[PEN-L:33005] Re: Re: Re: Whitehead and Marx

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ian Murray wrote:
>
> "Harvey is correct in conjoining
> Leibniz and Whitehead, since they have very similar philosophical
> agendas. They build systems around a world that is a grand repository of
> objects organically and logically connected with one another, where
> everything has a final purpose."
>
> ===============================
>
> "[T]he immensity of the world negatives the belief that any state of
> order can be so established that beyond it there can be no progress.
> This belief in a final order, popular in religious and philosophic
> thought, seems to be due to the prevalent fallacy that all types of
> seriality necessarily involve terminal instances. It follows that
> Tennyson's phrase, '...one far-off divine event To which the whole
> creation moves' presents a fallacious conception of the universe."
> [Process and Reality, p. 111]

A knee-jerk reaction to efforts to link "non-marxist" thinkers to
marxism is understandable because the suspicion it reflects is often
correct. Such linking _is_ often merely a way of exiting marxism
gracefully.

But knee-jerk reactions need to be followed up with some reflection. And
at least in Harvey's case invoking Whitehead & Leibniz is clearly not
such a instance of diluting or undercutting marxism. Any contemporary
marxist who cannot learn from Harvey is in bad shape.

It's been 35 years since I read _Process and Reality_, and I enjoyed it
though I didn't make much headway in construing it. After 30 years of
Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, Ollman, Harvey, Lewontin, & Levins, perhaps
I'll go back to P&R to see how it changes for me.

Carrol