Re: reparations

[JKSCHW@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 00-02-12 07:27:37 EST, you write:

<< It is understandable that Justin would embrace the "stagist" orthodoxies of
 a Marxism wrenched out of context. This, after all, is the lynchpin of the
 Analytical Marxism school  >>

How any could get this out my my quoting Marx's encominium to the way the
bourgeoisie have unleashed the forces of prodiction, I do not know. I was
not, in doing so, endorsing the view that capitalism was progressive, but
pointing out that Marx endorsed it. However, I agree with him in the respect
he meant it. That says nothing about stages, however.

I have defended "a kind of directionality in history towards emancipation, a
long run tendancy towards a state of affairs without domination," based
howver, on a class struggle account rather than on a Cohenist technologogical
determinist account. I have said the thesis about a tendenct towards
emancipation "must be qualified to avoid any discussion that complete
emancipation is inevitable, that history has any necessary sequence of
stages, or that reversions to previously abolished kinds or degrees of
domination are impossible." (Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, and Justice,
Legal Studies 17 (1997), p.p. 166-65. ). That is about as stagist as I get.

Louis expresses satisfaction that the intellectual tendency with which I
formerly identified, the analytical Marxists, has largely collapsed. I would
have thought that regret would be more in order than satisfaction; we could
surely use people like Cohen, Elster, Roemer, etc. If I were not on good
behavior I would be inclined, moreover, to respond tartly that an
ex-Trotskyist is in no position to talk about the fate of other people's
former identifications, glass-house-dwellers and stones and all, but I will
refrain. That sort of nyah-nyah-nyah-ism is not constructive. I myself wish
that Trotskyism were the lively and exciting force it was of old.

--jks