[Marxism-Thaxis] _Bourgeois_ Philosophy
Christopher Caudwell 1938 Reality A Study in Bourgeois Philosophy CB: Importantly, Caudwell discusses philo in terms of classes. This is a fundamental and continuous theme in his approach. This is critical in making his writing Marxist philosophical, Marxist-Thaxist. Few technical philosophers recognize the adjectives bourgeois or working classed as legitimate in describing philo. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Graham Priest: Dialetheism Marx
Graham Priest: Dialetheism Marx Ralph Dumain : Priest, Graham. 'Was Marx a Dialetheist?', Science and Society, 1991, 54, 468-75. While I don't expect everyone to be held spellbound by this question, it is illustrative of a recurring problem in intellectual history (and also in popular intellectual culture, which is another story. Priest's views on dialetheism (logic which admits contradictions) is controversial among his fellow logicians, and he responds to objections in his book. Probably his fellow logicians (except those interested in Marx, among which there are more than a few) are not terribly concerned about his views on Marx, and in fact he says nothing about Marx in his book. However he did get a response to his earlier article on dialectics and dialetheism: Marquit, Erwin. A Materialist Critique of Hegel's Concept of Identity of Opposites, Science and Society, Summer 1990, 54, no. 2, 147-166. ^ CB: You may know that Marquit is the editor at Marxist Educational Press,at the University of Minnesota. So along with the above article, Marquit has an article Contradictions in Dialectical and Formal Logic in a book _Dialectial Contradictions: Contemporary Marxist Discussions_, with about nine articles by US , Soviet, Canadian and German philosophers, juris prudence et al on this related topic. James Lawler has one of the articles. He has been on this list. Lawler's article is Hegel and Logical and Dialectical Contradictions, and Misinterpretations from Bertrand Russell to Lucio Colletti. Also, in Nature, Society and Theougt Vol.3, No. 1 1990 Marquit has Distinctions Between the Spheres of Action of Formal Logic and Dialectical Logic ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Graham Priest: Dialetheism Marx
Yes, I have this book, haven't read it yet. Know Lawler, knew him in Buffalo. Got an article by him on my web site. Of late he's written articles for the Open Court series on popular culture and philosophy, e.g. in THE SIMPSONS AND PHILOSOPHY, and some of the later books in the series. I also know Marquit and have published in his journal, most recently, a book review on Marcuse. Re your post on bourgeois philosophy and viz. this post on Priest: of course most academic philosophers do not comprehend the issue of bourgeois philosopphy or what make it beoirgeois, or the division of labor, or the consequences of fragmentation. My purpose in doing these studies--this historical review--is to map, analyze, and overcome the fragmentation of knowledge. -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sep 12, 2005 11:59 AM To: 'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and the thinkers he inspired' marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Graham Priest: Dialetheism Marx Graham Priest: Dialetheism Marx Ralph Dumain : Priest, Graham. 'Was Marx a Dialetheist?', Science and Society, 1991, 54, 468-75. While I don't expect everyone to be held spellbound by this question, it is illustrative of a recurring problem in intellectual history (and also in popular intellectual culture, which is another story. Priest's views on dialetheism (logic which admits contradictions) is controversial among his fellow logicians, and he responds to objections in his book. Probably his fellow logicians (except those interested in Marx, among which there are more than a few) are not terribly concerned about his views on Marx, and in fact he says nothing about Marx in his book. However he did get a response to his earlier article on dialectics and dialetheism: Marquit, Erwin. A Materialist Critique of Hegel's Concept of Identity of Opposites, Science and Society, Summer 1990, 54, no. 2, 147-166. ^ CB: You may know that Marquit is the editor at Marxist Educational Press,at the University of Minnesota. So along with the above article, Marquit has an article Contradictions in Dialectical and Formal Logic in a book _Dialectial Contradictions: Contemporary Marxist Discussions_, with about nine articles by US , Soviet, Canadian and German philosophers, juris prudence et al on this related topic. James Lawler has one of the articles. He has been on this list. Lawler's article is Hegel and Logical and Dialectical Contradictions, and Misinterpretations from Bertrand Russell to Lucio Colletti. Also, in Nature, Society and Theougt Vol.3, No. 1 1990 Marquit has Distinctions Between the Spheres of Action of Formal Logic and Dialectical Logic ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis Ralph Dumain's The Autodidact Project http://www.autodidactproject.org The C.L.R. James Institute http://www.clrjamesinstitute.org ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] that man (sic) was born free, but was crippled through social organisation.
