[PEN-L:32577] re: base-superstructure model

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Title: re: base-superstructure model

sometimes the phrase "vulgar materialism" is used to summarize Marx's 3nd thesis on Feuerbach:

"The [vulgar -- JD] materialist doctrine that people are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed people are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is people that change circumstances and that it is essential to educate the educator. Hence, this doctrine necessarily arrives at dividing society into two parts, of which one is superior to society [in Robert Owen, for example -- F. Engels]." [my paraphrase]

This is also a mechanical perspective.
------------------------
Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carrol Cox [mailto:cbcox@xxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2002 11:05 AM
> To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [PEN-L:32575] Re: RE: FW: base-superstructure model
>
>
> 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
>
>