[lbo-talk] Marx without quotation marks

Eubulides paraconsistent at comcast.net
Wed Apr 1 19:45:12 PDT 2009


----- Original Message ----- From: "Dennis Claxton" <ddclaxton at earthlink.net>


> Foucault in Power/Knowledge:
>
>
> "I often quote concepts, texts and phrases from Marx, but without feeling
> obliged to add the authenticating label of a footnote with a laudatory
> phrase to accompany the quotation. As long as one does that, one is
> regarded as someone who knows and reveres Marx, and will be suitably
> honoured in the so-called Marxist journals. But I quote Marx without
> saying so, without quotation marks, and because people are incapable of
> recognising Marx's texts I am thought to be someone who doesn't quote
> Marx. When a physicist writes a work of physics, does he feel it necessary
> to quote Newton and Einstein?"

==================

"Today, we can say, with Che Guevara, that there is no longer any need to say that we are Marxists, any more than to call ourselves Pasteurians or Newtonians -- on the condition that we truly understand what is meant by this statement: everyone is 'Newtonian' in the sense that there is no question of returning to pre-Newtonian categories or ways of posing problems. Yet no one is really 'Newtonian' any more, for no one can continue to be a proponent of a theory that is purely and simply false."

Cornelius Castoriadis "The Imaginary Institution of Society" [p. 41]



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