Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Milton Rogovin, Working Class Artist and Activist, Presente!

[Ralph Dumain]

I remember seeing his exhibits in Buffalo decades ago. Glad he made it 
past 100. I hope Manny Fried beats his record.

On 1/20/2011 10:11 AM, c b wrote:
> Milton Rogovin, Working Class Artist and Activist, Presente!
>
> 1. Milton Rogovin, Photographer, Dies at 101
> New York Times, January 18, 2010
>
> 2. The Working-Class Eye of Milton Rogovin
> New exhibition - Roosevelt University, Chicago
> January 20 - June 30, 2011
>
> ==
>
> Milton Rogovin, Photographer, Dies at 101
>
> by Benjamin Genocchio
>
> New York Times
> January 18, 2011
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/arts/design/19rogovin.html
>
>
> Milton Rogovin, an optometrist and persecuted leftist who
> took up photography as a way to champion the underprivileged
> and went on to become one of America's most dedicated social
> documentarians, died on Tuesday at his home in Buffalo. He
> was 101.

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Universal Races Congress 1911

[Ralph Dumain]

This July will mark the centennial of the Universal Races Congress? Does anyone 
know of any scholarly commemorations in the works?

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fundamental difference

[Ralph Dumain]

This is, however, a superficial analysis of what this is all about. 
There is, as far as I can tell, a qualitative difference between a 
quasi-existentialist position like the Biblical narrative of Job and the 
existentialist sensibility we find from the 19th century on. I imagine 
one could find comparable pre-modern alternatives in other 
civilizations. China's Juan Chi, for example, is not far removed from 
Diogenes. But let's begin with the 19th century and delve into the more 
distant past another time.

A reminder, though, that Existentialism is both a philosophical doctrine 
and a sensibility. The average person, thank goodness, was usually 
innocent of the conceptual structure of the doctrine, and absorbed the 
obviously resonant dimension of existentialism through literature rather 
than philosophy. The first time I heard this nonsense about essence 
preceding existence, I thought someone was pulling my leg. But as a 
teenager I had an existentialist sensibility, which I think is quite 
suitable for teenagers.

The acute consciousness of the individual stripped of traditional 
supports is progress. But no-one lives in a vacuum. The role of the 
existential sensibility in one's overall world view and trajectory is 
vital to understand, as well as the appropriation of the 
metaphysical/epistemological baggage to support one's projects.

The modern period, which of course witnesses the scientific revolution, 
the Enlightenment, the rebellion against feudal authority, clericalism, 
and metaphysics, and the emergence of the bourgeoisie, also sees the 
emergence of the individual as a self-conscious entity. This is real 
progress, which has yet to conquer the whole world as it should. This 
consciousness of the individual, however, is configured in different 
ways and has differential relations to the political and to tradition. 
Both the Enlightenment and Romanticism are witnesses to the emergence of 
the notion of the autonomous individual. Romanticism (confining my scope 
to Britain and Germany for the moment) itself embodies contradictory 
tendencies towards progress and reaction.

Dissatisfaction with the social order and the state of humanity goes 
back to the beginning of all civilization. There is an idealist, utopian 
dimension to all metaphysics and religion, however reactionary: it 
prescribes an ideal of what should be while reinforcing what is.  As the 
progress of modernity strips away traditional metaphysical supports, the 
dissatisfied individual, disillusioned by the corruption of society or 
the ineluctable prospect of mortality, finds himself alone, acutely 
conscious of his own condition and alienated from the collective 
existence of his society. What is new is that the metaphysical and 
mystical resources of the past no longer provide an outlet valve in a 
disenchanted cosmos.

The conservatively bent, socially privileged intellectual, warring 
against the hypocrisy and emptiness of official society, needs someplace 
to go, and when it takes a religious bent, as it did in Kierkegaard, the 
irrational retreat into the otherworldliness of Christianity is 
predicated on the thisworldliness of material privilege. Disillusioned 
conservatives make great literary people and cultural critics up to a 
point, but their imaginative conceptual constructs are predicated on the 
same social assumptions of the society whose bounds they need to escape.

The smug empiricism of David Hume is quite a different animal, forward 
looking, in terms of the emancipation of the bourgeoisie from feudal 
obscurantism, but it's not the Radical Enlightenment. And empiricism had 
its reactionary incarnation in Berkeley.

Already by mid-19th century, one sees the dualism of bourgeois thought 
encapsulated in the dichotomy of positivism and irrationalism, or if you 
will, scientism and Romanticism, and by the late 19th century, the 
dynamic is in full force. It is most clearly revealed in German thought 
and in the appropriation of German thought elsewhere. Romantic 
right-wing anti-bourgeois ideology is a virulent form of bourgeois 
ideology that becomes prominent in the 19th century, but which bears 
features that make it amenable to the (mostly humanistic, i.e. 
non-technocratic) left bourgeois intelligentsia.

Philosophers, of course, appropriating German thought (and in some cases 
the Dane Kierkegaard, who is also a product of German thought), also 
appropriate the metaphysical/epistemic apparatus of existentialism to 
varying extents and in varying combinations with other intellectual 
traditions. In the person of Heidegger, existentialism overlaps 
phenomenology, and both may be taken together or separately. I won't 
repeat what I wrote about Marcuse and Sartre.

The pop existentialism of the postwar period is a mixture, as I have 
said, of an actual philosophy and as a sensibility loosely tied at best 
to the conceptual structures even of the popular Sartre. We also know 
that Sartre, recognizing the def

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Existentialism, European LIbertarianism

[Ralph Dumain]

I don't think the analogy between existentialism and libertarianism 
holds up. I should also point out that there is a strain of left 
libertarianism that has nothing in common with American libertarianism 
as we know it. I think of British Solidarity and Noam Chomsky as 
examples. But our libertarianism is of the Ayn Rand stripe.

European existentialism has its left & right wing tributaries. The 
cross-breeding and mutual criticisms of these variants need to be 
examined. For example, both Marcuse and Sartre drew on Heidegger, but 
Marcuse was the superior philosopher and quite aptly criticized Sartre 
in 1948:

"Existentialism: Remarks on Jean-Paul Sartre's L'Etre et le Neant," 
/Philosophy and Phenomenological Research/, vol. 8, no. 3 (March 1948), 
pp. 309-336.
http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/40spubs/48hmsartre.pdf?sici=0002-8762%28194904%2954%3A3%3C557%3AEOFAP%3E2.0.CO;2-F

Marcuse was hardly guilty of the same fundamental errors of Sartre, who 
grafted Heideggerian thought onto a Cartesian base. Marcuse's 
neo-Romantic strain comes from other German philosophers as well as 
Heidegger. Of course, Marcuse was not an "existentialist", but 
Existentialism itself draws on various sources, and gets transmuted into 
different orientations in different national configurations and in 
different tendencies within national contexts.

This is true in the USA, where Kierkegaard was appropriated by 
reactionaries in the 1940s, but there was Richard Wright at the opposite 
end of the spectrum. And there was mainly a Sartre/Camus influence 
afterward, which also had a relationship to the civil rights movement. 
Here the methodological individualism of Sartre--if one wants to call it 
that--was not a major factor, but the notion of individual 
responsibility for the social good. But then popular existentialism was 
never technical philosophical existentialism, which in my view is asinine.

On 1/4/2011 12:04 PM, c b wrote:
> I'm now  thinking the Existentialism is European Libertarianism (Or
> Libertarianism is American Existentialism) They share Individualism as
> their essential quality. They apothesis "The" Individual. They
> fetishize uniqueness. They emphasize our differences rather than our
> commonalities and unities. Thus, they are , obviously, modern
> bourgeois philo, resonating with the great mass of alienated
> individuals; and importantly from the point of view of the ruling
> class, they theoretically affirm the atomization, division and
> spintering into a "thousand ( a billion) points of light" the Working
> Class.
>
> However, Libertarians have the logical sense to be anti-philosophical,
> and avoid Kierkegard's criticism.
>
> As hinted at in Kierkegard's statement, the assertion "The" Individual
> is logically contradictory. There is no typical individual, by
> definition of "individual". There is no General Individual.
>
> Nietszche is a real piece of work. He is the champion of the ruling
> classes of all times ( See Geneology of Morals). He criticizes
> "slaves" for resenting their masters. I kid you not. Nietszche is a
> kind of anti-Marx, as I say, championing oppressor classes over
> oppressed classses _all down through history_. Ubermensch/Supermen are
> his imagined new master class. Those who Will to Power rule and should
> rule. Hitler had the right one when he posed with Nietszche's bust, as
> much as Nietszche fans try to play it that Hitler didn't understand
> him or whatever. "Game knows game". Nietszche , philosopher of _all_
> ruling classes in general. Yukko !
>
>
>  An individual person, for Kierkegaard, is a particular that no
> abstract formula or definition can ever capture. Including the
> individual in “the public” (or “the crowd” or “the herd”) or subsuming
> a human being as simply a member of a species is a reduction of the
> true meaning of life for individuals. What philosophy or politics try
> to do is to categorize and pigeonhole individuals by group
> characteristics instead of individual differences. For Kierkegaard,
> those differences are what make us who we are.
>
>  Kierkegaard’s critique of the modern age, therefore, is about the
> loss of what it means to be an individual. Modern society contributes
> to this dissolution of what it means to be an individual. Through its
> production of the false idol of “the public”, it diverts attention
> away from individuals to a mass public that loses itself in
> abstractions, communal dreams, and fantasies. It is helped in this
> task by the media and the mass production of products to keep it
> distracted.
>
>  Although Kierkegaard attacked “the public”, he is supportive of 
> communities:
>
>  “In community, the individual is, crucial as the prior condition
> for forming a community. … Every individual in the community
> guarantees the community; the public is a chimera, numerality is
> everything…”
>
>  – Søren Kierkegaard, Journals
>
> ___
> Marxism-Tha

[Marxism-Thaxis] Plekhanov: materialism vs Neo-Kantianism etc. (3)

[Ralph Dumain]

Plekhanov, Georgi. "Materialism or Kantianism 
," in 
/Selected Philosophical Works/, Vol. II (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 
1976), pp. 398-414.

__. "Materialism Yet Again 
," in 
/Selected Philosophical Works/, Vol. II (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 
1976), pp. 415-420.


Who started this fight, I do not know. Curious so much energy was 
devoted to generic philosophical issues. Presumably I would have to read 
more widely to see exactly how this relates to a debate over historical 
materialism.

One can see a precedent for Lenin's later polemics, concerning (1) the 
battle against phenomenalism, (2) political accusations connected with 
these philosophical debates.

Certainly, the partisans of historical materialism held ground--I don't 
know else who would have done this at the time--against phenomenalists 
and dualists, and that is to be applauded. Beyond that, there's the 
question of what Plekhanov and others may have botched at the same time.

__. "On Mr. H. Rickert's Book 
" [review of:  H. Rickert, 
/Sciences of Nature and Sciences of Culture/] (1911), in /Selected 
Philosophical Works/, Vol. III (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), pp. 
481-486.

Here one sees Plekhanov attacking Rickert's treatment, as well as the 
dichotomy, of the /Naturwissenschaften/ and the /Geisteswissenschaften/. 
Plekhanov refutes the reduction of historical materialism to 
natural-scientific materialism and to economism. He also engages in an 
argument about Condorcet. Apparently, even Tonnies couldn't take 
Rickert's distortions. However, after blasting Rickert and his 
sympathizers, Plekhanove still hasn't specified the exact relationship 
between the natural and social sciences. Obviously, he sees both a unity 
and distinction--which was the superior perspective of Marxism--but 
there remains a question of what the lawfulness of social science 
consists of.

__. "On W. Windelband's Book 
" [review of Wilhelm 
Windelband, /Philosophy in the Spiritual Life of Nineteenth-Century 
Germany/] (1910), in /Selected Philosophical Works/, Vol. III (Moscow: 
Progress Publishers, 1976), pp. 419-423.

Windelband has recognized that philosophy is a reflection of the state 
of culture or society, and that the masses have entered history. But . . .

Contemporary social life in Western Europe has, in fact, been given
a "completely new cast" as a result of the "masses moving forward".
But the //author forgot that this onward movement of the popular
masses has encountered, and continues to encounter, strong
resistance from the upper classes. Once having forgotten this,
naturally he also lost sight of the fact that the resistance of the
upper classes to the onward movement of the masses was bound to find
its reflection in the whole course of Europe's intellectual
development, and especially in the history of literature, art and
philosophy. Consequently, he has given a quite incorrect
interpretation of that preaching of individualism which brought fame
to the name of Friedrich Nietzsche. Windelband says: "Thus, we are
undergoing a levelling down of historical distinctions, and the
establishment of a uniformity of life, about which not one of the
previous ages in human history had the faintest notion. But from
this there now emerges the grave danger that we shall thereby lose
what is most valuable, that which, strictly speaking, first
constitutes and at all times constituted culture and history, viz.:
the life of personality. The sense of this danger pervades deep down
the whole spiritual life of the last decades, and bursts out from
time to time with passionate energy. Alongside this outwardly
magnificently developing material culture there is growing a fervent
need for one's own inner life, and together with the democratising
and socialising life of the masses there is springing up an ardent
opposition of individuals, their upstriving against suppression by
the mass, their primitive striving to disburden their own
personality" (pp. 142--43). The question arises: how can
"individuals" be suppressed by the "mass" who themselves are
suppressed in class-divided capitalist society? It would be a waste
of time searching in the book under review for the answer to this
inevitable question. Windelband does not want to understand that in
so far as modern individualism, which found its most brilliant
representative in the person of Friedrich Nietzsche, is a protest
against the forward movement of the /mass/, it voices not fear for
the rights of /personality/, but fear for /class privileges./


These of course are only snapshots of the ideological tenor of the

[Marxism-Thaxis] Plekhanov: materialism vs Neo-Kantianism etc. (2)

[Ralph Dumain]

Plekhanov, Georgi. "Bernstein and Materialism 
" 
(July 1898), in /Selected Philosophical Works/, Vol. II (Moscow: 
Progress Publishers, 1976), pp. 325-339.

I am not versed in the relations among Spinoza, LaMettrie, the 
Encyclopedists, the 19th century German materialists, and Feuerbach. 
This part of the essay at least is not identical with the subsequent 
"Cant Against Kant". It's quite interesting, but a few off-the-cuff remarks:

(1) This has nothing to do with political debates except insofar as 
Plekhanov's antagonists themselves inject this silly stuff into them.

(2) Plekhanov's exposition breaks off at the very point where it starts 
to get interesting.

(3) Neither Plekhanov nor any of the people he discusses have any sense 
of the difference between empirical knowledge and philosophy's attempts 
to fill in the gaps, or how advances in the former alter what should be 
/provisional/ categorial structures of the latter.  And, noting the 
footnotes, where Plekhanov describes a meeting with Engels and Engels' 
confirmation of Plekhanov's view of Spinoza--Plekhanov is content with 
finality rather than further exploration. He merely engages a contest of 
doctrines, but not thinking any new thoughts.

(4) I know little about F.A. Lange, but one thing I know is that he 
wrestled with the mind-body problem and found materialism 
unsatisfactory. This was when biology had barely advanced to the point 
of addressing the question of sensation and apperception. The problem 
remains a problem 150 years later but in a drastically altered 
condition. Philosophy at best is a guidepost to how to interpret, or 
better, to avoid misinterpreting, our knowledge in our general 
categorial framework of world-meaning. (This should be opposed to 
Wittgenstein's retrograde cure, but that's another harangue.)

(5) A key correlative logical fudge of Engels is the ambiguous, and 
implicitly self-contradictory, statement, that he believes only in 
empirical knowledge and disavows metaphysics, only to remain content 
with a formulation of dialectical laws and their universal application 
retrospective to the attainment of adequate empirical knowledge.  But in 
actuality, this dominant strain of Marxist orthodoxy remained stagnant 
at the level of formulaic indoctrination, and once institutionalized, 
proceeded rapidly downhill.

OK, I'll look at the other 4 Plekhanov essays another time. Must get on 
with other things.

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Guy Robinson on Thomas Kuhn

[Ralph Dumain]

It amazes me that this rubbish is considered the cornerstone of 20th 
century philosophy. From formalism to the censorship of thought. 
Ultrasophisticated juvenalia. I can see what Rosa--is Rosa really a she 
or really a Rosa or Lichtenstein?--sees in this. It prevents the 
self-reflection of a Brittrot sectarian.

On 12/30/2010 12:18 PM, Jim Farmelant wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Dec 2010 09:40:33 -0500 c b  writes:
>> Rosa,
>>
>> "Marxist" philosophy without theses ? Without theory ?
> I think that claim has to be understood within the
> context of Wittgensteinian philosophy.  For
> Wittgenstein the only genuine propositions
> are those about the external world since
> those are the only kinds of statements that
> can be confirmed or disconfirmed.  Therefore,
> statements in mathematics and logic did not
> qualify as genuine propositions in Wittgenstein's
> view since they can be analyzed as being either tautologies
> if true, or contradictions if false.  As Wittenstein put it in the
> Tractatus:
>
> -
> 6.1
> The propositions of logic are tautologies.
> 6.2
> Mathematics is a logical method.
> The propositions of mathematics are equations, and therefore
> pseudo-propositions.
>
> 6.3
> Logical research means the investigation of all regularity. And outside
> logic all is accident.
> 6.4
> All propositions are of equal value.
> 6.5
> For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be
> expressed.
> The riddle does not exist.
>
> If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.
>
> Later on, Wittgenstein writes:
>
> The propositions of logic therefore say nothing. (They are the analytical
> propositions.)
> 6.12
> The fact that the propositions of logic are tautologies shows the formal
> -- logical -- properties of language, of the world.
> That its constituent parts connected together in this way give a
> tautology characterizes the logic of its constituent parts.
>
> In order that propositions connected together in a definite way may give
> a tautology they must have definite properties of structure. That they
> give a tautology when so connected shows therefore that they possess
> these properties of structure.
>
> 6.13
> Logic is not a theory but a reflexion of the world.
> Logic is transcendental.
>
>
> Later on also:
>
> 6.113
> It is the characteristic mark of logical propositions that one can
> perceive in the symbol alone that they are true; and this fact contains
> in itself the whole philosophy of logic. And so also it is one of the
> most important facts that the truth or falsehood of non-logical
> propositions can not be recognized from the propositions alone.
>
> And eventually:
>
>
> 6.53
> The right method of philosophy would be this: To say nothing except what
> can be said, i.e. the propositions of natural science, i.e. something
> that has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when someone
> else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he
> had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions. This method
> would be unsatisfying to the other -- he would not have the feeling that
> we were teaching him philosophy -- but it would be the only strictly
> correct method.
> 6.54
> My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me
> finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through
> them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder,
> after he has climbed up on it.)
> He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.
>
>
> 7
> Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
> --
>
> For Wittgenstein, propositions of philosophy
> are pseudo-propositions.  At worst they
> nonsensical like the propositions of traditional
> metaphysics.  At best, they turn out to be
> propositions of logical analysis which are
> still a species of pseudopropositions.
> Hence, that's why for Wittgenstein there
> cannot be theses or theories in philosophy.
>
>
>> CB
>>
>>
>> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/index.htm
>>
>

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Guy Robinson on Thomas Kuhn

[Ralph Dumain]

What's interesting about Plekhanov's "Cant Against Kant" is that in the 
process of refuting Bernstein's scapegoating of the dialectic, Plekhanov 
falters at the very moment he first cites/Engels/. If there were a 
philosophical root of the confusion, here's where it would be. It begins 
with the merging of the dialectics of nature, society, and thought as 
one and the same, but this ontologolization of dialectics is a mass of 
logical confusion. With Plekhanov this also goes by the name of monism. 
But to lay Plekhanov's error as one of beginning with the wrong 
philosophy would be to duplicate his own mistake, for there's more to it.

Plekhanov makes his first mistake by bypassing Marxism--I mean Marx's 
approach to analyzing society and the ideological phenomena within 
it--in favor of analyzing the putative philosophical preconditions or 
foundation of Marxism--dialectical materialism. This is pure nonsense. 
Is this where the Soviets got this bad habit from?

Another of his blunders is his crude analysis of a probably correct 
assertion of the petty-bourgeois basis of Neo-Kantianism, which however 
asserts nothing meaningful unless one proceeds beyond propaganda to 
explain the connection. Plekhanov combats Bernstein's empirical 
assertions with his own. He combats metaphysics with metaphysics, 
empiricism with empiricism. These two elements interplay in an entirely 
confused fashion.


On 12/30/2010 11:29 AM, Ralph Dumain wrote:
> I tried checking the text at leninist.biz, but I found the Plekhanov
> volume impossible to navigate. I wish someone would make this correction
> for me, because I would like to use this quote.
>
> It looks like I already did some preliminary spadework, viz. . . .
>
> Neo-Kantianism, Its History, Influence, and Relation to Socialism:
> Selected Secondary Bibliography
> <http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/neokantianism_biblio_1.html>
>
> There I link to 6 articles by Plekhanov on Kantianism. That entire
> period in philosophy, and for decades to come in continental European
> philosophy, was dominated by the Neo-Kantian influence. These debates
> are a small part of the overall picture.
>
> On 12/30/2010 11:14 AM, Ralph Dumain wrote:
>> I was thinking of the philosophical backwardness prevalent in the Second
>> International. I do like this quote from Plekhanov, however:
>>
>>   Strictly speaking, "/partisan science/" is impossible, but,
>>   regrettably enough, the existence is highly possible of
>>   "/scientists" who are imbued with the spirit of parties and with
>>   class selfishness/. When Marxists speak of bourgeois science with
>>   contempt, it is "scientists" of that brand that they have in view.
>>   It is to such "scientists" that the gentlemen Herr Bernstein has
>>   "learnt" so much from belong, /viz./ J. Wolf, Schulze-Gävernitz, and
>>   many others. Even if nine-tenths of scientific socialism has been
>>   taken from the writings of bourgeois economists, it has not been
>>   taken in the way in which Herr Bernstein has borrowed from the
>>   Brentanoists and other apologists of capitalism the material he uses
>>   to "revise" Marxism. Marx and Engels were able to take a /critical/
>>   attitude towards bourgeois scientists, something that Herr Bernstein
>>   has been unable or unwilling to do. When he "learns" from them, he
>>   simply places himself under their influence and, without noticing
>>   the fact, adopts their apologetics.
>>
>>   Georgi Plekhanov, *Cant Against Kant, or Herr Bernstein's Will and
>>   Testament* (August 1901)
>>   http://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1901/xx/cant.htm
>>
>>
>> There must be a transcription error here: "so much from *belong*":
>> doesn't make sense.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 12/30/2010 10:49 AM, c b wrote:
>>> On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 10:22 AM, Ralph Dumain
>>> wrote:
>>>> This is a commonplace analysis of Descartes&critique of the whole
>>>> epistemological tradition that came out of this. However, the disavowal
>>>> of scientific realism is childish. Speaking of childish, It's worth
>>>> contemplating the symbiosis between Rosa's juvenile Wittgensteinianism
>>>> and sectarianism. He differs from Henry Ford in declaring that, not
>>>> history, but all philosophy, is bunk. And if this doesn't show you that
>>>> the British far left--if that's what he is--is not at the end of its
>>>> rope, what does?
>>>>
>>>

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Guy Robinson on Thomas Kuhn

[Ralph Dumain]

Hasn't the British SWP been an advocate of Islamism? Furthermore, being 
caught in a struggle between inept arguments pro & con diamat--doesn't 
this drag us back to the 19th century? What progress is there is this?

On 12/30/2010 11:30 AM, Jim Farmelant wrote:
>
> On Thu, 30 Dec 2010 10:22:14 -0500 Ralph Dumain
>   writes:
>
>
>> Itsworth
>>
>> contemplating the symbiosis between Rosa's juvenile
>> Wittgensteinianism
>> and sectarianism. He differs from Henry Ford in declaring that, not
>>
>> history, but all philosophy, is bunk. And if this doesn't show you
>> that
>> the British far left--if that's what he is--is not at the end of its
>>
>> rope, what does?
>
> Well, Rosa is a supporter of the British SWP
> which is still officially committed towards
> dialectical materialism as the philosophical
> basis for Marxism.  However, she is supported
> by Richard Seymour who is very much a rising
> star within that party and the far generally in
> the UK.
>
> Jim Farmelant
> http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
> www.foxymath.com
> Learn or Review Basic Math

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Guy Robinson on Thomas Kuhn

[Ralph Dumain]

I tried checking the text at leninist.biz, but I found the Plekhanov 
volume impossible to navigate. I wish someone would make this correction 
for me, because I would like to use this quote.

It looks like I already did some preliminary spadework, viz. . . .

Neo-Kantianism, Its History, Influence, and Relation to Socialism: 
Selected Secondary Bibliography 
<http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/neokantianism_biblio_1.html>

There I link to 6 articles by Plekhanov on Kantianism. That entire 
period in philosophy, and for decades to come in continental European 
philosophy, was dominated by the Neo-Kantian influence. These debates 
are a small part of the overall picture.

On 12/30/2010 11:14 AM, Ralph Dumain wrote:
> I was thinking of the philosophical backwardness prevalent in the Second
> International. I do like this quote from Plekhanov, however:
>
>  Strictly speaking, "/partisan science/" is impossible, but,
>  regrettably enough, the existence is highly possible of
>  "/scientists" who are imbued with the spirit of parties and with
>  class selfishness/. When Marxists speak of bourgeois science with
>  contempt, it is "scientists" of that brand that they have in view.
>  It is to such "scientists" that the gentlemen Herr Bernstein has
>  "learnt" so much from belong, /viz./ J. Wolf, Schulze-Gävernitz, and
>  many others. Even if nine-tenths of scientific socialism has been
>  taken from the writings of bourgeois economists, it has not been
>  taken in the way in which Herr Bernstein has borrowed from the
>  Brentanoists and other apologists of capitalism the material he uses
>  to "revise" Marxism. Marx and Engels were able to take a /critical/
>  attitude towards bourgeois scientists, something that Herr Bernstein
>  has been unable or unwilling to do. When he "learns" from them, he
>  simply places himself under their influence and, without noticing
>  the fact, adopts their apologetics.
>
>  Georgi Plekhanov, *Cant Against Kant, or Herr Bernstein's Will and
>  Testament* (August 1901)
>  http://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1901/xx/cant.htm
>
>
> There must be a transcription error here: "so much from *belong*":
> doesn't make sense.
>
>
>
> On 12/30/2010 10:49 AM, c b wrote:
>> On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 10:22 AM, Ralph Dumain
>>wrote:
>>> This is a commonplace analysis of Descartes&   critique of the whole
>>> epistemological tradition that came out of this. However, the disavowal
>>> of scientific realism is childish. Speaking of childish, It's worth
>>> contemplating the symbiosis between Rosa's juvenile Wittgensteinianism
>>> and sectarianism. He differs from Henry Ford in declaring that, not
>>> history, but all philosophy, is bunk. And if this doesn't show you that
>>> the British far left--if that's what he is--is not at the end of its
>>> rope, what does?
>>>
>>> Now I'm reminded that I need to take a look at Plekhanov&   see if he's
>>> as bad as I'm told he is.
>> ^^^
>> CB: Well, Plekhanov opposed the 1917 October insurrection. That's
>> pretty stupid sectarian.
>>
>>> On 12/30/2010 10:10 AM, c b wrote:
>>>> That project was exemplified in Descartes' Meditations, and it laid
>>>> two demands on any account of knowledge and the means to knowledge,
>>>> demands that set the standard and defined the adequacy of any account.
>>>> There had been urgent reasons for making those demands but the reasons
>>>> were historical rather than philosophical and came from the
>>>> individualistic model of humanity that played such a pivotal role in
>>>> the era's project of eliminating feudalism's remnants in thought and
>>>> social institutions, and the project of justifying the conceptions and
>>>> arrangements that were replacing them. That story needs to be
>>>> elaborated, and will get some elaboration in the next chapter. What is
>>>> important here is that those demands have been accepted since without
>>>> serious critique or examination of alternatives.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The first of the demands, describable as a "democratic" or
>>>> "individualistic' one, was that a method be found that was available
>>>> to each separated individual to apply privately and severally in the
>>>> search for knowledge. The second, relating to the knowledge thus
>>>> found, was that the method would lead all who conscientiously applied
>>>> it to the same, objective and timeless true view of things.
>>>>
>>>> ^^
>>>> CB: This point on "individualistic" method is a good one. This is how
>>>> I define positivism.
>
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Guy Robinson on Thomas Kuhn

[Ralph Dumain]

I was thinking of the philosophical backwardness prevalent in the Second 
International. I do like this quote from Plekhanov, however:

Strictly speaking, "/partisan science/" is impossible, but,
regrettably enough, the existence is highly possible of
"/scientists" who are imbued with the spirit of parties and with
class selfishness/. When Marxists speak of bourgeois science with
contempt, it is "scientists" of that brand that they have in view.
It is to such "scientists" that the gentlemen Herr Bernstein has
"learnt" so much from belong, /viz./ J. Wolf, Schulze-Gävernitz, and
many others. Even if nine-tenths of scientific socialism has been
taken from the writings of bourgeois economists, it has not been
taken in the way in which Herr Bernstein has borrowed from the
Brentanoists and other apologists of capitalism the material he uses
to "revise" Marxism. Marx and Engels were able to take a /critical/
attitude towards bourgeois scientists, something that Herr Bernstein
has been unable or unwilling to do. When he "learns" from them, he
simply places himself under their influence and, without noticing
the fact, adopts their apologetics.

Georgi Plekhanov, *Cant Against Kant, or Herr Bernstein's Will and
Testament* (August 1901)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1901/xx/cant.htm


There must be a transcription error here: "so much from *belong*": 
doesn't make sense.



On 12/30/2010 10:49 AM, c b wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 10:22 AM, Ralph Dumain
>   wrote:
>> This is a commonplace analysis of Descartes&  critique of the whole
>> epistemological tradition that came out of this. However, the disavowal
>> of scientific realism is childish. Speaking of childish, It's worth
>> contemplating the symbiosis between Rosa's juvenile Wittgensteinianism
>> and sectarianism. He differs from Henry Ford in declaring that, not
>> history, but all philosophy, is bunk. And if this doesn't show you that
>> the British far left--if that's what he is--is not at the end of its
>> rope, what does?
>>
>> Now I'm reminded that I need to take a look at Plekhanov&  see if he's
>> as bad as I'm told he is.
> ^^^
> CB: Well, Plekhanov opposed the 1917 October insurrection. That's
> pretty stupid sectarian.
>
>> On 12/30/2010 10:10 AM, c b wrote:
>>> That project was exemplified in Descartes' Meditations, and it laid
>>> two demands on any account of knowledge and the means to knowledge,
>>> demands that set the standard and defined the adequacy of any account.
>>> There had been urgent reasons for making those demands but the reasons
>>> were historical rather than philosophical and came from the
>>> individualistic model of humanity that played such a pivotal role in
>>> the era's project of eliminating feudalism's remnants in thought and
>>> social institutions, and the project of justifying the conceptions and
>>> arrangements that were replacing them. That story needs to be
>>> elaborated, and will get some elaboration in the next chapter. What is
>>> important here is that those demands have been accepted since without
>>> serious critique or examination of alternatives.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The first of the demands, describable as a "democratic" or
>>> "individualistic' one, was that a method be found that was available
>>> to each separated individual to apply privately and severally in the
>>> search for knowledge. The second, relating to the knowledge thus
>>> found, was that the method would lead all who conscientiously applied
>>> it to the same, objective and timeless true view of things.
>>>
>>> ^^
>>> CB: This point on "individualistic" method is a good one. This is how
>>> I define positivism.
>>>
>>> ___
>>> 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
>>>
>> ___
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Guy Robinson on Thomas Kuhn

[Ralph Dumain]

This is a commonplace analysis of Descartes & critique of the whole 
epistemological tradition that came out of this. However, the disavowal 
of scientific realism is childish. Speaking of childish, It's worth 
contemplating the symbiosis between Rosa's juvenile Wittgensteinianism 
and sectarianism. He differs from Henry Ford in declaring that, not 
history, but all philosophy, is bunk. And if this doesn't show you that 
the British far left--if that's what he is--is not at the end of its 
rope, what does?

Now I'm reminded that I need to take a look at Plekhanov & see if he's 
as bad as I'm told he is.

On 12/30/2010 10:10 AM, c b wrote:
> That project was exemplified in Descartes' Meditations, and it laid
> two demands on any account of knowledge and the means to knowledge,
> demands that set the standard and defined the adequacy of any account.
> There had been urgent reasons for making those demands but the reasons
> were historical rather than philosophical and came from the
> individualistic model of humanity that played such a pivotal role in
> the era's project of eliminating feudalism's remnants in thought and
> social institutions, and the project of justifying the conceptions and
> arrangements that were replacing them. That story needs to be
> elaborated, and will get some elaboration in the next chapter. What is
> important here is that those demands have been accepted since without
> serious critique or examination of alternatives.
>
>
>
> The first of the demands, describable as a "democratic" or
> "individualistic' one, was that a method be found that was available
> to each separated individual to apply privately and severally in the
> search for knowledge. The second, relating to the knowledge thus
> found, was that the method would lead all who conscientiously applied
> it to the same, objective and timeless true view of things.
>
> ^^
> CB: This point on "individualistic" method is a good one. This is how
> I define positivism.
>
> ___
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> To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
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>

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] [marxistphilosophy] Guy Robinson on Thomas Kuhn

[Ralph Dumain]

It would have been a better essay without the Wittgensteinianism. And 
Rosa continues to show what a jackass he--excuse me, she--is.

The historical turn of the '60s and after went in a number of 
directions: that is a phenomenon worth analyzing. For example, there is 
conceptual material galore in Jerome Ravetz' key work of 1971; decades 
later he ends up partnering with an Islamist obscurantist. Is decadence 
necessary, or is it contingent?

On 12/23/2010 6:57 AM, Jim Farmelant wrote:
>
>
> Rosa Litchenstein has now published on her site the last of
> the Marxist philosopher Guy Robinson's essays:
> http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Robinson_Essay_Four_On_Misunderstanding_Science.htm
> It's all about Thomas Kuhn.
>
>
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Terry Eagleton on "The death of universities"

[Ralph Dumain]

Historically, radicals have come from the ranks of the 
scientific-technical intelligentsia as well, as arch-reactionaries from 
the humanities. When I was in elementary school and high school, English 
and history teachers were the worst reactionaries. I hated these 
subjects, loved math and science. Who knew I would turn out occupied 
with the former rather than the latter? Thanks for nothing, schoolteachers!

However, the business model that has overtaken universities, coupled I'm 
guessing with financial retrenchment, is gutting various programs, 
notably philosophy, I think in Britain, but also look out for the USA.

Howard University plans to ax its philosophy department, which is pretty 
small as is. In my view, there's too much Africana crap in it, but 
Howard is conservative enough without having to eliminate one of the few 
outlets for critical thinking in it.

On 12/19/2010 8:45 AM, Jim Farmelant wrote:
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/17/death-universities-ma
> laise-tuition-fees
>
> The Guardian
>   17 December 2010
>
> *The death of universities
>
> Academia has become a servant of the status quo. Its malaise runs so much
> deeper than tuition fees*
>
> Terry Eagleton
>
> Are the humanities about to disappear from our universities? The question
> is
> absurd. It would be like asking whether alcohol is about to disappear
> from
> pubs, or egoism from Hollywood. Just as there cannot be a pub without
> alcohol, so there cannot be a university without the humanities. If
> history,
> philosophy and so on vanish from academic life, what they leave in their
> wake may be a technical training facility or corporate research
> institute.
> But it will not be a university in the classical sense of the term, and
> it
> would be deceptive to call it one.
>
> Neither, however, can there be a university in the full sense of the word
> when the humanities exist in isolation from other disciplines. The
> quickest
> way of devaluing these subjects – short of disposing of them altogether –
> is
> to reduce them to an agreeable bonus. Real men study law and engineering,
> while ideas and values are for sissies. The humanities should constitute
> the
> core of any university worth the name. The study of history and
> philosophy,
> accompanied by some acquaintance with art and literature, should be for
> lawyers and engineers as well as for those who study in arts faculties.
> If
> the humanities are not under such dire threat in the United States, it
> is,
> among other things, because they are seen as being an integral part of
> higher education as such.
>
> When they first emerged in their present shape around the turn of the
> 18th
> century, the so-called humane disciplines had a crucial social role. It
> was
> to foster and protect the kind of values for which a philistine social
> order
> had precious little time. The modern humanities and industrial capitalism
> were more or less twinned at birth. To preserve a set of values and ideas
> under siege, you needed among other things institutions known as
> universities set somewhat apart from everyday social life. This
> remoteness
> meant that humane study could be lamentably ineffectual. But it also
> allowed
> the humanities to launch a critique of conventional wisdom.
>
> > From time to time, as in the late 1960s and in these last few weeks in
> Britain, that critique would take to the streets, confronting how we
> actually live with how we might live.
>
> What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as
> centres of critique. Since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia has
> been
> to service the status quo, not challenge it in the name of justice,
> tradition, imagination, human welfare, the free play of the mind or
> alternative visions of the future. We will not change this simply by
> increasing state funding of the humanities as opposed to slashing it to
> nothing. We will change it by insisting that a critical reflection on
> human
> values and principles should be central to everything that goes on in
> universities, not just to the study of Rembrandt or Rimbaud.
>
> In the end, the humanities can only be defended by stressing how
> indispensable they are; and this means insisting on their vital role in
> the
> whole business of academic learning, rather than protesting that, like
> some
> poor relation, they don't cost much to be housed.
>
> How can this be achieved in practice? Financially speaking, it can't be.
> Governments are intent on shrinking the humanities, not expanding them.
>
> Might not too much investment in teaching Shelley mean falling behind our
> economic competitors? But there is no university without humane inquiry,
> which means that universities and advanced capitalism are fundamentally
> incompatible. And the political implications of that run far deeper than
> the
> question of student fees.
>
>
>
> Jim Farmelant
> http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
> www.foxymath.com
> Le

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Ramblin' Tommy Scott-She'll Be Coming Around The Mountain

[Ralph Dumain]

Here's another version, since you asked for it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mwWYeOF6Ww


On 12/9/2010 10:10 AM, c b wrote:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghd-xL5gAjc
>

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Stoop down, baby

[Ralph Dumain]

I didn't know this was a problem. The only thing I can think of to do is 
to eliminate the reply-to field altogether, unless there is something 
else I can do using Thunderbird.


On 12/1/2010 1:02 PM, waistli...@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 12/1/2010 12:46:59 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> __rdum...@autodidactproject.org_ (mailto:_rdum...@autodidactproject.org) _
> (_mailto:rdum...@autodidactproject.org_
> (mailto:rdum...@autodidactproject.org) )writes:
>
> This is the funniest thing I remember you writing.
>
> I'm trying to figure out though which one is the proletariat. I would  hate
>
> to associate the capitalist class with All That Ass.
>
>
> Comment
>
> Somewhere, I have a copy of "Merry Christmas Baby" by Ollie, former  lead
> singer of the Temptations." One of the greats is on the guitar  but I
> forget
> their name at the moment.
>
> The real proletariat is the one stooping down. OK.
>
> Me. . . . man, I have always enjoyed looking up to see bottom. I guess this
>
> is beneath the underclass.
>
> My cash flow was cool but my mind has always been in poverty and on  the
> bottom brother.
>
> Hey  . . . I hit 10.5 on the glossary and yes, it is a  propaganda  tract.
> I
> am not an original thinker or writer.
>
> Merry Christmas Baby.
>
> I always loved the way "baby" can be non gender and/or gender depending  on
>
> the specific context and tonal quality of the voice.
>
> Victory to the proletariat on the bottom, top, and beneath the  underclass.
>
> :-)
>
> Wl.
>
> PS. Ralph has his "thang" set when you respond to his writing it goes to
> him as an individual instead of the list. To me that is fucked up. Change
> your  thang brother.
>
>
>
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>

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Stoop down, baby

[Ralph Dumain]

This is the funniest thing I remember you writing.

I'm trying to figure out though which one is the proletariat. I would 
hate to associate the capitalist class with All That Ass.

On 12/1/2010 12:40 PM, waistli...@aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 12/1/2010 10:02:07 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> cb31...@gmail.com writes:
>
> _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuYdZMoqD7U_
> (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuYdZMoqD7U)
>
>
> Comment
>
> This is my understanding of the proletarian REVOLUTION.
>
> WL.
>
> Stoop down, baby Let your daddy see
> Stoop down, baby Let your daddy see
> You've got something down there, baby
> Worryin' the hell out of me
>
>
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Charles Brown: Merry Christmas Baby & Please Come Home For Christmas

[Ralph Dumain]

I used to have to wait to catch this on my local blues program every 
December: sometimes I'd hear it, some years I'd miss it. But thanks to 
YouTube, it can be Xmas every day. (I detest Xmas, though.) The key to 
the song is in this verse:

"i ain't like the old saint nick, he don't come but once a year . . ."

When I used to sing it, the punchline would be . . .

"I'm back door Santa, I come every time you're here."


On 12/1/2010 10:57 AM, c b wrote:
> Back Door Santa
>
>
> they call me the back door santa
> i make my runs about the break of day
> they call me the back door santa
> i make my runs about the break of day
> i make all the little girls happy, while the boys are out to play
> i ain't like the old saint nick, he don't come but once a year
> i ain't like the old saint nick, he don't come but once a year
> i come runnin with my presents, every time they call me dear
> i keep some change in my pocket
> i chase the children home
> i give them a few pennies so we could be alone
> ileave the back door open so if anybody smells the mouse
> and wouldn't old santa be in trouble
> if there ain't n chimney in the house
> they call me the back door santa
> i make my runs about the break of day
> i make all the little girls happy, while all the boys are out to play
> they call me back door santa
> yeah that's what they call me
> they call me the back door santa
> yeah that's what they call me
>
>
>
>
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMfhaGNoSfw
>
> http://s0.ilike.com/play#Clarence+Carter:Back+Door+Santa:304369:s294531.8098589.6215.0.1.23%2Cstd_689a559ce25e70e991a8379f22fe1a15
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMj4Q6EVOW0
>
> "Back Door Santa" is a song written by Clarence Carter in
> collaboration with Marcus Daniel, and originally performed by Carter.
> It was released on a compilation album Soul Christmas in 1968. The
> track is in a 12-bar blues format.
>
> The lyrics are sexually suggestive, not having much to do with
> Christmas as a holiday. Run-D.M.C. sampled the song for "Christmas in
> Hollis".
>
> In late December 2005, The Black Crowes released a free download
> version of this song, complete with a horn section. This track can be
> heard in the film Mission: Impossible III.
>
> The Australian band Jet has also covered this song. It is available on
> their Japanese-only "Rare Tracks" compilation album.
>
> It was also performed by Bon Jovi and released on the A Very Special
> Christmas compilation album produced to benefit the Special Olympics.
> For unknown reasons, "Back Door Santa" was replaced on later pressings
> of the first "A Very Special Christmas" with the song "I Wish Every
> Day Could Be Like Christmas" also performed by Bon Jovi. Bon Jovi
> later released the track along with two other Christmas themed songs
> on the single for Please Come Home for Christmas
>
> In 2008, Elliott Yamin included a cover of the song in his Christmas
> album "My Kind of Hoiday"
>
> The song also appeared on the CBS sitcom "How I Met Your Mother."
> Season 2 Episode 11: "How Lily Stole Christmas"
> Stub icon This blues song-related article is a stub. You can help
> Wikipedia by expanding it.
> v • d • e
> Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_Door_Santa";
>
> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 10:41 AM, Ralph Dumain
>   wrote:
>> I used to hear all these songs regularly. My favorite is still "Back
>> Door Santa".
>>
>> On 12/1/2010 10:08 AM, c b wrote:
>>> Charles Brown: Merry Christmas Baby&Please
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMfGPZI59Zw

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Charles Brown: Merry Christmas Baby & Please Come Home For Christmas

[Ralph Dumain]

I used to hear all these songs regularly. My favorite is still "Back 
Door Santa".

On 12/1/2010 10:08 AM, c b wrote:
> Charles Brown: Merry Christmas Baby&  Please
>
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMfGPZI59Zw
>
>

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Revolutionary literature

[Ralph Dumain]

I believe that John Strachey cited Lawrence as an exemplar of the 
"fascist unconscious", which I think is correct.

In any case, Eagleton's futile exercise reminds me of how CLR James' 
ridiculed Sartre's conception of engaged literature in the late '40s / 
early '50s. Inter alia, James wrote that he didn't care about what 
political party an author belonged to; what mattered was the tacit 
assumptions embodied in the work itself. Of course, he was opposed to 
Popular Front historiography and Popular Front cultural criticism.

On 11/29/2010 7:14 PM, Mason Akhnaten wrote:
> What does one want to focus on..."the absence of genuinely
> revolutionary art", or that only radical conservatism "could produce
> the most significant literature"...
>
> Words like "genuinely" complicate the matter to no end.
> So perhaps concentrate on "the most significant literature"--and I
> think there are plenty of works of worldwide significance that
> certainly are not produced by radical conservatism.
>
> Yes, Brecht of course...
> I think Louis mentioned the surrealists and their milieu.  I would
> think Lorca is agreed upon as one of the preeminent dramatists of 20th
> century Spain, and it would be improper to call him a conservative.
> It actually looks like many of the significant figures in 20th century
> theatre were not politically conservative--I would hope GB Shaw's
> image hasn't suffered in the academy, and then you have Harold Pinter
> more recently.  It isn't that these playwrights must be 'genuinely
> revolutionary', the fact they are not conservative weakens Eagleton's
> claim.
>
> You can't really throw Upton Sinclair in there...seems doubtful than
> anyone would agree upon the man as one of the most significant in
> literature.  If you do, may as well throw in Richard Wright or any
> number of second-rate literary figures. Obviously Orwell and Huxley do
> not have the same stature as Lawrence or Joyce, but their works are
> widely read and their works are often listed among the best of the
> century--and no one would call either of these men politically
> conservative.
> Perhaps the easiest thing to do would be look at one of those "critics
> list of most significant authors" and look at trends between academic
> popularity and political attitude.
>
> So, there may be some exceptions to Eagleton's sweeping statement, but
> a couple that have been named (Brecht and Lorca) are notable for the
> historical circumstances surrounding their development as authors.  So
> perhaps a look at notable exceptions--and if there are trends amongst
> these exceptions--would be fruitful.
>
> [also, some of Pound's poetic works celebrate fascism- The Pisan
> Cantos, for example.  it is not simply restricted to some speeches on
> Mussolini]
>
> On 11/29/10, c b  wrote:
>> M.F. Kalfat mf at kalfat.net
>>
>>
>> In *Marxism and Literary Criticism*, Eagleton concludes a section entitled
>> "Base and Superstructure" in chapter one, "Literature and History" with
>> this:
>>
>> Whether those insights are in political terms ‘progressive’ or ‘reactionary’
>> (Conrad's are certainly the latter) is not the point – any more than it is
>> to the point that most of the agreed major writers of the twentieth century
>> – Yeats, Eliot, Pound, Lawrence – are political conservatives who each had
>> truck with fascism.  Marxist criticism, rather than apologising for that
>> fact, explains it – sees that, *in the absence of genuinely revolutionary
>> art*, only a radical conservativism, hostile like Marxism to the withered
>> values of liberal bourgeois society, could produce the most significant
>> literature. [emphasis added]
>>
>>
>> Is it a case of total "absence"? Is it inevitable in a capitalist society?
>> Could there be exceptions? Can you name some of these if any? For practical
>> purposes, let's stick to modern literature.
>>
>> --
>> محمد فتحي كلفت
>> Mahammad Fathy Kalfat
>>
>> ^^
>> CB: It would seem that "genuinely revolutionary" art might be hard to
>> purvey very widely in capitalist society.  You know the ruling ideas
>> of any age are the ideas of its ruling classes and all that.
>>
>> Anyway
>>
>>
>> Three Penny Opera by Bertolt Brecht ?
>>
>> The Jungle - Upton Sinclair ?
>>
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Revolutionary literature

[Ralph Dumain]

This is just another example of what a pretentious ass Eagleton is. What 
is genuine revolutionary art but a posturing notion? Furthermore, the 
vitriol directed at liberalism is the language of the right. There is 
insight among the disillusioned conservatives, to be sure, but this is 
hardly a perceptive analysis. Better you should read Raymond Williams' 
THE POLITICS OF MODERNISM than this crap.

