[lbo-talk] The zen of marx (was clarification)

[Alan Rudy]

Lakshmi:
It would help a great deal if we knew what you meant by your social justice
perspective, if you peruse the archives, you'll find a broad spectrum of
left perspectives on social justice.
It is also seems clear that you have some strong ideas about what Marxism is
and these, too, would be good to clear up, since there are a wide variety
perspectives on that issue here.
For example, while Ted's perspective (which I certainly wouldn't call
Stalinist - could you tell us what you mean by that term?) operates at a
very high level of abstraction (he's written similar things for years and I
still can't really suss out what "the higher dialectic of the conception"
really means), most on the list would - I think - suggest that generating an
alternative means of developing productive forces without externalizing
those costs on the working class and natural environment is hard to imagine
simply based on ideas of justice and fairness - the language of liberal
reform.
How do you see social justice relative to political economy?  Is your
perspective more like Adam Smith's, where a moral economy undergirds a
commercial economy of small industry and independent craft practitioners?

On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 1:02 PM, Lakshmi Rhone <lakshmirhone at gmail.com>wrote:


> On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 9:58 AM, Lakshmi Rhone <lakshmirhone at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 9:06 AM, Ted Winslow <egwinslow at rogers.com>
> wrote
> > (quoting Marx):
> >
> >  To oppose the welfare of the individual to this end, as Sismondi does,
> is
> >> to assert that the development of the species must be arrested in order
> to
> >> safeguard the welfare of the individual, so that, for instance, no war
> may
> >> be waged in which at all events some individuals perish.
> >>
> > Frankly speaking, Ted you are scaring me. My social justice perspective
> is
> > at odds with your Marxism/Stalinism. I worry that I am on the wrong list.
> >
> > LR
> >
>
> Just to clarify: I don't think the development of the productive forces
> should come at the happiness, much less lives, of actual individuals,
> especially those most precariously situated.
> LR
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> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

-- 
*********************************************************
Alan P. Rudy
Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
Central Michigan University
124 Anspach Hall
Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
517-881-6319