what 'postmodern'? kuhn is not a postmodernist, right? it's not a zig-zag nor an accumulation, but a series of more or less dramatic ruptures in basic conceptions and assumptions -- in kuhn's phrase, paradigm shifts. unlike kuhn, we would look at the relationship between these paradigm shifts and the mode of production, the character and compositional effects of class struggles, etc.
> Charles: Isn't this just a rehearsal of the debate between Marxist theory
of knowledge and postmodernist critiques of it ?<
quite the contrary. it was a rehearsal of a debate between theories of knowledge in which marx can more than easily be invoked on both sides of the dispute; and i would insist that any substantial account of marx's writings, taking into account esp the later works, does not grant such an easy depiction of marx on the side you're arguing. so, for instance: marx does not claim that his theories are applicable in any transhistorical way; rather they are a critique of capitalism -- an historically-specific critique of an historically-specific formation. hence, the debate over whether or not marx has a physiological conceptions of labour (a debate which we had here some months ago as i recall) -- and a debate which should perhaps be recalled in the context of a debate on physiological sexual difference.
but more specifically, this is why i wrote "is it really necessary that we convince ourselves (or others) that our politics is something other than conjunctural?" that is to say, the claim that one's politics is a science is (esp in the absence of any rigorous account of procedures, themselves open to dispute) a rhetorical claim which seeks to place one's politics on the apparently virtuous side of the enlightenment distinction between science and ideology/theology. as katha has already remarked, there's no reason to take the side of theology; but i would add, there's just are just as many reasons not to take the side of science, that is to say, no reason to adopt that distinction in an uncritical way as if it's a distinction made outside a specific historical context. whether we use the terms "modernity," "instrumental reason," "Western metaphysics," etc to signify this historical-specificity is open to debate (me, i prefer to be a little clearer about the relationship between forms of knowledge and class struggles than these afford by themselves); but they have the merit of at least acknowledging that forms of knowledge -- in particular the rendition of the science v ideology demarcation -- is an historically-specific one.
in any case, the things that you cited to define what science (or marxism as a science) is would not be accepted by most scientists (or at least last time i looked) nor many marxists, myself included. i'd particularly take exception to the claim about a dialectic between absolute and relative truth _unless_ this dialectical bundle was grounded as an historically-specific one, ie., an immanent one. i'd grant it, for instance, as the speculative (and often critical) side of bourgeois concepts (such as rights, humanity, freedom, and so on) but not as some kind of infinite, transhistorical knowledge which is articulable by infinite minds.
(apologies if that was garbled, i'm a little distracted by the WTO stuff)
Angela _________