[lbo-talk] "Theory's Empire," an anti-"Theory" anthology

Charles Brown charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us
Tue Jun 3 08:42:26 PDT 2008


shag

oh. of course they ignored it. part of the deal is that they also argued science itself was imperialist, racist, sexist, etc. In other words, the antidote to ideologically driven science was not more science but questioning the claims about science being the answer at all. people would have guffawed if i'd countered with scientific socialism as the antidote. ^^^^^ CB: Of course. I'm kidding a little bit. I know how most non-Marxist-Leninist leftists think of Marxism-Leninism: It's ooooooh aaaahh ! Stalinism !( scream at the top of your longs ! The Boogie man.) But you know having been through thinking about what they say for about 25 years ( actually, in terms of the Marshall Sahlins 'anthropolgical structuralist critique, I go back to 1972; following Sahlins, I was a Levi-Straussian structuralist before I was a Marxist. in other words, I was one) I conclude there's more of value in Marxism-Leninism than non-M-L leftists allow. M-L is anti-postivism. Actually, I gave in one of my recent posts my one general thesis on the principle that might come out of the struggle between Leninism and structuralism/postmodernism. I'll send it again , if you want. Anyway, after all that, I really think it's a mistake when they conclude that science may not be the answer at all. THE FOCUS ON THE WORKING CLASS DERIVES FROM MARX AND ENGELS' SELF-DECLARED SCIENTIFIC APPROACH, THEIR FOCUS ON NECESSARY CONNECTIONS, THE COERCIVE USE OF PROVISION 0F NECESSARIES BY RULING CLASSES DOWN THROUGH THE AGES. More like we gotta go with the "science for the people" approach. Gotta fight fire with fire sometimes. Prometheus for the people vs Prometheus for the bosses.

Turn things-in-themselves into things-for-us instead of things-for-them bosses. But the bosses aren't going to give up using science and it gives them a big advantage. It's like I thought when I worked on land recovery for the Yurok Indians (sort of practicing anthropology for the indigenous people), and wrote "Indigenous Knowledge in Aboriginal Land Recovery ": It's obvious that the best thing for the human race would be to move back to a mode of production more _like_ ( not identical to) hunters /gatherers/gardeners, give up much of this technology that is ending up like the brooms in the Sorcerers' Apprentice tale. But the bourgeoisie ain't going to give hi tech up unless we make them. And I don 't see how you make them without getting "science" ourselves. Maybe Jaggar has a plan for that - making the bourgeoisie give it up without us getting science ourselves. Now that would be some potent feminism.

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