File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_2001/aut-op-sy.0102, message 67


From: "Chris Wright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: Re: AUT: Linebaugh and Rediker, _The Many-Headed Hydra_
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 23:14:31 -0600


One point Rowan...
>
> >Tahir: Again, what Marx did was mainly present a critique of capitalism,
so
> >it's not very fair to charge him with failing to do something that he
> >didn't set out to do. But, crucially, Marx gave us a very useful way of
> >thinking about these things - call it historical materialism - and you
> >should check out Engels' The Origin of the Family, Private Property and
the
> >State to see how this same approach can be applied to a the question of
> >sexism, for example.
>
> Rowan: Then this is just my problem with Marx. In the development of
social
> justice and communism we can't just look at the end of capitalism but also
> at the end of racism, sexism etc.
Chris:  I don't think we can blame Marx for this.  When Marx discusses
communism, he clearly thinks of it in terms of the total transformation of
human relations in a way that post-Marx Marxism rarely does (see Lenin's
Soviets plus electrification = socialism or State capitalism plus workers'
control = socialism).  Marx looked at all sides of the problem, even when he
did not develop a totally worked out critique of every aspect, but how could
he have?  Marx could only write so much, I think.  And he could not be corre
t and consistent on everything, otherwise Marx could not be a human being of
his time, he would have to exist out of time and out of reality.  We have a
responsibility to do our own work and the question is whether how Marx
critiques capital as a fetishized and fetishizing social relation offers us
a significant insight that we can extend to all aspects of society under
capital's domination.  i think Marx does leave us that legacy, that
immanent, negative critique.  The end of class society is the end of
fetishized, reified, exploitative, oppressive human relations.  Marx is not
simply talking about the end of capitalism, but the end of alienated human
life.

For example, his simple passage in the German Ideology about fishing in the
morning, doing architecture in the afternoon and criticizing at night
without ever being a fisherman, an architect or a critic is actually a
devastating critique of the Enlightenment and alienated human relations.
Marx here challenges the idea that we are simply what we do in one aspect of
our lives, that we are our work.  This extends to the idea of being in some
simple way men or women, much less wholly socially contructed identities
like 'black' or 'white' or 'English' or 'Chinese'.  This one passage levels
a devastating critique against capital's idea of identity, and also at the
way in which Foucault (and a host of other 'post-modernists') celebrate
difference in a more or less uncritical way.

That aside, i think your point is well made and we cannot leave out the
totality of human relations when we talk about communism, and that includes
racism, sexism, etc.  However, i also do not think we can equate the
capital-labor relation with racial privilege or patriarchy.  They are not
commensurate social relations in my opinion.  Maybe more on that later.

> I've pretty much avoided Engels because of his use of historical
materialism
> as a determinist science. In particular I avoided 'Origins' because of the
> critique by most feminists that it separates out the spheres of production
> and reproduction - one of the main areas of feminist contention.

Chris: Yep.  See my comments to Tahir.

Cheers,
Chris



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