Jim's comments on Soviet philosophy seem to me judicious, fair, and informed. They are more nuanced than a simple blanket condemnation, which I did not mean to offer, or a blanket defense of orthodox diamat of the sort offered by the Brit popularizes like John Lewis or Maurice Cornforth.
>
>I think a final evaluation of Soviet philosophy remains to be written.
>It
>seems to me that some quite substantive work was done in the early
>years of the Soviet Union. Certainly, the debates in the 1920s between
>the Mechanists and the Dialecticians seem to be of some interest,
Until Stalin put down his fist, there was a reasonbaly lively Soviet philosophical scene. One might also add to this Rubin's brilliant Hegel-inspired attempt to reconstruct the notion of value and Paushanikas on law and Marxism, among other useful contributions.
Many of
>the
>scholars at the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow, who oversaw
>the publication of Marx's earlier writings (like the 1844 Manuscripts)
>simply "disappeared" during the 1930s.
Including Ryzanov, a very great loss to Marx scholarship.
>
In fact it seems that one characteristic
>of Soviet philosophy was while it on the one hand pledged its
>loyalty to a strict orthodoxy, it was still (at least following Stalin's
>death) able to absorb ideas and techniques from other philosophical
>traditions. I seem to recall reading a book many years ago by John
>Somerville on Soviet philosophy which made exactly that point.
>Even in Stalin's time it was customary for Soviet philosophers
>to be assigned to specialize in the work of one or more particular
>Western bourgeois philosophers, in order to refute their ideas.
>Very often this resulted in the Soviet philosopher in absorbing
>many of the ideas of the thinkers that he was supposed to be
>refuting.
Often this was not accidental: the author would give lip service to orthodoxy while exploring and developing the forbden ideas he was supposed to attack.
jks
>
>Jim F.
>
>
>
>On Thu, 21 Feb 2002 22:15:19 +0000 "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
>writes:
> > >CB: Uhhhh , I am being deliberately clear as a bell. You said 99
> > out of
> > >100 Marxist philosophers don't know anything about late 19th
> > Century
> > >neo-Kantians.
> > >
> >
> > Probably that is too high. Maybe it's 999 out of 1000, assuming that
> > there
> > are that many Marxsits philosophers left. There'a Harry van der
> > Linden and
> > who else?
> >
> >
> > >>^^^^^^^^
> > >
> > >CB: This is just another angle to make your anti-dialectical
> > materialist
> > >argument,
> >
> > Now you are insulting me. I never EVER argue that a doctrine is
> > false
> > because it unpopular. The dimat is (at best) false because it is a
> > bunch od
> > meaningless unhelpful obscurantist doubletalk. Of course lots of
> > stuff that
> > fits that bill has been very popular, such as New Age spirituality,
> > postmodern "theory," and religious fundamentalsims of various sorts.
> > So the
> > popelarity of a doctrine is not at all related to its truth value,
> > and you
> > know that I have always thought that.
> >
> > >Furthermore, people who are religious-nationalist existentialists
> > don't
> > >exactly strike me as the one's whose judgments I would respect that
> >
> > >dialectical materialism is bad.
> >
> > Nor me either, I was just pointing out that not all, indeed nost
> > most,
> > Soviet philosophers were Marxists, and most of them bailed out for
> > something
> > else as soon as they could do so without being fired or going to
> > jail. That
> > doesn'r mean theyw ere right to do so, of course, but given what
> > they
> > thought Marxsim was (the diamat) I find theira ttitude
> > understandable.
> >
> >
> > >
> > >(Gorbachev's wife was a philosphy teacher too)
> > >
> >
> > Actually Raisa Gorbacheva is or was a sociologist, which comes under
> > the
> > philosophy faculty of a Russian university.
> >
> >
> > >CB; Actually, in the chapter I quote, Lenin explains how Mach
> > started out a
> > >Kantian and then became more a Berkeleyian. What makes Lenin good
> > is the
> > >content of his discussion.
> >
> > I'd have to look at it again. As I said, Lenin was an amateur, but a
> >
> > talented one.
> >
> > >
> > >What's that appeal to "authority" you make ? Dogmatism ?
> >
> > No, knowing something about a subject matter. Harry van der Linden
> > is a real
> > authority on neo-Kantianism. He's studied it enough,a nd written
> > about it
> > intelligently, so that whatever he says on the subject is worth
> > taking
> > seriously.
> >
> > >
> > >CB: Lenin doesn't criticize [Mach's0 politics. It is his break with
> >
> > >philosophical materialism in the guise of still being a materialist
> > that
> > >Lenin objects too.
> >
> > On political grounds! He says that it lead to "fideism" (that is,
> > religious
> > faith), which he considers to be retrograde; of course an
> > Enlightenment
> > liberal like Mach was almsot certainly an atheist or agnostic, and
> > also that
> > it leads to various reactionary consequences, which in Mach's case
> > happens
> > not to be true. Also Lenin has more serious objections to thetruthof
> > Mach's
> > views or to Mach's arguments, and these deserve critical attention.
> >
> > >
> > >One of the Machists that Lenin criticizes in the book, the
> > Bolshevik
> > >Lunarcharsky, became Minister of Education, when the Bolsheviks
> > came to
> > >power. That's how off is your dogmatic, anti-communist ,
> > implication that
> > >Lenin used state power to enforce his philosophical views.
> >
> > Charles, you're not gonna get anywhereaccusing me of red-baiting. In
> > fact,
> > Lenin did use state power to enforce his views, though
> > (unlikeStalin) not
> > his philosophical ones. It was Lenin who criminalized political
> > dissent in
> > the FSU, established rule of one party,a nd the like. He was quite
> > proud of
> > these things, so don't try to pretend otherwise. As a liberal
> > democart, you
> > cannot expect me to approve. At the same time I have never said that
> > Lenin
> > was merely a paranoid murderous tyrant, a dictator and butcher, like
> > Stalin,
> > and I do not think that he was.
> >
> > Am I anticommunist? I sure as hell am antiStalinist. I hope I have
> > made that
> > clear. If "anticommunist" means (as it does in post WWII AMerica, a
> > defender
> > of containment and the national security state, some form of
> > McCarthyism at
> > home, and imperial intervention abroad (Vietnam, etc.), then you
> > know it is
> > slander to suggest that's what I am. If it means that I would oppose
> > the
> > establishhment of a Boslhevik regime in America, yeah, I would, but
> > what's
> > the point; I'd also oppose the establishment of a sharia Islamic
> > regime in
> > America, which is probably more likely.
> >
> > My rejection of diamat has nothing to do with my attitudes towards
> > communism
> > or socialism, and I remain a socialist and a historical materialist.
> > The
> > problem with diamat is just that it's bad philosophy. The fact that
> > it was
> > imposed by political fiat is not a problem with thediamat, except
> > insofara s
> > the diamat was thought to justify this imposition, as with the
> > political
> > system that imposed it.
> >
> > jks
> >
> >
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