Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 18:02:48 -0600
To: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
From: rahul-AT-peaches.ph.utexas.edu (Rahul Mahajan)
Subject: Re: Outside Observers for Class reading Capital


Hans, I realized after I sent off the response that I had no way of
knowing, from what you wrote, whether it was just an airy dismissal of
important issues or a nuanced critique that was simply written without a
full expansion. We may not be that far apart. I also agree that facts
embody values, a statement which is sometimes true in a meaningful sense,
i.e. when a psychiatrist says that a person is neurotic, and sometimes in
at best an utterly trivial sense, like say when I tell you the
cross-section for electron-electron scattering. In between, but definitely
on the side of trivial value-embodiment is a statement like "You have
smallpox." Academics who try to be oh-so-clever in overturning
"reductionism" and similar bugbears are generally far more reductionist
when they do it than any scientist I have ever hear of. Simply saying "get
rid of the fact-value distinction" without acknowledging or often even
understanding this hierarchy is a recipe for ignorance based on vulgar
reductionism.

On the other hand, you say things like:

>Religion is the other pole of modern science's expurgation of values out
>of the facts, in secret complicity with it.

This is obscurantist garbage. Don't confuse science with Madison Avenue and
don't ignore history. It was Galileo and Newton who shook the church and
destroyed its control over modern society, not a bunch of masturbating
philosophers. I will have more to say regarding such points in the future.


>Regarding your point on empiricism, again we seem to agree on the
>substantive issues, but you do not trust that I can explain it to
>undergraduate students or high school students.

I have no idea how well you understand the distinction. The point is, it
can't be communicated simply by explanation. I personally have a good
understanding of it because of 10 years of studying science. To really
understand many of these difficult concepts requires at the least a
knowledge of a great many concrete examples and how various distinctions
play out in those examples -- reading a few clever and well-put words is no
substitute.

>My thesis is that people are generally smart and sometimes they even
>try to think, but in modern society they are hindered because they do
>not learn the right categories.  The other half of my thesis is that
>reading Marx will help them.  Don't underestimate Marxism.  It may
>come across as simplistic, and my very brief remarks above will
>probably reinforce this impression, but if explicated correctly it is
>a very powerful body of thought.

I don't underestimate Marxism. I criticise it from the point of view of
someone who is immersed in it, not someone outside. I think far too many
people underestimate science, which in my opinion is an even more powerful
body of thought.

My main objection still stands. Whether people are generally smart or not,
the point is that the problems people have in understanding a Marxist point
of view are simply because of the attempts to stifle all independent
thought, not ultra-rarefied questions of dialectics versus analytics. You
speak in an overly-theoretical way and raise the suspicion that you're not
necessarily looking at what is right there in front of you. Of course, I
don't know your students; I merely assume they are like the ones I have
seen in similar non-elite institutions.




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