[PEN-L:32575] Re: RE: FW: base-superstructure model

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Forstater, Mathew wrote: 

[clip] vulgar materialism. David (M.) Gordon didn?t like this last
phrase,
by the way. I forget why, exactly. I thought Marx used it

Marx spoke of "vulgar economists," and both he and Engels, I _think_
spoke of mechanical materialism -- but I don't think either ever used
the phrase "vulgar materialism." I don't know why David Gordon disliked
it; I've come to dislike it because so often it is used by those who in
fact believe that _all_ materialism is vulgar. If you say "mechanical"
materialism, there is sort of an obligation to explain wherein the
position attacked is "mechanical," and even give some account of why, in
the specific context, it is even wrong to be mechanical. While if you
say "vulgar materialism" you have implicitly suggested that the person
holding the position is him/herself "vulgar," and therefore nothing
she/he says need really be replied to. It is similar to taking some
position some leftist somewhere has taken, labelling it "sexist" or
"conservative" or "literal minded," and leapting from that first to the
statement that "That, e.g., lack of humor on the left, is the reason we
(the left) are nowhere," and from that to the suggestion that whoever
you are arguing with is a mere humorless pedant and need not be answered
in detail or in a principled fashion.

"Mechanical Materialism" _names_ something; "vulgar materialism" is a
way of poisoning the wells of discourse.

Carrol