andie nachgeborenen wrote:
<<< I'm with you on this one, but if you are seriously interested in a couple of maximum strength answers, see Allwn Wood, The Marxian Critique of Justice, Phil & Public Affaits 1972 +/-, also his Marx and Equality in Analytical Marxism (ed. J. Roemer 1986); Richard Miller's Analysing Marx has a chapter defending Marxian amoralism.>>>
This is the second time in the last month or so when some opinion of mine has been characterized as a mere echo of Marx & it just happens that it was an opinion I held before I had ever read a word by Marx or any other marxist. One of the attractions of marxism for me was that it offered a way to explain social preferences without appealing to moralism. It had always seemed to me that assertions that "X is moral" or "X is immoral" contained an implicit appeal to religion. What other grounds could they have? I wrote a torturous and unsatisfactory paper on the subject in a semantics class I took from Alston at Michigan.
But re Marxism and "Science," the following from another list. The first is my own; the second a correction of my post.
******* Mark Lause wrote:
> As to Mike's question (which has just popped up), my views on the
> distinctions between hard sciences and the social scientists are fairly
> traditional. Obviously, social scientists can approach specific
> problems with a scientific rigor and, in cases like physical
> anthropology, you have scientific techniques applied in specific areas
> where they are very applicable.
The word "science," in German as in English, has "hardened" as it were in the last century. (Someone mentioned Popper, and he and the logical positivists certainly played a large role in this hardening.) When Marx & Engels spoke of "science" they (and their contemporaries) probably meant something like "systematic knowledge grounded in the material world," and "material world" would have, preeminently, referred to _relations_ as much as, or even more than, the 'objects' brought into relation.
Relations, of course, unlike the objects related, must be thought, not perceived. (See _Grundrisse_ [Pelican Marx, tr. Nicolaus], p. 143). Hence Marx's point in the Preface to the First German Edition (of _Capital_): ". . .the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both. But in bourgeois society the commodity-form of the product of labor -- or the value-form of the commodity -- is the economic cell-form."
To assume that only that which resembles physics is science, as occurred in the 20th century, is to obscure our understanding of science. Political Economy (as practiced by Smith, Ricardo, Marx was and is a science. Physics is a science. Our definition of science should be broad enough to include both. Every other week, it seems, string theory is in, string theory is out, string theory is in. Physics is not all that mechanical as contrasts between it and political economy might suggest, nor is political economy so "soft."
But what we know as the "social sciences" today (those officially so designated) are for the most part an early 20th-century development, and that development was to a great deal driven by the desire to "refute" Marx. Sociology, while not so corrupt as Neoclassical Economics or most Political Science, still _as a discipline_, moves towards mere description masquerading as explanation, and its categories stem not from a disinterested examination of reality but are, rather, reflections of _common sense_, i.e., of bourgeois ideology. However rigorous the thinker may be in handling those categories, his/her work is poisoned from the beginning by the categories selected.
One (even a Marxist) can learn a good deal by reading Weber's _Economy and Society_, but any careful reading of it will reveal it's grounding in the bourgeois illusion of the isolated -- abstract -- individual existing prior to and independently of social relations. But wherever and whenever we find ourselves, we are always already caught up in an ensemble of social relations, independently of which we simply have no existence. It is this dirty little secret of bourgeois ideology that sociology, economics, & political science exist to conceal. Carrol
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[Jack Vogel]
[Mark]> > As to Mike's question [clip] areas > > where they are very applicable.
[Carrol] > The word "science," in German as in English, has "hardened" as it were > in the last century.[clip] the 'objects' brought into > relation.
Yes, and Popper was first half 20th century, then came Quine and Kuhn and Feyerabend and 'unhardened' things considerably.
The whole 'hard' - 'soft' science distinction is itself philosophy :) and bourgeois at that :)
[Carrol] Relations, of course, unlike the objects related [clip] the commodity -- is the economic cell-form."
As Quine and say, Wilfred Sellars, showed long ago, the perception/thought distinction is also not clearly drawable. All perception "must be thought" as you put it :) ... [Carrol] One (even a Marxist) can learn a good deal by reading Weber's _Economy and Society_, [clip] & political science exist to conceal.
Ironically, the best contemporary treatment of this matter is by Richard Rorty (bless his bourgeois liberal heart :). His seminal work in 1979, "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature", debunked the whole 'passive perceptive individual' that lay at the heart of modern philosophy/thought.
Of course Rorty wants to use Dewey's pragmatism and warm fuzzy liberalism to shore up the status quo.
I've thought about his stuff and Marx since my grad school days. Both mean there is no such thing as 'disinterested' knowledge. This is one way I would parse 'class struggle'.
The best I have at this point are fragmentary thoughts, since events intervened and I did not become a philosphy prof :)
Solidarity, Jack *******
But philosophy aside, there are serious political problems created by claiming that capitalism as such is immoral (and that is what the claims that exploitation is immoral amount to). Moral judgments tend, in practice, to be absolutes, and any deviation from them becomes a "compromise' of one's purity. This assumption, I think, is behind one of the more juvenile forms of red-baiting, charging this or that marxist with "purism." The red-baiter is usually looking in the mirror when he/she makes the accusation. For example, I think it was this sort of moralism that has moved one goofball or another on this or other lists, at one time or another, to object to using Microsoft or shopping at Walmart or to say that they will hold their nose when voting for Kerry. If I accepted the ABB position I would vote for Kerry with no qualms or noseholding whatever. If it is politically correct to vote for him, it is correct, and that is all there is to it. It isn't immoral to vote for Kerry, it is bad political judgment.
The same kind of error is involved in debates among "pro-choice" adherents re abortion. If the fetus isn't a person, then it isn't a person any more than a sperm or an unfertilized egg is, and it is politically poor judgment to declare it to be a moral choice..
Moralistic purism is also behind the silly attacks on Bush's intelligence. Somehow it is felt to be immoral for a graduate of Yale not to be an intellectual. Pish! Such attacks on Bush are (politically) stupid because they deflect attention from the fact that there is a policy (also favored by Kerry) that we have to oppose, whether its adherents be stupid or geniuses.
I am aware that there are many individuals who hold to ethical theory in ways that avoid these weaknesses, just as there are Christians who have been good Communists. There are all sorts of contradictions in our movement. But I think the general drive of basing politics on moral judgment is as I have been indicating here.
Carrol