[WS:] Which, ironically, reflects the fundamental differences in material conditions of producing this type of knowledge. Or as the Old Man would put it, the former is about explaining the world differently, the latter - about changing it.
The stagist view of history of "vulgar" economic determinism of early Marxists were quite wrong empirically, but these "empirical errors" are venerable because they were more fruitful than the truths of bourgeois pundits of the era (thank you, Nietzsche). They inspired profound social changes that at the end of the day, made a world a better place. By contrast, the "grad school Marxism" does not seem to inspire anyone but narrow intellectual circles.
Of course, "inspiring" is not the quality of the text (or art,) but that of the relation between the text and the audience. The text becomes inspiring only if and when the audience avails itself of the particular type of inspiration that is implicit in the text. As the eastern wisdom has it "when the student is ready to learn, a teacher will appear." Otherwise, what once was inspiring words of wisdom turns into esoteric and obscure babble.
So instead of focusing on the text and its "message, a more fruitful approach would be to understand social changes that made the inspiration that Marxism once offered obsolete.
Wojtek
On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 8:27 PM, SA <s11131978 at gmail.com> wrote:
> shag carpet bomb wrote:
>
> i guess my real issue is: what's wrong if they did learn it in grad
>> school. where else would they learn it, and why would that be superior?
>>
>
> Where did I say there's anything wrong with grad school? I learned a lot in
> grad school.
>
> The phrase grad-school Marxism was just meant as shorthand for "Marxism as
> taught today in grad schools" (i.e., lots of epistemology and speculative
> anthropology) as opposed to "Marxism as conceptualized by the mass Marxist
> parties" in, say, 1890-1950 (i.e., lots of economics and stagist history).
>
> SA
>
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