Day 3 Semester 2 of Political Science (and History)
Day 3 Semester 2 of Political Science (and History)
Today is going to be weird to post about as most of what was talked about in my history class was not interesting enough to write about here. I reread my notes just to be certain. Didn’t miss anything that I could potentially mention but for the most part nothing stood out. We honestly only talked about what a act is, how facts relate to the study of history, how they’re applied, the system used to study history, and a tiny bit about Napoleon. If you’re curious about the Napoleon discussion it was only brought up in reference to Lynn Hunt herself and how her main focus as a historian is how women were treated during the French Revolution and Napoleon’s rule.
Facts - Coherence - Completeness
That’s the method in which all historians around the world use to to do their research and make conclusions to whatever questions they’re trying to answer. I don’t think this is truly worth writing about here but if someone is curious I am willing to discuss it more in the comments.
I’m writing this segment during my break so maybe my Political Science class will be more interesting. Then again, my classes are interesting but, like today, not every day is going to have good content to write about on Lemmygrad. Unless the class content itself or the professor makes comments related to or about Marxism I’m not going to write about it. Which probably doesn’t track well with my posts as I tend to ramble a lot but I’m going to try and cut back on that as much as possible. I would hate for anyone to get bored or frustrated reading my posts.
So class started and wouldn’t you know, we talked about Marxism! You bet your asses I add little hearts around anything to do with it too. So in this class we went over what explain political behaviour, who rules, and where and why. Interests, beliefs, and structures are the three main things that explain political behaviour. I mention this because we dove into beliefs which led to what modernists are, and in relation to modernists my professor told as that Mexico was deemed as some sort of authoritarian system compared to Western European nations. He mentioned the book The Civic Culture 1963 by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba in which they said just that. For what its worth my professor didn’t really take that claim seriously and only talked about it to lead into criticisms of modernism such as its tendency towards Anglo-American ethnocentrism. Next, of course, was postmodernism with a reference to Ronald Inglehart:
Cultures are sets of symbols subject to interpretation; focus on political discourse; challenge to modernist assumption on one clear, fixed, homogenous culture.
Political correctness and anti-PC; woke and anti-woke campaigns. The culture war fits here.
Critics of postmodernism: can interpretation explain something?
Symbols don’t have a monopoly. The colour red, for example, is the colour of the Labour Party but is also used by many conservatives in the USA.
Each ideology has its own idea for a good and just society. Im sure most of you know who Antonio Gramsci but he was discussed in class, so here’s what I managed to write down when my professor was talking:
He was a Marxist theorist that was arrested and unfortunately died in prison.
He never wrote a book himself but his works were saved and compiled by his friends.
He expanded on Hegemony.
Ideology is justification of rule.
The ruling class try to not only rule altogether but to convince the masses of their legitimacy.
After that we moved on to structures which opened up with Marxism. I wont write about my notes on Marxism but I want to talk about how my professor spoke about it. Of course we went over Base and Superstructure and how every society has both and in capitalism the bourgeoisie exercise power over every part of society. He admitted that the definition and discussion of Marxism in our class was the dogmatic version and that its a very orthodox ideology. His tone is almost kind, not dismissive or mocking, as if he recognizes Marxism as legitimate. If anyone remembers my last semester posts Marxism was brushed over in class, but even during the recorded lecture where my professor had more time he didn’t seem to take it seriously which saddened me but whatever.
Institutionalize was next but nothing too interesting was taught so I’ll skip it and go to “who rules.” So with this one there are two theories: pluralists and elites. With pluralists you got power dispersed equally among various political groups, no group has complete/permanent power. With the elite theory its self explanatory and Marxist traditions explain it well, yes my professor said this. My professor made sure to mention that in the Soviet Union, contrary to popular beliefs, it had factions and worked more like pluralists and he made this remark in regards to the criticism that pluralists cannot explain authoritarian regimes. He didn’t talk about the USSR with any contempt, and I feel like that’s important to mention. I wonder if any of the other political science professors here has the same view. With the elite theory section and citing Marxism as a school of thought that explain it well, a guy in my class asked if it was accurate to say that even in bourgeoisie societies its more pluralist as they too have factions. My professor answered this in the pluralist perspective there’s production bourgeoisie vs some other type of bourgeoisie that I couldn’t quite catch but that hardly matters.
After this the class ended and I went home. That’s really all I have for today, and for once I posted it on time.
Which probably doesn’t track well with my posts as I tend to ramble a lot but I’m going to try and cut back on that as much as possible. I would hate for anyone to get bored or frustrated reading my posts.
Unless it serves your interests or your own purposes not to, ramble away.
It's entirely up to the readers of your posts to determine whether or not they choose to read your posts and how they decide to go about that (e.g. reading closely, skimming, skipping to the parts that interest them etc.) Let the reader figure out what they want to get from your post and to seek that out themselves. Don't concern yourself with their needs because this is an exercise in reinforcing and enriching your own learnings. You aren't writing a paper or a book, so your concern for the reader shouldn't really be a high priority imo.
