Indeed it was harmful because it was ahistorical; it
generalised an immediate manifestation of history into
a rule of historical development. There is a certain
rigidity that belongs more to physics than to social
science. This case pertains more to the Latin American
Structurlist School than it does to Frank; i.e. it
cannot be generalised to people like Frank. My
question, however, was illustrative but pertinent as
it obviously provoked this sort of reply from you.
Your note brings into question this whole period of
sixties and its successes or failures certainly
insofar as it was followed by the rise of conservatism
in the developed world and the consequences attendant
on that. So as reform policy goes, its halfhearted
measures and class origin pre-empted its
discontinuity. It seems to have flared up once by a
majority of a "half-educated" lot, as they were called
by the conservatives denoting people who wanted change
but were not bright enough to provide an alternative,
others called them confused middle class kids, but in
all a successful reform policy becomes institionlized
and effective relative to the its articulation with
the local and international class formations. So, as
long as America's big business can be good to
Americans and bad for others the structuralist may
have a point worth thinking about. Conversely, when
big business becomes bad for everybody that is when
structuralism fails and Marxism wins.
--- Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Ali wrote:
> >A structural question: what role in history does a
> >citizen of the developed formations who is
> supposedly
> >progressive but pays taxes to the defence
> department
> >and other government agencies to clobber the poor
> at
> >home and abroad plays? Furthermore where to draw
> the
> >line between reformist and revolutionary politics
> if
> >the country to which the citizen belongs (the
> >structure) fully determines the indidual's role?
>
> An interesting question. For the "1960s generation",
> the answer took the
> form of sustained activism which in my case has
> meant organizing
> demonstrations against the war in Vietnam and
> raising material aid and
> volunteer support for the Sandinista revolution. As
> far as what this has to
> do with structuralist Marxism, the answer is a bit
> complicated. I would
> argue that the structuralist turn has been harmful
> for academic Marxism,
> although not as harmful as the post-structuralist
> turn that followed it.
>
> Generally speaking and leaving aside Althusser's
> original concerns
> vis-a-vis French Stalinism, the Althusserian
> innovation was motivated by a
> desire to place Marxism on the same kind of
> objective, rigorous platform
> that the rest of the social sciences occupied. By
> studying "structures",
> whether in the form of the potlatch or the nuclear
> family, academic
> Marxists could compete on the same terms as their
> peers. This kind of
> adaptation to the ivory tower has also taken place,
> in my opinion, with
> value theory and world systems, both of which have
> evolved from their
> combative origins in Marx and Lenin's writings to a
> kind of refined
> academic speciality.
>
>
>
> Louis Proyect
> Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
>
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