adorno on impatience

I'm having a lot of fun reading Adorno's lectures titled _Problems of Moral Philosophy_  published by Stanford in 2001. He makes a valuable point about the impatience some people have for philosophic activity:

[begin Adorno] I have found again and again that when carrying out theoretical analyses -- and theoretical analyses are essentially critical in nature -- that I have been met with the question: 'Yes, but what shall we do?', and this question has been conveyed with a certain undertone of impatience, an undertone that proclaims: 'All right, what is the point of all this theory? It goes on far too long, we do not know how we should behave in the real world, and the fact is that we have to act right away!' I am not blind to the motives behind this protest, particularly in the light of the atrocities perpetrated under the Nazis, and also of the difficulties of direct and effective political action in our own day, difficulties that lead people obsessively to put such questions as: 'Very well, if there are barriers everywhere and every attempt to create a better world is blocked off, what exactly are we supposed to do?' But the reality is that the more uncertain practical action has become, the less we actually know what we should do, and the less we  find the good life guaranteed to us -- if indeed it was ever  guaranteed to anyone -- then the greater our haste in snatching at it. The impatience can very easily become linked with a certain resentment towards thinking in general, with a tendency to denounce theory as such. And from there it is not very long before people start to denounce intellectuals . . . This reproach about the uselessness of theory, this impatient need to hurl oneself into action without delay spells the end of any kind of theoretical work and contains within itself, teleologically, as if it had been assumed from the outset, a relationship to a false, in other words, an oppressive, blind and violent form of practice. [end; pp. 3-4 in _Problems of Moral Philosophy_]

Comments

[Alain]

John, great quote! In a strange way it reminds me of the neocons - they are supposedly all about "big ideas" but there thinking is always infused with assumptions about human nature and international conflict. But,perhaps ironically, the last five years reveal that their ideas really promote "an oppressive, blind and violent form of practice."

[Adam Kotsko]

This is all very well in theory, but are you offering any positive program here?

[Alain]

Nicely put.

[John S. Ransom]

Adam! You're missing the whole point! No wait, you're not.

On the neocons as Alain mentions: yes, there is a sort of "hey, what would you do?" sort of imperative/criticism when neocons like, say, Hitchens afflict critics. "Well, so, what do you want to do, leave Hussein in power?" Impatience and the demand for action, answers, as a fascist, Nazi impulse: that's one thing that Adorno wants to communicate to us. He has great moments in _Minima Moralia_ along these lines as well. Demand for solutions. Impatience. "What do you propose to do?" "If all you can do is criticize, you shouldn't say anything." All of it 'fascist.'

[perezoso]

It's a bit sentimental and hyperbolic to label Hitchens as a fascist, or even as neo-con. We might not agree with all of his arguments regarding the justifications for the Iraq invasion, but I do agree with his general assestions that Islam is a bloody tyranny that must be opposed by any nations that value secularism and liberalism in general; force was more than justifiable in the case of someone such as Hussein. And Hitchens, more than about any modern journalist I can think of, is willing to confront fundamentalism, whether Islamic or Christian or Catholic. AS far as what was known, that is debatable. Bush, however incompetent, made a valid point in regards to the intellgence that was available in 2003: bi-partisan panels did sort of of give him the thumbs up and most democrats favored the action.

It's the pacifist left who sits around getting neurotic about "oh what do we do" as muslim terrorists fly planes into buildings and bomb US ships and target various European cities.

[John S. Ransom]

Hitchens wasn't called a fascist in the post above; his demand that we 'do' something was labelled fascist. But talk about hyperbole: how about the claim that "Islam is a bloody tyranny." I'm not aware of Hitchens confrontation with the fundamentalism of Islam. He supports the war in Iraq and he argues for that in Slate and elsewhere, and in that context he has employed some throw-away phrases about reactionary caliphates, but sustained arguments about Islamic fundamnetalism -- I don't remember him doing that.

Perezoso writes:
Bush, however incompetent, made a valid point in regards to the intellgence that was available in 2003: bi-partisan panels did sort of of give him the thumbs up and most democrats favored the action. [end Perezoso]

You are certainly right about democrats going along with Bush. I blame them very much for that. But it's not true that Bush made a valid point with the available intelligence. Nor was all available intelligence shared with Congress -- a point that might save the honor of some democrats there. For instance, there's this from the New York Times:

FOREIGN DESK

Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Doubts

By DOUGLAS JEHL (NYT) 1218 words
Published: November 6, 2005

A top member of Al Qaeda in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.
The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, ''was intentionally misleading the debriefers'' in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda's work with illicit weapons.

