File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2003/bhaskar.0310, message 50


Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 14:38:27 -0600
From: Carrol Cox <cbcox-AT-ilstu.edu>
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: Re: The tall poppy syndrome within CR


Probably all my brief posts should have "Footnote" or "Tangential
Observation" added in front of the Subject. In this case, the footnote
(or digression or parenthetical remark) focused on the sources of that
attempt ("attempt to describe reality"). That is, I don't believe Marx's
'marxist' thought _began_ with wanting understanding for the sake of
change. I believe, rather, that he found himself in the midst of trying
to bring about change, and in a 'first stage' reflection on that effort
note that it had brought about a fuller understanding of the reality he
was trying to change, _part_ of that fuller understanding being the
recognition of how even that greater knowledge (stemming from practice)
was unequal to the practice that generated it.

Take it as a casual observation rather than a major response to the core
of your post or this thred in general. It is not wholly unconnected to
the last line on spirituality. Quite frankly, I think that when men &
women find themselves actively engaged in a mass movement of some
substance, they tend (even if they are deeply religious in their general
theory) to tacitly let the question of "spirituality" drop by the
wayside; when the going gets rough and solidarity becomes a forlorn idea
rather than a living practice, the urge for spirituality revives.

Humans were pretty smart & pretty cooperative for several 10s of
millenia before they developed language. And most religions over the
millenia have been pretty mechanical affairs. I don't see much desire or
need for "spirituality" in Homer, nor in most Athenians of the 5th
century.

Carrol

jamie morgan wrote:
> 
> I'm not sure how your coments relate to what I sdaid - which was that Marx's
> interest was in capitalism as a mode of production - one that was not to be
> found outside Europe and the US at the time - and that many Marxist inspired
> movements outside this context have been problematic
> 

In reference to:

Jamie Morgan: Marxism was an attempt to describe reality in order to
transform it - it was a description of an industrialised society at a
particular time and place - are you surprised that it did not fit the
two thirds world for which it was simply not designed, or is this itself
a rhetorical device?

Cox: I think this is off just a bit. Marxism was first of all the
recognition
that until one was _already_ engaged in changing reality one could not
explain it. While the Eleventh Thesis doubtless contains a pragmatic
element (get busy just don't sit there) it is better used, I believe, as
a summary of marxist epistemology.

Spirituality seems to me to be merely spoilt solidarity. - Carrol



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