Re: [Pen-l] Question on overdetermination

["Jim Devine" <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

Anthony D'Costa wrote:
> I think the way the "overdetermined" (OD) school is using
> "historicism" relative to other marxists (OM) (since the OD school
> also claims to be marxists) is that OD does not seem to believe in the
> inevitability of the progress associated with the stagist school of
> orthodox marxists (which Jim correctly notes is not equal to OM).  The
> rejection of historicism by OD is not that OD is ahistorical but that
> OD rejects the teleological movement associated with historicism,
> meaning the determined progressivity of history as it unfolds (with
> say capitalism wiping away the remnants of feudalism).
>
> Now clearly if one were to simply use certain ethical arguments, the
> progressivity of capitalism can be challenged but without having to
> resort to OD perspective.  Thus loss of livelihoods due to capitalist
> market growth or environmental degradation could be politically
> mobilized to counter capitalism.  I don't think one needs to mobilize
> OD to come to this kind of conclusion, especially when empirical
> verification is generally absent with OD.

OD = overdosed? OM = old & moldy?

Seriously, the teleological perspective has been rejected for decades
before the OD folks came along, except in party manifestos and the
like. But it's long been traditional to separate "objective" factors
(capitalism's laws of motions creating possibilities for socialism's
rise) and "subjective" factors (the organization and consciousness of
the proletariat). Without the latter, nothing is inevitable. Even if
the working class is well organized and class-conscious, it's still a
struggle, not an inevitability.

-- 
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own
way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
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