shag wrote:
>
>
> That, or shut up shuttin' up already since you're being a ridiculous
> fuckheaded bore who, as usual, has too much time on his hand such that I'm
> surprised the freakin' axe blade on your favorite axe hasn't been worn to
> a freakin' nub.
No -- I think Jerry's use of "theory" (which is not quite mine and certainly not that of the more careful followers of "French theory," is still a contribution.
Going further. Jerry has also directed a couple barbs at "Maoists," barbs well directed insofar as the persons referred to themselves use that label, since the label itself obcures an important contribution to 'theory' by the Chinese CP &/or Mao itself, contained implicitly in the phrase "Marxism-Leninism-MaoTHOUGHT." (I've lost my source(s) for this but I think I'm remembering accurately.) The very words "Maoist," "Maoism" deny what is implied here. (Of course the ChineseCP and/or Mao himself also forgot/repudiated this distinction when they came out with the ridiculous "Theory of the Three Worlds," which claimed to be adequate to cover a whole historical epoch (and which raised to the level of (pseudo)theory the Chinese/Soviet split. Now the sense of "Theory" I want here is close to or overlaps Jerry's "testable hypotheis" but it is probably not quite the same. I'll try to creep up on it. I would regard Marx's presentation of Theory of Value, of productive/unproductive labor, of commodity fetishism, of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, of other crucial elements developed in Capital I-III, Theories of Surplus Value, & Grundrisse as theoretical achievements: they describe an abstract capitalism which remains unchanged throughout the many more concrete changes in capitalism. I've tried to get at this in various ways in a number of posts over the last few months. (Note that h olding anything like this position makes it essential to deny attempts to arive at an empiricist theory of capitalism.)
But I do not think that (in this strong sense of the term) it makes sense to sepeak of "Revolutionary Theory," of "Theory of History," or of "Theory of Socialism." (In fact, I am more or less using "theory" and "science" as synonyms here.) A weaker sense of theory, which Mao would have called d"thought," is involved when Lenin argues in WITBD that there can be no revolutionary party without a revolutionary theory. I think it consistent with the work as a whole (and makes sense of his later admonitions concerning it) to praphrase this somewhat as follows: no revolutionary party can be built in Russia in 1904 without a development of revolutionary _thought_ appropriate to the conditions of that place and time.
There really is no such thing as revolutionary _theory_, and the illusion of such theory is precisely the reduction of marxism to a religion. (There are of course all sorts of truisms that apply to all sorts of situations, but mostly in ways that are useless. It is easy to look at the Weatherman tendency for exmaple and develop a diatribe against "ultra-leftism"; the problem is that in the next upsurge "ultra-leftism" will take on a quite different form, and determination not to make the "same" mistakes that Weatherman made will be so much hot air, perhaps even be in defense of some new version of that practice which seems to be its opposite. There can be no revolutionary theory (in this strong or scientific sense) because there is no abstract "Revolution" remaining the same in all circustances as there is an essential capitalism remaining the same through all its (probably endless) permutations and variations. The Theory of Capitalism (i.e., what I call Marxism) is essential in grasping the concrete nature of particular capitalisms, but it is NOT an empirical description of ANY capitalism. The same cannot be said of any Theory of Revolution.
All this, of course, has nothing to do with the "Theory" that made a strong presence (but did NOT dominate) English departments in the 1980s and has long since been displaced by the new historicism and other retreats from reality.
Jerry's description below of Engels seems accurate, and dI would also agree that while (as Jerry says) Engels is wrong to claim the _necessity_ of amterialism for "working theories" I would partly agree with Engels: some kind of materialism certainly makes thinking historically easier; and the materialism implicit in the Eleventh Thesis (seen as an epistemology) certainly helps avoid the kind of empty theorizing sometimes seen on this list. Practice _is_ prior to thought; wherever and whenever we find ourselves we are always already engagted in a process (practice) and out thought can only strive to make sense of and expand that practice.
Carrol
Frederick Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy [Cited by Charles]
[Jerry] There is nothing in what Engels says here that is theoretical. Engels does not make theoretical claims for materialism itself but does claim that actual working theories or hypotheses don't make sense unless one assumes materialism.
Carrol] I still like the dedication to The Dialectical Biologist:
To Frederick Engels who got it wrong a lot of the time but who got it right where it counted