Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Bhaskar Sunkara wrote: Is it? Anderson's perspective may have seemed out of place, even pessimistic, on the heels of Seattle, but I'll still defend Renewals and would argue that it has been largely vindiciated. Quoting Elliott's excellent Ends in Sight: A more balanced rejoinder to ‘Renewals’ came from the French Trotskyist Gilbert Achcar. Ehhhm - in case you didn't notice the piece posted by Louis is actually by the very same Gilbert Achcar. Einde O'Callaghan On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 4:14 PM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote: snip This is a good analysis: Issue 88 of INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM JOURNAL Published Autumn 2000 The 'historical pessimism' of Perry Anderson GILBERT ACHCAR Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Yes, it's the piece in question. Anderson's being described with Gramsci's couplet (well not Gramsci's, but since everyone seems to think he originated it) On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 3:21 AM, Einde O'Callaghan eind...@freenet.dewrote: Ehhhm - in case you didn't notice the piece posted by Louis is actually by the very same Gilbert Achcar. Einde O'Callaghan Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Good take-down of Jason Reitman
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == (I can't stand Reitman myself. Up in the Air used the unemployed as potted plants and Juno amounted to anti-abortion propaganda.) Slate Magazine the oscars Up in the Air A slick Hollywood star vehicle dressed up by a mediocre filmmaker to look like an emblematic chronicle of our tough economic times. By Dennis Lim Posted Friday, March 5, 2010, at 9:55 AM ET You can tell a lot about the American psyche from the groupthink that emerges around the designated movie of the moment—in particular, from the conventional wisdom on whether or not a given film has social or political relevance. Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, despite its visceral view of war as madness and addiction, has been pegged as an Iraq war movie that has nothing to say about the Iraq war: action cinema unencumbered by politics. Meanwhile, Jason Reitman's Up in the Air, which stars George Clooney as a frequent-flying layoff specialist, is presumed to be an X-ray vision of the Way We Live Now, a film of tremendous social import that, per Frank Rich's endorsement in the New York Times, uses the power of pop culture to salve national wounds that continue to fester in the real world. What does it say about the way we think now that the emblematic chronicle of our Great Recession sidesteps the economic plight of the unemployed to wallow in the existential crisis of the lonely corporate executioner? A closer look at Reitman's work—and it should be noted that his films, with their slick surfaces, jaunty rhythms, and brisk patter, are designed precisely to discourage close looks—reveals a peculiar consistency, even though all three of his features have originated with the material of others (a Christopher Buckley novel, a Diablo Cody screenplay, a Walter Kirn novel). On one level, it is hard to fathom his success in the supposedly liberal bastion of Hollywood: His politics lean right when they are at all legible, and yet he's embraced as an insightful social satirist, the second coming of Billy Wilder. On a deeper level, though, this disconnect makes perfect sense: It speaks to the brazen hucksterism that is so much a part of Reitman's method. He's a mediocre filmmaker but a world-class panderer. His movies, which instinctively play to both sides of a charged issue, are the height of smoke-and-mirrors artistry, wholly dependent on the concealment and the semblance of meaning. Reitman's first film, Thank You for Smoking (2005), centered on an obfuscating Big Tobacco lobbyist, belongs to the dubious genre that people like to call equal-opportunity satire—which is another way of saying that it sprays potshots in all directions to avoid anything so onerous as a point of view. Juno (2007), which won Cody a screenwriting Oscar just as Up in the Air looks set to do for Reitman and Sheldon Turner, works overtime to make an accidental pregnancy look like the cutest, wackiest thing that could possibly happen to a teenage girl. But Juno at least triggered some debate about its politics. Up in the Air has been widely taken at face value as social commentary, which is, more than anything, a sad reflection on what passes for real-world relevance in a Hollywood movie today. Whatever Reitman's original intentions, Up in the Air has become a movie about its own significance. The director, an avid believer in his own press, has suggested that it is nothing less than the portrait of 2009. I honestly don't know what the film has to say about 2009—other than that it's kind of tough out there—and my guess is that Reitman's claim (which echoes the abundant critical praise for the movie's eloquence and prescience) has something to do with the long history of evasion and denial in American cinema when it comes to matters of work and the workplace. The first film in history was an 1895 short by the Lumière brothers with the self-explanatory title Workers Leaving the Factory. In the years since, as if in deference to their function as a leisure activity, movies have been largely blind to the daily rituals of work and the meaning it has in our lives (unless the characters are, say, detectives or assassins). Documentaries are the exception, as are sporadic outliers like Mike Judge. There is a kind of bracing novelty when a big movie with a glamorous star so much as glances in the direction of the real working world, where people toil, lose jobs, and struggle for survival (and have done so since long before 2009). Reitman is canny enough to understand this effect and cynical enough to exploit it vampirically by padding out his film with testimonials from actual unemployed people (obtained under false pretenses: He held casting calls for the newly terminated, claiming that he was making a documentary
