Hi Mike and everybody--
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Cole [mailto:mcole@weber.ucsd.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2000 8:58 PM
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: me too Bukharin or no
>
>
>
> 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).
I do not know what you mean by "Bolsheviks" but it is very far from
Tolstoian utopian socialism based on non-violence (cf. Gandhi and King). I
never heard that Bolsheviks who called themselves Bolsheviks referred
themselves to Tolstoian utopian socialism. For that reason, I think it can
inappropriate to refer Luria to be a Bolshevik if he indeed believed in
Tolstoian utopian socialism (which I don't know but trust your judgment,
Mike, since you were close to Luria).
I wonder if we ever learn about Vygotsky's real attitude toward what was
going on in the Soviet Union that time. I'd expect it to be rather complex.
> They were also internationalists, humanists, and other "ists".
Oh, I believe in that.
By the way (which is real "by the way" - don't try to read between the line
here), studying Italian renaissance, Russian culturologist Losev made an
interesting point of a connection between development and rising of humanism
and cruelty in the same people (again, I do not want imply anything about
Vygotsky or Luria).
>
> They were not Stalinists.
I think so. Besides, I think that Stalinism is not an ideology but
practice -- there is nothing to believe in. I'd recommend to see an
interesting movie titled "Stalin" (available in Blockbuster, with Robert
Duval as Stalin) based on memoirs and achieves . In this movie, Stalin's
friend Ordzhenikidze tried to convince Stalin not to eliminate Leningrad
party leader Kirov in early 30s. Ordzhenikidze said that Kirov agreed with
all your policies and decisions. Stalin replied, "I don't need anybody to
agree with Stalin!" Agreement implies freedom of decision making that was
too much for Stalin. Kirov was killed via Stalin's order.
> They WERE modernists and they DID, as Jim has pointed out (among
> others) they treat cultural difference as historical difference.
Yes. This is a long German tradition to treat cultures as history slices.
> For these reasons and my deep distrusts of notions of progress,
> I ALSO agree with Jim.
"Progressivism" is an ideological movement reictifies some specific values
of what is good as belonging to the object. For example, evolution is often
viewed as the "nature progress" toward "creating" human beings. Capitalism
is more progressive than feudalism, and so on. Particularity and
subjectivity of the notion of "progress" escapes from the progressivism.
However, I think that the notion of progress perhaps can be rehabilitated
within post-modern and social constructivism approaches.
>
> 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).
Sure. Mike, can you provide "non-progressivist" examples of development,
please?
>
> 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.
Was it World Bank? This is interesting. What in totalitarian countries was
done by KGB, in democratic-capitalist countries can be done by corporations,
banks, government agencies, and "free market." Can you elaborate on the role
of CIA, please? Did they contact you directly or was it indirect "guidance"?
> 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.
Thanks, Mike, your account is very interesting and informative (as usual).
>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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