Old post; new comment

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Marx' position on individuals is that they can't change the ultimate result of a historical tendency, but can speedup or slow down the process. Individuals are part of the accident or contingent aspect of historical development relative to the law determined or deterministic social aspect.

CB
> Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx> 07/25/00 04:56PM >>>


Experiences & responsibilities only matter when we engage in everyday
politics, trying to create a principled coalition (and also when we
look at history in the spirit of empirical investigations, examining
political choices various historical actors made, under the
circumstances not of their own making).  When we talk to one another
at this level, trying to decide which political direction to take, we
can't escape experiences & responsibilities.  But even at this level
of day-to-day political decision-making, we can't get stuck at
ethical appeals from experiences and to responsibilities;

___________

CB: I agree with this critique of individualism, empiricism and ethicism. However, I am thinking of the role of mothers as an objective social process. I don't think Marxism can procede with nothing whatsoever to replace bourgeois "psychology" or the science of the individual. We have to have materialist and practical alternative to these. One of the failures of the history of Marxism is to develop a full alternative to bourgeois theory and practice of the individual. This has made a difference in the struggle between capitalism and socialism. For example, I would speculate that the imperialists (CIA ,MI-5 et al) had more specific understanding of the Soviet leaders as individuals than vica versa , in part because the Soviets disparaged the role of the specifics of individuals at the level of concrete historical struggle. It is important to have an excellent theory and practice of the political economic factors first, but in the long run , the theory of individuals becomes a factor. I think next time we should have a comprehensive encyclopedia of the bourgeoisie as individuals.

I guess this is a sort of negation of the negation of the big man theory of history.

In other words, the socialization and childrearing process inputs political content to masses of people , so we have to have a science of this process. It is an active, material process. No idealism here. We might think of Marx's thesis on Feuerbach when he asks who will teach the teacher ? (A practical critical , or political question for Marx in this context). The answer is the teacher's mother , of course.

_________



we can't
unify all that can be unified unless we at some level understand
contradictions within the working class -- racism, sexism, etc.-- as
effects of the modes of production & reproduction (otherwise, we end
up thinking that divisions & hierarchies are permanent features of
humanity).

_________

CB: I agree. I intended mine as an example of materialist approach to reproduction, i.e. the making of persons, comradely !