From: "Colin Wight" <Colin.Wight-AT-aber.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: BHA: Radical Chains Indeed
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 10:35:23 +0100


Hi Everyone,

Heikki re your comments I have some agreements and some disagreements. Since
you present many of the issues as "possibilities" I would have thought that
they apply to all of us and not simply Bhaskar. Points of major disagreement
are:


>the fallacy of ad
>hominem (categorisation of theoreticians is
>substituted for engagement with their arguments)

This only becomes a fallacy if the categorisation of a theorist is not based
on their arguments. I generally find with Bhaskar that somewhere in the body
of work is such an engagement.
,
	and the fallacy of ad populum (appeal to the
	popular feelings within the critical realist
	community)

Since the CR community is a fairly disparate group, and, despite what those
who have never read Bhaskar think, is often split on fundamentals, this can
only be a very dangerous tactic. Moreover, and whilst remaining cognizant of
Mervyns's warnings re the new book, my understanding of the basic thrust of
its argument is that it certainly will not appeal to "popular feelings".

On Hume I agree, and a substantive engagement was promised but not yet
delivered. However, this issue revolves around differing interpretations of
academic techniques. I'm often been taken to task these days for engaging in
close (pedantic?) readings of X which I deem to be important, whereas others
want to, for example, take a standard textbook reading of Foucault and
accuse me of being fixated on minute points. The fact that these minute
points cut the ground out from under these naive readings doesn't seem to
bother them, no matter how many quotes from Foucault I can supply.

In terms of Bhaskar and Hume, for example, Hume figures prominently in the
index to Plato. Does RB supply quotes to support his arguments? No in
general not. Do the arguments hold when you go and look at Hume yourself? In
general yes. Should RB supply quotes of Hume saying what RB says he says?
I'm not sure, although it is certainly standard "good practice". But among
the "greats"(sic) of philosophy RBs practice is standard. Maybe, (begin
irony) we lesser beings should not demand of our gods that they conform to
our practices (end irony). Speaking personally, however, I like to see the
evidence on the page.

	-more generally, the possibility of creating a
	social and theoretical closure that prevent critical
	realists from engaging with the Others.

I don't see why this should be the case. I suspect that why others don't
want to engage with CR is more to do with reasons of academic politics, the
necessity of reading "some" philosophy of science, intellectual fashions,
and more importantly because CR is still committed to science, whereas the
radical left have always had a troubled relationship to it.
As you know in relation to my own practice, I read a range of people in an
attempt to find points of contact between CR and say, Zizek, or Foucault.
But I have to say I have come across very few people who read either of
these and have ever read any Bhaskar. This is particularly surprising in
terms of Zizek because both he and RB foreground absence.


	-the possibility of the illusion that the world's
	problems can be resolved only by means of philophical
	or metatheoretical argumentation; i.e. paradoxically
	the antithesis of scientific realism!

Well, again you note this as only a possibility and one that is rightly the
antithesis, not only of scientific realism, but most certainly of RB's
position. RB makes the point in the MOM pamphlet. And in line with my own
predilection for putting the evidence on the page: "Purely philosophical
considerations cannot take us very far in working out detailed policies. The
best that philosophy can do is to underlabour for socialism...But philosophy
does help in drawing out basic principles." (p.30)

And for Howard. You write that the light bulb example is exactly the wrong
example and might be the result of pre-scientific thinking. I disagree, the
point is exactly the result of scientific thinking about the nature of
social objects. We may well all agree that water is H2O, but as you rightly
point out social science is ideological terrain. So what is the market? Give
me 20 social scientists and I will give you 20 answers. Now in relation to
the market (and I know my flippancy irritates at times) I am reminded of the
Star Trek phrase, "it might be a market Jim, but not as we know it". To put
the evidence on the page again, "Emancipatory socialist action will involve
transforming the market - more precisely, abolishing some markets,
socialising and democratising others." (p.30).

Of course, how far you want to agree with this depends upon how you define
the "market". Howard suggests that talking of "markets" without money and
commodities would not be to talk of the "market". I would argue that since
the market is a historically and socially constituted form then there may
well have been "markets" that did not have these elements, but that is
because I have a different notion of what a market is; very roughly "a
system which facilitates the exchange of objects (which are different from
commodities)". It seems to me that to claim otherwise is to take an
ahistorical view of what a "market" is; i.e. it has to include the elements
that "our market" includes. However, and to be fair, in MOM RB does seem to
take Howard's view on this, "It [the market} is a nexus of cash transactions
settling exchange between different social agents." (24).  Well, even he has
his moments of inconsistency.

One small point. RB doesn't talk of money-less markets in MOM. I took this
from Hans D's line about "economies without money", which was an issue RB
raised at the last conference.

Cheers,




=================================Dr. Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Tel: 01970 621769
http://www.aber.ac.uk/~cow
==================================>



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