Continuing the discussion of overdetermination and the Amherst
school (but not that of music):
Steve Cullenberg writes that:>> I am not sure why you want to
continue to insist that overdetermination is warmed-over empiricism
(you wrote the essence of overdetermination is empiricism), but I do
hope that we can agree that my statement "what you see is what you
[get]" was not an appeal to empiricsm, but rather, as I reiterated,
a critique of "depth models" of explanation, including reductionism
and essentialism.<<
Okay, I'll accept the assertion that overdeterminism (the RM school)
isn't empiricist, at least as a working hypothesis. But I wonder if
a rejection of "depth models" is simply a rejection of any effort to
look below surface appearances? Perhaps I misunderstand the phrase
"depth model."
>>As an aside, of sorts, I don't think you can find many empiricist
arguments arouind these days. I also think that the strict
distinction between rationalism and empricism is an unfortunate
philosophical distinction.<<
Though I disagree on the absence of empiricist arguments around
these days, I agree that the philosophical distinction is
artificial, indeed impossible. But some unsophisticated people
_want_ to be empiricist or rationalist. And what I was thinking
(wrongly, I guess) was that some people fall into empiricism
without knowing what they're doing.
I wrote that >The cliche that "What you see is what you get" and an
empiricist commitment to not going beyond description (plus an
antagonism toward any quantification) sure seems to summarize what
Steve wrote (or what he writes in his current missive -- see
below).<
>>BTW, I have never been antagonistic to quantification. I can dig
out old posts on this if you want.<<
No need. Again, I'll accept your willingness to quantify (and accept
that I had the wrong impression). Here I was wrong: I misunderstood
your emphasis. Are you saying that the what kind of quantification one
uses is arbitrary, subjective?
>>I have argued that to make the statement "that X is more important
to Y", meaningful, rather than simply a loud appeal to what one
thinks is already obvious, does require a metric along which such
comparisons could be made. The metric doesn't have to even be a
scalar, but please tell me what it is. So calculate HDI's, GDP's,
surplus labor, or whatever and that is fine with me. For me, the
idea I am trying to get across is that things are [Not] of equal
importance, but that they are differntially important (or not
important) and therefore what we need to do is figure out the logic
of their interaction (produce an analysis, tell a story, however you
want to put it).<<
As I said in my August post, in many or most cases, it's not _up to
us_ to determine the metric. Capitalist itself reduces everything to
a single metric, that of money, exchange-value. However, it seems a
useful task to develop an _alternative_ metric as part of the fight
against capitalism. Maybe something like the "Genuine Progress
Indicator" or the "Measure of Economic Welfare" (though those
currently have some major limitations, since use-value can't be
quantified).
Also, we need some sort of _implicit_ quantification (or rank
ordering) if, for example, our concern is with which factors are
most important in causing some political event such as the Great
Depression.
In many cases, we need vector quantification, as with Howard
Margolis' replacement of scalar measurements of "intelligence" with
a set of 8 different types of intelligence and (in theory, at least)
8 different measures of intelligence. (At least according to the
article in the current BUSINESS WEEK, he's never tried to actually
measure the 7 "new" types of intelligence.) An effort to measure
how well these intelligences work together might produce a single
measure, but I'll leave that to the psychologists.
I would say that exactly what kind of quantification is needed
depends on the purpose of one's investigation or analysis. Maybe
that can be seen as merely subjective. But I also think that there
are obvious metrics that are inherent in empirical reality, as
with exchange-value under capitalism. So it's not _total_
subjectivism.
>Instead, my points were simply ignored, just as Eric's last missive
on the subject was totally ignored (until today!).<
>>Well, I apologize if you think I ignored you, but one thing
distracting me is that I am in the midst of organinizng a conference
program ... for the December Rethinking Marxism conference, and this
takes almost all my time now, literally. BTW, the deadline is
September 30 for paper proposals, so there is still time to get on
the program.<<
Apology accepted. Unfortunately, I can't afford to leave town at
that time to attend the conference. Anyway, I don't know if any of my
current research (e.g., on Hobbes, Locke & Rousseau) fits within the
rubric of that conference.
