Billmon: The Grand Delusion (cont.)

May 6, 2005

Billmon’s Whiskey Bar piece The Grand Delusion has by now generated some 350 comments.

(You may want to download this PDF file (760 KB) (right-click and ‘Save as..’) with Billmon’s piece and the first comment thread.)

For a continued discussion here, alabama’s recent remarks might be a good hook:

Call me unimaginative, citizen, but I find it inconceivable that Strauss could be compared to Marx in any way. To Weber, perhaps, or Durkheim–but then I don’t see the point of comparing these two founders of sociology with a classical scholar who bases his occasional put-downs of sociology on his understanding of the Hebrew Bible. When Strauss takes an occasional shot at sociology, which he really doesn’t bother to study.

Unlike Strauss, Marx and Nietzsche are major minds,working on the level of Kant and Hegel.

They’ve read everything, and have carefully studied, and understood, the "everythings" they’ve read. The work they do is incalculably rigorous, comprehensive and inventive, and they are unrelenting in the pursuit of this work. They go further, faster, harder and stronger than anyone, on any subject whatsoever. It’s a matter of magnitudes–of intellectual reserves–and I like to believe that all honest writers understand this.

Strauss himself understands it. Yes, he denounces Machiavelli for "blasphemy"–one of the strangest moves I’ve ever seen anywhere–but this is a dogmatic value judgment of the sort that many of us tend to make when we’re in over our heads, and Strauss, in his readings of Machiavelli, is definitely in over his head (something that could never be said of Marx and Nietzsche: their respective comments on Machiavelli, few and far between though they may be, show a thorough and lucid understanding of Machiavelli’s project).

What, then, does Strauss do well? Well, for one thing, he’s done valuable work on Maimonides, Al Farabi, and the whole Medieval Andalusian reading of Aristotle. He writes with great confidence and patience when dealing with these figures–no doubt because they give at least the appearance of a pre-scholastic (non-Christian?) reading of the Greeks. Because Strauss really doesn’t like Christianity! This is a limitation that has to be recognized and respected if we’re to have any success in reading him at all (and

I accept the fact that some folks don’t want to, and perhaps wouldn’t know how to, read his more technical contributions). As for his American political context, we all know very well that Strauss was appalled, and even somewhat terrified, by the McCarthyism that burned through our universities during his years in America.

I’m no intellectual historian, but I hope I’m not wrong to think that this context calls for some linkage to Strauss’s career in Germany and France during the thirties. I believe that if we can accept the guy for his own magnitude, successes and limitations, we get a much clearer picture of how truly mediocre, tendentious and anti-intellectual his supposed acolytes really are, and this, in my opinion, is a discrimination that truly counts.

But then I’ve never felt a need to demonize intellectuals in my take on the political scene, because I think the Masters of the Universe never read. They certainly don’t think. People who used to think, and then gravitate toward the scene of economic and political power relations, quickly lose the capacity to study ideas and concepts, and rarely, if ever, retrieve that capacity. They end up cutting deals and fabricating lies.

This is not an unusual fate in our world, but it’s completely removed from the career of Leo Strauss–who, I repeat, never rises to the level of Marx or Nietzsche (but then who does? maybe Freud?)

Posted by b on May 6, 2005 at 10:19 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Alabama: But then I’ve never felt a need to demonize intellectuals in my take on the political scene, because I think the Masters of the Universe never read. They certainly don’t think.
But they do make use of the stories and myths (frames ) and technologies and bureaucratic apparati created by intellectuals. Hitler and Bush did not read Strauss, but his minor contributions to the myth of a new generation of philosopher kings, duty bound to lead the sheep are useful to such people all the same – just as Derzhinsky’s creation of the Cheka proved so useful to Comrade Stalin. “I just framed the debate” is no better than Eichmann’s “I just scheduled the trains”. Nobody can be responsible entirely for the use that other make of his or her work, but if you advocate rule of the illuminati or create a secret police force, you cannot pretend to be a mere scholar.
Brother citizen: I am sorry to have insulted you, simply or otherwise. But I believe it is you who is evading the issue. Why is the mere introduction of Marxian jargon enough to elicit such a strong negative reaction? You say it is required for scientific history, but I don’t find this language in Braudel, or Wallerstien, or Marc Bloch, or E.P. Thompson or the astounding C.L.R. James or any of many brilliant and Marx influenced historians. So you tell me what is the value-add of this terminology – if I can use some jargon from modern capitalism. And since we hope to do our part in saving the world, it’s worth considering that even in a decidedly left wing and intellectual forum the persuasive power of your arguments are impeded by using language many of us associate with both terror and stiffling bureaucracy. If you hope to jar people from the sway of Murdochian reaction, couching your argument in language that loses the argument seems counter-productive. And then, you have evaded the substantive critique. Contemporaries of Marx and Engels, their erstwhile allies, repeatedly insisted that within the Marxist doctrine there was a strain of authoritarianism and mystification that would lead to despotism. One cannot, at this stage, dismiss this critique by averting eyes from the show trials and torture chambers or by pointing out the “worse” evils of the capitalists. Strauss may have meant Socratic philsopher kings, but he got Hitler and Rumsfeld. Marx and Trotsky may not have meant Beria and Lin Biao, but that’s what they got. Unintended consequences remain consequences.
Finally, I note two perceptive comments touched on by Colman. First, for many of us economic arrangements should be treated as engineering issues, not as matters of doctrine. Does X work better as a market or by votes or by professional administration – is a more appealing approach than “God made man for free markets” or “History requires us to live under the dictatorship of the proletariat.” Second, the advantages of the impersonality and alienation of the market are not to be ignored. Bookchin, writing from the US where communities are as prevalent as unicorns, is nostalgic for the villages and those village elders that many of our grandparents rushed to escape. Voltaire’s justly famous praise of the London stock exchange is no less true than young Marx’s attack on the alienation of the capitalist who lives less to gain more. Voltaire ignores the worldwide looting that floods the bourse with currency, but Marx ignores the stultification of his ideal German provincial town where the savants come down from the castle with morsels wisdom for the happy burgers.

Posted by: citizen k | May 6 2005 12:23 utc | 1

Pat, @ 2:39 AM, I could fetch up some kind of cute answer, but I honestly don’t remember what I meant when I said that. Were we engaged, perhaps, in a merry quarrel at the time?….I teach for a living, which is not, in this place and time, a vocation self-evidently intellectual. Most of my students–graduate students included–haven’t been taught to read with any care, and so I have to act as something of a salesman, or even a seducer, to get the process started. Strauss, in his later (American) years, is engaged in that very game. When he goes on and on about esoteric reading and writing, I think he’s really trying to maintain his class enrollments and his scholarly project at one and the same time. But charisma’s a grass-killing weed. Students can get high on a teacher’s style and performance without learning a single thing.

Posted by: alabama | May 6 2005 14:15 utc | 2

“Students can get high on an teacher’s style and performance without learning a single thing.”
Yes, and is not the art of evading the uncomfortable questions (some teachers’ styles are completely based on the art of exclusion) just as dangerous as all the other arts? If you have learned to ignore, to obscure, to marginalize, you have learned how to silence the other – and you can then safely dominate him/her/it. Take away the voice, and you have solved the problem. Except for the voices in your head, but they, too, can be silenced through decisive action. No matter which action.
Too simplistic?

Posted by: teuton | May 6 2005 14:34 utc | 3

citizen k, when the Masters of the Universe aren’t using intellectuals, they use athletes, priests and movie stars, and of course the rhetoric of de-mythification is always a tool in their hands. See how quickly they debunk the “myth” of the nation-state–when promoting the values of multi-national globalism! So what’s left? I think the only game in town is to contest the way specific people use people and things. Reading Plato is hardly a fascist pursuit, but reading Plato partially, or inexactly, is something that scholars should notice. My preferred way of challenging Strauss is to put his readings to the test. They are often tendentious and selective, missing the standards to which they aspire. This is what we should be working on.

Posted by: alabama | May 6 2005 14:39 utc | 4

Yes, teuton, we have to listen to the voices we read–the ones that draw us on:
Ferdinand : ….Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the king my father’s wrack,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air. Thence I have followed it–
Or it hath drawn me rather; but ’tis gone.
No, it begins again…. (The Tempest , 1.2. 388-95).
An act of faith–not without hazard.

