Ali wrote:
>The gravest theoretical tenet to come out of
>structuralism is the determinacy of structure. This
>puts an end to the role of individual in history (an
>Altrhusserian idea) or as others (modern and
>postmodern sociologist) like to call it "the death of
>agency."
It doesn't put an end to the agency of individuals, but it simply
reasserts that the agency that Marx & Marxists are interested in is
that of classes. The emancipation of humanity is the task of the
proletariat considered as a class, not of this or that proletarian
individual or faction. The proletariat has the reason & potential to
accomplish universal social emancipation _despite_ the fact that a
good number of proletarians have & will always act contrary to this
goal.
>It is
>worthwhile to note that Marx critique of Feurbach's
>notion of man in the abstract independent of social
>relations and to which he rebutted by defining man as
>the reflection of concrete social relations tends to
>meet fully the structuralist emphasis on the priority
>of social relations.
Well said.
Yoshie
