Re: Historical Materialism

["Justin Schwartz" <jkschw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> CB: What would be the advantage of formulating [exploitation theory]
> without Marx's way of formulating it , or Engels' way ?
>
> ^^^^^

Making it clearer, getting it right, avoiding ambiguities, problems, and
objections with their versions.



> I want to say this respectfully, but I think it is slanderous or insult
> without foundation to characterize those who adhere more strictly to Marx
> and Engels position in the law of value debate with AM as "religiously
> fundamentalist" .

I didn't do that, but there are those who think that Marx wrote it, I
believe it, and that settles it! I'm sure you've met some. Louis' Marxism
list is full of 'em.


> As far as I am concerned it is like claiming that any physicist or
> biologist who adhere's closely to Einstein or Darwin's positions is being
> worshipfully religious. Horseshit !

Fundamentalism is an attitude. A biologist or physicist may be F about
Darwin or Einstein if she insista on using the original texts (most
biologists have physicists have never read Origin of Species or the 1905,
etc. papers on relativity theory), reject any variation from those formulae,
treat any objections as wrong in advance, hand on the the ideas even in the
face of severe predictive and explanatory failures and the degenerating
utility of certain approaches . . . . Einstein was a fundamentalist about
determinism, he didn't care hwo good quantum theory looked; Mach about
atomism.

Anyway, me, I'm not an AM, I don't even call myself a Marxist. But I do
think the AMs had the right attitude of total irreverence towards
"classics." Marx deserves our respectful attention, and should get the
scientific criticism he said he welcomed.

jks


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