[Xmca-l] Re: Leontyev's activities

[Andy Blunden]

Greg, as Marx said: "Communism is the riddle of history solved," (1844).
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm#44CC4

This discussion is an example. We each enter this discussion for 
different reasons (maybe not the same reason Mike created it for), maybe 
to find the answer to some question, but as we participate, the object 
of our activity broadens and deepens, and we find ourselves pursuing 
different questions. And xcma develops "according to its own logic" as 
they say.

An activity (generally) exists. Individuals join it (with their own 
motives). The object of the activity develops as people join it, 
participate in it, and find disappointment or enlightenment, etc., in so 
doing and modify the activity accordingly. A number of people joined the 
Bolshevik Party in 1903 with the aim of Socialism, but it didn't turn 
out like that despite their intentions and personal motives, but maybe 
the outcome (Stalin, USSR, Comintern, etc.) was there in the way they 
set about fighting for "socialism"? City planners see certain problems 
in the city's operations and instead of building public transport, they 
build freeways for cars. 100 years later (as Jane Jacobs showed) the 
problems are even worse, and they haver a different kind of city. Things 
don't always work out, but the outcome is *immanent* in the project 
itself, and is only realised in the outcome. A group of workers get the 
union in to solve oppressive problems at work. After years of fighting, 
they are all worn out, disillusioned and most of them fired. But the 
workplace is unionised and the next generation of workers enjoy the 
benefits.

Andy
http://www.academia.edu/2947516/The_Fine_Granules_of_Historys_Sediment
greg.a.thompson@gmail.com wrote:
> Andy, could you give an example of what you mean when you say that the object is immanent in activity?
> -Greg
>
>