"System before history" was Re: agrarian revo?

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Michael Perelman wrote:
>
> Please Carrol, refrain from the characterization of others here.
>
>

I will -- but please do note that the thrust of my posts was pretty much
at positions more than at the people who held those positions. As I said
in my post on the coming recession, the debate is not really over what
people are good people or bad people but over the fundamental attitude
towards organizing that one takes. Do we focus on class grounds or do we
focus on moral/ideological grounds detached from class? The historical
debate is really subordinate to question of the nature of capitalism
_now_ -- or as Bertell Ollman puts it: "As a general rule, the
interactions that constitute any problem in its present state are
examined before studying their progress over time. The order of inquiry,
in other words, is system before history, so that history is never the
development of one or two isolated elements with its suggestion,
explicit or implicit, that change results from causes located inside
that particular sphere (histories of religion, or of culture, or even of
economics alone are decidedly undialectical)."

Carrol