excerpt from Liberty A study in bourgeois illusion From this it follows that the animals are less free than men. Creatures of impulse, acting they know not why, subject to all the chances of nature, of other animals, of geographical accidents and climatic change, they are at the mercy of necessity, precisely because they are unconscious of it. That is not to say they have no freedom, for they possess a degree of freedom. They have some knowledge of the causality of their environment, as is shown by their manipulations of time and space and material - the bird's flight, the hare's leap, the ant's nest. They have some inner self-determination, as is shown by their behaviour. But compared to man, they are unfree. Implicit in the conception of thinkers like Russell and Forster, that all social relations are restraints on spontaneous liberty, is the assumption that the animal is the only completely free creature. No one constrains the solitary carnivore to do anything. This is of course an ancient fallacy. Rousseau is the famous exponent. Man is born free but is everywhere in chains. Always in the bourgeois mind is this legend of the golden age, of a perfectly good man corrupted by institutions. Unfortunately not only is man not good without institutions, he is not evil either. He is no man at all; he is neither good nor evil; he is an unconscious brute. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Russell, number is class of all classes
Liberty A study in bourgeois illusion Suppose someone had performed the regrettable experiment of turning Bertrand Russell, at the age of nine months, over to a goat foster-mother, and leaving him to her care, in some remote spot, unvisited by human beings, to grow to manhood. When, say forty years later, men first visited Bertrand Russell, would they find him with the manuscripts of the Analysis of Mind and the Analysis of Matter in his hands? Would they even find him in possession of his definition of number, as the class of all classes? No. In contradiction to his present state, his behaviour would be both illogical and impolite. ^ CB: Speaking of the unconscious, interesting that Russell introduces classes puningly into his philosophical discussion of number, at the same time that Marxist philosophy pressing on the world thinking about philosophy in terms of social classes. This passage reminds of the discussion of Piaget and chldren discovering number wihtout schooling. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] On Zeleney's On the Relation of Analytic and Dialectical Thinking
Ralph D: I also know Marquit and have published in his journal, most recently, a book review on Marcuse. ^^^ CB: And I just noticed that one of your reviews On Zeleney's On the Relation of Analytic and Dialectical Thinking, with response by Jindrich Zeleny, is in the same issue (Vol.3, No.1 , 1990) of _Nature, Society and Thought_ as Marquit's Distinction Between the Spheres of Action of Formal Logic and Dialectical Logic I'll have to read that one. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] that man (sic) was born free, but was crippled through social organisation.
