Freed From Ideology, Russian Philosophers Explore Limitless Possibilities (NYT)

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat Mar 13 07:41:18 PST 1999


James Farmelant wrote:


> March 13, 1999
>
> Freed From Ideology, Russian Philosophers Explore Limitless Possibilities

Some Marxist efforts to analyze bourgeois culture are handicapped by failure to notice that, given the core principle of that culture, individualism, one would expect endless variation, some of it quite radical, and that to the bourgeois mind itself that endless variation would appear as limitless possibility.

Applicatins of the term "decadence" (which I hold is only applicable to the cultures of tributary modes of production) usually come from failure to notice this potential for endless variation in bourgeois culture. Non-Marxist (or semi-Marxist) analysis of bourgeois culture is often equally handicapped by failing to notice that, fundamentally, the new of bourgeois culture is usually (always?) not that new.

Carrol



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