File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/97-05-17.000, message 22


Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 10:51:00 -0400 (EDT)
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
From: Howie Chodos <howie-AT-magi.com>
Subject: Re: BHA: Class, intentional structures


Thanks, Michael, for the reply. I don't have any problems with your reading
of the historical record. I'm not sure, though, exactly what theoretical
lessons you would draw from it, especially with regard to the question we
had been debating, the nature of class factors and their relative salience
in influencing the course of events. 

I do get the impression that in considering actual historical events you
give a greater place to the importance of the conscious intervention of
people in deciding the outcome than I thought you did in some of the more
condensed remarks you made in the previous post. If I may press you a bit
further, I am still somewhat puzzled as to what you meant by it *not* being
true to say that "in marxism, class action depends on class interest or its
recognition (aka as class consciousness)." Are the various strategic
mistakes and successes you identify in various past scenarios devoid of any
such content? Can class alliances be forged without some sense of the
various class interests at play, and then doesn't this require of us a
certain theorization of the nature of these interests, of how we come to
accurately perceive them (or not), etc.?

You say that "the conditions of transformative social action are different
in different conjunctures". This implies that, in Lenin's terms, the
'concrete analysis of the concrete situation' is critical for the success of
any transformative project. This further means that our conscious
intervention, or lack of it, can be decisive in determining the outcome (as
your examples of 1848 and 1968 indicate). I would draw the conclusion that
therefore history (or at least the process of transition from capitalism to
socialism) cannot, in fact, occur entirely "behind the backs" of social
actors. Radical social change is a complex, messy, unpredictable business.
Success depends, in part, on how people react to the particular
circumstances they find themselves in. We can't manufacture social
transformation out of nothing, simply through our theoretical prescience,
determination and strength of will, but nor are these factors irrelevant to
the eventual outcome. 

It is because of the importance of these 'subjective' factors that I
continue to feel that the question of whether we assign to class an
automatically primary place in the determination of interests, and in our
strategizing about the real processes of social and political change,
remains an important one to debate.

Howie Chodos




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