File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9706, message 2


From: yahpgill-AT-lisp.com.au
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 22:52:42 +1000
Subject: Re: M-TH: Hannah Arendt, Simone Weill


Rob's generous response to my post about Simone Weil raises many issues,
but I'll just take up one that seems relevant to Marxist fundamentals.

>...
>>She asserts that Marx was mistaken in attempting to base a social science
>>on needs. It is force [ie what Weber defines as 'power'] which determines
>>social life.
>[snip]
> Arendt explicitly distinguishes between 'power' and 'force'.
>The latter refers to an action type which is oriented to individual
>achievements whereas the former emphasises a consensus reached by free
>agreement among participants.[snip] This constitutes a communicative
>action >model (Habermas's point of departure), with a strong emphasis on
>intersubjectivity as a viable alternative to coercion.


Others on the list will correct me if I phrase this wrongly, but I
understand Arendt and Habermas to assert that in theory it is always
possible for the parties in any human situation to achieve agreement in
communication, ie to arrive at the 'same truth' (about themselves, the
world, their situation in it). (Whether consensual (unforced) *action*
follows depends on the situation: I suppose Marxists would (or should) say
that it all depends on class situation.) Anyway, the starting point is the
basis of the philosophical tradition descending from Socrates  - truth is
reached through the work of dialectic. This seems to me to be a fundamental
tenet of both liberalism and Marxism.

Weil, reader of Augustine and the Baghavad Gita, friend of Bataille and
Camus, stands away from this 'western rationalism' (loose label, I know).
'The afflicted silently beseech to be given the words to express
themselves', In fact a major cause of affliction is having no words which
avail to express one's situation. It might be that one has never learnt
such words, or even that there *can be no such words*. The Leninist
conception of the vangard party was based precisely on the idea that the
working class needed to be informed of the words which (supposedly) would
express its situation correctly, thus enabling it to act effectively to be
rid of affliction. But Weil compares truth in the face of rational
discourse with 'a vagrant accused of stealing a carrot from a field...
before a comfortably seated judge who keeps up an elegant flow of queries,
comments, and witticisms.' So in terms of Arendt's distinction, for Weil
'power' always has at least the potential of being 'force' for those who
cannot adequately express themselves within the prevailing discourse.

Lyotard is interesting to bring on here.( The Postmodern Condition is, more
than anything else, an attack on Habermas.) For Lyotard, both liberal and
Marxist conceptions of justice harbour a nostalgic yearning after the ideal
of communication whereby 'an author can write while putting himself at the
same time in the position of the reader'. 'He who lodges a complaint is
heard, but he who is a victim, and who is perhaps the same, is reduced to
silence' (Le Differend). But while Lyotard argues for a pragmatic
conception of justice which can apply in spite of irreducible differences
of language or understanding, Weil believed that there must always be an
unbridgeable gap between 'truth' and 'language'. This gap is a necessary
tragedy of the human condition. (I guess this makes her an 'existentialist'
rather than a 'postmodernist'.)

Question: can Marxism (or 'post-Marxism') deny that consensus about 'what
is true' is always (*potentially*) achievable? What would Marxism look like
without this Socratic assumption? (My hunch is that it would look awful,
but I'm interested in how others react to the question.)

Paul Gillen

PS
>
>Paul goes on:]
>>She believed strongly in the value of manual work, and did it often in
>>spite of poor health.
>
>[But would she have starved if she didn't do it?]
>
There's more to say here (especially in the light of Russell's comment on
Arendt and human activity) - maybe later...




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