kelley wrote:
> the claim that gender and racial oppression is functional for capitalism is
> raised by charles all the time on this list. why don't you attack him?
I have every so often objected to his consistently empiricism interpretation of marxist principle. I gave up after you and he engaged in a mutual hymn to the beauties of empiricism, but I had previously made my point clear several times that the "unity" of theory and practice does *not* mean, primarily and other than accidentally that practice is the test of theory but that practice is prior to theory, the source of theory. It is those who believe
that practice is the test of theory who, on the whole, have dismissed marxism as a dead theory. I decide that really there was no point in launching a polemic against the absurd the proof of the pudding is in the eating line.
But Charles, whose devotion to the communist cause is obvious and unbending is a living proof that in fact one can be a communist while believing almost any combination of theories. On specific occasions I have argued with him and will again.
Your sudden quick summary of "what marxists believe," with its repetition of all too often heard cliches, seemed a different matter. I will wait awhile to digest your current bibliographical excursus before responding further. But I want to thank you now for being the occasion for my formulating at greater length than before my conviction of the necessity for the morale and fighting fitness of the working class that it (or its leading fractions) make the fight for social justice in general and against sexism, racism, and homophobia in particular central to the struggle for class unity.
Carrol
P.S. Marx took his basic theory of productive labor from Smith, and Smith was not above using the ambiguity of the phrase as part of his fight against priests and nobles. I don't think that figures in Marx's discussion. I might also add that I am not convinced that it is, in any case, a useful analytic category. But that is an entirely separate issue.