Posted by: alabama | May 6 2005 15:01 utc | 5

citizen k
“By careful study, I have unlocked the key to the true world wisdom and can now explain everything, but only to the worthy” seems to me to be common to both Strauss and Marx. But I am no philosopher, just a bystander with a reflexive dislike for certain forms of authority.
This is an excellent example of your posymodernist tendency to conflate all theory as “authority.” You know very well western marxism has spent so much effort to derive practices not hidebound by “authority.” Couple of obvious examples: Adorno, Jameson, Eagleton.
You say it is required for scientific history, but I don’t find this language in Braudel, or Wallerstien, or Marc Bloch, or E.P. Thompson or the astounding C.L.R. James
Good grief. Not true. Example: the very basis of Braudel’s research about capital is justified by Marx’s m-c-m’. wow. James’ study of Hegel (“Notes on the Dialectic”) was thoroughly inspired by Marx’s critique of Philosophy of Right. Wallerstein’ systems-theoretic research on capital expansion is inspired by Marx’s discovery of contradictions of such expansion. I sort of agree with your view of Thompson, but the same could be said of Raymond Williams if he died in 1960.
Trying to fugure out where you come from: you take the antitheory stuff too far, I think. Plus, some of your examples are inappropriate.

Posted by: slothrop | May 6 2005 15:36 utc | 6

I haven’t read all the 350 posts, nor have I read any Strauss beyond potted summaries, and from the posts just above, I see a pov. like this has probably already been dissected…but once written it calls for posting..
Philosophical, moral and political ideas or analyses constructed by ‘thinkers’ seep into the culture. People adopt them, or consider them natural, or experience them as part of a conventional world view. I’m always amazed, for example, when I see and hear young women (but not elderly ones) in France using a model of personhood and relations that is heavily Freudian, while saying, if questioned directly, either that Freud is dépassé or has been ‘proved wrong’. It is quite astonishing.
In some circumstances, people will seek out justification, corrobation, or amplification for these views. The French girls will refuse to read Freud; yet, a Fascist aquaintance of mine learnt English to be able to read Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry in the original.
My experience of politicians though is that they almost never go this autodidact and self-confirmatory route. They simply adopt, or steal (steal in the sense that they cherry-pick and de-contextualise) what suits them. And what suits them is not ideas, but slogans or mantras that either serve their group’s cohesiveness – we all believe in X, we know that is so – or may be impressively served up to a gullible public – some principle or bit o’ theory that can fly, hopefully elegantly. When they use these snippets as rationalisations they are so poker-faced earnest, pious even, that one can feel the yawning gap between a healthy pragmatism (always pointed to a desired result) and the ‘excuse’ imported from another plane.
In short, politicians don’t much like other people’s ideas, except insofar as they have to know what they are to accomodate to them in some measure (in democracies) and never (?) use them for inspiration. Their inspirations today come from sociologists, publicists, media people, pollsters, and psychologists. They may turn to experts such as economists or medicos for advice on ‘issues’, but that is it. They are practical.
(Cultural differences exist of course: I was thinking of Swiss politicians and the neo-cons..)
I suppose an author like Strauss (there are others too) provides some fleshing out of supremacist and authoritarian ideology, but exactly what, and how is that genuinely important? (sorry – I downloaded the posts and *will* read them..)
Look at the key text today (US) — the Bible. Now, I may be accused of mixing up apples and oranges, as the Bible is hardly political theory. However, as a core or key text for the evangelists, a community that has both infiltrated and been co-opted by the middle and higher reaches of Gvmt, it deserves concentrated attention. However, no-one is reading the Bible to understand G. Bush, the neo-cons, or the Kooky Christians. It is obvious that whatever Biblical message is contained in this work has been perverted and transformed to suit the mindset of a small section of the population that is experiencing loss of a life-style (community, prestige, income, power- control of land and production-), providing a rallying point, and, most importantly a sort of ‘sociological’ explanation for the peculiar shift to the Right and the incredible, unreal, Republican victories in the urns. (Urns? Ouch, I meant in the innards of Diebold machines..)
-bit of a ramble… 🙂

Posted by: Blackie | May 6 2005 15:38 utc | 7

oopos. thompson died I think in early 90s. That is, some on english academic left, like Williams, developed Marxism. One of the the really great books is Marxism and Literature.

Posted by: slothrop | May 6 2005 15:44 utc | 8

Greetings!
While other Urggghians prefer astro-surfing near ZBX-pop-Hoik, I, Urgggh-Argh!, have chosen to come here.
(I admit, I am not very good at astro-surfing.)
Yes, I would like to say hello all of you here at the Strauss-Marx Let’s Get It On convivium.
My reason for writing is that your conversations with each other, it seems to this alien, demonstrate everything you are trying to say about everything that is not your conversations with each other.
Right.
It is the tradition of my planet to offer advice. And so, with the confidence only an Urggghian knows, I declare the following to be indisputably and irrevocably after the preceding unless you are reading upside down, in which case,
!EMOCLEW:
Harrumph. Therefore:
1) If the world appears a vale of misery, I recommend Buddhism.
7) Write about cheese instead of earning money. And learn to knit.
4) A well-written sentence is a thing of beauty.
5) Beware of the over-developed ego. That’s what egos do: they over-develop themselves. This makes them sad. (See Buddhism, above.)
(Urggghians prefer to glow in the dark.)
Oopsie. A black hole.
17.3) There is no.

Posted by: Urgggh-Argh! | May 6 2005 15:55 utc | 9

Slothrop: “I don’t find this language in Braudel” is not refuted by “the very basis of Braudel’s research about capital is justified by Marx’s m-c-m’.” Narrow question: is the jargon required? Narrow answer: Apparently not. Next question: then why do you insist on it?

Posted by: citizen k | May 6 2005 16:33 utc | 10

Thank you.

Posted by: beq | May 6 2005 16:33 utc | 11

Young Marx • engineering but not on authority…
Fellow citizen – thank you for your temperate reply. Let us consider this and see what sort of ground we are standing on.
Language of the discussion: You and others have mentioned “Marxist jargon”, and although I can accept as a topic of discussion that root and branch of Marxian technical vocabularies might possibly be all jargon, I wonder if you can appreciate how difficult it is to discuss this possibility in the way you seem to have proposed. It’s as if you asked me: “So, when did you stop beating your wife?” If I answer that I do not beat my wife, the frame of the discussion is still citizen and whether or not he beats his wife. Rather unfair, no? You have also responded positively to Colman:

for many of us economic arrangements should be treated as engineering issues, not as matters of doctrine.

Here I think we have our common ground. I agree with you. Let’s agree that economic arrangements should be treated as engineering issues, not matters of doctrine, and so they are to be allowed their technical vocabularies. And yet, as citizens(!), we are not absolved of the responsibility to choose trusty engineers and check up on them. I take it you do not trust just any engineer, but that you expect them to demonstrate understanding of how the economy works before you agree to grant them faith and credit as experts. That is, I take it you have standards the engineers must meet.
As a disciplined field of knowledge, Marx’s later writings were precisely a critique of the technical vocabulary of economic engineers, one designed to show that the political economists of the 19th century were unreliable, untrustworthy purveyors of a doctrine and a jargon that earned its social support because it was so effective at bamboozling. So, it should be clear that Marx committed himself quite publically to agreeing with you and Colman – economic arrangements should be treated as engineering issues, not as matters of doctrine.. Marx’s main body of theory is designed to prove that economic arrangements should most definitely be treated as technical matters, and not doctrine. Of course, just because you and Colman may agree with Marx on this one point does not make you Marxists, but it does provide us with a starting point. Will you stand by your earlier assertion?
If so, I am going to have to ask you to come clean. Do you really accept nothing on authority? I doubt it. I hope I don’t sound disrespectful, but the fact is that most people who learn math, for example, accept it as true but do not have any idea how to reason through the processes to understand how mathematics is true, sound, and reliable. For most people, math is true – they are doctrinaire about it. I specifically made the decision at the outset of college not to figure it out, but to accept the doctrine. The only way to actually understand something is to commit to its details long enough to figure out what it’s worth. I am presenting Marx to you as someone whose writings might be extremely valuable to a part of your project here – to treat economic arrangements scientifically, not on blind faith. Please tell me something about how you critique economics so that you follow the engineers, not the snake handlers.
So, I am asking you to respond to two things here.
Did Marx write as if he were trying to make economic arrangements less “faith-based”?
First do you accept the possibility that Marx’s mature writings (basically, everything after his 20s) stated as a primary goal treating economic arrangements as a kind of scientific engineering. If not, why not? And may I suggest that its only fair to base your reasons on something Marx actually wrote (and wrote after 30, that is, after he actually experienced an aborted revolution and committed to your goal of scientific/engineering economic arrangements). After all, I am doing you the same courtesy of working from things you actually wrote.
What are your methods for weeding out economic myths and deceptions?
Second, please tell us how you tell the difference between doctrine and ‘engineering’? Perhaps you and Marx will turn out to share some characteristics here.
Fair play. I’ll answer your question.
Which brings me to the point you asked me to address, my advocacy of a theorist and a vocabulary that, as you said, “many of us associate with both terror and stiffling bureaucracy.” Yes, the associations many make with Marx are a drag on the discussion. But the reasons for that association have been alluded to in the prior thread and and they suggest reasons to come back to Marx. Just as the Son-of-Strauss neo-cons constantly invoke the Founding Fathers of the U.S. without the least intention of following their lead, the Stalins, Derzhinskys and Ceaucescus invoked Marx with purely Straussian style intentions. One reason this is such a productive thread is that Marx’s disrepute is in large part a product of Straussian style con men who know to gravitate to gold, and exchange it for an equal volume of fool’s gold, or counterfeit money. Strauss’s bad money drives out the good kind. Or to abandon all technical terms:
Why is it that criminals rob banks? Because that’s where the money is.
So between the con men who replace critique with cant (it is the cant you object to, yes?) and the hostility to a theory that criticizes capitalism for destroying people, Marx’s reputation is marked, hunted even. Now, I’m not asking you to agree. My reply is, rather: if this analogy between stolen gold and Marxian critique were plausible and likely, would it be reasonable grounds for continuing the discussion long enough to see where the gold might be in this Marxian stuff?

