Bookmark: Marxian methods

[john_b_cannon]

Haven't been on LJ much lately. If you want more Fodder, I've been writing recently for the Solidarity Webzine and our campus grad student organizing committee against budget cuts, fee hikes, declining access, and austerity in public education. Check it out!

Next quarter I'm teaching my own class for the first time. It's called "Philosophies of

Comments

[john_b_cannon]

e.g., Just in the section we're reading for tomorrow: "Everything is political, even philosophy or philosophies and the only 'philosophy' is history in action, that is, life itself. It is in this sense that one can interpret the thesis of the German proletariat as the heir of classical German philosophy - and one can affirm that the theorization and realization of hegemony carried out by Lenin was also a great 'metaphysical' event."

If you buy this as an honest description of part of the genealogy of the philosophy of praxis in Gramsci, at a basic level it would be interesting to reread Lenin on leadership and organization along with Gramsci on hegemony and see what they actually have to do with each other - to what extent Gramsci's hegemony represents an orthodox if generalized version of Lenin, a wacky derivation, a theory that coincides in some respects but contradicts in others, etc. It would also be worth figuring out exactly what Gramsci means by calling this "a metaphysical event," and whether he means it precisely or analogically. But in any case, this is a part of Gramsci which Eurocommunism, the New Left, and Cultural Studies have to treat as inessential or sucking up to the Third International or residual backwardness on G's part. If you actually think this kind of stuff is central to G's project in the notebooks, then this leads to a different interpretation of them.