[lbo-talk] life after newspapers

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Tue Mar 31 06:47:47 PDT 2009


shag carpet bomb wrote:
>
>
> I learned of those critiques -- in a very obvious way -- not from
> reading
> Foucault, but from reading _Eyes on the Prize_ and watching the PBS
> documentary in the early 1990s. But I also encountered them long
> before,
> reading Gloria Anzaldua, bell hooks, Angela Davis, etc. In other
> words,
> from reading feminist critics of identity political struggles.

There are quite a few Marxist writers of the last 40 years (Postone & Albritton are the ones I'm familiar with but there are others) who (a) escaped from the Third International (implicit) premise of "World-View" Marxism, (b) focused on his critique of political economy rather than on his "economics" or other aspects of his writing, and (c)deemphasize the struggle for equality (citizenship) rather than freedom that dominated "socialist" struggle from the 1790s through the wars of liberation of the mid-20th c. (which should be seen in focus with the civil-rights movement in the u.s.). Personally, I've just been grasping this (partially) in the last couple years, and haven't a clear sense of it yet -- but it opens up the world in interesting ways.

I don't think the identity politcs could or should have been avoided, being an essential part of the struggle for equality (citizenship), but _obviously_ that (like social democracy) was wholly inadequate in terms of human freedom.

Carrol



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