--- Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote: "It might help if I mention that I am currently reading Robert Albritton, _Economics Transformed."
Alright, then I'll admit I'm re-reading Iris Murdoch's *Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals*, and very much enjoying her wry comments on the second-class status given to personality and individual consciousness in Marx, Freud, Sartre and the structuralists.
Bob
>
>
> 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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> > >
> >
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