From: MSPRINKER-AT-ccmail.sunysb.edu
Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 19:32:38 -0500 (EST)
Subject: BHA: Classical marxism
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu



               State University of New York at Stony Brook
                       Stony Brook, NY 11794-3355

                                            Michael Sprinker
                                            Professor of English & Comp Lit
                                            Comparative Studies
                                            516 632-9634
                                            15-May-1997 07:23pm EDT
FROM:  MSPRINKER
TO:    Remote Addressee                     ( _bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu )
 
Subject: Classical marxism

To be brief:  "classical marxism" says a great many things (if
one includes under that designator, for example, the texts of
Marx and Engels) about class, class struggle, about what is being
called "the primacy thesis" here, and so forth.  I've been at
those "classical marxist" texts for a couple of decades, along
with a shitload of commentaries, debates, revisions, etc., etc.,
and if there's a single, correct reading that establishes once
and for all that, in marxism, class action depends on class
interest or its recognition (aka as class consciousness), it's
just gone right by me.  Some folks hold to this view (which I
happen to think is incorrect, for what it's worth--a previous
phrase used skeptically about history being made "behind people's
backs" being more like what marxism can helpfully contribute to
notions of social action), but it is not established without doubt and
certainly not without powerful, cogent rivals in "classical
marxism."  I'd quote Lenin at this point, but instead ought just
to shut up and say that proclaiming the univocal truth about
"classical marxism" is something no marxist, let alone a Bhaskarean
ought ever to do on pain of being called at the very least
a dogmatist.  Come back Kant and Hume, all is forgiven.

Fraternally,

Michael Sprinker


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