File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/97-05-14.000, message 84


Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 18:05:38 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: Re: BHA: The primacy of social class & Bhaskar's Critical


Let's hope that whether list members treat my adversial participation here
as (1) gratuitous sadism demonstrating only the desire to snipe, (2)
thought-provoking and substantive concern with the issues; they are goaded
into demonstrating conclusively that they are not wankers, but really are
doing something of vital intellectual importance.  By all means, make a fool
out of _me_, and then I will be happy, for I am looking for some significant
results.

What bothers me about Bhaskar is one thing, and what bothers me about
students of Bhaskar is something else, and far deeper.  While I recognize
the fact that people are of different ages and backgrounds and thus can be
excused for trodding what for other people is well-trodden, worn-out old
ground, I find myself dismayed by what I see as hackneyed, old cud being
chewed up once again. 

What bothers me here is not unlike what bothers me about "analytical
Marxism", i.e. what is one moved to prove to whom, to advance what in the
realm of social theory?  It may be a live project for you to still fight
methodological individualism, but it doesn't move me.  And while it is
reassuring to learn from Hans that Howie's views may not reflect Bhaskar's,
I'm really disturbed that these tired old issues are trotted out again and
taken for fresh profundities: why don't working class people actually follow
their class interests, how do we account for Stalinism, what about new
social movements, etc.?

Now let's take up a topic that concerns Howie, the relation between class
and gender.  What does Howie have to say about this other than engaging in
philistinism regarding the primacy of gender or class, based on notions of
the very class schematism or economism I already criticized in my previous
post?  Wouldn't it be more productive to show how Bhaskar's or any other
methodological approach integrates and interrelates the various social
categories to advance understanding of the social system, than merely to
whine and whine about the primacy of class?  Gender is not my stalking
horse, but let me mention something that is: the race-class nexus.
Logically this is similar to the gender-class nexus.  Now what amazes me is
that, though there are theoretical elaborations of the race-class nexus,
going back to at least Oliver Cox, there is nothing that relates race-class
theory to fundamental methodological and analytical aspects of Marxist
theory.  Why is there no Lukacs, Korsch, Derek Sayer, etc., that does for
race what Lukacs, Korsch, etc. did to combat economism, reductionism, and
misplaced schematism in general Marxist theory?  What has Bhaskar have to
offer here, for class or for gender?  Let's hope Bhaskar is not as insipid
as Howie proved to be in recent posts.

Indeed, there is no substitute for reading Bhaskar, Collier, etc.
themselves, but this list does afford the opportunity for people to explain
why Bhaskar is important and how he can be used.  My concern is not that
list members are academics instead of activists, but that they are more
academics than real intellectuals because of their institutional
brainwashing, and that their creative imagination has not been properly
stimulated by their intellectual socialization.  

Bhaskar himself may not be to blame for this, but there is something
disturbing in how Bhaskar institutionalized his thought, creating or
recycling terms like naturalism, critical realism, transitive, intransitive,
transcendental, etc., that serve to create yet another academic specialty
and portend something more original and distinctive than it may really be.
Maybe somebody can explain one day what Bhaskar means by the dialectics of
"absence".  Bhaskar at least seemed to know what he was talking about in his
entry delineating three types of dialectic in the DICTIONARY OF MARXIST
THOUGHT.  Bhaskar certainly is on to the shallowness of positivism and the
importance of depth realism.  But none of this is new, nor need it be
crticized for not being new unless it serves as a form of mystification and
commodification of intellectual work.

There has been more interesting work on Marx in the English language since
1980 than the all of previous history.  We've got Tony Smith, Patrick
Murray, Postone, Beamish, D. Sayer, and dozens of others, whose fecundity is
more immediately apparent than Bhaskar's ontic adventures.  I wouldn't be
wasting my time subscribing to this list if my sole purpose were to dis
Bhaskar, and Hans knows it.  Yes, I do find naivete and innocence tax my
patience.  So I hope
people will get pissed off enough to prove me wrong, and not just to whine
how mean I am.



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