[PEN-L:7215] Re: jim o'connor on harvey review

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lou is raising that old riddle of the dialectic of theory and practice, not an easy puzzle to solve.

The more technical and academic writing and analysis should not be stopped, but we need more translation into the language , ideas and discourses of everyday people. That is , popularization. This is a first step in uniting theoretical work with practice. Marxist professors should be especially interested in this, in the classical sense of Marxist. Do the writing now and win the publication and broadcast problems later.

Translations of O'Conner and Harvey into street language would produce an important dialectic between science and practice. There approaches might grow, as well as influencing the thinking of "regular" folks.  New areas of necessary study would become obvious, areas which would be more persuasive to the "average" person.

I am not so naive as to think there are no barriers to this for profs. , but how are they struggling against these barriers ? Where are the teachins of the 2000's. (The "90's" is about over, folks) ?

We have a responsibility to continue the tradition of solving the antagonism between predominantly mental and predominantly physical labor, even though that is a bit of a voice crying in the wilderness these days. We need those barefoot "doctors of philosophy" this time.

One of the most successful groups of popularizing academics in recent years have been paleontologists. Dinosaurs are the kids' animal category of the era, replacing or equaling mice from Mickey Mouse days. The paleontologists have positioned themselves well for the next battle over evolution with the creationists. Dinosaurs are part of mass kids' common sense today.

Why not left social science cartoons ? The unity of academics and animators.

Though natural science is less contested by the ruling class, let a thousand Stephen Jay Goulds bloom in social science.


Charles Brown

Detroit

>>> Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> 05/25/99 11:58AM >>>
Michael Perelman:
>Academic publishing, like posting to the Internet, only goes beyond personal
>gratification if it serves some larger purpose.  In that sense, I think
that we
>might do well to pursue the matter.

Okay, Michael. Here's the problem. As much as I admire the books you've
produced over the years, isn't a serious problem that virtually nobody
outside the academic world except someone like myself reads them? If I had
not stumbled across PEN-L and discovered all these academic Marxist debates
(and that's really what they are), how would an ordinary socialist activist
find out about them? Your books are not for sale in places like Revolution
Books. Nor are journals like Rethinking Marxism or CNS. One finds out about
them through the network of academic conferences which form the basis for
professional collaboration, as is the case for all such disciplines. The
MLA is to literature as the Amherst conferences are to Marxism. If anybody
thinks different, they are deluding themselves. All the PhDs who publish in
S&S or for Guilford are basically writing for each other. No ordinary
working people read this material. Furthermore, it is not even directed to
them. Except for Monthly Review and the party presses, this world is
self-contained and with virtually no impact on politics in the outside world.

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)