On Thu, 3 Feb 2000 00:17:33 -0500 (EST) bhandari at mmp.Princeton.EDU
(Rakesh Bhandari) writes:
> For Cohen superstructural
> >elements (i.e. the state, the law, religions, ideology) function
> >so as to stabilize the economic base with a differential selection
> >that favors those superstructural elements most suitable for
> >stabilizing the base over those that are lest suited.
>
> Jim did GA Cohen (whose lectures here last semester I unhappily
> missed)
> ever reply to Derek Sayer's Violence of Abstraction in which it is
> argued
> that Cohen's basic concepts, such as forces, relations, mode of
> production,
> are either too thin to sustain a universal theory of history or are
> surreptiously invested with the meaning/forms that they take
> specifically
> in bourgeois society and thereby hypostatised because they are then
> passed
> off as actually transhistorical concepts in a universal theory of
> history?
I have no idea maybe Justin knows.
> For example, Sayer draws from Godelier to show how in so called kin
> based
> societies, seemingly superstructural elements can themselves be
> relations
> of production. Sayer gives example of forces of production that may
> seem
> otherwise to be relations or superstructures.
That has been a common objection to Cohen's interpretation. Cohen in *KMTH* did take on the issue of whether science is part of the forces of production or part of the superstructure. His answer was basically that to the extent that scientific knowledge is applied to production it is part of the forces but to the extent that scientific ideas may be distorted by social interests then it may also become part of the superstructure in asmuch as it becomes ideology. Thus something like social Darwinisn would be part of the superstructure inasmuch as it was ideology rather than genuine science. (Cohen's position thus differed from Gramsci's who treated science as superstructural).
>
> >
> >Outside the realm of Analytical Marxism writers like Dawkins
> >with his memetics have argued that selection processes
> >work to explain the evolution of myths, legends and religious
> >beliefs. Dawkins has even proposed that religion can be
> >understood as a memetic virus.
>
> Don't know what to make of memetics as a theory of cultural
> transmission.
It seems to require a lot more theoretical articulation before it can be of real use to the social sciences.
> But it sure seems unable to explain variation over time and space
> in rates
> of social evolution. I haven't read Blackmore's book because she
> doesn't
> seem to even touch on the question I find most interesting.
>
> >That raises as you point out below the issue of what Dawkins
> >calls the evolution of evolvability.
>
> Or the evolvability of evolution?!
>
> >Remember Darwin attributed his discovery of the principle of
> natural
> >selection to his reading of Malthus.
>
> Yet Malthus had no idea of non fortuity in survivorship once
> overfecundity
> ran up against a limited resource base. And in fact evolution is
> possible
> without intraspecific competition on a competitive exclusionary
> basis--the
> Malthusian population scenario.
>
> > And of course political economy
> >did not become a distinct discipline until after the rise of
> capitalism.
>
> Nor did art???
>
> Isn't that Robert Wright book inspired by Teilhard de Chardin,
> Bergson
> through the back door? It seems so 20th century.
Quite possibly. The NY Times reviewer seemed to imply something of that kind. I haven't read the book but it is my understanding that he tries to justify his notion of historical progress in terms of selectionist explanatory models.
Jim F.
>
> rb
>
>
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