Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 11:54:07 +0100
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-TH: Re: being determines consciousness ?


Rob writes, under the influence of God knows what:

>... Back from a wet lunch ...
> Humans made conscious of something will employ
>reason with respect to that something, and, as humans, we become much less
>predictable when such a circumstance comes about (not least because we tend
>to reason in language).  Scientific Marxism stops for me at the dawning of
>consciousness.

and more along the same lines that I cite below.

The trouble is, that he doesn't specify the limits of consciousness. People
can be conscious of their class and material interests and not give a hoot
about the effects defending such interests has on those exploited by them.
The scientific approach will clearly be needed to analyse the pressures of
material social interests on human behaviour. This will logically lead to
the conclusion that in a class society the scientific consciousness of real
economic relations is repressed in great chunks of humanity, either by
self-interest or intimidation. In a non-class, communist society, this will
lead to less large-scale social antagonism in understanding our motives for
doing what we do, but won't stop us taking sides on the basis of material
interests, although our material interests will be much more in sync with
our opponents' material interests in general terms.

Also, scientific Marxism won't stop at the dawning of consciousness, as
it's an integral part of that consciousness. It'll just become part of
common sense, something everybody takes for granted and learns about like
gravity and light.

Might as well add a thought or two about linguistics while I'm at it.

Linguistics is important. Ralph and Rob have the following exchange:

>>The number of Marxists who have learned or understood anything at all about
>>real linguistics I can count on one hand, or maybe even one asshole.
>
>Who's the arsehole you have in mind?
>
>I know it shouldn't be, Ralph, but this is beyond me (although I have
>studied a little sociolinguistics).  I gotta go with what I have, and hope
>to get more along the way.  What am I saying that peeves you so much?

Engels was very interested in philology (especially Germanic studies) and
Marx had an excellent grounding in Classical studies.

Those interested in getting a rough idea of what's going on and why in
linguistics could read the fathers of structuralist linguistics Ferdinand
de Saussure and Leonard Bloomfield and then have a look at Noam Chomsky's
seminal works Syntactic Structures, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax and
Cartesian Linguistics. As for socio-linguistics, Trudgell's introduction in
Penguin is excellent (and cheap).

One of the great things about linguistics is that it provides an accessible
entry to real scientific method for more literary and culturally interested
people.

Cheers,

Hugh

______________________



>My belief that we can't predict reliably in the case of a conscious (ie. of
>the actual manifestations of the exchange relation) population is muchly
>rooted in the belief that language is as much a site of struggle as the
>shop floor.  Language is a system of meanings, some residual, some emergent
>(Gramsci and Williams each said something like this) - as we reason,
>institutionalise and deinstitutionalise through language, this seems
>important to me.
>
>But I don't think Habermas gets it right when he divorces 'interaction'
>from 'labour' altogether - each is reflecting the same basic category.  But
>they do not do so in neat synchrony.  Tensions between the forces and
>relations of production appear when the conditions of our labour and
>material living contradict the institutions that live in our words - try as
>the system might to introduce the 'consumer' as synonomous with 'human',
>for instance, the suddenly discordant 'citizen' is still around in
>language, defined by a meaning system that suddenly seems wholly removed
>from the system that affords 'consumer' its meaning.  And I reckon the
>'citizen' is consequently a revolutionary subject.





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