> I won't enter this debate as it pertains to NC and MF. But I do want to say
> that I think you are being a little un-generous (i know kettle pot and all
> that) to Ted here. What I get form Ted is not his own trade marked reading
> of Marx but rather a pretty well established contention that Marx has
> different notion of human freedom and nature than either Kant or Hegel and
> by extension he seeks to use this reading of Marx against M Foucault. To
> call it Trade Mark Ted can only be read pejoratively.
That wasn't my intent. I apologize to Ted if he construed it that way.
I was (tm)ing my own label "Ted-Marxist" to make fun of the commodification of knowledge. File that under "jokes that fell flat", I guess.
> On the claim that "we inadvertently reinforce the ideological bulwarks of
> our capitalist society:" Part of what Marx meant by critique was a
> retrieval of the rational kernel within liberal political economy and the
> German enlightenment. Similarly there is a rational Kernel in Bush's,
> republican's and Democrat's use of the concept of genuine self
> determination.
Rather, a consistent Marxist position is that the ideas that emerge in a given society are the products of social/historical conditions, and when social/historical conditions change, the most deeply held beliefs can "melt into air". For example, Ted provided the Gotha quote about the eventual dismantlement of the bourgeois concept of "rights" in a communist society. Just as the concept of "rights" would be an anachronism in some future communist society, just so with "self-determination". There is no "rational kernel" in either of these concepts that must be retained in all human societies; rather, whether or not they exist depends on historical conditions and social relations.
Miles