Extras archive

/ NOTIS Radical Llggulslic:s It is perhaps not immediately obvious how there could be a radical linguistics. After all, much linguistics, particularly grammatical theory, has no obvious political or social significance. Chomsky was recognizing this when he wrote some years ago that ‘I do not see any way to make my work as a linguist […]

Llfi’BBS Dietzgen Dear Editors, Adam Buick’ s str iking and sympa th- etic account of Joseph Dietzgen (RP10) sheds light on what is surely one of the most shadowy areas of Marxist philosophy. Buick places us all in his debt and, moreover, demonstrates convincingly that Dietzgen well deserves to be rescued from his current neglect. […]

formations from a particular, materialist and thoroughly experimental basis., The material base of socialism is simultaneously its moral base: how direct producers are, and the thousand’s of struggles involved in understanding what it is to be a direct producer under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Above all, socialist revolution is not equivalent to a regime […]

Brnsl Casslrer lohnIbbett This is the third article in a series on neglected .1r misunderstood philosophers. The others have been on Dietzgen (in RP10) and Merleau-Ponty (in RP11). Articles on r:ollingwood and Foucault are planned; other suggestions would be welcome. Although the works of Ernst Cassirer are readily available in English, I suspect they only […]

inst~d of the insignificant and useless knowledge In sum radical philosophy’s attitude to both so often produced. And some research has clearly science and common sense is the same: where it been dangerous, e.g. in biological warfare and helps, use it; where it doesn ‘.t, criticize it; eugenics. where…;i.t gets in the way, remove it. […]

Lellen Foucauh’s Romanticism Dear Editors The Cahiers du cinema interview with Foucault on ‘film and popular memory’ which you published is full of interest in its discussion of the possibility of presenting popular struggle in a positive and combative manner. The problems involved in maintaining the autonomy of popular historical memory against bourgeois manipulation, and […]

PHIEOSOPHY FROM PH I L 050 PHI CAL ADVicE 1”’£ t!.Ec.N “PlVIIII& Gc~f:~ J)~’c.uL:T’f 25p S,’-uA-r,NC’:r MY Wl11- f>R.o~I-E….,,,..ftc~ SU~Cll<.m- R.IGo~!! I I PHILOSoPHIC.A-L ADvicE -rAKE AN EPI’SfEtllol.O&/CAL BREAK. ‘2.5 PENCE Pt..EA~. 25 P aDDlaDls Out of the Depths GLASGOW SUSSEX ~IDDX. POLY PXFORD (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) Reds in the Bed Into the Unknown […]

Discussion Dialeclics IN SEARCH OF DIALECTIC I am going to make some criticisms of dialectic as it is presented in the two papers in :R adical Philosophy 14. Richard Norman quotes with approval Engels’s criticism that Hegel failed to distinguish between a dialectic of concepts and a dialectic of the real world. He then takes […]

ing-class Clbove one’s own as an individual. Not only is it a form of moral philistinism to construct a theory in which they must be excluded, but it can only devalue an important (though subsidiary) weapon in the working-class armoury for use in the class struggle. The Valu~ of Morality Morals, or rather moral principles […]

Liberals,fanalics and moral philosophers Aspects of R~M. Hare’s I have recently re-started work on a study of Tolerance and rummaging through my books for any which I might usefully read or re-read as background or foreground picked out R. M. Hare’s Freedom and Reason, chapter 9 of which has the title ‘Tolerance and Fanaticism’. I […]

Discussion Willgenslein’s Conservalism K. T. Fann, in his admirably lucid article (‘ lVi ttgenstein and bourgeois philosophy’ , Radical Philosophy 8, p24ff) recommends that radicnl philosophers should adapt to their own purposes the methods of the later Wittgenstein. Given, however, that a radical philosopher as such aiMs at altering widely-accepted modes of thought- and action […]

Hegelian Marxism than to the relations that exist in Althusser’s thought. He attacks the latter as ‘philosophy’s police mentality’ but no more. The difference is that between a clear and rigorous analytic distinction between the concepts that combine into a theory – a distinction that Al thus.ser tries to maintain – and a relationship of […]

Benton’s comments on Ranci~re seem to put forward a rather different view of science than Althusser does, so we are in fact dealing with three positions, and we can discov~r the implications of Ranci~re’s argument by working through them. Ted Benton provides a useful example in his argument that it is possible to separate the […]

LelleJls little meaning. ~ao’s view concerned the problems and future of China, whereas Freire has evolved his views as a result of a progressive literacy campaign in Latin America. The situations and historical contexts of both are so far apart in space and in time as to have only a tenuous link. In one key […]

DISCUSSION Ranciere~a~d Ideology The article by Jacques Ranciere, ‘On the Theory of Ideologv’ (Radical Philosophy 7) is one of the most powerful critiques of Althusser’s work so far to have been produced from the left. Given the wide reception that Althusser’s work is now receiving in Britain it is vital that the issues which Ranciere […]

Noles Report on work in progress THE INHERITANCE OF INTELLIGENCE AND IDEOLOGY I want to under-take a project of Marxist journalism wi th respect to the curr_ent political/scientific debate over IQ; understanding the present as history requires revealing the social basis for the views of all those involved, including the scientists on both sides, the […]

Discussion Ordinary Language Philosophy and Radical Philosophy 1. Sean Savers The Editorial of Radical Philosophy 6 (pl) concerns ordinary language and ordinary language philosophy. It is a vapid and compromising piece of writing on a topic upon which radical philosophers have previously been clear and decisive; and what it says is such an abandonment of […]

tions and then hacking away at the rest of the paper to fit it to the procrustean bed thus constructed has not unnaturally led him astray. Incidentally, I don’t think Sayers’ distinction between ‘ordinary language philosophy’ and ‘theory’ is really of much use as a touchstone for diagnosing what is reactionary about English-speakin~ philosophy at […]

Y~~————————————————————————————————————- The Huntington File In June 1973, Samuel Huntington, Professor of Government at Hc.rvard University, former consultant to the Secretary of Defense, and distinguished advocate of ‘forced draft urbanisation’ (concentration camps) in Vietnam, came to Sussex University to give a lecture and a seminar. As a result of a demonstration organised by the Sussex Indochina […]

Discussion Leninism versus proletarian self-emancipation Norman Geras argues (RP6, pp20-22) convincingly that Marx’s theory of socialist revolution is grounded on the fundamental principle that ‘the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself’. Marx held to this view throughout his entire forty years of socialist political activity, and it […]

LelleJls Dear Editors The trouble with most Marxists, would-be Marxists, left-wing intellectuals, and bannercarrying hangers-on, is that they live outside!the real classstruggle; they live in cloisters, like monks; and only very rarely do they ever descend into the suppurating wound where the organisms of inequality originate. There is sound reason for the belief.that no revolution […]