Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1996 18:03:21 -0400
Subject: Re: Group or individual -Reply


In a reply to Lisa, Adam writes:

>I think what is mysterious to you is why I am so insistently dogmatic
>about seeing production as central. I can only reply that it is because
>I am a Marxist. If you see something other than production as central,
>then really the whole of Marxism falls. Even if you may continue to
>agree with some of the conclusions of Marxism, you must be getting there
>my some other route.

Leo:
This is an interesting question. I would take a different posture, following
Poulantzas, that for a Marxist class struggle is central. The point at which
I decided that I was a post-Marxist was when I concluded that class struggle
as Marx conceived it was not necessarily the central focus and motivating
force of human history  (although it could be at certain times in certain
epochs); and, therefore, that a broader conception of struggle over power was
required. I am afraid I would have come to that conclusion a lot earlier if I
thought that production was central in the way that Adam is arguing for it. 

Adam again:
>I think your (Lisa's) criticism of Engels, basically that he is "Lamarkian"
,
>is just a different way of saying you don't agree with his basic
>aim - to explain the rise of human society as a thing in itself.

Leo:
If I am not mistaken, there really is no question but that Engels was a
"Lamarkian", insofar as Engels' anthropological writings say as much. I also
believe that there is a clear distinction between a Lamarkian and a Darwinian
view of evolution, with a Lamarkian view being one of slow, culturally based
natural adaptation and a Darwinian view being one of much more radical
disjunctures in natural selection (assuming that I am not overly influenced
by Stephen Jay Gould's version of Darwinism). Without
speaking for Lisa, I think that the charge of Lamarkianism goes straight to
the viability of Engels' anthropology.

Leo




     --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---