[Marxism] Alan Sokal interview
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=802 Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] NY Times' Jerusalem property makes it protagonist in Palestine conflict
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.zcommunications.org/ny-times-jerusalem-property-makes-it-protagonist-in-palestine-conflict-by-ali-abunimah Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Coyote in :Central Park
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Maybe, but I'm pretty impressed with coyotes. ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Coyote in :Central Park
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == You see, it's true. We live in an age of diminished expectations. - Original Message - From: Mark Lause markala...@gmail.com To: David Schanoes sartes...@earthlink.net Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2010 12:50 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism] Coyote in :Central Park Maybe, but I'm pretty impressed with coyotes. ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Then, what is it that's happened in China and is happening in China. More's to the point, how can the class nature of a country that massive and important by changed by a handful of old men passing resolutions about it. ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Mark Lause wrote: Then, what is it that's happened in China and is happening in China. More's to the point, how can the class nature of a country that massive and important by changed by a handful of old men passing resolutions about it. I don't think that when a old man like me writes about the class nature of Chinese society will have much impact, least of all on the 45 million dollar apartments for sale in Shanghai. It is rather a question of understanding the world we live in. Marxism is not just a tool for changing society. It is also about understanding it. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Mar 6, 2010, at 1:52 PM, Louis Proyect wrote: Mark Lause wrote: Then, what is it that's happened in China and is happening in China. More's to the point, how can the class nature of a country that massive and important by changed by a handful of old men passing resolutions about it. I don't think that when a old man like me writes about the class nature of Chinese society will have much impact... Sorry, you weren't among that particular handful of old men. Mark was referring to the CPC leadership and how, by passing resolutions, they changed the Chinese state from a workers' state to a capitalist state. Shane Mage The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed. Joe Stack (1956-2010) Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Right. But I think it's relevant for us, regardless of our age, to ask: Can you have a change in class rule without the destruction of the state? Because that didn't happen in China...which leaves us to wonder whether it has changed its nature of late or whether those of us who saw it as ultimately a workers state before were wrong ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Perry Anderson's Weberian turn
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == In a massive (15, 308 words) article that appears in the current New Left Review, Perry Anderson addresses “Two Revolutions”, namely the Russian and the Chinese. My expectations were that Anderson would be interesting as well as wrong. He did not disappoint. Mostly the article can be reduced to a kind of laboratory experiment where one rat is compared to another. The rat that has been fed a constant diet of Big Macs will look sickly while the one that eats wheat germ and yogurt will look great. That, in a nutshell, is how Anderson approaches Russia and China. China’s success story, we are told, has a lot to do with “communism”, a term that Anderson deploys much more in the terms of bourgeois social science than Marxism. This is to be expected from somebody who announced to the world in 2000 in a NLR article titled “Renewals” that: By contrast, commanding the field of direct political constructions of the time, the Right has provided one fluent vision of where the world is going, or has stopped, after another—Fukuyama, Brzezinski, Huntington, Yergin, Luttwak, Friedman. These are writers that unite a single powerful thesis with a fluent popular style, designed not for an academic readership but a broad international public. This confident genre, of which America has so far a virtual monopoly, finds no equivalent on the Left. Little did Anderson suspect that only a few years later Fukuyama would do a 180 degrees turn and disavow his “end of history” thesis under the impact of an imploding financial system. That being said, he still seems smitten by the prospects of being “fluent” and “powerful”. I for one place much more importance on being truthful and revolutionary. read full article: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/perry-andersons-weberian-turn/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Not to split hairs, but I'm not talking about the 'class nature' of China but the class nature of the state. Historically, we have regarded the state as an instrument of class rule--something very specific to the class that rules. We are agreed on that, aren't we? If I'm reading you correctly, you're saying that the events of 1917 rendered it obsolete to wonder whether it is state capitalist or a degenerated/deformed workers state...or that the nomenclature is somehow peculiar to Russia or China. I may be confused as to what you're saying here I don't know that a state's ever in limbo, though something like the fog of war might well obscure our sense of which class is shaping and using it. But it certainly doesn't stay in limbo for decades of time. ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Sartesian wrote: The problem with talking about the class nature of China then or now, the class nature whether we consider it state capitalist or degenerated/deformed workers state, is that the nomenclature holds to the analysis, an analysis made obsolete in 1917, that the class nature is peculiarly and specifically internal to China, or Russia, before it, and does not take into account the limbo status of those revolutions based upon the pressures of the world market and the void created/maintained by the incomplete development/penetration of capitalism into the countryside. On the contrary, it seems to me that the authors of both the state cap and the deformed workers' state theories (Cliff and Trotsky) premised them on a global analysis which said the world economy remains on the capitalist level of social development. Accordingly, so do/did the USSR and China. For Cliff, this meant that once workers' democracy was lost, the resulting Stalinist states were capitalist. For Trotsky, it meant they would eventually be returned to capitalism unless world revolution occurred. Either theory can reasonably account for China. Mark is right that capitalism can't be restored by the resolutions of old men; clearly there was/is a deeper social dynamic at work in the USSR and China. He is also right to ask: Can you have a change in class rule without the destruction of the state? I think we have to distinguish between the transition to a post-capitalist society and a collapse back from such a society to capitalism. The former will not happen without a rupture: smashing the state and creating a new one. The latter simply requires a gradual degenerative process. The reason being that *all*states by their very existence are a manifestation of the fact that society has not yet fundamentally transcended the capitalist mode of production. This what Lenin meant when he said a workers' state is a bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie. So if a revolutionary society doesn't go forward to socialism, along with other countries, it will ultimately fall back to full-blown capitalism, in some form. The formal structures of the bourgeois state may remain, although the inner essence changes. [When I made this point once before, Sartesian replied that you can't have a bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie. Actually, I agree, Lenin was being ironic; it would be better to call a workers' state a capitalist state without the bourgeosie.] Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I think Tom's post is very good even where I disagree with it, but before we go too far down this road, I want to reiterate the original point-- that the analysis of permanent revolution Trotsky developed, and articulated pretty clearly I think in Results and Prospects is not a theory of development where communists can out-accumulate the bourgeoisie in countries enmeshed in capital's network through uneven and combined development. Mark's not the only one confused-- I have been trying to sort this out for more than 20 years-- ever since Poland 1981, in attempt to derive something a bit more dynamic than either state capitalism or deformed workers' state. I don't buy [nice choice of words, that] state capitalism, for the simple reason that you can't have capitalism without a capitalist class; and a class, by definition, has a specific, and necessary social relation of production that it brings with it to power, and that brings it to power. So where is that social relation of production unique, specific, and necessary to the state capitalists in the USSR, or China, or Cuba, etc.? The transformation of China has little to do with men or women, old or young, passing resolutions. It has everything to do with the enduring agricultural limitations that the revolution did not, could not, overcome; the inferior productivity of China's state industry; and the massive inflows of direct foreign investment. If the CCP has not lost total control of the process, we might caution-- wait awhile, the revolution only took place in 1949, this process started in 1979. I don't think China is going to escape an economic upheaval of immense proportions, and I expect that, if there a successful workers revolution as a result, the impact on living standards will make Russian post 1991, Russia of 1998, look good in comparison. What China was, in its social organization, was certainly an extension of Stalin's Russia. Returning to our criteria of class and the relations of production for determing the character of the economy, is it correct to say that the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, in and of itself, is sufficient to the change of those relations esssential to a worker's state being a worker's state? IMO, no. The nationalized collectivized whatever property relation as it exists in these areas is itself deformed, a product of the inadequacies of capitalism, inadequacies determined by the international development of capital, inadequacies which the revolution absorbs into itself when taking power.I realize this is more metaphor than detailed analysis, and this does not mean we don't defend such areas from the assaults of the advanced capitalism; it does mean that any notion of development that does not include 1) international success of revolutionary struggle 2) actual functioning organs of workers power separate and apart from those of any party, is not a worker's state, and will decompose into capitalism, and that decomposition can and will appear as economic development. - Original Message - From: Tom O'Lincoln suar...