If Mort Divine ruled the world

[Einherjar86]

I cannot recall my humanities classes besides philosophy classes doing much wrt helping understand ambiguity or complexity of every day life, and few people are taking many philosophy classes unless you want to count the neo-nunnery of Female Gender Studies departments. Peterson doesn't rip all humanist academics. Just the ones who probably like Foucault. Which just so happens to be a substantial portion. This portion can't continuously deride a portion of the population as inherently immoral and then wonder why there's a backlash, especially when one can't even "repent" for the sin of a straight white male.

Where the hell do humanist academics "deride a portion of the population as inherently immoral"? What does it mean that this portion is deemed "inherently" immoral? How is immorality inherent? This isn't something we can discuss if I can't even understand or relate to your premises, especially when journals like Critical Inquiry and New Literary History publish articles that say things like this:

The understanding of both agency and ethics in the identity-based approaches, by contrast, is relatively impoverished. Such approaches typically envision enactment or practice as a simple choice between (or, at best, taut combination of) espousal and subversion of various ascriptive and power-laden identities (gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality); such enactments are imagined, moreover, as directly and predominantly political in meaning and consequence. Reflexivity is limited to one’s relation to generalized social and cultural categories, whether that relation expresses itself as affirmation, affiliation, subversion, or disidentification; and what Nancy Fraser calls “recognition politics” dominate the landscape of political practice and debate. Ultimately, a whole range of possible dimensions of individuality and
personality, temperament and character, is bracketed, as is the capacity to discuss what might count as intellectual or political virtue, or, just as importantly, to ever distinguish between the two.

(from Amanda Anderson's "Pragmatism and Character," published in Critical Inquiry)

Major figures in the humanities exhibit similar suspicions of critical theory as vanguard politics, including Toril Moi and Rita Felski (both heavy-hitters in the contemporary literary studies landscape; Felski edits New Literary History). I also think it's worth noting that all of them are women...

So again, I simply cannot take Peterson seriously when his knowledge of "postmodernism" is at best a naive conservatism reacting to selectively identified comments from such "latent communists" (or whatever Peterson would call them) as Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, blah blah blah. I'm sorry, the whole thing is so alien to any accurate perception of what the humanist academic landscape actually looks like from inside. So as far as I'm concerned, Peterson's arming the "damned" (as you call them) by painting a false image of the "saved"; and then, consequently, it becomes this very lack of understanding that perpetuates the rhetorical divide between the damned and the saved. The whole thing is obscene.

I'm not trying to let the 1970s and '80s critical theorists off the hook. As far as I'm concerned, they did very little to correct misconceptions of their work (and in certain cases, some conceptions may have been warranted). But Peterson is lodging an assault on an intellectual ecology that he clearly knows next to nothing about.

Incidentally, Peterson seems to be publishing actual peer reviewed work at a far higher rate than any of his more notable academic detractors. I can't even find any publications by Nathan Robinson (of course he's still a graduate student - but still, not even one?) or others like Ira Wells, so it wouldn't even be fair to compare citation numbers when the competition is at a potentially collective zero. If he keeps publishing and teaching, it's pretty hard to claim his videos or the self-help book are reaching for popularity when failing otherwise. Pinker doesn't appear to have contributed original research in a peer reviewed journal in some time - is he then only interested in the popularity of being a public intellectual? I don't think so. Of course, Robin Hanson might disagree (can't wait to read his new book)!

Several associates of Peterson have acknowledged the quality of his peer-reviewed work, which makes his online rants all that much stranger. Honestly, it appears that his goal is to translate his academic work into palatable and digestible content for his fans; and he does so by demonizing others.

Robinson seems to be cultivating a public persona. There's nothing wrong with that. He's also published two books, only one of which looks to be academic.

Since 2010 or so, most of Pinker's research has been funneled into his book projects, which are both academic and aimed at a wider audience. Again, there's nothing wrong with this. It's possible to be a public intellectual without being fanatical (it's just easier to do through books than through interviews and videos).

The problem for people in need of therapy is not that they can't do some complicated thing, it's that they need help functioning in routine tasks and situations. No surprise that a lot of therapy can have a "no duh" sound to those not in need of it.

So why does the therapeutic methodology need to involve the demonization of the complicated thing? It's a flaw in perception that academics are somehow targeting non-academics (specifically, non-educated non-academics); but Peterson's brand of therapy chooses to exacerbate this flaw instead of correct it.

