THE POLITICS OF MARX SOCIOLOGY

I've read 'Ishmael' (is Tinygiraffe still here?) and I disagree with the presupposition that our purpose is not to kick as much ass as possible. That said, if one does not intend either to excel personally (I like to think I do) or just serve oneself relentlessly why not step aside? I mean, all you civic heroes are just looking for icebergs and demographics to throw yourselves on top of and defend but what the hell is wrong with you yourself that you're not worth tearing all the rest up for, as long as you're here eating the food and using the detergent, and even if you're driving a hybrid car you're still burning 90% of the resources I am (don't forget, hybrids have more complex drive trains, hence higher production cost and lower service life). And that's if you're tying up the capital for a hybrid car - someone somewhere had to bleed for that capital otherwise Sierra Leoneians would have 'em too.

Yeah you can say you're good and virtuous and thoughtful, but even if your darling little heart is in the right place, what are you excelling at that hasn't been done 10,000 times before? And isn't goodness, virtue and thoughtfulness all relative? So if you're burning down the planet almost as much as I am, and grading yourself subjectively, how could your benefit - cost possibly be positive?

My response to Marxism - we're all assholes, and we've all got the same 24 hours in a day, but some assholes don't worry about themselves or any other assholes or anything else and every now and then one of those unhindered assholes stumbles upon something of lasting value that eclipses all that came before it. If you're destined to have only what you take away from someone or something else or what you're given then you might as well be the best taker you can be. And if you're up to the challenge, like all you Che Guevara fans think you are, you might as well do something sensitive, enlightened, mentally developed, pagan, cynical, poetic, philosophic, dispassionate, reserved, independent, Nietzschean, unbroken, uncivilised and or master-class rather than handing off what you don't need to someone else and expecting a reward from something you had no need of to begin with.

I can't speak for anyone else but I know I'm not an asshole.

You may not be an asshole or a jerk (I'll give you that much credit and take your word at face value) but you're kind of oblivious to the fact you replied to post dated in January 2008 from a poster who last posted on the a2k forum on Fri 15 Aug, 2008 03:04 am.

It's one of the few posts that came up when I searched "sociology".

The distinguished sociologist Daniel Bell had some interesting perspectives on Marxism, perspectives which I found very useful and accurate in my nearly 50 years of association with the discipline of sociology and I encourage readers to follow-up on the following post which I have written in his memory.-Ron Price, Australia
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DANIEL BELL: R.I.P.

Daniel Bell died this year(25/1/'11). I have followed his writings with interest all my academic life. He began to teach sociology at Columbia in 1959, the year I joined the Baha’i Faith. He then taught at Harvard until his retirement in 1990. I won’t give you chapter and verse of his distinguished career which you can easily access on the Internet. I began studying sociology in 1963. I taught it from 1974 until my retirement in 2005. I won’t give you chapter and verse of my quite undistinguished career since I have been a generalist and taught many subjects. I was not the precocious student, nor the specialist academic and prolific writer that made Bell the famous professional in the social sciences.-Ron Price, Pioneering Over Five Epochs, 8 August 2011.

You were born the very year
those Tablets1 were unveiled
in New York……I always liked
your writings on ideology and
post-industrialism in your two
books listed as among the 100
most important books: 1950 to
2000.2 There is, as you say, an
ambiguity, irony, complexity, &
paradox woven into our very real
world politics,3 you who were, a
socialist in economics, a liberal in
politics, a conservative in culture.
Thanks Daniel Bolotsky! I’ll write
more about you on another day.

1 Daniel Bolotsky(10/5/’19-25/1/’11 had his name changed to Daniel Bell in 1932; The Tablets of the Divine Plan, Abdul-Baha, 1919.
2 The End of Ideology(1960) and The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976) were so listed by the Times Literary Supplement.
3 Russell K. Nieli, “R.I.P. Daniel Bell,” The Socjournal: The New Journal of Sociology and Media, 15 February 2011.

Ron Price
8 August 2011