From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Thu Mar 16 2006 - 15:30:38 EST
Though I loved reading some of Castoriadis's writings, I am not aware of the specifics of this particular critique, although I do recall that Castoriadis criticised Marx's value theory on epistemic and ontological grounds. Well, the concept of value contains an irreducible ethical dimension, and is therefore not directly amenable to scientific proof itself. Castoriadis developed his ideas in a context where supposedly radical Marxists pursued very conservative, even reactionary politics, and this profoundly shaped his thought. What intrigues me though is why, in 2006, many, even very learned people still cannot accept the idea that Marx may have been in part correct, and in part wrong, with the implication that one can improve on Marx. Is it a fixation on orthodoxy, or alternatively a problem of vulgar, shallow dismissal? Is it a blindness to the ever-changing creativity of lived experience? There is no doubt in my mind that much "Marxism" did just as much intellectual damage to Marx's ideas, as the anti-Marxist scholars who, as Hal Draper highlighted, vulgarly falsified his thought. But that is just to say that a revolutionary thinker cannot expect that people will not contest or champion his ideas from all kinds of sides, i.e. that his thought will remain uncontroversial. If he did not enter into controversy in some way, he would not be revolutionary at all. Jurriaan
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