Posted by: citizen | May 6 2005 16:49 utc | 12

citizen k
Because Marx (like Weber and Durkheim and Parsons even) are systems theorists aiming for description of social totality. Thus, Braudel’s research (to give only one example) is not only guided by totality, but by the theorized contradictions of capitalist development. To be sure, Braudel showed how herky-jerky this development was. However, that’s where the influence of Marx on Braudel ends. Braudel, at least in the three volume Civilization does not intend explanation of how and why these contradictions play out beyond the “kondretieff waves”.
This is all to say, Marx, in the example of Braudel, plays an enormous influence in terms of a methodology of research. To acknowledge this debt is merely a metter of intellectual honesty. To say reference to this debt is “apparently” unneeded is obviously a mistake. Making this kind of “source” error, as our marginalized friend razor says, is dangerous: such ignorance permits nazis to read nietzsche in a preferred way. Want to avoid such disasters.

Posted by: slothrop | May 6 2005 16:53 utc | 13

citizen k
I’ll try to explain what I suspect is your obsession. Habermas splits modernity into three basic methodological traditions: action-theoretic (all about the individual, symbolic interactionism), systems-theoretic (grand theory), communications-theoretic (Mead, “linguistic turn”).
You want to dismiss systems theory because of a fear of “authority”/reification/myth. This would be a mistake, because, in the effort to do so, the sort of postmodern thing detectable in your posts here, the antitheory threatens to become another reification/”authority.” What can happen, is this faith in the individual, or even in communicative interaction, this relativism of meaning/truth, can be a way to vindicate the most insidious totalitarianism.
And no, I’m not throwing out names in order to fuel an ego. I’m “anonymous.” The purpose in doing so is to maximize the chance to connect to the knowledge of others.

Posted by: slothrop | May 6 2005 17:09 utc | 14

One more way to understand what citizen k may be doing. The problem is a kind of “performative contradiction” characteristic of someone like Foucault. I’m pretty sure citizen k would condemn reason/rationality as an “authority” worth the effort of continuous deconstruction. I’m down w/ that, but not as way to kid ourselves reason does not exist, because to say reason “does not exist” is a reasonable claim. This performative contradiction demonstrates why systems-theory, morality, reason, are relevant. As for Marx, the systems theory demonstrating the logics of capitalist expansion aim for a condemnation of a kind of authority which should be replaced by another; an authority distributing authority, in the best case, the distribution of power guided by an authority sanctioned to do so. The tautology is unavoidable, something discerned w/ great acuity by Marx. We should not, cannot, entertain belief that systems of social integration are avoidable. In this, the rightwing libertarian makes the same error as the postmodern, citizen k.
To touch on Strauss: seems clear to me acknowledgment of the system is captured in his illiberalism: just control the little bastards with myth, why we elites rule. Strauss uses reason as a weapon.

Posted by: slothrop | May 6 2005 17:34 utc | 15

Obviously no historian post-Marx can work the same way. But evolutionary biologists don’t either use the language of Darwin or feel bound to keep to the limits of his original view. Reading Braudel or a much more limited history like Eyes on the Prize (great book), anyone who has read Marx and understood something about historiography will see the influence and what has changed since Carlyle and Gibbon. But my initial point was that these historians don’t need to speak of “dialectical materialism”, or otherwise use the specialist language of Marx and some of his followers – indeed, Engels Peasant War is remarkably jargon free as is 18th Brumaire or the Civil War in France (although neither of these are anywhere near as sophisticated as Braudel). Some of this is clearly just personal preference – fans of Hegel, Bourbaki, and Lacan think differently than people who prefer Neitchze, Ramanujan, and Ed Abbey, but some of it is just resistance to linguistic colonization by repressive and opaque language that, by its nature, subjugates wild reality and sends it into the ordered barracks of some ideological reservation.

Posted by: citizen k | May 6 2005 17:47 utc | 16

basically, I merely wanted to augment citizen’s keen, simple explanations of the integration of practice and theory (“praxis” for those who dig jargon).
“We all got opinions/Where do they come from? … Each statement seems like a natural fact…” from Gang of Four “Why Theory”

Posted by: slothrop | May 6 2005 17:50 utc | 17

Citizen: Bakunin, for all his faults, had an astonishing accomplishment in social sciences – a correct predictive analysis. He writes that (1) Marx has set the study of economics and history on a scientific path making a major advance in how we understand the world and (2) Marx’s works are flawed in a way that will lead to the creation of despotisms of the intellectuals&clerks. This analysis seems to me to be fundamentally validated by experiment on both counts. Perhaps it deserves a little more attention.
I don’t believe Colman and I are agreeing with Marx on the issue of engineering, because Marx claims that history must produce a rule by proletariat and an end of the market economy – disgusing a moral judgement (or wild guess) as a scientific imperative. I don’t have any idea what History or Jesus or The Market or “requires”, and don’t see it as our duty to usher in that required state, but am perfectly happy to jury-rig something that works reasonably well. Crusades seem to me to be uniformly unpleasant in result and if some implacable impersonal unstoppable force wants something, it doesn’t need our assistance – being unstoppable and all.
Finally on the matter of jargon. My main complaint here is that leftist intellectuals are ceding the battle to the right. The right produces the breezy popularizations of Fukyama and that odious English twerp who wrote Cash Nexus. Even Horowitz’s writing got more acessible, if no more sensible, when he joined the right. The leftist academics
produce dense tracts read by the other 20 leftist academics. Perhaps that’s because even in the most scholarly works, like Braudels trilogy, without jargon one is forced to confront the uncertainty and irregularity of the world as it actually is. But whatever the cause, it sucks. If you really have some answers, explain them in clear simple terms and get on Oprah or Canal Plus to do some marketing. People only turn to crap like the Left Behind series because they don’t see better answers and it’s a poor excuse to blame the media in the age of the internet.

Posted by: citizen k | May 6 2005 20:06 utc | 18

Citizen
“Razor:
I have responded to your complaints with the most basic and jargon free account of a key marxist difference, and you ignore the issue. When confronted with an actual idea that demands you think coherently and in front of people where we can see what you have to offer, have responded with mere accusations and made no effort to relate them to the ideas you pretend to critique. You have not offered anything.”
Let’s review.
1. This is a thread on Billmon’s excellent book report on a book on Leo Strauss, putting Strauss in an intellectual context in today’s predicament.
2. In thread comments there will be no rigorous analysis of the infinite issues that dwell in that book report. There will be some interaction between people on the thread in close to real time, in which the most interesting thing, to me, is that such a thread is even socially possible.
3. The thread has taken off on a tangent connected to the noun and the proper noun marx, presumably, Karl Marx.
4. I, and apparently others, believe this tangent may be fundamental. The comment section is not a place I can lay out a comprehensive discussion of my own perspective – even if I had a determinate one.
5. One concrete example of my concern: Gary Becker gets a noble prize for work that I believe at its core is irresponsibly and dangerously dishonest about what I call source of identity questions. I believe that the reason he – and legions of others – get away with this is that work connected with the noun marx has ghettoized source of identity questions so no person of intellecutal authority is capable of effectively challenging patent nonsense. Win by defautl.
6. I want patent nonsense challenged.
7. If I were master of the universe there would be close reading of all the great texts,as some things cannot be learned except by rigorous reading. And of Marx, absolutely, but, no more than Mencius. But I am not master of the universe nor aspiring to be, and the use of books is endless, and much study is worrisome.
8. I have attacked the premises of those doing “Marx”. No one has to accept those premises.
9. Citizen is oblivious to the fact the fundamental premises have been attacked, and assumes I must acccept those premises to paricipated, then condemns me for not accepting those premises.
10. A superior intellect would recognize, in spite of my sloppy writing, that the premises have been attacked, and make whatever peace they choose to with that attack.
11. A few examples of premise attack that flank marxism. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. (though marx may have defender there.) Festinger on cognitive dissonance. Albert Bandura on Bobo dolls. Antonio Damasio on – my terms – the non existence of rationality. Stanley Millgram on authority. Tooby & Cosmides on the Standard Social Science Model. D.C. Dennett on theory of mind. Janet Astington and smarties. And the earlier references I made to population biology, predator prey (the Red Queen hypothesis) and immunology, are also all fundamental steps in knowledge about the human condition that flank marxism.
12. Marx did not read EVERYTHING he read the cannon of his day. He did not read Chu Hsi. He did not critically read the most critically read work of all time, the Bhagavata. And he certainly did not read any of the work I reference in 11. My suspicion is that if Marx were alive today, he would be another one of those mathematical economists, because that is the watering hole of today’s scientific materialists. I understand others would reject that conclusion.
13. My conclusion. There is a turf war going on, and it shows up on this thread just like it shows up whenever Israel comes up in foreign policy, and it shows up whenever anyone questions the Catholic Church. I have zero interest in these turf wars. I only want to know that Becker and Strauss, as well as the whole SSM crowd, are challenged on source of identity questions and have a stop put to their cheating, which is a core problem. Based on the record I have zero hope that those who defend Marx turf will help, or, even listen.
14. A gal who doesn’t believe in evolution kindly went to the northern and southern bonobo colonies in San Diego with me. She thought I would enjoy talking to her friend, egghead to egghead, about why there was a flood and there is no evolution. I didn’t talk to her friend about anti-diluvian theories. Her friend pointed out I was not a reasonable person. Perhaps. The incident comes to mind.
15. But what I really want to say, is, what I find completely American, and closer to my heart of the matter than any comprehensive philosohy, that is I suspect of the Bakersfieldian tradition:
I was fighting everybody,
I was fighting everything
But the only one
That I hurt was me
I got society’s blood
Running down my face
Somebody help me
Get outta this place
How could someone’s
Bad luck last so long
Until I realized
That I was wrong
Social Distortion. I Was Wrong.

