[Xmca-l] Re: social / societal

[Wolff-Michael Roth]

Andy,
but you can hear this phrase as saying that Ricardo looked at the social
structure, not Marx ... Marx is writing how Ricardo approached the problem,
not he himself. The paragraph is about distribution (I am looking at the
phrase in MEW42), and the preceding one begins with a statement about
societies. In the paragraph before, Marx writes about societal law, and
societal distribution (MEW42, p.31). So I would not say that Marx writes
about structure as social---it is societal, and all the surrounding text
makes it such.

But of course, you know that we are all struggling with the use of
language, especially when we are trying to move to different discursive
forms, and when the old ones still show up so that there are
inconsistencies in what we articulate.

Michael


Wolff-Michael Roth, Lansdowne Professor

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On Mon, Jan 15, 2018 at 5:50 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> Oh, and further down the same document, Marx says:
>
> "Ricardo, dem es darum zu tun war, die moderne Produktion in
> ihrer bestimmten sozialen Gliederung aufzufassen ..."
>
> translated as: "Ricardo, whose concern was to grasp the
> specific social structure of modern production ..."
>
> So, even Marx, it seems, occasionally uses "sozial" in the
> sense of "societal"!
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> On 16/01/2018 12:01 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:
> > David I never said social/societal wasn't a useful
> > distinction. I said in 40 years of studying Marxism I had
> > come across the word "societal" - I was not a psychologist,
> > that's all.
> >
> > Consider the opening words of the Grundrisse:
> >
> >     "Der vorliegende Gegenstand zunächst die /materielle
> >     Produktion/. In Gesellschaft produzierende Individuen -
> >     daher gesellschaftlich bestimmte Produktion der
> >     Individuen ist natürlich der Ausgangspunkt."
> >
> > Translated into English as "The object before us, to begin
> > with, /material production/. Individuals producing in
> > society – hence socially determined individual production –
> > is, of course, the point of departure."
> >
> >
> > Isn't it blindingly obvious that "socially" here means what
> > you might call "societally"? Isn't it obvious that having
> > been introduced to "social" in this sense, there is no need
> > for the word "societal"? Nonetheless, I accept, if your
> > topic is psychology, there is a useful distinction there.
> > But in the context of reading Marx, there is no need for a
> > different word.
> >
> >
> > Andy
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > Andy Blunden
> > http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> > On 15/01/2018 8:45 AM, David Kellogg wrote:
> >> Like Wolff-Michael (and unlike Andy), I have always found the
> distinction
> >> between social and societal a useful one. Yes, I see that the similarity
> >> between the words makes them very confusible: I myself use
> "interpersonal"
> >> vs. "social" when I teach, but this actually makes them too distinct. I
> >> think that "social" and "societal"--even MORE than their German
> >> equivalents--emphasize how linked they are, and also how tied they are
> to
> >> language. At some point--and it is a point that is just as traumatic as
> the
> >> first year of life, when the child must pass from primary to secondary
> >> intersubjectivity--the interpersonal begins to confront us as something
> >> more, something alien, something quite beyond our direct control.
> Instead
> >> of speaking language, language begins to articulate us.
> >>
> >> I think, in some ways, Wolff-Michael's example of crime is a poor one,
> >> because I don't think that "crime" actually exists at the social level:
> >> "crime" is simply what the ruling class chooses to call certain forms of
> >> exploitation, aggression, and violence from which it doesn't directly
> >> profit.  But Wolff-Michael is right to argue for the link--both social
> >> relations and societal phenomena are the result of the ensemble of human
> >> relations, although which social relation is foregrounded and which
> >> backgrounded must necessarily change as we move from the social to the
> >> societal. The feminist slogan "the personal is political" is not a
> >> redundancy, but it is usually understood backwards, to mean that
> everything
> >> social is societal, when in fact it should be understood to mean that
> >> everything societal is in the final analysis social.
> >>
> >> But sometimes the news cycle will bat a poor example away and provide a
> >> better one. Take, for example, the presidential proposal that US
> >> immigration policy distinguish between "shithole countries" and Norway.
> >> Now, for many years, racists have been whining that people are
> >> being "politically correct" and taking all the fun out of being
> publically
