Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 12:57:53 -0500 (EST)
From: Howie Chodos <howie-AT-magi.com>
Subject: Re: BHA: RM conference


Sorry for just jumping in like this but I want to offer some tentative
observations on the discussion about the Rethinking Marxism Conference. I,
too, was there. And I, too, have quite ambivalent feelings about the whole
thing. Forgive me if I repeat anything that may have been said previously on
the list, as I have been a somewhat selective lurker to date.

I want to focus on Tobin's recommendation that a more forceful advocacy of
CR is in order. This strikes me as an excellent idea, but one whose
implementation has, I would suggest, a condition which has hitherto gone
unmentioned. CR is, in my view, vulnerable to many of the same debilitating
charges as postructuralism, insofar as it is identified with a relatively
uncritical appropriation of Bhaskar. Bhaskar appears to many as
impenetrable, or at the very least not worth the effort to decode. 

I myself feel this way about his most recent work. There may be stuff of
real substance there, but I have not yet been persuaded that it is worth the
effort required to get inside Bhaskar's head. Moreover, I think I have a
principled philosophical objection to the idea of privileging absence over
presence and, as best I can understand, this is among the things he defends
in Dialectic. 

I guess my point is that we need a pluralist understanding of CR if it is to
become attractive as a counter-pole to trends such as Resnick and Wolff's
postmodern Marxism. 
Bhaskar has, in my view, done us an enormous service by providing a cogent
way to hold onto ontological realism, epistemological relativism, and
judgmental rationalism simultaneously. This is the bedrock of my own
commitment to CR. (I am much less convinced by the way in which he tackles
the dialectic.) Such a CR seems to me to be robust enough to go toe to toe
with postructuralism and to sustain a commitment to transformative activism
as well. But it seems to me that it will never be of interest to a broad
range of theorists and activists if the main vocabulary in which it is
recognized as an intellectual framework is that of Bhaskar himself.

The problem that the RM Conference highlighted for me is the difficulty of
imagining what a reconstructed left that is theoretically diverse, yet
capable of acting politically, would look like. Philosophy does not, in my
opinion, ever map directly onto politics. Adherance to a CR view of the
world does not automatically guarantee the ability to advocate a feasible
transformative politics any more that adherence to some form of
postructuralism automatically disqualifies one from doing so. 

We confront many complex issues whose translation into practical politics
requires an ongoing dialogue amongst many people with very different
theoretical emphases. The dilemma is how to conduct this dialogue in a
principled manner without descending into sectarian squabbling, how to
juggle theoretical diversity with the exigencies of speaking in a coherent
voice if one is to attract political support. 

I did not get the impression that there were any innovative answers coming
>from the prominent postructuralists that I was able to hear at the
conference, and I remain inclined to think that a theoretical framework
anchored in CR has the best chance of providing constructive solutions to
this dilemma. One thing does, however, seem clear to me. Any way forward has
to allow for the permanent expression of difference (theoretical, political,
practical) in a context which still manages to promote unity of action.

Howie Chodos



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