Date: Fri, 13 May 1994 05:57:10 -0600 Sender: psn@csf.Colorado.EDU From: David Fasenfest Subject: Re: Cullenberg on Post Modernism Paul Cockshott's two post are very interesting...two short comments: 1) regarding the role of Marxism on world events--though many are eager to posit that the end of the "eastern bloc" countried is an end to the relevance of Marxism on world affairs and the rejection of Marxist ideas by the masses...one needs to keep in mind (to support Paul's comment) that there are very strong worker's movements throught the world, that in Poland and now Hungary the political heirs of communism are being elected back into state power, and that as long as capitalism obtains as a system Marxism is the most comprehensive critique (even if one deems it a "failure" for what happened in central and eastern europe). Socialism having evolved from its less democratic forms (and least we forget early capitalism for several decades if not centuries was far from democratic) may well re-emerge as more democratic socialism in opposition to non-humanist (and globally less democratic as a rule) capitalism; 2) on the notion of progress and time direction of change...it is worth separating levels of development of productive forces (in which convergence and system domination makes sense) from levels of political forms in which social arrangements are predicated on potentials and the conditions, potential and emergence of class forces (classes in the transhistorical sense of social divisions based on material, legal, etc control). In that there is ample questions of any proper directionality--it may be more fruitful to think in terms of local conditions which probablistically lead to more likely socio- political outcomes. Otherwise it all gets too teleological and functionalist. David Fasenfest, Purdue University Bitnet: XVIB@PURCCVM Internet: XVIB@VM.CC.PURDUE.EDU