> Wojtek wrote
>
> > That is a historical narrative that gives justice to power struggle.
> > However, if we take the "system as a whole" approach and start seeing
> > all what is going as something that feeds into the system - we abandon
> > the realm of empirical science and enter the realm of teleological
> > mysticism. Which is what much of modern Marxism cum world system are.
> > Basically, the same genre as Talcott Parsons' social systems and
> > neo-classical economics, but with with reversed polarities.
>
>
> This is awfully unfair to everyone concerned. First of all, it is
demonstrably
> true that many people behind the effort to set up welfare policies thought
that
> was a way of stopping more drastic action following on. It is entirely
possible
> for many or even most capitalists to have misread their own interests.
That was
> explicitly argued by some social democrats. Now you have basically revised
them
> to be identical to those people who really did oppose capital with
reforms.
> That's a mess, historiographically speaking, a construct used to defend
the
> equally bizarre comments about teleology in a previous posting.
>
> But don't get me wrong. I think you have an important point and that we
must
> indeed accord proper place to those struggles. But I don't see why we
should
> assimilate them to the capitalist project of managing aspirations, Ford,
Keynes.
> And a lot of sociology, in fact. Angela Mitropoulos has an interesting
essay
> about this in the Australian context, but I am in the bush right now
without my
> files.
>
> Then there is the matter of talk of 'systems as a whole' being in some way
> inimical to science. I think such a statement can only be sustained on the
basis
> of certain rather silly presuppositions about what empirical science is.
Clearly
> there can and are scientific, empirical studies of complex systems. So
maybe you
> think society isn't a system. Now, if you discovered this, that would
really be
> something very different from discovering a flaw in the reasoning of
people who
> elaborate on the theory that society really does constitute a system.
>
> It is entirely possible that society is a complex ensemble in which
everything
> really does feed into the system. (And I think you and Grant have hit upon
one
> such 'route') That means something entirely different from saying that any
> struggle within the system must be automatically a defeat, that there are
no
> lines of flight out of the system, that there are no ways of tipping it
into
> another state, that there are no tendencies within the ensemble that are
in
> contradiction with others, etc...
>
> Systems allergy is so like, late twentieth century.
>
> Thiago Oppermann