From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Sat Nov 19 2005 - 09:17:29 EST
---------------------------- Original Message ------------------------ Subject: Marx on Chance in History From: "Jurriaan Bendien" <adsl675281@tiscali.nl> Date: Sat, November 19, 2005 6:25 am ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jerry, I forgot about this quote, but really the whole quote is worth looking at: "World history would indeed be very easy to make, if the struggle were taken up only on condition of infallibly favorable chances. It would, on the other hand, be a very mystical nature, if "accidents" played no part. These accidents themselves fall naturally into the general course of development and are compensated again by other accidents. But acceleration and delay are very dependent upon such "accidents", which included the "accident" of the character of those who at first stand at the head of the movement." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_04_17.htm The suggestion seems to be that if "accidents" played no part in human history, then all human events would occur "by design", presumably divine intervention, hence the reference to mysticism, i.e. seeing the totality from the perspective of God which is impossible for humans (characteristic of mystical statements, is their interpretive combination of different levels of abstraction through metaphor). The corollary is that understanding the interconnection of historical events, in order to separate out the necessary and the accidental, takes a lot of experience and research, we have to as it were "build up a picture" of the subject being investigated, in order to understand what is attributable to personal ideosyncracies, and what is attributable to the nature of the epoch. Althusser's philosophical concept of "overdetermination" may have some methodological use, but it is really a theoreticism, which by seeking to explain everything, actually explains nothing. Marx's own view was, that it takes experience and investigation, in order to be able to cognise the totality in its totality, there are no conceptual "shortcuts" which can provide instant wisdom - with the proviso that, from a certain point of view, history can appear as a big mystery, while from another point of view it can become comprehensible in its internal necessity. Hence his idea of the materialist interpretation of history as a "guide" for research. Jurriaan
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Nov 20 2005 - 00:00:02 EST