Re: inevitability

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> snedeker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 01/01/01 09:47PM >>>
Charles,

I would not call for cutting back on the quotations from Karl or Fred. I
rather like the quotes. I simply think that we should be a little more
flexible in the interpretation of their words.

(((((((((

CB: I don't grant that I am dogmatic and you are not. I am dialectical and 
dynamic in
my treatment of Marxism as a guide to action not a dogma. I don't grant that 
you are
more flexible where it is appropriate than I am. My position is that I am 
flexible
where it is appropriate. I totally reject your tired, cliched claim that you 
are being
"flexible" in some virtuous intellectual and theoretical or activist sense. 
That stuff
is so "dogmatically" oppositional in Marxism, it is sad. Read _What is to be 
Done ?_
where the same type of phony freshness is skewered by the much fresher Lenin.

Don't even try it.

((((((((((


 you can find evolutionary and
non evolutionary arguments in their analysis of the historical process. just
think of the great quote about humans making history, but not under
circumstances  of their choosing. what exactly is meant here by
"circumstances?"

((((((((((

CB: They are sort of like the "environment" in evolutionary talk. You don't 
think
Darwin included "circumstances" in his theory ? The idealistic philosophical 
statement
of evolutionism is Hegelianism , to give you a heuristic. For example, what's 
rational
is actual and what is actual is rational is a way of saying survival of the 
fittest.

For Marx, human history is LIKE a natural history due to reification from 
alienation
of people. When reified by class exploitative alienation and the threat of state
violence, people act like things so they have a sort of "natural" history. Thus 
, they
simulate an evolution like that in a natural world. Class history is a simulated
natural history.