[lbo-talk] Rose 3

Tahir Wood twood at uwc.ac.za
Wed Jul 16 02:36:30 PDT 2008


“Missing from Marx’s oeuvre is any concept of culture, of formation and re-formation (Bildung). ^^^ CB: This is interesting, but what about superstructure ? That corresponds to culture. Marx doesn't spend a lot of time writing about superstructure, but he talks about it some. Anyway, it would be interesting to see how Rose develops the concept of culture. Her reference to "representations and subjectivity", and "structural change" below are interesting

Tahir: She would argue that the notion of superstructure as culture is exactly one of the (abstract) conceptual identities that leads to the kinds of gross simplification she mentions. For culture to be more than abstract like this, it must involve the re-formation of consciousness, as, in Hegelian terms, a reconciliation of the concept with the intuition. Otherwise the simplification will simply lead to another terror, to impose 'socialism' from above using the power of the state. Therefore this is also a critique of statism. The answer to your question is already embedded in the quotes, I would say. Tahir

^^^^^

There is no idea of a vocation which may be assimilated or re-formed by the determinations or law which it fails to acknowledge or the strength which it underestimates. Because Marx did not relate actuality to representation and subjectivity, his account of structural change in capitalism is abstractly related to possible change in consciousness. This resulted in gross oversimplification regarding the likelihood and the inhibition of change. This is not the argument that Marx’s predictions about the conditions of the formation of revolutionary consciousness were wrong. It is an argument to the effect that the very concept of consciousness and, a fortiori, of revolutionary consciousness, are insufficiently established in Marx.

-------------- next part -------------- All Email originating from UWC is covered by disclaimer http://www.uwc.ac.za/portal/public/portal_services/disclaimer.htm



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list