File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1994/marxism_19Jul.94, message 7


From: SUBTILE-AT-aol.com
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 94 20:03:16 EDT
Subject: Re: Laclau and Mouffe and exploitation (repost)



Andy Daitsman says about Laclau and Mouffe that they assert that

"serfdom or slavery do not become
oppressive until a discourse arises that asserts "the rights inherent to
every
human being" (p. 154), thereby giving rise to a discursive antagonism and to
consciousness not just of inequality but also of injustice.  From a Marxist
viewpoint, this assertion is little more than absurd."

My question: why would this be absurd to Marxists who had given up on any
"foundational" concept of species-being?  I myself thought that Marx thought
serfdom and slavery were oppressive because they went against the human
phenomenology of "species-being" (borrowing from the master-slave dialectic
in Hegel's PHANOMENOLOGIE DES GEISTES) and produced alienation as such.  But
without such a phenomenology, wouldn't serfdom/ slavery be viewed as
appropriate to a particular mode of production and a particular development
of civilization?
-Samuel Day Fassbinder

   

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