>Incidentally, what difference does it make to you what anyone
>thinks of Weber?
incidentally, why did you care that i brought weber's name up?
incidentally, why does yoshie spend a lot of time arguing for hobbes over spinoza or machiavelli over whoever else? what a lame question! sheesh!
oh and incidentally, this started, as i recall, when i made an offhand ref to weber and weberian scholarship and you proceeded to attribute to me that marxist misuse of weber you speak of below. you then went on to mischaracterize weber. i corrected both of you.
the question should be why did it matter to you?
but, to answer your question:
i care because i think people should get their crits right. i care because i am a scholar. i care because i think scholarly work should be elucidated properly. i care in the same way i care about stupid comments made about marx. i have always said, carrol, that i'm a sociologist before i'm a marxist.
the crits you offered up were simply wrong. i corrected you. now you know. there are, as i said, plenty of crits of weber and weberian scholarship to make. but not the ones offered here. yoshie has a crit in her latest, but it is unimportant.
human action. weber surely understood the importance of human action. in fact he was far too much of a bourg liberal in that regard, as someone else mentioned, dennis perhaps.
>Why is it important? Is there something in
>Weber that no one else provides and that is essential to
>building opposition to U.S. imperialism? Are there any crucial
>ideas in Weber that exist no place else? Can he tell me
>something about ancient Greece that I can't learn from
>Finley, de Ste. Croix, Wood, Starr, or Cornford?
uhm, were this question makes no sense. perhaps you should explain first why the above offer an advance over weber. in any case, it's a silly question. why do you study milton? as i expl'd already, he's part of my scholarly work. i'm a sociologist of the economy and did my undergrad thesis and a master's on the frankfurt school./habermas. therefore, it would be silly of me not to know weber.
weber's also part of my discipline, so i know his work in a way i don't know other work. i'm as SOCIOLOGIST carrol. so i care b/c i don't like people to get sociology wrong by attributing idiotic claims to the work of sociologists.
i have explained what i think weber offeres in many posts these past two years. as you know, google.com with a site search on my name and weber should bring them all up for you.
briefly, weber offers insight into the routinization of the work that most people do. i've addressed this before, yoshie has even seen fit to draw on fem. scholars that utilize this framework.
for me, weber is like lacquer is to you: a bourg liberal theorist that has his/her uses.
In any case, my debate is not really with you but with other marxists who tend to slip into some version or other of ahistorical understanding of history.
but you see, both of you tried to mark me from the git go, without giving me the benefit of the doubt. i think i deserve that from you after three years. you should know better.
>The assumption that capitalism "naturally"
>flows from preceding history, when accepted by marxists, tends
>also to encourage the belief that there can be a "science" of a
>socialist order just as there is a science of capitalism. That way
>leads to an oligarchic conception of socialism. Weber is important
>only insofar as he has an influence on marxist thought.
ahhh, i see. so, the world according to pope carrol is that kelley is not allowed a scholarly identity and that she must only and always speak about theorists who are influential and useful to marxist thought.
ok. thanks for setting me straight.
i'm gonna save that one and next time certain characters on this list are on about the theorist of the month, i'll paste it in and mail and send it on , bot style.
> but that quote woj spoke of does suit you:
> "No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the
> end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or
> there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither,
> mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive
> self-importance. For of the stage of this cultural development, it might
> well be truly said: "Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart;
> this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never
> before achieved."
Wojtek is unable to understand U.S. history and despairs of a mass democratic movement. For that reason he can no more than Mark Jones understand why a battle against racism is core to any progressive politics in the U.S. Hence his Platonic dismissal of practical politics. And since he already KNOWS all there is to know about politics he can only regard *all* discussion on lbo or elsewhere as pointless.
not sure what your grinding an axe on woj's head has to do with anything. hope you feel better though.
kelley
Carrol