Date: Sun, 28 Sep 1997 23:37:34 -0700
From: cdavidson <cdavidson-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: Re: M-I: Marxism, Dewey, Mead


Hi Jim, et al.

Dewey and Mead quite consciously saw themselves as offering a third
alternative to the classic split in epistemology between the materialist
(correspondence theory of truth) and idealist camps (coherence theory of truth),
both of which they saw as hampered by metaphysics and not sufficiently scientific. 

Instead they offered instrumentalism, ie, a hypothesis was true to the extent
that it was able to successfully resolve the problem it posed; it then became 
a working hypothesis, which, especially to Dewey, was a much more satisfactory
way of viewing the universe than proclaiming something or other to be
"objective reality.  Orthodox Marxists dismiss Mead-Dewey as subjective
idealists, but I think they miss the point.  I Think the best way to see what
they were driving at is to view them from the perspective of Stephen Jay
Gould's critique of inevitable progress in Wonderful Life and Full House. I
think those two works are solid, and serve to highlight the Hegelian metaphysics
that permeates even the most hardnosed materialism of Marx and Engel--not that
I fault them so much; they were merely expressing what was cutting edge science
in their day.

The bottom line: In epistemology, I think Dewey and Mead are a lot deeper
than Marxists usually think, and they are much closer to the scientific
thinking of today than the classical dialectical materialism of Marx, Lenin
and even Mao.

james m blaut wrote:
> 
> James F.:
> 
> I should like to see more discussion on the list of this important matter
> of the relation between Marx/Marxism and Dewey and Mead (and also
> Whitehead). I don't agree that the main distinction is micro-social (Mead)
> vs. macro-social (Marx). Probably if there is a main distinction it is
> Marx's revolutionary socialism vs. the evolution socialism of Dewey and
> Mead, who in fact were somewhat sympathetic to Marxism (see for instance
> Mead's *Movements of Thought in the 19th C*). (Whitehead was rather
> progressive, but I don't recall what he said about Marx.)
> 
> In my (absolutely nonprofessional) view, the realist pragmatism of Dewey
> and Mead was very close to a generalized materialism -- we could call it
> empiricism with faith in the reality of the stuff being experienced -- and
> I have often wondered whether it was a certain nervousness about defending
> the nasty, subversive idea of materialism in US university culture of the
> early part of this century (or for that matter today) that kept Dewey from
> calling his view flat out materialism. Like Marx, Dewey, Mead, and
> Whitehead believed in progressive evolution. Marx was not, in my view, a
> Hegelian because you can't be a Hegelian without being a metaphysician: you
> can accept the dialectical view of progress but not much more. (Recall
> Marx's devastating comments on Hegel';s mwetaphysics in M's writings on the
> philosophy or right/law.) I don't think Dewey, Whitehead, and Mead  had
> much Hegel in them (after Dewey's conversion c.1900) apart from a sort of
> evolutionism and monism. A lot of the comparison made between them and
> Hegel seems to me to represent a failure to see that their really important
> goal was to distance themselves from Kantianism. Am I wrong in all of this?
> Probably.
> 
> Comment?
> 
> Jim Blaut
> 
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