[lbo-talk] Time to Get Religion

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 12/2/06, Jerry Monaco <monacojerry at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/1/06, Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The Marxist tradition once had a world view, a world view (more
> > specifically a philosophy of history) of inevitable dialectical
> > progress, from pre-capitalism, to capitalism, to socialism, the world
> > view that the Marxist tradition borrowed in part from Christianity and
> > in part from liberalism.  It no longer does, though it remains useful
> > as it supplies a theoretical framework and analytical tools.  Since
> > the world view of inevitable dialectical progress was manifestly out
> > of this world, the Marxist tradition, as a theory, may be said to have
> > improved as a result of the loss of that world view.
> >
> > The problem: a school of thought can be built around a theoretical
> > framework and analytical tools, but a social movement cannot be.  A
> > social movement, especially one with an ambition to present a superior
> > alternative to capitalist modernity, needs a world view, a world view
> > that inspires people to have faith in the work they must do in the
> > face of adversity.  Have Marxists in particular and socialists and
> > leftists in general invented a new world view?  No.
> >
> > T
> > --
> > Yoshie
>
>
> Yoshie,
>
> What are you doing now?  God-building?
>
> I had to search back through my memory and then with a little help through
> my Leninist texts to come up with this -- but minus the positivism -- it
> sounds like you are recreating "proletarian philosophy".  So perhaps you
> should also look for precedents in the philosophy of Lunacharsky, Gorky, and
> Bogdanov?
>
> I'm not necessarily criticizing, but pointing out that over and over again
> we have actually rehearsed this debate in one form or another. Perhaps a
> form of "god-building" is what is needed and a "proletarian philosophy" or
> socialist world-view has to be constructed in such a way to provide us with
> a "God-substitute" and through it positing a teleological goal to history?
>
> If this is what you mean that I am pretty much against it; because all and
> all I still imagine there will be no religion, heaven or hell, only human
> consciousness, earth, sky and all of life.  At least one of my goals --
> socially and politically -- is that humans can live without the false-hood
> of teleology
>
> Or is it that you think that the God doesn't need to be built because the
> other religions have shown us the way all we should/need to do is secularize
> their teleology?  Because only with a secularized teleology can we motivate
> people? provide them with hope?  It was all this kind of stuff that as a boy
> submerged in Catholicism, that I turned to Darwin, Marx, and the physical
> sciences to get away from.
>
> Maybe, I am misunderstanding you.
>
> Jerry Monaco

A new secular -- but not secularist -- world view needs no teleology.
It just has to be big, powerful, attractive, and exciting, as big,
powerful, attractive, and exciting as the religious find their own
religion to be.  E.g., Stephen Jay Gould's punctuated equilibrium --
which works just fine for social history, not just biological history
-- doesn't come with any teleology whatsoever.
-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
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