The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility. Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as ''credible'' evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons. [end excerpt from NYT article]

See? It's not true that everyone had the same intelligence. One piece of intelligence not everyone had was that a key source of the administration's claims was already discredited as a liar. Note that this information was available in February of 2002.

[Adam Kotsko]

I'm racking my brain, and I can't think of a single valid point Bush has ever brought up. That takes a certain kind of talent.

[traxus4420]

"It's the pacifist left who sits around getting neurotic about "oh what do we do" as muslim terrorists fly planes into buildings and bomb US ships and target various European cities."

That's because the neocons are in power and don't have to complain -- they ARE doing things, all the time. You're completely missing the point of the Adorno quote: what is the value of theorizing as set against impatient demand for action for those who are NOT in power. Face the neocons with theory and 'so what do we do' is the first thing out of their mouths.

To Adorno: Then again, if nothing ever gets done, what can possibly happen except more of the same?

[perezoso]

You don't have any "theory" you silly bitch ( nor are we required to subscribe to Adorno's marxism ala Frankfurt). It's funny how postmods start upholding "Justice" with a capital J as soon as their precious pacifism comes under attack. But let's assume your platonic Justice exists: was the Iraqi invasion just? It would take a great deal more research and argument then what has been provided here to argue that either way. Read some of Hitchens' essays from Slate from 2003-2004: he provided quite a bit of empirical justification for the invasion.
(btw I do think the Iraqi civilian casualties should be more properly acknowledged--but unfortunately that may have been the cost to rid Iraq of the totalitarian Baathists (and if you want further evidence of Islamic terror, read an account of the Iran-Iraq conflict in 77-79--).

[Adam Kotsko]

Wow, so now we need to display exhaustive research in every fucking blog post in order to oppose the Iraq War? First you want us to be more decisive, then you want a dissertation a day. Bull-fucking-shit.

[John S. Ransom]

prezoso writes:
You don't have any "theory" you silly bitch [end]
But haven't you just validated Adorno's whole point about the fascist violence of gestures? Not that we have to have recourse to Adorno to know that this kind of approach *in a discussion* is utterly out of place.

You should apologize. It was a moment of anger. I urge you to back away from it and you can keep every single other point you want to make. You call someone a 'silly bitch'? And is this something you do in more everyday encounters as well, as soon as someone disagrees with you, or refuses to go along with your transparent ironic gauzy front? Shame on you. Yeah, that's right: shame on you.

Let's turn to those points.

perezoso says: It's funny how postmods start upholding "Justice" with a capital J as soon as their precious pacifism comes under attack.[end]

No it isn't funny. Because in order for it to be funny or ironic or whatever, you would have to be working with the assumption that postmodernists uphold a capital 'j' notion of justice whenever they criticize some particular injustice. But that's exactly the assumtption that is challenged.

writes further: was the Iraqi invasion just? It would take a great deal more research and argument then what has been provided here to argue that either way. Read some of Hitchens' essays from Slate from 2003-2004: he provided quite a bit of empirical justification for the invasion. [end]

Hitchens would be a lousy guide on this front. But anyway, feel free to respond to the fact -- a fact that is true, that exists independently of the will of human beings interested to deny it -- that a huge part of the case for war was based on lies, as reported in the article excerpted earlier.

But before you do anything you should apologize for exiting the ideal speech situation and using merely abusive terms to refer to interlocutors.

[perezoso]

"Hitchens would be a lousy guide on this front."

Pourquoi? You continually just make these ethical and political assumptions, as if you were quoting verbatim from the "Marxist Blogger's guide to Party Politics." And I like how you move from Humean ethics (you have yet to grasp that Hume was a subjectivist in regards to any sort of ethical norms) to now a nearly Xtian sounding perspective. Hume was a proto-consequentialist more or less: acts, individual and political, should be measured by the effects they produce (not simply by intentions or assumed moral axioms) and he would probably have supported the war, if it resulted in a curtailing of Muslim power and the further liberalization of the Middle east: I don't necessarily agree with this view, but it's not completely untenable.

