first, let me lay out what I do not claim:
- that mental activity is in some sense -ontologically, causally, explanitorally- prior to physical activity
- that a sufficient account of any kind or degree of social phenomena can be given exclusively in terms of mental activity
- that mental or discursive or rational activity is wholly unbound from conditions that immediately precede and circumscribe it
What I do hold is that, nonetheless, these commitments don’t undermine the desirability of an integrated mental/physical approach. One where they both have causal roles to play at the macro + micro level.^^ The most obvious point I can think at which this clashes with Marx is wrt normativity. He’s notoriously ambiguous on this point but, if you’ll allow me to do a little violence, an at least common reading is one which sees him as setting out a descriptive science that unmasks received, common-sense norms like ‘rights’ or ‘justice’ as discursive tools that legitimate disproportionate distributions of wealth/power. The only real true moral north is freedom, and the liberatory goal is to reach a point where politics isn’t possible anymore. Now, I don’t think this is even close to the most plausible reading of the man himself, but something like it definitely animates most baby marxists (along with a bunch of other shit, don’t get me started) -and this is part of why I think the shearing away of Marxist approaches since the 70s^ was mostly a good thing. The ability/language that allows us to acknowledge when unjust** material conditions are being covered over by norms/mores/values/whatever is a good thing, and one for which we’re largely indebted to Marx. The view that norms/mores/values always or even just mostly do that is fucking crazy and incoherent.
For what it’s worth, ‘culture’ is probably my least favorite word and one that I’d actually eliminate entirely on account of its slipperiness.
^^ I’ve always thought of marx’s base-superstructure as analogous to supervenience in the phil of mind, and if that’s the case, then it’ll run into the same problems supervenience does.
^totally willing to admit there was some Kuhnian loss here, too
**again, because of immanent critique, i can’t even use this term to describe what I’m trying to get at
