File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-03-22.073, message 23


Date: Tue, 18 Mar 1997 23:34:50 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-I: Application to Reality?



I don't know what to make of this sort of response. I'm not opposed to
changing the world. That's why I do this stuff. But I don't understand why
changing the world is supposed to be inconsistent with precise, careful,
rigorous argument. I certainly don't think Marx thought that the exigicies
of practical organizing or even the need to be accessible to a wide
audience precluded exact and difficult thinking and writing. Even his
Manifesto, certainly intended as a popular document, is extremely dense
and in fact carefully argued in the main, although presented in a very
bold and epigrammatical style. Naturally it is something that only a
great master of language could bring off, and it is in fact hard for
students to understand, as I know from my years of teaching it. But in
any case, I think the antithesis presented by Zeynep and others is false:
either practical effectiveness and accessibility or rigor and accuracy.
If we are not rigorous and accurate then we will in the long ruin not be
practically effective because we will be operating from false premises or
on conclusions that do not follow from true premises.

But perhaps the argument is that the style of writing adopted by
analytical and other academic Marxists, which is suitable and indeed
necessary for academic publication, is inherently wrong for Marxist
writing, which should be addressed to moving people to action. If so,
then the demand is in effect that Marxism should not be done in a way that
gives it any academic presence at all, because if it is not written to be
published in academic journals, then those journals will not publish it.
This means, practically, that Marxist professors will have to be Marxists
on the side, doing their academic work as a day job and Marxism on the
side, as their movement work. It also means that, lacking an institutional
presence in the scholarly journals, Marxism will become even less
reputable in scholarly circles than it is now, so that Marxists will have
a harder time teaching classes in the subject or assigning Marxist
readings, or indeed in getting hired. I should mention that I no longer
have any personal interest in the matter, having been dumped from the
academy for my Marxist work. But I point out the implications of the
dichotomy Zeynep proposes.

I understand that her circumstances are different from ours. In Turkey
there is, she tells us, an audience of radicalized workers who are
interested in hearing what Marxists might have to say. Maybe academic
posts are easier to come by and journals are more willing to publish a
wider variety of material. But she should recognize what our
circumstances are here in America and indeed in Western Europe.

I have defended the standards that prevail in scholarly journals. I think
that these are generally pretty high. The values promoted in these
journals include care in argument, precision in stating positions,
thoroughness in replying to objections, solid design in empirical
research, exactness in defining and using concepts. Not all journals
attain these standards, and certainly not alla rticles in most journals
do, but the selection pressures do tend towards the standards being
approximating in many publications. I don't see anything wrong with that.
What's the alternatives, sloppiness, carelessness, dogmatism? Surely
Zeynep doesn't advocate those as alternatives.     
   
Zeynep correctly says that in practical politics instincts have a lot more
to do with success than the sort of analysis one finds in journals. But
surely she cannot mean, can she, that we just choose up sides on
instinct and then act in whatever way seemsd expedient to achieve whatever
vaguely defined goals seem right. Sure, we do that a lot. But if we are
attempting to do Marxist analysis and theory to provide a coherent
framework for our political activity, we have to _think_, don't we?


Now, Zeynep and other have attacked the use of rational choice theory in
Marxism. This is really a seperate question. One might agree with
everything I have said so far and still think RTC is bankrupt. I emphasize
again what I have said before, that I am very far from being an
unqualified defender of RCT and moreover analytical Marxism is not
coextensive with rational choice Marxism. That said, I insist that RCT has
its uses even though it is quite abstract. 

Zeynep seems to object, if I understand her, that as revolutionaries we
should be most interested in the cases where RCT assumptions don't apply,
where group solidarity triumps over rational self interested, in the
revolutionary moments. I too of course am interested in those conjunctures
and I agree that RCT cannot explain them. That is one point at which its
utility is limited. But of course we have to be interested in normal
behavior in capitalsim either, and here RTC in the form of game theory has
a lot to offer by way of explaining why those moments are so rare. As
Rajul pointed out in his nice exposition of the Prisoner's Dilemma,
PD-type situations are pervasive in capitalist society and anyone who has
erver tried to organize anything will recognize the problems. In general
in a society that encourages rational self interested behavior we can
expect to find a lot of that sort of thing all over the place.