@alphalink.com.au Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Sartesian wrote: I don't buy [nice choice of words, that] state capitalism, for the simple reason that you can't have capitalism without a capitalist class; and a class, by definition, has a specific, and necessary social relation of production that it brings with it to power, and that brings it to power. So where is that social relation of production unique, specific, and necessary to the state capitalists in the USSR, or China, or Cuba, etc.? Well I didn't, and don't want to get into an argument on the Russian question. The immediate issue is whether the Chinese state can evolve into conventional capitalism without a rupture in the state. Yes, it can. But since you ask me directly: I agree you can't have capitalism without a capitalist class, meaning a social class that accumulates capital (dead labour) and exploits living labour via a wages system. It does not however have to be the bourgeosie. A state bureaucracy can drive, and be driven by the accumulation process. The social relations of production in the USSR included: top-down control of the means of production, alienated labour, a wages system, and a drive to accumulate capital. The latter was in turn driven by military competion with the west. The necessity for the bureaucracy to assume the role of capitalist arose from the historical coincidence which saw the workers lose power, with no bourgeois element capable of seizing it. Having taken the reins, it created a somewhat bizarre set of bureaucratic social structures to suit its needs, and a pseudo-Marxist ideology to validate the lot. This is a long way from Perry Anderson. Or is it? Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Thousands rally in Israel in support of evicted Palestinian families
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Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Perhaps my understanding of state capitalism is strange...or perhaps it has been always imprecise. My impression is that many who put forward the idea did not think that the capitalist class did not exist, but that it mastered the economy through the mechanism of the state. Again, I could well be wrong My understanding may well be of a pre-Cliff IS kind of state capitalism that was passed by at some point... This is, I hasten to add, an issue on which I have no strong position...indeed, no position at all...but it's a subject of some importance to us all. In that, I'm in the same boat as Tom and Artesian ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Mark wrote: My impression is that many who put forward the idea did not think that the capitalist class did not exist, but that it mastered the economy through the mechanism of the state. There are many theories of state capitalism The term goes back to social democratic and anarchist critiques of the Bolshevik regime. Later came Raya Dunayevskaya, CLR James, Paul Mattick et al. Also it can apply to diverse phenomena. For example, Obama's bailout of the banks coiuld be called state capitalism, and I would use it myself to apply to some third world nationalist regimes in the post-war era. It could also apply to the :military-industrial complex. In all these cases there is indeed some kind of bourgeoisie present. Not in the USSR. Sure there were some elements of private enterprise, but not enough to be decisive. So Tony Cliff actually used the term bureaucratic state capitalism to apply to the stalinist states, but later one he and his followers seem to have decided it was too much of a mouthful, and let the first word drop. This should not be confused with bureaucratic collectivism, the theory argued by Max Shachtman and Hal Draper. They didn't think the USSR was capitalist, they thought it was a new kind of class society. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Interesting. Thanks. On one level, I'm less concerned about what we call it than how we can explain the changes that have taken place in those countries without their wholesale destruction of the old state and its replacement with a new one. This is what's stumping me more than anything. ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Evo donates 50% of salary to Hati, Chile,
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == and we shoudln;t forget when Evo was first elected, on of his first moves was to slash his own salary by 50% and, as no other public servant could earn more than the president, the salaries of top bureaucrats in the process Evo Donates 50% of Salary to Haiti and Chile March 3, 2010 *The president of Bolivia sets an example …* Translated from CubaDebate, March 2, 2010 http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2010/03/02/evo-morales-donara-el-50-de-su-sueldo-a-chile-y-haiti/ Bolivia’s President Evo Morales has launched a five-day campaign, called “Chile and Haiti need you,” to raise funds for the two countries. “This is a solidarity campaign with two Latin American peoples who have suffered irreparable climate damage,” said the Bolivian president. Setting an example, Morales announced that he and his vice-president will contribute 50% of their salary for the month, and that the other cabinet ministers will donate 30%. Funds raised during the five days will be channeled through and managed by the state bank. The Bolivian leader said that the campaign goal is for Bolivia to contribute about 2 million dollars. -- “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” — Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man Under Socialism “The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of dummy?” — Jarvis Cocker Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism-Thaxis] Mamardašvili Soviet philo sophical culture
