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| Leon Trotsky - from Wikipedia |
The idealists and their almost deaf and
blind disciples, the Russian subjectivists, thought that mind and critical
reason moved the world, or in other words that the intelligentsia directed progress.
As a matter of fact, all through history mind limps after reality.
Leon Trotsky. Literature and RevolutionTrotsky was only partly right. We rationalise after the fact but theories often come before the facts that eventually support them. Otherwise there would be no progress.
I'm not sure if he was talking about facts and theories here. Sounds like the standard Marxist view that forms of thought are dependent upon material conditions of production, which is something a bit more subtle.
ReplyDeleteSV - yet Marxism is nothing if not predictive, so presumably exempt from "limping after the facts".
ReplyDeleteNo, Marx would have said that the objective reality of capitalism led to his theory about it.
ReplyDeleteSV - would he? I could never get anything that specific out of Marx, but that may be down to my difficulties with him.
ReplyDelete