Various writers 'adopted' _praxis_ for their purposes, ignoring or not knowing its use by Gramsci himself. But beyond this, merely to assert that practice and theory (or "praxis" and theory) are related doesn't approach the substance of the questions being asked. Those concern how & under wht conditions and with what mediations. Is there any necessity (or even possibility) when one rubs one's hands of that action being governed by the rubber's conscious appeal to a physiological theory that would explain the relationship between the rubbing and the rubber's purpose.
Theory is above all _Conscious_ and _Self-Conscious_, and explicitly as such. Let's focus on some concrete practice, not Practice as a reified abstraction. Locally last April an activist here, excited by Left Forum videos, propose that we organize a "Conscience raising mass meeting." (If you sneered at his verbal error, Fuck you.) We hashed it around by e-mail and a couple meetings of 7 or so people, and came up with what we called "Coming Together for Democracy" sessions, in which we invited various groups in town to send a representative to describe what their group were doing. The resulting two Forums & discussions excited us, though ever since we have been off and on talking about how the sessions could be better structured to involve those attending into 'deeper' discussion.
Now, at the beginning, no one explicitly raised any statement of purpose much more precise than "Why don't we do something to get people together," and we attempted NO theoretical explanation for that. We just went ahead and did it. Now I think we do need to start moving towards some more precise understanding, after the fact, of just how we should formulate our purpose in this activity, some formulation of conscious principles we should embody in the work. Progress is being made along these lines. This is what I call theorization of practice, raising practice to the level of theory (though VERY 'low level' theory. It is, incidentally, what the Chinese called Thought rather than Theory. (The 'theory,' such as it was, that supposedly guided or made sense of this Thought, was Marxism-Leninism. Huh!" All of us in these local discussions could of course start explaining themselves in terms of irritations with this or that aspect of the present u.s., or even in terms of their adherence to Marxism or to Radical Democracy or to the Advancement of Humanity. And that would mere babbling after the fact.
No 'high level' theory for our actions was invoked by anyone. Napoleon named it: "I act, then see what happens." The serious thinking (approaching theorization) occurs in the process of that "see what happens."
And remember, Theory only exists in the head of the theorist or those who read/listen to him. It is always emerging from practice & reflecting back on that practice.
There is a relation, but endlessly repeating that theory and practice (in the abstract) are related gets us nowhere.
Carrol
Chris Sturr:
shag: "As for the question: sure it makes sense. I mean, in the above set of thinkers, they all see theory and practice as related."
But what you said earlier was about how theory and *praxis* are related, not how theory and *practice* are related: "I was a student of what is called the "philosophy of praxis" - a tradition of scholarship that was absorbed with the questions: what is theory? what is praxis? what is the relationship between the two?" My only point was that if you were using "praxis" in Gramsci's sense [which I guess you weren't], it wouldn't make sense to ask what the relationship between theory and *praxis* is. But do any of these theorists use "praxis" as a synonym for "practice"?
I'd forgotten that Alison Jagger used the term "praxis." And I still have Brian Fay's Critical Social Science on my shelf--I remember it being really good. But I think I overdosed on theory for a while--I'm not usually tempted to pick those books up these days.
Carrol: I would also like to hear more about Ted Morgan's book (even its title would be helpful--I guess I could Google). Sorry also about your eyesight. I've got cataracts that keep getting worse, but I can only imagine how frustrating more serious eye problems would be.
-- -- Chris Sturr Co-editor, *Dollars & Sense* 29 Winter St. Boston, Mass. 02108 phone: 617-447-2177, ext. 205 fax: 617-447-2179 email: sturr at dollarsandsense.org ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk