Geras vs Laclau

["Ricardo Duchesne" <rduchesn@xxxxxxxx>]

> OK, but this is an old point, due to Kant, and while true, it is not
> informative about the question of realism. After all, no one pretends
> his account of whatever, given by fallible humans in real time, is
> complete. But that does not mean that there is not a complete account
> that could in principle be given; it does not mean that an adequate
> account is not a fragment of that complete account; it does not mean
> that accounts that are inconsistent with that complete account (or
> with each other) are acceptable, in fact, it tells us zippo, except to
> be modest and careful. Which is important, but not news. I don't know
> why it is supposed to be newsto historical materialists, who have
> always emphasized the partiality of knowledge claims nad the
> interestedness of inquiry.

I do recall Lenin saying something along these lines.

I am not a relativist, nor a social  constructionist.  These terms are
too loaded.  I think marxists committed a grave error rejecting
Hegel and turning back to a pre-Kantian metaphysical materialism,
the one which postulates  a substratum called "matter". I like to
examine truth as it has been constructed by generations of human
beings. Only when we look at its many shapes or forms, at its
phenomenology, do we learn something about the truth. The truth
lies in the very effort to achieve it,  in the ongoing effort to overcome
the contradictions of one one shape leading to the formation of
another.

I wrote:
> >
> >The complaint that L&M offer a simplistic, straw man version of
> >historical materialism is one that no marxist will ever fail to make.
> >Marxists  have outdone Ptolemy in their deployment of epycycles,
> >eccentrics, and equants, in all sorts of contradictory combinations,
> >to reconcile their theories with observed phenomena. But this
> >accusation is a red herring. *Hegemony* is exactly an examination of
> >the many, yes, creative strategies marxist have employed to overcome
> >monocausal explanations. L&M's conclusion, after detailing many such
> >strategies - by Plekhanov, Kautsky, Lenin, Luxemburg, Althusser,
> >Gramsci, and others - is the correct one that, "whatever the level of
> >complexity in the system of mediations" achieved, everyone retained
> >the metaphysical idea that there was a "single underlying principle
> >fixing - and hence constituting - the whole field of differences".
> >
 Justin:
> In other words, you admit that Geras is right in hsi criticism, that
> L&M insist that the "essence" of Marxism is class reductionism, and
> that anyone who insiste on the importance of class but amplifies it
> with other considerations is inconsistent in abandoning the "essence."
>
No I don't. It is clearly stated above that marxists will always bring
the "straw man" excuse the moment you remind them they are still
conceiving the relations of production as the unifying point. Is class
the truth, or is it a truth? I think this is a bettter way of posing the
issue that saying, in Leninist fashion,  we only have a partial truth
because we only have a partial understanding of class dynamics.

I reread L&M's discussion, and thought that Geras has them dead to
> rights. They have a straw man that no serious historical materialist
> has ever maintained. L&M reject _any_ attempt to give explanatory
> primacy to some causal factor, insisting as a matter of _principle_
> that all explanatory factors are of equal or indeterminate weight, and
>  they say, quite clearly, that class is not one that should be given
> serious weight at all--not because they think it lacks serious weight,
> but because it would be politically foolish to collapse back into
> Marxsim with with bad essentialism. L&M, in rejecting explanatory
> primacy as  matter of principle, thereby reject explanation in social
> theory, except in a local sense in microcontext, and they urge us to
> avoud cloass as a factor even in those microexplanations. This is
> intellectual nihilism.
>

I agree L&M go too far in avoiding any sort of primacy but they are
correct in claiming marxists have privileged one last instance.

> _________________________________________________________________ Get
> your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
>