> >> offensive and rude by insisting on some link between social interactions
> >> and societal issues. The idea is that if you interact with Omarosa,
> Kanye
> >> West, Ben Carson, and Condoleeza Rice socially you can say what you like
> >> about the societies they came from. When liberals insist that someone
> born
> >> in America is one hundred percent American, no matter where their
> ancestors
> >> were born, they also subscribe to this kind of magical disjunction.
> >>
> >> Trevor Noah is right to say that the truly shocking thing in what the
> >> president said wasn't "shithole". It was Norway. This isn't simply
> ignorant
> >> and unrealistic (what Norwegian would give up the generous trust of oil
> >> revenues and emigrate to a country like the USA which totally lacks a
> >> decent health service or retirement plan?). As in Finland, the
> Centre-Right
> >> government in Norway is in a coalition with a far-right, anti-immigrant
> >> party, dedicated to keeping the country Nordically pure. THAT is not
> >> just an attack on civility, like using the word "shithole".  It's an
> attack
> >> on civil rights. As soon as the US government takes this
> >> minority government as a model,  it is no longer a social,
> >> personal, offense; it's societal now.
> >>
> >> David Kellogg
> >>
> >> Recent Article in *Mind, Culture, and Activity* 24 (4) 'Metaphoric,
> >> Metonymic, Eclectic, or Dialectic? A Commentary on “Neoformation: A
> >> Dialectical Approach to Developmental Change”'
> >>
> >> Free e-print available (for a short time only) at
> >>
> >> http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mon, Jan 15, 2018 at 4:29 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <
> a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Absolutely difficult to satirise, Rob. As if reason was literally being
> >>> stretched to push what could be considered to be reasonable, so that at
> >>> every stretch what few years ago would be absolutely unthinkable
> becomes
> >>> not only thinkable but normal. Like Spanish police beating people for
> going
> >>> to vote to an (illegal, yet peaceful) referendum in Catalonia and
> >>> politicians being held for months in prison only for "prevention,"
> while a
> >>> horde of citizens in other parts of the country encouraging the police
> like
> >>> they encourage football teams, "A por ellos!!"
> >>> Alfredo
> >>> ________________________________________
> >>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> >
> >>> on behalf of robsub@ariadne.org.uk <robsub@ariadne.org.uk>
> >>> Sent: 12 January 2018 20:18
> >>> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
> >>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: epidemic or endemic? white suprem-racists
> >>> international science?
> >>>
> >>> I was going to joke that I bet Toby Young was on the guest list, but I
> >>> see he was. Truth is becoming really hard to satirise.
> >>>
> >>> Rob
> >>>
> >>> On 12/01/2018 19:06, Peter Smagorinsky wrote:
> >>>> I believe that this is London's way of making London a more appealing
> >>> place for Trump to visit. Recently they have said some not-nice things
> >>> about him, and that makes him turn from orange to red-orange. On the
> color
> >>> scale, that's an escalation of tensions. I see this conference as a
> >>> validation of his world-view, making the UK less of a shithole of a
> country
> >>> to him and his followers.
> >>>> -----Original Message-----
> >>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@
> >>> mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Peg Griffin
> >>>> Sent: Friday, January 12, 2018 11:25 AM
> >>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> >>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] epidemic or endemic? white suprem-racists
> >>> international science?
> >>>> https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/
> >>> 51323/title/Secret-Eu
> >>>> genics-Conference-Uncovered-at-University-College-London/
> >>>> <https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/
> >>> 51323/title/Secret-E
> >>>> ugenics-Conference-Uncovered-at-University-College-London/&
> >>> utm_campaign=TS_D
> >>>> AILY%20NEWSLETTER_2018&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=
> >>> email&utm_content=5994
> >>>> 4918&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--0-XeLCUUnDDfuDnseG5HUEF4e07f2Kt6
> >>> FETdaZKU-LuNy2l-YYp5OtU
> >>>> MYu_TX7t6Cty6Zf5sNwbX7zL0wBteZ0FmKQ29FAn7V0wUCfIAPc_PrMXk&_hsmi=
> >>> 59944918>
> >>>> &utm_campaign=TS_DAILY%20NEWSLETTER_2018&utm_source=
> >>> hs_email&utm_medium=emai
> >>>> l&utm_content=59944918&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--0-
> XeLCUUnDDfuDnseG5HUEF4e07f2Kt6
> >>> FETda
> >>>> ZKU-LuNy2l-YYp5OtUMYu_TX7t6Cty6Zf5sNwbX7zL0wBteZ0FmK
> >>> Q29FAn7V0wUCfIAPc_PrMXk&
> >>>> _hsmi=59944918
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Peg Griffin, Ph. D.
> >>>>
> >>>> Washington, DC 20003
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >
> >
>
>