>>> LeoCasey at aol.com 06/20/01 02:49PM >>>
Not quite, Charles. It is true that post-Marxists do not see history as a
teleological process, with an immanent logic that works itself out until it
is fully and teleologically developed, be that logic the Hegelian geist or
the Marxian production. And if you want to employ the term idealism here,
certainly it must start with teleological conceptions of history, which
find an immanent logic which precedes actual human history.
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CB: So, your claim is that Marx and Engels' theory was idealist and teleological ? Not quite, Leo. Marx is the one who focussed everybody on anti-teleological approaches, anti-religious approaches, the historical uniqueness of capitalism in contradictory unity with its relationship to previous modes of production.
What do you mean by "human" in "human history" ? Surely the beings in feudalism were not the same as those in capitalism, since there is no logic transcending one group to the other.
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For my own part, I find the concepts of idealism and materialism to be so crudely applied so often, as Laclau and Mouffe pointed out in their reply to Geras' crude materialism, that I try to avoid them altogether so as to avoid misunderstandings.
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CB: Oh no, we wouldn't want to be crude. Must be refined always.
Rule of thumb: when someone starts calling an approach "crude", there is a high likelihood that they are going to run idealism on you.
For a non-crude discussion of the dialectic of contingency and necessity , see Engels' _Anti-Duhring_. The point here is that Marxism's approach to history is not teleological, as you claim.
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It would cause confusion to speak of post-Marxism, at least in the Laclau-Mouffe version, as historical materialism, given the identification of that term with Marxism, but post-Marxism of this variety certainly is both historical and materialist. Far from the account you supply, no one -- not Laclau, Mouffe or I -- has ever put forward the position that different social formations of different relations of production [feudal, capitalist, etc.] appear spontaneously, without reference to the historical conditions of their emergence. To the contrary, they emerge out of very particular historical dynamics at discrete moments in history, as one of a limited range of possibilities at that moment. But the limits are internal to the specific moment of history, not to the unfolding of a transcendent logic.
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CB: That's the same thing as saying they arise spontaneously.
Anyway, any general claim regarding different or more than one "discrete" moment in history implies a logic that transcends the individual discrete moments. In other words, your claim that there is no logic common to the different historical moments is a transcendent , although negative, claim in itself. And as I said, it implies that at every specific historical moment, suddenly, spontaneously, a new logic arises, unrelated to any previous moment's logic. It is historical magicalism.
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If you want to talk at the very high level of abstraction which Marx would call a mode of production, feudalism arose in Europe out of the specific historical conditions the followed the collapse of the Roman empire and ancient world. European feudalism was not the next stage in a necessary, progressive development toward an historical telos, with no other possible avenues of historical development.
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CB: I can't tell whether you agree or disagree with Marx's understanding of this issue. Above you grouped Marx with Hegel. Now you seem to be talking like a Marxist.
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So what post-Marxists dispute is the existence of an immanent historical logic, pre-given before the start of human history.
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CB: For a post-Marxist you don't seem to know what Marx taught. Surely, you are not claiming that Marx taught that there was an immanent historical logic, pre-given before the start of human history. Why do you refer to Marx in your self designation as a "post-Marxist" ? What does Marx have to do with your theory ?
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Certainly, struggle -- not simply class struggle, but all sorts of struggles over power -- is part of what determines the direction of human history within the limits prescribed by a given social formation.
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CB: Oh, but this "class struggle" is not transcendent across social formations ? I mean by your argument, "class struggle" in feudalism is a completely different thing than "class struggle" in capitalism, otherwise one falls into "transcendence". We really shouldn't use the same words "class" or "struggle" to describe them
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What is trans-historical about the Marxian formulation is the insistence that human history is the history of _class_ struggle, as a consequence of the special status it accords to production and the conception of human beings as laboring beings by nature. While Frederick Douglass' abolitionism and feminism were, in part, a class struggle, they were also a great deal more.
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CB: What does Douglass mean by " progress" ? Isn't progress from one mode to another a transcendent notion ? One historical moment can't really be compared to another. They are completely different things, like apples and oranges.
>CB: I agree with Leo that Marx and Engels afforded transhistorical primacy
>to the class struggle in _The Manifesto of the Communist Party_. I note
>that the post-Marxist and other position of denying transhistorical
>processes and contrast on contingent ( accidental) and socalled historical
>( that is , I guess, not TRANShistorical ) processes reduces to an
>idealist/religious/magical epistemology. It posits that social formations
>arise spontaneously , like Athena birthed fully formed from the head of
>Zeus. Poof ! we have feudalism with no relation to anything that came
>before. Presto ! Capitalism, a complete accident with respect to what went
>on before. Radical contingencism is radical anti-explanation.
>What of Leo's favorite quote from Frederick Douglass ? Is it struggle that
>"causes" the accidents that are progress ? Wasn't Frederick Douglass
>making a transhistorical generalization about the efficacy of struggle and
>progress, very much like that of Engels and Marx, ?
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 212-98-6869
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --
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