>>
I've only just crawled, battered but unbowed (coz, bugger it, I
still think I
was in the right of it), from an LBO-Talk skirmish on this sort of
question,
and I do not propose to repeat the dose here, but do think (as I'm
sure Lou
does) that Hardt makes too little of the problems Marxian thinking
and postie
thinking have with each other. Nietzchean total-critique-of-truth is
a
*fundamental* problem, for mine, yet marks quite a lot of postie
thinking..
And that neo-Weberian tendency to look to the rationality of
modernity as the
point of departure, rather than class, takes us away from history on
a
hopelessly idealist plane.
============
I don't want to repeat either Rob, but it wasn't about the zero-sum
game of who's right and truth as finality and conversation stopper. We
need to understand more about the co-evolution of class and reason;
especially if we are to get a better handle on severing science and
it's possiblities from the prerogatives of capital. We also need to
look more deeply at the constitutive metaphors and analogies in Marx.
It's about complementarity and dialogue, not argument and winners and
losers
>>
I'll say no more on that (sighs of relief all 'round, I'm sure), but
Yoshie is
giving us something of a good example of where postism can take us in
this
latter respect. H&N's refusal to engage with the class relationships
causes
them not to notice the slip they make (the category error of equating
the
feudalism -> capitalism transition with the development towards
whatever
'globalism' might mean to them. And this sort of unsubstantiated
info-global
exceptionalism has been all over the academy for yonks - from Bell to
Negroponte to Castells - saliently getting nobody anywhere ... )
Anyway, back to a droopy Japan and a wheezing Wall St ...
Cheers,
Rob.
======
For a great take on N&H's views on class see "Cyber-Marx".....
Ian