>Not being an idealist, I don't see criticism of theories as being
as productive as actual political action, but at least it helps a
little rather than hurting;<
>>I am not an idealist either, but I don't think it is that unique
to me to argue that doing theoretical (including the most abstract
and the most empirical) and academic work are material, in every
sense of the word. And, are you seriously implying that "theory
hurts?" and that "actual political action...helps a little?" Always?
this must just be your rhetorical flourish.<<
No, I didn't say that theory hurts (and I don't think I said
"always"). I just think that mere thinking about stuff is less
effective than actual activism. If I may permission to dredge up
another cliche, actions speak louder than words. More accurately,
theory can only change history via its effects on practice.
Of course, some activism (like working for David Duke) actually
hurts. And one role for theory is to point us away from the Dukes that
hazard the world (though I would guess that morality alone would do
this). Good theory seems extremely necessary. But some major good
things, at least temporarily, have been achieved without very good
theory (as with the earliest stages of the Russian Revolution).
(None of the forces, not the Bolsheviks, not the Narodniks, not the
"bourgeois democrats" had a good theory of what in heck was going
on, though some were better than others.)
>criticism on the level of logic, facts, and methodology rather than
stooping to name-calling ("petty bourgeois," "essentialist," or
"merely traditional") (One of Marx's unfortunate tendencies was to
get into name-calling.)<
>>Jim, making an argument that some theory is essentialist is not
name calling any more than saying an argument or analysis is
empiricist. I am still amazed that some of this phrasing is at all
controversial (not in the sense that everyone should agree with it),
but rather that so much of academic life outside economics,
including outside radical economics it seems, takes these ideas as
fundamental matters, even though they are debated.<<
I think that the RM school's usual rejection of other school's work
as "essentialist" ends up leaning toward being name-calling in that
the positive contributions of the essentialists are ignored. Not
that I'm an essentialist, but at least the essentialists were
willing to make statements about some matters being more important
than others in the social formation. They at least make an effort to
use their theory to explicitly guide practice.
>>And, Jim, this sounds a little like sour grapes on your part, as
you are one of the great polemicists on the net, and have engaged in
your share of insulting repartee (need we ask Gil Skillman, for
one?), and frankly, your recent email responding to me where you
claimed didn't see overdetermination but did see missles aimed at
Iraq, was no in innocent way of provoking a response, was it?. This
doesn't really bother me, but feigned outrage as a debating ploy is
rather boorish. <<
Maybe boorish, but I always try to follow the biblical injunction
that when attacking, always leave the opponent room to retreat (only
surround on three sides). I see nothing wrong with polemics
(obviously), but I try to avoid making them _personal_ while trying
to keep them as substantive as possible. I wanted to know if I was
right about your empiricism, which sure seemed the case from your
previous missive.
As to Gil, I must admit that I got a mite peeved at him because he
seemed totally unable to understand what I was saying. (I have a
hang-up with not being understood.) Like most people (present company
excepted, of course), I don't always live up to my own standards.
>Most, perhaps all, of the articles in RM seem to be _applications_
of the W/R theory and methodology (though, as noted, these
applications sometimes seem to go beyond the W/R core actually
contradicting it).<
>>I have been an editor of RM for nine years now. And, I would say,
that fully 95% of the articles in RM could in no way be considered
an "application of RW theory", by which I mean a specific
development of their work. I would guess that 80-90% of the articles
don't even refer to them, maybe more. We publish so many things,
from so many diverse approaches, that you would be better off
accusing us of having an identity crisis. And many of the articles
that deal with Wolff and Resnick's work directly, like m ine on
"Socialism's Burden" do so very critically (also John Roche's on
value theory comes to mind). So, I don't know where this comment
comes from. ...<<
If you say so; I respect such empirical observations. I must admit
that I decided to let my RM sub lapse because I wasn't reading it.
So I read only the articles that are relevant to current research
projects. Too many journals, too little time.
I also get more from _interactive_ reading, as with discussions and
seminars. Too bad an undergraduate university is not a good place
for those...
