Re: BHA: Delivered up to the world

[Mervyn Hartwig <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Heikki, Victor, Gary

Heikki has taken the words right out of my mouth, except that he's done
it better than I could have.

Victor writes:

<The problem with the Frankfurt school (among several) is that
<they lack a sophisticated understanding of the over arching Ideology
<secreted by each of the mode of productions.  Ideology and
<superstructures are secereted by the base, but base  takes priority in
<some way or another over superstructure (against F. school).

Adorno rejected the notion that base determines superstructure, but if
this is meant to imply among other things the standard line that he
lacked an understanding of political economy and the inner dynamics of
the capitalist mode of production, I think this is very wrong.

Mervyn

Heikki Patomaki <user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
>1. Even if Adorno may lack explanation of occultism in
>other times and places, his explanation about the tendency
>towards occultism *in capitalism* may be entirely correct.
>To think otherwise would be to commit ignorantia
>elenchi fallacy.
>
>2. There are internal connections between positivism and
>capitalism, so there may be good reasons to think that in
>capitalism -- with its tendentially positivist and skeptical
>(in fact both in Humean and Nietzschean senses) modes
>of thought -- occultism and spiritualism are especially
>in need of explanation.
>
>3. The points above of course presuppose that occultism
>and spiritualism are explainable in social psychological
>and social scientific terms. I think critical realists can
>accept that not only false beliefs but also possibly
>correct beliefs have geohistorical determinations,
>so EVEN IF we thought occultism and spiritualism
>have something to them, they should be seen as
>explainable.
>
>
>               Heikki
>
>
>>>Mervyn wrote:
>>>***
>>>Theodor Adorno speaks of the tendency towards occultism or spiritualism
>>>in late capitalism - a system with a 'veiled tendency ... towards
>>>disaster' - as a symptom of a general 'regression in consciousness' and
>>>as 'an unconscious projection of a subject decomposing historically if
>>>not clinically'.
>>
>>How I wonder would Adorno have accounted for the tendency towards occultism
>>in say the slave mode of production?  or feudalism? or mercantilism? or
>>"non-late" capitalism?
>>
>>Deeply puzzled
>>
>>
>>Gary
>
>
>
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Mervyn Hartwig
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United Kingdom
Tel: 020 7 737 2892
Email: mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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