re: dialectics, etc.

[James Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ricardo writes: >..."the production of subjects" is nothing new; it was
tried, with very grievous consequences, by the Soviets. Che's "New Man" was
a similar attempt. A more extreme example is Pol Pot's experiment, which
should end all such talk about "producing" humans, "total innovations". <

While I generally agree with what Louis said about this, I want to add an
additional addendum:

The idea of creating a "New Man" is very old. For example, Plato
(pretending to be Socrates) wrote in his REPUBLIC about structuring a
society that creates what he considers to be the very best men (and women)
to be the Guardians of his ideal society. Since then, the idea of educating
people to be better than they currently are (educating in the broadest
sense of the word) has shown up on all spots of the ideological spectrum
from Robert Owen's utopian socialism to the conservatives efforts to push
"family values" (i.e. patriarchy and anti-abortion) in the schools.

Marx's idea of the creation of the "New Man" is quite different. Whereas
Plato asked the question about "who watches the watchers (Guardians)?" and
came up with the idea that they should be educated, Marx asks "who educates
the educators?" (in the THESES ON FEUERBACH). He rejects Owen and the like:
their "doctrine necessarily arrives at dividing society into two parts, one
of which is [seen as] superior to society" (thesis 3). Plato, Owen, and the
like lord themselves over the masses, becoming the "condescending saviors"
referred to in the Internationale.

In Marx, as Hal Draper documents in KARL MARX'S THEORY OF REVOLUTION (4
volumes), it is the workers who educate themselves. Capitalism propels them
into situations where they have little choice but to self-organize and
self-educate, creating themselves as potential replacements for the
bourgeois rulers.

BTW, Pol Pot made no effort to create a "New Man." He just forced people to
obey his crazy ideas. Rather than being an effort at education, it's more
like Sukarno's slaughter of a million suspected communists in 1965 and his
slaughter in East Timor since 1973 or so. (These dates seem wrong. I am
sorry if my memory is fading.) The difference is the US never treated Pol
Pot as an official ally so we heard about all his sins in the official
"free press." (Pol Pot was an unofficial ally of the US after he was ousted
from power, but that's a different issue.)

in pen-l solidarity,







Jim Devine  jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
"Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let
people talk.)
-- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.