<HTML> <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">From: andie nachgeborenen CB: Your "So you say that in one of the two concrete cases where you discussed this, you accepted as plausible the absurd belief that class interests operate directly to explain behavior without psychological mediation " </BLOCKQUOTE> does not seem like an accurate characterization of Yoshie's "I don't recall saying that "class interests," considered as merely economic interests, are direct determinants of the "psycho-sexual" matters, perhaps with the exception of my restatement of Luker's explanation of the rise of anti-abortion ideology in the late-nineteenth century (she attributes it to male medical doctors' attempt at professionalization of medicine)." Since you reject the idea that psychological factors can ever be explanans CB: I think it's "psychological " factors can never be explanans of social phenomena. and <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">have expressly stated that they are always explananda, you must hold that some other non-class-interest factor but nonpsychological explains other phenomena. This is still mechanical Marxism. </BLOCKQUOTE> CB: No , it's not socalled mechanical Marxism. It's social determinism. ^^^^^^ Frankly, until I heard you and Carrol assert this absurd view, I would havesaid that <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">it was a straw man that no intelligent Marxist ever actually believed. jks</BLOCKQUOTE> CB: Me thinks ye doth protest too much <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> </BLOCKQUOTE> </HTML>