Carroll writes"
><< I blow hot and cold on the usefulness of the term "dialectical
>materialism," but even when I warm to it I don't like to see it posited
>as *the* philosophical basis for "historical materialism." <<
Right. "a" philosophical basis for Marx's materialist conception of
history makes more sense than "the" philosophical basis. (The notion of
there being only one ("the") philosophical basis of historical materialism
seems to come from Stalinist diamat itself.) Better, there was a
dialectical relationship between the two as Marx developed them, just as
there was a dialectical relationship between theory and empirical research
and between theory and practice...
Justin writes:
>Even apart from the specific expressions, I'm with Carrol on this
>one.... A credible case can be made that Marx consciously rehjected
>philosophy and philosophical bases, regarding them as mere ideology, and
>saw the materialist concetion of history as a partial substitute,
>preserving what might be valuable in philosophy while explaining why it
>was ideology. See Daniel Brudney's excellent recent book, Marx's Attempt
>to Escape Philosophy. One might debate, of courese, how successful was
>Marx's attempt to escape philosophy.
I think that Marx often used the word "philosophy" (or "Philosophy") to
refer to German idealist philosophy. According to Karl Korsch (if I
remember correctly), Marx wasn't against philosophy _per se_ as much
against the artificial divorce between philosophy and
empirical/scientific/practical thought. He wanted to merge philosophy and
what we call "social science."
In any event, the relationship between Marx and philosophy depends on one's
meaning of the word "philosophy."
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine
