What I understood myself as saying was that the civil rights movement was heavily informed by Christian themes and beliefs as interpreted by Southern Blacks (and some whites). Whereas Miles has seemed to assert that the Christian element in the civil right movement was all about preserving dominant power relations.
--- On Mon, 3/30/09, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com> wrote:
> From: shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] life after newspapers
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Monday, March 30, 2009, 10:09 PM
> At 08:06 PM 3/30/2009, Dennis Claxton
> wrote:
> > I understand this to say that liberal Northern members
> of the ruling strata were predisposed by family and religion
> to challenge other members of the ruling strata.
> That's pretty much the opposite of the interpretation you
> give of what Miles is saying.
> >
> >> I would be curious as to how you reached these
> conclusions from Miles' arguments. I personally don't see
> how you could reach these conclusions, especially in regards
> to the second argument. robert wood
> >
> > What he said.
>
>
> as I pointed out last year, also, Miles' argument is
> wonderfully illustrated by Doug McAdams' _Freedom Summer_.
> In that book, McAdam's looks at the people who applied to
> participate in Freedom Summer (Northern white Libs). He
> first compares those who applied at all to the larger
> student population, finding that those who applied were
> already predisposed to agree with the goals of Freedom
> Summer. And they were so inclined because they were already
> influenced by religious and political orientations fostered
> in their families. In turn, he compares those who actually
> kept their commitments and those who didn't and
> finding, again, that those who kept their commitment were
> even more committed to the goals of Freedom Summer via
> already existing institutions: progressive (relatively)
> religious background, parents already engaged in more
> progressive political organizations, etc. The people who
> went were already involved in some form of progressive
> political action and organization building.
>
> In turn, he then shows how engagement in FS meant
> involvement in social institutions and practices that
> radicalized them even more, and from there, a whole slew of
> radical movements broke out, directly related to the fact
> that leaders of the free speech movement, women's liberation
> movement, and more were involved in Freedom Summer -- which
> drew on a rich tradition of political protest, political
> organization, and social movement practices such as Freedom
> Schools. It was direct participation with and working
> alongside Blacks, building an organization, that made a big
> difference which was palpable when McAdams compares the life
> trajectories of those who were involved in FS and those who
> weren't.
>
> The other points Miles made was gesturing at what Carrol's
> talking about when he mentions Postone here lately. Postone
> talks about the need to ground criticism -- critical theory
> -- in _contradictions_. I'll quote Postone on that, because
> it speaks directly to what I wrote earlier, about wishing
> Carrol would speak more to this part of Postone's work:
>
> "...I must briefly elaborate on the notion of contradiction
> and its centrality to an immanent social critique. If a
> theory...that is critical of society and assumes that people
> are socially constituted is to remain consistent, it cannot
> proceed from a standpoint that...purports to lie outside of
> its own social universe; rather it must view itself as
> embedded within its context. Such a theory is an immanent
> social critique. It cannot take a normative position
> extrinsic to that which it investigates (which is the
> context of critique itself) -- indeed, it must regard the
> very notion of a decontextualized, Archimedean standpoint as
> spurious. The concepts used by such a theory, then, must be
> related to its context. When that context is intrinsically
> bound to the nature of their object This means that an
> immanent critique does not judge critically what "is" from a
> conceptual position outside of its object -- for example, a
> transcendent "ought."
>
> Instead, it must be able to locate that "ought" as a
> dimension of its own context, as a possibility immanent to
> the existent society. Such a critique must also be immanent
> .... That is, if it is to be internally consistent, it must
> be able to ground its own standpoint in the social
> categories with which it grasps its object, and not simply
> posit or assume that standpoint. ... (T)he critique must be
> able to show that the nature of its social context is such
> that this context generates the possibility of a critical
> stance toward itself. It follows, then, that an immanent
> social critique must show that its object, the social whole
> of which it is a part, is not a unitary whole. Furthermore,
> if such a critique is to ground historical development
> socially, and avoid hypostatizing (ah! love that Marxist
> theory keyword! I haven't read it in so long! - shag)
> history by positing a transhistorical evolutionary
> development, it must show the fundamental relational
> structures of society to be such that they give rise to an
> ongoing directional dynamic.
>
> (Sweet Baybay Jaysus on a Cracker, this guy is wordy! Also,
> not that the last sentence is not a claim that social
> structure *makes* people do anything. Rather, it is a claim
> about the general directional dynamic. -- shag)
>
> The notion that the structures, the underlying social
> relations (please take note of that construction:
> structures, the underlying social relations... it's
> important. Structures is another word for social relations!)
