Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 16:27:56 -0500 From: Charles Brown <charlesb-AT-CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> Subject: M-TH: A vulgar marxist here By vulgar marxism I mean a constructive critic of fancy marxism and its left-liberal cousins. My general attitude is to extract the rational kernel from the modern and post-modern left neo and paleo liberals from Hegel to post-Foucaultists. So, I like the kernel of truth metaphor used in the list discussion in the last day. As to the true universal Doug asked Yoshie for, I would build it. not on a new idea, but Marx and Feuerbach's species-being. All of the workers and other people represented by other social movements are human species-beings. Although biiology only limits us human beings because we have culture (super-natures and natures ) this contradiction between biology and culture is still where it is at in generating universals or big generals. Being determines consciousness is still a focal rule of thumb (guide to action) for building a universal, real common interests among huge numbers of people, the masses. My first post-Marx development of species-being is to derive women's libertion organically from historical materialism's premises, as Marx and Engels derive workers' liberation from those species-being historical premises. It is a correction of classical Marxism, but based on Marxsim's own premises. In ways its too vulgar for pomos and fancy marxists. However, the pomos and their old cousins, Frankfurt school, Gramsci, exitentialists, et al. all the fancy marxists have taught us something: being determines consciousness discontinuously, intermittmently, rarely. Through most of the actual time of history, consciousness and being are reciprocally determining. Only rarely, in revolutions, primarily and ultimately does being utterly determine consciousness. Today, that means that the direct naked appeal to the working class' class self-interest is inadequate in itself-necessary but not sufficient in the formal logical sense -to inspire revolution. That appeal cannot be dropped - the vast majority are working class, wage laborers - but must be complemented with appeals to other consciousness, other consciousness determined by being (gender, for example) and consciousness that is determined more by consciousness. Overall one wants to change the world based on interpreting it, changing it through practical-critical activity, a unity of theory and practice still. All Power to the People as a whole. Charles Brown, your new comrade --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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