On 11/29/2010 6:56 AM, M.F. Kalfat wrote:
> In *Marxism and Literary Criticism*, Eagleton concludes a section entitled
> "Base and Superstructure" in chapter one, "Literature and History" with
> this:
>
> Whether those insights are in political terms ‘progressive’ or ‘reactionary’
> (Conrad's are certainly the latter) is not the point – any more than it is
> to the point that most of the agreed major writers of the twentieth century
> – Yeats, Eliot, Pound, Lawrence – are political conservatives who each had
> truck with fascism.  Marxist criticism, rather than apologising for that
> fact, explains it – sees that, *in the absence of genuinely revolutionary
> art*, only a radical conservativism, hostile like Marxism to the withered
> values of liberal bourgeois society, could produce the most significant
> literature. [emphasis added]
>
>
> Is it a case of total "absence"? Is it inevitable in a capitalist society?
> Could there be exceptions? Can you name some of these if any? For practical
> purposes, let's stick to modern literature.
>

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Margaret Burroughs: Co-founder of DuSable Museum and prominent artist

[Ralph Dumain]

I love this stuff. I'm not so knowledgeable about museums, but there's 
many a story about black bibliophiles. Check this one out:

Blockson, Charles L. /"Damn Rare": The Memoirs of an African-American 
Bibliophile/. Tracy, CA: Quantum Leap Publisher, Inc., 1998.


On 11/23/2010 10:40 AM, c b wrote:
> Margaret Burroughs: Co-founder of DuSable Museum and
> prominent artist
>
> She started Chicago's renowned African American history
> museum in her living room nearly 50 years ago
>
> By Kristen Schorsch
> Chicago Tribune
> November 21, 2010
> http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/obituaries/ct-met-burroughs-obit-1122-20101121,0,7991807.story
>
> Margaret Burroughs, an artist, teacher and longtime
> Chicago Park District commissioner, started the
> nationally recognized DuSable Museum of African
> American History in the living room of her South Side
> home almost 50 years ago.
>
> Mrs. Burroughs helped shape some of Chicago's most
> lasting institutions. She and her husband, the late
> Charles Burroughs, co-founded the DuSable Museum in
> 1961, and she was one of several artists and art
> supporters who 70 years ago started the South Side
> Community Art Center.
>
> "To me, she's a model for dreaming big. She's a model
> for doing the work that it takes to do those dreams,"
> said Cheryl Blackwell Bryson, chairwoman of the DuSable
> Museum's board of trustees. "Not everybody can build an
> institution that becomes a road map for other ethnic
> groups around the world to emulate, an institution that
> is designed to impact lives."
>
> Mrs. Burroughs died Sunday, Nov. 21, in her home in the
> city's Bronzeville neighborhood, surrounded by family,
> according to the museum. Relatives said she was 95.
> Other records indicate she was 93.
>
> In a statement, President Barack Obama praised Mrs.
> Burroughs' generosity and commitment.
>
> "Michelle and I are saddened by the passing of Dr.
> Margaret Burroughs, who was widely admired for her
> contributions to American culture as an esteemed
> artist, historian, educator and mentor," Obama said in
> a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to Dr.
> Burroughs' family and loved ones. Her legacy will live
> on in Chicago and around the world."
>
> Born in St. Rose, La., Mrs. Burroughs moved to Chicago
> as a child. She attended the Chicago Teachers College
> and received bachelor's and master's degrees from the
> Art Institute of Chicago. She later received several
> honorary degrees and was well known as "Dr. Burroughs."
>
> Her long resume includes teaching for more than 20
> years at DuSable High School. She also taught at
> Kennedy-King College.
>
> Mayor Richard Daley said: "Through her artistic talent
> and wide breadth of knowledge, she gave us a cultural
> gem, the DuSable Museum of African American History.
> But she herself was a cultural institution."
>
> Mrs. Burroughs immersed herself in art at a young age.
> In her early 20s, she joined several others in starting
> the South Side Community Art Center. Executive director
> Faheem Majeed said Mrs. Burroughs, who lived across the
> street from the Bronzeville center, remained active in
> the organization and recently was campaigning to help
> the center buy an adjacent vacant lot.
>
> "Dr. Burroughs was a titan," Majeed said. "She had a
> great influence as an institution builder and a role
> model, but the amazing thing was how accessible she
> was. She still rode the bus to go grocery shopping."
>
> She set up a legendary salon in Bronzeville, which
> attracted the likes of sociologist W.E.B. DuBois and
> writer James Baldwin. Unhappy that there were few
> places for black artists to showcase their work, she
> helped launch an art fair in the late 1950s at a
> shopping center at 35th Street and King Drive.
>
> A few years later, hoping to bring black history to the
> forefront in Chicago, she and her husband planted the
> seeds for what would become a thriving museum with
> about 100 items in their living room.
>
> They called their creation the Ebony Museum of Negro
> History and Art. It would become the DuSable Museum,
> which today boasts a collection of more than 100,000
> pieces in its Washington Park building, with plans to
> expand.
>
> Mrs. Burroughs also helped start the National
> Conference of African-American Artists.
>
> She taught art and poetry to prison inmates, according
> to the Chicago Park District. For the last 35 years,
> she and the Rev. Jesse Jackson spent Christmas Day at
> the Cook County Jail.
>
> "Dr. Burroughs was a pillar of strength and character
> in our community," Jackson said in a statement. "Dr.
> Margaret Burroughs radiated hope."
>
> Mrs. Burroughs bowled and took up roller-skating in her
> 80s.
>
> In 1989, she was inducted into the Chicago Women's Hall
> of Fame. President Jimmy Carter appointed her a member
> of the National Commission on African-American History
> and Culture.
>
> Mrs. Burroughs has won the Paul Robeson Award, named
> for the black singer and

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] We must dream!

[Ralph Dumain]

I'm guessing CLR James would have enjoyed this article. I don't have a 
detailed enough knowledge of the progress of the revolutionary movement 
from 1902 to 1917, but I find Lih's scenario convincing enough.

Once the Bolsheviks took power, though, they discovered how intransigent 
social reality was in comparison to their will to radically transform 
it. It is possible that Lenin's dream of 1902 exceeded reality, though 
he obviously gauged the potential of the discontent of the masses with 
the repressive tsarist regime and social order.

The other question in all this is, except for enhancing historical 
consciousness, what relevance any interpretation of Lenin has for today, 
and esp. in a radically different type of society such as the USA. I 
used to say something comparable to "we must dream", but now I see only 
a pipe dream.

On 11/8/2010 10:22 AM, c b wrote:
> Lars T. Lih: ?We must dream!? Echoes of `What Is to
> Be Done?? in Lenin?s later career | Links International Journal of
> Socialist Renewal
>
>
> By *Lars T. Lih*
>
> I appreciate the opportunity to look again at Lenin?s /What Is to Be
> Done?/?especially since I have just completed a biographical study of
> Lenin?s career as a whole (/Lenin/, forthcoming in the Critical Lives
> series by Reaktion Books). One of the things I found?to tell the truth,
> somewhat unexpectedly?was a series of echoes of /What Is to Be Done?/
> throughout Lenin?s entire career. So I thought it would be useful to
> talk about some of the basic themes of Lenin?s book and tie each of
> these themes to later echoes.
>
> Full article at http://links.org.au/node/1980

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Review: The Scottsboro Boys @ The Guthrie Theater

[Ralph Dumain]

  I hate musicals to begin with. And opera too. I can't stand any of 
them. OK, I did like the movie CABARET. But otherwise I think Mel Brooks 
summed it all up in "Springtime for Hitler" . . . until he turned his 
movie into a musical (which I saw and admittedly enjoyed, with stubborn 
reservations).

The conclusion that not much has changed since the '30s is off base, but 
it's true that mainstream liberalism is honest about the past as long as 
it's the distant past and not the present. This frames most of its 
documentary efforts (Ken Burns and others').

I don't trust reviewers as a rule, but as I am prejudiced against 
musicals, my initial reaction is:

(1) WTF!
(2) I'm amazed that anyone would do anything with the Scottsboro Boys 
now, and a musical, no less.

I think though that someone should do a musical about the Tea Party. 
"Camptown crackers have a ball . . . doo dah, doo dah . . . "

On 9/14/2010 10:29 AM, c b wrote:
> Review: The Scottsboro Boys @ The Guthrie Theater
>
> By Tad Simons
> August 8, 2010
> Mpls.St.Paul Magazine
> http://blogs.mspmag.com/themorningafter/2010/08/review-the-scottsboro-boys-the.html
>
> Is The Scottsboro Boys-the final musical from the
> legendary writing team of John Kander and Fred Ebb (Ebb
> died in 2004), who gave us Chicago, Cabaret, and Kiss
> of the Spider Woman-Broadway's next big hit?
>
> Or, is it a shamelessly racist piece of claptrap that
> traffics in every imaginable negative stereotype for
> the sole purpose of entertaining rooms full of wealthy
> white people?
>
> Or, is it the most outrageously subversive play ever to
> hit a Guthrie stage: a shocking, viciously satirical,
> brutally honest flaying of American culture that-in the
> long tradition of jesters who use humor to tell "the
> truth" to the king-lambastes, lampoons, and blasphemes
> in order to reveal deeper, more disgraceful truths that
> Americans might otherwise ignore?
>
> Or is it all of these things? And then some?
>
> These are the sorts of questions likely to be spinning
> around in your head after sitting through The
> Scottsboro Boys, an unlikely musical built around the
> tragic true story of nine black men from Alabama in
> 1931who were wrongly accused of rape and spent years in
> jail waiting for the legal system to exonerate them.
>
> The Scottsboro saga is rightly regarded as one of the
> most shameful episodes in the history of American
> jurisprudence, though it is also viewed by some as an
> evolutionary leap for the American justice system, if
> only because the men weren't immediately lynched.
> Depending on how one looks at it, what happened to the
> Scottsboro boys was either a travesty of justice or
> evidence of the relative fairness, however imperfect,
> of the American legal system. (After many years, most
> of the charges were dropped and the men paroled, but
> their lives were ruined.)
>
> As the kids like to say, it's complicated. Complicating
> things much further is the musical itself, which
> chooses to present this unfortunate episode in history
> as a minstrel show, the pre-vaudevillian art form that
> died out because of its inherent racism. You can't
> rinse a minstrel show clean of racism, but you can use
> it as a prism to explore certain aspects of race-and,
> though it's tremendously risky (and not entirely
> successful), that's what The Scottsboro Boys attempts
> to do.
>
> The show wears its heresies like a badge. It comes
> complete with black actors in blackface, black actors
> portraying white people, and disconcertingly jaunty
> tunes about such entertaining topics as frying in an
> electric chair and the homey comforts of slave life.
> White people are vilified. Black people are skewered.
> Jews are mocked. Southern people are slandered. On the
> surface, this may be a shiny, polished musical with
> upbeat tunes and lots of unexpected humor, but burbling
> beneath that surface charm is an angry, disturbing
> energy that's difficult, if not impossible, to ignore.
> It's as if the writers set out to turn every cultural
> taboo about race on its head, spin it around a few
> times, and spit it back in your face with a vengeance.
>
> The Scottsboro Boys isn't created merely to entertain;
> it is engineered to send you out into the night full of
> ambivalence and conflicted feelings about what you just
> saw. In any given scene, you might be thinking, as I
> did, "Oh, here are bunch of black guys in blackface
> singing a happy song. But wait, I'm supposed to be
> disgusted by the very thought of black entertainers
> acting this way. But strangely, I'm not as disgusted as
> I should be, because it's just part of the show, and
> the actors know what they're doing. None of them is
> being forced to act like that. Then again, if these
> guys wanted to be in this show and get paid, dressing
> and acting like that had to be a prerequisite for the
> job. But if this really is as crazily racist as it
> looks, why would any self-respecting actor even
> parti

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fidel Castro Blasts Ahmadinejad As Anti-Semitic

[Ralph Dumain]

  It would be interesting to know what he has to say about Hugo Chavez 
and his former Eastern bloc patrons in this respect.

On 9/9/2010 1:00 PM, c b wrote:
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/08/fidel-castro-blasts-ahmad_n_708592.html
>
>
>
>
>
>   Fidel Castro Blasts Ahmadinejad As Anti-Semitic
>
> WILL WEISSERT | 09/ 7/10 09:01 PM | AP

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fwd: Roy Haynes, Jazz Drummer...

[Ralph Dumain]

  Wow. I haven't seen him for close to 30 years. He did indeed play with 
Trane. I'm from the LP era, so I don't know about CDs, but I believe 
Haynes was the drummer on my favorite version of "My Favorite Things" 
ever (1963), on the /Selflessness/ album. (Dammit, I don't have this on CD!)

I think he also played with Sarah Vaughan, along with everyone else.

On 9/8/2010 8:30 AM, c b wrote:
> PB: ...who performed on Monday at Hart Plaza at the jazz festival in
> Detroit, is 85 years old! I had thought that he had played with John
> Coltrane on a live record featuring My Favorite Things. But I can't
> seem to find it. However, during his life he did play with Charlie
> Parker, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, and just about everybody who
> was or is anybody in Jazz!
>
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Peace, Freedom and McCarthyism - Anticommunism and the African American Freedom Movement

[Ralph Dumain]

  This is great stuff, except for the attack on CLR James. But I guess 
all publicity can be considered good publicity. Incidentally, when 
someone once brought up Malcolm X at one of James's talks, he responded 
that the person who really counts is Paul Robeson. I don't know anyone 
other than me who has ever said anything like this. I think it's 
important to recognize that the vacuum left by McCarthyism fostered a 
climate for people who dissented from mainstream liberalism to gravitate 
to Elijah Muhammed's fascist cult. Historical amnesia rules the roost to 
this day.

On 8/25/2010 11:29 AM, c b wrote:
> Peace, Freedom and McCarthyism - Anticommunism and the
> African American Freedom Movement
>
> Book Review
>
> Anticommunism and the African American Freedom Movement:
> "Another Side of the Story"
> edited by Robbie Lieberman and Clarence Lang
> Palgrave Macmillan. 251 pages, $85.00
>
> Reviewed by Mark Solomon
>

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Genes don't have selves

[Ralph Dumain]

The selfish gene metaphor surreptitiously reintroduces teleology into 
evolutionary discourse, esp. in the popularization and metaphorical 
extension of evolutionary thinking. Dawkins' bullshit concept of *memes* 
immediately illustrates the danger.

On 8/12/2010 10:21 AM, c b wrote:
> Post to Pen-l
>
> CB
>
> ^
>
> Genes don't have selves
>
> ^
> Commentor:
>
> PART 2 SELFISH GENES: Richard Dawkins' "selfish genes" metaphor has
> been almost universally misunderstood. "Selfish genes" does not mean a
> selfish person.  It's simply a way of looking at evolution as though
> animals act on behalf of their genes:
>
> "It rapidly became clear to me that the most imaginative way of
> looking at evolution, and the most inspiring way of teaching it, was
> to say that itâs all about the genes. Itâs the genes that, for their
> own good, are manipulating the bodies they ride about in. The
> individual organism is a survival machine for its genes." â Richard
> Dawkins
>
> ^^^
> CB: Well, the species that acted in ways that perpetuated themselves ,
> that biologically reproduced a new generation that reproduced a new
> generation that produced a new generation...over many generations such
> that the species still survives at the point at which Dawkins is
> discussing them "manipulated" their bodies in a way that, yeah, they
> passed on their genes. That's what happpens in reproduction; genes are
> passed on. The genes, too, "survived" because by definition a species'
> genes "survive" when it survives. And the genes of a species go
> extinct when a species goes extinct.
>
> But , as is mildly implied by using the word "selfish" to modify
> "genes", this doesn't mean that the genes have something like
> consciouness or subjectivity or "agency" (in post-modern terminology)
> or "selves", such that they direct the bodies  (bodies that grow out
> of their codes through base pairs making proteins, etc.) to act in
> ways that improve chances of survival of both the genes and the bodies
> and their future generations. Genes don't have selves, I guess is the
> best direct criticism of Dawkins' theory.
>
> Dawkins' theory is something of an obverse, or reverse or whatever
> LaMarckianism. LaMarckianism ( a form after the discovery genes) holds
> sort of that the motions of a species' bodies can directly
> modify/"mutate" genes based on the "experience" of said bodies to
> cause the genes make bodies in the next generation adjusted to those
> experiences of the previous generation. Selfish-gene theory holds that
> it is the genes that are causing the bodies to act as "machines" or
> instrumentalities to assure the survival or perpetuation of the genes.
> In the one the bodies influence and control the genes. In the other ,
> the genes influence and control the bodies.
>
> It's a truism or trivially true from the premises of Darwinism that ,
> _for species that do survive and don't go extinct_, "the individual
> organism is a survival machine for its genes, ".However,  for species
> that go extinct their organisms are not survival machines.  Both these
> sort of opposite, complementary statements are trivially derived from
> Darwin's and Mendel's basic ideas. Dawkins formulation about
> selfish-genes, doesn't add anything that is not already trivially true
> in Darwin's _The Origin of Species_, and Mendel's genes.
>
> ^^^
>
> So-called "selfish genes" create people who both cooperate and compete
> at the same time (e.g., the best team player). With respect to
> "selfishness," it's actually our innate drive for "status" that has
> been transmogrified into a drive for money (political power). The
> drive for "status" is one of our most-powerful innate drives.
>
> Jay
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[Marxism-Thaxis] my new bibliographies: Second International, Neo-Kantianism, et al

[Ralph Dumain]

Here is my latest bibliography:

Second International Marxism, German Social Democracy, Austro-Marxism: 
Selected Secondary Bibliography 


. . . which complements this one:

Neo-Kantianism, Its History, Influence, and Relation to Socialism: 
Selected Secondary Bibliography 


Both have their idiosyncracies, as indicated by the notes therein.

This one does not cover Marxism at all, but it is useful nonetheless:

Historical Surveys of Atheism, Freethought, Rationalism, Skepticism, and 
Materialism: Selected Works 



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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] A play about Stalin

[Ralph Dumain]

Yet another document demonstrating how little confidence can be placed 
in a revolution of peasants. The crude, shrewd and ruthless pragmatism 
of Stalin marks why he came out on top, just what you would expect in 
the situation. Stalin is one tough piece of shit.

So far it's a compelling drama. The one thing I find jarring is the 
series of captions between scene 21 and 22. Too much history compacted 
into these captions.

What does it mean that Stalin is held hostage to the Politburo, as 
Truman says?

And what's this:

"Eighth Extraordinary Congress of Soviets on December 5, 1936 approves 
the new
Constitution. But Stalin's plans are thwarted by the NKVD."

It is not clear from the structure of the play what the engineering of 
the Soviet Constitution, other than for propaganda purposes, was about.

Also, it would be useful to know why Stalin was so unprepared for the 
German invasion.

Also, what is behind Malenkov's proposal in scene 42, other than 
rhetoric, that is?

A curious statement by dying Stalin to the dead Kamenev near the end:

"I was trying to push through a new, more democratic constitution,
but the NKVD
claimed to have discovered new bogeymen under every bed. They
hi-jacked the
congress, when my report on the constitution was to have been the
main item on the
agenda.

"You were a hostage to fortune. You had to be sacrificed. The new
constitution was
more important than the fate of any of the so-called Old Bolsheviks,
you, or my
daughter's godfather, or even me. But I had to survive, or the
constitution would have
fallen. As it was, most of my democratic proposals were removed."

What is this all about?

Curious Stalin's attitude toward his fellow mass-murderers Yezhov and 
Yagoda.

What's this about the USA having a hand in Trotsky's assassination?

Trotsky's big mistake was being the intellectual's intellectual, not to 
mention a Jew, now recognizing how impossible it is to be such an 
intellectual in a country full of violent, ignorant little shits.

Then, the Palestinians, the Greeks, the Jews come to accuse Stalin.

And finally Stalin pleads that he was at the mercy of the NKVD.

What a shame the play ends with Paul Robeson singing that dumbass Soviet 
national anthem. Not one of his better moments.

Congrats on a compelling play. It filled me with even more disgust for 
the USSR than I already had.


On 7/16/2010 3:35 AM, Karl Dallas wrote:
> I have just completed the first draft of a play about Stalin, the result of
> over 12 years of research. Though some scenes have been imagined, as far as
> possible I have gone to published sources for reports of what happened or
> what was said at the time.
> At present it is far too long for theatrical performance, but my purpose in
> mentioning it here is to encourage criticism, however hostile (since I
> imagine it will provoke hostility, since it does not portray its subject as
> the devil incarnate; nevertheless I have tried to paint him "warts and
> all").
> The script can be read at http://www.karldallas.com/stalinplay.pdf.
> ---
> Go well.
> Karl Dallas
> Follow me on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/karldallas
> Want to help the people of Palestine? Then follow
> http://www.twitter.com/bradfordvp and http://www.twitter.com/dpalestine
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Scope and Limits of Theory: Provisional Draft

[Ralph Dumain]

If we are talking about Lou Proyect, which I'm sure we are, then any 
word uttered or action taken by this character should not catch anyone 
by surprise. You're bound to come up with fleas.

Trotsky's inflexible dogmatism has been noted by many. One interesting 
example is Jean van Heijenoort's memoir, /With Trotsky in Exile/.

Lenin seems to have been aware of his compromise with practicality, esp. 
in trying to run a shabby fledgling state. A revealing portrait of the 
tension he felt in doing this can be found, curiously enough, in this 
article:

Lilge, Frederic. "Lenin and the Politics of Education," /Slavic Review/, 
vol. 27, no. 2, June 1968, pp. 230-257.

I don't think the word "theory" should be limited to scientific theory, 
but I do think the distinction should be made between strict scientific 
theory and a broader theoretical project. Note also that the word 
"science" in English tends to be applied fairly strictly, whereas in 
other languages the cognate term is broader, approaching the scope of 
our word (scholarly) "discipline".

As to "revolutionary theory", I don't believe in it, but I can certainly 
understand the attempt to mediate theory (i.e. theoretical understanding 
of the state of affairs) and political practice. What else could 
revolutionary theory be if it's not merely an ideology.

The Black Panthers was a many-faceted phenomenon. Breakfast programs 
yes, community organizing yes, sporting quasi-military quasi-uniforms, 
stupid, putting Eldridge Cleaver in a leadership position, not smart . . . .

You are aware of course of the Trot fetish for Malcolm X, and presumably 
the "theory" behind the fondness for black nationalism. Those who 
support this perspective have not had another original thought about it 
since 1965.

I'm not sure where you're going with this draft. Hopefully, you're not 
going to waste your time converting washed-up sectarians.

On 7/7/2010 9:19 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> There was a thread on marxism, ending today, which I started with a post
> on theory. At first the response it got was to an "incidentally" remark
> on the Panthers. Then Angelus Novus reopened it, and then at someplace
> Lou went ape-shit and it got wilder and wilder, at least from him, and
> it ended with him unsubbing Angelus and someone who had defended
> anarchism (mildly).
>
> My initial post was labelled a draft, and I indicated it was to be
> continued. I'm sending it here to see how it fares on this list.
>
> 
>
> {Applogy: Becaus of my fucking eyes I can't even find this book on the
> shelf, let alone quote exactly from it. Later I will look up the exact
> words and post them.}
>
> In  Revolutionary silhouettes, Lunacharsky makes an interesting
> comparison of Lenin&  Trotsky.  Lenin, he says, was more "opportunist"
> in a special sense, while Trotssky was the more orthodox Marxist. By
> "opportunism" he he means readiness to seize the opportunty as one shows
> itself, without letting doctrine get in the way.  An incident from WW 2
> may illustrate the distinction being made here. When the German
> Engineers failed to completely destry the bridge at Remagen (w?) an
> opportunity opened up for crossing the Rhine, which ahd to be seized at
> once because the damaged bridge might collapse at any time. But this
> involved a radical change of plans, including major shifting arund of
> troops, etc., and that change in carefully laid plans, some of
> Eistenhower's generals believed, would cause too much trouble. They
> favored proceeding with original plans  to avoid too much confusion.
> Other generals said _seize_ the opportunity, which is what Eisenhower
> chose, with a result that very possibly shortened the war and definitely
> decreased casualties. This is not a bad illustration of theory versus
> concrete analysis of concrete situations.
>
> As a matter of fact, in the past Lou has criticised Trotsky for sending
> messages from Mexico dictating daily tactics to his followers in Spain.
> But Trotsky was merely being a good orthodox Marxist: he believed there
> was a Marxist revolutionary theory and that that theory could dictate
> the correct tactics regardless of special local circumstances. Similarly
> the 'orthodox' U.S. generals who opposed using the bridge had a
> long-established military theory as to the correct way to make an
> assault over a river, and their plans had been drawn up accordingly.
> Another way of putting this, is that they assumed there to be a direct
> relationship between theory and praactice: abstract theory could dictate
> detailed tactics in all situatios. (Assuming a direct relation of theory
> to practice is, I think, the most useful definition of "dogmatism.")
>
> That is probably true in the more rigorous physical sciences. It is true
> for _some_ cooking_: There are many items for which you can go to the
> cookbook (theory) and followiing it directly will come out with the same
> results everytime. But this is not true, for example, in knead

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Ghandi rejected Zionism

[Ralph Dumain]

Really? I thought Hindutva fascism was connected to anti-Semitism?

