Peter Dorman wrote: >Seriously, the point is about the parallel attempts of sociobiology and >at least some forms of marxism to connect the endpoints of material and >intellectual life without working through all the mediations. (And even >then, of course, the account of "material life" is highly selective.) Given that the more militant among us have taken me to task for spending too much time on those mediations over the last couple of years, it's odd to find myself defending the idea of a relation between social position and thought. But here I am, doing so. Let's not become sophisticated in our revulsion from "vulgar Marxism" that we reject any connection between ideas and material life. >Anyway, it isn't changing class relations but the vitality of the left >that is decisive for viable dissent in economics. We agree that these >are not the same, right? How can you measure "the vitality of the left" without taking the measure of class relations? It's kind of dispiriting for a radical political writer, to take another in my series of nonrandom examples, to feel like he's talking only to himself and a few friends. Doug
