibn Khaldun indicates how Arab mercantile capitalism features sophisticated market rationality, but it is not clear how this market rationality is substantively different from your "Western rationality", other than Islamic banks etc. and other than that specific terms of exchange are institutionalised with different ethical norms. People might thing in a different way about capital accumulation, but they accumulation capital nevertheless, and if Eastern rationality hinders that accumulation, they will drop it. 6) Marx explains that the bourgeois modes of production are not dependent on any particular culture, any ethnicity or form of reasoning - such culture, ethnicity or forms of reasoning may certainly prove to be a gigantic obstacle to primitive accumulation, insofar as they achieve social cohesion and satisfaction of needs on the basis of a principle of social order or institutionalised social relations which are incompatible with bourgeois private property relations, but primitive accumulation through privatisation can always be achieved through asserting violence and raping, "the laws of motion of capitalism working themselves out with iron necessity towards inevitable results" through military accumulation. 7) If we were to argue that there is "Western rationality" then we confront the problem that parts of mathematics for example originates from the East (cf. e.g. Dirk Struik, A History of Mathematics - which provides a Marxian interpretation) and thus also that many forms of reasoning, communication and symbolisation used in the West did not originate in the West, but were part of imperialist appropriation from elsewhere or originated through legitimate international trade. 8) If we were to spell out very rigorously the difference between "Western rationality" and "Eastern rationality" then we would conclude there is no difference in substantive method, only a difference in the relative value attached to different forms of reasoning used to guide behaviour, determined by anatomical and cultural differences; but through the operation of the laws of motion of capitalism, the effect of these differences is gradually cancelled out and all different rationalities are subsumed under the logic of Capital, because the ultimately market leaves no space for any other logic than market logic, i.e. all use-value must be restructured to conform to exchange-value (see 6). Globalisation concepts and globalism are tools for imposing market logic. 9) If "Western rationality" is just Western, then it is difficult to explain why Eastern peoples actually adopt it and use it, and how they can use it, because if their reasoning was radically different, then Western rationality would be incommensurate with Eastern rationality. 10) Insofar as ethnic differences in rationality are different, the differences are ultimately not very great and more a question of problem-solving style, and emphasising different problem-solving styles and thus differentiating between people may only be due to a sectional interest. In reflecting on these issues, Karl Marx remarks significantly, "where the ideologist sees a unity, there is a contradiction; and where there is a contradiction, he perceives a unity". He tackles your problem in a different way, because he notes already in his early texts that concepts of humanity and inhumanity are historically changeable, and therefore if a behavioural norm is not consistent with peaceful private accumulation of capital, the bourgeois says it is "inhuman", but that is just to say, that the concept of human nature must conform to the contingent systemic requirements of private capital accumulation. In addition, Marx implies that whereas ethical norms are supposed to be universal in their application (they must apply to everybody in the same way under the same conditions, as codified by legal rules), in practice a society structured by business competition and the exploitation of other social classes through the market, makes it impossible to reconcile the universal ethical norm completely with personal behaviour, even if we try, there is perpetual conflict between the individual and the social which can at best be contained by the system, but not cancelled out. And therefore all ethnic differentiations are subsumed by, and overdetermined by, the logic of private accumulation, the logic of competition, and the logic of competing class interests. Jurriaan
