[lbo-talk] A Case for Difficulty and/or Prolixity

[Tayssir John Gabbour]

On 12/9/06, bitch <bitch at pulpculture.org> wrote:
> I also argue that Chomsky relies on a vulgar marxism which is easy to
> explain. As a consequence, he can't speak to the experience of oppressed
> groups in this society such as women, queers, and so forth.

Well, I once asked Chomsky for an intro to econ, and he strongly
recommended a book which he blurbed. It immediately argued against
this vulgar marxism, this tunnel vision of economism. Instead, it
discussed different spheres of life, like the kinship, community,
economic, and political. And it directly argued against the vulgar
marxist claim that the economic "base" is dominant in any and all
economies.

(Rather, it claims that we'd have to empirically study a society to
see the relations between these spheres of life; theory alone is
insufficient to guess at some pattern of dominance between them. The
book incidentally is Hahnel's _The ABCs of Political Economy_.)

Tayssir