Do you know anything about Gandhi's letters to Hitler, or is this just 
Pakistani propaganda?

On 6/27/2010 11:35 AM, Jim Farmelant wrote:
>
> On Sun, 27 Jun 2010 15:00:21 +0900 CeJ  writes:
>
>> http://www.twf.org/News/Y2001/0815-GandhiZionism.html
>>
>> excerpt:
>>
>>
>>  
>
>> Gandhi's response to Zionism and the Palestine question contains
>> different layers of meaning, ranging from an ethical position to
>> political realism. What is interesting is that Gandhi, who firmly
>> believed in the inseparability of religion and politics, had been
>> consistently and vehemently rejecting the cultural and religious
>> nationalism of the Zionists.
>>
>> What follows then is that he was not for religion functioning as a
>> political ideology; rather, he wanted religion to provide an
>> ethical
>> dimension to nation-State politics. Such a difference was vital as
>> far
>> as Gandhi was concerned. A uni-religious justification for claiming
>> a
>> nation-State, as in the case of Zionism, did not appeal to him in
>> any
>> substantial sense.
>>  
> I suspect that Gandhi's position on that is by no means
> not unrelated to his own advocacy of a secular India.
> Although Gandhi was a very devout Hindu, he was
> emphatic in support of India being a secular state
> in which Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians etc.
> would all have equal rights.  Following independence,
> this would put him on a collision course with the
> right-wing Hindu nationalists who would eventually
> assasinate him. I also suspect that Gandhi would
> not have been too suprised that the BJP (direct
> political descendents of the sort of Hindu nationalists
> who assasinated him) have been strongly pro-Israel.
>
>
>
> Jim Farmelant
> http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] American Jews Who Reject Zionism

[Ralph Dumain]

I can't say I keep up with Zionist arguments since 1967. There have been 
a number of arguments for over a century to bolster the obviously shaky 
arguments for the colonization of a patch of desert that had no live 
connection with the European Jews of the 19th century. How much weight 
those arguments were given depended heavily on the actual situation of 
European Jews, and of course there were weighty counter-arguments as 
well. Now if there were no connection whatever between contemporaneous 
Jews of a century ago and ancient Judaea, meaning that ancient Judaea 
never existed, or that there was no component of its inhabitants that 
made its way to Europe ever, then I suppose the argument for Palestine 
as opposed to Uganda, Argentina, or Nevada may have never gotten 
anywhere, though you never know. There were those like Zamenhof who 
thought the actual direct lineage was rather threadbare, not to mention 
that any actual connection was effectively meaningless.

However, for the sake of argument, suppose that modern day Jews could be 
connected to the ancient Israelites, and assume also that a huge 
percentage of moder Jews got that way via conversion rather than a 
bloodline to ancient Israel. So what difference does that make? I 
remember from 45-50 years the argument that Israel is the homeland of 
the Jews, but I never heard even once any argument for racial or ethnic 
purity and I can't see what damned difference it would make one way or 
the other, any more than I ever heard any arguments based on the Bible 
or the notion of the chosen people. Of course, people may well have 
harbored those ideas and I missed the memo. The point remains, the only 
argument I ever heard, at least one I can remember that stuck in my 
head, was the argument from the history of anti-semitism all over the 
world, and the argument from the Holocaust. As far as I know, these were 
the only arguments anyone cared about, but apparently I was wrong.

Actually, it all seems pretty ridiculous now. I suppose Einstein's 
version of Zionism was reasonable and endorseable, but in retrospect it 
seems completely unrealistic. I guess you had to be a European Jew tired 
enough of humiliation and exclusion to entertain the notion. This rather 
than an ur-racism and lust for conquest--a Stalinist lie of 
long-standing, explains a lot, at least for those removed from the scene 
where the dirty work that was done. That's my argument, which is not an 
endorsement for Zionism, just in case anyone is tempted yet again to 
accuse me of being an agent of AIPAC. A Jewish friend of mine who just 
treated me to a birthday movie, dinner, and inebriation told me just a 
few hours ago he thinks Zionism in the end is bad for the Jews, and I 
wouldn't argue otherwise, except to say that examining the historical 
time line with some care, while not necessarily arguing the plausibility 
of an alternate time line, would at least grant a more convincing 
perspective than the simple-minded propaganda of Stalinists and third 
world nationalists, which turns out to be a less effective ideological 
tool in combatting Israel's actions than they fancy.

On 6/26/2010 11:27 PM, CeJ wrote:
> RD:>>There is also the argument of Shlomo Sand, that the concept of Jewry is
> a modern concept, that the Exile never happened, that there were mass
> conversions involved in the formation of the Jews in Europe (and
> elsewhere), and therefore that the actual ties of European Jews to
> ancient Judaea are spurious. Thus the founding Zionist myth is . . . a myth.
>
> To argue for anything on any of these bases, against Zionism as well as
> for, defies logic.<<
>
> As I understand it, the now infamous  Koestler "13th Tribe" thesis was
> really an attempt of a non-religious Zionist to show that the Jews of
> Europe largely had a European ethnogenesis, in order to counter
> European anti-semitism. I haven't read the book, but I have seen how
> its arguments and evidence have been only of selective use to serious
> scholars of the topic. Now the sad sick joke is that the work is
> attacked as anti-semitic and is cited constantly by the Zionists so as
> to obscure the very real scholarship that is showing that the standard
> accounts of the ethnogenesis of European Jewry (W. European Jews moved
> to C. and E. Europe to escape Christian persecution) has far too many
> missing parts and implausiblities. Wexler has done considerable work
> on showing how Ladino-speaking Sephardim are of N. African origin and
> how C. and E. European Ashkenazim are of basically Turko-Slavic
> origin. Even those who have tried to dimss his discussions haven't, as
> far as I can see, shown them to be implausible (whereas one very large
> implausibility is E. Europe getting a very large Jewish population
> because of the migration of a few ten thousand Jews from what is now
> France--before foods like potatoes, European populations in most parts
> didn't increase rapidly).
>
> CJ
>
> ___

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] American Jews Who Reject Zionism Say Events Aid Cause - NY Times

[Ralph Dumain]

An interesting factual account, but one is loathe to draw definitive 
conclusions from it. Coincidentally, a Pakistani Facebook friend 
recently posted a video called Judaism vs Zionism, featuring someone 
with an English accent contrasting Jewish ethics with the Zionist state. 
Such simple-minded reasoning clarifies little, and in fact promotes 
irrationalism rather than dispels it. There's a three-way conflation 
here between ethnicity, religion, and nationalism, and four-way when one 
adds biology to the mix.

There is also the argument of Shlomo Sand, that the concept of Jewry is 
a modern concept, that the Exile never happened, that there were mass 
conversions involved in the formation of the Jews in Europe (and 
elsewhere), and therefore that the actual ties of European Jews to 
ancient Judaea are spurious. Thus the founding Zionist myth is . . . a myth.

To argue for anything on any of these bases, against Zionism as well as 
for, defies logic. Additionally, there is an assumption that religious 
justifications and myths of origin played the decisive role in the 
formation of Zionism in the 19th century and a constant, unvarying role 
throughout its history, which, as the Stalinists and partisans of 
/other/ nationalisms would have it, was always and unvaryingly fueled by 
racialism and a master plan to drive out the Arab inhabitants of the 
region. Counter-myths are not necessarily more illuminating than myths. 
There is not a single point that was not already debated by Zionists 
themselves in the pre-Herzl period, not to mention anti-Zionists, more 
often on a secular than on a religious basis. And the rational and 
irrational components of pro-Zionist arguments have to be calibrated 
along a sliding scale, which can be done when we see what those 
arguments were, especially as Palestine was by no means a target of 
universal consensus in the early period.

We will learn more if we examine the conditions of 19th century Europe, 
esp. Eastern Europe, but also Central Europe, and look at what 
nation-building meant across the board among nationalities under the 
yoke of empires, in a world almost completely subject to empires and 
that by the end of the century would be completely subjugated, with 
nothing but empire in sight. We could also compare fantasies and schemes 
of colonization and resettlement among various peoples. One could, for 
example, examine 19th century black nationalism and compare it to 
Zionism before Zionism got anywhere so that it could be imitated or opposed.

Taking all this as a base, we can better understand the variations on 
the theme, and to what extent nationalist projects actually were 
underwritten by irrationalist ideologies like religion, racial theories, 
metaphysical idealism (German Romanticism), Social Darwinism, etc., and 
how much weight these ideologies had, among secular and religious 
components of the population.

What it takes to convince people of anything depends heavily on 
circumstances and options as well as ideologies, and sometimes it 
doesn't take much of a push to convince people of something. Which is 
why secularists and even people with little taste for nationalism (like 
Einstein) would turn to Zionism.  Another factor is that those far 
removed from a concrete situation may not even have the facts with which 
to justify the policies they are being sold. Religion, shmeligion, 
ancient homeland, shlomeland, between 1945 and 1967 the Holocaust was 
the only argument anyone needed to hear, and for American Jews at least 
the other elements played rationalizing supporting roles at best, at 
least as I remember the atmosphere of the early '60s.

(Remember the theme song to the film "Exodus"? I was accustomed to 
hearing only Ferrante and Teicher's piano rendition. When I got hold of 
the sheet music, I learned that the theme had lyrics, and when I saw the 
verse "This land is mine, God gave this land to me", I was appalled: I 
had never heard such a thing before, and had accepted the legitimacy of 
Israel as a product of the Holocaust without any crap about God in the 
mix. I don't recall any American Jews ever saying anything about God, 
though they were nominally religious.)

On 6/26/2010 8:44 AM, Jim Farmelant wrote:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/us/26religion.html
>
> American Jews Who Reject Zionism Say Events Aid Cause
> By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
>
> One day nearly 20 years ago, Stephen Naman was preparing to help the
> rabbi of his Reform Jewish temple in South Carolina move the congregation
> into a new building. Mr. Naman had just one request: Could the rabbi stop
> placing the flag of Israel on the altar?
>
> "We don't go to synagogue to pray to a flag," Mr. Naman, 63, recalled
> having said in a recent telephone interview.
>
> That rabbi acceded to the request. So, after being transferred to North
> Carolina and joining a temple there six or seven years later, Mr. Naman
> asked its rabbi to remove the Israeli flag. This time, the

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Martin Gardner - RIP

[Ralph Dumain]

I slightly expanded my initial reaction into a blog entry:


  Martin Gardner Dead at 95
  


On 5/24/2010 7:49 AM, farmela...@juno.com wrote:
> Another great one passes.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/us/24gardner.html?hpw
>
> Jim Farmelant
> http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Neo-Taylorism

[Ralph Dumain]

Didn't Hitler drive a VW?

On 06/07/2010 02:14 PM, c b wrote:
> VW plant trains 'industrial athletes'
> Chattanooga workers prepared to 'perform at the highest level'
> Bill Poovey / Associated Press
> Chattanooga, Tenn. -- Volkswagen is requiring production workers hired
> for its new U.S. assembly plant to go through a fitness program on top
> of the usual job training, aiming to forge an "industrial athlete" who
> can lift, grip, bend and push without flagging

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Rightwing pundit: Helen Thomas voices world's view on Israel

[Ralph Dumain]

Of course this is a pack of right wing lies. Re Helen Thomas: her 
remarks, if she has been quoted correctly, are repellent, but one should 
add that there is a logical distinction between Israel's right to exist 
as a state, Jewish or otherwise, and the right of Jewish people to live 
there, regardless of their proximate or distant origins. The right of 
all peoples to live a viable life in the modern nation-state on par with 
all other citizens (or perhaps i should say denizens) is a generally 
recognized if not practiced principle since the end of World War II. 
However anybody got to be where they are (that is, in a particular 
nation-state), it is too late to demand "they go back where they came 
from". (The pattern of settlements on the West Bank do not fall into 
this category.) Interestingly, a pioneer of this principle was L.L. 
Zamenhof, an Eastern European Jew and the inventor of Esperanto, who 
declared insistently a century ago that all citizens of any state 
deserve to live there on an equal and nondiscriminatory basis.

On 06/10/2010 10:40 AM, c b wrote:
> Nolan Finley, Detroit's house rightwinger, thinks most of the world
> thinks Israel doesn't have a right to exist.  He criticizes "most of
> the world", but it's amazing that he thinks and says that most of the
> world doesn't think Israel has a right to exist. I don't know if
> that's true. I don't know if most of the people in the world have an
> opinion on that issue.  Finley might be a bit "paranoid".
>
> CB
>
>
> http://detnews.com/article/20100610/OPINION03/6100356/Helen-Thomas-voices-world-s-view-on-Israel
>
> Last Updated: June 10. 2010 1:00AM
> Nolan Finley
> Helen Thomas voices world's view on Israel
>
> It's ironic -- hypocritical? -- that veteran journalist Helen Thomas
> is drawing such harsh and universal criticism for saying that Israelis
> should get out of "Palestine" and go back where they came from, namely
> Poland, Germany and the United States.
>
> At the core of Thomas' remarks is a challenge to Israel's right to
> exist. That's also at the heart of the condemnation showered on Israel
> for its bloody confrontation with an aid flotilla trying to reach the
> blockaded Palestinian ports of Gaza.
>
> Israel is cutting off shipments to Gaza because the territory is
> controlled by the Hamas terrorists. Materials reaching the terrorists
> have a high likelihood of being used in attacks against Israel.
> There's no question, then, that Israel was acting in its own defense.
>
> Yet the universal denunciation of Israel for boarding the aid ships
> was immediate and shockingly hostile, and came even before the facts
> of the incident were established.
>
> Advertisement
>
> As clearly as Thomas' remarks, the reaction reveals how the world
> really feels about Israel.
>
> Challenging the right of any nation to defend itself is a de facto
> challenge to its right to exist. Self defense is the basic right of a
> sovereign nation. Denying Israel that right is a denial of its
> legitimacy.
>
> It happens every time Israel acts against a threat. When Israel
> responded to relentless rocket attacks from Hezbollah by invading
> Lebanon, it was condemned for a "disproportionate response." When it
> built a security fence as a barrier between its people and Palestinian
> terror, it was called out for the inhumanity of separating farmers
> from their fields.
>
> When it moved into Gaza to sweep away terrorists who were targeting
> schools and homes in undisputed Israeli territory, it was asked to go
> home and endure its tormentors.
>
> The criticism comes from those who say they believe in Israel's right
> to exist, but won't give it any room to exercise that right. It's not
> possible, in their view, for Israel to do anything correct in response
> to outside attacks.
>
> The condemning chorus is growing larger and louder as the Obama
> administration wobbles on the Jewish state. At nearly every
> opportunity, the White House has expressed ambiguity on its Israel
> position. President Barack Obama seems to go out of his way to
> intentionally raise doubts about the relationship.
>
> Obama, whose roots are in the far-left peace community and liberal
> academia -- Israel's most dangerous enemies -- has allowed the idea to
> take hold that the United States is inconvenienced by Israel, perhaps
> even a little embarrassed, and sees the Jewish state as a burden
> rather than a valued ally.
>
> While the White House has not joined the jackals in tearing apart
> Israel for the flotilla incident, neither has it expressed
> unequivocally that Israel has the right in such matters to repel a
> possible threat.
>
> America sets the standard for supporting Israel, and establishes the
> boundaries for the rest of the world. When the U.S. is less than
> absolute in its commitment to Israel's right to defend itself, it
> emboldens Israel's many enemies.
>
> There's no way Turkey would have acted with such provocation in
> instigating the flotilla showdo

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Rules are symbolic , built on symbols.

[Ralph Dumain]

The issue is not coherence in the semantic sense, but syntactic 
intelligibility. The early phase of TG grammar did a remarkable job of 
explaining how certain transformations were possible and others not, in 
this case, in the English language. In this *sentence, "what" is the 
direct object of "sold".

On 06/10/2010 08:54 AM, c b wrote:
> On 6/9/10, c b  wrote:
>
>> Speakers proficient in a language know what expressions are acceptable
>> in their language and what expressions are unacceptable. The key
>> puzzle is how speakers should come to know the restrictions of their
>> language, since expressions that violate those restrictions are not
>> present in the input, indicated as such. This absence of negative
>> evidence—that is, absence of evidence that an expression is part of a
>> class of the ungrammatical sentences in one's language—is the core of
>> the poverty of stimulus argument. For example, in English one cannot
>> relate a question word like 'what' to a predicate within a relative
>> clause (1):
>>
>> (1) *What did John meet a man who sold?
>>  
>
> ^^^
> CB: Aside from the learning acquisition issues, what, (speaking of
> "what") does the above sentence mean ?   It is semantically as well as
> syntactically problematic.  A child language learner might not use it
> because it doesn't express a coherent thought .
>
> Why did John meet a man who sold ?
>
> When did John meet a man who sold ?
>
> How did John meet a man who sold ?
>
> Where did John meet a man who sold ?
>
> Did John meet a man who sold ?
>
> What did John meet a man who sold for ? = Why did John...
>
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fromm and Bourdieu

[Ralph Dumain]

I do not see Fromm's psychoanalysis as idealist at all, no matter what 
Marcuse says.  However, Fromm's specific assessments of people and 
ideas, e.g. Pope John XXIII or D.T. Suzuki, smack of a lack of 
groundedness.

Marcuse, Horkheimer, and Adorno spent the 1930s turning idealism on its 
head, but that doesn't mean their avowed materialism was always 
materialist. Marcuse seems the most influenced by Romantic thought.

But none of these classifications can be applied in a hard and fast manner.

On 06/02/2010 06:22 PM, Domhnall Ó Cobhthaigh wrote:
> Thanks everyone for all the help.
>
>
>
> cb - I take your point. I ventured somewhere with the Lenin stuff that I did 
> not want to. I obviously have misunderstood the little I've read...more 
> reading there remains.
>
>
>
> Ralph - thanks for your summary it helped a lot. Am looking forward to those 
> links.
>
>
>
> One question is how you see Fromm as idealist.
>
>
>
> At least as far as I understand him he doesn't seem idealist to me - he is 
> always at pains to identify the determining medium of repression (which 
> conditions ideology) to the social reality in which humans live. So the roots 
> for this feedback loop are material. But I know that Marcuse accused him of 
> being idealist in Eros and Civilization. However, I think that his attack on 
> Marcuse is more substantial as all the Hegelians certainly appear to have a 
> weakness when it comes to grounding their dialectics in empirical fact - it 
> seems to me as if Marcuse earned the accusation of idealism much easier than 
> Fromm.
>
>
>
> Obviously Fromm's Marxism was certainly early period stuff focussing on the 
> concepts of the Philosophical notebooks era but I still don't see that as 
> leading inexorably to idealism.
>
>
>
> One way in which idealism could creep back is perhaps that by seeing 
> repression as reflecting inherent perhaps platonic 'human' drives that cannot 
> find expression in concrete society. But I think he would reply by saying 
> that they are objective, scientifically verifiable drives having their own 
> roots in material reality - albeit the reality inherent in the human 
> condition. So at base both drives and the cause of their repression are 
> material and that these constitute factors which provide a mechanism for the 
> development of an ideological superstructure corresponding to any given base.
>
>
>
> Perhaps you can shed light on this as this is pretty much the issue I was 
> wanting some insight on. It's actually a similar question in regard to 
> Bourdieu's approach.
>   
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Pierre Bourdieu and Erich Fromm

[Ralph Dumain]

Here are some Fromm links:

Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium edited by Erich Fromm
http://autodidactproject.org/other/socialist-humanism.html

Internationale Erich-Fromm-Gesellschaft e.V. (English version)
http://www.erich-fromm.de/e/index.htm

Origin Myths in the Social Sciences: Fromm, the Frankfurt School and the 
Emergence of Critical Theory by Neil McLaughlin
http://www.ualberta.ca/%7Ecjscopy/articles/mclaughlin.html

On the 100th anniversary of his birth: Erich Fromm's Marxist dimension 
by Kevin Anderson
http://www.newsandletters.org/Issues/2000/Aug-Sept/8.00_essay.htm

Note esp. the essay by Neil McLaughlin, which deals with the disputes 
between Fromm and the others.


On 06/02/2010 05:46 PM, Ralph Dumain wrote:
> Lenin is a separate question from the Fromm vs Marcuse controversy. I
> will have to make another thorough study of Lenin's MAEC one day. My
> take on it is that Lenin's critique of positivism's phenomenalism is
> basically sound. Whether he missed something important about positivism
> I won't venture to say at this point. Lenin's critique of Bogdanov's
> theory of perception and Lenin's general theory of reflection have come
> in for criticism; these seem to be his weakest points. It is important
> to understand that Lenin's intervention into the philosophy of science
> (antural sciences0 needs to be distinguished from his or others' views
> of historical materialism;  pace Lenin, these are not all of a piece.
>
> It seems that Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Adorno treated Fromm quite badly.
> In his turn, he disdained their philosophizing. Fromm and the others
> were two very different sorts of people. Fromm did not understand their
> brand of philosophy. His idealism is of the order of moral idealism
> (also influenced by his youthful immersion in Judaism); he seems to be
> overly idealistic in his assessments of others, for example. Politically
> he seems rather light, though his critiques of American politics and
> pathology were quite influential and important.
>
> One can see why Marcuse and the others were irritated by him, but their
> dismissal of his psychoanalytic work and their own rather dogmatic
> appropriations of Freud can be faulted.
>
> There are some articles on Marcuse vs Fromm online. I'll look for the
> links. The author's name eludes me at the moment, but it will come to me.
>
> On 06/02/2010 09:53 AM, Domhnall Ó Cobhthaigh wrote:
>
>> Stephen, sorry I don't speak German very well at all, certainly not 
>> sufficient to read any of this material in German. But thanks anyway.
>>
>>
>>
>> CB, I think you misinterpreted me - perhaps it's my own inadequate 
>> self-expression - I think Bourdieu's approach is fundamentally marxist - it 
>> does not negate marxism. On the other hand I think that he adds some 
>> additional thoughts coherent with marxism. He has the advantage of 
>> expressing himself very carefully and precisely.
>>
>>
>>
>> Here's a good piece by him which covers a lot of ground:
>>
>>
>>
>> http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/bourdieu.htm
>>
>>
>>
>> I think Fromm approached the same issue from a slightly different 
>> perspective using psychoanalytic methods.
>>
>>
>>
>> Again, I see Fromm took great care to maintain the decisive but not finally 
>> determinate role of the (productive) material base but I think it is valid 
>> to see how fundamentally human (animal) drives are repressed by dominant 
>> material (social) conditions can influence ideology through the subconscious.
>>
>>
>>
>> In both cases, I was wondering if comrades here had come across arguments 
>> which might run counter to these. The issue at stake is the accusation of 
>> 'idealism' a la Lenin or from Marcuse. In regard to the latter, I think I 
>> would tend to agree with Fromm who reversed the accusation to point to 
>> Marcuse's philosophy being based on a disconnect with psychoanalytic 
>> research (and the dogmaticism of Freudian concepts).
>>
>>
>>
>> In regard to Lenin's assault on idealism, that's another question - perhaps 
>> comrades would be able to give their opinions on it? There would appear to 
>> be some consensus that it was misplaced although Timpanaro appears to stand 
>> over the bulk of his remarks pointing to their context as opposed to their 
>> expressed content. I do not know enough on this to really have a set opinion 
>> so would value any thoughts.
>>
>>
>>
>> Yours,
>>
>> Domhnall
>>  

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Why , oh, why are humans so thoroughly socially determined ?

[Ralph Dumain]

Seems to me this claim about Greece stealing from Egypt is predicated on 
a mystical/esoteric conception of philosophy, and smacks of the crackpot 
mentality of all Afrocentric philosophy.

