[lbo-talk] The postmodern prince

[Michael Dawson -PSU]

> I'm pretty indebted to the classics - Marx, Freud, the Frankfurters -
> though it may not always show. Theories don't come much Bigger than
> those.

I still think we're talking past one another.  By Big Theory, I think I mean
what Chomsky rejects, which is the pretensions that social science needs to
trade in "sophisticated" (i.e., unclear) ideas in order to produce results.
To me, Big Theorists are the people who over-rate theory and smother
everything (usually including their own vacuity) in its verbiage.  Louis
Althusser and virtually all post-modernists are prime examples of that,
IMHO.

Marx, Freud, and, say, Erich Fromm are indeed the biggest of the big in
terms of supplying smart ideas/theories.  But aren't their ideas ultimately
simple, despite the labor that went/goes into acquiring and producing them?
Marx:  Ruling classes live via exploitation of underlings.  Freud:  Growing
up in modern society is damned hard.  Fromm:  Class society perverts and
suppresses love and the other ultimate goods.

I shall post no more forever (today)...