Re: Forwarded from Paul Dillon

["illonph" <illonph@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I am very interested in replying to the previous responses concerning Zizek
and will do so soon.  I have been basically  lurking on Marxmail because,
for one thing, the writers on this listserv produce a lot more than I can
read attentively and I haven't established any good filters yet.  But one
has to jump in some place.  I'm respoonding to this specific note from
Kenneth Campbell because I don't really disagree with anything therein at a
fundamental level and I couldn't agree more that the larger social processes
transforming the society as a whole into a capitalist society also called
forth individuals to represent and theorize it; in this case, Marx and
Engels, and there were many others who preceded and followed Marx and
Engels, what Marx did (to my mind) is equivalent to what Copernicus did
insofar as it provided the basis for a systematic materialist critique of
society -- it saw the gods as produced from human activity rather than the
other way around, true Feuerbach had prepared this ground but he had not
related it to the very processes of social reproduction as did Marx and his
friend, colleague, and maintainer, Frederick Engels.
I don't think Zizek would disagree with this either.  I don't think he is
saying that Lenin created the Russian revolution, I think his intent, at
least in "Revolution at the Gates" is to use Lenin's interventions during
the period between March and November 1917 as a background against which
contemporary political interventions can be backlighted, as it were.  Here
in California, Zizek is very relevant because we are totally infected with
New Age Cultural Relativism, and Zizek's critique of that is very to the
point.


All that said I think it is a little too simplistic to just point out the
fact that Marx and Engels weren't academics.   Here we get near the
territory of Gramsci's theory of the organic intellectual, but the fact
neither Marx or Engels were from the working class.  Their specific actions,
in the period 1840 through Engels death, cannot be carried forward as is as
a model;  the massive differences in the social economic and cultural
frameworks (one can point to the interconnection of the global economy, the
destruction of regional economies and the interactions between major world
traditions or religions, at the very least,    .  I think the key question
is whether the theoretical product is useful.  I happen to think that
Zizek's contribution is useful and want to air that out here since it's
clear that here it will probably receive a lot of criticism that will bring
to the surface any BS that I might not have been able to detect.

Paul H. Dillon




----- Original Message -----
From: Kenneth Campbell <kkc@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2003 10:39 AM
Subject: RE: Forwarded from Paul Dillon


> Quick note:
>
> I got a private email about this post of mine.
>
> I'd like to clarify two things:
>
>  1. I wrote this unfinished sentence:
>
> >The academic production of Marxist/Marxian/Marxengue (a
> >new form of dance) is really rather irrelevant, no?
>
> I intended to write:
>
>     "The academic production of new forms of Marxist/
>     Marxian/Marxengue (a new form of dance) is really
>     rather irrelevant, no?"
>
>  2. Marx and Engels were not academics. I recall a post from a person I
> respected in their understanding of Marx who said, in one debate (I
> paraphrase):
>
>     Once, there was only one person [Marx] and he found
>     another [Engels] and then they went on to change
>     the world.
>
> That's nonsense.
>
> Karl and Fred may have riffed off each other as creative forces, but
> they didn't create anything out of the primordial ooze. They built upon
> a well established foundation.
>
> But... rather than sit around creating "new ideas" as part of a "job,"
> they attached themselves to a real movement.
>
> And the movement was enormously better for it.
>
> But, without that movement... they would have been nothing more than
> idealists.
>
> Ken.
>
> --
> The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in
> various ways; the point is to change it.
>           -- Karl Marx