I'm no Rousseau expert, but this doesn't sound right to me. The Rousseau quote in itself seems to be a quintessentially dialectical statement: how is it that a human being born a tabula rasa (socially if not genetically), who has the potential to become anything, is then socialized in a society that limits and imprisons him? The primitive state is not necessarily valued in itself, but rather contrasted dialectically with the alienated, repressive state of civilization. Let's remember that Rousseau was out of place in the aristocratic milieu of the French Enlightenment. Voltaire got all the girls, leaving Rousseau with his dick hanging out, and Voltaire thought he could educate the rulers to reform society according to the first principles of reason. Rousseau brolught a perspective from outside in the only way he could. -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sep 12, 2005 12:55 PM To: 'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and the thinkers he inspired' marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] that man (sic) was born free, but was crippled through social organisation. excerpt from Liberty A study in bourgeois illusion From this it follows that the animals are less free than men. Creatures of impulse, acting they know not why, subject to all the chances of nature, of other animals, of geographical accidents and climatic change, they are at the mercy of necessity, precisely because they are unconscious of it. That is not to say they have no freedom, for they possess a degree of freedom. They have some knowledge of the causality of their environment, as is shown by their manipulations of time and space and material - the bird's flight, the hare's leap, the ant's nest. They have some inner self-determination, as is shown by their behaviour. But compared to man, they are unfree. Implicit in the conception of thinkers like Russell and Forster, that all social relations are restraints on spontaneous liberty, is the assumption that the animal is the only completely free creature. No one constrains the solitary carnivore to do anything. This is of course an ancient fallacy. Rousseau is the famous exponent. Man is born free but is everywhere in chains. Always in the bourgeois mind is this legend of the golden age, of a perfectly good man corrupted by institutions. Unfortunately not only is man not good without institutions, he is not evil either. He is no man at all; he is neither good nor evil; he is an unconscious brute. Ralph Dumain's The Autodidact Project http://www.autodidactproject.org The C.L.R. James Institute http://www.clrjamesinstitute.org Ralph Dumain's The Autodidact Project http://www.autodidactproject.org The C.L.R. James Institute http://www.clrjamesinstitute.org ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] that man (sic) was born free, but was crippled through social organisation.
On Mon, 12 Sep 2005 12:55:03 -0400 Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: excerpt from Liberty A study in bourgeois illusion Caudwell seems to have held to a type of compatibilism concerning the issue of free will and determinism. As such it seems to bear more than a passing resemblance to the views of Plekhanov as outlined his essay, The Role of the Individual in History, http://art-bin.com/art/oplecheng.html as well as to view of my friend Tom Clark (who is not a Marxist), see: http://www.naturalism.org/freewill.htm Certainly, Caudwell's take on freedom can be seen as as a Spinozan and even Baconian, since for him human freedom is based not on an illusory contracausal free will but rather upon the acceptance of necessity which leads us to seek the determinants of our own behaviors which in turn makes it possible for us to become the masters of the natural and social forces that shape our destinies. Thus, for Caudwell, socialism was seen as the key for the expansion of human freedom under modern conditions. From this it follows that the animals are less free than men. Creatures of impulse, acting they know not why, subject to all the chances of nature, of other animals, of geographical accidents and climatic change, they are at the mercy of necessity, precisely because they are unconscious of it. That is not to say they have no freedom, for they possess a degree of freedom. They have some knowledge of the causality of their environment, as is shown by their manipulations of time and space and material - the bird's flight, the hare's leap, the ant's nest. They have some inner self-determination, as is shown by their behaviour. But compared to man, they are unfree. Implicit in the conception of thinkers like Russell and Forster, that all social relations are restraints on spontaneous liberty, is the assumption that the animal is the only completely free creature. No one constrains the solitary carnivore to do anything. This is of course an ancient fallacy. Rousseau is the famous exponent. Man is born free but is everywhere in chains. Always in the bourgeois mind is this legend of the golden age, of a perfectly good man corrupted by institutions. Unfortunately not only is man not good without institutions, he is not evil either. He is no man at all; he is neither good nor evil; he is an unconscious brute. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] COVERUP: The dynamiting of the New Orleans levy system
