marx and marxists and even heavy users of marx talk about _class_ society, not just capitalism. in which case: all history is the history of class struggle. yanno?
the same issue comes up when people talk about women's oppression or racism or whatever. they seem to think that marxism only addresses capitalism. this seems to be some sort of desire to say, "well, racism (women's oppression, etc.) were around before capitalism, so it must have roots outside capitalism.
uh. no. that's not quite it. which is to say, plenty of marxist-feminists and socialist-feminists can talk about women's oppression _and_ class analysis. They just don't reduce class analysis to one historical era. They talk about class society. Whether you buy their arguments or not -- 'nother story. Same thing with Miles.
Also, isn't your criticism a genetic fallacy anyway?
also, i'm not sure what spiritual yearning has to do with anything. what does it mean, anyway?
kelley
At 12:53 PM 6/13/2005, Luke Weiger wrote:
>I might've been a bit too cryptic here. Anyway, Miles, your argument above
>is a manifestation of Marxism in its most vulgar and least plausible form
>(what Dennett would call "greedy reductionism"). Chuck recently wrote in
>response to Carrol, "Besides the life of the mind didn't begin or end with
>Marx." Similarly, spiritual yearning didn't spontaneously arise with the
>advent of capitalism, and there's little reason to think it would
>necessarily evaporate upon the realization of something better.
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>-- Luke
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