On 06/01/2010 12:33 PM, c b wrote:
> ..
> Cheikh Anta Diop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheikh_Anta_Diop)
> claims that Aristotle looted the libraries of the Egyptian city that
> preceded Alexandria, so , if that's true, some Egyptian philosophy and
> knowledge may have been preserved through Aristotle
>

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Pierre Bourdieu and Erich Fromm

[Ralph Dumain]

Lenin is a separate question from the Fromm vs Marcuse controversy. I 
will have to make another thorough study of Lenin's MAEC one day. My 
take on it is that Lenin's critique of positivism's phenomenalism is 
basically sound. Whether he missed something important about positivism 
I won't venture to say at this point. Lenin's critique of Bogdanov's 
theory of perception and Lenin's general theory of reflection have come 
in for criticism; these seem to be his weakest points. It is important 
to understand that Lenin's intervention into the philosophy of science 
(antural sciences0 needs to be distinguished from his or others' views 
of historical materialism;  pace Lenin, these are not all of a piece.

It seems that Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Adorno treated Fromm quite badly. 
In his turn, he disdained their philosophizing. Fromm and the others 
were two very different sorts of people. Fromm did not understand their 
brand of philosophy. His idealism is of the order of moral idealism 
(also influenced by his youthful immersion in Judaism); he seems to be 
overly idealistic in his assessments of others, for example. Politically 
he seems rather light, though his critiques of American politics and 
pathology were quite influential and important.

One can see why Marcuse and the others were irritated by him, but their 
dismissal of his psychoanalytic work and their own rather dogmatic 
appropriations of Freud can be faulted.

There are some articles on Marcuse vs Fromm online. I'll look for the 
links. The author's name eludes me at the moment, but it will come to me.

On 06/02/2010 09:53 AM, Domhnall Ó Cobhthaigh wrote:
> Stephen, sorry I don't speak German very well at all, certainly not 
> sufficient to read any of this material in German. But thanks anyway.
>
>
>
> CB, I think you misinterpreted me - perhaps it's my own inadequate 
> self-expression - I think Bourdieu's approach is fundamentally marxist - it 
> does not negate marxism. On the other hand I think that he adds some 
> additional thoughts coherent with marxism. He has the advantage of expressing 
> himself very carefully and precisely.
>
>
>
> Here's a good piece by him which covers a lot of ground:
>
>
>
> http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/bourdieu.htm
>
>
>
> I think Fromm approached the same issue from a slightly different perspective 
> using psychoanalytic methods.
>
>
>
> Again, I see Fromm took great care to maintain the decisive but not finally 
> determinate role of the (productive) material base but I think it is valid to 
> see how fundamentally human (animal) drives are repressed by dominant 
> material (social) conditions can influence ideology through the subconscious.
>
>
>
> In both cases, I was wondering if comrades here had come across arguments 
> which might run counter to these. The issue at stake is the accusation of 
> 'idealism' a la Lenin or from Marcuse. In regard to the latter, I think I 
> would tend to agree with Fromm who reversed the accusation to point to 
> Marcuse's philosophy being based on a disconnect with psychoanalytic research 
> (and the dogmaticism of Freudian concepts).
>
>
>
> In regard to Lenin's assault on idealism, that's another question - perhaps 
> comrades would be able to give their opinions on it? There would appear to be 
> some consensus that it was misplaced although Timpanaro appears to stand over 
> the bulk of his remarks pointing to their context as opposed to their 
> expressed content. I do not know enough on this to really have a set opinion 
> so would value any thoughts.
>
>
>
> Yours,
>
> Domhnall
>   
> _
> Your E-mail and More On-the-Go. Get Windows Live Hotmail Free.
> https://signup.live.com/signup.aspx?id=60969
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>

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Chris Hedges: the USA needs a few good communists

[Ralph Dumain]

Chris Hedges spent too much time at the Harvard Divinity School. And I 
don't care for his characterization of Marx.

On 05/31/2010 09:47 AM, Jim Farmelant wrote:
>
> This Country Needs a Few Good Communists
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/this_country_needs_a_few_good_communi
> sts_20100531/
> Posted on May 31, 2010
>
> By Chris Hedges
>
> The witch hunts against communists in the United States were used to
> silence socialists, anarchists, pacifists and all those who defied the
> abuses of capitalism. Those “anti-Red” actions were devastating blows to
> the political health of the country. The communists spoke the language
> of class war. They understood that Wall Street, along with corporations
> such as British Petroleum, is the enemy. They offered a broad social
> vision which allowed even the non-communist left to employ a vocabulary
> that made sense of the destructive impulses of capitalism. But once the
> Communist Party, along with other radical movements, was eradicated as a
> social and political force, once the liberal class took
> government-imposed loyalty oaths and collaborated in the witch hunts for
> phantom communist agents, we were robbed of the ability to make sense of
> our struggle. We became fearful, timid and ineffectual. We lost our
> voice and became part of the corporate structure we should have been
> dismantling.
>
> Hope in this age of bankrupt capitalism will come with the return of the
> language of class conflict. It does not mean we have to agree with Karl
> Marx, who advocated violence and whose worship of the state as a utopian
> mechanism led to another form of enslavement of the working class, but
> we have to speak in the vocabulary Marx employed. We have to grasp, as
> Marx did, that corporations are not concerned with the common good. They
> exploit, pollute, impoverish, repress, kill and lie to make money. They
> throw poor families out of homes, let the uninsured die, wage useless
> wars to make profits, poison and pollute the ecosystem, slash social
> assistance programs, gut public education, trash the global economy,
> loot the U.S. Treasury and crush all popular movements that seek justice
> for working men and women. They worship only money and power. And, as
> Marx knew, unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes
> greater and greater numbers of human lives until it finally consumes
> itself. The nightmare in the Gulf of Mexico is the perfect metaphor for
> the corporate state. It is the same nightmare seen in postindustrial
> pockets from the old mill towns in New England to the abandoned steel
> mills in Ohio. It is a nightmare that Iraqis, Pakistanis and Afghans,
> mourning their dead, live each day.
>
> Capitalism was once viewed in America as a system that had to be fought.
> But capitalism is no longer challenged. And so, even as Wall Street
> steals billions of taxpayer dollars and the Gulf of Mexico is turned
> into a toxic swamp, we do not know what to do or say. We decry the
> excesses of capitalism without demanding a dismantling of the corporate
> state. The liberal class has a misguided loyalty, illustrated by
> environmental groups that have refused to excoriate the Obama White
> House over the ecological catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. Liberals
> bow before a Democratic Party that ignores them and does the bidding of
> corporations. The reflexive deference to the Democrats by the liberal
> class is the result of cowardice and fear. It is also the result of an
> infantile understanding of the mechanisms of power. The divide is not
> between Republican and Democrat. It is a divide between the corporate
> state and the citizen. It is a divide between capitalists and workers.
> And, for all the failings of the communists, they got it.
>
> Unions, organizations formerly steeped in the doctrine of class warfare
> and filled with those who sought broad social and political rights for
> the working class, have been transformed into domesticated partners of
> the capitalist class. They have been reduced to simple bartering tools.
> The social demands of unions early in the 20th century that gave the
> working class weekends off, the right to strike, the eight-hour day and
> Social Security have been abandoned. Universities, especially in
> political science and economics departments, parrot the discredited
> ideology of unregulated capitalism and have no new ideas. Artistic
> expression, along with most religious worship, is largely self-absorbed
> narcissism. The Democratic Party and the press have become corporate
> servants. The loss of radicals within the labor movement, the Democratic
> Party, the arts, the church and the universities has obliterated one of
> the most important counterweights to the corporate state. And the
> purging of those radicals has left us unable to make sense of what is
> happening to us.
>
> The fear of communism, like the fear of Islamic terrorism, has resulted
> in the steady suspension of ci

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Martin Gardner - RIP

[Ralph Dumain]

Say it ain't so.

I discovered Martin Gardner in the *Mathematical Games* column of 
/Scientific American/, having innocently bought it off the newsstand 
because of my boyhood interest in science. I think the issue I bought 
was June or July 1967. And then I was hooked. I also read some of his 
other stuff, most memorably /Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science/.

My name was published in one issue for my solution of some problem 
involving "Baker's Solitaire". Names were omitted though, when said 
article was reprinted in one of Gardner's anthologies.

On 05/24/2010 07:49 AM, farmela...@juno.com wrote:
> Another great one passes.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/us/24gardner.html?hpw
>
> Jim Farmelant
> http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
>
>
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[Marxism-Thaxis] highest stage of white supremacy

[Ralph Dumain]

I don't know whether I mentioned this book years ago; just came across 
it while re-organizing my books:

? Cell, John W. /The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: The Origins of 
Segregation in South Africa and the American South/. Cambridge 
[Cambridgeshire]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.


Sample text 

Publisher description 


Table of contents 


If Waistline or others are familiar with this book, I'd be interested in 
some feedback. Haven't read it myself.


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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fwd: Fwd: [MLL] Fwd: Stalin Archive now on the Revolutionary Democracy website

[Ralph Dumain]

Truly disgusting, but archives are always useful, as is toilet paper.

At 12:31 PM 4/18/2010, Marxist Front wrote:
>- Forwarded Message - From: editor 
>revdem To: 
>marxist-leninist-l...@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: 
>Fri, 16 Apr 2010 20:07:08 +0530 (IST) Subject: 
>Stalin Archive now on the Revolutionary 
>Democracy website The Revolutionary Democracy 
>website at: www.revolutionarydemocracy.org now 
>includes a Stalin Archive. Just Scroll down the 
>left side of the site. The archive includes so 
>far  Volumes 14 to 18 of the Works of Stalin 
>which were published by Red Star Press, London, 
>in the 1970s and 1980s; the Correspondence 
>Between the Chairman of the Council of Ministers 
>of the USSR and the Presidents of the USA and 
>the Prime Ministers of Great Britain During the 
>Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 and the Minutes 
>of The TehranYalta&   Potsdam Conferences. Here 
>is the introductory note to the archive: Stalin 
>was a leading communist revolutionary of the 
>twentieth century whose seminal contribution is 
>increasingly felt in the twenty first 
>century.His name is identified with the 
>construction of socialism in the Soviet Union, 
>the victory over fascism in the Second World War 
>and the transition to communist society. These 
>colossal victories would not have been possible 
>without the defeat of the oppositions led by 
>Trotsky and Bukharin who opposed socialist 
>industrialisation and collectivisation. By the 
>time of the death of Stalin a large people’s 
>democratic camp had been built up in central and 
>eastern Europe and Asia alongside the USSR. Yet 
>the writings of Stalin are not easy to locate 
>despite the fact that anumber of websites 
>include some of his works. 13 Volumes of the 
>Works were completed in English prior to the 
>Twentieth Congress of the CPSU in 1956. The 
>dummy of Volume 14 had been printed prior to 
>this event and the publication of the volume was 
>announced before the Closed Speech. It was not 
>to be printed. The Soviet archives show that 
>preparatory work had alsobegun for volumes 15-17 
>of the Works of Stalin. This archive represents 
>an attempt to widen the availability of the 
>writings of this classic of Marxism. We begin by 
>reconstituting Volumes 14 to 18 of the Works of 
>Stalin which were published by Red Star Press, 
>London in the 1970s and 1980s. These volumes 
>which are much in demand have been out of print 
>for many years. The Red Star Press compilation 
>drew upon the labours of communists who had 
>gathered materials for the publication of the 
>Works of Stalin in French and German. Separate 
>from these endeavours communists in Albania and 
>Spain independently compiled volumes 14 in their 
>languages. In the United States, Volumes 14 to 
>16 were published in Russian from Stanford 
>basedupon the official Soviet publications. 
>Under Khrushchev and Brezhnev some of the 
>contributions of Stalin bearingupon diplomatic 
>matters were published in the Soviet Union. We 
>are placing a part of these on the web. After 
>the fall of the USSR volumes 14 to 18 have been 
>published in Russian and more are under 
>preparation under theeditorship of Prof. Richard 
>Kosalapov. With the opening up of the 
>StalinArchive currently held in the former 
>Central Party Archive of the CPSU aconsiderable 
>part of the vast body of Stalin’s writings are 
>now available in the public domain. In the near 
>future we plan to put on the web in a 
>chronological form some of Stalin’s writings 
>which are not included in existing collections. 
>This is an international task and weappeal for 
>assistance on this in terms of the location of 
>materials and the translation of Stalin’s 
>writings from the Russian. Those who wish to 
>help in this cause may contact us at: editor_rev...@rediffmail.com


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[Marxism-Thaxis] Guy Robinson: blog (4)

[Ralph Dumain]

There is at least one surviving blog by Guy Robinson:

Guy's Philosophical Nuggets
http://dalkeyguy.blogspot.com/

Among other things, his correspondence with Thomas Kuhn can be found 
here. As is usual for all reactionary philosophies, Robinson's 
bugbear is Descartes and the Enlightenment. For an advocate of 
dialectics, there is no dialectical thinking here. See Robinson's first post:


Questioning
 
the Qestions

Now look at this:


Reconstructing
 
Science

Here, in lukewarm support for Meera Nanda's hardcore anti-pomo 
anti-subjectivist approach to science, Robinson reveals his 
philosophical bankruptcy.

"Yet at the same time we can find deeply problematic Galileo's image 
of 'The Book of Nature' in which the sciences are already 'written in 
mathematical symbols'. Equally problematic is the picture of 
scientific progress as the approach to some ultimate and final truth. 
That view of a truth standing above and outside of all of humanity, 
human interests, human practices and human languages has a pretty 
clearly theological character that ought to ring some alarm bells 
amongst Marxists.
"It is not that we have to find some via media between the 'realist' 
and the 'anti-realist'. We have to see that both positions are 
incoherent and unintelligible."

Wrong!

"It is neither Marxist nor helpful to picture scientific progress in 
the way Meera Nanda wants to, as 'increase in truthfulness', that is, 
as an approach to to some (presumably unattainable) ideal, an 
'ultimate truth'. I have criticized this 'approach' model of progress 
elsewhere (also in Philosophy and Mystification - ch.11, 'On 
Misunderstanding Science'). Here I will say only that it is both 
undialectical and un-Marxist, and that we can make sense neither of 
the ideal nor of the notion of approaching it. (It has its political 
counterpart in the utopian socialisms that were roundly and rightly 
criticized by Marx and Engels.)"

Drivel!

You can read the rest of Robinson's amalgam of sense and nonsense for 
yourself. But this can serve as evidence of the worthlessness of 
Wittgensteinian Marxism.

Scientific Realism and the correspondence theory of truth are 
correct; their opposites are wrong.
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Praxis interpreters of Marxism

[Ralph Dumain]

"But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world."

 -- Introduction to A Contribution to the 
Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

"To have one basis for life and another for science is apriori a lie."

 -- "Private Property and Communism" from the 
Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts of Karl Marx (1844)


At 09:20 AM 4/15/2010, c b wrote:
>I certainly quote all those often.
>
>Charles
>
>On 4/14/10, Ralph Dumain  wrote:
> > I'm in a rush right now, but the main
> > inspirations for my perspective come from:
> >
> > 
> <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm>Introduction
> > to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s
> > Philosophy of Right, in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, February, 1844.
> >
> > Thesis 3 of
> > <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/index.htm>Theses
> > on Feuerbach, 1845
> >
> > <http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/marxsci1.html>"Private
> > Property and Communism" from the
> > Economic-Philosophical
> > Manuscripts<http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/marxsci1.html>
> > of Karl Marx (1844)
> >
> > Marx of course made key statements on praxis from
> > the doctoral dissertation & Epicurean notebooks
> > of 1841 through The German Ideology and Theses on Feuerbach (1945).
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Praxis interpreters of Marxism

[Ralph Dumain]

I'm in a rush right now, but the main 
inspirations for my perspective come from:

<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm>Introduction
 
to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s 
Philosophy of Right, in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, February, 1844.

Thesis 3 of 
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/index.htm>Theses 
on Feuerbach, 1845

<http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/marxsci1.html>"Private 
Property and Communism" from the 
Economic-Philosophical 
Manuscripts<http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/marxsci1.html> 
of Karl Marx (1844)

Marx of course made key statements on praxis from 
the doctoral dissertation & Epicurean notebooks 
of 1841 through The German Ideology and Theses on Feuerbach (1945).


At 01:57 PM 4/14/2010, c b wrote:
>On 4/14/10, Ralph Dumain  wrote:
> > Syntactic ambiguity or ineptitude on my part. I meant:
> >
> >  . . . nor is attempting to deny Marx's materialism necessary in
> > order to develop the concept of praxis.
>
>^^^
>CB: Yes.
>
>Do you derive "praxis" from Marx's phrase "practical-critical
>activity" in the first Thesis on Feuerbach ?
>
>
>"The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism ­ that of
>Feuerbach included ­ is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is
>conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not
>as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in
>contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed
>abstractly by idealism ­ which, of course, does not know real,
>sensuous activity as such.
>
>Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought
>objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective
>activity. Hence, in The Essence of Christianity, he regards the
>theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while
>practice is conceived and fixed only in its dirty-judaical
>manifestation. Hence he does not grasp the significance of
>“revolutionary”, of “practical-critical”, activity. "
>
>
>
>
>
>
>^^^
>
>
> >
> > At 01:40 PM 4/14/2010, c b wrote:
> > >It's not necessary to develop the concept of praxis ?
> > >
> > >
> > >On 4/14/10, Ralph Dumain  wrote:
> > > > Here is where I would agree with Hillel-Rubin as against Robinson,
> > > > Dunayevskaya, and many others. Trying to play off Marx's advocacy of
> > > > "naturalism" as a transcendence of both idealism and materialism is
> > > > the bogus ploy here. But note please that praxis philosophers do not
> > > > all go for this gambit, nor is it necessary to develop the
> > > concept of praxis.
> > > >
> > > > See also my review:
> > > >
> > > > <http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/ruben-dh-2.html>Review of
> > > > David-Hillel Rubin,
> > > > <http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/ruben-dh-2.html>Marxism and
> > > > Materialism: A Study in Marxist Theory of Knowledge
> > > >
> >
> >
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>
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Praxis interpreters of Marxism

[Ralph Dumain]

Syntactic ambiguity or ineptitude on my part. I meant:

  . . . nor is attempting to deny Marx's materialism necessary in 
order to develop the concept of praxis.

At 01:40 PM 4/14/2010, c b wrote:
>It's not necessary to develop the concept of praxis ?
>
>
>On 4/14/10, Ralph Dumain  wrote:
> > Here is where I would agree with Hillel-Rubin as against Robinson,
> > Dunayevskaya, and many others. Trying to play off Marx's advocacy of
> > "naturalism" as a transcendence of both idealism and materialism is
> > the bogus ploy here. But note please that praxis philosophers do not
> > all go for this gambit, nor is it necessary to develop the 
> concept of praxis.
> >
> > See also my review:
> >
> > <http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/ruben-dh-2.html>Review of
> > David-Hillel Rubin,
> > <http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/ruben-dh-2.html>Marxism and
> > Materialism: A Study in Marxist Theory of Knowledge
> >


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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Praxis interpreters of Marxism

[Ralph Dumain]

Here is where I would agree with Hillel-Rubin as against Robinson, 
Dunayevskaya, and many others. Trying to play off Marx's advocacy of 
"naturalism" as a transcendence of both idealism and materialism is 
the bogus ploy here. But note please that praxis philosophers do not 
all go for this gambit, nor is it necessary to develop the concept of praxis.

See also my review:

<http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/ruben-dh-2.html>Review of 
David-Hillel Rubin, 
<http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/ruben-dh-2.html>Marxism and 
Materialism: A Study in Marxist Theory of Knowledge


At 01:15 PM 4/14/2010, c b wrote:
>Ralph Dumain: Autodidact Project: David-Hillel Ruben on ...Jan 11,
>2008 ... I will look at three of Marx's interpreters, Georg Lukacs,
> Marxism is literally the study of praxis, because praxis is its
>object. ...
>www.autodidactproject.org/other/ruben-dh-1.html - Cached
>
>David-Hillel Ruben on Materialism & Praxis
>The second point I wish now to mention concerning the notion of
>essential independence is this. Sometimes, when one advances the idea
>that nature or natural things can exist independently of thought, or
>the human, the question is raised whether or not thought, or human
>praxis, isn't also part of nature. Do we deny that it is? And if
>thought isn't part of nature, to what sort of supernatural existence
>do we wish to consign it? Of course, we are not denying that the
>human, that thought or praxis, are also part of the natural order.
>When Marx says that thought essentially depends on nature, he is
>asserting that thought is part of the overall system of nature. We
>might put our point this way. What materialism asserts is that there
>could be, indeed that there was in fact, a system of nature long
>before it came to have a particular feature or part, thought or human
>existence, a part which it does now in fact have.
>
>^^
>CB: Truly.
>"the Self is a product of historically developing cultures in which
>infinite nature cognises and transforms itself"
>
>
>
>^^^
>
>Karl Korsch seems, in his Marxism and Philosophy, to raise just this
>sort of accusation against what he calls 'vulgar socialism', those who
>'separate' thought and being. He criticises any form of Marxism which
>attempts to 'draw a sharp line of division between consciousness and
>its object' and to 'treat consciousness as something given, something
>fundamentally contrasted to Being and Nature'. Korsch says that such
>views contain 'a primitive, predialectical and even pre-transcendental
>conception of the relation between consciousness and being'. [27] But
>to what sort of 'sharp line of division' or 'fundamental contrast' are
>we committed? We are certainly not, pace Korsch, committed to the
>thesis that thought and nature are somehow ontologically different,
>that the difference between them is one of a Cartesian-like
>irreducible ontological difference. Ontologically, thought too is a
>part of nature, and this is why we said that thought too is part of
>the overall system of nature. All any reflection theory need assume,
>against which Korsch argues, [28] is that the relation between
>particular thoughts and that which they are about is a contingent
>relation in both directions, but this certainly does not commit us to
>a 'sharp line of division' between thought and nature in some
>ontological sense. To think otherwise would be to conflate the
>epistemological requirement of two-way contingency between a
>particular thought and its object with an ontological distinction
>between thought (in general) and nature. Indeed, if one makes an
>ontological distinction between thought and being, then each of the
>pair would have to be essentially independent of the other, as
>Descartes for example would claim. The essence of thought and being
>would be different. But Marx argues for a contingent relation in one
>direction, between being and thought, but an essential relation in the
>other. Thus, although the 'essence' of being does not include thought,
>the essence of 'thought' includes being.
>
>^^^
>CB: Nice formulation.
>
>Being is a necessary condition of thought. ( not being, not thought)
>Thought is a sufficient condition of being , but not a necessary
>condition of it.
>
>^
>
>  The distinction between them cannot be ontological--they cannot
>constitute two separate kinds of things, since thought is not
>essentially independent of being. Because, in classical philosophy,
>the criterion for something's being a thing is its logical
>independence of everything else, for us the essential dependence of
>mind or 

[Marxism-Thaxis] Marxs Lucretian Project / Thomas R Laehn & Cecil L Eubanks

[Ralph Dumain]

http://www.allacademic.com/one/www/www/index.php?cmd=www_search&offset=0&limit=5&multi_search_search_mode=publication&multi_search_publication_fulltext_mod=fulltext&textfield_submit=true&search_module=multi_search&search=Search&search_field=title_idx&fulltext_search=Marx%27s+Lucretian+Project

Laehn, Thomas. and Eubanks, 
Cecil.
 
"Marx's
 
Lucretian Project" Paper presented at the annual 
meeting of the Midwest Political Science 
Association 67th Annual National Conference, The 
Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, IL, Apr 02, 2009 
Online 
<APPLICATION/PDF>.
 
2010-04-14 

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed

Abstract: Karl Marx’s dissertation, ostensibly 
concerned with the atomic theories of Democritus 
and Epicurus, has received little attention 
relative to his other writings. This lacuna in 
the scholarly exegesis of the Marxian corpus is 
partly due to the dissertation’s earliest 
critics, who rejected Marx’s interpretation of 
Greek atomic theory as anachronistic, as well as 
to the efforts of many later scholars to 
disassociate Marxism from inquiries into physical 
nature in order to protect Marx’s teachings 
from the charge of vulgar materialism. In this 
essay, we offer a new interpretation of the 
dissertation and suggest that Marx used the 
debate between the Greek atomists to both depict 
the triumph of Hegelian logic over Kantian 
metaphysics and announce the revolutionary role 
of praxis in world history. In both respects, 
Marx’s choice of Lucretius as the favored 
interpreter of Epicurus serves to illumine the 
extent to which Marx’s search for mediation 
between freedom and necessity had already begun; 
and in symbolic form, it illustrates Marx’s 
belief that such mediation must be grounded in 
historical practice. Our interpretation of 
Marx’s thesis contradicts the prevailing belief 
that his earliest writings evince little concern for social change.

