Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 13:32:36 +1000
From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au>
Subject: Replying to Mervyn was Re: Warming up was Re: BHA: movement building



>Mervyn makes some points in his post to which I will react before coming 
>up with what I feel is a positive proposal.


Now to start with I was threatening no one with a flame war. Those who know 
how I have insisted on this list adhering to academic protocols will know 
that this is extremely unlikely. I was merely pointing out that some people 
are being causal with their language and verging on the insulting and are 
actually being very high handed with remarks about the fairies and gurus.

Nor have I pre-judged the book. If of course I had come out with a standard 
Dialectical materialist/Leninist sneer would I have been accused of 
pre-judging? It seems to me that my own particular crime is that I am 
insisting on maintaining an open mind. I merely am arguing that we should 
not be spooked.  After all it is not as if Bhaskar has murdered someone and 
gone insane (Althusser), or been revealed as a Nazi collaborator and an 
anti-Semite (Paul De Man), or been exposed as a thorough going nasty piece 
of Nazism (Heidegger).  Bhaskar's crime is merely that he seems to have 
found God.

I will yield to no one in my hatred of religion and my commitment to the 
down fall of capitalism but honestly I cannot see that God Bothering is a 
priori a monstrous fault.

It could possibly be argued that Bhaskar has chosen a particularly down 
market version of Godism - namely the New Age variety - and that he did not 
shop around enough in the Fortnam & Mason's  of religions. I reject any 
such hierarchy among religious beliefs. They are all suspect to me.  The 
only Hierarchy I have any time for is Kierkegaard's preference for the 
religion of the New Testament which he felt had been betrayed by the 
established Church.

My strong feeling is that this latest evolution in Bhaskar's thought has 
occurred because he has wanted for some time to go beyond the safe level of 
absolute negativity.  That was the stance that Kierkegaard detected in 
Socrates and which he himself adopted.  It was also the approach advocated 
by Marx & Engels - the absolute criticism of all that is.  Bhaskar it seems 
has chosen the more difficult path of positivity.  There are signs of the 
likelihood of this in his other books especially in his concept of concrete 
utopianism and his clearly expressed admiration for Ernst Bloch's variety 
of Marxism.


Now my personal remarks about Bhaskar have attracted a negative comment 
from Mervyn.  I can understand that, but Mervyn was not a member of this 
list when Bhaskar was labelled as a charlatan and worse.

So what is to be done?  We could indeed have two lists.  The "social 
scientists" and the "emancipators" could head off. That would leave the 
rest of us caricatured as "followers of the guru".

Now anyone is free to set up any list they like.  But my strong preference 
is for us to stay together.  We should schedule a forum on FEW in Sept/Oct 
when those of us in the colonies will have picked up a copy.  We should 
also approach Bhaskar to come on the list and participate in the forum 
which would have a limited time frame.

regards

Gary



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