----- Original Message ----- From: "Ted Winslow" <egwinslow at rogers.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Monday, January 14, 2002 10:05 AM Subject: Re: Science, Science & Marxism: A Last Word From me
Justin wrote:
> add that the way you go about does not strike me as
productive, I think
> if you want to refute Hayek's arguments you have to show
that there is a
> institutional structure compatible with planning that
gives individual
> (yes!) people the incentive to gather, accurately compute,
and honestly
> report, the relevant information without imposing too high
transaction costs
> on the information gathering process. Talk about internal
relations is
> absolutely no help here.
I just showed you that Justin. The "yes!" means you didn't understand what I said - Marx's argument starts from "individual people". If they are "universally developed individuals" they have all the incentives you mention. You should say "talk about internal relations is absolutely no help" *to you*. Your assumption that if you don't understand a concept it must be "obscurantist" is mistaken.
In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper made the same kind of "argument" re Whitehead's elaboration of the concept in Process and Reality.
"Whitehead considers himself a rationalist philosopher too; but so did Hegel, to whom Whitehead owes a great deal; indeed, he is one of the few neo-Hegelians who know how much they owe to Hegel (as well as to Aristotle). Undoubtedly, he owes it to Hegel that he has the courage, in spite of Kant¹s burning protest, to build up grandiose metaphysical systems with a royal contempt for argument." (vol. 2, p. 247)
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Well that's pure bunk because W admitted he couldn't plow through more than 20 pages of H when he had to stop because it was an inpenetrable fog.
Ian