Hi Eugene--
I will allow others to comment on Bukharin or Vygotsky's form of
marxism in Psychology of Art and other matters I poorly understand.
My intuitive, not book-learned, understanding is that Luria and Vygotsky
(not only) were Bolsheviks, which in Luria's case, meant a Tolstoian
utopian socialism at the beginning, but which clearly became a form of
despotic ideology in the hands of people from East of the Seine (and
not only).
They were also internationalists, humanists, and other "ists".
They were not Stalinists.
They WERE modernists and they DID, as Jim has pointed out (among
others) they treat cultural difference as historical difference.
For these reasons and my deep distrusts of notions of progress,
I ALSO agree with Jim.
However, only up to a point.
Historical does not intrinsically mean PROGRESS. Right? And, mirabus dictu,
development does not always mean PROGRESS either. (see Rousseau among
others).
What is so neat about all this for me is that the Russian reviewers are
blasting me for a relativist iconoclast who does not understand the
first thing about Vygotsky. The last part is almost true. The first
part is a highly organized and very difficult to deal with nexus
of cultural misunderstandings.
When I went to Liberia in 1964 to worry about African kids learning
math I had absolutely no theory provided by my graduate education
to even give me a hint at how to proceed toward an encompassing
theoretical framework. Fumbling around, transforming, and messing
about with my pampered experience of Liberian reality I found in
long term retrospect that part of the answer had something to do with
theories generated in Russia, with fascinating cousins in other places,
like the United States.
In my case, it was not Soviet Power and the NKVD that made people
behave for me as I did my experience. It was the CIA and AID.
I wonder what folks think of my description of those times from
an American point of view, and how different they were, or were not,
from the ideology of literacy campaigners throughout this century.
There are religious missionaries. And there are academic/"secular"
missionaries. I used to be one of the latter and there is no
indication I will ever be one of the former. Hmmmmmm. That must
make me a Dane! :-)
mike
PS- Hi Eva.
PPS-- That is what I think, Eugene. If we want to get down to specifics
on the research itself, lets see if we can identify places in the
transcript where xmca members can be invited to "read between the
lines" to see what they can see. After all, as Eisenshtein among others
reminds us, all meaning is between the lines!
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