[lbo-talk] Chomsky vs Marx/Lukacs

[Jerry Monaco]

On 10/24/06, Angelus Novus <fuerdenkommunismus at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > I am happy to leave you with your own form of
> > superstion and mumbo-jumbo.
>
> Boring.  This is polemic disguised as an argument.
> And falsely attributing positions to me, as well(as
> stated above, I have only superficial familiarity with
> Foucault, and none with Derrida).
>
>
First let me apologize.  I didn't mean to attribute positions to you
and in writing quickly I did.  I won't apologized for the remark on
superstition because you often show the intellectuals biased to
superior superstition and mumbo-jumbo.  I am not disguising this as
argument at all.  I wasn't making an argument.  It is very hard to
root out our individual self-deceptions and baseless beliefs in our
own superior knowledge .  We are certain about things where there is
very little certainty.  You express so much certainty that I am little
certain that you believe you are beyond mumbo-jumbo.  But why don't
you live up to it.  Why avoid your own superstition.  Embrace it and
see where it leads you.  I say this in all fun.


> --- Jerry Monaco <monacojerry at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Marx provided a nice model, and he was a great
> > writer but why exagerate his
> > contribution?
>
On 10/24/06, Angelus Novus <fuerdenkommunismus at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Not just a nice model, a pretty damn good one.  It is
> an abstract model of a "pure" capitalism, just like
> the neo-classical economists have their "pure"
> capitalism models, only Marx's model is better because
> it does not assume a frictionless system or tranquil
> equilibrium.

We all have our superstitions and for some reason one of yours is that
Marx's Capital provides knowledge of something in the real world.
Capital is worth reading for its way of thinking, but the model
matches nothing that we can point to today and didn't match much of
19th century English Capitalism, either.  There were a few insights,
but nothing that is worth calling a "theory", except in a very loose
everyday sense.

I don't want to attribute positions to you, but Engel's remark that
Marx developed a science equivalent to Darwin's theory of evolution is
just ridiculous and is a prime example of what Ravi likes to call
"scientism."