File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-03-31.182, message 38


From: Carrol Cox <cbcox-AT-rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: JF on marxist phil...A note on *Marxism & Linguistics*
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 1997 14:40:40 -0600 (CST)


    I've simply deleted without reading or more than glancing at the
thread(s) on diamat, but I believe at least some participants in
that debate tended to treat marxism as a theory of everything; if
that is the case, they are mistaken, and one of the most powerful
statements of the limits of marxian categories comes from no one
else but Stalin himself.

    I suspect most self-labelled and 'militant' stalinists read this
(if they read it at all) on the unconscious premise that Stalin never
did anything but repeat himself, and hence fail to notice that it
has a theoretical interest beyond anything else Stalin wrote. (Note:
his "major" writings don't really claim to be anything but a restate-
ment of Lenin.) And non-stalinists probably never bother to read it
at all.

    My attention was drawn to it by a footnote in Sebastiano Timpanaro's
*On Materialism* (Verso, 1976). (I've misplaced my copy, so I can't
quote exactly.) Timpanaro is at that point arguing for the importance
of recognizing the importance of biology, insisting that there were
elements in human life that cut across class and historical boundaries.

    The importance of *Marxism and Linguistics* is, precisely, it's
insistence on the limits of the base/superstructure pair. Language,
Stalin says, is NOT part of the base, it is NOT a class phenomenon,
it is NOT a means of production, it is NOT a force of production. The
whole thrust of the work is to free linguistic studies from having to
fit within marxist historical categories. (Timpanaro calls this work
the only work by Stalin of theoretical interest.)

    I don't know if this is relevant to any of the current threads or
not. Just thought I'd mention it.

    Carrol
P.S. Rahul--don't try to compete with the WSJ ed page in grumpiness.



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