lbo-talk-digest V1 #4733

Kelley kwalker2 at gte.net
Tue Aug 14 09:06:53 PDT 2001


At 08:43 AM 8/14/01 -0700, Miles Jackson wrote:


>On Mon, 13 Aug 2001, kelley wrote:
>
> > the analysis is tied to historical materialism. do marxists
> > make judgments on the way other societies organize their
> > production/consumption? or, do they argue that these are necessarily tied
> > to historical social structural organization of various societies? their is
> > a goal here, right? and it has to do with freedom in our economic life. why
> > do you accept freedom from the arbitrary authority and domination of
> > capital as okay-fine and don't acknowledge it as, likewise, a product of
> > myopic ethnocentrism?
>
>Actually, I'd argue that the notion of freedom is also a historically
>embedded concept, and to assume that freedom is a Universal Good is
>just silly.

right.


>For me to state "Capitalism sucks" is not the same as saying
>"You don't believe capitalism sucks, reeducation camp for you, comrade",
>is it?

no. but i'm not sure what this has to do with anything.


>The ethnocentrism is not inherent in the values or beliefs I
>have; the ethnocentrism emerges when I blindly apply the values and
>beliefs I have learned in a specific sociohistorical location to
>people in substantially different cultural contexts.

no one is doing that, here, as ken explained. it's not about judging another culture as inferior. one can make distinctions without placing the kinds of value judgments you're invoking.

Marxists typically argue that class conflict is the "motor of history" right? when Marx said in the Critique of the Gotha Program that Germany was still a feudal society and so shouldn't undertake practices that presuppose that it's a capitalist society, was that a value judgment on Germany's failures to be a class society.


>There's a difference here, for me at least, between
>holding values and insisting they must reflect values that should be
>held by any Right Thinking Citizen.

there aren't going to be people engaged in discourse that don't share the value of discourse. in order to have a value disagreement at all, we have to share an incredible amount of values between us to begin with. since there is no one engaged in discourse--not everyday CA--that is not in agreement with the historically embedded concept of freedom, democracy, equality, etc that we share, then no one is going to impose anything on them.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list