And Brien would be right and Sciabarra wrong. I think the evidence is
unequivocal. There are too many people out there who think that Marx was
just a "philosopher". Usually philosophers think this way.
At 06:20 PM 6/19/2006 -0400, you wrote:
I noticed that in the second edition of Kevin Brien's
book is a reply by Brien to a critique that Chris
Sciabarra wrote back in 1988. See,
Chris Sciabarra, "Marx on the Precipice of Utopia,"
Critical Review 2, no. 4 (1988): 76-81.
There Chris is said to have presented a critique
of the first edition of Kevin Brien's book, presenting
an argument that Chris would later develop in
greater detail in his book, *Marx, Hayek, and Utopia*.
In the article, Chris criticizes Marx on the grounds
that his project presupposes that the possibility
of attaining a synoptic grasp of the movement of
history. But this is seen by Chris as impossible
in light of Hayek and Polanyi's insights that
such a synoptic grasp is impossible given the
the inherent limitations of man's cognitive
capacities. Brien's reply is that he does
not think that Marx presupposed the infallibility
of human knowledge. Rather Marx in his view
presupposed that human knowledge whether
of nature or of society is always a conditional
knowledge of the conditioned. Such knowledge
is always limited. Marx is seen by Brien as
attempting to understand the dynamic tendencies
of the capitalist social formation. Marx is seen
as having attempted to capture the broad
structiral dynamics of the capitalist social formation.
While aiming for a kind of holistic or synoptic
understanding, it's not aiming for a "holistic"
or "synoptic" understanding as conceived by Hayek.
Knowledge for Marx, is according to Brien, always
fallible and conditional in nature. Brien suggests
that Chris' criticisms may be applicable to some
of Marx's followers but not to Marx, himself.
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