Date: Fri, 14 Apr 1995 01:03:06 -0800 From: jones/bhandari <djones-AT-uclink.berkeley.edu> Subject: Re: Marxism as science Rahul seems to be challenging the scientific status of Marxism on several grounds. At one point, Rahul challenged any notion of the inevitability of the transition to socialism. In his Marx, Reason and the Art of Freedom Kevin Brien provides a very thoughtful treatment of this issue: "...no inference can be drawn from these to the effect that a mass breakdown in the existential vialbility of the capitalist form of social consciousness will in fact occur, or that an accompanying breakdown of capitalist social relations will occur. That is, these laws do not permit one to day with scientific warrant that a breakdown of the capitalist social order is inevitable. This is so, irrespective of what social order might be claimed to follow such a breakdown. Here we recall the discussion concerning the operation of factors that counteract a given tendency. On methodological grounds we have have seen that it is always logically possible for some new factor to come into being which could effectively block the realization of a given tendency. This is not to say that such factors will indeed emerge, but only that is possible for them to emerge. Thus, even tough there may be an objective tendency toward the breakdown of the capitalist social order, new counteracting factors may emerge, in addition to those already in operation, which could effectively block a breakdown in the capitalist social order. One such factor might be the reemergence on a worldwide scale of a fascist version of the capitalist form of social consciousness, together with a fascist political practice undertaken within the framework of the existing capitalist social relations. Such a development might indefinitely block a breakdown of the capitalist social relations by providing a destructive vent for the mounting frustration of exisential needs that the ongoing development within this framework generates. "...these laws bring into focus the crucial role that developments in the superstructure play in transition from one social formation to another. A breakdown in the existential viability of the capitalist form of social consciousness would leave indeterminate the new form of social consciousness that eventually come into predominance. After such a breakdown, developments in the superstructure would have positions that had been nonpredominant up unti the period of breakdown would beocme predominant thereafter. This in turn underscores the crucial importance of developments in the superstructure *prior* to such a looming breakdown. In the face of such a prospect, superstructural developments would be predominant factors in sharping whether or not there would be a mass regression to a fascist verion of the capitalist form of social consciousness. Such a development would perhaps preserve for a time the capitalist complex of social relations, but at the cost of a universal barbarism and perhaps an eventual universal annihilation. On the other hand, supposing that a fascist regression within the framework of capitalism does not occur, superstructrual developments prior to a looming breakdown in the capitalist social order would be pivotal in sharping the kind of social order that would come into being in the aftermath of its actual breakdown--whether "Brave New World," or "statism," or statism-cum-fascism, or genuine socialism. "(78-79) Kevin M Brien, 1987. Marx, Reason and The Art of Freedom (Philadelphia: Temple University Press). --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
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