Peter said,
i'm afraid that marx would not have had much time for the post
modernists (indeed he settled accounts to his satisfaction with the 19th
century equivalents) as you rightly imply. class, for example bourgeois and
proletarian, indeed, is considered as an objective category in the sense
that
the existence of these classes in modern capitalist society is a fact
(sorry,
nate!) about how social production takes place, whether people like it, know
it, or not. i guess that, for marx, without an understanding of that fact
(not
just in general but concretely in terms of a detailed analysis of the system
and how it works) any conception of political or social institutions, of
what
they are for and how they work will remain hopelessly abstract, inadequate
(and
therefore ideological, in so far as it will fail to penetrate to the
essential
socio-economic contradictions out of which such institutions arise).
No need to be sorry Peter, I agree. The point I'd make is the "objectivity"
that Marx speaks to was done in such away that it becomes absurd to argue as
some capitalists did at the time that Capital was a handbook for
capitalists. Now, your use of "objective" above I would situate in some
sense, as "anti-objective" in the sense there is a definite politics to it.
When I think of objectivity liberalism comes to mind which attempts to make
the "objectivity" (again I see this as subjective) transparent, which hides
the political, class aspect that Marx "objectively" brought out.
What and where we put content in the objective and subjective boxes seem
less important to me than say from what standpoint one is talking about
objectivity. For Marx, he was NOT taking an objective "objective" standpoint
on class but one that was directed to not only understanding the world, but
also changing it. So, respectfully I would like to ask what is your "not so
objective" objective standpoint. Your discussion of Blair was helpful here,
which I did not sense in the paper itself. I think Marx, Ilenkov, and you
have much more faith in the role of science in transforming society than
myself. I tend to see it in a Foucaultian fashion much more along the line
of Marxist criticisms of the state.
It seems to me, as you hinted at in your last post that there are concrete
struggles here. It seems to me that the left has put its eggs in the wrong
basket for far too long. Now we can hold on to our scientific facts and
objective truth, but when the day is done Blair and Clinton are the voice of
the left. The last election in our state for governor 80% of "working class"
voted for a republican governor (Dictator actually with the most liberal
line item veto in the states) that is "anti-working class" to his core.
Maybe it was your emphasis on "life activity" but the discussion seemed
abstract in the sense it was devoid of content. Materialism (big or small)
is fine, but what are we materializing to.
Nate
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