When Marx and Engels ridiculed and mocked (oh noes! ridiculing and mockery! oh noes! they were Big Meenies!) the Left Hegelians in _The Holy Family_ they argued against this particular approach but at the same time left the door wide open to this search for a subject of history:
"When socialist writers ascribe this historic role to the proletariat, it is not, as Critical Criticism pretends to think, because they consider the proletarians as gods. Rather the contrary. ... The question is not what this or that proletarian or even the whole of the proletariat at the moment *considers* as its aim. The question is *what the proletariat is,* and what, consequent on that *being* it will be compelled to do. Its aim and historical action are irrevocably and obviously demonstrated in its own life situation as well as in the whole organization of bourgeois society today." (just as one example... there are more)
And passages like that contribute to our tendency to also advance an immiseration thesis. Yay! immiseration! Yay!
At 11:02 PM 4/21/2010, brad wrote:
> If you don't think it matters than why are you asking these patronizing
>questions? I think you are holding a grudge and need to grow up.
>
>It matters because people have been presenting their analysis of the TP as
>fact, and I think the left (give me hell carrol) should be correct on our
>analysis. I know others think it is better to make a political statement
>than actually be correct on things but I don't. Like I said I am perfectly
>open to being proven wrong about this. However you would have to prove it,
>not just engage in some school yard type personal attacks.
>
>Brad
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