Some Chat on Psychology, Theology, and other Pseudo-Sciences,was [Fwd: Re: desire/ message board]

[Carrol Cox]

DANIEL.DAVIES at flemings.com wrote:

> This is an incredibly interesting post.  My only problem with it is that
> I've had very similar arguments put to me in a different forum, only with
> the word "Marxism" appended to the list "psychology, theology, phrenology
> ...", and "class interests" appended to the list of things which do not
> exist yet which have well-developed theories about them.

I agree. Moreover, I don't believe that the distinction (which I obviously
make) can be established in an academic context of verbal disputation.
I will not succeed in convincing anyone who is not already commited
to making sense of the world in Marxist terms, because the core of
my argument is simply that IF historical materialism is true, THEN
certain abstractions are empty ones. And what this points to is the
profoundly different routes which one follows to marxism or to any
other theory of social relations. One has to be a marxist in practice
before one even thinks about becoming a marxist in theory. One cannot,
I think, be "converted" to marxism by reading or studying marxist texts --
one must *first* find oneself involved in struggle which whatever theories
one carries with one (consciously or unconsciously) fail to explain. Then
one looks around for some way to explain that practice. I became a marxist
before I had read a single work by any marxist. Becoming a marxist was
what led to my reading marxists, which I did in order to make
some sense of the practice in which I found myself involved. This
is why I always come back to the line by Mephistopheles (in
Goethe's *Faust*) which Marx quotes in *Capital*: *Im Anfang
war die That*. The priority of action to thought, of practice to
theory (the defintion of theory, in fact, as the summary and
self-critique practice -- and a specific practice, the practice of
the international working class under capitalism). She/he who
is brought to Marxism by thinking which is not forced by practice
(i.e., some sort of collective political struggle) will never be a very
happy marxist but will be forever voyaging new seas of thought
to reassure him/herself that he/she is not missing out on something.
I never read the tale of the Wandering Dutchman, but that seems
to be an apt metaphor for those who are marxist by intellectual
conviction rather than political necessity.

Carrol