>From: Yoshie Furuhashi (furuhashi.1 at osu.edu)
>Date: Tue Feb 18 2003 - 18:03:37 EST
>
>
>I'd like a lot more scientific studies of many things, preferably
>written from Marxist points of view, but I like my theory to be
>sparse and elegant, rather than chunky and cluttered (Cf. Occam's
>Razor -- <http://hepweb.rl.ac.uk/ppUK/PhysFAQ/occam.html>).
William of Occam was progressive in his day, but to my way of thinking his razor is reductionist and mechanical - rather like the economic revolution going on in his time.
I thought a principle of materialist dialectics is that everything is connected to everything else. There are no simple truths.
Natural self-organising structures can be elegant but not because they are sparse. IMHO.
>I don't think there are many Marxists left in academe in the USA (or
>anywhere else for that matter), if by Marxists you mean those who
>consider Marxism to be not just a useful social theory but a
>practical political project.
Unless you still accept the idea of a single vanguard party in each country, I do not see how marxism can be a "practical political project". It can at best influence and inform other progressive projects. Networking is a powerful way to do this.
And for its theory - or rather its method - the dialectical materialist, conceptually revolutionary method - to be triumphant, the paradox is that it must become ubiquitous, and therefore perhaps invisible as specifically marxist.
Consider how universal the assumption is now in historical analysis that the economic conditions have a powerful influence on society.
There is a fundamental sense in which the best marxist theory is invisible:
"The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered by this or that would-be universal reformer.
They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes."
From that point of view LBO-talk is full of marxist theory. Including when it is talking about struggles and contradictions which are not directly related to wages and the conditions of labour at work but the social and ideological ways working people try to reproduce their lives under conditions of late capitalism.
No?
Chris Burford