COVERUP: The dynamiting of the New Orleans levy system by Ernesto Cienfuegos La Voz de Aztlan Los Angeles, Alta California - September 11, 2005 - (ACN) New evidence is surfacing concerning the sabotaging of the New Orleans levy system that resulted in the flooding of primarily Black neighborhoods. A significant number of New Orleans residents have come forward to say that the levies were breached on purpose by the authorities. Also, this publication has located the original Associated Press article that reported on a gun battle between the New Orleans Police Department and US military contractors near the vicinity of the breached levy along the 17th Street Canal. The original report states that New Orleans police shot and killed 5 armed US military contractors in a gun battle. The original AP report was confirmed by a US Army Corps of Engineers spokesman. The AP story has now been deleted on pretty much all news websites and a different version substituted. Our publication was forwarded a link to the original report by one of our subscribers after reading our article, The Great New Orleans Land Grab This article argues that the gun battle was an attempt by the New Orleans police to stop further sabotaging of the levy system by US military saboteurs under high level secret orders. We have also provided a mirror link to the original AP report on our server in case the forwarded link gets deleted or the report is changed. The original AP report is at _http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5256023,00.html_ http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2005-September/_http://www.gua rdian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5256023,00.html_ (http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5256023,00.html) Our mirror link to the report is at _http://www.aztlan.net/police_kill_five_contractors.htm_ http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2005-September/_http://www.azt lan.net/police_kill_five_contractors.htm_ (http://www.aztlan.net/police_kill_five_contractors.htm) Our article, The Great New Orleans Land Grab proposes that the sabotaging of the levy system had already been planned. They were just waiting for the right hurricane to implement it. Katrina provided just the right cover. The ultimate purpose is to rid New Orleans of poor Black folks and take their valuable land away. We are already seeing the plan take fruition. Banks and mortgage companies are already foreclosing on homes and properties because poor Black in diaspora are unable to make mortgage payments. Also, Black families in New Orleans who owned their homes outright could not afford damage insurance and do not have the money to rebuild. Most likely, their properties would be taken away for failure to pay property taxes. Developers, and contractors stand to make a lot of money in the new New Orleans. Vultures are already hovering over the devastated city. Dick Cheney was recently in town to survey the possibilities for Halliburton and deals are being made with a Las Vegas group to build multi-million casinos in the Big Easy. Many of the Black families in diaspora already suspect the worse. Resident Andrea Garland, now re-located to Texas, said, I also heard that part of the reason our house flooded is that they dynamited part of the levy system after the first section broke - they did this to prevent Uptown (the rich White part of town) from being flooded. Apparently they used too much dynamite, thus flooding part of the Bywater. So now I know who is responsible for flooding my house - not Katrina, but our government. There are also claims by intelligence expert Tom Heneghen that 25 earwitnesses heard explosions immediately before the levies broke. The Washington Post, in addition, interviewed John Mullen III, an African American retired schoolteacher now staying at the Houston Superdome. John Mullen III lived in the Lower Ninth Ward, an all Black neighborhood. John Mullen told the Washington Post that he believes that the levy breaks had somehow been engineered to keep the wealthy French Quarter and Garden District dry at the expense of poor Black neighborhoods like the Lower Ninth Ward -- a suspicion the Washington Post has heard from many other Black survivors. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] that man (sic) was born free, but was crippled through social organisation.
On Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:27:00 -0400 (GMT-04:00) Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm no Rousseau expert, but this doesn't sound right to me. The Rousseau quote in itself seems to be a quintessentially dialectical statement: how is it that a human being born a tabula rasa (socially if not genetically), who has the potential to become anything, is then socialized in a society that limits and imprisons him? The primitive state is not necessarily valued in itself, but rather contrasted dialectically with the alienated, repressive state of civilization. Let's remember that Rousseau was out of place in the aristocratic milieu of the French Enlightenment. Voltaire got all the girls, leaving Rousseau with his dick hanging out, and Voltaire thought he could educate the rulers to reform society according to the first principles of reason. Rousseau brolught a perspective from outside in the only way he could. I would agree that is a rather undialectical, mechanistic reading of Rousseau. Although, it should be noted that Rosseau was sufficiently ambigous in his writing, that he can be interpreted in all sorts of different ways. -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sep 12, 2005 12:55 PM To: 'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and the thinkers he inspired' marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] that man (sic) was born free, but was crippled through social organisation. excerpt from Liberty A study in bourgeois illusion From this it follows that the animals are less free than men. Creatures of impulse, acting they know not why, subject to all the chances of nature, of other animals, of geographical accidents and climatic change, they are at the mercy of necessity, precisely because they are unconscious of it. That is not to say they have no freedom, for they possess a degree of freedom. They have some knowledge of the causality of their environment, as is shown by their manipulations of time and space and material - the bird's flight, the hare's leap, the ant's nest. They have some inner self-determination, as is shown by their behaviour. But compared to man, they are unfree. Implicit in the conception of thinkers like Russell and Forster, that all social relations are restraints on spontaneous liberty, is the assumption that the animal is the only completely free creature. No one constrains the solitary carnivore to do anything. This is of course an ancient fallacy. Rousseau is the famous exponent. Man is born free but is everywhere in chains. Always in the bourgeois mind is this legend of the golden age, of a perfectly good man corrupted by institutions. Unfortunately not only is man not good without institutions, he is not evil either. He is no man at all; he is neither good nor evil; he is an unconscious brute. Ralph Dumain's The Autodidact Project http://www.autodidactproject.org The C.L.R. James Institute http://www.clrjamesinstitute.org Ralph Dumain's The Autodidact Project http://www.autodidactproject.org The C.L.R. James Institute http://www.clrjamesinstitute.org ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Philosophy of Rousseau