(As far what was known and possible lies: I suspect the CIA and govt. knows far more about that than civilians do. That report is just one sample of evidence--not at all representative. And it is to be remembered that Blair--not exactly a neo-con--was very convinced that the invasion was necessary).

[perezoso]

That said, I am willing to admit that Hitchens and many of the neo-cons may have been too eager to lend his quill to BushCo. I have not yet reached a decision on whether it was a "just war," and that may be difficult if not impossible for any rational person given the challenges involved in gathering the relevant evidence. Yet that in no way implies one supports the muslim radicals or academic marxism.

If BushCo had said this will cost say 50,000 iraqi civilian lives would the dem hawks and neo-cons still have supported it? Maybe not. Or maybe BushCo botched it (that was Kerry's point) and are guilty of overkill. Fallujah looks that way). Chomsky's view however unappealing and anti-american should not be dismissed out of hand, and Chomsky, however predictable his polemics may be, is willing to take on the idiotic marxist left. One problem is that the US "left" is being run not by Chomsky-- but by stupid phucks like Nancy Pelosi or Ho-wood celebrities.

In regards to the Chomsky vs. Hitchens match I remain a bit ambivalent until all the details are in, and really it's not like at the top of my priorities. I don't see it as that theoretical--in fact it's really quite analytical; determine what are the facts and the relevant evidence--did BushCo lie or misconstrue the intelligence data-- and then make an assessment.

[traxus4420]

Oh no! I think I've just been called out!

I am, however, already familiar with perezoso's M.O. -- surfing left-wing intellectual/academic blogs and making the same points over and over again, regardless of what the post was actually about (and, naturally, never leaving an email/URL trace). If you are interested in having an intelligent debate about the Iraq war, it might be a good idea to comment on a post that has this subject as its topic, or maybe even start a discussion of your own.

And I'm not sure what you expect from all the posturing. You've taken great pains to prove to everyone that you aren't an idiot, so I can only assume that you're only out for shits and giggles, to ruffle a few feathers. Which, you know, whatever gets you off...(this isn't my blog).

Or perhaps you're part of some hidden campaign to sabotage the nefarious plots hatched by the sinister cadre known as Long Sunday (chief targets being idle discussions on various Frankfurt school intellectuals)!

Back on-topic: I realize this is just an excerpt (and maybe misleading), but does anyone know Adorno's position on the eventual necessity of action -- the ultimate place for action -- or is he only out to criticize this 'impatient' insistence on it? It seems a bit ridiculous to have a political position that is against activity...who ever does actually know what should be done? When has that ever been anything resembling easy?

P.S. I'm not a marxist, academic or otherwise (nyah nyah)

[perezoso]

that was in response to a previous post, puto.

you don't know shit about ethics or adorno either. "marxist ethics": that's a good one. if anyone had ever bothered to read a few excerpts of marx you'd have realized marxism was not about ethics.

[....................]

yr little cowardly cafe-leftism is a mockery of whatever used to be the new left anyway. o my whatever is to be done. dreadful ghastly! ed abbey, a real mutha f-n leftist, knew what had to be done....jack yr little chi chi ass and take yr daddy's money...haven't ever figured out a proxy either

[John S. Ransom]

In response to traxus4420:

Adorno's view is that there might, actually, be something 'practical' about the refusal to propose plans and solutions. From the same page as quoted from above:

[begin Adorno]
Ladies and Gentlemen, I urge you therefore to exercise a certain patience with respect to the relations between theory and practice. Such a request may be justified because in a situation like the present -- one about which I do not entertain the slightest illusion, and nor would I wish to encourage any illusions in you -- whether it will be possible ever again to achieve a valid form of practie may well depend on not demanding that every idea should immediately produce its own legitimating document explaining its own practical use. The situation may well demand instead that we resist the call of practicality with all our might in order ruthlessly to follow through an idea and its logical implications so as to see where it may lead. I would even say that this ruthlessness, the power of resistance that is inherent in the idea itself and that prevents it from letting itself be directly manipulated for any instrumental purposes whatsoever, this theoretical ruthlessness contains -- if you will allow me this paradox -- a practical element within itself. Today, practice -- and I do not hesitate to express this in an extreme way -- has made great inroads into theory, in other words, into the realm of new thought in which right behavior can be reformulated. This idea is not as paradoxical and irritating as it may sound, for in the final analysis thinking is itself a form of behavior. [end]

[traxus4420]

Thanks.

[perezoso]

"I would even say that this ruthlessness, the power of resistance that is inherent in the idea itself and that prevents it from letting itself be directly manipulated for any instrumental purposes whatsoever, this theoretical ruthlessness contains -- if you will allow me this paradox -- a practical element within itself."

This would make the materialist, anti-hegelian Marx himself cringe. Ideas don't have measurable "powers"; moreover, Adorno's retro-metaphysics is quite opposed to the real empirical and economic thrust of marxism however flawed that empirical program was.

Real Praxis is neither metaphysical nor aesthetics: it may imply finding alternative energy sources to oil and coal, or bicycling instead of driving, or eating fish and chicken instead of beef.

[John S. Ransom]

perezoso writes: Ideas don't have measurable "powers";

Perhaps the compression natural to this medium contributes to my question. Do you really mean ideas have no powers?

Let's take one of Marx's best known 'materialist' comments; one that seems to give unhesitating primacy to the 'material' side of his analysis:

[begin Marx]
The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, became the guiding principle of my studies can be summarized as follows. In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or -- this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms -- with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic -- in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. [end Marx]

Not much room for vagueness there! It seems that 'ideas' play a secondary, derivative, role relative to the movement of much more powerful material forces such as technological improvements in the productive forces. But this argument by Marx is undermined in his own work from several directions. For instance, there's his comments about the possibility of 'ideology' in _The German Ideology_. I know that quoting from things all the time stinks of pedantry, but I don't know how else to proceed.

First, Marx makes clear that despite the primacy of 'material' economic factors, the political scene is the 'stage' on which class struggles are fought out. And this scene is at least greatly concerned with 'ideas.' He says, to paraphrase: "every class struggling for mastery must first conquer for itself political power in order to represent its interest in turn as the general interest, which in the first moment it is forced to do." The need to represent one's own interests as the interests of society inevitably involves the presentation of ideas -- along with signs, music, all kinds of art, etc. The high point of Marx's highly productive confusion concerning the primacy of 'material' over 'intellectual' forces is also found in _The German Ideology_

[begin marx]
The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc., of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. – real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.

In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life.
[end marx]

It's important to follow this incredible piece of writing with great care -- which doesn't mean that I'm the best guide. According to Marx, the relation between ideas and the material processes that produce goes through a number of stages. First, 'ideas' initially *fit* the technological developments that produced them. There's this sort of initial non-alienated, non-ideological moment, when the 'ideas of the ruling class' are actually in sync with the productive forces and with the interests of society as a whole. Those ideas give the productive forces room to move and grow; the activity productive forces 'on the ground' in turn endorse and legitimate ideas. In this context, Marx grants -- not that he wouldn't want to anyway -- that humans "are the producers of their conceptions" though as such they are conditioned by the material circumstances in which they come to consciousness. Where Marx, it seems to me, is in error is when he says that ideas 'no longer retain the semblance of independence.' I mean, in a sense that's right -- where else is anyone going to get ideas from but from their interaction with a specific environment? But in another sense it isn't right at all: ideas can work with or against particular changes in the material world; ideas can impede or enable change. Look, if the old ruling class can come up with ideas designed to reinforce antiquated material forces, and if those ideas have efficacy, then it doesn't make much sense to say that ideas have 'no independence' from the historical forces that developments in the economic base produce. And of course this was exactly the concern of the so-called "Western" marxists like Lukacs and Gramsci: that the ideas of the working class were not sufficiently 'in tune' with changes in the economic base. This lack of proper tuning had quite serious consequences, as we all know.

[perezoso]

"Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life."

Yes! And in fact I agree with much of this material consciousness--though not with everything Marx does with it in Capital--, and Marx held to this position fairly consistently as far as I can tell. This is German Idealism in the blender: not only is theism and Kant denounced, so is the Hegelian impersonal Reason and the immaterial dialectic as well. Thought, consciousness, ideas: all shaped by material existence. Zooper! Spitze! Not so far from Darwin, and in fact in other sections Marx admits he bases some of his thought on empiricists such as Hobbes and Locke. The metaphysics has been reduced to the necessary intellectual representation of human's biological and economic existence: Homo Economicus. What part do you disagree with? I do not dispute Marxist materialism: I dispute the various economic assumptions of Capital; that is, they--say the Surplus Theory of Value-- are presented as necessary laws and they are not. Those situations--that the worker is always exploited and his real wages never keep pace with management/owners--may be often true, but all of the time? Nicht.

Nonetheless that type of materialist ontology is quite opposed to the type of speculations Adorno was doing.

[perezoso]

Conflict between capitalists/management/bourgeois and worker/proletarian gives rise to ideas, yes, and I think he's saying that both capitalists and workers have their own language and ideas and codes--not a surprise; the real issue which most leftists skirt is intention: sometimes Marx seems to be a strong determinist and denies intention and individual will altogether, but then he also seems to hold that individuals do have ideas and that the individual revolutionary will-- say of a VI Lenin--- is important, if not central. Marx seems to shift btween description and prescription: is he merely describing how economic history unfolds and neutral in regards to it, or is he promoting his own revolutionary agenda and proscribing what people should do. He is doing both, but there is a sort of basic ethical issue: are people sort of determined to act in regards to furthering class interests? I don't think that is fair to claim; many workers might side with capitalists and there are plenty of bourgeois narxists. And there is the whole issue of Justice and "good": marxists would like to think that their model produces a more just economic system, but Marx seems to avoid that issue of showing how and why communism will be more just or efficient than capitalism, amd to what degree.

[John S. Ransom]

perezoso writes:
Not so far from Darwin, and in fact in other sections Marx admits he bases some of his thought on empiricists such as Hobbes and Locke. [end]

You might want to check out, if you haven't recently, the "Afterword to the Second German Edition of _Capital_" where Marx approvingly quotes a reviewer of his book, who writes in part:

"As soon as society has outlived a given period of development, and is passing over from one given stage to another, it begins to be subject to other laws. In a word, economic life offers us a phenomenon analogous to the history of evolution in other branches of biology. The old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws when they likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry. A more thorough analysis of phenomena shows that social organisms differ among themselves as fundamentally as plants or animals."

While not mentioning Darwin, the reviewer Marx quotes clearly has him in mind. I don't remember, however, Marx speaking approvingly of Hobbes. If you remember where that is, let me know; but it's no big deal. I want to say something else about your post but will do so in a separate note.

[perezoso]

There are numerous passages in Marx-Engels' "Die Heilige Familie" indicating Marx's relationship to materialism, both of the French and English schools. The treatment of Hobbes and Locke may be a bit hasty but not incorrect. The point on Hobbes' nominalism is mildly interesting: names don't point to any essences, either platonic or Cartesian. It is wrong to think "that a word was more than a word"

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch06_3_d.htm

begin quote:

"Hobbes, as Bacon’s continuator, argues thus: if all human knowledge is furnished by the senses, then our concepts, notions, and ideas are but the phantoms of the real world, more or less divested of its sensual form. Philosophy can but give names to these phantoms. One name may be applied to more than one of them. There may even be names of names. But it would imply a contradiction if, on the one hand, we maintained that all ideas had their origin in the world of sensation, and, on the other, that a word was more than a word; that besides the beings known to us by our senses, beings which are one and all individuals, there existed also beings of a general, not individual, nature. An unbodily substance is the same absurdity as an unbodily body. Body, being, substance, are but different terms for the same reality. It is impossible to separate thought from matter that thinks. This matter is the substratum of all changes going on in the world. The word infinite is meaningless, unless it states that our mind is capable of performing an endless process of addition. Only material things being perceptible, knowable to us, we cannot know anything about the existence of God. My own existence alone is certain. Every human passion is a mechanical movement which has a beginning and an end. The objects of impulse are what we call good. Man is subject to the same laws as nature. Power and freedom are identical.

Hobbes had systematised Bacon without, however, furnishing a proof for Bacon’s fundamental principle, the origin of all human knowledge and ideas from the world of sensation.

It was Locke who, in his Essay on the Humane Understanding, supplied this proof.

Hobbes had shattered the theistic prejudices of Baconian materialism; Collins, Dodwell, Coward, Hartley, Priestley, similarly shattered the last theological bars that still hemmed in Locke’s sensationalism. At all events, for materialists, deism is but an easy-going way of getting rid of religion."