---

I haven't read this yet, but perhaps it will 
yield some insight. Cf. my recent posts on Marx's 
dissertation, Livergood, Schafer, and Balaban.
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Communitarianism

[Ralph Dumain]

I consider communitarianism to be a metaphysical 
concept, a manifestation of organic conservatism, 
essentially right-wing in character, and 
essentially inimical to Marxism. I see 
communitarianism, which I would say has roots in 
the 19th century, as opposing liberalism and 
Marxism from the right. Identifying Marxism as a 
world view with totalitarianism or 
authoritarianism is at bottom obscurantist 
reactionary ideology. It makes me ill just reading this article.

At 12:56 PM 4/14/2010, c b wrote:
>Communitarianism
>
>
>Communitarianism, as a group of related but distinct philosophies,
>began in the late 20th century, opposing individualism. Not
>necessarily hostile to social liberalism or even social democracy,
>communitarianism emphasizes the need to balance individual rights and
>interests with that of the community as a whole, and argues that
>individual people (or citizens) are shaped by the cultures and values
>of their communities.[1]
>
>Contents [hide]
>1 Terminology
>2 Origins
>3 Philosophical communitarianism
>4 Ideological communitarianism
>4.1 Communitarian political philosophy
>4.1.1 Social capital
>4.1.2 Positive rights
>4.2 Comparison to other political philosophies
>4.2.1 Authoritarianism
>5 Communitarian movement
>5.1 Influence in the United States
>6 Criticism
>6.1 Critical communitarianism
>6.2 Opposition
>7 See also
>8 Notes
>9 Further reading
>10 External links
>
>
>[edit] Terminology
>Though the term communitarianism is of 20th-century origin, it is
>derived from the 1840s term communitarian, which was coined by Goodwyn
>Barmby to refer to one who was a member or advocate of a communalist
>society. The modern use of the term is a redefinition of the original
>sense. Many communitarians trace their philosophy to earlier thinkers.
>The term is primarily used in two senses:
>
>Philosophical communitarianism considers classical liberalism to be
>ontologically and epistemologically incoherent, and opposes it on
>those grounds. Unlike classical liberalism, which construes
>communities as originating from the voluntary acts of pre-community
>individuals, it emphasizes the role of the community in defining and
>shaping individuals. Communitarians believe that the value of
>community is not sufficiently recognized in liberal theories of
>justice.
>Ideological communitarianism is characterized as a radical centrist
>ideology that is sometimes marked by leftism on economic issues and
>moralism or conservatism on social issues. This usage was coined
>recently. When the term is capitalized, it usually refers to the
>Responsive Communitarian movement of Amitai Etzioni and other
>philosophers.
>[edit] Origins
>Communitarianism has been traced back to early monasticism, but in the
>twentieth century began to be formulated as a philosophy by Dorothy
>Day and the Catholic Worker movement. In an early article the Catholic
>Worker clarified the dogma of the Mystical Body of Christ as the basis
>for the movement's communitarianism. Communitarianism is also related
>to the personalist philosophy of Emmanuel Mounier.
>
>Later secular communitarians began from analysis of classical
>republicanism, focusing on ancient Greek and Classicist writers. Since
>the beginnings of the 1990s they incorporated the post-modern concept
>of civil society into their philosophy. Soon, due to work of Robert
>Putnam, they mistakenly started to treat Tocqueville as a main
>theoretician of civil society and their primary ancestor. Thus they
>engaged in a direct clash with neo-liberal theory since Tocqueville
>was a liberal, not a republican theorist, giving new impetus to their
>work[2].
>
>[edit] Philosophical communitarianism
>Communitarianism in philosophy, like other schools of thought in
>contemporary political philosophy, can be defined by its response to
>John Rawls' A Theory of Justice. Communitarians criticize the image
>Rawls presents of humans as atomistic individuals.
>
>Communitarians claim values and beliefs are formed in public space, in
>which debate takes place. Both linguistic and non-linguistic
>traditions are communicated to children and form the backdrop against
>which individuals formulate and understand beliefs. The dependence of
>the individual upon community members is typically meant as
>descriptive. It does not mean that individuals should accept majority
>beliefs. Rather, if an individual rejects a majority belief, such as
>the historic belief that slavery is acceptable, he or she will do so
>for reasons that make sense within the community (for example, the
>Judeo-Christian conception of the imago Dei, or reasons deriving from
>secular Enlightenment humanism) rather than simply any reason at all.
>In this sense, the rejection of a single majority belief relies on
>other majority beliefs.
>
>The following authors have communitarian tendencies in the
>philosophical sense, but have all taken pains to distance themselves
>from the political ideology known as communitarianism, which is
>discussed fu

[Marxism-Thaxis] Guy Robinson: Philosophy and Mystification (3)

[Ralph Dumain]

"'I think, therefore I am,' said Descartes, and the world rejoiced at 
the perspective of the expansion of individual personality and human 
powers through the liberation of the intellect."

-- Facing Reality, by C.L.R. James, Grace C. Lee, Pierre Chaulieu 
[pseudonym of Cornelius Castoriadis] (Detroit: Bewick/Ed, 1974, orig. 
1958), pp. 67-68. http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/clrdiv2.html

Google books offers a limited preview of Robinson' book:

http://books.google.com/books?id=WA2Db17p4HIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=guy+robinson+%22philosophy+and+mystification%22&source=bl&ots=vWYBmv2UBb&sig=hx4qHZTuHtH26ZrsI6paktWU3YU&hl=en&ei=J9_FS5nKIsOC8gaIp9iuDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

The final chapter--14: Coda: philosophy and history--addresses the 
problem of defining modernity, and whether the notion of 
postmodernity is acceptably acceptable in indicating a postulated 
historical shift. Robinson also addresses the nature of feudalism and 
its transition to capitalism. His philosophical bugbear is Descartes 
and attendant individualism. There is no dialectical appreciation of 
Descartes to be found here.

Chapter 13--Newton, Euclid, and the Foundation of Geometry--addresses 
a complex of historical intellectual problems: empiricism, 
rationalism, and Kantianism, in relation to Euclidean geometry, 
logicism and formalism in the foundations of mathematics, social 
contract theory . . . Robinson's big obsession is that philosophers 
allegedly neglected practices as the basis of mathematical concepts. 
For this he praises Newton as opposed to Locke.

Chapter 11--On Misunderstanding Science. Robinson begins with 
trepidation over the notion of Scientific Realism. He begins with an 
appreciation of Kuhn, and again decries Descartes and the tradition 
of modern epistemology. And one expects this from a confirmed 
Wittgensteinian. Robinson makes a big deal out of incommensurability, 
which presumably is usable by someone who thinks that the notion of 
"forms of life" is worthwhile. Robinson also sees merit in Popper's 
notion of "versimilitude", as a way of conceptualizing scientific 
progress. Robinson likes the word "objective" as long as it is not 
identified with the "real".

At this point I am sickened. Sadly, Robinson identifies 
foundationalism with realism, and so he feels the necessity of taking 
the latter down with the former, as well as embracing Wittgensteinian 
irrationalism, which he denies being such.  All of this presumably is 
congruent with Marx's philosophy of praxis, but in its subjectivist 
interpretation, and is perceived to be fleshing out Marx's cryptic 
remark that the one science is the science of history.

PS: The praxis interpreters of Marxism were repeatedly slandered as 
subjectivists by Stalinists worldwide. One home-grown example is John 
Hoffman's Marxism and the Theory of Praxis: A Critique of Some New 
Versions of Old Fallacies (1975). However, the Praxis philosophers 
such as Markovic were never subjectivists, just to pinpoint an 
example or two. Others do indeed trade on philosophical ambiguities 
as does Robinson.
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Guy Robinson essay

[Ralph Dumain]

Essay 2 is a mixed bag:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Robinson_Essay_Two_Introduction.htm

Some of this is on the right track--plowing familiar ground--and some 
intellectually messed up.

Essay
 
Three: The Concept of Nature, Its Mystification and Demystification

It's a shame that Robinson's work is so amateurish and badly though 
out. He acts as if the philosophy of praxis is an entirely new 
discovery, but his argument is sloppy. The notion of a material 
reality independent of the existence of humans is noxious to him, but 
as far as we can determine, there has been over 4 billion years of 
the existence of the material universe as we know it independent of 
our own. Yes, the minute  our own praxis enters the picture, we have 
to advance intellectually beyond the Enlightenment to the 19th 
century to conceptualize at least abstractly the totality of this 
process. Robinson does not take the trouble to introduce clarity and 
discrimination into his argument, preferring to make grand 
generalizations about the theologization of nature without taking 
care to specify whether he is talking about a concept of natural 
determinism applying to society, or the deistical supplantation of 
feudal religion--rather Robinson makes blanket general statements 
which subvert the rational content of his thesis. General statements 
about "mechanistic" science are BS.

Robinson loves Aristotle and Wittgenstein. Probably the latter is why 
Rosa is entertaining Robinson's work, in spite of his limited 
endorsement of a dialectical perspective.

One can only cringe if the rest of the book is like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Mystification-Guy-Robinson/dp/0823222918/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271258375&sr=1-1


At 07:45 AM 4/9/2010, farmela...@juno.com wrote:


>Rosa Lichtenstein has just published
>a third essay of Guy Robinson's at
>her website.
>
>All three essays can be accessed at:
>
>http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/other_material.htm
>
>Scroll to the foot of the page.
>
>Jim Farmelant
>http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Guy Robinson essay

[Ralph Dumain]

If you actually look at the Magee book, you will see his claims go 
far beyond citing Hegel as an idealist. For him, Hegel is a magus, 
which is good news for some, bad news for others, and a load of crap for me.

Now on to Guy Robinson:

Making Materialism Historical
By Guy Robinson
http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/making_materialism_historical.htm

Robinson rightly singles out this neglected passage from The German Ideology:

The history of nature, so-called natural science, does not concern us 
here; but we will have to examine the history of men, since almost 
the whole ideology amounts to either to a distorted interpretation of 
this history or to a complete abstraction from it. Ideology is itself 
only one of the aspects of this history.
Other than this, Robinson's arguments are entirely familiar ones. 
Some of this essay is good if a retrod of familiar ground. Robinson 
writes as if he's discovering something new. The paragraph beginning 
with a rejection of the correspondence theory of truth is a mess. His 
dislike of noptions of objective reality, citing the Theses on 
Feuerbach, is familiar BS. The rest of this first essay is crap.


At 10:23 AM 4/14/2010, c b wrote:
>  Ralph Dumain  wrote:
>
> > I think Magee is full of crap. Rosa undoubtedly likes this because
> > Magee creates a mystical Hegel that evokes revulsion in any
> > materialist.  There are Marxists who like Magee for the same reason,
> > to validate their own perspective, e.g. Cyril Smith. It's easy to
> > demolish diamat, but this does not approach anything that really
> > matters for dialectical thinking.
>
>
>^
>CB:  U think someone is full of crap ? how unusual !
>
>It's a,b,c of dialectical materialism that Hegel was an idealist, not
>a materialist. So, any mature materialist already considers Hegel a
>mystifier.  For God's sake (smile) , Marx and Engels specifically say
>that they extract the rational kernel from Hegel's _mystical_ shell.
>What a dog-bites-man story is Rosa L.'s and Magee's report that Hegel
>was a mystifier.
>
>
>
> >
> > At 09:44 AM 4/14/2010, c b wrote:
> > >farmelantj :
> > >
> > >Rosa Lichtenstein has just published
> > >a third essay of Guy Robinson's at
> > >her website.
> > >
> > >All three essays can be accessed at:
> > >
> > >http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/other_material.htm
> > >
> > >Scroll to the foot of the page.
> > >
> > >
> > >^^^
> > >CB: There, Rosa L says:
> > >
> > >[1] Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition, by Glen Magee
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >This book was published by Cornell University Press in 2001; here I
> > >reproduce the Introduction to this work, copied from the Marxist
> > >Internet Archive. The thesis of Magee's book is central to the aims of
> > >Essay Fourteen (summary here), where I show that dialecticians have
> > >imported into Marxism a set of ancient mystical and Hermetic theses,
> > >which ideas can be found represented throughout the work of countless
> > >ruling-class theorists, right across the globe, and in all known Modes
> > >of Production.
> > >
> > >^^^
> > >CB:  Some known modes of production don't have ruling classes. And
> > >said modes without antagonistic classes have dialectics , too !  See
> > >Levi-Straussian structural analysis of Native American myths in
> > >_Mythologique_ , for example.
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Guy Robinson essay

[Ralph Dumain]

I think Magee is full of crap. Rosa undoubtedly likes this because 
Magee creates a mystical Hegel that evokes revulsion in any 
materialist.  There are Marxists who like Magee for the same reason, 
to validate their own perspective, e.g. Cyril Smith. It's easy to 
demolish diamat, but this does not approach anything that really 
matters for dialectical thinking.

At 09:44 AM 4/14/2010, c b wrote:
>farmelantj :
>
>Rosa Lichtenstein has just published
>a third essay of Guy Robinson's at
>her website.
>
>All three essays can be accessed at:
>
>http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/other_material.htm
>
>Scroll to the foot of the page.
>
>
>^^^
>CB: There, Rosa L says:
>
>[1] Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition, by Glen Magee
>
>
>
>This book was published by Cornell University Press in 2001; here I
>reproduce the Introduction to this work, copied from the Marxist
>Internet Archive. The thesis of Magee's book is central to the aims of
>Essay Fourteen (summary here), where I show that dialecticians have
>imported into Marxism a set of ancient mystical and Hermetic theses,
>which ideas can be found represented throughout the work of countless
>ruling-class theorists, right across the globe, and in all known Modes
>of Production.
>
>^^^
>CB:  Some known modes of production don't have ruling classes. And
>said modes without antagonistic classes have dialectics , too !  See
>Levi-Straussian structural analysis of Native American myths in
>_Mythologique_ , for example.


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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Free Ebook Service Of Interest (Was U of C Ebooks)

[Ralph Dumain]

This is news to me. I see that one has to register to use this site? 
Is this advisable?

At 07:37 PM 4/10/2010, Bill Quimby wrote:
>Have you looked at
>
>http://a.rg.org
>
>There is a strong focus on postmodernist heroes, but a fruitful supply
>of materials on Marxism, Frankfurt School authors, etc. There is no
>search mechanism, but you can click on "Library" and then search
>alphabetically by author. You can sign up for a daily "new additions"
>newsletter.
>
>I think that rg.org is not a producer per se but an aggregator, as well
>as an indicator to others willing to laboriously scan a work. I've noted that
>items requested often show up a few days later!
>
>To date, only Verso has issued a formal cease and desist request.
>
>- Bill
>
>Ralph Dumain wrote:
> > University of California Press has made a whole collection of e-books
> > available online, many of them in their entirety for free. I'm oting just a
> > few such books on Marxism (& a few realated topics) of interest:
>
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[Marxism-Thaxis] University of California Press e-books

[Ralph Dumain]

University of California Press has made a whole collection of e-books 
available online, many of them in their entirety for free. I'm oting 
just a few such books on Marxism (& a few realated topics) of interest:

Review 
of James Miller, 
History 
and Human Existence: From Marx to Merleau-Ponty by R. Dumain
book available at:
http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft2489n82k;query=marxism;brand=ucpress

Title: 
Althusser
 
and the renewal of Marxist social theory
online access is available to everyone

Author: Resch, Robert Paul
Published: University of California Press,  1992

Title: 
Revolution
 
and history: the origins of Marxist historiography in China, 1919-1937
online access is available to everyone

Author: Dirlik, Arif
Published: University of California Press,  1989

Title: 
High
 
culture fever: politics, aesthetics, and ideology in Deng's China
online access is available to everyone

Author: Wang, Jing 1950-
Published: University of California Press,  1996

Title: 
Fifteen
 
jugglers, five believers: literary politics and the poetics of 
American social movements
online access is available to everyone

Author: Reed, T. V. (Thomas Vernon)
Published: University of California Press,  1992

Title: 
Critical
 
crossings: the New York intellectuals in postwar America
online access is available to everyone

Author: Jumonville, Neil
Published: University of California Press,  1990

Title: 
Romain
 
Rolland and the politics of intellectual engagement
online access is available to everyone

Author: Fisher, David James
Published: University of California Press,  1988

Title: 
Letters
 
and autobiographical writings
online access is available to everyone

Author: Mills, C. Wright (Charles Wright) 1916-1962
Published: University of California Press,  2000

Title: 
An
 
unmastered past: the autobiographical reflections of Leo Lowenthal
online access is available to everyone

Author: Lowenthal, Leo
Published: University of California Press,  1987

Title: 
Darwin
 
in Russian thought
online access is available to everyone

Author: Vucinich, Alexander 1914-
Published: University of California Press,  1989

Title: 
Nothing
 
but history: reconstruction and extremity after metaphysics
online access is available to everyone

Author: Roberts, David D 1943-
Published: University of California Press,  1995

Title: 
On
 
Heidegger's Nazism and philosophy
online access is available to everyone

Author: Rockmore, Tom 1942-
Published: University of California Press,  1991

Title: 
Soviet
 
perceptions of the United States
online access is available to everyone

Author: Schwartz, Morton
Published: University of California Press,  1980

Title: 
The
 
fabrication of labor: Germany and Britain, 1640-1914
online access is available to everyone

Author: Biernacki, Richard 1956-
Published: University of California Press,  1997

Title: 
When
 
the Soviet Union entered world politics
online access is available to everyone

Author: Jacobson, Jon 1938-
Published: University of California Press,  1994

Title: 
Workers
 
against work: labor in Paris and Barcelona during the popular fronts
online access is available to everyone

Author: Seidman, Michael (Michael M.)
Published: University of California Press,  1990

Title: 
A
 
little corner of freedom: Russian nature protection from Stalin to Gorbache v
online access is available to ev

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Lewontin letter on Lamarckian issue (was Re-evaluating Lysenko)

[Ralph Dumain]

Aside: I recall _Goedel, Escher and Bach_ as a load of New Age crap.

As for Lamarckism and cultural evolution, I'm wary of such 
metaphorical thinking. Lewontin's response is unclear. More on this later.

Another aside: In 1975, I attended a guest lecture by Lewontic on 
heritability, as part of a course on scientific racism.


At 02:51 PM 3/29/2010, c b wrote:
>I finally found my letter exchange with Lewontin as reported to this
>list in December 2005. Will look for the articles discussed.
>
>Charles
>
>http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2005-December/019560.html
>
>Marxism-Thaxis] Response from Lewontin
>Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org
>Mon Dec 12 14:54:34 MST 2005
>
>Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Logical Empiricism (reformatted)
>Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
>Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
>
>
>
>Back in October I sent a fax ( my email didn't get through to him) to
>Richard Lewontin with interjection comments on his article New York Review .
>He sent  me a letter back. I called him and asked him if I could send his
>letter to the list. He said ok.  I'll copy my original note to him below.
>
>Dear Mr. Brown:
>
>Thanks very much for your thoughtful comments on the recent article in The
>New York Review. I was particularly struck by your point that culture, if
>modeled on an evolutionary process, definitely has a Lamarckian inheritance.
>What is not always appreciated by scientists is that once one has a
>Lamarckian form of inheritance, the strictness of Mendel's Laws no longer
>applies, of course, and almost anything is possible. A very interesting book
>showing the implications of forms of passage from one individual to another
>without any particular fixed rule of inheritance is the book on cultural
>inheritance by Feldman and Cavalli. What they show is that the moment you
>get away form strict genetic segregation and allow an arbitrary probability
>of the passage of a trait from one individual to another, the whole question
>of selection fades. Let us say, a trait can spread not because it is
>selected but because the rule of transmission strongly favors it. If
>everybody who ever heard a particular word that had been invented now used
>it ,it would spread very rapidly through the population, even though it
>could not be said to have some particular selective advantage. In a sense,
>the distinction between the rules of inheritance and the rules of selection
>disappear once one allows a free possibility for transmission rate.
>
>I am delighted that you read the article so critically and that you saw one
>of the most important points about cultural inheritance.
>
>Thanks again for having written me.
>
>Yours sincerely,
>
>R.C. Lewontin


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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Benjamin Button

[Ralph Dumain]

Interesting. But I thought the message of Forrest Gump is that being 
white and a retard is a formula for bliss.

At 11:06 AM 3/28/2010, Paddy Hackett wrote:


>I watched the video version of The Curious Case of Benjamin
>Button some weeks ago.
>As a movie it was moderately entertaining and visually
>impressive but certainly not encaptivating. It was of
>excessively long duration. However much of it, even allowing
>for poetic licence, was implausible.
>
>Essentially the film is about time. Its key theme is the
>ageing process and the way this process is a real concrete
>influence on the lives of people. The film draws our
>attention to age and the relationship between the different
>generations. In this way it somewhat challenges our minds
>concerning the matter of age and even ageism.
>Notwithstanding the ageism that exists in today's world the
>film brings out the hard fact that age does, in a sense, get
>in the way. It does this by showing how Benjamin's physical
>evolution from a man into a boy and later a baby cannot be a
>"proper" father to his child -nor "proper" lover to his
>female partner. Again his birth in the form of an old man in
>the form of a new born baby obstructs his relationships with
>his peer group. The reversal of the aging process in
>Benjamin seriously and inevitably influences his
>relationships with other people. This is a fact that would
>obtain under all social conditions. Indeed there may be an
>evolutionary aspect to this matter involving natural
>selection. And this is because age matters in the
>relationship between individuals from different generations
>whether under capitalism or communism. However under
>capitalism the age question is more pronounced. And ageism
>under capitalism is a real and oppressive issue.
>
>Other than that there is little more that I can say about
>this film. Perhaps the short story, on which the movie is
>loosely based, which I have not read is more comprehensive
>and interesting. Surprisingly I discovered that at least one
>film critic suggested that this movie resembles the Forest
>Gump movie --because, while watching it, I had drawn a
>similar conclusion.
>
>Paddy Hackett
>  http://paddy-hackett.blogspot.com/
>
>
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[Marxism-Thaxis] Soviet Cybernetics

[Ralph Dumain]

http://www.siam.org/news/news.php?id=488

Language, Mathematics, and Ideology

SIAM NEWS
November 7, 2002

Book Review
Philip J. Davis

 From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics. By 
Slava Gerovitch, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002, 369 pages 
(54 of which are notes and references; illustrated with numerous 
photos of Soviet personalities)

When I first learned of this book and read the first reviews several 
years ago, I immediately book this book on my want list. Never got 
hold of it, though. Now I'm reminded of the thick oppressive abusive 
fog of ideological language that strangled the Soviet mind throughout 
nearly all of its existence. Something to keep in mind when dealing 
with the undead.
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[Marxism-Thaxis] Descartes & Marxism: Selected Bibliography

[Ralph Dumain]

OK, here's my work in progress:

Descartes & Marxism: Selected Bibliography
http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/descartes-marx.html

Passing references to Descartes are legion, but substantive additions 
are needed and welcome.
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[Marxism-Thaxis] Atom and Individual in the Age of Newton

[Ralph Dumain]

Difficult to judge whether there's an analytical perspective here 
comparable to the recent co-edited volume on Hessen and Grossman.

Freudenthal, Gideon. Atom and Individual in the Age of Newton: On the 
Genesis of the Mechanistic World View, translated by Peter 
McLaughlin. Springer; original publication: Dordrecht; Boston: D. 
Reidel Pub. Co.; Hingham, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1986.
(Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science; vol. 88)
288 pp.
ISBN: 978-90-277-1905-8
http://www.springer.com/philosophy/philosophy+of+science/book/978-90-277-1905-8
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[Marxism-Thaxis] Social and Economic Roots of the Scientific Revolution: Hessen & Grossman

[Ralph Dumain]

Here's an exciting new publication, which unfortunately costs US $189:

The Social and Economic Roots of the Scientific Revolution: Texts by 
Boris Hessen and Henryk Grossmann
Freudenthal, Gideon; McLaughlin, Peter (Eds.)
Series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 278
Springer, 2009, XII, 400 p.
http://www.springer.com/new+%26+forthcoming+titles+%28default%29/book/978-1-4020-9603-7

* Assembles the classics of Marxist historiography of science
* Offers the first publication of a book by Grossman and a new 
and reliable translation of Hessen
* Provides an in-depth introduction to the various theories
* Outlines the historical context of these theories and their 
biased anti-Marxist reception

The volume collects classics of Marxist historiography of science, 
including a new translation of Boris Hessen's "The Social and 
Economic Roots of Newton's Principia" (1931), Henryk Grossmann's "The 
Social Foundation of Mechanistic Philosophy and Manufacture" (1935) 
and his Descartes' New Ideal of Science. Universal Science vs. 
Science of an Elite, published here for the first time. These three 
papers, along with two very short pieces, present the classical 
Marxist analysis of the relation of science and technology.

In a detailed introductory essay the editors analyze the main 
arguments of these authors. They show that Hessen and Grossmann never 
attempted to explain the rise of modern science by the utilitarian 
motives of the scientists. On the contrary, they argue not that 
science developed in order to improve technology but rather by means 
of the study of technology. Marshalling a wealth of historical 
evidence, Hessen and Grossmann argue that technology served as the 
laboratory of scientific mechanics. This is the reason thatin physics 
mechanics developed first and that thermodynamics and electrodynamics 
followed later when the respective technologies (steam engines and 
dynamos) had made other aspects of nature experimentally manageable. 
Finally, the editors address Hessen's thesis, that ideological 
commitments in the age of Newton prevented the formation of a 
consistent materialist world view on the basis of the new science.

Table of Contents

1. Historical and systematic introduction by the editors, 2. Boris 
Hessen, "The Social and Economic Roots of Newton's Mechanics" , 3. 
Henryk Grossmann, "The Social Foundation of Mechanistic Philosophy 
and Manufacture" . 4. Henryk Grossmann: Descartes New Ideal of 
Science. Universal Science vs. Science of an Elite, 5. Henryk 
Grossmann, book review (1938) and a letter to Max Horkheimer (1935), 
6. A short biography of Henryk Grossmann (by Rick Kuhn, Canberra), 7. 
Hessen in lieu of biography

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Descartes, Smith and the Theory of Subject

[Ralph Dumain]

I just came across this old email. I'm compiling 
a bibliography on Marxism and Descartes, and it 
looks like this might fit in. I'd also like to 
read the paper itself. Is it available online?

At 01:27 PM 10/11/2008, dogangoec...@aol.com wrote:
>Dear All, please find below the abstract of my 
>paper on Descartes, Smith and the theory of 
>subject. The paper will appear in the 3rd issue 
>of BAYKUS - a Turkish journal of philosophy. You 
>may think it is not dealing with the 
>contemporary crisis. Sure it does not. But it 
>deals with a fundamental contradiction of 
>capitalism in regard to the question what is the 
>situation of individuals in capitalit markets 
>and production and of how to establish a society 
>in which all individuals might be emancipated 
>and regard one another as their second selves. 
>Cheers, Dogan - Â  This 
>paper aims to present Smith’s theory of 
>subject in his intellectual context and in 
>relation to some con temporary approaches. The 
>issue will be, first, dealt with in relation to 
>Descartes from a philosophical and social 
>historical point of view and this will be 
>related to Smith’s philosophy of subject. 
>After having referred to Smith’s Scottish 
>background as a philosopher, there will be 
>presented Smith’s two dimensional (general and 
>historical) philosophy of subject as a critique 
>of Cartesian philosophy of subject. In that 
>connection there will be pointed to two 
>traditions in the philosophy of subject: cogito 
>and mirror. As will be seen below, Smith defines 
>himself in mirror tradition. This will lead to 
>presentation of Smith’s methodological 
>revolution in the theory of subject and of his 
>use of some of his major concepts such as 
>situation, sympathy, impartiality a nd the 
>division of labour. After having worked out 
>Smith’s investigation into the contradiction 
>between general and historical aspects of the 
>philosophy of subject there will be pointed out 
>that Smith uses a social theoretical perspective 
>which might bring about the emancipation of subject.


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[Marxism-Thaxis] Lenin & the "philosophers ship" (1)

[Ralph Dumain]

Chamberlain, Lesley. Lenin’s Private War: The 
Voyage of the Philosophy Steamer and the Exile of 
the Intelligentsia. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007.

Contents: The night before -- The Paper Civil War 
-- The Janus year -- Arrest and interrogation -- 
Journey into exile -- Joining the emigration -- 
Prague -- Berlin -- Paris -- Ending up -- The 
sense of what happened -- Appendix 1: GPU report 
on the arrests of 16/17 August 1922 -- Appendix 
2: The lists of deportees from Moscow and Petrograd -- Appendix 3: The lives.

“In 1922, Lenin personally drew up a list of some 
160 ‘undesirable’ intellectuals – mostly 
philosophers, academics, scientists and 
journalists – to be deported from the new Soviet 
State. ‘We’re going to cleanse Russia once and 
for all’ he wrote to Stalin, whose job it was to 
oversee the deportation. Two ships sailed from 
Petrograd that autumn, taking Old Russia’s 
eminent men and their families away to what would 
become permanent exile in Berlin, Prague and 
Paris. Lesley Chamberlain creates a rich portrait 
of this chilling historical moment, evoked with 
immediacy through the journals, letters, and memoirs of the exiles.”

Sample text

---

I hesitated to approach this book for the longest 
time, fearing that it might constitute just 
another anticommunist diabtribe. I read Berdyaev 
30 years ago and concluded that his deportation 
was no loss to Russian culture. Of this 
deportation I thought: Good riddance! However, 
I've harbored doubts whether this was the wisest 
way to handle the problem, given the bullying 
habits inherited from autocratic feudal society 
that ended up in the Stalinist disaster.

AIso, I knew nothing or next to nothing of the 
other deportees, and I knew I needed to know the 
details of this incident as a key to getting at 
the bottom of Bolshevik thought and behavior. It 
was only a matter of time before I broached this 
book, but some recent stimuli knocked it up 
several notches on my reading list.

As it turns out, the book is not what I feared. I 
did a quick read of the first and last chapters, 
and now I'm even more eager to read the rest. At 
the beginning, in spite of the author's harsh 
view of the Bolsheviks, she disavows any 
intention of endorsing the right wing mysticism 
that goes along with the rehabilitation of the 
exiled idealist thinkers (p. 7) (not to mention a 
reactionary exile of recent times like Solzhenitsyn).

The final chapter is even more interesting. There 
are some curious oddities. She reads Lenin as a 
positivist and sees him as analogous to 
Wittgenstein in philosophy. There's an 
interesting exposition of her take on the lessons 
of Russian structuralism and formalism.

But key to this chapter is a triangulation of 
idealism, materialism/modernism, and humanism. 
Chamberlain is an unapologetic secularist. She 
sees the Russian idealists as embodying an 
outmoded society and world view, and she finds 
their stance unnecessary and extraneous to 
societies with a track record of secularism, 
liberalism, and formal democracy. However, in the 
oppressive world of czarist Russia, whose culture 
was barely broached by the Bolshevik revolution, 
the valuation of individual personhood and its 
linkage to transcendent mystical and religious 
ideas was a strategy to grab onto something to 
preserve human dignity where it could not be 
found elsewhere, and in that respect in context 
was not totally superfluous as it was seen, 
rightly, in the West. Nor does Chamberlain 
totally condemn Lenin. He gets some props for his 
quest to modernize Russia, to rid it of its 
obscurantist and oppressive past. But she also 
argues that the cavalier dismissal of the private 
and the personal, of the humanist concerns of the 
idealists, was the royal ideological road to 
totalitarian despotism where there was no hiding 
place for the integrity of the individual.

I would have argued things differently, but 
Chamberlain has forced me to consider this angle, 
that is, admit the possibility that there was 
something more generally tragic in the fate of 
these exiles beyond their private personal 
experience of tragedy. Her book goes into 
extensive detail of the deportations and the fate 
of the deportees in exile. I believe these 
details will reveal sought-after nuances of how 
Soviet society functioned at various levels, not 
just Lenin's motivation for selecting those 
individuals he was eager to get rid of, but of 
how lower level bureaucrats and police agents, 
hardly intellectuals, thought and behaved.  In 
addition to procedural details, Chamberlain 
addresses the ideological dimension, particularly 
the slippery slope of accusing people of being 
objective class enemies regardless of their actual intentions and deeds.

I think there are nuances to this scenario as 
there are to the position of the more intelligent 
Bolshevik leaders th

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[Ralph Dumain]

There are other things to look at in addition to recycling this 
crackpot horseshit. For example:

(1) The misuse by vulgar ignoramuses of the well-intentioned but 
logically muddled notions of Engels, who habitually confused 
subjective with objective dialectics, conflated empirical laws and 
logical constructs, and created an ambiguous structure to be abused 
by lesser intellects who acted as if empirical matters could be 
decided by a priori metaphysics.

(2) The crude instrumentalism of Stalin, but also the naive 
conceptions of scientific labor promulgated by Bukharin (cf. 
Polanyi), resulting in the crushing of autonomous scientific work in 
favor of a vulgar pragmatism in which all intellectual 
activity--science, philosophy, literature, the promulgation of 
atheism, etc.-- was subordinated to the master task of "building 
socialism"--which of course was not socialism at all, but crash 
industrialization.

(3) The very irrationality of a despotic state structure mimicking 
the worst features of Czarism in which the subjective wish 
fulfillment of an egomaniacal absolute dictator surrounds himself 
with boot-licking yes-men incapable of providing accountability or 
any objective check in an overpoliticized ideological environment.

(4) What is really involved in addressing gaps in scientific 
knowledge at a given point in time, and who is worth taking 
seriously, on what basis.

Reading the posts over the past few days makes me want to vomit, and 
reminds me why I resigned from so many Marxist lists at the end of the '90s.


At 09:56 PM 3/25/2010, CeJ wrote:
>JF:>>Shouldn't we also take
>a look at the life and
>career of the Soviet
>geneticist Nikolai Vavilov,
>who was the leading Mendelian
>geneticist in the Soviet Union
>of his time and who suffered
>imprisonment, where he died,
>because of his opposition to
>Lysenkoism?<<
>
>Good point. I think it was Vavilov who helped Lysenko rise to the top.
>The accomplishments of Michurin probably meant more than the work of
>Lysenko or Vavilov in terms of crop production and diversification in
>the SU. But Vavilov appears to have been on the way towards a 'green
>revolution' himself had he not been so vitiated and ruined by the
>system. I would also point out, however, that the figure held up as
>the father of the green revolution, the American Borlaug, DID NOT make
>use of an Mendelian understanding of the genetics of wheat. Rather, he
>used intuitive and 'seat of the pants' judgements about what to
>hybridize in order to adapt wheat to Mexico (such as bringing in
>strains of wheat that were hardy in Kenya). The very sort of thing
>Burbank, Michurin and Lysenko would have approved of. There is
>something, at least until the research of the 1950s and onwards, about
>Lysenko's dismissiveness about the pea and fruit fly counters--they
>weren't improving agriculture.
>
>In retrospect, I think it is fairly easy to see that (even without
>reverting to simplified ideas of dialectics), Soviet biology, genetics
>and agronomy would have benefited from a much more open debate between
>the the two dogmas. Back to my original point, with a bit more detail:
>I think it is unfair to blame Lynsenko for the failures of Soviet
>agricultural policy. And the US was hardly the model for agricultural
>improvement at the time of the Dust Bowl. The Soviet Union suffered
>from a lack of its own scientific communities in understanding the
>climates they had to deal with (that the farmers had to deal with),
>and issues in transport and storage probably hampered agricultural
>production more than anything Lysenko did.
>
>CJ
>
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Left critique of New Atheism

[Ralph Dumain]

I always thought Eagleton was full of shit, just as a literary 
theorist, even before he returned to God.

At 01:40 PM 3/25/2010, c b wrote:
>I can't remember whether Jim F. cites this in his essay.
>
>CB
>
>March 27, 2009
>
>Article
>
>Culture & Barbarism
>Metaphysics in a Time of Terrorism
>
>http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/culture-barbarism-0
>
>Terry Eagleton


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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] WL's glossary--a suggestion

[Ralph Dumain]

Prior to this latest flurry of posts, I thought CeJ was an 
intelligent man. I didn't realize how mistaken I was. I can see this 
Wiki will be like a stable, except that we won't be able to shovel 
the shit fast enough.

It's really essential to define the purpose of this project, its 
audience, and the degree of erudition that it should exhibit. If it 
is to exhibit the perspective of a specific tendency, then perhaps a 
textbook or handbook might be a better format than a glossary. I 
could be wrong, but "glossary" to me sounds more abbreviated than 
"dictionary", which is more abbreviated than an "encyclopedia". You 
can't explain concepts like dialectic in a glossary. At most, you 
could list a number of possible definitions. And depending on what 
you think your audience needs to know, applied to what texts or 
analyses, why do you think certain terms belong or not in your 
glossary. But ultimately, the why of all this must be nailed down first.

And then there's the question of the Internet. Young people who won't 
go to the library to read books, which here are being purged from 
branch libraries in favor of computers, but they'll go to surf the 
net. They would rather cruise dating sites and watch movies than 
educate themselves, but if anyone maintains the curiosity to look at 
your glossary, they could go to the Internet, click on designated 
URLs to learn more.

At 07:44 AM 3/24/2010, waistli...@aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 3/23/2010 7:36:28 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
>jann...@gmail.com writes:
>
>Why don't we put up the latest version of this at googledocs  and
>collaborate, 'wiki-style', on it? Then it could be published as a  blog
>or wiki.
>
>Might prove after all that has been said that this  list's regulars can
>work together on something?
>
>Discussing it over an  old-fashioned list like this probably won't get very
>far.
>
>CJ
>
>
>Reply
>
>I can agree with this but on March 31. I jumped the gun badly..
>
>WL.
>
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[Marxism-Thaxis] Global Class War

[Ralph Dumain]

The Global Class War : How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future 
- and What It Will Take to Win it Back
by Jeff Faux

"Why, in 1993, did the newly elected Bill Clinton pass the North 
American Free Trade Agreement, a pro-business measure invented by his 
political adversaries and opposed by his allies in labor and the 
environment? The answer, according to Faux, is that Clinton was less 
devoted to his base than to his fellow elites, rewarding their 
donations to the Democratic Party with access to Mexico's cheap labor 
and lax environmental standards. With a fluid grasp of both history 
and economics, Faux, founder of the Economic Policy Institute, 
critiques both Democrats and Republicans for protecting transnational 
corporations "while abandoning the rest of us to an unregulated, and 
therefore brutal and merciless, global market." Faux describes how 
free trade and globalization have encouraged businesses to become 
nationless enterprises detached from the economic well-being of any 
single country, to the detriment of all but transnational elites. He 
details the genesis of NAFTA and the failure of the agreement to 
deliver on its promises to workers, predicting a severe American 
recession as its legacy. But Faux sees hope for North America in the 
model of the European Union, a pie-in-the-sky conclusion to this 
incisive, rancorous book."

http://www.amazon.com/Global-Class-War-Americas-Bipartisan/dp/0470098287/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269435567&sr=1-1
 



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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Negation of the negation: let try this out

[Ralph Dumain]

More to the point about the nature of capitalism: 
not only private property, but the separation of 
the worker from implements of production, control 
of labor process, and ultimately from knowledge 
and skills. Role of technological deployment in 
reducing worker to appendage of machines, etc.

I'll have to see what else has been written on 
negation of negation that is usable. Engels' use 
of concept in dialectics of nature is total confusion and nonsense.

I believe that Stalin omitted negation of 
negation and others approved of this.


At 01:22 PM 3/23/2010, waistli...@aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 3/23/2010 10:40:21 A.M. 
>Pacific Daylight Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ 
>(mailto:cb31...@gmail.com)  writes: CB: He says 
>"capitalist production... begets its own 
>negation. WL: Correct. What is capitalist 
>production if not bourgeois private  property? I 
>am aware of the sharp differences within Marxism 
>on this issue.  Marxism of all stripes contend 
>that the negation capitalist production begets 
>is  the proletariat. What is the proletariat? A 
>property relation expressed as the  workers 
>owning their labor ability in a world of private 
>ownership of means of  production. On this basis 
>I contend that Marx is speaking fundamentally of 
>a property  form being negated. Her is also 
>speaking of a quantitative aspect of 
>property  development wherein one capitalist 
>negates - kills many. Monopoly negates -  kills, 
>“less many.” > CB: What is the 
>qualitative change in means of production 
>that  Marx mentions in the quote ? WL: You got 
>me there my friend. None. However you have 
>quoted this passage  enough to know its  this 
>segment of Marx is 1294 words including 
>footnotes. Marx is speaking of a new mode of 
>production taking root based on a 
>qualitative  change in the means of production 
>and corresponding change in property. A 
>new  reader will not know this from this passage 
>but there is an index called  “industrial 
>revolution.” My fear is writing  something 
>that only “us ” old  heads will make sense 
>or nonsense out of. X Negation of 
>the > negation signifies the preservation of the 
>specific  quality of the > contradiction 
>pinpointed as the point of departure - 
>the  starting point of a > motion. CB: Elaborate 
>this thought. WL. This is fully elaborated in 
>the example of advanced communist  society based 
>on a post industrial development and 
>“withering away of the state”  will express 
>a negation of the negation as a return to the 
>quality called  primitive communism - non 
>property in means of production. This is not to 
>say the draft is internally cohesion enough with 
>the proper  flow. The problem is that form is 
>not separated from quality in reality. 
>* Negation of the negation is > not 
>a universal law of dialectics but  rather an 
>expression of the > dialectic of change. (see 
>Dialectics,  quantity, quality, the antagonistic 
>element.) ^^^ CB: What dialectic is not a 
>"dialectic of change" ? WL: I am still fighting 
>with Gould’s Marxist Glossary which list 
>“negation of the negation” as one of the 
>“laws” of dialectics. When I put down my 
>boxing  gloves the above sentence is not needed 
>at all. 
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] To Socialism! How?

[Ralph Dumain]

I'll offer a few suggestions nevertheless:

ABOLITION: wage slavery is a metaphor. Do you really want to include 
this under this heading?

AMERICAN REVOLUTION; Why do you say that the conclusion of the 
Vietnam War is the end of the epoch of national liberation?

POPULISM: Some more relevant historical info is in order. For 
example, what happened to populism at the end of the 19th century (Tom Watson).

ANARCHISM needs to be fleshed out.

ANARCHO-SYNDICALISM: Too abstract & prescriptive.

ANTAGONISM needs to be re-done.

ANTI-IMPERIALISM: Conclusion about Vietnam War needs to be justified. 
Also, the periodization 1776-1976 fails to account for what happened 
in between. For example, the 19th century was still a century of 
colonial conquest. National liberation movements of central and 
Eastern Europe were the result of different factors from those in the 
20th century colonized world. As the world was ruled by empires, much 
political thinking was based on that reality.

Base (economic) and superstructure: (political): a construct not to 
be taken literally.

Bourgeoisie: . . . To "act bourgeoisie" : I can guess the audience 
for this colloquialism, but I caution against allowing this to pass 
uncritically.

Chauvinism applies to more than just nations.

Class antagonism as class struggle: the dialectic : Meaning of the 
term "dialectic" is not clear, nor is it clear why such reference is 
even needed here.

COMMUNIST REVOLUTION: Given the experience of Russia, China, et al, 
communism must mean more than the abolition of private property.

Contradiction:  Needs to be revamped.

Dialectics, quantity, quality, the antagonistic element.  Awful.

Dialectal materialism: (materialist dialectics) : Godawful.

Doctrine and Science: awful.

I'll stop here ands await the next draft. This document reads too 
much like Marxist-Leninist agitprop to me, continuing the bad habits 
of the past. One must think of the purposes to which this glossary 
will be put: is it to decipher a restricted set of musty tomes of the 
past, or to actively and critically engage both past concepts and 
current perspectives?


At 08:36 PM 3/22/2010, waistli...@aol.com wrote:


>In a message dated 3/22/2010 4:56:33 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
>rdum...@autodidactproject.org writes:
>
>And when we see what this phony health care reform amounts
>to,  there's going to be a much bigger clash than what occurred on
>Capitol Hill  this weekend. Which reminds me, I have to make time to
>read Waistline's  Marxist glossary.
>
>Comment
>
>Stop . . . . don't read the glossary. It at 6.5 with rewrites that makes
>6.0 obsolete. I need seven days. Should be at 8.0
>
>
>WL.
>
>
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] To Socialism! How?

[Ralph Dumain]

I don't know which is worse, this CPUSA bullshit or the postmodern 
horseshit recently posted. I've been reading programmatic statements 
of the Democratic Socialists of America, which don't satisfy me 
either. It seems everybody these days, however, is engaged in 
attempts to characterize the capitalist system today and a 
perspective to struggle beyond it. I suppose this is a good sign. 
What is remarkable, however, is that the financial crisis of 2008 and 
the 2009 bailout have made the politics immediately preceding it 
obsolete. And when we see what this phony health care reform amounts 
to, there's going to be a much bigger clash than what occurred on 
Capitol Hill this weekend. Which reminds me, I have to make time to 
read Waistline's Marxist glossary.

DSA:

http://www.dsausa.org...

http://theactivist.org/blog/archives/towards-freedom-the-theory-and-practice-of-democratic-socialism
 



At 06:28 PM 3/22/2010, waistli...@aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 3/22/2010 8:13:42 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
>_cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) writes:
>
>Strategy deals with the qualitative turns in the balance of forces that it
>is necessary to seek and the class and social forces and political trends
>and  social movements that can be won for that qualitative turn, and the main
>  opponent in relation to that turn. Tactics deals with the most useful
>issues,  demands, forms of struggle and forms of organization to achieve the
>alignment of  class and social forces, in the first place, necessary 
>to win the
>strategic  objective or qualitative turn in the balance of forces.
>
>
>Comment
>
>Here a definition of strategy I will not be using.
>
>WL.
>
>
>
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] [marxistphilosophy] Historical-Critical Dictionary of Ma...

[Ralph Dumain]

I post all these references not because I believe 
in them but because they are historical examples 
of reference and pedagogical material that one 
can either use or discard in whole or in 
part.  I'm not thrilled to death with any of it. 
And most of this stuff about quality and quantity 
and the rest of it is a waste of time, or 
positively harmful. It's a mess. I can't be sure 
what the purpose of your glossary is, whether to 
teach useful concepts independently of their 
history or to provide a guide to deciphering 
writings from the past, explaining how 
specialized terms have been used. But for 
purposes of people not invested in engaging 
scholarship or the intellectual history of 
Marxism, a good deal of this stuff is going to be 
absolutely useless. I also have to repeat that 
for a scholarly work such as this 
Historical-Critical Dictionary, it's surprisingly 
anemic for all the detail it does give.