Im sure most of you know who Antonio Gramsci but he was discussed in class
Just be aware that Gramsci is used in the service of many purposes and his materialism is often downplayed or even erased from how his theory is interpreted or applied.
This is in large part a product of the fact that he was never able to really produce a body of work that is coherent and which nailed down his positions due to the circumstances of his imprisonment.
What this means is that I'd urge you to approach people's takes and applications of Gramsci with a healthy skepticism unless they are Gramsci scholars.
Out of interest, it's worth noting that the chief prosecutor for Mussolini said of Gramsci during his trial "We must prevent this brain from functioning for 20 years."
My professor answered this in the pluralist perspective there’s production bourgeoisie vs some other type of bourgeoisie that I couldn’t quite catch but that hardly matters.
Potentially "rent-seeking bourgeoisie", which is more relevant to liberalism but this is the group of bourgeoisie who are extractive rather than productive in the economy; landlords, speculators, financiers and investors etc.
To illustrate the point, imagine what the consequences would be if every member of the bourgeoisie made their money by being a landlord or an investment banker; the economy would collapse in a week.
My professor made sure to mention that in the Soviet Union, contrary to popular beliefs, it had factions and worked more like pluralists and he made this remark in regards to the criticism that pluralists cannot explain authoritarian regimes. He didn’t talk about the USSR with any contempt, and I feel like that’s important to mention.
This is promising!
Next, of course, was postmodernism
I'm an ex-postmodernist/poststructuralist. While there are useful tools in the poststructuralist toolkit, these days I am extremely skeptical of the overall utility of this intellectual movement.
If you want a crucial perspective on poststructuralism from an insider, the articles of Gabriel Rockhill are excellent and many his lectures hosted on his YouTube channel The Critical Theory workshop are also great. I can provide links if you need but I'm being lazy rn.
I agree about feeling free to be expressive. Personally, I enjoy these posts. So I wouldn't want them to be curtailed for the sake of users who aren't interested (which is fine, of course, they don't have to read them if they don't want to).
Postmodernism/poststructuralism can be so alluring, right? I suppose this is one of Rockhill's main points, that this kind of 'critical theory' presents itself and is presented as being radical, of tearing up the world by it's roots, so sharp. It even impresses conservatives and they'll admit to it but dismiss it as not-their-thing. But it's mostly pretend. An intellectual game. It lets you do the Zizek thing of having a scathing, disarming, and charming critique of literally anything – even toilets or perverted flowers – but it's a performance to distract from it's inability to identify what's wrong and what needs to be fixed, nevermind how to do it.
Maybe we're similar, do we agree that we don't need to discard all of it, as some is useful, but it can be hard to divine the useful parts from the complexity?
The ruling class try to not only rule altogether but to convince the masses of their legitimacy.
It might come from Engels, but I remember reading this line is straight out of the beginning of Lenin's STATE AND REVOLUTION recently.
Comrade professor 🤔
I like reading your posts, do continue
I’m glad you like them! Even if nobody reads I’ll continue to write these posts as I think it’s beneficial for me to keep a log of my experiences as the years go by. It’ll be neat to read my old posts once I make it to senior level courses to see how things have changed.
I like the posts and have read all three, but if you intend to make it a daily thing, you might want to make a comm for it to keep it tidy and organised. Otherwise they risk getting lost in the feed since freechat is one of the most active comms. But if you do, please crosspost it or mention it on the next post so people (and me) know to subscribe.
It's open to challenge and there will be exceptions. But I've heard historians claim that all historians are Marxists nowadays. Because they all accept that history can only be understood in context. Now, I think there's more to Marxism than that, including actually reading Marx and being a revolutionary, in theory at the least.
It's not the worst start. But it can be disarming when they say it to try to suggest that 'Marxist'-Marxists aren't necessarily right just because they explicitly do Marxism and call themselves Marxist. If it means historians are receptive to Marxist ideas, fair enough. To the extent that they are. I've not yet worked out what I think about the underlying claim.
Maybe you'll see this come through? I'll be interested in seeing whether you spot it and how you articulate it. Me? I tend to be overoptimistic. I see someone doing something vaguely Marxist and think, yay, a comrade. Until I get disappointed 😞
I have a theory that historians know that Marx was right but don't know how to square that with a liberalism firmly embedded in their discipline – after all, they are historians, concerned with facts, coherence, and completeness, as you say (I'd not heard that before, do you have an author I could look up?). History traditionally being written by the ruling class and all that. I don't want to add to your reading list but Parenti's History as Mystery and The Assassination of Julius Caesar discuss some of this. The first chapter of the former is a critique of history textbooks iirc.
6 classes with my History professor and I can confidently say he is not a Marxist at all, not even sympathetic really. Then again he could surprise me, its still early and I have yet to write a paper for him to grade, his response to that will sort of confirm it for me.
I’d not heard that before, do you have an author I could look up?
Yes! The book is called History Why It Matters by Lynn Hunt. It’s one of the required readings for my History class. You can find it on Libgen, that’s where I got mine. I’d recommend not spending money on it, to be honest.
Parenti’s The Assassination of Julius Caesar is already on my list but I’ll definitely add his History as Mystery to the list as well.