Re: [Marxism] Theocracy

[Greg McDonald <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>]

Haines wrote:

<I'll not elaborate this fundamental issue beyond a few hints. The
motive for my view goes back decades to a concern I had for the role
that ideas play in history, my feeling that to represent history as
simply the effect of ideas (which historians often do, and is perhaps
exemplified by the social Gospel example), ultimately gets us into hot
water.

I have three problems with it at this deeper level: it seemed a subtle
kind of idealism; it struck me as reductionist; and it seems tied to
what used to be called the Great Man Theory of History, which really
means a ruling class perspective. I will here address only the first
two criticisms and not justify the third, which would divert the
thread too much.

I'm not accusing Greg of any of these vices, and only suggesting that
a rather conventional mode of explanation that consists of
establishing a causal chain that leads from an idea to a material
outcome carries some unfortunate baggge. Not just because it seems
idealist (a reduction of ideas to mere epiphenomena would be just as
wrong), but because the causal chain itself is isolated from its
context to the exclusion of any structural causation, and this is
reductionist.

It seemed to me that a materialist would certainly have to allow for
the influence of ideas, but would reduce their role from that of the
mainspring of change to that of a mere constraint of an escape
wheel, from being an active causal force to becoming something
that gives focus to that force as a lens might focus a beam of light. >

Your ignoring the fact mentioned in my post that once the idea of the  
social gospel became institutionalized, it became a material force.  
I'm not suggesting a simplistic and reductionistic causal chain, nor  
am I implying a "Great Man" theory of history. (Marvin Harris beat  
that high schoolish tendency out of me in his grad school class, out  
of me and everyone else.)

No doubt I should have reminded our readers that Rosa Parks attended  
the Highlander School as well. The fact is, none of these progressive  
ideas would have made any impact whatsoever if the immiseration and  
disenfranchisement of jim crow had not existed. But then again, the  
whole social movement spawned by the social gospel would not have  
existed without the ill effects of capitalism to begin with. So  
there's your dialectic, implicit in the idea. In other words the idea  
was generated as a result of reflection on a material reality, and  
the idea to institutionalize the idea in the specific time and place  
in which it  occurred  was based on a specific analysis of the then  
current conjuncture of social relations in the deep south.  Without  
the extant social reality neither MLK, Myles, or Rosa would be  
perceived today to be "great".

Be careful of a reductionistic mechanical materialism from the other  
direction. Given the choice between a perceived subtle idealism and  
the notion of ideas as epiphenomenon of the real,  I'll take the  
former any day of the week, and especially on a sunday.

Oh, and btw, Nagarjuna applied the negative dialectic specifically to  
the world of ideas and to religion, or what we term to be religion.  
And remember that he did not have the ill after effects of a  
Descartes to contend with.

Greg

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