Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2000 14:16:49 +0100
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Negelect of Bhaskar (Marx?)


Hans

I take your point re my comment. However, I think you perhaps put it too
combatively. There is also a strong faction (I think 'strand' or some
such would be more accurate) that doesn't want to see CR distanced from
marxism; while things might be a bit different 'in the ranks', at the
level of the CCR it is clearly the majority strand. While ever this is
the situation, I can't see CR as a movement distancing itself from
marxism, though strands within it might do so to varying degrees. At the
level of the CCR the issue simply doesn't arise and there is no evidence
of factional fighting, on the contrary. The moment of the ideological
appears to be just that - only a moment; they are otherwise all
scientists who want to work together, broadly, under a common
ontological umbrella for a common emancipatory project.... 

This is in no way to deny that to understand and ignore that Marx was
the first critical realist is a political act, rather it is to adopt the
view that this is an act that marxist critical realists must (while
criticizing it) live with because they want to see all possible
varieties of emancipatory social science flourish. Nor is it to deny
that the ideological mechanism you adduce will probably continue to make
the going tough (though conditions could change quickly, e.g. if the
'anti-capitalist' movement mushrooms around the issues of the
environment and third world poverty). But it will affect CR emancipatory
social science as such and not just its marxist strand. In other words,
I think CR's emancipatory impulse has a very good chance of containing
division along ideological lines.

The CR/DCR divide might seem to lend weight to your view. It certainly
attests to real differences, but by no means neatly along a marxism vs
the rest fault line - thus Collier is a marxist socialist broadly on the
CR side of the divide; and I don't see why the two tendencies can't
continue to co-exist amicably.

Of course the situation in the CCR could (but might well not) change
rapidly if current moves to democratize it (led by Bhaskar himself) are
implemented. Both the CCR and IACR are currently discussing
constitutional reform. There are two broad models on the table, one for
a unitary organization with a democratically elected executive, the
other keeping a dual CCR/IACR structure but with many of the functions
of CCR devolved to IACR, also with a democratically elected executive.
(The issues are complicated by the desirability of maintaining, for
reasons to do with tax, some sort of status as a charity). Whichever
option is chosen, I am optimistic that CR can continue to grow as a
multiform movement for emancipatory social science.

Mervyn


Hans G Despain <hdespain-AT-econs.umass.edu> writes
>The last message I inadvertently sent before writing my message.
>
>What I find interesting about Doug's observation is that intellecutal 
>production tends to reflect the "Spirit" of the era.  It is amazing how 
>automatic this is, how powerful the ideological element is in academia.  And 
>because the ideological element most often possesses ontological warrant how 
>pervasive it becomes.  Whereby, (historical) process and (institutional) 
>change itself appears to suggest skepticism and relativism.  So to address 
>Tim's "wondering" I believe there to be a very strong ideological mechanism 
>at work here. 
>
>Mervyn's commit that the affinity between critical realism and marxism is not 
>"offically downplayed", I can accept.  However, there seems to me to be an 
>especially strong faction of critical realists who would be quite pleased to 
>have critical realism distanced from marxism.  This is more of a feeling I 
>get discussing critical realism with various people then anything 
>"officially" or explicitly stated or written.  imo a moment of the 
>ideological, exactly the type that Althusser suggests is within every 
>intellectual (including myself and yourself.  And with emphasis, not just 
>academics, but every intellectual).
>
>It is true as Tobin suggests critical realism need not necessarily be 
>affliliated with Marx.  However, methodologically something new happens with 
>Marx, via Hegel.  It is something implicit in science and the production of 
>knowledge.  Something Hegel attempted to articulate (however unsuccessful he 
>may have been) and something Marx attempts to put into practice in social 
>science and political economy, the first to do so in such a successful way 
>(even though he did not explicate it, maybe because he was not able to?).  
>Bhaskar attempts to explicate it by means of history and philosophy of 
>science.  To not understand this relation is an intellectual tragedy, and an 
>extremely poor reading of Bhaskar since 1979!  To understand it and ignore 
>it, is a political act, one may even say a political act of violence.
>
>Karl Menton suggests that the negelect of Bhaskar may have occured with or 
>without this relation to Marx.  Perhaps ... and maybe for the reasons you 
>suggest, however, they would not manifest in the same way.  It is rare that 
>someone feels they accomplish a successful critique simply by means of 
>pointing out an affliation.  With Marx it is not so rare, this is because of 
>the ideological and political elements involved.
>
>Roy Wilson had a number of commits to my post.  I find it difficult to 
>following discussions with paragraph by paragraph responses (some of which I 
>think Roy misunderstood, especially my moments of sarcasm).   So let me just 
>address a few issues.  First, I don't think Bhaskar will be received well in 
>most Dialectical Materialist Circles, in that their notion of science are 
>much more akin to empiricism (and the metaphysical mistake Bhaskar attempts 
>to critique and overcome, namely the epistemic fallacy) than it is to the 
>ontology and epistemology implicit in Marx.
>
>Secondly the "specific ontology" which I refer is the one which Bhaskar 
>transcendentally constructs, and as Roy pointed out, Outhwaite (as does 
>Bhaskar) calls 'philosophical ontology'.  And yes, in this sense, I do 
>believe that without committing the epistemic fallacy, the current and 
>historical philosophical debates and critiques of science in the Western 
>world would not exist.  Which is not to say that all philosophical debates 
>would be absented, of course this would not occur.  Rather, the debates would 
>not center on silly problems of knowledge, e.g. does a falling tree make a 
>sound when it hits the ground if no one is there to hear it? etc..., to 
>debates concerning the (real) structures, mechanisms, social relations and 
>(social generated) motivations which exist and shape (social) reality.  This 
>is similar to what Marx had to say about those that interpreted the first 
>chapter as an attempt to "prove" the 'law of value'.  As Marx wrote to 
>Kugelmann, "The prattle about the necessity of proving the concept of value 
>rests only on complete ignorance both of the subject in question and of the 
>method science ... even if there were no chapter about 'value' in my book, 
>the analysis of real relations I give would contain the proof and 
>confirmation of the actual value relation."  Or to paraphase Engels 'the 
>prove of the pudding is in eating it'.  Or Hume, 'at the end of the day the 
>greatest of (epistemological) skeptics walks down the stairs, and not out the 
>third story window.'
>Which is not to deny the importance of emistemology, but to heed against the 
>epistemic fallacy or the negelect or absenting of ontology (and strucutures).
>
>Hans D.
>
>
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-- 
Mervyn Hartwig
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