From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Thu Mar 15 2007 - 20:45:55 EDT
Hi Jerry,
You:
In other [very familiar] words, "The philosophers have only *interpreted*
the world, in various ways: the point, however, is to *change* it".
Me:
This polemical quote of Marx had some merit in the context within which it
was written, it's also sexy, but its significance is probably overrated,
particularly because of its ambiguity. Point is that with their
interpretations, the philosophers did change the world, insofar as they
durably altered the way people thought about things by systematically
thinking things through to their conclusion. Engels acknowledges Feuerbach
was a philosopher who at least drastically altered the German intellectual
scene ("the end of classical German philosophy"). The real question is how
we can form, or arrive at ideas which can change the world, and here Marx
was inclined to the point of view that the philosophers "imagined"
themselves (as ideologists) to be changing the world with their ideas,
whereas those ideas were merely a reflex of what was happening anyway. He
wanted to get away from speculative philosophy, and from the idea that
through word-mongering real change could be effected. But in the process of
freeing himself from the tradition of speculative philosophy, he often went
to polemical excesses and extreme positions such as that there was no more
role for philosophy in the field of knowledge.
You:
I understood part of the rest of what you wrote to mean that we not only
have to understand capitalism and then act on that understanding by changing
to a non-capitalist system but that we also need to consider the "morality
of power and the power of morality" in a socialist society.
Me:
I don't write about morality much because I am not married, though I have
thought through and experimented a lot about moral problems. I consider it
very unwise for a single man to discourse about morality. In war, as the
quote goes, the first casualty is the truth, and this includes moral truths,
as you can see with this war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran for example (not
to mention Israel/Palestine). All I can say at this stage is that I am a
firm believer in a rational, experiential ethics. Religion seems to offer a
sanctuary for the morally confused with neat-and-tidy fixed principles, but
in reality modern religions are no less morally confused than any other
creed. We are dealing with a moral superstructure which is out of sync with
how life is really lived by people, that is how it is. It's a sort of global
moral crisis, in which people cannot agree on criteria for how to evaluate
social experience beyond discussions about the limits of what can be
tolerated. For a current example, can you tolerate that Iran might get
nuclear weapons? The political elites in particular are always very
concerned with being able to draw the line somewhere, to keep order. The
sexual revolution and the information/communication revolution have burst
the bounds of how people used to associate, and they have thus also burst
the bounds of traditional moral and spiritual thinking. Behind that you find
the destruction of old principles of class structuration, and the emergence
of new principles of class structuration. A reasoned, experiential ethics
doesn't tell people what is good for them, but verifies what is really good
for them through reason and experience/experiment, scientific or otherwise.
That requires that people have to be in a position where they can rationally
discuss these things and they can experiment to find out, including making
moral errors and learning from them. "The power of morality and the morality
of power" is a sort of slogan I have, for something that is sorely missing
in most Marxist discussion, even although it is continuously implied.
Marxists continuously imply that some things are good and others bad,
without thoroughly reasoning through to the foundations of that. Often
Marxists evade moral discussion, for fear of moralising. But in reality they
can be terrible moralists. I think you need to be concerned with "the power
of morality and the morality of power" at all times, not just in socialist
society.
You:
"The economists have changed Marx, in various ways; the point is to
interpret him - correctly". Is that and should that be "the point",
Jurriaan?
Me:
Well I think it is a good thing if Marx is read in context, and if what he
really thought and intended, is honoured. As Hal Draper remarked, Marx as
controversial figure was endlessly misrepresented even by people who ought
to know better. But the only real reason for studying Marx is because you
aim to do something at least as good as, or better than he did, i.e. to take
up the story where he left off. The classics are classics, because they
formulated certain problems particularly well, it's a foundation for coming
to grips with the problems of your own epoch. But your own epoch is your
epoch, not theirs, and therefore you are compelled to do something new, even
if you prefer to cling to the old. If e.g. you take somebody like Lenin, he
aimed to be scrupulously faithful to Marx's letter and spirit, yet what he
did with that, in a completely different context, was highly innovative and
original. I am not saying that this was necessarily all good or all bad, but
whatever the case it was highly original and innovative. All this is missed
by orthodox Marxism, which considers Lenin to simply be an orthodox Marxist.
He wasn't. He was very unorthodox, in going far beyond Marx's letter and
spirit.
You:
Where have Kliman and Freeman recognized that the perspective that they
have been presenting has been their own? They have emphasized over and
over again that theirs is an *interpretation* of Marx (indeed it's the "I"
in TSSI). Riccardo made the claim the other day that they have *invented*
a Sraffa to critique; I think it could also be said that they have
*invented* a Marx of their own making to show that his quantitative theory
was free of logical inconsistencies.
Me:
Well they can speak for themselves, but I think there is a sense in which
they engage in a sort of Althusserian "ideological class struggle". They
both come from Marxist traditions which were very concerned with protesting
against the falsification of Marx's thought (Trotskyism and Dunayevskayan
humanism). In the case of Dr Carchedi, who belongs to neither tradition, he
wrote to me "First, Sraffa's critique of marginalism does not vindicate
Marx, on the contrary. Second, Marx does not need Sraffa to criticize
marginalism. Thus, what is the importance of Sraffa (for Marx)?" and:
"Jurriaan, take your time to think about temporalism versus simultaneism. I
am confident you will realize that simultaneism, Sraffianism, etc. are
totally alien to Marx's project."
But as yet I am not persuaded by all of this.
Regards
Jurriaan
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