I was thinking of the philosophical backwardness prevalent in the Second
International. I do like this quote from Plekhanov, however:
Strictly speaking, "/partisan science/" is impossible, but,
regrettably enough, the existence is highly possible of
"/scientists" who are imbued with the spirit of parties and with
class selfishness/. When Marxists speak of bourgeois science with
contempt, it is "scientists" of that brand that they have in view.
It is to such "scientists" that the gentlemen Herr Bernstein has
"learnt" so much from belong, /viz./ J. Wolf, Schulze-Gävernitz, and
many others. Even if nine-tenths of scientific socialism has been
taken from the writings of bourgeois economists, it has not been
taken in the way in which Herr Bernstein has borrowed from the
Brentanoists and other apologists of capitalism the material he uses
to "revise" Marxism. Marx and Engels were able to take a /critical/
attitude towards bourgeois scientists, something that Herr Bernstein
has been unable or unwilling to do. When he "learns" from them, he
simply places himself under their influence and, without noticing
the fact, adopts their apologetics.
Georgi Plekhanov, *Cant Against Kant, or Herr Bernstein's Will and
Testament* (August 1901)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1901/xx/cant.htm
There must be a transcription error here: "so much from *belong*":
doesn't make sense.
On 12/30/2010 10:49 AM, c b wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 10:22 AM, Ralph Dumain
> <rdum...@autodidactproject.org> wrote:
>> This is a commonplace analysis of Descartes& critique of the whole
>> epistemological tradition that came out of this. However, the disavowal
>> of scientific realism is childish. Speaking of childish, It's worth
>> contemplating the symbiosis between Rosa's juvenile Wittgensteinianism
>> and sectarianism. He differs from Henry Ford in declaring that, not
>> history, but all philosophy, is bunk. And if this doesn't show you that
>> the British far left--if that's what he is--is not at the end of its
>> rope, what does?
>>
>> Now I'm reminded that I need to take a look at Plekhanov& see if he's
>> as bad as I'm told he is.
> ^^^^^^^
> CB: Well, Plekhanov opposed the 1917 October insurrection. That's
> pretty stupid sectarian.
>
>> On 12/30/2010 10:10 AM, c b wrote:
>>> That project was exemplified in Descartes' Meditations, and it laid
>>> two demands on any account of knowledge and the means to knowledge,
>>> demands that set the standard and defined the adequacy of any account.
>>> There had been urgent reasons for making those demands but the reasons
>>> were historical rather than philosophical and came from the
>>> individualistic model of humanity that played such a pivotal role in
>>> the era's project of eliminating feudalism's remnants in thought and
>>> social institutions, and the project of justifying the conceptions and
>>> arrangements that were replacing them. That story needs to be
>>> elaborated, and will get some elaboration in the next chapter. What is
>>> important here is that those demands have been accepted since without
>>> serious critique or examination of alternatives.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The first of the demands, describable as a "democratic" or
>>> "individualistic' one, was that a method be found that was available
>>> to each separated individual to apply privately and severally in the
>>> search for knowledge. The second, relating to the knowledge thus
>>> found, was that the method would lead all who conscientiously applied
>>> it to the same, objective and timeless true view of things.
>>>
>>> ^^^^^^^^^^
>>> CB: This point on "individualistic" method is a good one. This is how
>>> I define positivism.
>>>
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