pg. 261 fast food nation
'no society in human history worshipped science more devoutly or more blindly than the soviet union, where "scientific socalism" was considered the highest truth. And no society has ever suffered so much environmental devastation on such a massive scale.'
I cannot enlighten you to start off with but I will try to answer some of your question, the ones I cannot answer I will either answer with more questions or some kind of discussion.
This selection from the text is on page 261 of Fast food nation in the epilogue at the end of a paragraph and to be honest kind of comes out of no where.
the paragraph read,
"Much like the workings of the market, technology is just one means toward an end, not something to be celebrated for its own sake. The Titan II missiles built at Lockheed Martin plant northwest of Colorado Springs were orginally designed to carry nuclear warheads. Today they carry weather satellites into orbit. The missiles are equally efficient at both tasks. There isnothing inexorable about the use of such technology. Its value cannot be judged without considering it purpose and likely effects. THe launch of a Titan II can be beautiful, or horrific, depending upon the aim of the missile and what it carries. No society in human history worshipped science more devoutly or more blindly than the Soviet Union, where "scientific socalism" was considered the highest truth. And no society has ever suffered so much envirnomental devastation on such a massive scale."
You can make your own judgements about this but it seems that Schlosser is saying that trust in certain kinds of science is dangerous. I think that it is possible that Schlosser would attack 'science' itself but this is not the issue of the book.
In general my feelings were that Schlosser did a very good job with this book, what I read of it, or have so far.
I don't think that the soviets were employing marxism really at all. Sure it was based on the idea of it and perhaps was the dream they strived for but that is not what happened. I don't think this sentence makes sense, (for I don't understand, "First off, if the Soviets worshipped science, blindly or not, they would have rejected Marxism out of had," perhaps you left something out. i don't think that your point in the next sentence is solid at all. The definition of scientific socalism as I found, (I checked several sources and by the way Schlosser uses this term completely incorrectly) means just a form of socalism opposed to utopian socalism used by Fredrich Engles. The term was apparently never used by Marx himself but was what was used to describe his sociologic, economic, and political theories. it is called scientific because like science marx observed thigns. no joke. Because Marx's theories were based on observation and conclusions based on these observations, his theories. This is certainly not an empirical line of thought, as is the nature of thought and human existence, just his stab at it I guess.
I don't think the author was trying to say anything about what the highest truth is, maybe it is blind devotion to science, maybe its teletubbies or dogma. he was just making a comment on what the soviets believed. I don't see hot it isn't scientific at all and I don't think Scchlosser is saying that, if you have an arguement to this effect I would be happy to hear it. With the question after that I think here you are making the conclusions, Schlosser never mentions Marx, at least not here, it has nothing to do with Marx at all, I don't know how Marx felt about science but I'm pretty sure that all of the 'scientific' stuff that teh soviets did had little to do with anything from marx.
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