Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 00:06:30 -0500 (EST)
From: Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin-AT-utkux.utcc.utk.edu>
Subject: M-I: Re: M-SCI: lettre ` marxism-sciences


Comrades,

I want to respond to Ingo Wotschek's post below. I think it is excellent.
The reason for my passion in ridding Marxism of its scientistic
pretensions is based directly on the position that Wotschek has here
articulated. Because we are social products, and because we produce
society, praxis is at the center of our activity and should be at the
center of our activism. The working class is concerned with many things,
but the most crucial thing is emancipation from exploitative capitalist
relations, and this can only be accomplished through correct social
practice and correct consciousness regarding this practice. The working
class is advanced little or not at all by attempts to extend the dialectic
to nature. What is important to the development of socialist democracy is
what happens in the social world, the real world, the world of humans and
their relations to one another and to the production of their material
life. The scientific world of spheres and spirals is far removed from our
daily lives.

This is one of the crucial differences between historical materialism
(Marxian social thought) and dia-mat, and perhaps the most important one.
Historical materialism undertakes as it subject and object human social
relations. By understanding that WE produce society, we understand that we
can change society. The goal of Marxism is to make subjective the
objective social world and our class interests, to put the production of
this world under reason, through democracy, and build a society that
permits the free and full development of each of our capacities. Dia-mat,
on the other hand, holds that history is guided by "iron laws," that there
is little human agency can do to change the course of history, a history
unfolding according to some eternal logic inherent in the universe. This
is a reactionary and conservative ideology. If the people wanted
democracy, Stalin could tell them: If it was time for you to be free, then
the dialectic would have unfolded in such a way as to permit this.
Socialism from the top is what dia-mat sets about legitimating, and
socialism from the top is a false socialism. Dia-mat is an elitist
pseudoscientific worldview, inherently conservative (because it is
anti-humanist), and potentially totalitarian. It pulls about itself the
trappings of objectivist science, and claims to reveal the essence of the
true world.

What my posts argue is that we should get back to the core of Marx's
thought: that humans produce social and material reality. We should never
let our ideas about the world reify into eternal laws that limit our drive
for freedom and democracy. I appreciate Wotschek's post very much, and
only regret that I have to discuss matters of philosophy and science in
order to make explicit the false assumptions embedded in dialectical
materialism. This was why I have purposely avoided being dragged into
discussions of Einstein, Newton, etc. These discussions represent red
herrings for the working class. What is relevant for our cause is the
expansion of global capitalism and the interpenetration of capitalist
logic into every sphere of social life, and, of course, what we intend to
do about it.

I understand this list to be concered with where Marxism and science
intersect. I regard Marxism as a social science, which makes it no less
valid or important than the "hard" sciences. Social science has an
advantage over the physical sciences: the scientist can ask the objects
under study what *they* think about what is going on, for the object of
the social scientist is a subject. This also permits the subject to adjust
their understanding of their reality. Moreover, and largely for this
reason, physical sciences do not apply well to the study of social
reality, whereas social science is well-equipped to critique physical
science, since the latter is socially constructed. Marxism is remarkable
because it combines the nomological-scientific with historical-hermeneutic
(or more simply, perhaps, the nomothetic with the idiographic) and raises
this synthesis to the level of critique by being self-reflexive. As Moishe
Postone wrote recently, in *Time, Labor, and Social Domination*, "Marxian
theory...is self-reflexive and, hence, is itself historically specific:
its analysis of the reation of theory and society is such that is can, in
an epistemologically consistent manner, locate itself historically by
means of the same categories with which it analyzes its social context."
Marxism further demands that this analysis be put into practice. Theory
*and* praxis.

As you know, this debate has at the edges problematized Marx's naturalism
in relation to his humanism. This is a fine point of departure for another
thread. However, I regard this, and I agree with Shlomo Avineri on this,
as not really a problem. Jurgen Habermas states the correct position quite
clearly in *Theory and Practice*: "Marx's Naturalism is understood from
the perspective of his revolutionary Humanism and sharply differentiated
historically from the metaphysical Materialism of the epigones, Engels and
Kautsky, Lenin and Stalin." I have my differences with Habermas, but on
this point we are in complete agreement.

Thanks for the sobering post, Comrade Wotschek. If I have misinterpreted
the intention of your post, forgive me.

Peace,
Andrew Austin


On Sun, 26 Jan 1997, Ingo WOTSCHEK wrote:

> What follows is partly inspired by what I read in marxism-sciences and
> partly by what I am planning to do myself.
> =09That is to say that I am not following minutiously everything that is
> written in the list; often I am already fed up at the beginning of a
> mail by the jargon it uses, be it the one used by =93political=94 activists
> or the one used by =93scientific=94 practioners. I think there is some
> confusion about the nature of Marx=92 enterprise which causes the rubbish
> poured out in much of nowadays discussion on the subjects treated in the
> lists and everywhere else. This confusion is largely due to a reception
> of Marx=92s work in categories which are a very part of the =93thing=94 or, as
> he often says, the =93shit=94 he is critizising. That is why people try to
> find in Marx=92 work a sociology, an epistemology, an ontology, an ethics,
> a moral, a religion or a policy, that is why they are trying to
> applicate it.
> =09In doing so, they already neutralize Marx=92 critique in using criterias
> which are part of what Marx critizises. Presupposing =93spheres=94 (that=92s
> the word Marx uses) or realms where marxian theory has to have some
> impact is forgetting that Marx=92s work itself is about how these realms
> (find a better word if you like) come into being and how they are to be
> overcome. There are no reserves from which one might applicate marxian
> theory as an epistemology or a policy. It is even wrong to term it as a
> theory if it is to be used as a guideline for some =93praxis=94.
> =09I am not pretending to be an oracle of what Marx really says, but I
> think it is really important to get what he was doing; what he was
> trying to do, was basicly trying to overcome the impotency of philosophy
> (or science for that matter - the autonomity of science has a long
> history) in regard of the desaster human relations and practice are
> subject to. This desaster is called alienation [Entfremdung] and later
> on fetischism. Are there any domains where these, today, are not
> conditioning life, praxis or =93existence=94?
> =09I=92ll try to explain the relation of alienation and cognition in further
> postings. For now I=92d like to propose to discuss the theory of
> Sohn-Rethel in regard of a marxian theory of the constitution of
> scientific =93facts=94 and its shortcomings.
> =09On this occasion I=92d also like to recommend to those of you who are not
> too =93borniert=94 to have a look at the page of the KRISIS-group (which is
> in german). They are trying to elaborate a radical critique of the
> =93Warengesellschaft=94, the society of merchandise or commodity and the
> =93marxism=94, which was functioning in this context. You=92ll find them at
> http://magnet.at/krisis.
> =09Please, don=92t bother me with Engels, Bernstein, Kautsky, Gramsci,
> Althusser, Lenin, Stalin, Honecker, Ho-Tschi-Minh, Mao, Trotzky, Robert
> Hue, Castro, Bill Clinton, or Deng-Siao-Peng.
> =09
> =09Ingo Wotschek
>
>
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