Posted by: razor | May 6 2005 20:19 utc | 19

Razor:
I want patent nonsense challenged too, and I appreciate the poem.

Gary Becker gets a Nobel prize for work that I believe at its core is irresponsibly and dangerously dishonest about what I call source of identity questions. I believe that the reason he – and legions of others – get away with this is that work connected with the noun marx has ghettoized source of identity questions so no person of intellectual authority is capable of effectively challenging patent nonsense.

I am having a hard time understanding what you mean by “source of identity problems.” If you don’t mind, could you also explain what you mean by saying that work connected with “marx” has ghettoized these questions so that no person of intellectual authority can effectively challenge patent nonsense? I’d like to see what you mean.
I’m also interested in your take on some of that list of challenging perspectives, but could you please respond to above questions first?

Posted by: citizen | May 6 2005 20:37 utc | 20

P.S. enjoyed story #14 and its moral immensely. very fine to begin to get to know you.

Posted by: citizen | May 6 2005 20:40 utc | 21

slothrop
i think the gang of four’s song is related to an essay of mao tse tung called ‘where do correct ideas come from’ – somethink like that – a text i would sorely love to fedex to razor & citizen k

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 6 2005 20:42 utc | 22

Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?

They come from social practice, and from it alone; they come from three kinds of social practice, the struggle for production, the class struggle and scientific experiment. It is man’s social being that determines his thinking.
…

Posted by: b | May 6 2005 21:11 utc | 23

ô b
you & nugget are such good researchers that as soon as one breathes here – the connection is found – i was going through my shelves looking for the essay to see if it was the basis of the song & i think so
of course there’s nothing there to please razor/citizen k & timka – i think there’s enough there to condemn me for a comintern or two
& of course i’m in league with the communist movement in all its aspect – well since 1848 at least & perhaps longer – i believe rod stewart was alive then & singing popular ballads – certainly i’m responsible for all forms of secret police since that great polish citizen count derzhinsky sent orders to ludwig wittgenstein to get the english lads in form so that the british & american secret services could just be branch offices of moscow control
of course every & all tendencies, every discpline in the social & human sciences created by marxism are my full responsibility & all their errors, mine, obviouslly
but yes the chinese fatboy had a way wih words – not bad for a librarian

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 6 2005 21:31 utc | 24

can’t help myself :
“Man’s knowledge makes another leap through the test of practice. This leap is more important than the previous one. For it is this leap alone that can prove the correctness or incorrectness of the first leap, i.e., of the ideas, theories, policies, plans or measures formulated in the course of reflecting the objective external world. There is no other way of testing truth. Furthermore, the one and only purpose of the proletariat in knowing the world is to change it.”

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 6 2005 21:34 utc | 25

I don’t believe Colman and I are agreeing with Marx on the issue of engineering, because Marx claims that history must produce a rule by proletariat and an end of the market economy – disguising a moral judgement (or wild guess) as a scientific imperative.

These claims of Marx you mention are not his premises, they are his theories. I am asking you to compare premises with Marx to see where we actually agree, and then try to find where we disagree. I think it is already clear that we disagree, and it would be more useful and informative to disagree about the same thing.

Finally on the matter of jargon. My main complaint here is that leftist intellectuals are ceding the battle to the right.

I share your concern. But you have directed me both to regard economics as engineering (not doctrine), and to dispense with technical terms. So, which is it?

Posted by: citizen | May 6 2005 21:40 utc | 26

Ah the Great Helmsman, hero of so many French academics and of Nixon too. He (Ch’in-Shih-huang, the first emperor of China) only buried alive 460 scholars, while we buried 46,000. In our suppression of the counterrevolutionaries, did we not kill some counterrevolutionary intellectuals? I once debated with the democratic people: You accuse us of acting like Ch’in-shih-huang, but you are wrong; we surpass him 100 times”. first Speech to the Party Congress, May 17, 1958.
Razor: People who like Mao are not going to joing your crusade against Gary Becker, a fellow spirit.

Posted by: citizen k | May 6 2005 21:48 utc | 27

Citizen:
Your first point eludes me. There are obviously two aspects to Marx’s work. First, he describes the mechanism of the class struggle. Then he asserts that there is a purpose to history – the Hegel-in-sabots triumph of the working class. The second seems an attempt to smuggle teleology into analysis. If we simply look at the class analysis, at the mode of attempting to understand history as a real-world process, then we have a view that is certainly compatible with “economics as engineering”. But the second component is not.
On your second point, there is a difference between technical language and jargon. A differential equation may be the only precise way to describe a surface. On the other hand, the scientific sounding language used by scientologists is jargon. So I’m open to illustrations of why a certain form of expression is technical language that adds precision and not jargon that disguises nonsense. Again, I note that the exceptionally sophisticated historical analysis found in Braudel or Thompson requires very little beyond plain language and ordinary mathematics.

Posted by: citizen k | May 6 2005 22:15 utc | 28

but neither are braudel or thompson as tough as they need to be
& ever since his attack on althusser all the little scholars who found his presence difficult & who never had any real sympathy for thompson’s project – get a hard on in their francophobia
i repeat you might think it is the height of nonsense to use both thompson & althusser. i do not
& as for the helmsman – give it a break

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 6 2005 22:23 utc | 29

Then he asserts that there is a purpose to history – the Hegel-in-sabots triumph of the working class.
This is so crass and horrible. I realize this is the standard issue dismissal of Hegel and Marx (“teleological” “soteriological”!).

For Marx, Hegel’s Logic is ‘the money of the spirit,’ the speculative thought-value of man and nature. This means that in bourgeois society ‘man’ and nature, and body and mind, are separated and reconnected through the relation of private exchange.” p. 6 Hiroshi Uchida. (1988). Marx’s Grundrisse & Hegel’s Logic. ed. Terrell Carver. New York: Routledge.

There’s way more to the relation of Marx and Hegel than some devotion to “teleology.”
If this is what you (finally!?) discover in Marx as “totalizing,” then we are common ground. I don’t think anyone here would seriously defend Marx’s Hegelianism.

Posted by: slothrop | May 6 2005 22:33 utc | 30

…defending Marx’s “Hegelianism” based on this trite reproduction of of what “Hegelianism” means.

Posted by: slothrop | May 6 2005 22:35 utc | 31

I am enjoying the debate because it has been such a long time since I’ve had so much fun listening in to a good discussion with reasoned disagreement, citing so many works I have not encountered since graduate school. I picked up Drury’s 1989 book on Strauss and more interesting to me, the book of Strauss’ more cordial correspondence with Eric Voegelin, Faith and Political Philosophy (1934-1964) (Penn State U Press, 1993, Emberley and Cooper trans and eds.). So far I’ve been fascinated by Drury and have enjoyed the letters, but will get to the essays commenting on them sometime next week after finals are done and I get my knee worked on (surgery). I plan on reading a few of Strauss’s works between terms. Not that I have all that much time. I knocked six books out of place in my summer reading list, and will have to choose from among his works on the classics (Aristotle and Plato this time) to make it work. My field is ancient history and church history and I am fascinated by Voegelin’s ideas of a shift towards Gnosticism in politics (which he does not support). But we’ll see how much of this is relevant. I’m reading Drury’s 1989 book on Strauss, not the current one eliciting commentary. I’ll read that last, after I have a decent background in Strauss own works. I know said I wouldn’t, but your conversation has seduced to the dark side.

