replaying the positivist/dialectical dispute from 1970s in Germany?
There was a big debate in Germany in 1960s, where sides were occupied centraly by
Adorno,
Habermans,
Popper. From the summary that i found online:
Whereas critical rationalism views society as a collection of autonomously
determined individuals, critical theory views society as a dialectical
totality in which each individual "is determined by its mediation within
that totality" (O'Connor 174). These two theories of sociology disagree
over the use of empirical research techniques. Critical rationalists
believe that identifying and analyzing the opinions of individuals within
a society leads to an understanding of the society; critical theorists
believe that empirical research techniques cannot give insight into society
because they will merely reflect the ideologies that society imposes on
individuals. Individuals do not choose ideology; ideology is organically
suffused into individuals by the society in which they mature.
from
http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Adorno.html
Much of both neo-liberal ideology and capitalist-parliamentary nation state lies on the wide use of positivist methodology, and on supression of dialectics. Our work so far has been mostly dialectic, but we need to discuss and learn what that actually means.
And why is is that knowing own methodology and working on it is as important as working on the open-org framework, or any other production, including knowledge. In other words, we ought to both know how to use and how to develop our knowledge production tools. Methodology matters, immensly.
Back to the positivist dispute, it is Karl Popper who write "Open Societies and its Enemies", one of the most important books for capitalist revolutions of second half of 20th century. His way of theorizing openness, and backing up positivism, have been at the core of ideology that our framework stands opposed to.
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