File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9706, message 69


Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 09:44:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Chris M. Sciabarra" <sciabrrc-AT-is2.NYU.EDU>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Popper's critique of Marxism (fwd)


On Tue, 10 Jun 1997, Karl Carlile wrote:
> KARL CARLILE: Hello Chris. Sorry for the delayed reply.
> CHRIS:Notice the differnce between the original claim and the one
> being debated here.  My original message states (see above) -- ". . .
> I would agree with Elster that those aspects of Marxism which project
> historical changes into the future as if from a synoptic vantage
> point, are indeed, problematic." 
> Insofar as we are HUMAN, we must project into the future.  But that
> projection must ALWAYS be bound by context.  We cannot take a
> SYNOPTIC vantage point on the whole, and make judgments about the
> ultimate telos of human history. 
> KARL: I do know that the development of the forces of production are
> being increasingly constrained by the prevailing social relations of
> production is a historical fact. If you disagree with this fact then
> I am prepared to debate this with you on this list. Clearly this fact
> constitutes a historical condition and is thereby constitutes
> historical contextuality. It is a context from which projections into
> the future can be made. Whether these projections prove correct only
> time can tell. 

	What YOU are saying, and what has historically been said by many
socialists convinced of the inevitability of their utopian ideal are quite
different.  There has always been a kind of intellectual hubris projected
by those who used to feel that capitalism was simply headed for a crack up
and that the communism of Marx's dreams was on the horizon.  This took on
the flavor of an almost messianic theology.  Considering that much of this
is owed to the original Hegelian philosophy of history, itself influenced
by Hegel's theological upbringing, this is not surprising.  
	The problem for me, is this:  When individuals project that kind
of "end of history" and measure the reality against it, they almost always
try to CONSTRUCT a bridge to that end.  And if the end itself is
unreachable, as I believe Marxian communism is, then the consequences will
most likely be quite different from the intentions of those who seek to
create it.

> I cannot, for the life of me, see how this modest viewpoint of mine 
> can be identified by you with making "judgments about the ultimate
> telos of human history."  Perhaps there is a misunderstanding 
> here. If so provide the list with an example of what you understand 
> to be some of these synoptic vantage points of Marx's.
> Look forward to hearing from you Chris and anybody else who cares to
> join in. Karl
	Marx was notoriously silent in many ways in his descriptions of
the socialist future, claiming that we couldn't be creating recipes for a
future that had yet to unfold.  But by giving us a view of that future
that was entirely without a state or a market, Marx leaves us awaiting a
kind of nirvana that is, in my view, unreachable.  How he could KNOW that
this was an inevitable consequence out of capitalist development, and how
he could abstract himself from the social totality to take an Archimedean
point of view on history, is entirely undialectical in my view.  It is a
kind of synopticism that one finds in certain versions of dialectic going
back to Plato, but it is illegitimate.
					- Chris -
==========================================Chris Matthew Sciabarra, Ph.D.
Visiting Scholar
New York University Department of Politics
715 Broadway
New York, New York  10003-6806
Email:      sciabrrc-AT-is2.nyu.edu
Website:    http://pages.nyu.edu/~sciabrrc
==========================================



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