Posted by: diogenes | May 6 2005 22:56 utc | 32

neither razor, nor timka, nor citizen k & certainly not i are in a position to dehegelianise hegel. he was a giant. we are not. marx too a giant. your so called church of dna is the whirlpool of sencondry thought, of primal impulse & of instinctual stupidity
we would do well to relativise & take alabama’s counsel to take into account magnitude & their magnitude is beynd question.
your church is still on the edge of primitive science & it is you who find the need to totalise the opinions of a citizen a slothrop & myslef who most probably share as convergent opinions as you will not allow yourself to imagine
your rhetorique is undergraduate & you know it. you know old bolshies will always bite

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 6 2005 22:57 utc | 33

Re Citizen:
“by “source of identity problems.” If you don’t mind, could you also explain what you mean by saying that work connected with “marx” has ghettoized these questions so that no person of intellectual authority can effectively challenge patent nonsense?”
Thanks for believing I have a brief answer to one of the choke points of the age I have worried for decades. I don’t. It is a twenty hour job just to assemble a nice for instance. That’s the way with the real work rather than real time fun.
But it is clear the key to the con occurs whenever a choice is made, because the choice made depends upon the identity of the person making the choice, which, depends upon ….. well, certainly on things the cheaters won’t acknowledge and will not tolerate others exploring.
For examples, go to posner and beckers blog. (There is a fun mocking thread out there about moon men and the utility of going to war with them, on Crooked Timber as I recall.)
Then, citizen, give your marxist explantion (like religion, each so self identified has his own) of the source of identity of the choice maker who chooses, say, a washer and dryer over a third child. Then, let me know who you can sell that explanation to and what assumptions were accepted to make the sale. Or, let me know who has effectively challenged Becker on the choice con. The closest I know is “autistic economics” which drifts off into the usual blather associated with the left.
More productive, in the short term, if you are unfamiliar with Social Distortion, get Bad Luck, and, I Was Wrong, and play with volume at 11.
Citizen k
the tight writing brings the former host to mind. Yes, Mao and Becker work the same tradition though Mao is in a different class, so, probably some deaf ears here. Strange beings, humans. But, I, more likely than not out of defect, have hope that the source problem, if fairly addressed, is quite solvable, and the major barrier is now intellectual inertia and provincialism rather than capacity. I can just feel it.
Regarding Mao quotes, Mr Zimmerman reported,
You were telling him about Buddha, you were telling him about Mohammed
in the same breath.
You never mentioned one time the Man who came and died a criminal’s death.
For close reading, if you have to choose, go with the synoptic gospels and Quelle (source?) over marx any day of the week.

Posted by: razor | May 6 2005 23:02 utc | 34

————-
“And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic anatomy of classes. What I did that was new was to prove:
(1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with the particular, historical phases in the development of production
(2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
(3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.
Karl Marx
Letter to Weydemeyer
March 5, 1852
—————
So my understanding of Marx is, as noted here, poor. (1) is not at issue right now, but (2) and (3) seem to come from the sky, and not from the source of correct ideas at all. In any case, (2) and (3) conflict with the “engineering view of economics”.

Posted by: citizen k | May 6 2005 23:04 utc | 35

rg:
I have overshoot the mark if my rhetoric is quite undergraduate, I aim for high school, though the ambition that exceeds my grasp is plain.
And your riff on DNA is just silly, as well as anti intellectual and disrespectful to the wonder of life, not to mention anti scientific materialist. The conceit that what you cite gives you authority …. When I was a minor my university exam question from a maoist was a Mao quote on chicken and eggs to explain away by analogy why China was not at the stage of development for a revolution from contractions that real marxism required, Mao being, at best, an outlier. But, I moved on. So did China to the immense relief of its people. Perhaps you can find the quote on your shelf.

Posted by: razor | May 6 2005 23:13 utc | 36

If differential equations is the precise way to describe a surface, then “surplus-value” is the precise way to describe the surface of social causes for our modern (“capitalist” – same thing) society’s determination to transform the the hell out of the world by “producing” it as values more and more, without any limit except failure to reproduce capitalism.
Is destructive acceleration a less relevant concern than the surface of a sphere? Is it nonsense to think that the social is real and can cause such disasters to happen? If the social is real and dangerous, why not try to measure it? And if it can be measured, would you expect to do so with terms designed to describe empirical things? Society is not itself empirical , but it is real, and quite knowable by reasoning (gravity is a similar case). This is not less complex than actually precisely describing the surface of a sphere.
Before you respond about my ‘ridiculous’ definition of “society” as real-but-unempirical, consider that the “numbers” essential to do differential calculus are likewise real but not empirical. Such logics are basic to scientific thought.

Posted by: citizen | May 6 2005 23:25 utc | 37

razor
you have a habit of saying of anything not in accord with your own propositions as silly -i am complemented as you well know- over 350 posts – & anything that is at all outside your own totalisation is silly
thus you conflate hegel with feurbach with marx with dietzgen with mao with louis – with just about anybody you care to name
strauss becomes schmitt becomes heidegger becomes whatever you want it to be
& as far as history is concerned – well you’ve covered the waterfront there – from genesis to the coming apocalypse – with everything bad, real bad coming from the reds of course, who else because kim il sung sprouted from hegels head somewhere in your thinking. & so on
your riff on dna was pompous, totalising & was the easy shoplifting of a certain anglo saxon scholarship that needs to wear its learning heavily disguised as speaking for the common man, undergraduate or high school student as you pointed out
sorry i remind you of primal scenes at university life – but …well….that little tragedy is of no consequence
to quote zimmerman
“what was it you wanted?”
as with the gnostic texts well i read them the same time you did when we were twelve & believed we were capable of being faust – ô it was so simple then

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 6 2005 23:35 utc | 38

(2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
(3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.

Isn’t this entirely in agreement with what I said about [a set social forces] tending toward there being no one left but “us” proletariats. What is unscientific (uncontrolled in an engineering fashion) about such a prediction?

Posted by: citizen | May 6 2005 23:38 utc | 39

Razor:
I resisted responding to the DNA bit because I once spent a long year as part of a research team working to debunk Shockley and Herrnstein’s DNA fundamentalist smears on racial minorities. Their fundamental deception turned on the fact that thought is not the same thing as brain matter, and they refused to deal with this.
So, the Church of DNA sounds awfully dangerous to me. My entire engagement with Marxism is an engagement with a science of the social, which has no empirical existence. It is simply causal factors based on empirical beings and the relations between them. Brains are empirical, but thought only partially so, if at all. Society, thoughts, gravity, and all other causal things are all real, even if not empirical. Does this sound strange? Without this idea you cannot understand how science works.

Posted by: citizen | May 6 2005 23:47 utc | 40

razor:
still trying to figure out what is an “identity problem”

Posted by: citizen | May 6 2005 23:49 utc | 41

citizen
i have waited a few days now for responses to your considered posts & i will not be surprised if i’m still waiting next week
i think for our friends – we all melt into one – if i am a little inflammatory is is only in response to what i can only interpret as a considered silence

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 6 2005 23:49 utc | 42

citizen, come on. Every thick family saga by a Russian is Tolstoyian, and every attempt to mimic scientific methods is scientific.
The mortal does not have the competence for the agenda you describe, much less mortal initiates.
And, step out of a plane at 15,000 feet to check if gravity is knowable by reasoning. Gravity is self enforcing without being named or mathematized.
If the claim is we are as a matter of fact embedded in a social world, well, yeah. But those trying to mathematize “society” are neo classical economists and social scientists, all of whom cheat on the source of identity question – society – if only because they cannot get their tools on it and sample the population and squeeze out statistical signifance with 95% confidence that the result isn’t random noise.
And as best I can tell, and I cannot even read the math, surplus value is where the mathematical economic materialists seem to have conceded the war is lost, and neo classical economics is turning out to be the true heir to the marxian “engineering” project. As is true of all the age definers, Marx was a Smithian more than a marxist, that is, his identity and his ambition and his methods were more defined by the tradition on which he trained and attempted to surmount that those who took him as their departure point.

Posted by: razor | May 6 2005 23:51 utc | 43

citizen
from where i sit – or rather bend(over bookshelves obviouslly) what you are saying is perfectly clear
the silence in response to it speaks – volumes

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 6 2005 23:52 utc | 44

razor
you really do have a sidney greenstreet quality – i really do. i like a man who likes a man……who
now marx was smithian & hegel i guess kojevian or whatever
if you are as freewheeling with your dna as with your philosophy then there must be some interesting forensic research to be done there

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 6 2005 23:56 utc | 45

O RGiap, how can you even indirectly raise the accusation of francophobia to such a devotee of the Annales school? In retaliation, I will present you with my favorite Mao quote: “Comrades get to the point. You don’t have to take off your pants to fart.”
And on that note. Good night.