I don't fully understand the exdtent of the resistance to RCT and formal
methods generally. Maybe a lot of Marxists share the general allergy of
many humjanities types towards maths. Maybe people find the assumptions of
RCT repugnant, which in some ways it is, but that's a critique of
bourgeois society isn;t it? Maybe it's because it's hard, but so is Hegel.
Well, say defenders of Hegel, that's different, Hegel had _ideas_. (I'm a
defender of Hegel as well.) So do rational choice theorists; it's a very
fruitful way of thinking about social relations. Maybe it's because a lot
of people who do RCT don't do a lot of analysis of particular political
situations--but this isn;r right, because they do. As I mentioned, the
breeding ground of game theory was the Cold War and the arms race and
international conflict generally. Maybe it's because it's not class
analysis. But then we get efforts by Wright, Pzeworksi, Roemer, and others
do do class analysis in RCT terms, and indeedm with the first two of
thesem to analyse particular phenomena of interest to Marxists, like the
decline of social democracy or the operations of class compromise in RCT
class-analytic terms. 

So these criticisms don't work. Look. It's quite OK to say, look, I'm too
busy. There's a lot of stuff out therre that might be good that I don't
have time to learn. I don't have the time to master a difficult technical
vocabulary and a complex body of theory on the hope that it might be
useful when I can apply stuff I know to be useful to problems that I know
interest me. That sort of rejection of RCT makes perfect sense. But to
reject it as per se counterrevolutionary, especially when one doesn't know
much about it, that's mere prejudice.  

It's likewise prejudice to reject the broader current of analytical
Marxism without having read some of it, only on the basis of a pretty good
secondary source like Roberts. Roberts or any such critique isn't a
substitute for thinking. It's a guide to thinking about stuff one knows
something about first hand. The same goes for more speciualized concerns
with RCT. 

--Justin


On Wed, 19 Mar 1997, Zeynep Tufekcioglu wrote:

> 
> >Justin:
> 
> >>I agree with Louis that AM was largely a professor's response to
> >>professional demands for prevailing standards of rigor and clarity. I
> >>guess I don't see anything wrong with that. I think the standards are good
> >>and professors are the peoiple with the time do the work to master them. 
> 
> I think this is one of the problems arising from ignoring the fact that the
> reason most of us are interested in marxism is that it provides with a
> useful analytical tool for changing the world. I know it sounds a bit corny
> to repeat it, but that was the whole point. "The philosophers up till now
> have interpreted the world in various ways, the point is however, to change it."
> 
> Justin claims, for example, AM might give us the likely behaviours of actors
> in conflict situations, if we accept certain assumptions. Neat, but my
> politician side is betting on the unlikely happening. That's when we'll have
> a chance. Revolutions are about upturned societies, upheavels, crises,
> unpredictability. Leadership is about being able to find its way through the
> half-darkness. If AM provides some general guidelines that can't be fathomed
> any other way, it would be a nice detail. However, in really important
> situations, revolutionaries have a chance because, among other things,
> bourgeois politicians can't understand what the hell is going on and can't
> control the situation by the normal methods which assume people will be
> afraid, or they'll behave rationally, etc.  
> 
> I think that's the problem of abstract-concrete argument. Abstractions are
> fine for general guidelines, however, rather useless in concrete situations.
> Politics is always concrete. No amount of "this was highly unprobable"
> complaints will help when something not highly probable but possible does
> happen. There are gut feelings, instincts, wrong decisions, etc. "Rigor and
> clarity" in politics usually means coming down on "let's do *this* and not
> *that*" in spite of lack of proper and complete evidence and time.
> 
> As for this rationality argument, I must admit it is highly irrational for
> many people to join a revolutionary movement. It may be beneficial to the
> class as a whole, but the more involved you are, the more personal risk you
> take. How can you explain that except throwing in some benefit to terms like
> honor, dignity, a yearning for justice, etc. I don't see how these can be
> quantified in any way.
> 
> I must retell the story of a psychiatrist doctor friend of mine. Sorry if it
> is second take for anyone. He kept claiming that there was something about
> revolutionary people that was impossible to explain by hereditary
> conditions. Some stubborn gene or something. He was completely opposed to
> both rational human being theories and functionalist approaches. He claimed
> that, even if a revolution happenned, the people pushing for change and
> progress would still be a minority as now. Perhaps, a larter portion but
> still a minority because no amount of environmental difference would produce
> that type if the predisposition did not already exist. Of course, I
> complained how "counter-revolutionary" his theory was for postulating that
> cultural change was so difficult and that human nature would be so resistant
> to progress and what was the purpose of highlighting the negative example of
> capitalism and how demoralising such theories were... 
> 
> "Demoralising? See, that's what I'm trying to tell you. Being the stubborn
> type they are, it is not possible to demoralise them."
> 
> Zeynep
> 
> 
> 
> 
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