So we give up on social theory until self-defined collectivities emerge that act politically? What kind of radicalism is that? Besides you miss he point, HM does not start with individual descriptions of the characteristics of individual people. It starts with a dynamic theory of class society, identifies social positions therein, and assigns properties to individuals in part on the basis of their location in the theoretically described social position and in part on the empirical facts about their awareness and behavior. What's the point of this? Well, how do you know, for example, that the Democrats are not going to offer us a route to socialism? Because in a capitalist society the political parties are effectively controlled by the capitalist class, to whose interests they are responsive. Action without theory is blind, theory without action is empty.
--- Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> The process of describing people empirically then
> aggregating the result
> into x number of categories seems to be an
> entertaining academic
> pursuit, but I'm not certain what it has to do with
> understanding
> history -- i.e. with grasping the changing relations
> which among
> collectivities within which individuals act. It does
> not, for example,
> tell us a great deal about which sectors of the
> population will enter
> into political activity in a mass way under some
> future set of
> conditions. When such political activity is once
> underway _then_ and
> only then does it become possible to understand (and
> one hopes expand)
> that activity through more concrete analysis of the
> class positions
> those in action occupy. Mere categorization is
> perhaps of interest to
> marketing but is of close to null political or
> historical interest.
>
> Carrol
>
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