[lbo-talk] Dewey on intelligence, co-operation, and class

Mike Ballard swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au
Fri Oct 19 05:59:55 PDT 2007


Ian, Woj, and others who may wish to respond:

The quote above is preceded by a criticism of the use of 'class' as the defining concept for describing turn of the 20th century existence. Dewey writes:

In spite of the existence of class conflicts, amounting at

times to veiled civil war, any one habituated to the use

of the method of science will view with considerable

suspicion the erection of actual human beings into fixed

entities called classes, having no overlapping interests

and so internally unified and externally separated that

they are made the protagonists of history -- itself

hypothetical. Such an idea of classes is a survival of

a rigid logic that once prevailed in the sciences of

nature, but that no longer has any place there. This

conversion of abstractions into entities [*] smells more

of a dialectic of concepts than of a realistic examination

of facts, even though it makes more of an emotional appeal

to many than do the results of the latter.

Thoughts?

--ravi *****************

Individuals are not classes, but classes cannot exist without individuals. Social relations between classes are relations between people of more less political power. The employing class are the modern lords of the manor: they own the places of employment. The individuals they employ to produce wealth make up the working class. The concept of class can and usually does remain an abstraction to most intellectuals who identify with ruling classes throughout history, including those of the present bourgeois social order.

Mike B)

Everybody's got to believe in something. I believe I'll have another beer." - W. C. Fields http://www.iww.org/culture/official/preamble.shtml

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