From: Russ Pearson <R.Pearson-AT-art.derby.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 1998 10:43:08 +0100
Subject: M-TH: Re: crap advanced 


>Yoshie writes:
>> Lou, we ought to leave Russ alone with his love of advanced crap. (And let
>> Freud take care of him and his fetish.)
>
>I agree. At some point the discussion has to move forward. Mark is
>correct. Lou is correct. It doesn't do any good to prove the same points
>over and over again. We need either to move to different threads to
>explore real disagreements grounded in real unity, or on the "green"
>thread turn to strategy and tactics for the incorporation of the green
>into the red rather than simply reproving the necessity for it.
>
>The lists have profited from simply ignoring some endlessly repeated
>positions rather than endlessly answering them.

This _is_ becoming tiresome. But, when crap gets advanced that Louis and
Mark are simply 'correct' (with the subtle connotation that there's no
point disagreeing with the Truth) and it's gainsaid that the green is to be
incorporated into the red, I get a little irked. I do not think that they
are 'correct' and I don't  believe the case is valid for some sort of
greening of Marx. To assert that the case is proved and that therefore this
is a mere strategic/tactical question is to say the least an abbrogation of
political theory.  We can agree to differ-I'm happy to leave it like that.
I will _not_ however stay quiet when I'm misrepresented, viz:

>Your response was to talk about how you can still buy cod at
>your local fishmonger. This was evidence of your philistine stupidity and
>contempt for science.

To put it politely, Louis is being economical with la verite. Further
evidence of a mind full of fevered projections.

As to the question of the fetish Koshie, technology, rather than being
treated as a relationship between people mediated by 'things', is reified
as a relationship between things, which in due accord are assumed a life of
their own. The case par excellence is nuclear technology. As may be
implied, I do not go along with the arguments surrounding 'instrumental
reason', though I would welcome further debate and clarification of these
issues. I for one, do not believe that I have some god-given access to
truth and have I hope, the ability to listen to rational argument and to
change my mind on an issue if I believe the evidence warrants it.

As to Freud,  I prefer the Gestaltian re-workings of Fritz Perls and co,
thank you very much.  On Freud's use of the fetish: whereas Marx transforms
the concept to undermine bourgeois postivist economics by revealing it as a
magical system, Freud resurrects the religious aspect by granting the
phallus some sort of transhistorical, transcendent power.  I don't go along
with this, do you?

Russ





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