Kautsky parle

alec ramsdell a_ramsdell at hotmail.com
Sat Sep 5 14:30:14 PDT 1998


James Withrow writes:


>On Thu, 3 Sep 1998, Michael Eisenscher wrote:
>"Workers can understand Marxist concepts, but not if they are
>presented as
>you do here. I have never heard "rentier classes," "bourgeois society,"
>"value theory," "proletariat," "fetishistic expression," "surplus labor
>time," or "necessary labor time" roll off the tongues of workers with
>whom I have dealt over the course of more than 30 years of union work."
>Dennis commented:"Well, translated into 1990s terms, you could reel off
>the
>afore-mentioned
>Marxian categories as "Wall Street greedheads", "corporations",
>"critical thinking", "ordinary working people", "false problems",
>"Nike's greed" and "whatever your job is, you deserve fair
>compensation". There remains the small problem of "the revolution". How
>about "Massive, Sudden Global Grooviness"? To the Linux-barricades,
>comrades!"
>
>Alec protested:"That's pretty "Extreme", don't you think, Dennis?"
>
>_______________________________________________
>
>No, Alec, it's not extreme.

Oh, I was just joking "Extreme" as in the sport lingo (sky surfing, bunji jumping, etc). Like that ad I've seen for some financial consultants that says "Extreme Consulting," and shows some consultant/rock climber climbing a rock. Or my favorite from the Baffler: "extreme spreadsheet, dude!"

In fact, I'd get rid of that "critical
>thinking" part, too.

Not a chance. Emerging from the rather significant cognitive and affective consequences of heavy opiate use requires some rebuilding of intellectual infrastructure, where categories have collapsed. This means, for now, honing in on a few texts that are familiar from a while ago, to get things going. There's a lot of jargon as you know but then there is something solid like this:

"Criticism", in its Enlightenment sense, consists in recounting to someone what is awry with their situation, from an external, perhaps "transcendental" vantage-point. "Critique" is that form of discourse which seeks to inhabit the experience of the subject from inside, in order to elicit those "valid" features of that experience which point beyond the subject's present condition. "Criticism" instructs currently innumerate men and women that the acquisition of mathematical knowledge is an excellent cultural goal; "critique" recognizes that they will achieve such knowledge quickly enough if their wage packets are at stake.

(Terry Eaglton, _Ideology: an Introduction_, p. xiv)

Once again, let me say that the Far Left may have
>some important points to make. It's a shame that most of us will never
>know because we can't understand the jargon.

-Alec

(BTW, I'll answer yr off-list matter in a bit. Still have no internet access of my own, so my wiredness is erratic.)

______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list