[ show plain text ]
"[Marx would] be the first to agree that you must never judge someone on
the basis of his own self-conscious image, but on the basis of the whole
process which, behind this consciousness, produces it" (Althusser, "Is it
Simple to be a Marxist in Philisophy", p. 178-79)
This passage is similar to Ajit's but a "softer" version, because, above,
what the author meant is not irrelevant.
Paul Z.
***********************************************************************
Paul Zarembka, supporting RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
******************** http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka
Ajit Sinha <ajitsinha@lbsnaa.ernet.in> said, on 05/13/00 at 06:00 PM:
>Most of you are interested in reading
>an author, in this case Marx, as a subject. You are interested in getting
>into his mind, so to speak, to find out what was he thinking, i.e.,
>whether he meant this or that. If he was alive today, you could have
>asked him whether his commodity is the product of capital or not. And his
>answer yes or no would have settled the issue for you once and for all.
>For me that is not the case. The author is not the last arbiter of his
>book. I read a *book* or a series of books as an object that needs to be
>analyzed on its own, irrespective of what the author meant.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed May 31 2000 - 00:00:09 EDT