Posted by: citizen k | May 7 2005 0:05 utc | 46

citizen
this is a kick. My off the cuff ‘church of the DNA’ is suspect because of Shockley, and, I assume, the whole eugenics things as well from the turn of the last century, yet, let’s tip toe around confusing the idea with the actions when it comes to Marx???????? Man on man oh man. It turns out we are also on different sides of the sociobiology debate of the 80’s, and you are with Mr. Gould, while I think Mr. Wilson was closer to the mark.
if “identity” doesn’ work for you, go with, why those who choose, choose the way they choose. You tell me why.
rg: you are as inerrant as a latter day pope. God bless you. The wonderful thing about the snyoptic gospels and Quelle is that they are so un gnostic, so dirt and flesh and blood and no theology but do the right thing and love, and, I had the good fortune to come to them late, for which I am grateful, as it made clear with no sunday school to confuse the issue that there was no one like Jesus. That stuff stands the test of time.
I have overstayed my welcome. Godspeed.

Posted by: razor | May 7 2005 0:07 utc | 47

razor:
yes exactly, gravity causes things. That makes it real not empirical. That which is empirical is experienced, and we only have 5 senses. Tell me, which sense do you use to feel gravity, touch? That is not gravity, that is the floor holding you up. Like society, it is not empirical, but oh so dangerous whether you think about it or not. But yes, I am not subscribing to any mathematical determinism of details, rest assured.
I’m very excited that we’ve agreed on something again.
About surplus-value: I have not read your authors, nor can I figure how to think of Marx as more Smith than Marx. Marx outmoded Smith, and because the cat was out of the bag it became essential for the field to gut Smith of his “political-economy” and pretend that all that Smith was ever talking about was “economics”. If you are interested in seeing “surplus-value” well used, see Moishe Postone. By picking up on the question of time, he uses surplus-value in ways that have answered a number of questions for me about how social control works over farther and farther distances in modern times (one of my big questions as a historian).

Posted by: citizen | May 7 2005 0:11 utc | 48

razor & citizen k
ô no! i though we were just about to form a popular front!
we have only to argue with alabama a little on the unwiseness of his advocacy of leo the blind & to suggest strongly to diogenes some other reading matter
& citizen k – that is such a beautiful quote – it cannot be surpassed – not by any stretch of the imagination – or pants for that matter
you are always welcome in this house – just don’t take mao too literally or biologically for that matter

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 7 2005 0:13 utc | 49

citizen
could you offer a few suggestions with the moishe postone

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 7 2005 0:15 utc | 50

Citizen: If you accept, as an article of faith or otherwise that propositions (2) and (3) are correct, you cannot agree with Colman’s “engineering/what-works” approach to economics (and I hope I am getting Colman’s point correctly) because you already believe you know the one true answer. Do you believe that Marx did in fact prove those propositions? I don’t see a proof or even a plausibility argument.

Posted by: citizen k | May 7 2005 0:21 utc | 51

Good old EO Wilson, the guy who wants us to learn how to act more like the ants. Yes, I took his course – very plausible. But Gould actually made me think. Penguin Knees… that was a good one.
Razor – sorry if I seemed to call you a eugenicist. I qualified with personal history so you would understand if I let my points come out too sharply. But more importantly, I explained my grounds for disagreement. It seems you’ll never let me know what this source question was. Did anyone else get it?
R’giap, thanks for the asides. I too have been waiting for those answers, and I noticed that clear explanation does not seem to be something they wished to get involved in.

if “identity” doesn’ work for you, go with, why those who choose, choose the way they choose.

Is he asking me to theorize rational choice theory socially? Seems rather rude since the whole point of rational choice theory is to pretend to study society without getting any more social than George Berkeley would sanction.

Posted by: citizen | May 7 2005 0:30 utc | 52

If you accept, as an article of faith or otherwise that propositions (2) and (3) are correct, you cannot agree with Colman’s “engineering/what-works” approach to economics (and I hope I am getting Colman’s point correctly) because you already believe you know the one true answer.

Okay, trying to understand the logic here (correct me if I get it wrong) First, a caveat: me finding these propositions true does not = me finding these propositions to be the one true answer. But once I’ve cleared that up, I seem to have erased your explanation of why it is that I cannot agree with Colman. Could you re-explain it so I can understand?
The plausibility argument is that the proletariat population is growing. As I understand the term proletariat, it means people without the means of production by which to support themselves (to reproduce), people who must sell their labor to get by. Far as I can see, all those farmers, and a lot of those entrepeneurs of a century ago are now mostly proletariats, wage laborers. What’s so implausible? What that I say here is dogmatic?
The proof? Well for that you and I would both have to study. Heck, I can’t even prove that 2+2=4.

Posted by: citizen | May 7 2005 0:46 utc | 53

rememberinggiap:
What I’ve read of Moishe Postone’s and have on hand are
Time, Labor, and Social Domination: a reinterpretation of Marx’s critical theory1996 (1993 hardback)
his major book
“Critique and Historical Transformation” in Historical Materialism 12.3 pp. 53-72
It’s a good introduction to all his work, and this entire issue of HM is devoted to critique of his book. funny cover too.
i would very much appreciate hearing your thoughts if you read any of it.

Posted by: citizen | May 7 2005 0:53 utc | 54

citizen
i surely will,thank you

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 7 2005 2:36 utc | 55

Citizen: I think you are using a sleight of hand to conceal the failure of Marx’s predictions. Marx did not predict merely that the wage economy would expand world wide, he stated explicitly that he had “proved” the imminent coming of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and then a second social change. He was exceptionally clear about what he meant by this dictatorship, clear about the locus of change – in the most advanced capitalist countries, quite clear that the workers in those countries would be impoverished as the profit rates dropped, strong in his assertion that labor unions would fail to raise wages, and although he didn’t set a date, he diagnosed capitalism as being in its last stages. In sum, he was wrong. In contrast, his opponent Bakunin, predicated (a) that the revolutionary actions would take place on the periphery, and that (b) the application of the marxist model would lead to repression and terror. It’s all very well to claim that later generations of Marxists have advanced the theory, but the if you can’t see why a claimed, trumpeted, insisted on, “proof” of a falsity is a serious problem, you will have to keep telling yourself that the disrepute of Marxism is due to bad press from the capitalists.

Posted by: citizen k | May 7 2005 16:17 utc | 56

Well, after reading that lot, I don’t even know if I could possibly agree with me. I certainly don’t believe Marx on (2) or (3), at least not in the sense that I understand it to be normally interpreted.
However, I will freely admit that I am guided here by assorted economic readings rather than a close study of Marx himself. I’ll get to that, but I have this thesis to rewrite first. Marx seems to me to be an author to approach via his disciples rather than by a direct route. I don’t think he appreciates people just ringing his doorbell without making an appointment.
As for Marx being wrong, well he was, in some parts. So was Einstein. So was Newton. So was everyone. His criticism of laissez-faire capitalism is pretty damn sharp though.

Posted by: Colman | May 7 2005 16:26 utc | 57

That’s a fair assessment by a anyone who admits no expertise about Marx, colman. Thanks.
The claim of teleology in Marx, followed by condemnation of Marx because the teleology fails, is a strawman. Over and over again, Marx insists something like this:

The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.–Manifesto

or this, from German Ideology:

It is ridiculous to suggest socialism will occur as the result of the collapse of capitalism, without the revolutionary provocation of workers. Without question, Marx’s theory of fetishism lays out how ideology of consumer “freedom” would conceal from mass consciousness the social relations of capitalism. The task of the left is to reveal such ideology, in order to expedite the confrontation of labor against capital. Nowhere, afaik, did Marx ever suggest such practical consciousness of social relations is “inevitable.”
What is “inevitable” is the inability for capitalism to overcome the contradictions of its mode of production. Detaining collapse has been made by a number of factors not anticipated by Marx: collective bargaining, welfare statism, militarism, etc., or indeed, the quite persistent way ideology reporoduces legitimation of capital. Yet, to sweep away Marx as a moribund error because of the failure of his “teleology” is thoroughly disingenuous.

Posted by: slothrop | May 7 2005 17:33 utc | 58

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.”–XI thesis on Feuerbach.
Sorry, didn’t preview.

