File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9802, message 493


Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 20:55:46 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: relativism


Doug wrote:
>Well that's exactly why it's so complicated. It's a lot easier to take a
>Sokalish science-fundamentalist position or a boneheaded Aronowitz pure
>constructionist position (to the point where Stanley can actually say that
>medicine has done more harm than good in the 20th century). To figure out
>how the "real" world, which we can know only indirectly and approximately,
>and the social world shape each other requires that you know something
>about science, politics, culture, and psychology. Not just about them, but
>how they interact.
>
>Tom Athanasiou, author of the fine book Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich
>and Poor (a subtitle for all you folks out there who think greens don't
>care about class), told me that he once wanted to propose a book on
>medicine, the first half of which would be a critique of orthodoxy, the
>second half of which would be a critique of the alternative crowd. He
>realized, though, that the audience for this would be prohibitively small,
>since most readers were in one camp or the other, and were incapable of
>finding virtue and vice in both.

As I wrote, critical realism helps us to clarify how and why false choices
are produced. As for the small size of audience, it is of course beyond the
control of individual writers. What I was trying to say, though, is that we
do *not* lack theory; what's lacking is propaganda and agitation. Beyond
that, as Carrol always says, it's a matter of the existence or
non-existence of mass movements, which practically shapes the ideological
climate.

>>I don't find this sort of relativism that threatening. Relativism is simply
>>a symptom of a legitimation crisis, or as Gramsci said (I think), its
>>morbid symptom. Relativism is a danger, but it's also a sign of
>>opportunity, in that it can be seen as an index of the ruling class's
>>inability to monopolize Truth. Truth is on our side anyway; what we need to
>>do is to gain force to move history according to our truth.
>
>Relativism in this context is very threatening. The risk of environmental
>catastrophe is not something that should be decided by either Andrew Ross
>or the science department at GM (or LM, either, for that matter). Here we
>have a professional (and very skilled) anti-environmentalist appropriating
>squishy science studies to promote the interests of mining, timber, and oil
>companies. Saying "some science is political science" or "all science is
>political science sometimes" is a lot different from what Arnold is saying,
>which in this specific instance is his claim that a bunch of elitists are
>concocting tales of climate change to screw the working class. He's using
>what purports to be a critique of the ruling class to promote the interests
>of the ruling class.

Sure. Whether using relativism or logical positivism or whatever, PR men of
the ruling class always try to promote corporate interests. The
appropriation of populism by the agents of the ruling class is not new
either.

What I was talking about is relativism as a general cultural climate,
though. A reign of Cynical Reason, so to speak. It's as though the ruling
class is saying, "The Emperor is naked, but so what? We have power! Truth
be damned." This should *concentrate* our minds.

What determines the outcome of "debates" isn't the truth values of the
statements of contenders, in a case like this. The fate of the working
class & environment gets decided by whether or not we get to abolish
capitalism in time. A dose of Machiavelli is what we need. We do not lack
theory. We do not lack truth. What is lacking is nothing but power.

Yoshie




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