[Marxism] Quiting Marxism, embracing what?

[gregory meyerson]

haines: this is just false. and I don't think you really believe it!  
and it enables joaquin type positions.


bhaskar doesn't fit your description here: he's a marxist philosopher 
of science; marxist biologists, to take another example, like lewontin 
are not looking just at the limitations of capitalist economic 
development.  Alan Gilbert's Democratic Individuality makes detailed 
arguments that marxism is about injustice even if marx and especially 
engels on occasion spoke in relativist terms about morality.


in your last post, you cited bhaskar's scientific realism and human 
emancipation:  one of this this book's central tasks is to undo the 
fact/value split as part of making an argument for moral realism in 
ethics.  this endeavor becomes more clear in his dialectics book.


the word "reductionist" is of little use because it's used so 
imprecisely.  all thought is reductionist. and reduction is built into 
good explanations of the natural and social worlds.


if people are going to call marxism reductionist about race, at least 
have the courtesy to study the best marxist stuff out there:  say allen 
on race and gimenez on gender (there was a science and society issue 
recently devoted to these things).



On Dec 9, 2006, at 8:19 AM, Haines Brown wrote:

> Marxism is not about injustice or power relations, it is about the
> limitations and potentials of the working class arising from
> capitalist economic development.