So are Marxism, socialism, revolutionary ideas generally -- if being a product of capitalism discredits an ideal or an ideal, all ideas and ideas in capitalist society are discredited.
>
> > that these notions of human nature, of justice, of
> the realization of
> > the essence of human beings, are all notions and
> concepts which have
> > been formed within our civilization, within our
> type of knowledge and
> > our form of philosophy, and that as a result form
> part of our class
> > system;
Yes, and?
and one can't, however regrettable it may
> be, put forward
> > these notions to describe or justify a fight which
> should-and shall
> > in principle--overthrow the very fundaments of our
> society. This is
> > an extrapolation for which I can't find the
> historical justification.
> > That's the point. ..
That's a fallacy. Some old German emigre said that capitalism creates its own gravediggers,. We can hope. But the fact that they are created by capitalism and that their ideas are formed by struggle within and (again we can hope) against it, doesn't mean that they are not suitable tools for use in the struggle against it.
In fact, they are the only tools we have: if you want ideas untouched and unformed by capitalism, where will you find them? You paint yourself into a Foucauldian box here: we are totally constituted by existing social relations, but the only way we can get out of them is to start from outside them, but there is no access to anything outside them. So we struggle fruitlessly, beating our wings against the bars of the Iron Cage.
Marx had a better idea: some of the ideas and ideals and motivations, formed by and within capitalist social relations, are antagonistic to those relations, and create from within those relations a place to stand and overturn them. That's because capitalism is not a Foucauldian total system of power, but a system riven by contradiction and conflict, a system that generates crises and produces groups with an interest in understanding and abolishing it.
And these groups, including the working class, will have ideas of justice and freedom that, of course, are conditioned by capitalism. But because capitalism involves contradictions, it does not create just one set of ideas of justice and freedom. In addition to the ideas of the ruling class, it creates ideas of the working class (among other subordinate groups).
These ideas, if fully implemented, will lead to the abolition not only of capitalism and the ruling class, but of the working class as such -- their realization will involve the creation of a new set of social relations. Those relations will, no doubt, produce different ideas of justice and freedom and other things than the ones even the most radical praxis can create within capitalism. However, we do not know what these are and it is unlikely that they could motivate workers _formed by capitalism_ to struggle against it anyway, even if we could know.
(It's been a long time since I've touted my own work on this list, but haven't I sent you the papers I've written on this subject? I am sure that I have. If not, I can have them PDF'd and email them to you if you like. Anyone else who wants to see, too.)
>
>
> I know Ted wants to argue that there is a
> distinction between the "bad"
> capitalist notion of freedom and the genuine
> Ted-Marxist(tm) notion of
> free self-determination. However, this distinction
> between false
> freedom and true freedom is in itself an ideological
> product of our
> society (for God's sake, even George Bush uses the
> rhetoric of true
> "self-determination" to contrast the noble U. S.
> with the jihadists who
> claim they are freedom fighters!). Thus, in
> perpetuating the notion of
> "genuine self-determination", we inadvertently
> reinforce the ideological
> bulwarks of our capitalist society.
>
> 2. The notion of self-determination obscures the
> many ways in which
> social relations actively create human
> characteristics and tendencies.
> For the Ted-Marxist (and Chomsky), the problem with
> our society is that
> it is repressive; we are naturally free, and
> capitalist society is bad
> because it constrains that natural potential for
> creativity and freedom.
> I agree with Foucault that this way of thinking
> about power is at best
> incomplete and at worst misleading. Power does not
> only work by
> repression; it works via the creation of the types
> of people--including
> "free, autonomous individuals"--that reproduce power
> relations. Thus
> political change is not contingent on unleashing
> restraints on some
> ur-form of human freedom; rather, political change
> is all about creating
> social relations that make possible new human
> capabilities and
> tendencies. Maybe I'm reading too much into the
> Theses on Feuerbach,
> but I see no contradiction at all between Marx and
> Foucault here.
>
> Miles
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>
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