Why Dialectics? Why Now?

Abstract

The common, of course, was the land owned by everyone in the village. By the late middle ages, feudal lords were claiming this land as their own private property. In universities today, we can discern two opposing kinds of scholarship: that which studies the people who steal a goose from off the common (‘Goose From Off the Common Studies’, or G.F.C. for short) and that which studies those who steal the common from the goose (‘Common From the Goose Studies’, or C.F.G. for short). If the ‘mainstream’ in practically every discipline consists almost entirely of the former, Marxism is our leading example of the latter.

The law locks up the man or woman

Who steals a goose from off the common,

But leaves the greater the greater villain loose

Who steals the common from the goose.

Anonymous, 15th century, English