Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 15:35:08 +1000 (EST)
From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au>
Subject: Replying to Howie was Re: BHA: HAS BHASKAR ADVANCED SOCIAL THEORY &


At 12:45 PM 4/29/97 -0400, you wrote:

>But it has to be said that this also places class on the same analytical
>level as other axes of social stratification, such as gender and race. In
>this sense, this view of class challenges one of the key precepts of
>traditional Marxism, the primacy of class, or the idea that there is some
>important sense in which class (and/or economic) processes are *necessarily*
>more important than other dimensions of social life. I can see no way to
>uphold this traditional Marxist notion that does not involve some
>unacceptable (to me) form of economic determinism or quasi-Hegelian
>teleological theory of history. 
>
>In this sense (for me), redefining class along these lines is one of the
>preconditions for exorcising Hegel's ghost from the Marxian legacy. The
>problem, though, is how to avoid these defects without falling into the
>opposite dead-end of denying the existence of class oppression, and losing
>touch with any possibility of linking transformative agency to the reality
>of social location. I would not presume to say that a Bhaskar-inspired take
>on these questions is the only way to accomplish this twin objective of
>rejecting class primacy without falling into pomo indeterminacy, but it is
>the path that I have found to be the most promising.




The challenge from my good friend Ralph Dumain has borne remarkable fruit.
We should all be grateful.  I am especially pleased to read Howie's piece.
My pleasure is due in no small part to the restoration of the position of
the political to the Bhaskarian framework.  At some stage (yet another good
intention) I will do something on Bhaskarian politics, until then however
just a brief comment on Howie's post.

1. The primacy of class.    Now it is tedious to go over old debates in the
old way, and this is a very old one.  But my own take on this is not
theological nor even pragmatic.  I would argue that class is primary only in
the sense that we are within capitalism and that is a class based system.

Now if that sounds remarkably trite consider this quotation from the very
latest sheep in sheep's clothing none other than Labour's own Tony Blair:-

"I want a society based on meritocracy and one in which your sexuality,
gender and race are not important.  My enemies are more to do with
unemployment, a broken-up health service, a lack of opportunity, failing
schools and poverty.  People who stand in the way of tackling these problems
are my enemies.

"Who are these people?  They are Tories principally and vested interests.
But I am not going to sign up to any list.  Put it this way, I know if at
the end of my premiership we have not tackled the crisis in schools, tackled
long term unemployment, the we will have failed."  (in Hutton, W. et al
"Tony Blair interview: "I am going to be a lot more radical in government
that many people think, Observer, 27 April 1997)

Now when I have controlled the vomit reflex I can see a remarkable absence
here and it is of course the question of class.  This is the great taboo of
our time not only in politics but also in the academy.  I insist here that
we have to consider seriously why is it safe for Blair to talk about race,
sexuality and gender but not at all safe to subscribe to any list i.e. deal
with the causes of the manifestations of class power.

My own answer is that there is a taboo on class as part of the
"ex-nomination" process that Barthes describes in Mythologies.  This is the
process by which the bourgeoisie became the class that did not need to speak
its name.  As Barthes points out an essential component of that process has
been the draining away of meaning from oppositional concepts such as class
itself, imperialism, colonialism etc.

But the repressed has a tendency to return and the urgency of the need to
think once more against Capitalism demands that we prioritise considerations
of class not simply to balance the execrable evasions of post-structuralism,
but because the system has grown around the prime moment of the exploitation
of labour by capital.

2.  The going beyond of the Hegelian legacy.


As I understand it Bhaskar represents, in DCR certainly, more of a return to
rather than a going beyond of Hegel. I read Bhaskar  as taking the
dialectical trope of master -slave and reworking it into a cluster of
master-slave relations all of which are marked by Power(2) relations of
subordination and domination, but none of which is primary.  

As we all know what Marx did with the same dialectical figure was to
substitute the proletariate for the slave. For some including Bhaskar this
has locked Marxism into reductionism.  But we are in a period now where the
danger is not reductionism but the total eclipse of any notion of class or a
critique growing out of an analysis of the class structure.  That is why I
cannot help thinking that there is a rather tired deja-vu 1970s look about
Bhaskar's politics especially with its rejection of the primacy of the
capital - worker relationship.

regards

Gary



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