Evert van der Zweerde, “Philosophy in the Act: The Socio-Political Relevance of Mamardašvili’s Philosophizing,” /Studies in East European Thought/ (2006) 58: 179–203. ‘. . . Loneliness is my profession . . .’ — Merab Konstantinovic( Mamardašvili (1930–1990) ‘Loneliness is my profession,’ is the title of an interview the Latvian philosopher Uldis Tirons conducted with Mamardas?vili in 1990. 35 In this interview, Mamardašvili pointed out that his loneliness was of a personal character – ‘‘I am a chronic specialist in loneliness since early childhood’’ – as well as of a professional nature: ‘‘And then, loneliness is my profession ... (OMP, p. 69)’’36 Leaving the first form to biographers, we can, I think, distinguish two senses of this professional loneliness of the philosopher, one structural, the other contextual. In the first sense, intended by Mamardas?vili himself, philosophy is a ‘lonely activity’ in any case, as some of his definitions of philosophy make clear: ‘‘Philosophy is just a fragment of the smashed mirror of universal harmony that has fallen into an eye or a soul (OMP, p. 64).’’ And: ‘‘... philosophy is a reaction of the dignity of life in the face of anti-life. That’s it. And if there is a pathos of life, then man cannot be a non-philosopher (OMP, p. 67).’’ In a second sense, his was a lonely position because, unlike most of his colleagues, he did not actively deal with the problem of Marxist–Leninist dogmatics or with Marxism as the official ideology in the Soviet Union. Mamardašvili declared that he was not a Marxist, but he also said he was not an anti-Marxist either. Van der Zwerde endeavors to explain the unique position of this philosopher within Soviet philosophical culture. Van der Zwerde is the author of an important study, /Soviet Historiography of Philosophy: Istoriko-filosofskaja Nauka http://www.wkap.nl/prod/b/0-7923-4832-X/ (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997 [Sovietica; v. 57]), which I reviewed in 2003: Soviet Historiography of Philosophy: Review Essay http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/sovphilhist.html I wrote more about Soviet philosophical culture in my diary of December 2003 - January 2004: http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/diary0401a.html#soviet Van der Zwerde sets out to explain two things: the philosophical culture in which M. was active, and his central concepts--form, thought, and culture. First, he demystifies Western presuppositions about Soviet philosophy, and he provides a biographical summary of M., who indeed became a hero of Soviet intellectuals seeking autonomy and integrity. M. himself commented on the changing role of the intelligentsia, drawing on Gramsci, while rejecting the conceit of the intelligentsia as arbiters of enlightenment. M. also selectively engaged Marx, in a non-trivial fashion. For M., the role of the intellectual in society was to was to claim a presence for /thought /in culture and society. There must be conditions for thought to be able to take place--a public space. M. criticized Russian culture for a neglect of form, for example of the formal character of legal systems and of democracy, though his position did not devolve into a pure formalism. M.'s second preoccupation is the process of thinking--when thinking becomes alive and a presence in the world, not just closed up in itself. Engaging the past of philosophy is to make its thoughts come alive again, not that past philosophies are absolutes in themselves, but that they create spaces in which thinking beings 'reconstitutes' itself. Descartes is a prime example. Russian philosophy has systematically degraded Descartes and Kant. (190-1). But, taking a cue from Hegel, M.. rejected Robinsonades. M.'s third central concept is 'culture', and here the cosmopolitan notion of 'transculture' (not 'multiculturalism'!) becomes important. In the 1980s M. took on the issue of 'civil society', which became a big theme in late Soviet society. M., criticically discussing Hegel in 1968, had already broached this subject. Once again, M. is concerned with the live act of thought and its conditions of possibility. In his conclusion Van der Zweerde cautions against romanticizing dissenting heroes or demonizing the philosophical culture of the Soviet system, given that any social system tends toward rigidity and requires independent criticism. M. has been characterized as the Georgian Socrates, interestingly, since M. in his youth was lucky enough to circumvent the proscription of Socrates demonized at the hands of Stalinism. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Re: Mamardavili Soviet philosophical culture
A couple of interesting references from the footnotes: 20 For a recent, somewhat impressionistic rendering of Russian anti-Cartesianism, see Lesley Chamberlain, Motherland; A Philosophical History of Russia (London: Atlantic Books, 2004), ch. 8, Rejecting the View from Descartes. Mamardas^vili, Merab K. Analysis of Consciousness in the Works of Marx in Studies in Soviet Thought, Vol. 32, 1986, pp. 101120. Berry, Ellen E., and Epstein Mikhail. Transcultural Experiments; Russian and American Models of Creative Communication, St. Martins Press, New York, 1999. At 08:05 PM 3/6/2010, Ralph Dumain wrote: Evert van der Zweerde, Philosophy in the Act: The Socio-Political Relevance of Mamardavilis Philosophizing, Studies in East European Thought (2006) 58: 179203. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
