Functionalism in Marxism Again (was Re: "Practicalities" of Reparations)

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Thu Mar 29 15:14:33 PST 2001



>Yoshie, this is what I was talking about a while back as to when a
>scientific theory takes on a life of it's own and can be harnessed to
>achieve reactionary goals. Clearly we don't want to say that anti-racism is
>against working class interests anymore than we want to that racism is, so
>how do we neutralize the right's appropriation of science to engage in what
>few on the left would deny is racist?
>
>Ian

James Farmelant has argued here that there is an element of functionalism in Marxist explanations, and I agree with his take on this. Until we win, we will continue losing. That's tautological & hardly interesting, but consider a more complicated form of the same: until capitalism is abolished, any reform the working class win will inevitably have contradictory consequences, which are "functional" to capitalism. The same will be true of a "successful" reparation movement _under capitalism_, as it has been of the "success" of the civil rights movement.

The first step toward a practical opposition to the Right in a war of positions is to mobilize people who already are opposed to the Right but have been politically inactive for a host of reasons. Build your base, and move forward from there, while in the process re-defining terms of political struggles (including symbolic elements of them). That's the only practical way to break the functional trap, in my view.

Yoshie



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