> of modern society are contradictory provides the theoretical
> basis for such an immanent critique to elucidate a
> historical dynamic that is intrinsic to the social
> formation, a dialectical dynamic that points beyond itself
> -- to that realizable "ought" that is immanent to the "is"
> and serves as the standpoint of critique.
>
> (I'll stop there to note that this was what I was talking
> about when I asked Carrol to speak more to Postone's
> understanding of normative critique. Postone doesn't say
> that morality -- the "ought" doesn't matter. Rather, he's
> saying that the "ought" can be located in the given society
> in so far as it is immanent to that society. That the ought
> is grounded in society, otherwise, it's coming from some
> point external to it, in which case, well, ... how exactly?
> That would be an incredibly ideational approach!)
>
> To continue:
>
> Social contradictions, according to such an approach, then,
> is the precondition of both an intrinsic historical dynamic
> and the existence of the social critique itself. ... The
> significance of the notion of social contradiction goes
> beyond its narrower economic interpretation as the basis of
> the economic crises in capitalism.
>
> (OK? He's saying that he's not reducing these to
> contradictions in the economy. He goes on to specify what he
> means by this....)
>
> As I argued above, it should not be understood simply
> as the social antagonism between laboring and expropriating
> classes; rather , social contradiction refers to the very
> fabric of a society, to a self-generating "nonidentity"
> intrinsic to its structures of social relations -- which do
> not, therefore, constitute a stable unitary whole.
>
> (Now, here's the part that's rilly rilly important! The
> part that Carrol's been harping on, I think --shag):
>
> Marx's immanent critique of capitalism does not consist
> simply in opposing the reality of that society to it ideals.
> Such an understanding of immanent critique assumes that the
> essential purpose of the critique is to unmask bourgeois
> ideologies, such as that of equal exchange, and reveal the
> sordid reality they disguise -- exploitation, for example.
> This is related to critique of capitalism from the
> standpoint of "labor" outlined above. The critique based
> upon the analysis of the specificity of labor in capitalism,
> however, has a different character; it does not seek merely
> to peer behind the level of appearance of bourgeois society
> in order to critically oppose that surface (as "capitalist")
> to the underlying society totality constituted by "labor".
>
> (Note: the difference here is important. Unmasking
> bourgeois ideology can be shared with, for instance, people
> who are very social conservative. People who decry, say, the
> loss of the family. Look here! Look at how capitalism tears
> apart sentimental and nurturing family relations. This is
> horrible! We must right this wrong by celebrating
> sentimental and nurturing family relations, etc.)
>
> Postone again:
>
> Rather, the immanent critique Marx unfolds in _Capital_
> analyzes the underlying totality itself -- not merely the
> surface level of appearances -- as characteristic of
> capitalism. The theory seeks to grasp both surface and
> underlying reality in a way that points to the
> possible historical overcoming of the whole -- which
> means... that it attempts to explain both the re laity and
> the ideals of capitalist society, indicating the
> historically determinate character of both.
>
> (OK. Here's another crucial part of this, where Postone
> contrast Marxist critique with utopian critique):
>
> Immanent social critique also has a practical moment; it
> can understand itself as contributing to social and
> political transformation. (gasp!) Immanent critique rejects
> positions that affirm the given order, the "is," as well as
> utopian critiques of that order. Because the standpoint of
> the critique is not extraneous to its object but, rather, is
> a possibility immanent to it, the character of the critique
> is neither theoretically nor practically exhortative.
>
> (OKey dokey: It is neither theoretically NOR practically
> exhortative!! !!!!!! ................ !!!!!!!!
> ............................... ..... ..........
> ............. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!!! dot dot dot fucking
> dot dot dot dot dot dot dot! fuckdot! )
>
> Postone: The real consequences of social and political
> actions are always codetermined by the *context within which
> they take place,* (my emph) regardless of the justifications
> and goals of such actions.
>
> (Oh! Lard! Did Miles actually write that sentence? Hmm? :)
>
> Postone: Inasmuch as immanent critique, in analyzing its
> context, reveals its immanent possibilities, it contributes
> to their realization. Revealing the potential in the actual
> helps action to be socially transformative in a conscious
> way.
>
> (OK. It's more entertaining to read this from Marx in his
> letter to Arnold Ruge about the goals of a periodical they
> were thinking of publishing.)
>
> Postone, pp. 86-89, _Time, Labor, and Social Domination_.
>
>
> --
> http://cleandraws.com
> Wear Clean Draws
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>