>>What I can't understand, Jim, is how we can both agree on L&L
[Levins & Lewontin] and not on what I am writing about
overdetemination. For me, overdetermination as a theory of causality
could just as well be explicated in the final chapter of L&L's book
_The Dialectical Biologist_, called "On Dialectics".... <<
Wait a second. I thought I answered that. There's a difference
between reductionism (i.e., reduction of the social system to its
allegedly pre-existing "atoms") of the sort that L & L criticize,
on the one hand, and saying that some components of the totality (e.g.,
capitalism, racism, patriarchy) are more important than others (the Rotary
club). I favor the latter. Much of the RM school (at least that part
which I am familiar with) does not.
>Abstraction is also needed to help us understand which social
institutions are the most important ones in determining the nature
of the social formation.<
>>I'm not trying to be coy here, but I don't get at all how you see
R&W abstracting from abstraction. And, much of what you wrote I
agree with, using L&L as a facilitator, so does it come down to my
insistence that the desire to find "which social institututions are
the most important ones in determining the nature of the social
formation" is an ill-posed statement unless and until you tell me
how we can measure "most important." I think that goes to the crux
of our disagreement and a lot rides on that.<<
Again, I thought I answered that: how important an institution is
depends on what one is looking for. For example, capitalism is more
important than the Rotary Club in determining the laws of motion of
the social formation that includes them both and thus in affecting
our lives. Capitalism (and patriarchy) are also probably more
important in determining the social life of while males of the
small-business class than is the Rotary Club, since the latter seems
largely a phenomenon of the former.
>> And, it would not be too hard to interpret your statement as a
epigram for empiricism.<<
I don't understand. Empiricism is impossible.
---------
In his final missive on this subject, Blair writes:>>I did not
use any of the names you refer to: "petty bourgeois,"
"essentialist," or "merely traditional."<<
I didn't say you did (I was trying to clarify the meaning of
"ruthless" in Marx's phrase that I could support). I do find that
the AS, like many other schools, rejects the visions of outsiders
without sufficient study.
But now you get into insults, impliations that I am a dogmatist:
>>...Yes, I could try to "sketch" the broad conclusions of the AS to
guide you through such reading as I mentioned, but you are obviously
determined ... to understand what you want to understand, so I don't
think that would be a very productive use of my time. ...<< and
>>... I am convinced that nothing I could say would change your
understanding ....<<
I don't know how you know that I am "determined ... to understand
what [I] want to understand" if you don't present your point of
view, if you never tried to convince me of the validity of your
viewpoint.
Luckily, the next comments are substantive: >> This is precisely
because, in my view, as Antonio said of Eric, your comments seem "to
insist on sifting statements... through the lenses of the very
different positivist... perspective."<<
well, I'm no positivist: crucially, I never thought that what I was
saying was value-free. (Though positivism seems a step above the
now-popular view that we should surrender to subjectivity.)
>> For example, you repeatedly make the mistake that Laclau and
Mouffe call an "essentialism of the elements," which presupposes
that things are in effect preconstituted in themselves and only then
understood in interaction with other similarly constituted
elements.* (* "The abstract laws of motion... say one thing. But in
interaction with pre-capitalist modes of production, racial/ethnic
domination, patriarchy, and resistence from oppressed groups, we may
see different results in some cases." -- J.D.) <<
But I don't think that capitalism could ever exist without (e.g.)
some sort of family/kinship system. Capitalism could not exist
without people and people can't live without some kind of a
family/kinship system. So capitalism is not "preconstituted in
itself."
The laws of motion of capitalism are abstract, leaving a lot of
details out; so the actual workings of the social formation depend
crucially on the nature of the family/kinship system. As Hartmann
points out, there's nothing necessarily capitalist about the ruling
class being primarily male. The maleness of that class is the result
of patriarchy, and how capitalism and patriarchy happen to mesh in a
way that helps reproduce both over time.
>>It is this sifting, as it seems to me, that makes it unlikely in
my opinion that I will be convinced by anything you are likely to
say, as I continually see you mischaracterizing overdetermination in
the same way and therefore, in my eyes, "misunderstanding."<<
Since you never explained overdetermination or how I "misrepresented"
overdetermination, I don't know what to think about this.
in pen-l solidarity,
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<74267,[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ.
7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA
310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950
"Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way
and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