 

[Dak]

Where the hell do humanist academics "deride a portion of the population as inherently immoral"? What does it mean that this portion is deemed "inherently" immoral? How is immorality inherent? This isn't something we can discuss if I can't even understand or relate to your premises

Being a man, being white, being straight are things you are born with and are your identity. So there's the inherent part. And all of those things are the root of all the evil in the world (also Capitalism, which is simply straightwhitemaleism with money): Here's a sampling of very recent stuff:

https://icgc.umn.edu/events/4972/elephant-room-grown-conversation-about-whiteness
https://www.nwsa.org/cfp
http://www.publicbooks.org/big-picture-confronting-manhood-trump/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/18902138.2017.1390658
https://twitter.com/jessienyc?lang=en
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13613324.2017.1377417

(from Amanda Anderson's "Pragmatism and Character," published in Critical Inquiry)

Major figures in the humanities exhibit similar suspicions of critical theory as vanguard politics, including Toril Moi and Rita Felski (both heavy-hitters in the contemporary literary studies landscape; Felski edits New Literary History). I also think it's worth noting that all of them are women...

I don't know who is and who isn't considered a major figure these days in critical theory, but apparently not major enough to make a dent in what gets the media or the money. Maybe serious thought from internal sources is pushing against "latent Marxists". It doesn't appear to be getting the necessary penetration where it is needed.

So again, I simply cannot take Peterson seriously when his knowledge of "postmodernism" is at best a naive conservatism reacting to selectively identified comments from such "latent communists" (or whatever Peterson would call them) as Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, blah blah blah. I'm sorry, the whole thing is so alien to any accurate perception of what the humanist academic landscape actually looks like from inside. So as far as I'm concerned, Peterson's arming the "damned" (as you call them) by painting a false image of the "saved"; and then, consequently, it becomes this very lack of understanding that perpetuates the rhetorical divide between the damned and the saved. The whole thing is obscene.

I'm not trying to let the 1970s and '80s critical theorists off the hook. As far as I'm concerned, they did very little to correct misconceptions of their work (and in certain cases, some conceptions may have been warranted). But Peterson is lodging an assault on an intellectual ecology that he clearly knows next to nothing about.

You might be right about this. Maybe it's not happening in comparative literature departments. Maybe Peterson's broad brush strokes are too broad and his ideological genealogy is off. But Sociology, Gender Studies, and maybe to a lesser degree, Fine Arts departments provide him plenty of end-state evidence. Even Psychology for that matter, although maybe late to the party.

Honestly, it appears that his goal is to translate his academic work into palatable and digestible content for his fans; and he does so by demonizing others.

It's really more of his non-academic work (like the mythology stuff) + clinical experience. Almost all of his academic work is looking at personality via the NEO-PI and various correlates. Some of that makes an appearance in his talks but not all that much, and probably because personality is mostly descriptive rather than prescriptive. Clinically we don't use personality tests very much unless something doesn't seem to be adding up from other methods.

I don't think it's mere conservatism that makes him attack anything that might even be tangentially connected to Marx. It's the focus on the system over the individual which can inculcate or justify an apathy or essentially a learned helplessness. It's toxic from a clinical perspective. Throw in his intense relationship with Solzhenitsyn or stories like the story of Reserve Police Battalion 101, and how he ties all that together with Marx and anything remotely connected with collectivism and it makes a lot of sense even if he's fuzzy at best or even wrong on the theoretical particulars. More specifically, this is why the demonization. When you have to see people takes paths between success or suicide on an individual level over years and years, and then see how that can potentially take place on a cultural or mass level, the demonization makes sense. I know you would certainly disagree, but I don't see academia in the Humanities seriously engaging with the "difficult thing", or even understanding what the difficult thing is. Academia in the humanities looks a lot more like late Scholastics than anything else from my vantage point, and I include a large portion of psychology in that.

 

[Einherjar86]

I don't know how valuable it is for me to go through all the ways in which I disagree with you. The hostility perceived by those outside academia is generated by an inability to communicate with the kinds of studies you linked in a way that isn't defensive. If you can only conceive of your position as one of defense, then your interlocutor is an attacker. I don't agree that any such hostility actually there (in any broad, general sense), or that such studies imply an assault on the non-academic notion of individuality, or other values. It's not hostility, it's a different kind of language game. At this point, even the academic gesture signals hostility. As Peter Watts says, "How do you say 'We come in peace' when the sending of the message is interpreted as an act of war?" This is the condition that describes the separation we're discussing. People outside academia don't want to actually read academic work; and when academics read non-academic opinions, they see derision and dismissiveness, which likely hardens their critical resolve.

So again, I don't see these links/examples in the same way that you do--not that I don't see them as critical in their rhetoric, but this rhetoric doesn't necessarily translate into political action (in fact, claiming that rhetoric does translate into political action is a stereotypical "postmodernist" stance). This surely has to do with my position in academia, but I see the kind of animosity that Peterson stokes as being incredibly unfair and unwarranted (and ultimately counterproductive).

 

[Dak]

If you can only conceive of your position as one of defense, then your interlocutor is an attacker. I don't agree that any such hostility actually there (in any broad, general sense), or that such studies imply an assault on the non-academic notion of individuality, or other values. It's not hostility, it's a different kind of language game. At this point, even the academic gesture signals hostility. As Peter Watts says, "How do you say 'We come in peace' when the sending of the message is interpreted as an act of war?"

Isn't this precisely the problem created by marxism and critical theory? Class struggle, capitalism, then feminism, etc etc consists of very early entered ideas that voluntary trade is exploitation, consensual heterosexual sex is rape by males, and being white means one is oppressing minorities. It's not that Peterson is playing a different language game, if anything he's being hypocritical in saying don't play that game while engaging in the same language game. I understand that those ideas are within a context of "structural oppression", which I see as adding only superficial nuance. On the individual level for the broad majority of humans, these are simply ideas to justify either apathy or destructive behavior. Most people not only aren't interested in going deeper, they couldn't go deeper even if they sat in your class forever (particularly creative or "rightbrained" persons - who of course are overwhelmingly left). So then they live quite unhappily and maybe if they are lucky they eventually see a halfway decent therapist who helps them find a sense of responsibility and prosocial behavior.

More concretely: Almost every person who comes through our clinic (and probably the majority of persons who ever seek therapy) experienced verbal and/or physical and/or sexual abuse as children, and maybe even ongoing into adulthood. This is very clearly a type of structural oppression at the individual level. Very rarely can the therapist or the client have any effect on that environment (particularly when it's in the past). Secondly, telling the person "well your problem is you were abused" is inaccurate and not therapeutic in itself. Oppression is a problem, but not the only problem, it's a stimulus. Response to stimuli is the other half of the equation. Coping: Adaptive vs Maladaptive. The therapist's function is to change the response to adaptive instead of maladaptive coping.

My perspective on the victimhood mentality fomented by ideas like class struggle, institutional racism, "the patriarchy", etc. from a therapeutic perspective is that it is a maladaptive coping strategy, to put it nicely. Person Y experiences sexual abuse by their father. Rather than getting therapy, they read some tripe on Jezebel or HuffPo, or worse go into a gender studies class, and can now blame all of their dysfunction on "the patriarchy", and subsequently down that rabbit hole - capitalism, whiteness, etc. Alternatively, Person X is bullied as a child, struggles academically because he/she is not that bright, and finds an online forum saying pick-your-minority is the reason for all of their problems. Person Y and Person X wind up hitting each other with bricks at a protest/counter protest.

So again, I don't see these links/examples in the same way that you do--not that I don't see them as critical in their rhetoric, but this rhetoric doesn't necessarily translate into political action (in fact, claiming that rhetoric does translate into political action is a stereotypical "postmodernist" stance). This surely has to do with my position in academia, but I see the kind of animosity that Peterson stokes as being incredibly unfair and unwarranted (and ultimately counterproductive).

Peterson is probably more a product of it than stoking it, and it's a fraction of his content. Incidentally:
https://www.insidehighered.com/quic...andons-plan-list-‘neo-marxist-course-content’

I considered building such a website but put plans on hiatus as I talked it over with others and decided it might add excessively to current polarization...

I agree that such a list would have been counter-productive, and that Haidt's Heterodox Academy is probably the right way forward.

Edit: Here's a good article highlighting the approach I think that you have - yet also the demonstration that what is written and how it's interpreted are quite far from each other:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politic...ality-is-not-the-enemy-of-free-speech/555014/

The insights of intersectionality would cast doubt on the notion that a small group of cognitively privileged, Anglophone Westerners admitted to a top-100 law school after earning undergraduate degrees in one of the richest countries in the world have surpassed the rest of humanity in achieving a definitive understanding of matters as complex and sweeping as “how power works” and “how language works.”

Truly intersectional thinkers would be highly suspicious of the ostensible “truths” offered and the notion that “there is no debate here”—for they would be attentive to the perspectives of people subject to different kinds of oppression, want them all to have their say, compare their views to the law students, and learn that the vast majority of African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics, socioeconomically disadvantaged Americans, immigrants, Muslims, Hindus, non-Westerners, non-cognitive elites, and socioeconomically disadvantaged people (among others) hold different, contrary views about how power and language work. To declare that “there is no debate” would preemptively exclude their perspectives

And it is a mistake to cede intersectionality to those who so misapply its insights.

Neither mislabeling people as fascists nor conflating speech with violence nor asserting a tiny, privileged elite’s understandings of power and language as settled truths are rooted in the insight that oppression operates in interlocking ways.

If this is how the "cognitively privileged" understand these nuanced concepts, is there any hope for the average person?

 

[Einherjar86]

Isn't this precisely the problem created by marxism and critical theory?

Marxism, sure--but humanist theory, even critical theory =/= Marxism. The great lie that has been foisted on the mass public is that liberal academia is awash with Marxists and radical leftists who want to "fundamentally change our way of life." This is a gross exaggeration that is mostly the fault of the political right.

I have a short anecdote to share:

A couple weeks ago there was a workshop on campus for dealing with resistant students (which can be a serious problem in the classroom). One topic was how to address students who get confrontational because we're "teaching them Marxism." Some students actually believe this, and they ask what the point is of reading Marx in a literature class--it must be that we're trying to brainwash them into becoming Marxists.

One of the faculty on the panel responded by saying that it's our (i.e. teachers') responsibility to tell our students that we don't care whether or not they leave the classroom "believing" Marxism (whatever that means). The point of reading Marx alongside, say, Charles Dickens, or Walt Whitman, or Abraham Lincoln, or W.E.B. Du Bois, etc. isn't to convince students that Marxism is right; it's to consider what it means to read the work of an author who did believe in Marxism, or who was exposed to Marx's writings during his/her life.

One of the most devastating lies circulating in pop culture today is that academia is a Marxist institution out to infiltrate and "decolonize" the West. People on this forum have expressed such views. This is part of the breakdown between academia and mass culture, and people like Peterson promote this misunderstanding. He believes that all (or most) academics in humanities departments are secret Marxists bent on corrupting the minds of their students--he seriously believes this!

If this is how the "cognitively privileged" understand these nuanced concepts, is there any hope for the average person?

Of course. But not when they're told not to bother reading or trying to understand it b/c it's all propaganda from clandestine Marxist sleeper cells.

 

[Dak]

Marxism, sure--but humanist theory, even critical theory =/= Marxism. The great lie that has been foisted on the mass public is that liberal academia is awash with Marxists and radical leftists who want to "fundamentally change our way of life." This is a gross exaggeration that is mostly the fault of the political right.

We've already had "fundamental changes to our way of life" regularly over the last 100+ years, and socially they have all been towards the ideas espoused by liberals, not conservatives (although, that is to be expected almost by definition). It's not an exaggeration. Look at the flip on most sexual mores, the increasing utilization and proliferation of wealth transfers, etc. This has been driven by academics and those instructed by them, not high school dropouts who voted straight ticket Republican and go to church every sunday.

A couple weeks ago there was a workshop on campus for dealing with resistant students (which can be a serious problem in the classroom). One topic was how to address students who get confrontational because we're "teaching them Marxism." Some students actually believe this, and they ask what the point is of reading Marx in a literature class--it must be that we're trying to brainwash them into becoming Marxists.

One of the faculty on the panel responded by saying that it's our (i.e. teachers') responsibility to tell our students that we don't care whether or not they leave the classroom "believing" Marxism (whatever that means). The point of reading Marx alongside, say, Charles Dickens, or Walt Whitman, or Abraham Lincoln, or W.E.B. Du Bois, etc. isn't to convince students that Marxism is right; it's to consider what it means to read the work of an author who did believe in Marxism, or who was exposed to Marx's writings during his/her life.

One of the most devastating lies circulating in pop culture today is that academia is a Marxist institution out to infiltrate and "decolonize" the West. People on this forum have expressed such views. This is part of the breakdown between academia and mass culture, and people like Peterson promote this misunderstanding. He believes that all (or most) academics in humanities departments are secret Marxists bent on corrupting the minds of their students--he seriously believes this!

Well I don't think Marx needs censoring - but he isn't literature, he's defunct economics (that's being really generous and civil about it) and should be presented as such. Maybe many in academia aren't explicitly rabid marxists, but they fall for similar arguments and have similar sentiments, even if tempered. Studies have shown academia is overwhelmingly liberal. Of course, there are a few sectors of academia that are rabid (like Gender studies).

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-e...conservatives-hiring-20160520-snap-story.html

Only 14% of professors in our survey identified as Republican. Academia isn't teeming with radicals, but it is one of the most liberal occupations in the U.S.

I'll provide my own anecdote: I attended a campus student event for what is primarily a black resistance group. The event was a talk by an African American PhD student in sociology at NC State who has previously been in the news for pro-gun rights rhetoric as it pertains to protection from police brutality and white supremacists. The turnout was quite small (to one of your points, only around 30ish), and no one was uncivil to me. Guess what the problem for blacks is according to the speaker? Whites and that also = Capitalism. Guess what the solution is? Owning the means of production (although for him, he advocated setting up alternative, black only institutions which operate under Marxist principles rather than seizing "white production" or whatever). Of course, the irony was that every time he asked anyone in the audience a question for participation, either no one answered or they gave a wrong answer. I had to help the brother out a few times. Go figure, 1 of 3 white people had to fill in the conversational gap because no one else knew that credit has filled the gap in stagnant real wages since 1970. I was colonizing the conversation. I did in fact agree with about half of what he said......it's just that he is in fact a Marxist. And this is what "activists" get "activated" by (or Butler or whatever). It doesn't matter if they are all technically separate when they all hang together. I challenge you to show me an feminist activist that thinks Capitalism is better than Marxism. Paglia? She is, of course, not a real feminist.

I've been ensconced in "academia" from the student side for some years now, and I've seen nothing to disabuse me of the notion that it is overwhelmingly left (as if my anecdotes would be against the actual studies). That every professor isn't marching in the streets to seize the means of production isn't a defense. I'm in a class right now telling me it's my responsibility as a psychologist to identify power imbalances and advocate against them as per critical theory. This is a learning requirement by the American Psychological Association.

Of course. But not when they're told not to bother reading or trying to understand it b/c it's all propaganda from clandestine Marxist sleeper cells.

Ordinary people (IE, the middle of the bell curve) aren't generally interested anyway. But no, they couldn't even if they cared. The writing is literally beyond their comprehension. Basic comprehension of news is often even beyond them.

 

[Einherjar86]

We've already had "fundamental changes to our way of life" regularly over the last 100+ years, and socially they have all been towards the ideas espoused by liberals, not conservatives (although, that is to be expected almost by definition). It's not an exaggeration. Look at the flip on most sexual mores, the increasing utilization and proliferation of wealth transfers, etc. This has been driven by academics and those instructed by them, not high school dropouts who voted straight ticket Republican and go to church every sunday.

I'm sorry, you can't just say this and expect it to become true. You can't deny the hyperbole of claims that the majority of academics are closet Marxists out to infiltrate and overturn modern society. It doesn't matter if you feel it to be true, any evidence for it is inconclusive at best. Just because a professor assigns an excerpt from Capital doesn't mean that teacher believes Marxism is "better" than capitalism. Maybe that professor is ambivalent on aspects of modern capitalism. Maybe s/he feels that society works well, generally speaking, but that certain concessions or adjustments deserve to be made. In this day and age, any call for the faintest kind of regulation or oversight conjures vitriolic accusations of "Marxist!" and "Socialist!" from the political right. That's hyperbole.

Well I don't think Marx needs censoring - but he isn't literature, he's defunct economics (that's being really generous and civil about it) and should be presented as such.

Why? When we assign Adam Smith or Edmund Burke we don't preface it by decrying their flaws because they were market economists or conservatives. Why should the presentation of Marx demand an interpretive disclaimer? Texts deserve to be understood on their own grounds, and to be treated as such within the historical context presented by the class. The point isn't to dictate students' opinions on these texts, but to guide them in order to make their own decisions.

And literary courses don't assign Marx in totum. He doesn't have to be read as "defunct economics," but can be read as interpretive critique that is as applicable today as it was in the nineteenth century. You seem resistant to this on all fronts, which is an absolutist position that I'm not in agreement with.

I challenge you to show me an feminist activist that thinks Capitalism is better than Marxism. Paglia? She is, of course, not a real feminist.

This is an unfair question, since it assumes that all feminists also publicly announce their opinions on economic philosophy. I'm fairly certain that Butler is a socialist, but as for the majority of feminist scholars in the humanities? I can't say.

Additionally, just because certain feminist scholars present criticism of capitalist history or practices in their work, it doesn't mean that they believe Marxism is "better." That's very black and white.

Most of my objections to what you're saying have to do with your sympathy for a pervasive attitude that I find to be misinformed, exaggerated, and ideologically anti-intellectual (in other words, it takes a stand against academia purely because it's academia). I'm not saying this is your stance (although at times I think it is), merely that you're sympathetic to this position. I've done my penance lamenting over the woes of anti-intellectualism and their hostility toward the "liberal elite" (who really aren't low- to mid-level academics, if we're being honest, but upper-middle-class, educated non-academics). I find it increasingly difficult to sympathize with a group of people who see my very position as being one of political opposition.

 

[Dak]

Sorry for leaving this alone for several days but I finally got a decent halfday open.

I'm sorry, you can't just say this and expect it to become true. You can't deny the hyperbole of claims that the majority of academics are closet Marxists out to infiltrate and overturn modern society. It doesn't matter if you feel it to be true, any evidence for it is inconclusive at best. Just because a professor assigns an excerpt from Capital doesn't mean that teacher believes Marxism is "better" than capitalism. Maybe that professor is ambivalent on aspects of modern capitalism. Maybe s/he feels that society works well, generally speaking, but that certain concessions or adjustments deserve to be made. In this day and age, any call for the faintest kind of regulation or oversight conjures vitriolic accusations of "Marxist!" and "Socialist!" from the political right. That's hyperbole.

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/03/the_prevalence_1.html

This was a breakdown that is afaik the last we have on admitted preferences.

Overall, Marxism is a tiny minority faith. Just 3% of professors accept the label. The share rises to 5% in the humanities. The shocker, though, is that as recently as 2006, about 18% of social scientists self-identified as Marxists.
.................
If 18% of biologists believed in creationism, that would be a big deal. Why? Because creationism is nonsense. Similarly, if 18% of social scientists believe in Marxism, that too is a big deal. Why? Because Marxism is nonsense. Furthermore, if 18% of a discipline fully embrace a body of nonsense, there is also probably a large bloc of nonsense sympathizers - people who won't swallow the nonsense whole, but nevertheless see great value in it. Suppose, plausibly, that there is one fellow traveler for every true believer. That would bring the share of abject intellectual corruption to fully 35% - and 51% in sociology.

So our differences in perspective might have something to do with the company we keep, but I find it hard to believe there's a lot of non-Marxist sympathizers in English departments. I consider "Radicals" and "Activists" being inconsequentially different, and the share in the humanities is quite high. Of course, my claim to inconsequential difference is your claim of hyperbole. Tangentially, I find it interesting Caplan expects that numbers have declined in the last ~decade. I expect the opposite, given the popularity of people like Sanders. Maybe outright "Marxists" have decline, but the other two columns would have seen increases, and to me that's the same thing. The underlying axioms are the same.

Why? When we assign Adam Smith or Edmund Burke we don't preface it by decrying their flaws because they were market economists or conservatives. Why should the presentation of Marx demand an interpretive disclaimer? Texts deserve to be understood on their own grounds, and to be treated as such within the historical context presented by the class. The point isn't to dictate students' opinions on these texts, but to guide them in order to make their own decisions.

And literary courses don't assign Marx in totum. He doesn't have to be read as "defunct economics," but can be read as interpretive critique that is as applicable today as it was in the nineteenth century. You seem resistant to this on all fronts, which is an absolutist position that I'm not in agreement with.

It's not applicable because the labor theory of value was debunked about as soon as Das Kapital came out. That's not Marx's fault, the LTOV wasn't even his idea, and the critique is good insofar as one accepts the labor theory of value, but that's like saying if we accept that the earth is flat, some conspiracy theories make sense.

This is an unfair question, since it assumes that all feminists also publicly announce their opinions on economic philosophy. I'm fairly certain that Butler is a socialist, but as for the majority of feminist scholars in the humanities? I can't say.

Additionally, just because certain feminist scholars present criticism of capitalist history or practices in their work, it doesn't mean that they believe Marxism is "better." That's very black and white.

Most of my objections to what you're saying have to do with your sympathy for a pervasive attitude that I find to be misinformed, exaggerated, and ideologically anti-intellectual (in other words, it takes a stand against academia purely because it's academia). I'm not saying this is your stance (although at times I think it is), merely that you're sympathetic to this position. I've done my penance lamenting over the woes of anti-intellectualism and their hostility toward the "liberal elite" (who really aren't low- to mid-level academics, if we're being honest, but upper-middle-class, educated non-academics). I find it increasingly difficult to sympathize with a group of people who see my very position as being one of political opposition.

In the sense that opinions on political economy aren't starkly published by nearly all feminists it is indeed unfair. However, to tie that question into your closing statement about it being very taxing to your sympathies to have your position viewed as one of political opposition, I must ask how the heuristic fails the proverbial farmer in Iowa. Would you expect a most excellent majoring student of yours to A. Come in as a staunch conservative and/or B. Leave as staunchly conservative? The same for Gender Studies? The numbers don't bear that out. There's nothing sympathetic to the market within sociology departments, or continental philosophy (that I'm aware of). In a more concrete sense, the fact that you and/or people you know (whether that low to mid level academics or upper middle class, educated non-academics) are far more likely to vote for Bernie Sanders vs Paul Ryan (not that I care for Ryan, but he's considered popularly a fiscal conservative) puts you in that opposition, and vice versa.

It is my strong opinion that the deepening animus is not so much a result of the differences of opinion, but the degree to which policies are increasingly centralized. You live in the most redistributive and regulative state in the country, bar maybe California. No one in Iowa cares if people in Massachusetts want to live like that.....until Massachusettsian politics invade Iowa, whether via policy or by NPR/CNN/etc. Now it's a problem. Throw in something about the urban/rural divide on top of it.

 

[Einherjar86]

Sorry for leaving this alone for several days but I finally got a decent halfday open.

Yeah, I don't think it's worth it to keep going. It's too much trouble re-reading my posts to remember what I was thinking, and then crafting a coherent response.

I acknowledge that my perspective is a particular one, but I probably expose myself to more material outside my wheelhouse (including links from this forum) than most in my immediate community. In most cases these don't change my mind, they only illustrate the contours of the rhetorical divide.

I only have one quibble, and it's kind of annoying considering I've said this multiple times before...

It's not applicable because the labor theory of value was debunked about as soon as Das Kapital came out. That's not Marx's fault, the LTOV wasn't even his idea, and the critique is good insofar as one accepts the labor theory of value, but that's like saying if we accept that the earth is flat, some conspiracy theories make sense.

The LToV is not the entirety of Marx's philosophy or writings. It's one component of the critique of political economy. You do not need the LToV to talk about false consciousness, alienation, commodity fetishism, etc. all of which basically represent a form of cultural critique.

These concepts are still applicable today as theories of social meaning and analysis. They don't comprise an economics, they comprise a method of reading culture. You can appeal to these ideas and never need to deal with the LToV.

 

[Dak]

I acknowledge that my perspective is a particular one, but I probably expose myself to more material outside my wheelhouse (including links from this forum) than most in my immediate community. In most cases these don't change my mind, they only illustrate the contours of the rhetorical divide.

Well you talk to me sometimes

The LToV is not the entirety of Marx's philosophy or writings. It's one component of the critique of political economy. You do not need the LToV to talk about false consciousness, alienation, commodity fetishism, etc. all of which basically represent a form of cultural critique.

I don't know about the "etcs", but two of the three you listed are empty critiques, as they are quite easily generalized to nothingness with no argument against doing so. "You like something? Ha! Fetishism!" - "You believe something? Ha! You're just buying into a theory of someone else which is using you!"

Alienation is simply a fact of life to varying degrees, regardless of the social organization. In other news, Gravity is an oppressive force.

 

[Einherjar86]

I don't know about the "etcs", but two of the three you listed are empty critiques, as they are quite easily generalized to nothingness with no argument against doing so. "You like something? Ha! Fetishism!" - "You believe something? Ha! You're just buying into a theory of someone else which is using you!"

Alienation is simply a fact of life to varying degrees, regardless of the social organization. In other news, Gravity is an oppressive force.

Ha, well none of those comments comes remotely close to accurately capturing what its concept is.

 

[Dak]

Ha, well none of those comments comes remotely close to accurately capturing what its concept is.

Rather than going off in three different directions, I'll stick with one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism

The next mention of fetishism was in the 1842 Rheinische Zeitung newspaper articles about the "Debates on the Law on Thefts of Wood", wherein Marx spoke of the Spanish fetishism of gold and the German fetishism of wood as commodities:[11]

The savages of Cuba regarded gold as a fetish of the Spaniards. They celebrated a feast in its honour, sang in a circle around it, and then threw it into the sea. If the Cuban savages had been present at the sitting of the Rhine Province Assembly, would they not have regarded wood as the Rhinelanders' fetish? But a subsequent sitting would have taught them that the worship of animals is connected with this fetishism, and they would have thrown the hares into the sea in order to save the human beings.

What is apparent here is that "fetishism" was Marx blindly (or ideologically) staggering around the concept of subjective value - which has roots in scarcity but isn't entirely explained by it. Marx's "deep" analysis was to go "huh, different people like different things to different degrees. that's dumb (or exploitive!)". The following (but earlier) quote clarifies that:

the commodity-form, and the value-relation of the products of labour within which it appears, have absolutely no connection with the physical nature of the commodity and the material relations arising out of this. It is nothing but the definite social relation between men themselves which assumes here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between things........ I call this the fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour

I could also point out that it is incorrect that there is no connection between value and physical nature of the commodity, nor that monetary value is the sum total of social relations. On more thought, maybe I'm wrong about Marx not being at fault for missing subjective value theory. Feitshism appears to be his attempt at engaging in "woo-wooing" it.

The value of a commodity originates from the human being's intellectual and perceptual capacity to consciously (subjectively) ascribe a relative value (importance) to a commodity, the goods and services manufactured by the labour of a worker. Therefore, in the course of the economic transactions (buying and selling) that constitute market exchange, people ascribe subjective values to the commodities (goods and services), which the buyers and the sellers then perceive as objective values, the market-exchange prices that people will pay for the commodities.

A. That sounds like a pretty reasonable summary of the STOV, minus the part about "labour of the worker" B. It's technically a critique that some people perceive these subjective values as "objective" values, but I must say....and? Some people think the earth is flat.

 

[Einherjar86]

I don't know what to tell you man, but you're either seeing what you want to see or Wikipedia doesn't give you enough info (maybe both).

 

[Dak]

you're either seeing what you want to see or Wikipedia doesn't give you enough info (maybe both).

Maybe both, but it's not like the "seeing what you want to see" criticism can't go the other way and I'm not entirely unfamiliar with Das Kapital. Just because someone creates a label (symbol) for something doesn't mean it corresponds to anything new, if anything at all. This is something that social scientists have to deal with when trying to define and demonstrate a construct (http://www.statisticshowto.com/construct-validity/). To demonstrate it you must have a way to test it with both discriminate and convergent validity - that is, you must be able to test it in such a way that the method of testing hangs together internally - with significance, and is also sufficiently different from all other related constructs (http://www.statisticshowto.com/convergent-validity/). I don't see Marx doing that here - he doesn't actually attempt to test anything and it has poor face validity once one understands alternative constructs.

 

[Einherjar86]

The evidence for Marxian concepts like false consciousness and fetishism is blatantly present. It's all around us. That doesn't mean said evidence can't be interpreted differently. False consciousness could be falsified if the structure of modern cultural belief were drastically different in very specific ways (and it would have made little sense for Marx to make the argument if that were the case).

As a critical perspective on why nations and/or large communities accrete around certain values and beliefs, Marx's writings are invaluable. That there is evidence for them doesn't mean there are no other possible interpretations.

Also, I didn't say there's no connection between LToV and these concepts. I said we don't need LToV in order to talk about them. A person can arrive at correct or compelling conclusions from incorrect premises.

 

[Dak]

False consciousness could be falsified if the structure of modern cultural belief were drastically different in very specific ways (and it would have made little sense for Marx to make the argument if that were the case).

https://www.britannica.com/topic/false-consciousness

False consciousness, in philosophy, particularly within critical theory and other Marxist schools and movements, the notion that members of the proletariat unwittingly misperceive their real position in society and systematically misunderstand their genuine interests within the social relations of production under capitalism. False consciousness denotes people’s inability to recognize inequality, oppression, and exploitation in a capitalist society because of the prevalence within it of views that naturalize and legitimize the existence of social classes.

You can falsify the concept of false consciousness because it's built the following: "genuine interests" "inability to recognize exploitation" "misperceive their real position". These are all unsubstantiated assertions built on truisms from the labor theory of value, among other things. It's unsubstantiated critique built on unsubstantiated critique built on a falsifiable theory of value. Just because cultural beliefs are X doesn't mean Y notion of them is automatically true.

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm not going to argue with the internet, but the definition of false consciousness you've cited is more specifically that of cultural hegemony. Engels apparently wrote about this (I'm less familiar with his writings), but it's not the broader definition of false consciousness. I'm referring to the notion that people mis-perceive values as "self-evident" when in fact they're actually the products of years of cultural development. So for example, people mis-perceive liberal selfhood as a pre-existing, originary essence, when it actually emerges as a side-effect of material conditions.

 

[Dak]

So for example, people mis-perceive liberal selfhood as a pre-existing, originary essence, when it actually emerges as a side-effect of material conditions.

Well I would agree that this is a misperception. I don't see what the use of "broad false consciousness" is here though. People are generally uncritical, and fail to investigate overarching cultural structures, and this is rather necessary. Every cultural hegemonic "ecology" in history has benefited from this, and in most cases the people themselves benefit from it - which is another reason why it isn't investigated. There are always benefits to worshiping the right gods, and when those gods are overthrown rarely do conditions improve, even if they weren't the best of gods.

 

[Dak]

 

[Dak]

Also *supports IDs for getting into school*. Probably doesn't support IDs for getting into a voting booth.