"Brave New World" or "the Soul of Man underSocialism"?(wasRe:Desire & Scarcity)

[Carrol Cox]

[This was written 11:00 pm CST Sunday but not sent then
because I was already way over posted. Several other related
posts have appeared since but I send this as originally written.]

"Daniel F. Vukovich" wrote:

> Michael,
>
> [snip] I was trying to downplay our differences or our
> non-communication, and to show that I was not, in fact, being melodramatic,
> as you accused.
>
> [snip]

O.K. I stick to the substance of my posts, but I too would like
to see the element of hostility in posts lowered somewhat. If you
respond favorably both to Michael's economics and to Mao's
China, there should be some basis for not merely slamming each
other personally.

Now as to the word "postmodern." Anyone familiar with the
practice of historians, of the history of literary criticism and
scholarship, and of the history of history of philosophy should
know that it is rather commonplace to make general statements
about some supposed "school" or tendency (e.g., Augustan Age,
Aristotelianism, Absolutism, Old Regime, Romanticism, etc. etc.
and then make endless qualifications and exceptions when the
writer gets specific. They are very useful terms to start a
conversation (or even a careful analysis) with -- and no one
gets all fucking excited over them. When we aren't fighting, we
all know in fact both that "postmodern" is a very sloppy term
indeed AND that it is a useful term (so long as the user is prepared
to accept modificatins/exceptions/etc in particular cases.)

I could probably rip Justin's list apart, and I'm sure others could
do an even more efficient hatchet job on it. But except for point-
scoring the list isn't a bad way to begin. ???

And of course the recent posts have been far more specific than
those on postmodernism as a whole. They have dealt specifically
with questions around using psychological categories for social
discussion and the validity of psychoanalysis. Whether or not
postmodernism names a discussable topic or not, psychoanalysis
certainly does.

Timpanaro once  said that western marxists were in total
agreement on one thing -- the infallibility of Freud. Communists
are not the only dogmatists around.

Carrol