Robert Wrubel wrote:
>
> --- Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
> "At the level of fundamental theory agents are
> merely_personifications of social relations."
>
> You mean "representatives" of social relations? What
> is the point of talking about agents stripped of their
> individual voice, their understanding, their moral
> passion?
>
I didn't. I talked about fundamental theory. What you are talking about exists at an altogether different (and more concrete) level. And I did mean _personification_ NOT representative. It might help if I mention that I am currently reading Robert Albritton, _Economics Transformed_. I got excited about him first at a forum at Marxism 2006 in Amherst, then from an article in the HM forum on Arthur. I've just ordered his _Dialectics and Deconstruction in Political Economy_. He has worked out relationships between fundamental theory and historical actuality that I've been trying for some years to fumble out myself.
Carrol
> BobW
>
> >
> >
> > Michael Perelman wrote:
> > >
> > > People organize their thoughts by stories.
> > Anecdotes about criminality and other
> > > abuses helped to form those stories. The people
> > who do theory CAN, but not
> > > necessarily do help to give those stories
> > coherence. Yet Carroll is correct
> > > emphasized the importance of people on the ground
> > doing person-to-person organizing,
> > > even Karl Marx never did that kind of organizing
> > that Carroll is emphasizing.
> >
> > The theory is, I think, of crucial importance to the
> > people doing such
> > organizing; one of their tasks is to simplify &
> > paraphrase such theory
> > to bring it into relationship with more concrete
> > levels of
> > understanding, and the more deeply they understand
> > the fundamental
> > theory the better prepared they will be to select
> > from and/or simplify
> > that theory in appropriate ways to fit particular
> > situations or
> > particular people in those situations.
> >
> > At the level of fundamental theory agents are
> > _merely_ personifications
> > of social relations. Dogmatism is the belief that
> > without translation
> > that theory can guide practice. What one might call
> > reverse-dogmatism is
> > the belief that unless the theory can guide
> > practice it is bad theory.
> >
> > Carrol
> >
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