Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 08:58:24 GMT
From: Chris Burford <cburford-AT-gn.apc.org>
Subject: M-I: The Unconscious - Marxists on Desire


Thanks to Jon for the suggestion of cross-posting to 
marxism-psych, which I am doing. For people's
reference, m-psych has turned out to be a list with
about 100 subscribers and a gentle volume.
People seem to be exploring cautiously the range of 
possible implications. But there have been
some very authoritative contributions. Ask
majordomo for info if you are interested in subscribing.


About Jon's point here. I am in sympathy. 
I think it is sectarian and unmarxist simply to 
belabour the postmoderns. They reflect subjectively
the objective development
of capitalism in a society in which there is increasing 
overall surplus, which has spread out to the mass market.
The meeting of desires, however ephemeral, has become
in some lines of production, much more important than
the meeting of physical wants. 

This presents no problem to classical marxism providing
we use our heads and think creatively instead of dogmatically.

Sentence 3 of Capital refers to commodities satisfying 
some human "need".

Sentence 4 says it does not matter logically whether 
those needs spring for example from the stomach or the 
imagination ("der Phantasie").

These are the opening chords of a great symphony
mainly of tragic, but also of beauty and achievement,
which certainly embraces those areas of which we are
unconsious, and in some of its many variations, 
the phenomena that the postmodernists recognise 
so much more vividly, than pinched marxist dogmatists.



Chris Burford
London

_____________________________________________________________



From: Jon Beasley-Murray <jpb8-AT-acpub.duke.edu>
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 14:56:28 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: M-I:*The* Unconscious; was Marxists on desire

Well, Carrol and I may have to agree to disagree on this, as he seems
quite set in his refusal of the concept of the unconscious, and I (as he
noted) am quite set in my acceptance that there is such a thing as the
unconscious (if willing to grant a wide variety of views on what it is
and how it works).

[Maybe this might be a topic to cross-post to marxism-psych, or at least
to sound out the thoughts of folk over there, by the way.]

To state my position (and not to appear "illicit"), I think that
reference to the unconscious is reference to the fact that we are not
purely rational beings (for better or for worse) and that some (at least)
of what we do is determined by forces beyond our control that are *also*
to some extent at least an integral part of us (ie. are not merely
external contstraints).

I think Freud is persuasive (and a very easy read, by the way) in his
demonstrations of the impact of the unconscious--primarily, for him,
visible in dreams, jokes and "slips."  "The ego is not master in his own
house."  Fair enough, I say.

I do, however, tend to part company with much of psychoanalysis from
thereon, and especially find much recent psychoanalytic theory dry and
disabling.

Anyhow, all this just to explicate the "of course" to which Carroll took
exception.

I think Marxist theories (indeed any liberatory praxis) have to take
account of the unconscious (and thus desire) even if their aim is to
subdue it.  I think Justin well exemplifies the position that the
socialist project is to produce a rational management and understanding of
the world, and that this necessarily involves a subjugation of the
unconscious--"Where Id was, there Ego shall be."  I happen to be less
comfortable with this position (and would question its viability, for a
start), which is also the project of ego-psychology, and yet don't want
to fall into the various Lacanian mystifications that are also premised
upon a rejection of such ego-psychology.

Anyway, hope all this clarifies where I'm coming from, at least.

Take care

Jon

Jon Beasley-Murray
Literature Program
Duke University
jpb8-AT-acpub.duke.edu
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons


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