From: cbcox-AT-rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Carrol Cox)
Subject: Re: BHA: Base & Superstructure
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Date: Sun, 8 Jun 1997 09:18:40 -0500 (CDT)



Colin writes:
>
> Tobin asked:
>
> >There remain difficulties with it (if ideology is a superstructure in this
> revised sense, where does language belong?)
>
> My answer would be that it is on all levels: base and superstructure, if you
> want to use that terminology.

Assuming the validity of the base-superstructure perspective, then in one
of his works Stalin had something of theoretical interest to say: Marxism
and Linguistics. His point there was that language was simply not part
of *either* base or superstructure but prior to and mostly independent
of both. See Sebastiano Timpanaro, *On Materialism*, London: Verso,
1975. Sol Yurick, in his introduction to the MR edition of Caudwell's
Studies in a Dying..., quotes a key passage from Stalin, perhaps the
only really interesting sentence in Stalin's collected works, and calls
it counter-revolutionary, his "evidence" being the change in Stalin's
own *rhetoric* during the war. Of course, Yurick confuses language,
which really changes very very slowly, with rhetoric, slang, etc.
Carrol


>
> Thanks,
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> Colin Wight
> Department of International Politics
> University of Wales, Aberystwyth
> Aberystwyth
> SY23 3DA
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
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