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Open Marxism, Volume 2: Theory and Practice
Topics covered include Marxism and political economy, historical materialism, dialectics, state theory, class, fetishism and the periodisation of capitalist development.
- GenresPhilosophyPolitics
200 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1992
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January 11, 2022Part of the explosion around re-conceptions of Marxism in the 1990s, or the "glasnost galore" as I like to call it.
On paper this should be everything I like: Jabs at Althusser, attacks on the god-forsaken hismat/diamat -division, and making Marx talk with thinkers who have better ideas than him about stuff (I know, gasp).
Buuuuut I was also disappointed with how much excessive Marx-exegesis and transliteration of practical action into ontological mumbojumbo there was. My mixed feelings are well summarized by the first paper, where Richard Gunn obliterates the idea of a separate "historical materialism" (yay!) by claiming that it vanishes with a theory/metatheory-distinction when subjected to a robust account of practical reflexivity. But then the rest of the paper is spent on high level abstraction about the relationship between universality and particularity (oh nay!), and making jabs at outlines of the most general parts of the systems of various philosophers (apparently Kant's problem of whether to emphasize the productive imagination or schemas is a mirror of the leftist incapacities to structure a critique of capitalism on a dynamic categorization thereof, apparently). Here I felt strange seeing so many references to Leibniz and non to pragmatists, who surely, at least on this specific point, hold congruent positions.
Second piece was on Kuhn and Marxism, which, to me, appeared to be far too concerned with reinventing the wheel instead of engaging with someone like Peirce, who most certainly took the thoughts of the author much further. I guess the most sophisticated (non-philosophy of social science) authors writing on Critical Realism hadn't done their breakthroughs yet, so perhaps it is understandable that they fail to engage with Peircean varieties of argument properly. Nonetheless, a lot of the at times quite clever insight feels redundant when others have already put in the work. A new revival of something like a Kuhnian-Marxian position might be Dallman's PHD, which is def on "the list".
Negri was a lot of fun, but I have nothing more substantive to say about it.
On paper this should be everything I like: Jabs at Althusser, attacks on the god-forsaken hismat/diamat -division, and making Marx talk with thinkers who have better ideas than him about stuff (I know, gasp).
Buuuuut I was also disappointed with how much excessive Marx-exegesis and transliteration of practical action into ontological mumbojumbo there was. My mixed feelings are well summarized by the first paper, where Richard Gunn obliterates the idea of a separate "historical materialism" (yay!) by claiming that it vanishes with a theory/metatheory-distinction when subjected to a robust account of practical reflexivity. But then the rest of the paper is spent on high level abstraction about the relationship between universality and particularity (oh nay!), and making jabs at outlines of the most general parts of the systems of various philosophers (apparently Kant's problem of whether to emphasize the productive imagination or schemas is a mirror of the leftist incapacities to structure a critique of capitalism on a dynamic categorization thereof, apparently). Here I felt strange seeing so many references to Leibniz and non to pragmatists, who surely, at least on this specific point, hold congruent positions.
Second piece was on Kuhn and Marxism, which, to me, appeared to be far too concerned with reinventing the wheel instead of engaging with someone like Peirce, who most certainly took the thoughts of the author much further. I guess the most sophisticated (non-philosophy of social science) authors writing on Critical Realism hadn't done their breakthroughs yet, so perhaps it is understandable that they fail to engage with Peircean varieties of argument properly. Nonetheless, a lot of the at times quite clever insight feels redundant when others have already put in the work. A new revival of something like a Kuhnian-Marxian position might be Dallman's PHD, which is def on "the list".
Negri was a lot of fun, but I have nothing more substantive to say about it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review