Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 23:30:49 +0200 (EET)
Subject: Re: M-TH: marxian, marxist


And once again...

>   To be a Marxian, I think, implies
> that one is operating _within_ an intellectual tradition
> that can be traced back [in some fashion] to Marx.

So it's basically a philosophical commitment.

>  To be a Marxist implies
> that one is operating within a tradition of theory _and praxis_
> that can be traced [in some connection] back to Marx's
> revolutionary theory and politics.

Which is basically a political commitment.

All this leads to several questions. Part of them concentrate on
question "were Marx's (more or less philosophical) basic views
correct?" Another group of questions can be compressed into question
about Marx's conception (based on nearly life long studies) about
social reality, "did he got it right?" Then we have issues of
politics: "were his political conclusions proper, did they answered
the most urgent problems of his time?" Finally comes the question "did
he managed to transform his political view into coherent and succesful
practice?"

(Consider the following as my 'contribution' to stalinism discourse.
This isn't very coherent narration, after all - written as fast as
possible - but basically I try to ask, isn't it a time broaden a bit
our discussion?)

Now I'm not sure about all Marx-inspired and interested people around
the world but I once learned that in a sense most important
characteristic of Marx's life work was politics based on social
science, justified by science: he wasn't utopian. There's no
intuition, no feeling, no vision that can justify politics. It can be
done only by showing that state of social reality is not the same as
it claims or promises to be. (I pass the question of how any kind of
reality can claim or promise anything - let's just say that it happens
in public discourses, in laws and in morality of given society or
civilization.)

It seems to me that for some people this 'scientific' Marx is a bit
boring and that there are - perhaps eternal, at least somehow
overhistorical - tasks Marx somehow delivered us lesser beings to
carry on. Some other people seem to think that this is not the case,
and that 'scientific' Marx is based on erroneous reasoning: they seem
to be saying that politics is either a special brand of art where
politically specific laws govern, or that it's basically a question of
justice which cannot be answered 'empirically' (scientifically).

I have hold the view that labour theory of value has been sort of
cornerstone of marxism: it shows that there's a factual, continuing
antagonism between labour and capital, and that from this follows
several nasty contradictions concerning justice, law, morality and so
forth. According to this, Marx might have made false analyses (in
Capital), and he surely was one-sided in his analyses (an 'economist'
who reduced the whole social world into economic basic relations), but
that doesn't change a thing so far as he was able to show that in
capitalist societies does emerge 'natural(ly)' forms of thought (that
gets materialized as laws, moral conceptions, conceptions of justice,
forms of social perception) which insist that there are no
contradictions between general social tendencies or structures and
public or 'official' self-conceptions of given society. That is, if we
say our 'western civilization' is 'based' on equality and liberty, for
example, and if we find out that there are contradictory structures to
our 'basic facts', then we have a justified argument for a change.

During the last few years I've read every now and then discussions on
LTV and wondered turns in the discussions, directions they take. Well,
that's not my point. Also I've realised that basically it doesn't mean
a thing whether LTV stands or falls. (Besides, it might be considered
not as scientific theory but as metaphysical - ontological - one. It
just structures the sense and viewpoint we use.) Basically, this kind
of reasoning goes, Marx's greatest achievement was to develop a
critical strategy which doesn't stick to any 'basic principles'.
Instead it searches contradictions between 'promises' and 'facts'.

This makes life a bit easier because you don't have a positive
supposition that might fall tomorrow, which would be disastrous if
your whole 'system' (say, worldview/theory and politics/practice) is
based on it. Well, there are problems with that, too. Why should you
search for contradictions? What is the basis for this search? (Sorry,
no motives in my universe.) Answer, "I want a change", and you're an
emotionalist, voluntarist or somesuch. There is a possibility to make
a way through 'facts and promises' strategy by sticking to needs and
such (as 'facts'), and then studying how they are denied by
self-contradicting discourses (as 'possibilities'), but it would be a
rocky road, I guess.

What are my answers to my four basic questions? You really want to
know? Okey, here they are: (a) yes; (b) no, he didn't have time; (c)
yes, but that was then; (d) no doubt about that.

Jukka



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