Howard,
I love LSV's ideas, I do love him but sometimes I treat myself to question him trying to understand him better.
I know he was a man from the beginning of 20Th century and that he was someone who was foward his time. Maybe because of this I treat myself to do so.
"(...) I think of Vygotsky differently than as developing a positivist discourse."
Howard
But he himself admits this when cotes Engels (number 9, § 44), for example:
"(...) only when the science of nature and of history had assimilated daletics, all philosophic trash will be absorved by positive science." (Bold mine, free and rough translation from Portuguese to English, Engels apud LSV)
"(...) I see him as attempting to define a materialist and a methodological space between three poles, positivism, pan-textualism and uncritical Marxism, all idealist positions."
Howard
Yes, he indeed advocates the historical materialism as something superior than dialetic materialism and is attempting to set the fundamental principles of "genetic-experimental methodology" and scientific validity of 'indirect method'. But, in my view, he points only two poles: Descriptive psychology (introspectionism, psychoanalisis etc) X Explanative psychology (associacionism, behaviourism, reflexology etc) (number 12, last §). The "third way" or sintesis of this dichotomy would had been unsucessfully tryed by three psychological schools: "Geisteswissenschaft", "Gestalt" and "Marxism".
"(...) I wonder if neo-Marxism is playing this role in psychology today?"
Howard
Sometime ago I heard an interesting explanation by Phd. Angel Pino that states some difference between a marxist interpretation and a marxian interpretation. The first of them would be very close to what you call uncritique marxism (political militancy) and the last one, a critical interpretation of Marx's ideas (neomarxism? postmodern approach to Marx's ideas?).
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