Philosophy of Rousseau http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau [edit http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jean-Jacques_Rousseauaction=edit section=3 ] Nature vs. society Rousseau saw a fundamental divide between society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society and human nature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_nature . Rousseau contended that man http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humankind was good by nature, a noble savage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage when in the state of nature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature (the state of all the other animals, and the condition humankind was in before the creation of civilization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization and society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society ), but is corrupted by society. He viewed society as artificial and held that the development of society, especially the growth of social interdependence, has been inimical to the well-being of human beings. Society's negative influence on otherwise virtuous men centers, in Rousseau's philosophy, on its transformation of amour de soi http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amour_de_soiaction=edit , a positive self-love, into amour-propre http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amour-propreaction=edit , or pride http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride . Amour de soi represents the instictive human desire for self-preservation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-preservation , combined with the human power of reason http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason . In contrast, amour-propre is not natural but artificial and forces man to compare himself to others, thus creating unwarranted fear http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear and allowing men to take pleasure in the pain or weakness of others. Rousseau was not the first to make this distinction; it had been invoked by, among others, Vauvenargues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vauvenargues . In Discourse on the Arts and Sciences Rousseau argued that the arts and sciences had not been beneficial to humankind, because they were advanced not in response to human needs but as the result of pride and vanity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity . Moreover, the opportunities they created for idleness and luxury contributed to the corruption of man. He proposed that the progress of knowledge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge had made governments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government more powerful http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_%28sociology%29 and had crushed individual http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual liberty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty . He concluded that material progress had actually undermined the possibility of sincere friendship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship , replacing it with jealousy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jealousy , fear http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear and suspicion http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Suspicion_%28emotion%29action=ed it . His subsequent Discourse on Inequality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Inequality , tracked the progress and degeneration of mankind from a primitive state of nature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_nature to modern society. He suggested that the earliest human beings were isolated semi-apes who were differentiated from animals by their capacity for free will and their perfectibility. He also argued that these primitive humans were possessed of a basic drive to care for themselves and a natural disposition to compassion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion or pity. As humans were forced to associate together more closely, by the pressure of population growth, they underwent a psychological transformation and came to value the good opinion of others as an essential component of their own well being. Rousseau associated this new self-awareness with a golden age of human flourishing. However, the development of agriculture and metallurgy, private property and the division of labour http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour led to increased interdependence and inequality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inequality . The resulting state of conflict led Rousseau to suggest that the first state was invented as a kind of social contract http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract made at the suggestion of the rich and powerful. This original contract was deeply flawed as the wealthiest and most powerful members of society tricked the general population, and so cemented inequality as a permanent feature of human society. Rousseau's own conception of the social contract can be understood as an alternative to this fraudulent form of association. At the end of the Discourse on Inequality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Inequality , Rousseau explains how the desire to have value in the eyes of others, which originated in the golden age, comes to undermine personal integrity and authenticity in a society marked by interdependence, hierarchy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy , and inequality. [edit
