Re: Sapir-Whorf Redux! (was Re: Max Weber's Genteel Racism)

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis Proyect wrote:

>
> You have to learn that many of your erudite posts mean less to other people
> who lack your great breadth of knowledge.

Come on Lou -- the number of academic degrees on marxism
almost certainly outnumbers by far the number of degrees on
lbo-talk, and probably equals at least the degrees on pen-l.
And one of the striking traits of the Bolsheviks, which
I hope this list emulates, was a really deep interest in the whole
scope of human knowledge.

Anyone who doesn't know what the Sapir-Whorf theory is
should ask -- because it is part of the intellectual background
of so-called "post-modernism," which listers here fairly often
post against.

The understanding of language (both of what it does and of
what *it does NOT do*) is rather important politically.
Descendants of the Sapir-Whorf theory are among the
chief intellectual (and even political) challenges to marxism
today. Maillist subscribers are in effect candidate cadre for the
politics of the future. Why should their intellectual interests
be either censore or mocked?

Carrol