It's not at all surprising to me to see the same reactions coming from the
same places and with the similarly distributed levels of attention v.
reliance, carefully worked out analysis v. quick and snappy, easily digested
catch phrases. Nevertheless, I find the same stereotype at play, not in the
rather excellent discussion of the implications of the Ilyenkov's account of
the ideal, but in the need to criticize the theory on the basis of its
association with the historically contingent. Dianne's comment about how
she found the entire discussion "boring" reminded me of how I felt when I
was a child and saw my parents watching the news on television, or listening
to people do nothing more than talk. Maybe, Dianne, there is nothing more
than childish play but strangely enough I do remember my mom watching the
McCarthy trials on television (1954?)--something about the attention she
gave to those proceedings just struck me in that funny kind of way that
sticks and forms childhood memories (I love Benjamin's meditations on this).
Perhaps it was because what was going down there was so antithetical to the
light of free inquiry and discussion, the free play of reason as Kant might
have phrased it when identifying the union of the ideal and the sensuous
that both Hegel and Peirce found necessary to sustain any theory of truth at
all --but . . . how odd to have that same feeling here on xmca, incipient
witch baiting. Even more so when the failing the accusers attribute to the
in-their-view objectionable position is in fact their own.
But as is true of all stereotypes, there something there and I think that
Alfred was most clear about it, and not surprisingly he seems to have been
the only one to have read what I wrote carefully and to have identified what
I considered to be the key points, although his interpretation, as well as
Judy and Phillips interpretations, and Diane's reaction, are predicated on
the same misunderstanding. I'm still working on my response to Alfred's
long post. I understand the reaction in general since a(a) it is quite
difficult to believe things that require a form of mediation to which we are
not accustomed at all.and (b) the historical experience with marxist theory,
when considered in isolation from the war against it waged by international
capital, did produce the kinds of experience that hovers like a bogey-man in
the words of the critics. So its hard to communicate the theory without
being an easy mark for the kind of rabble rousing rant (cap letters to
indicate shouts and all) that seems to have stirred up the reaction here.
Sort of like telling people the earth isn't round, or the sun doesn't move
around the earth. Just so, everything we sense just seems to motivate
against taking seriously that our perceived subjectivity, our cogito, might
be nothing more than the reflection of a historical process and with no
substance of its own. And this problem, that ideas always come on the
scene before people are ready for them -- how else could new ideas come? --
might also be the basis of the errors of totalitarianism that frame the
fears expressed in Diane's, Alfred's, Phillip's and Judy's commentaries.
I'm sorry but so much of the reactive response (no, not all) seems to be
based on a grade school kind of "so are you" or "you're daddy doesn't drive
a new car" type statement that it is really hard to see why it matters to
comment or to try to demonstrate the mistakes. And personally I am not
interested at all in convincing any of the above mentioned respondents about
anything at all. My interest has been in exploring these ideas with people
who also find them useful and to provide some exegesis for those who
xmca'ers who might be reading these exchanges with little prior knowledge
but a sincere interest and a mind open to new ideas.
I'll let Ilyenkov have the final word here,
"As we know, the question of the relation of the abstract to the concrete in
thought arose before Marx in the light of another, more general, problem:
which scientific method should be used?
"This question assumes a view of scientific development as of a natural
historical process. In general, Marx has always been decidedly opposed to
the Leftist view of the development of spiritual culture which ignores all
the previous attainments of human thought. In science, just as in all the
other fields of spiritual culture, actual progress is always attained by
further develoment of the values created by previous development, not by
starting from scratch; by a theoretically developed head rather than by the
Lockean tabula rasa.
"It goes without saying that the assimilartion of the results of previous
theoretical development is not a matter of simply inheriting ready-made
formulas but rather a complex process of their critical reinterpretation
with reference to their correspondence to facts, life, practice. A new
theory, however revolutionary it might be in its content and signficance, is
always born in the course of cricial reassessment of previous theoretical
development." (Dialectics of Abstract and Concrete).
I'm hopeful that those with sufficiently open minds and the clarity to
evaluate the content and form of the messages posted here will be able to
distinguish uncritical reaction from critical reinterpretation.
Paul H. Dillon
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