Re: Premises, Circularities and Alan's ontology

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>
To: <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 2:23 PM
>Subject: [PEN-L:22565] RE: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: : Premises, Circularities


> > As is always the case with these debates, I can't resist the urge to
> > ask - so what? Why is the value controversy so important? Why is it
> > so important for Justin to reject it and Rakesh to defend it?
>
> I can't speak for those folks, since my mind-reading ability has evaporated,
> but the reason why I think "value" (i.e., one of the key concepts of Marx's
> CAPITAL) is important because I think that it's a central component in the
> kind of alternative research program that's needed to counteract and
> ultimately overthrow the hegemony of the neoclassical orthodoxy (and the
> orthodoxies of other social sciences).
>
> I agree that books like WALL STREET can do an excellent job without using
> value, but that's only describing a piece of the whole (and using concepts
> that Marx developed, partly using value). I'm sure many excellent books like
> that will be written in the future without using value explicitly, but I
> think that it's important to building the alternative research program to
> have a constant cross-pollination between the high-theory level (dialectics,
> value, etc.) and the more empirical level (WALL STREET, etc.)The
> more-empirical works can benefit from more philosophical reflection or
> more-theoretical analysis, just as the high theorists can and should learn
> from doing empirical work and from confronting the ideal nature of abstract
> concepts with heterogeneity (the down and dirtiness) of the real world. Both
> types of analysis can gain from learning the limitations of their
> perspectives.
>
> Jim D.
>
=====================

In a second look at this after reading Doug's post, I'm wondering if it doesn't unwittingly express
some ivory towerism that we need to work on..."high-theory" always struck me as elitism when I was
in grad school where I saw a lot of good profs succumb to the "theory is the opiate of the academic
class". I know most of us on this list are far more politically active than most citizens, but I do
think Nick Dyer-Witheford is onto something at the end of "Cyber-Marx":

"Academics perhaps lose some pretensions as the bearer of great truths and grand analysis, but they
become the carriers of particular skills, knowledge and accesses useful to movements in which they
participate on the basis of increasing commonalities with other members of post-Fordist 'mass
intellect.'

"I would add that the matrix for these connections is formed by the new movements of social unrest.
Participation in these movements pulls academics into contact with other public service workers
protesting cutbacks, wider labor and trade unionist organizations, and the many diverse
constituencies surging against capital's agenda of high-technology austerity. Out of such contacts
comes a corporate-university interaction very different from that which capital intends -- one that
disseminates opposition to corporate rule from the streets back onto the campuses, and again from
the campuses onto the streets."

Ian