what's interesting, to me, is that one of the things for which you mock Carrol is his repeated insistence that we shouldn't draw up blueprints for the future. The quotes bits are exactly the kind of blueprint Carrol has rejected.
I'm partial to this view Carrol's outlined, articulating it since before this list was a twinkle in Doug's eye. I was introduced to it early on via socialist feminism (Alison Jaggar) and the Frankfurt School. Perhaps I've overlaid Carrol's ideas with my own, distorting what he's saying, but the reason socialist feminists and the Frankfurt buoyz took that view was that, in their estimation, it was a way of enhancing the autonomy of workers' struggles as well as the particularism (not the best word) of Marxist theory where the emphasis is on _particular_ forms of historical struggle (where the social and historical conditions matter, are particular, and thus resist some universalizing framework through everything must be subsumed under the March of History).
This is the view that also undergirds Postone's work, and which also animates, I think, Carrol's opposition to moralizing. I could be wrong about Carrol, but I do know that it's what animates _my_ opposition to moralizing. Here's what I read when I first encountered the view, and I'm curious why people find it objectionable:
"A distinguishing feature of the Marxist conception of political theory is that such theory should not focus on the elaboration of ideals to be instantiated in some absolutely good society of the future."
(NOtice that Jaggar, a careful thinker who's trained in political and ethical theory and philosophy, sees no contradiction in that statement and shouldn't -- for the reasons others have tried to outline here before and for which dossbomber has partly earned the moniker. :)
"According to historical materialism, ideals are not only developed by people in specific material circumstances; they are shaped by people's experience of those circumstances. The ideals that inspire political struggles are directed toward the elimination of specific institutions of domination, institutions that become the focus of political attack only when the material preconditions for abolishing them already exist. There is no reason to suppose that these ideals will be valid for all time nor that they are adequate for the regulation of every society. On the Marxist view, there is no ultimately good society, only a continual struggle to overcome specific obstacles to human fulfillment as these become apparent. Given this view of political theory, it is futile for political philosophers to pretend that they can finally and authoritatively articulate social ideals and principles of universal validity. The most they can do is to provide a systematic formulation and defense of the most progressive ideals that emerge in their time."
p 207, Feminist Politics and Human Nature, Alison Jaggar
Earlier, introducing the reader to themes that guide her argument, Jaggar elaborates themes that emerge in the work of the Frankfurt School and which I've previously outlined regarding Postone in another post to the list [1]:
"Inseparable from a vision of the good society sis a critique of the philosopher's own society. This critique may not be worked out in any detail but it is always at least implicit because a conception of justice is simultaneously a conception of injustice. ... How much emphasis a philosopher gives to the positive vision and how much to the negative critique depends on a number of things.... Some philosophers may believe that their task is to provide a detailed blueprint for the future; others, like Marx, may have epistemological reasons for believing that the guture must be designed by its future inhapitants and that the immediate task is to struggle against specific forms of oppression. Thus Marx's philosophy... consists largely in a detailed critique of the capitalist future. Nevertheless, the vision of an alternative society, however, indistinct, underlies every philosophical criticism of contemporary injustic or oppression, just as every philosophical theory of the good society contains an implicit condemnation of existing social evils.
A third aspect of political philosophy is a consideration of the means for traveling from here to there, a strategy for moving from the oppressive present to the liberated future. Many philosophers have failed to give explicit attention to the question of means. ... They have held an elevated conception of political philosophy as the articulation of universal ideals and have viewed the question of how to instantiate those ideas as being both logically secondary and non-universal."
I want to highlight this next, and closing sentence to that paragraph:
"The Marxists tradition is one of the view that has given much weight to the question of the means as well as of ends and this is because hthe Marxist belief that theory is born from practice, that only in the process of struggling against oppression can people formulate new visions of liberation." (p. 16, Feminist Politics and Human Nature)
To Carrol, if you are reading:
Yes, JAggar problematizes the concept of "human nature" and is is actually, from her, that I decided to call it "human being" -- the emphasize the praxis aspect. She probably couldn't do that with a book title -- and especially since she was elaborating not just marxist and socialist feminissm, but liberal and radical and cultural feminisms -- which take a static view of human nature.
Also, you might find of interest her earlier statements about philosophy v. theory -- or, rather, her insistence on putting that opposition under criticism:
"The normative nature of political philosophy is uncontroversial. Indeed, it is customary to distinguish political philosophy from political science precisely by claiming that political science, which is said to investigate how political systems in fact work, is empirical, while political philosophy, which tells how they ought to work, is normative. Political science is seen as descriptive, political philosophy as prescriptive. Although I do not wish to deny the normative nature of political philosophy, I shall challenge this customary way of distinguishing political philosophy from political science by arguing that both, as they are commonly defined, include both normative and empirical elements. Interchangeably with "political philosophy," I shall also use the more ambiguous term "political theory," which is more generally recognized as including both claims in what is ordinarily called political science and also explicitly normative claims." (p 15)
I bring that up because of your pointed comments about "theory". It's another example of why claims about the use of "theory" among the various pomos was suspect (or something like that). To those of us in the social sciences, especially those in schools of critical social science, the idea that theory is some kind of sneaky way to do philosophy without calling it such has been called in question -- albeit likely on different grounds than Tilottama Rajan does. My point only being that the terms "theory" -- usually used to describe empirically based, substantive work that is supposed to address "what is" -- and "philosophy" have a different history in the social sciences. If I ever manage to stop being so lazy, maybe I'll hunt down her article to better understand it.
[1] http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20090330/004921.html
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