File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9802, message 646


Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 19:20:31 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Left conservatism?


In case my original cross-posting didn't make sense, I'll resend the whole
sequence.

Yoshie

********************
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 18:44:47 -0500 (EST)
From: Paul Gallagher <pcg-AT-panix.com>

> From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
> Subject: M-I: Left conservatism?
>
> Left Conservatism?
>

Are you a subscriber to the Science-as-Culture list? Maybe following
the debate there will put things into perspective. I think it's entirely
correct that the science partisans of the Science Wars are servants of the
right. Not only objectively do they serve the right, their motives are, so far
as I can tell, reactionary. One's hatred for post-modernism shouldn't
blind one to this fact.

One of my (many) personal betes-noires is human sociobiology. It's not
accidental that many of the science warriors - Levitt and Gross and
Ehrenreich - are strong defenders of sociobiology; Levitt and Gross are
enemies of Marxism as well. Since you feel strongly about the environment, you
should  realize that Higher Superstition-like arguments are used against
advocates of environmentalism; for example, hard-headed scientists don't
believe in global warming, only "brainless leftists," ideologically motivated
pseudo-scientists, believe in it, they say. I've seen Higher Superstition,
Sokal, and the Living Marxism TV special praised in the same sentence.

Quite apart from arguments about the relation of science to ideology or to
metaphysics, the Science Wars are not about the defense of science,
which hardly needs the help; they are about defeating the academic left and
dissident academic thought in general. Attacking foolish post-modernists -
attacking what is probably the liberal-left's weakest link - is a clever
tactic, but I hope people will be smart enough not to fall for that ploy.

Since Higher Superstition and related texts are filled with attacks on
Marxism and uppity students, and since Sokal is so nakedly self-promoting,
I'd think the political character of the science wars should be obvious.

As an addendum, ask yourself, what's the political content of this
passage? Is your first response, let's join forces with this guy to
attack post-modernism and strengthen the Left? If so, then you think like
Sokal and Ehrenreich.

*************************

Doug wrote:
>I agree with your [Paul Gallager's] characterization here, but it's not
>obvious >at all. These things are pretty damn complicated in fact.
>
>It's funny that the pomo-istas should use Sokal as their representative of
>"neoconservative Marxism," in Judith Butler's phrase, since Sokal is no
>Marxist. But that's what happens when both sides argue with caricatures
>rather than real people and real texts.

It can't be that complicated. Between postmodernism and sociobiology, there
is enough room to stake our position easily. To put it differently, marxism
refuses both a discursive fundamentalism of postmodernism and
sociobiology's naturalization of the social.

What is to be remembered here is that bourgeois ideology remains operative
by ceaselessly producing false choices (for instance, positivism vs
conventionalism). Such false choices are produced because the places of
history and human agency/practice are squeezed out from our conceptions of
reality and science. Read Roy Bhaskar. Or Caudwell.

>I don't think I posted this tidbit here, but for what it's worth, Ron
>Arnold, one of the leaders of the right-wing anti-green Wise Use movement,
>said on my radio show the other week that he derived great inspiration from
>Aronowitz' writings on science. In Ron's aphorism, "All science is
>political science."

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.

Yoshie




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