andrew_russell/fs/ksg@ksg.harvard.edu
Thu, 19 Mar 1998 17:44:29 +0100
andrew russell/fs/ksg
03/18/98 10:17 PM
To: lilasqd@hkg.com
cc:
Warm greetings.
Bo wrote:
***Yet, Marx is hardly a quality metaphysicist in our book, he starts as a
staunch materialist by declaring that the economical conditions determine
what people think; our theorizing is just a superstructure justifying
exploitation ...or the exploitees reaction (this really ends his own
philosophizing too). But there is
perhaps more to his teaching than this.***
There certainly is. Marx's materialism is one of his most significant
contribution to 19th C. philosophy. The "Marxian flip-flop" was a
departure from the major phil. thinking (Kant, et al) of his
contemporaries.
Your understanding of the Marxian flip-flop that you allude to ("economical
conditions determine what people think") is off the mark. You misunderstand
2 critical points.
1. Economic conditions are a contributor, but not the sole contributor, to
the culture and society that create the context in which we learn, and
learn to think. Ec. conditions are the most prominent in his analysis
because they are the lowest quality.
2. Just because this has been historically accurate does not mean it
cannot change, for man creates history. (remember World history is the
history of human labor.)
>From all of the stimuli our five senses collect, plus the connections that
our brain produces, we have consciousness. We think according to how we
are conditioned, taught, educated (they all mean the same thing) to think.
Otherwise we could not neither communicate nor identify resources we need
to live. Historically, and presently, that is dominated by SOM. This is the
structure in which our society resides.
Marx wanted to change the structure of that society.
Marx was concerned with the objectification of the worker; he was concerned
with the process of turning a human into a machine and hence alienating him
from his own needs and desires and personality. As we know, defining a
human as an object is wholly inaccurate and does no justice to freedom or
the individual personality.
So yes, economic and social conditions do indeed, in part, determine what
people think and how they think it, because these conditions create the
context for all we know. Phaedrus' vision of a way out of this SOM trap,
which forces us how to think, drove him mad. Marx envisioned of a way out
of this alienating SOM trap, via a worker's revolution and the evolution of
a social structure that satisfies material needs and allows a man to do
with his life as he pleases.
Marx, like Pirsig, has a distaste for specialization (the division of
labor). Pirsig clearly respects H.D.F. Kitto's contributrion from "The
Greeks" (ZMM 341). Pirsig rejoices in the discovery of the term "arete":
"Arete implies a respect for the wholeness and oneness of life, and a
consequent dislike of specialization. It implies... a much higher idea of
efficiency, an efficiency which exists not in one department of life but in
life itself." - Kitto on "arete"
and now Marx on specialization, from the German Ideology:
"For as soon as the division of labour comes into being, each man has a
particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from
which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a
social critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of
livelihood; while in a communist society [he speaks NOT of Soviet or
Chinese communism, but rather his own theoretical vision], where nobody has
one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any
branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes
it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in
the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise
after dinner, JUST AS I HAVE A MIND, without ever becoming hunter,
fisherman, shepherd, or critic. This fixation of social activity, this
consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above
us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to
naught o
ur calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development UP
TILL NOW."
Thus Marx, metaphysician and visionary.
Andy
P.S. Marx is blacklisted because he had the courage to take on the whole
damn thing. Sounds like Phaedrus and UChicago.
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