Posted by: slothrop | May 7 2005 17:35 utc | 59

As far as the contradictions of capitalist development go, I think Billmon’s Chicken & Egg will explain how increasingly difficult the legitimation of capital now becomes. The problem of overaccumulation (surfeit of savings) is partly mitigated now by the circulation of excess capital to finance consumption in the West while immiserating Chinese and other workers. Who doubts the solution to this problem will require the Chinese workers to confront the capitalist overlordship of the CPC?
The more things change…

Posted by: slothrop | May 7 2005 17:45 utc | 60

Since the bright line on diminishing returns on investment had been crossed by me on this thread, I stayed away, but when I checked what citizen k had to say, i read this from citizen:
“Is he asking me to theorize rational choice theory socially? Seems rather rude since the whole point of rational choice theory is to pretend to study society without getting any more social than George Berkeley would sanction.”
As I live and breath. “He” (me this time) was responding to a challenge from citizen (that is to far off thread to have productively responded to) whereupon citizen asked He (me) to describe what He (me) meant by source of identity, a phrase I find obvious enough, but citizen found cognitively impenetrable.
John Doe make a choice. as citizen knows “rational choice” theory will explain that choice on its own sharply restricted terms. He (me) wants a precise articulation of why John Doe makes the choice John Doe makes. Such a precise articulation will be a refutation of Becker’s economic imperialism. (An imperialism shared by Marx, as k noted above I believe in the Mao reference.) Hard work, but couldn’t be simpler issue. I contend the issue is one of why John Doe has the identity he does, so the inquiry will be a detective story about the source of John Doe’s identity. I contend that one reason this hard work hasn’t been done is marxist blather shuts out effective responses.
Do it or don’t but leave out smug evasions about how some minor academic orthodoxies of the day will either factor the problem into the terms it is comfortable with, or punt, avoids the daily human reality. Anyone who can sling the shit on hegemonies and false consciouness and superstructures and ephiphenomnon and reification and totalisation has the mental capacity to stick to the issue, but not the emotional commitment as their heart belongs to antoher.

Posted by: razor | May 7 2005 19:51 utc | 61

razor
You have not explained at all what you mean by “source.”

Posted by: slothrop | May 7 2005 20:07 utc | 62

Slothrop: Marx’s claim to have proved (2) and (3) is an assertion that history has a purpose and destination. No?
Citizen: sorry for the delay, but answering your questions takes time I have not had.
Razor: what do you mean by “source questions”? Do you mean, the source of desire? Why we want what we want?

Posted by: citizen k | May 7 2005 20:36 utc | 63

razor
I read all your comments, and I’ll admit there’s not much to work with. Not really fair to claim others like citizen are “smug.” To compare his comments to yours: his are vastly more substantive, without doubt.
I haven’t read the books you listed, but will keep them in mind for future enjoyment.

Posted by: slothrop | May 7 2005 20:38 utc | 64

citizen k
With all due respect, seriously, I cannot understand why someone of your impressive erudition would wheel out the old “teleology” thing against Marx. Really, this is quite irritating because Marx was bloody adamant about not doing this.
I just don’t detect, in my own reading of Marx or even early Hegel, a “telos.” In both, the collective transformation of nature/history is accomplished by labor/agency. Consider the Phenomenology. Isn’t it more the case History/Spirit is “made objective” by the exhaustion of the different systems of domination/different themes on the slave/master dialectic? It makes sense, logically, such systems, including the age of reason for Hegel, and for Marx, capitalism, would be other phases in the agency of domination eventuating in a “negation of the negation.” This is not telos, but the conscious construction of history to realize the end of domination.
Now, we can certainly argue how this might be more or less possible in practice. But the imagination for utopia exsists precisely because humans know history is made by humans. Not teleology, agency. And we are indebted to Marx, all of us without knowing it,
for providing a concrete analysis of the impossibility of capitalism to do nothing else but destroy humanity.
As to what we should do? Marx provides justification. It is up to us now to apply the justification. And, I assume most of us are on the bus (except for razor). But, don’;t look at me, I’m a shitty bus driver.

Posted by: slothrop | May 7 2005 21:19 utc | 65

I have a problem. I should have never pursued it here. It is one of the problems that comes with realizing Things Could Be Different.
A human is born. Clone ten more. Stick them in ten different places. Then watch them make their utility maximizing choices in the Brazilian jungle, the University of Chicago, Cambridge, Chiapas, Thailand, Shanghia, Prague, wherever.
Why do they make the choices they make? Part of must be what is put in front of them. Part of it must be what is inside of them.
Marxism has a closed system set of answers (that have proven reality independent, with justifications for reality independence built in) to these questions that will explain why people will make the choices they do, and, why they have the choices they have. Neo classical economics runs in terror from these questions and makes the individual a black box that makes choices (except when it comes to marketing.)
Do I have a good answer to why the Cloned Ten choose what they do? No. In the most basic terms, people will choose according to their identities. So I want to know what makes identities. I am assuming it is self evident that the identity of the clone in the rain forest has a different “source” than the clone at the U of C, even after the huge genetic variable has been controlled for. Hence, the term source of identity. But that doesn’t matter. The problem matters.
My original contention is that I cannot use any academic orthodoxy today to effectively explore why people make the choices they do and why they have the choice they have – as proven by the lack of an effective counter to Becker’s assumptions – and, that a major reason for this deficit is that what tools there are to answer the question are marxist – and it has many, some of incredible power – but these tools impose their own 19th Century blinders, and, have earned such a bad reputation that their use will guarantee the underlying issue will be immediately lost. No one will ever get out of marxist analysis alive.
There is much at stake. Politics and government is about the creation of choices. The dominance of the U of C “autistic” approach to “choice theory,” causes a different set of civic choices than we would otherwise have. I am asking for some competition to challenge the U of C autistic approach, by talking about the process by which choice makers make the choices they make. In terms of neo classical economics, I am asking how do we get tranparency with regard to how choices are created and then made, and transperancy with how those with power use the process by which choices are made to gain advantage. Until this is done we are all chasing our tails, and it cannot be done in a quantitive, determinate way.

Posted by: razor | May 7 2005 21:53 utc | 66

Razor:
I’ve had a bad conscience about my closing snarks, but please know that I was also doing my best to follow your line of thought. I’m relieved to hear that you are not pursuing rational choice as social theory. And although there is room for play in what your terms mean, that is a problem we all share, and I think I get your basic line of curiosity/problem-consciousness now.
I would agree that any answer to your question cannot be purely quantitative and determinate, but if you mean by that that numbers will have nothing to do with it, and no aspect of the answer is definite, that would be going too far (for me). My initial answer to your question is one shared by Durkheim, Weber, Marx, and many others: that the social structures decisions. I assume you would like to be able to say more. But before I try to move to any detail, I’d like to know what aspect of Becker’s theory you mean to challenge. My apologies if you’ve explained this before, but what’s wrong with Becker? Or rather, is there a quote, an idea, an answer of his that captures something of what makes you dislike his approach? I’ll see if I know how to speak to your concern.
Citizen k (12:17) & Colman (12:26)
Conceded (though I don’t imagine I ever claimed the opposite) – Marx was wrong about some things. I gather we three all share admiration for his critique of 19th century capitalism. Citizen k’s points out that Marx’s claimed to have proved things that later turned out to be untrue. Precisely speaking, I am not sure that Marx was wrong about the specific things you claim (need to review the texts) but I have satisfied myself on other important claims that Marx was wrong. But, with Colman, I have also satisfied myself on such matters in regard to Newton, Einstein and others who continue to guide well both me and the world. So, in short, I can see where you’re coming from.
Colman: Well, after reading that lot, I don’t even know if I could possibly agree with me.
LOL. But seriously, I didn’t ask you to agree with the conclusions of me, Marx, or even yourself. I am asking if you would accept that Marx had any sort of engineering/scientific orientation in the way he begins his approach to economic matters.
Marx seems to me to be an author to approach via his disciples rather than by a direct route. I don’t think he appreciates people just ringing his doorbell without making an appointment.
I’m tempted to agree. But in my experience its more like martial arts – you need a master to guide you through first and show you how to start working on the thing (Capital). It’s written like a Japanese sword is made: each chapter refolds the prior one, making something qualitatively new out of the key terms before. Possibly comparable to learning a second language in that one must relearn constantly and re-adjust what had seemed to work just a little while earlier. Reading the acolytes gives me no impression of this, in fact can’t, because it is more like physically acquired learning – not addition, but transformation of the way one understands.
Which is to say – I also understand the complaint about elitism, but I am not sympathetic. It is pathetic to expect that you could learn something extremely valuable without actually experiencing it; there is no critical learning without sweat, without both concentration and attention. Children NEVER learn math without actually understanding it, and that requires a master (often the mother) to bring them into the circle of math-literate people. Although no one is required to learn how to relate to people nor is anyone required to learn how society is a real thing, because our ignorance hurts us, we will all learn a bit of realist insights through poetry even if we never study Marx or realist social science. But for me this study is neither elitism nor the weariness mentioned in Ecclesiastes – but the same sort of relief I get from an excellent joke, or from the dawning of clear understanding over an old and vexed mystery.