Anyone still care to dispute the relationship of Marxism to English empiricism?

[John S. Ransom]

Very interesting post on the Holy Family. Comment one:

perezoso writes:
The point on Hobbes' nominalism is mildly interesting: names don't point to any essences, either platonic or Cartesian. It is wrong to think "that a word was more than a word"
[end]

Isn't there a little bit of the postmodern feel both from Hobbes and Marx? Hobbes was much more focused on language than Marx, of course. There are no essences, and so there's no such thing as 'justice,' a moral term that serves as a mere marker for whatever self-interested desire an individual hopes to pawn off on the community at the moment. Thrasymachus makes a similar point in _Republic_.

Aren't these all so many intereseting prefigurings of insights that postmodern thinkers have extended? But what then would I say to the counterclaim that if we equate this and that thinker from widely different fields, the result will be a generalized mush. Well, I deny that claim! If Hobbes says something postmoderny, then what can we do? The advantage to my argument is that it reduces the absurdly exaggerated gap that is supposed to exist between postmodernism and what came before it, on the one hand, and *philosophy* (in general) and postmodernism in particular.

Second comment: I would be surprised to see someone claim that Marx didn't grow out in part of English empiricism. If I ever said that I unconditionally withdraw it. But he also has a strong relation to the Hegelian idealist tradition that so consumed his youth. This is an old debate in Marx studies. Here's what Marx wrote about his relation to Hegel twenty years (1867) afterward with _Capital_ already under his belt. Marx's comments come right after the quotation from the reviewer that all but compared _Capital_ to Darwin's theory of evolution.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm
Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?
[Ransom interjects: and so he is recharacterizing the more Darwinian read of his work provided by the reviewer, from 'evolution' to 'dialectics.']

Of course the method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry. The [inquiry] has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connexion. Only after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described. If this is done successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror, then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction.

My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of “the Idea,” he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of “the Idea.” With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.
[Ransom: Yes but clearly that 'ideal' -- its presence or absence among 'the forms of thought', for instance -- is going to be awfully important for how and if the material world is actually transformed.]

The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at the first volume of “Das Kapital,” it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre ‘Epigonoi who now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing’s time treated Spinoza [that is, contemptuously - jsr], i.e., as a “dead dog.” I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.
[Well, that's pretty goddamn high praise for Hegel. So English empiricism, by all means. Quite vivid comparisons possible with Darwin also. But what gives the whole system movement in Marx is still the work of ideas; namely, the dialectic, which can only make its presence felt via thoughts, however dependent these might be on material factors. A few of the theses on Feuerbach on this point:

II
The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice.
[Yes, and the problem is, what if people don't do this when they're supposed to? And again:]

III
The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men . . .
[Changed by men -- humans -- who think, and if they don't think right, there's trouble.]

And finally:

I
The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such. [end]
[and we need that active side!]

It is precisely during this time, as well, that Marx is writing reviews of political events in the United States and Europe and he spends a lot of time in those writings trying to figure out why, in fact, 'ideas' are less in tune with 'material factors' than one would otherwise expect. And so for instance in the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Near the end of the first section he writes:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm
As soon as one of the social strata above it gets into revolutionary ferment, the proletariat enters into an alliance with it and so shares all the defeats that the different parties suffer, one after another. But these subsequent blows become the weaker, the greater the surface of society over which they are distributed. The more important leaders of the proletariat in the Assembly and in the press successively fall victim to the courts, and ever more equivocal figures come to head it. In part it throws itself into doctrinaire experiments, exchange banks and workers' associations, hence into a movement in which it renounces the revolutionizing of the old world by means of the latter's own great, combined resources, and seeks, rather, to achieve its salvation behind society's back, in private fashion, within its limited conditions of existence, and hence necessarily suffers shipwreck. It seems to be unable either to rediscover revolutionary greatness in itself or to win new energy from the connections newly entered into, until all classes with which it contended in June themselves lie prostrate beside it.[end]

The problem is that workers would again and again and then other oppressed groups again and again 'miss' their appointment with history. That's the reason for the birth of Western Marxism -- to explain that distortion of the dialectic and to offer new approaches which, more and more, focused on the 'ideal' side that Marx had deemphasized but never underestimated.