At 9:54 AM -0600 2/23/03, LouPaulsen wrote:
>Marxist principles are basic to understanding to what is going on
At 9:54 AM -0600 2/23/03, LouPaulsen wrote:
>the basis of a "Marxist understanding"
At 7:41 AM -0800 2/23/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>an extremely asbstract model that operates at a very high level of
>abstraction. It no more admots of unmediated application to a
>concrete phenomenon than any other similarly abstract theory, e.g.,
>neoclassical economics. Marx himself flshed out its application to
>particular phenomena, such as increasing automation or the
>development of the factory system or the struggle over the length of
>the working day, with rich, complex, anything-but-spare historical
>investigations referring precisely to particular institutional
>histories and political debates.
At 7:41 AM -0800 2/23/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>A closer analogy is provided by thr application of Darwin's theory
>of natural section to the development of particular traits, where
>almost all the explanatory work is done by reference to the
>evolutionary history, with the spare abstract theory operating as a
>sort of background constraint.
I like the word "constraint" here. One thing that theory allows us to do is to exclude what is irrelevant to it.
What I'm weary of is the tendency of some to think that they must either radically revise "an extremely abstract model that operates at a very high level of abstraction" as "a sort of background constraint" or ditch it altogether in order to explain new concrete social phenomena, _when nothing of the sort is called for_. It's like blaming a tool when what's inadequate is not the tool but one's skill in using it well. -- Yoshie
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