Marxism and Relativism ...

[tooblue]

Originally Posted by Sleeping in EQ

Your ruminations are absurd, and whether you've studied Marxism or not, you don't understand it.

You say that you aren't trying to make Marx a relativist and then turn around and in the same post try to do that very thing (again).

Playing with Marxist philosophy in a manner unique to your experience is not something a Marxist does (read that again, if necessary). It might be something a postmodernist would do. The move from historical materialism and dominant ideology to identity politics is a move from a modernist approach (that in its form in das kapital Marx and Engels actually tried to make into a science, and one whose causes would culminate in an effect--communist utopia) to a postmodernist approach. Modernist and postmodernist approaches are, by definition, mutually exclusive because they rely on assumptions that are wholly contradictory.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s the class consciousness arguments (note: consciousness is here ascribed to class and not to individual identity) fractured for some into environmentalism, second wave feminism, studies of sexuality, and race studies. For the scholars who went with the fracture, historical materialism was no longer an adequate explanation and identity politics were seen as a better explanation. Those who continued to put forward historical materialism have developed and elaborated on their own concepts to try to account for the problems (such concepts as hegemony and interpolation received more emphasis).

Marxists have their disagreements, but a Marxist of any stripe does not countenance the identity politics that you repeatedly invoke. They believe in the objective (note: not relative) truth of species being and see identity politics (such as you are invoking when you claim on the individual level to be both a Marxist and a relativist) as just another aspect of the dominant ideology, as another layer of malaise. The concept of species being, which is what Marxists believe we'll discover in communism, is mutually exclusive of identity politics.

For any conservatives who are reading this, that last paragraph is a pretty decent summary of one of the main sources of infighting on the left. It also describes why Marxism is such a danger to right-leaning politics because it is so singularly absolute in it's declaration of a progressive march to communism. Postmodernists don't believe in the Marxist notion of progress.

Marx wouldn't care a bit about the content of a religious disagreement, such as how or what should be taught in terms of Mormon history. Marx is interested in how religion functions to help maintain the economic status quo. For Marx, religion is caused by economics. It is an effect of economics.

In brief, I reject your attempt to use the term "Marxist" idiosyncratically. You do not get to have your own private language. You cannot be the sole or unique source of the meaning of a word (such as "Marxist"), since that would mean that you could express yourself in entirely private language. You can't. The essence of language is communication, and that, in turn, depends on language having currency--on shared linguistic conventions. Language can never be a wholly private game, which is why no one but the schizophrenic can make sense of his word salad.

Please, is somebody getting a better understanding of Marxism out of my efforts? I feel like I should bill TB for an independant study course (just kidding, TB).

Humor me and let’s suppose we are considering the hole in the doughnut, and not the doughnut itself; so therefore it is irrelevant that Marxists ‘believe in the objective’ for we are willing to explore the notion that a Marxist can be sensitive to the relative. And what if Marxism wasn’t a revolutionary philosophy but also is just another aspect of the dominant ideology? In other words Marxism is a product and a part of the grand narrative. And yes I would claim; “that [the Marxists] ideas were more relative than he knew”, not because I am an eccentric post modernist but because I wish, though impossible it might seem, to be a relativist Marxist!

The very purpose of this venue is to foster and develop one’s own private language –you can’t take that away from me, nor even attempt it unless you recognize your only recourse is to label me ignorant or worse; and that is not productive. It is wonderfully absurd to imagine this venue as something more than a form a wikipedia (Barbara shutters) … however this forum is no more grandiose than any other Walmart of Internet repositories … except maybe Cougarguard is a form of Target

Again this thread is not about Marxism and was started by an individual who vehemently refuses to be categorized, codified or lumped into a general category so as to facilitate prosecution, so therefore I reject your attempts at narrow interpretations of Marxism vs. relativism, postmodernism etc. Perhaps I should bill for an independent studies Art Exploration class –of course at some point you will have to produce a painting or sculpture, or something before I can award credit

Oh, and Merry Christmas everyone ... I better go and clean the toilets and prepare the house for guests or this Marxist/relativist/eccentric postmodernist will find a lump of coal under the tree in the morning