>>> ForstaterM at umkc.edu 03/22/01 02:38PM >>>
first and last paragraphs of my
AN ESSAY ON THE ORIGINS OF RACISM
Mathew Forstater
Draft-Comments Welcome
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We should not make the mistake of employing a dichotomous treatment of the "real world" and the "world of ideas"-ideas are real, the idea as material force.
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CB: Ideas become a material force, when they grip masses.
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Then, Justin:
The technical name in rhetoric is actually the argumetum ad hominem,a term
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that has a more familiar meaning, quite distinct, in naming a fallacy of attacking a view because of who says it. ("Well, _Justin_ believes that too!). But it also names the (nonfallacious and indeed dialectical) approach
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of arguing from premises accepted by your interlocutor. --jks
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>
>I think what Charles is pointing to is the 'strategic' use of arguments
>that one's audience might find persuasive, even if one arguing it doesn't
>necessarily accept those basic premises. There must be a technical name for
>it in rhetorical studies, like "showing your opponent is a hypocrite." In
>one of my interviews on reps. I said something like "Those who hold
>property rights dear must find cause for concern when a most fundamental
>property right--the property in one's own labor--is violated." mat
>
recalls Marx:
Thge weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the weapon, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates *ad hominem*, and it demonstrates *ad hominem* as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter. But for man the root is man himself.
This quote appears in the frontispiece of E. San Juan, Jr.'s _Hegemony and Strategies of Transgression_, along with the following from Rosa Luxemburg:
Unrelenting revolutionary activity coupled with boundless humanity--that alone is the real life-giving force of socialism. A world must be overturned, but every tear that has flowed and might have been wiped away is an indictment, and a man hurrying to perform a great deed who steps on even a worm out of unfeeling carelessness commits a crime...
From this contradiction between the sharpening of the problem and the lack of prerequisites to its solution in the initial stage of revolutionary development it follows that the individual skirmishes of the revolution may end in _defeat_. But revolution is the sole form of "war"--and this is its special law of life--where the final victory can be prepared only by a series of "defeats"!
In this I hear further justification for Yoshie's (and others') call for support for reparations as a strategic moment in this ongoing struggle--under present circumstances, the reparations movement may serve a number of complementary roles, akin to the anti-apartheid and other similar struggles in the recent past.