Posted by: citizen | May 8 2005 3:08 utc | 67

Max Weber goes global

Posted by: Nugget | May 8 2005 3:12 utc | 68

@alabama
No, teaching at this time is not obviously an intellectual endeavor. But it was obvious to me that you are an intellectual. So your rejection of the tag was startling. And your objection to anti-intellectualism, in response to b real’s post, brought it back.
The primacy of ideas: That was the subject of our friendly quarrel. I was arguing that neoconservatism – like its parent, 20th Century American conservatism – is an intellectual movement, albeit a confused one – and can only be defeated as such. It is only by examining and refuting the ideas fundamental to neoconservatism that one can hope to effectively counter and defeat it. (The same would apply to neoliberalism.) And one can only do this by reading the words of neoconservatives themselves, as well as supportive and contributing conservative writers. Nothing else will really do. No momentary neoconservative defeat will substitute for solemn analysis.
One must begin by taking one’s enemy at his word. It’s the very least he deserves. (I’m not suggesting anything about Strauss; I’ve not read him.)
History is the practical demonstration of ideas, is it not? The character and actions and policies of any given society or civilization, at any given time, is a result of the ideas – or broadly guiding philosophy – that achieved ascendance in the previous generation. (And just why and how did it achieve this?) Neoconservatism is no exception.

Posted by: Pat | May 8 2005 8:23 utc | 69

What is Yeats for, alabama?

Posted by: Pat | May 8 2005 10:18 utc | 70

Pat, let me begin by citing Yeats’s “A Prayer for My Daughter”:
An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed….
A few lines earlier, in the same poem, he also prays for the following:
May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel….

Posted by: alabama | May 9 2005 5:39 utc | 71

These lines are never far from my thoughts, and I certainly heard them when referring to our own “merry quarrel”–just as, whenever I hear the word “intellectual,” I also hear the word “hatred” (as in the phrase “intellectual hatred”). This hatred, for me, is the one great occupational hazard of intellectual commitment. Like any hatred, it springs from fear, and is easily confused with courage. Thus the sentence “j’accuse! “, so bravely pronounced by Zola, easily becomes, in my own experience, a phrase full of hatred–of intellectual hatred. I’ll admit that it worries me. And then there’s another responsibility…

Posted by: alabama | May 9 2005 5:40 utc | 72

“The Intellectual”–with a capital “I”–is a real figure, masculine or feminine. A public figure; a secular prophet, if you will, begotten, chiefly, by the rise of newspapers, journals and feuilletons in the eighteenth century. Rousseau, Diderot, Goethe, Mme. de Stael–that sort of thing. The great “Intellectuals” are master-thinkers, encyclopedic in their scope and authority, with the allure of rock-stars in their command of public attention. They also write and think with the fortunes of the general public in mind, and they mean to make a difference in the right way (Zola, fighting for Dreyfus, is a canonical instance of this). They have extraordinary guts, and are gifted with a great sense of political timing. I’d like to be one of these, just as I’d like to be a first-string NFL quarterback. Daydreaming of this kind can actually interfere with the business at hand: in the classroom, which happens to be my work-place, one can flash and thunder like a Biblical prophet; no one will interfere. But the real business is teaching students to key on the main clauses of compound-complex sentences.

Posted by: alabama | May 9 2005 5:57 utc | 73

And now I’ll answer your post of 4:23 AM: I don’t think that “history is the practical demonstration of ideas, though great thinkers have certainly described it that way–Hegel and Marx being among the favorites in this particular watering-hole. I also don’t think that the “character of a given society is the result of ideas that achieved ascendence in the previous generation”. I think ideas are driven, and that the drive is hard to describe. Yeats again, in the poem called Meru:
Civilization is hooped together, brought
Under a rule, under the semblance of peace
By manifold illusion; but man’s life is thought,
And he, despite his terror, cannot cease
Ravening through century after century,
Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come
Into the desolation of reality:
Egypt and Greece, good-bye, and good-bye Rome!….

Posted by: alabama | May 9 2005 6:17 utc | 74

We “raven”–we rape and devour. We do this in “thought” (as we do in our bodily actions), meaning that we rape and devour our very thoughts by means of our ravening thoughts (hence those “farewells” to Egypt, Greece and Rome). Thoughts are the very medium of human life–about this, Yeats is absolutely clear–but the activity of life (all that “ravening,” all that drive for “the desolation of reality”) is, in its intellectual essence, downright heedless (man carries on as he does “despite his terror”–terror at the “ravening” itself, I suppose). To be “an intellectual”, from this point of view, is to be a particular kind of shark, or tiger. It’s not exactly intellectual. Gaining ascendency (as you put it), ideas are birds of prey. In my lucid intervals, I’m a kind of cannibal and rapist, and while I certainly don’t plan to stop thinking, Yeats gives me plenty of reason to understand that this is a humble–even a bestial–pursuit.

Posted by: alabama | May 9 2005 6:49 utc | 75

@alabama – if it was my usage of the term “elite” that you took issue w/, apologies extended, for an “anti-intellectualism” msg was not my intent. since knowledge is power, it is imperative that we always strive to sharpen our weapons. this was my point. i have no interest in dissuading others from their own prefered methodology so long as it contributes to sharpened weapons for all. 🙂

Posted by: b real | May 9 2005 16:18 utc | 76

Irascibility is my Achilles heel, b real. I rant and rave when “ravening,” and I admire your forebearance … 🙂

Posted by: alabama | May 9 2005 16:57 utc | 77

Sorry, but the press of extracting surplus value from my insurrectionary, yet alienated, employees and avoiding the hegemonic thrashings of the behomoths further up the food chain, has made thinking about these things at even the feeble level I’ve exhibited here impossible for now. Back after victory or defeat or both.
Better to be silent and be considered a fool than to speak and erase all doubt – MT.

Posted by: citizen k | May 10 2005 3:38 utc | 78

Citizen: Here, from portions of “The Economic way Of Looking At Life” Nobel Lecture, December 9, 1992, Gary S. Becker, are opportunities to give an effective no jargon rebuttal to false assumptions.
My contention, again: there is no succinct response to these patently false claims, and, while Marxism has a vocabulary to respond, its responses are self defeating because of marxisms’ history and self referentialism. I would further claim that Becker here is doing exactly what he denies, and pursuing a Marxian materialist approach, and that Strauss continued the Marxian comprehensive philosophy approach.
With regard to the competition and how “avaialble opportunities” come into being:
Unlike Marxian analysis, the economic approach I refer to does not assume that individuals are motivated solely by selfishness or gain. It is a (italics) method (italics) of analysis, not an assumption about particular motivations. Along with others, I have tried to pry economists away from narrow assumptions about self interest. Behavior is driven by a much richer set of values and preferences.
The analysis assumes that individuals maximize welfare (italics) as they conceive it (italics), whether they be selfish, altruistic, loyal, spiteful, or masochistic. Their behavior is forward-looking, and it is also consistent over time. In particular, they try as best the can to anticipate the uncertain consequences of their actions. Forward-looking behavior, however, may still be rooted inn the past, or the past can exert a long shadow on attitudes and values.
Actions are constrained by income, time, imperfect memory and calculating capacities, and other limited resources, and also by the available opportunities in the economy and elsewhere. These opportunities are largely determined by the private and collective actions of other individuals and organizations.
With regard to the deus ex machina “economic and social environment”:
The amount of crime is determined not only by the rationality and preferences of would-be criminals, but also by the economic and social environment created by public policies, including expenditures on police, punishments for different crimes, and opportunities for employment, schooling and training programs. Clearly, the type of legal jobs available as well as law, order, and punishment are an integral part of the economic approach to crime.
…..
With regard to “altruism”:
Many economists, including myself, have excessively relied on altruism to tie together the interests of family members. Recognition of the connection between childhood experiences and future behavior reduces the need to rely on altruism inn families. But it does not return the analysis to a narrow focus on self –interest, for it partially replaces altruism by feelings of guilt, obligation, anger, and other attitudes usually neglected by models of rational behavior.
With regard to clever counter intuitiveness:
Altruistic family heads who do not plan to leave bequests try to create a “warm” atmosphere in their families, so that members are willing to come to the assistance of those experiencing financial and other difficulties. This conclusion is relevant to discussion of so-called “family values,” a subject that received attention during the recent presidential campaign in the United States. Parents help determine the values of children – including their feelings of obligations, duty, and love – but what parents try to do can be greatly affected by public policies and changes in economic and social conditions.
…..this means that programs like social security that significantly help the elderly would encourage family members to drift apart emotionally, not by accident but as maximizing responses to those policies.
With regard to authority over all others:
… This is not the place to go into a detailed response to the criticisms, so I simply assert that no approach of comparable generality has yet been developed that offers serious competition to rational choice theory.
,,
The rational choice model provides the most promising basis presently available for a unified approach to the analysis of the social world by scholars from the social sciences.
So, in two paragraphs, is Becker right or wrong? If marxism is a science, it should be a gimme.

Posted by: razor | May 10 2005 20:08 utc | 79

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