> Just surprised that as even a post marxist
And what makes me a "post marxist"?--I never said that. I hate this post stuff. Not that I really care about labels. I have always sought to hold true views, not orthodox ones of any sort.
you have
> elided Marx's critique of civilization, Western civilization.
Oh, you are going overboard on this. I was just reacting to Carrol's comment that Western Civilization was a con job. I do agree with Gandhi, Western civilization would be a good idea.
the
> consignment by anti orientalists such as by your heroes the Mills of India
> to the ground level on 'the scale of civilizations'.
Singular Mill, please. I am a great fan of John Stuart M. As for James M and Bentham, I think Marx had their number. I don't hold any truck with many of Mill's views, including his rather quaint 19th century "ranking" of the "worth" of civilizations, a project that makes no sense at all. And in any case Mill's ranking would be crazy on its own terms, because viewed in terms of his own criteria, Indian (and Chinese) civilizations are great civilizations, that is, they lasted a long time, covered a lot of territory with articulated political structures, and produced recorded cultural works of very high complexity. I would add that their food is a lot better than European food, and certainly better than _English_ food.
> It is a sign of the conservatism of the times, and analytical marxism in
> particular, that so little interest is shown in this Marxist theme of the
> deformation of character by the very civilization that you so one sidedly
> tout here.
It is a defect of analytical Marxism that it has been unhistorical and narrowly social-scientific, so that much of it either works within the abstractions of rational choice psychologies that have no place for the notion of character or, as with Elster, in terms of a cold cognitive psychology that also don't do much with the idea of a character.
I am not sure that has to do with conservatism, though. Maybe with lack of general humane culture. I mean, Elster reads great literature, mines it for examples, and presses it into the procrustean bed of his own limited preoccuptations. If Roemer reads literature, it doesn't show. The thing about Marx is that he was a man of extraordinary cultivation of a sort that I don't think is possible today, alas.
> >[jks: ] I don't agree that liberal rights somehow "contain" totalitarianism. Some
> >of Frankfurters used to talk like that too, but I think it's idealism.
>
> [rb:] The argument by Poulantzas (a former lawyer) is different than the
> Marcusean one about repressive tolerance.
I thought you were alluding to the Adorno-Horkeimer thesis in Eclipse of raeson rather than to Marcuse. I have not given P's argument close attention.
> or Paul Thomas (my great undergrad prof in political theory who
> introduced me to Marx) in his rather stimulating Alien Politics.
Pauul Thomas is wonderful. Do people on thsi list know his work? He wrote a fabulous book on marx and the Anarchists that is relevant to our debates about postmodernism. Alien Politics is also a great work and a very unconventional and thoughtful interpretation.
> >Whether capitalism required Judaeo-Christianity, who knows. I have always
> >been suspicious of the Weber thesis.
>
> Are you less suspicious of the necessity of J-C thesis in other forms?
>
Of that type of thesis. When capitalism caught on in China, Japan, and Korea, it surely took hold. I don't deny that Judaeo-Christaianity had something to do with the rise of capitalism, but I have never seen a convincing account of exactly what.
--jks