rkm and Bill Schell:
rkm:
Your argument is really classical Weber. Consider:
"It seems clear to me that Euro expansionism and dominance was primarily
due to this focus on creativity and narrow rationalism. They were always
looking for the new, and always willing to sacrifice the old. China, allow
me to suggest, had more sense that to seek far-flung dominions -- they knew
it would disrupt their society as much as the other: if something can't be
integrated, it's destabilizing."
This argument falls into the category of what I call Walrus and Carpenter
explanations for the rise of Europe: How sad that our European civilization
was so inferior to others in understanding the true meaning of life and the
world. How sad that our rationality, creativity, "rational restlessness"
(Weber) fored us to eat up these other civilizations, but didn't they taste
good!
Bill Schell:
You won't find an appeal to rationality-as-cause in the *Communist
Manifesdto.* That is nonsense. In fact, if you read *The German Ideology*,
written at about the same period, you'll find one of the finst critiques of
rationality-as-cause in the entire literature of the 19th century.
Again you quote me out of context. (A bad habit. Like smoking.) There are
many, many modern theories that fall within the categories "Marxism" and
Neo-Marxism." But that doesn't mean that all of them reflect classical
Marxist theory or, for that matter, are valid. I mentioned the fact that
some of these theories are indeed Weberian, and I think I made it clear at
vaious points in the book that I don't like these theories. In other
writings I show that they're imnvalid and that they really distort the
classical Marxist viewpoint. In a papwr entitle "Robert Brenner in the
Tunnel of Time" (*Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geograpyh*, around 1995) I
show that Brenner's theory is neo-Weberian: an appeal to the rationality
created in Europe by early capitalism.
"Blaut: 'Marx did not root his theory in rationality and I did not say he
did.' Schell: Nor did I. [Ah, but yes you did!] Rather Marxism is, in many
of its variants, which is what you wrote." Nope.
"Moreover, Weber does not deny rationality to traditional civilizations."
Dead wrong. I won't point you to the places in the book where I discuss
this, or the citations to Weber's works, because you'll accuse me of
pushing the book.
Jim B