(OPE-L) Praxis Reports

From: Gerald A. Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Sun Mar 21 2004 - 08:31:18 EST


Speaking of Gramsci, didn't he assert that human 
practice _is_ philosophy and that we engage in a 
"philosophy of praxis"?

Does that mean that those of us who joined yesterday
with an estimated eleven million others world-wide
in anti-war protests were engaging in the construction 
and reconstruction of philosophy?  Or, does the 
(re)construction of philosophy require _more than_
practice?

There were somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000
demonstrators in New York City yesterday. The _New
York Times_ reported yesterday, I read on another list, 
that _2 million_ people demonstrated against the war in 
Rome -- but I am skeptical of this estimate.  

Did _you_  demonstrate yesterday?  If so, could you give 
us a brief   "praxis report"?

How could the anti-war movement be analyzed from a
Gramscian perspective?   From a systematic dialectical 
perspective would it be theorized as contingency? And, if
so, could it be theorized as "contingency of a moment's content", 
or a "major contingent external" or as a "minor contingent 
external"? (*)   How could it be analyzed from other 
perspectives including that of "Open Marxism"?

In solidarity, Jerry

(*) See Geert's "On 'Becoming Necessity' in an Organic 
Systematic Dialectic: The Case of Creeping Inflation" in 
Albritton, R. and Simoulidis, J. (eds.) (2003) _New Dialectics
and Political Economy_, pp. 42-59.  See especially  pp.43-44.

PS related to Ajit's question:  there was a sizable
correspondence between Sraffa and Gramsci.  Did a
discussion of Hegel and Hegelianism occur in those 
exchanges?


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