Amusing (and interesting) Regards Ian ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Thinking Allowed <[email protected]> Date: Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 1:58 PM Subject: Thinking Allowed Newsletter Full Marx For Trying To: [email protected]
Welcome to the Thinking Allowed Newsletter – Full Marx For Trying Wednesday 28 April 2010 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qy05 Repeat Sunday 02 May 2010 When I began my lecturing career in the late sixties at York University, I described myself as a social psychologist. It seemed the best way to cover my interest in the different ways in which individuals adapted to their social situation. I was, I remember, particularly interested in an alienation index – a questionnaire which claimed to reveal the degree to which individuals felt that they had control over their own circumstances and their future prospects. This, I felt sure, would make an excellent topic for my very first seminar. But my self-assurance began to wane as I looked out from behind my desk and saw the bored expressions on some of my new students’ faces. I ploughed on regardless. Perhaps this was the way students always looked. It was only when I reached the end of my introduction to alienation that I realised I’d misread those expressions. It wasn’t boredom which was etched on those faces. It was suppressed anger. What I hadn’t realised was that the late sixties were a time when sociology courses attracted a considerable number of students who regarded the subject as almost synonymous with socialism. Many had enrolled after spending their earlier years in left-wing political parties or radical factions such as the International Socialists or the Socialist Labour League. It was, in fact, a young man called Simon, a former member of the SLL, who took the lead when I asked the group for their comments on the thesis I’d been developing. Simon told me that he had one simple question. Why had I chosen to misrepresent the whole idea of alienation? All my questionnaire showed was that people suffered from varying degrees of misery and depression. That wasn’t alienation. Alienation proper referred to the condition of society under capitalism. It explained the manner in which human beings had become separated from the fruits of their own labour. It was an account of how human nature had been distorted by an economic system based upon profit. He saved his last challenge to the end. After looking round the rest of the group for a second in search of intellectual support, he delivered his coup de grâce. ‘It sounds to me as though you haven’t read your Marx.’ It was perhaps his use of the possessive ‘your’ which troubled me most. It somehow implied that I’d fallen down on a fundamental duty. I hadn’t read my own Marx let alone anybody else’s. In later years I remedied this deficiency with a vengeance. I not only read my own Marx but also joined a left wing talking group which happily spent hours meticulously examining every nuance of his capitalist critique. For a time this new learning served me well. I could readily put bolshie students in their place with an apt quotation from the great master and I was even called upon to make contributions to debates with such titles as The Coming Crisis of Capitalism. But then Marx receded. Or at least his claim on academic attention. In the seventies and eighties social scientists became increasingly fascinated by the dizzy delights of postmodernism. Marx was indicted for producing a deterministic development story of social change, a meta-narrative. I think I only realised how his fortunes has gone full circle when I attended an alumni dinner at the height of the post-modernism boom. The distinguished speaker, who’d once been a member of the York sociology department, chose to mention my name during his catalogue of memories. ‘And I’ll always remember good old Marxist Laurie Taylor’, he said to growing smiles from his audience. ‘Remember how he used to say that capitalism was doomed.’ The smiles turned to general laughter. ‘Well, Laurie’, said the distinguished guest. ‘I’ve got news for you. Capitalism is still here and doing rather well.’ It says much for the changing times, that his announcement, far from disconcerting the audience of old students, actually elicited a loud cheer. In what ways might the current economic crisis prompt a return to Marx? Do current events in Greece and elsewhere support the idea that capitalism is on a self-destructive path? Questions I’ll be putting to David Harvey the distinguished geographer and author of The Enigma of Capital. That’s at four o’clock today or after the midnight news on Sunday or on our downloadable podcast. Also in the programme: Why does an eminent economist choose to describe our current approach to the development of poorer countries as Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark? Laurie Names used in this article may have been changed. To unsubscribe from the Thinking Allowed newsletter visit... http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/thinking-allowed/newsletter/leave/ and enter your email address in the Unsubscribe box. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
