Re: [xmca] Vygotsky, Lukacs and Lenin - another try

I think you are right Bruce that these writers are all
moving in the same space so to speak. The stuff in WITBD
about scientific consciousness, which BTW, utilises a famous
quote from Kautsky is very relevant and connects up with
Lukacs' famous contribution: basically, working class people
cannot learn about the dynamics of society as a whole,
knowledge which they need if they are to become the ruling
class and be responsible for managing social life as a
whole, out of the conditions of everyday life in the
factory. They have to become intellectuals, sort of, and
acquire the knowledge of their age, and they have to get
involved in the struggles and problems of the students, the
intellecuals, the small business people, peassants and so
on, in order to develop a universal consciousness, and they
need a party organisation to achieve all that learning.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm

A lot of this has been attacked for being elitist - why
can't workers know and do everything? why is their
experience in factory work so inferior - and such rhetoric,
but it is really just very basic marxism, which is why Lenin
used the quote from Kautsky in his polemic against the
Mensheviks, to set it all off.

Andy

Bruce Robinson wrote:
>
> Perhaps a link here is the relation of both to Lenin's ideas. In his article in
> Science and SOCIETY July 2007 on Vygotsky and Lenin, Wayne Au draws a very direct
> link between Lenin's 'What is to be done?' and LSV on two issues related to
> learning: the difference between everyday and scientific consciousness and the
> ZPD. Au concludes LSV might have been directly aware of WITBD in his writing or
> it might also have been that they approached related problems from the same
> dialectical materialist framework, thus reaching similar conclusions. The former
> seems possible to me.
>
>
>
> Lukacs of course took up these ideas of Lenin's in 'history and Class
> Consciousness', in my view in a rather fetishised way, making the revolution the
> point at which the proletariat leapt to a realisation of its historic class
> consciousness. I'm not sure if this is what you're referring to Joao, but I feel
> that much closer relationship to the ZPD can be found in Lenin and also
> particularly in Trotsky with his conception of transitional politics and demands.
>
>
>
> I'm afraid I don't have the exact reference for the Au article with me but it
> should be easy to find as the title starts with 'Vygotsky and Lenin'. I would be
> interested to hear what xmca'ers think of it.
>
>
>
> BTW, I think there is a lot in Lukacs' last unfinished text 'The Ontology of
> Social Being' that is of interest from a CHAT perspective.
>
>
>
> Bruce Robinson
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
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Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ +61 3 9380 9435 
Skype andy.blunden
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