[lbo-talk] BDL on Sweezy

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Wed Mar 3 08:04:35 PST 2004


Alexander Nekvasil wrote:
>
> Brad DeLong <jbdelong at uclink.berkeley.edu> writes:
>
> > (I do make an implicit evaluative judgment by
> > mentioning the fact: res ipsa loquitur, after all.)
>
> It seems you have massaged the text a little, too.
>

Of course no fact (reality, actuality, however-you-translate-res) ever, ever speaks (or even whispers) for itself.

While it's been more or less accepted for several millenia, isn't a focused and self-conscious recognition that all facts are theory drenched supposed to be a particular emphasis of 20th-c thought? Reality has no voice until humans give it one.

History is not a fifth-grade arithmetic text, and has no clear-cut "lessons" to teach anyone. Three times seven in the gradeschool text is always 21, even if the school is burning down. But neither Stalin nor Democracy can be extracted from history and be the "same."

Carrol


> cheers
> AN
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