At 07:51 PM 3/20/2010, waistli...@aol.com wrote:
>"Quality and Quantity and Contradiction. Stalin 
>argues that qualitative changes occur "not 
>accidentally but as the  natural result of an 
>accumulation of imperceptible and gradual 
>quantitative  changes."11 We should note that 
>this is only one aspect of this category of 
>dialectical logic. It is the more 
>"commonsensical" side of the problem. The 
>more  difficult question is how, concretely, do 
>different quantities of the same thing  change 
>the quality of it, or why is it that a 
>phenomenon is something other than  its 
>constituent parts taken separately. For 
>instance, a thousand soldiers  fighting together 
>on a battlefield constitute qualitatively 
>something different  from a thousand fighting 
>separately. Common sense tells us it is 
>concentration  that makes the difference. Yet a 
>thousand soldiers fighting 
>separately,  scattered throughout the 
>countryside, can sometimes be more effective 
>than a  thousand in concentration. As we can 
>see, it is an aspect of dialectics that is  not 
>only complex, but forces us to recognize the 
>unity of the two sides. Yet in  Stalin the 
>quality quantity process becomes more one of 
>causality. Small  incremental changes in 
>abstract quantity create large qualitative 
>leaps. There  is no room for how these new 
>qualities affect the quantity. There is 
>no  appreciation of the reciprocal relation of 
>the philosophy of praxis (Marxism  — ed.) 
>quality is also connectedd to quantity and this 
>connection is perhaps its  most fertile 
>contribution." Comment I am in overdrive 
>conditioned to do 12 hours work with a couple of 
>break  and a lunch period. The above is why I 
>hate and remain anti-philosophy. We are not 
>going  to hide behind philosophic concepts and 
>mumbo jumbo.. Allow me to get the heart  of the 
>issue of Quality and Quantity and Contradiction. 
>Here is the question posed by the author: "The 
>more difficult question is  how, concretely, do 
>different quantities of the same thing change 
>the quality of  it, or why is it that a 
>phenomenon is something other than its 
>constituent parts  taken separately." In this 
>authors critique of Stalin’s "Dialectical and 
>Historical  Materialism" he adopts the exact 
>same underlying thinking of Stalin and 
>presents  the same conclusion in  different 
>words. The question "how concretely 
>do  different quantities of the same thing 
>change the quality of it," means you have  not 
>solved the equation.  This is the wrong 
>question. Here is the equation: the introduction 
>of a new quality, - incrementally or 
>quantitatively, into an existing process 
>(quality/quantity), begins the  quantitatively 
>change - alteration, of the old quality. At a 
>certain stage in the accumulation of the new 
>quality, the old process or old quality begins 
>the  process of breaking down, and is forces to 
>leap to a new qualitative definition.  How this 
>takes place is pretty easy for the workers to 
>grasp. Once you introduce a new quality into a 
>process and it begins quantitative  expansion or 
>receives more inputs or additions of the new 
>quality, the process  halts development and 
>expansion on the old basis. This is so because 
>the process  now evolves and develops with the 
>new quality within it. In society, specifically 
>a historically distinct social system (mode 
>of  production), more of the same or a 
>quantitative increase of the same thing  cannot 
>produce a qualitative leap or compel society to 
>change qualitatively. The  industrial 
>revolution, inaugurated by the steam engine, was 
>a new quality that  brought the expansion of 
>manufacturing to an end as it grew 
>quantitatively on  the old basis of the old 
>technology. Not all at what time, but all the 
>related  clusters of technology associated with 
>the underlying principles of the steam  engine 
>came into play quantitatively.. Now the process 
>of quantitative injection of a new quality - the 
>steam  engine and related cluster of technology

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Ralph: Class antagonism ... the dialectic (OK Ralph) .

[Ralph Dumain]

Quickly.

The first edition of A Dictionary of Marxist 
thought ed. by T. B. Bottomore is partially accessible via Google books.

http://books.google.com/books?id=q4QwNP_K1pYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=dictionary+of+marxist+thought&cd=1#v=onepage&q=dialectic&f=false

These entries can be viewed in full:

dialectical materialism (Roy Edgley): p. 142-3
dialectics (Roy Bhaskar): 143-150
dialectics of nature (Robert M. Young): 150-151

I haven't read this stuff in a long time. This is 
far more professional than the usual garbage, but 
I won't vouch for it being definitive. Curiously, 
I never see this topic covered comprehensively and comprehensibly.


At 10:55 AM 3/20/2010, Ralph Dumain wrote:
>Old stuff:
> *
><http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/howtothink.html>"How
>to Think" (Sojourner Truth Organization)
> *
><http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/howtostudy.html>How
>to Study: A Guide for
>Students<http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/howtostudy.html>
>(Jefferson School of Social Science)
>See also my Marxism web guide:
>
><http://www.autodidactproject.org/guidmarx.html>Marx and Marxism Web Guide
>
>Note that I have some old crap as well as more
>technically sophisticated stuff. For example, I
>have one volume of the Cornforth trilogy. I'm
>going to have someone digitize the other two
>volumes because others have been nagging me for
>them. But I strongly dislike all the old
>diamat/histomat textbooks. They're awful. But
>anyone interested in this kind of stuff can find
>some of it on my web site as well as on other Marxist web sites.
>
>I am going to be late, so I must sign off now.
>
>At 10:47 AM 3/20/2010, Ralph Dumain wrote:
> >In a hurry, as I must meet with someone soon. In
> >order to process this paragraph I had to copy it
> >into a Word file and break it up into paragraphs.
> >Printing it out, will look it over with care later.
> >
> >Will work on "dialectical materialism"--needs a
> >complete overhaul, keeping in mind this is not for an academic audience.
> >
> >Check google books--I don't think you will get
> >much of Bottomore there, but maybe some snippets or an article.
> >
> >I will check my web site: I have some old
> >pedagogical materials there, of historical if not current value.
> >
> >Dictionary should seek to explain, varying points
> >of view if necessary, not preach.
> >
> >Marxists Internet Archive has some pedagogical
> >introductions, from Trot standpoint, which is a
> >derivation of Marxist-Leninism, but I don't like their approach.
> >
> >Various people from various tendencies have been
> >thinking recently of how to popularize their
> >ideas, for example, on the web. So a common problem is being recognized.
> >
> >More later .
> >
> >At 09:03 AM 3/20/2010, waistli...@aol.com wrote:
> > >I have not looked at Bottomore's dictionary
> > >since giving it away in 2004. I will run to the
> > >bookstore and locate a copy and look at it.
> > >Anyone that  publishes a Marxist glossary enters
> > >into extreme controversy with every
> > >single  segment of the Marxist current. The most
> > >difficult aspect of the project is  staying on
> > >focus. The focus is a real audience and creating
> > >an organizing tool  that is educational. There
> > >are comrades better equipped for many reasons to
> > >take  the lead on this project and all have
> > >refused. The reason is a desire to produce  a
> > >glossary that sounds like how the American
> > >proletariat think things out in  real time. For
> > >instance the American proletariat does not react
> > >to the word  “mediate” or
> > >“interpenetration.”  Trade Unions mediate
> > >relations between  their members and their
> > >employers. Trade Unions were initially organized
> > >to  protect the wages and conditions of labor
> > >from pressure of their members  employers for
> > >profits. Because of the lost ground of union
> > >over the past 30  years “mediate” becomes a
> > >concept meaning union enhance wages and
> > >this  experience has not been true for almost
> > >twenty years.  The need for the glossary arose
> > >in the course of holding classes
> > >-  educationals, with first a group of young
> > >people and recruiting a few older -  retired
> > >workers, pushed into action over health care.
> > >Let me give a real time  example of the
> > >conceptual problem of the American mind

[Marxism-Thaxis] [marxistphilosophy] Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism : Dialectics (1) [fwd]

[Ralph Dumain]

Yesterday I mentioned the Berliner Instituts für 
kritische Theorie (InkriT) . . .
http://www.inkrit.de/

and its project the Historical-Critical 
Dictionary of Marxism (HCDM), particularly its   . . .

Section in English

and various free downloadable articles.

Now I wish to call your attention to one article:

Dialectics 
(Wolfgang Fritz Haug)

This article reveals this reference source to 
take a definite point of view rather than remain 
neutral, i.e. to reclaim Marxism from the Soviet 
debacle, in theory as well as in practice. 
Whether this particular effort is Germanocentric, 
in spite of its citation of literature from a 
panoply of languages and nations, I can't be 
sure, but there are East and West German authors 
cited that probably weigh more heavily in Haug's 
neck of the woods than they do in the 
English-speaking world, even among Communist 
parties. But this is not a complaint, it's a 
question of how various authors orient themselves 
in struggling with their intellectual heritage.

I draw some inferences in what I take 
historical-critical to be in practice. Haug the 
evolution of a key concept, its different 
interpretations and mutual criticism of authors, 
and draws his own conclusions. I consider this 
legitimate as far as it goes, but I am not 
entirely happy with the result of such a detailed 
presentation, because in the end it, aside from 
lack of comprehensiveness in covering such an 
enormous topic, the underlying logical issues 
behind both the standard dialectical materialist 
formulations from Engels on and all the different 
approaches to dialectics remain underanalyzed. 
While the difficulties in extracting Marx's 
approach to dialectics from his scattered cryptic 
statements are explored, both Marx's epistemology 
and the dialectics of the critique of political 
economy remain under-discussed. By contrast, Roy 
Bhaskar's tripartite classification of dialectics 
in the first edition of A Dictionary of Marxist 
Thought at least delineates a typology of dialectic to be dissected.

Haug's conclusion is a case in point of my issue:

Dialectics would therefore be relevant for an 
orientation which combines agility and wisdom; although it does not give up
its secrets in a methodological formulation, it 
would nevertheless be relevant as method in an elementary sense, understood as
heuristics [Findekunst]. Both functions are 
connected to a conception of the world which 
allows a contradictory, moving context
to be thought. – ‘Perhaps it is not too bold, in 
a Brechtian sense, to define the Sage as the 
quintessential location in which such
dialectics may be observed’ (Benjamin, qtd in 
Ruoff 1976, 39). The ability to practise 
dialectics is, finally, an art. ‘Being a dialectician
means having the wind of history in one’s sails. 
The sails are the concepts. It is not enough, however, to have sails at one’s
disposal. What is decisive is knowing the art of 
setting them’ (Benjamin, 473).
This is much too vague, even as a characterization of a heuristic.

I could construct a typology of dialectic on the 
fly, and also provide a capsule description of 
the fundamental logical lapses in Engels' 
formulations, which I do not see in this article.

(TO BE CONTINUED)
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Ralph: Class antagonism ... the dialectic (OK Ralph) .

[Ralph Dumain]

Old stuff:
* 
<http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/howtothink.html>"How 
to Think" (Sojourner Truth Organization)
* 
<http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/howtostudy.html>How 
to Study: A Guide for 
Students<http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/howtostudy.html> 
(Jefferson School of Social Science)
See also my Marxism web guide:

<http://www.autodidactproject.org/guidmarx.html>Marx and Marxism Web Guide

Note that I have some old crap as well as more 
technically sophisticated stuff. For example, I 
have one volume of the Cornforth trilogy. I'm 
going to have someone digitize the other two 
volumes because others have been nagging me for 
them. But I strongly dislike all the old 
diamat/histomat textbooks. They're awful. But 
anyone interested in this kind of stuff can find 
some of it on my web site as well as on other Marxist web sites.

I am going to be late, so I must sign off now.

At 10:47 AM 3/20/2010, Ralph Dumain wrote:
>In a hurry, as I must meet with someone soon. In
>order to process this paragraph I had to copy it
>into a Word file and break it up into paragraphs.
>Printing it out, will look it over with care later.
>
>Will work on "dialectical materialism"--needs a
>complete overhaul, keeping in mind this is not for an academic audience.
>
>Check google books--I don't think you will get
>much of Bottomore there, but maybe some snippets or an article.
>
>I will check my web site: I have some old
>pedagogical materials there, of historical if not current value.
>
>Dictionary should seek to explain, varying points
>of view if necessary, not preach.
>
>Marxists Internet Archive has some pedagogical
>introductions, from Trot standpoint, which is a
>derivation of Marxist-Leninism, but I don't like their approach.
>
>Various people from various tendencies have been
>thinking recently of how to popularize their
>ideas, for example, on the web. So a common problem is being recognized.
>
>More later .
>
>At 09:03 AM 3/20/2010, waistli...@aol.com wrote:
> >I have not looked at Bottomore's dictionary
> >since giving it away in 2004. I will run to the
> >bookstore and locate a copy and look at it.
> >Anyone that  publishes a Marxist glossary enters
> >into extreme controversy with every
> >single  segment of the Marxist current. The most
> >difficult aspect of the project is  staying on
> >focus. The focus is a real audience and creating
> >an organizing tool  that is educational. There
> >are comrades better equipped for many reasons to
> >take  the lead on this project and all have
> >refused. The reason is a desire to produce  a
> >glossary that sounds like how the American
> >proletariat think things out in  real time. For
> >instance the American proletariat does not react
> >to the word  “mediate” or
> >“interpenetration.”  Trade Unions mediate
> >relations between  their members and their
> >employers. Trade Unions were initially organized
> >to  protect the wages and conditions of labor
> >from pressure of their members  employers for
> >profits. Because of the lost ground of union
> >over the past 30  years “mediate” becomes a
> >concept meaning union enhance wages and
> >this  experience has not been true for almost
> >twenty years.  The need for the glossary arose
> >in the course of holding classes
> >-  educationals, with first a group of young
> >people and recruiting a few older -  retired
> >workers, pushed into action over health care.
> >Let me give a real time  example of the
> >conceptual problem of the American mind. Here is
> >the agreed upon  basic description of
> >dialectical materialism: Dialectal materialism:
> >Dialectal materialism is an approach and method
> >to the study of a real  world in constant
> >change. A materialist approach begin with the
> >real material  world. The world is knowable and
> >our knowledge of its laws develops -
> >evolves,  from a lower to a higher level.
> >Society contains laws of development
> >moving  society from a lower to a higher level.
> >Change in society is based on  development of
> >the productive forces and social relations of
> >production. The constant changes and interaction
> >between productive forces and social
> >relations  prevents us from knowing everything
> >at any particular moment. But that is no  excuse
> >for not accepting and learning about what is
> >real. On the contrary, it  inspires a serious
> >Marxist to constantly study. The materialist
> >approach is  combined with the dialectical
> >method, treating all pheno

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Ralph: Class antagonism ... the dialectic (OK Ralph) .

[Ralph Dumain]

In a hurry, as I must meet with someone soon. In 
order to process this paragraph I had to copy it 
into a Word file and break it up into paragraphs. 
Printing it out, will look it over with care later.

Will work on "dialectical materialism"--needs a 
complete overhaul, keeping in mind this is not for an academic audience.

Check google books--I don't think you will get 
much of Bottomore there, but maybe some snippets or an article.

I will check my web site: I have some old 
pedagogical materials there, of historical if not current value.

Dictionary should seek to explain, varying points 
of view if necessary, not preach.

Marxists Internet Archive has some pedagogical 
introductions, from Trot standpoint, which is a 
derivation of Marxist-Leninism, but I don't like their approach.

Various people from various tendencies have been 
thinking recently of how to popularize their 
ideas, for example, on the web. So a common problem is being recognized.

More later .

At 09:03 AM 3/20/2010, waistli...@aol.com wrote:
>I have not looked at Bottomore's dictionary 
>since giving it away in 2004. I will run to the 
>bookstore and locate a copy and look at it. 
>Anyone that  publishes a Marxist glossary enters 
>into extreme controversy with every 
>single  segment of the Marxist current. The most 
>difficult aspect of the project is  staying on 
>focus. The focus is a real audience and creating 
>an organizing tool  that is educational. There 
>are comrades better equipped for many reasons to 
>take  the lead on this project and all have 
>refused. The reason is a desire to produce  a 
>glossary that sounds like how the American 
>proletariat think things out in  real time. For 
>instance the American proletariat does not react 
>to the word  “mediate” or 
>“interpenetration.”  Trade Unions mediate 
>relations between  their members and their 
>employers. Trade Unions were initially organized 
>to  protect the wages and conditions of labor 
>from pressure of their members  employers for 
>profits. Because of the lost ground of union 
>over the past 30  years “mediate” becomes a 
>concept meaning union enhance wages and 
>this  experience has not been true for almost 
>twenty years.  The need for the glossary arose 
>in the course of holding classes 
>-  educationals, with first a group of young 
>people and recruiting a few older -  retired 
>workers, pushed into action over health care. 
>Let me give a real time  example of the 
>conceptual problem of the American mind. Here is 
>the agreed upon  basic description of 
>dialectical materialism: Dialectal materialism: 
>Dialectal materialism is an approach and method 
>to the study of a real  world in constant 
>change. A materialist approach begin with the 
>real material  world. The world is knowable and 
>our knowledge of its laws develops - 
>evolves,  from a lower to a higher level. 
>Society contains laws of development 
>moving  society from a lower to a higher level. 
>Change in society is based on  development of 
>the productive forces and social relations of 
>production. The constant changes and interaction 
>between productive forces and social 
>relations  prevents us from knowing everything 
>at any particular moment. But that is no  excuse 
>for not accepting and learning about what is 
>real. On the contrary, it  inspires a serious 
>Marxist to constantly study. The materialist 
>approach is  combined with the dialectical 
>method, treating all phenomena in nature 
>and  society as dialectical. The basic laws of 
>materialist dialectics are: This had to be 
>rewritten The reaction to the term dialectical 
>materialism  was fascinating and mind boggling. 
>Everyone would demand to know its meaning 
>and  treated the term with hostility. We 
>reversed the words and all the 
>hostile  reactions disappeared. The second line 
>was changed and the terms “real 
>material  world” was reduced to “material 
>world.” The reason is that people reacted 
>to  real material world with the ideology 
>“what is real to you might not be real 
>to  me,” meaning experience. Ralph, I was 
>fucked up because “ real world” was 
>meant  to deliver a concept of a world existing 
>outside the individual human body, mind  and 
>sense perception. People already understand the 
>world is real, but  experienced individually. 
>Soon as the formulation was changed a different 
>the  concept of dialectical materialism was 
>better understood. Here is the rewrite: 
>Dialectal materialism: (materialist dialectics) 
>Materialist dialectics is an approach and method 
>to the study of a real  world in constant 
>change. A materialist approach begin with the 
>material world.  The world is knowable and our 
>knowledge of its laws grows from a lower to 
>a  higher level. Society is knowable, containing 
>economic laws moving society from  a lower to a 
>higher level. Change in society is based on 
>development of the  productive forces. Its 
>constant cha

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Ralph: Class antagonism ... the dialectic (OK Ralph) .

[Ralph Dumain]

I think we should all discuss this publicly, 
pooling our knowledge and abilities. I doubt I 
have a unique ability lacking in others here. But 
you are most welcome to send me a copy of the 
whole text and I'll give whatever useful feedback I can.

Have you found the first or second edition of 
Bottomore's Dictionary of Marxist Thought useful 
for some of your source material?

At 09:23 AM 3/19/2010, waistli...@aol.com wrote:
>Comrade Ralph: A new Marxist glossary is being 
>prepared. The last Marxist Glossary  receiving 
>large distribution in America was L. Harry 
>Gould’s 1943 "Glossary of  Marxist Terms." A 
>larger second edition was published in 1946 
>called "Marxist  Glossary" and reprinted in the 
>1970’s by "Proletarian Publishers." Us. Things 
>are heating up and small circles are forming 
>everywhere. Most of the younger people and older 
>workers are 100% unfamiliar with Marxism or any 
>Marxist  concepts. A new glossary is needed. I 
>vowed to do such a glossary ten years ago  in a 
>discussion on Marxism list. The problem was 
>being unable to find an  audience. Since Obama's 
>election things have heated up dramatically and 
>the  material from ten years ago, and most 
>certainly that of the old Soviet era is  totally 
>inadequate. I have taken the lead on writing a 
>Marxist glossary but it is part of a  collective 
>effort amongst a core of comrades. However an 
>"outside  view" is  needed. By this I mean 
>outside our meetings in Detroit. A fundamental 
>draft will be prepared by the March 30, 2010 
>deadline. I  would love to send you the entire 
>glossary no later than March 30, and or  discuss 
>terms on line in the open. I do wish to send you 
>the entire glossary off line through. Why? 
>Because of your uncompromising critical and 
>informed point of  view. Ralph we might not find 
>this in our lifetime but I assure you no one  is 
>rolling over or going out like a bunch of 
>mutherfucking  suckers.  Right or wrong (and we 
>already know what are going to be historically 
>in  error) we are dedicated to opening the new 
>era of proletarian onslaught in the  flesh. The 
>bourgeoisie is not going to take everything away 
>from us and we stand  around like simpletons 
>talking about "where are the people." The 
>"people been in  motion" and this is the kind of 
>shit we live for. Victory of death. Proletarian Unite. WL.
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Agamben - Coming Community vs. Negri & Hardt - (Coming?) Commonwealth

[Ralph Dumain]

As trivial as I find all this stuff, I find that sometimes Zizek hits the mark, 
though his specific insights never add up to a comprehensive picture.  

The only thing I really dislike in this extract is his charitable remarks about 
Islam. He is, though, quite correct about this:

" With the dynamics of contemporary capitalism, the opposition between rigid 
State control
and carnivalesque liberation is no longer functional. "

-Original Message-
>From: CeJ 
>Sent: Mar 15, 2010 6:03 AM
>To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu
>Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Agamben - Coming Community vs. Negri & Hardt -   
>(Coming?) Commonwealth
>
>And Zizek is in the midst of all this too. I don't think the Z man
>answers the question about 'deterritorialization', but it seems to me
>to be a concept borrowed from Deleuze and Guattari. I do agree with
>him on some points, and then find him maddeningly reactionary on
>others. But the dude is popular, and in this postmo post-cap world of
>winners and losers, we adore the celebrity of the winners.
>
>
>
>http://www.softtargetsjournal.com/web/zizek.php
>
>ST: But when Negri and Hardt use the term "deterritorialization,"
>don’t they mean something very specific, namely that the difference
>between productive and unproductive labor has become increasingly
>unclear, and therefore that the site of exploitation is no longer
>localized, but disseminated across the social surface—the entire space
>of society is politicized, and no longer simply the factory?
>
>Let’s start with Negri and Hardt. Somewhere in the middle of
>Multitude, there is an intermezzo on Bakhtin and carnival. I violently
>disagree with this carnivalesque vision of liberation. Carnival is a
>very ambiguous term, more often than not used by reactionaries. My
>God, if you need a carnival, today’s capitalism is a carnival. A KKK
>lynching is a carnival. A cultural critic, a friend of mine, Boris
>Groys, told me that he did some research on Bakhtin and that it became
>clear that when Bakhtin was producing his theory of carnival in the
>1930s, it was the Stalinist purges that were his model: today you are
>on the Central Committee, tomorrow . . . With the dynamics of
>contemporary capitalism, the opposition between rigid State control
>and carnivalesque liberation is no longer functional. Here I agree
>with what Badiou said in the recent interview with you published in Il
>Manifesto: "those who have nothing have only their discipline." This
>is why I like to mockingly designate myself "Left-fascist" or
>whatever! Today, the language of transgression is the ruling ideology.
>We have to reappropriate the language of discipline, of mass
>discipline, even the "spirit of sacrifice," and so on. We have to do
>away with the liberal fear of "discipline," which they
>characterize—without knowing what they’re talking about—as
>"proto-fascist." But back to Negri. You know, the Left produces a new
>model every ten years or so. Why was Ernesto Laclau’s Hegemony and
>Socialist Strategy so popular twenty years ago? It suited a moment
>when the priority of class struggle gave way to the linking of
>particular struggles (feminist, etc.) in a chain of struggles. Now,
>Laclau is trying to dust off the theory to fit the new Latin American
>populism of Chavez, Morales and so on. Negri, I’m afraid, did capture
>a certain moment, that of Porto Alegre and the antiglobalization
>movement—that was, de facto, his "base." But what is problematic for
>me is his theory that if today the very object of production is the
>production of social relations themselves, then the way is open to
>what he calls "absolute democracy." I totally reject this logic. It is
>pure, ideological dreaming. In the final twenty pages of Multitude,
>the position is more or less theological—the tropes of "ligne de
>fuite" and resistance and so on are all founded on the fantasy of a
>"collapse" of Empire. In a way, it is the "optimistic" mirror image of
>the model you find in someone like Agamben, who presents not so much a
>pessimism but a "negative" teleology, in which the entire Western
>tradition is approaching its own disastrous end, the only solution to
>which is to await some "divine violence." But what is Benjamin talking
>about? Revolution—that is, a moment when you take the "sovereign"
>(this is Benjamin’s word) responsibility for killing someone. What
>does violence mean for Agamben? He responds with "playing with the
>law" and so on. Forgive me for being a vulgar empiricist, but I don’t
>know what that means in the concrete sense.
>
>ST: You mentioned "liberated territories"—isn’t the first example that
>comes to mind the southern zone of Lebanon and the southern suburbs of
>Beirut? Isn’t it possible to conceive of a phenomenon like Hezbollah
>not simply as a theologico-political form of communitarian
>organization but as a phenomenon of resistance irreducible to its
>theological support? Isn’t this the theoretical task for us, rather
>than characterizing 

[Marxism-Thaxis] Merab Mamardashvili: Bibliography & Web Links

[Ralph Dumain]

Here is my latest bibliography (always 'in progress'):

Merab Mamardashvili: Selected Bibliography & Web Links (with Annotations)
http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/mamardashvili.html

Here we have another example of the relation between self and social 
environment and the problem of self-development and intellectual 
wakefulness, under conditions of repression, but in a culture quite 
different from what we experience in western democracies. I have my 
doubts we would feel compelled to create a space for 'philosophizing' in 
exactly the same manner with a comparable perspective. Our experience of 
repression and censorship is rather different. The USSR never overcame 
the authoritarianism and deadness of peasant society and feudal 
autocracy in the process of modernization. The handful of creative 
intellects among the leading Bolsheviks, though certainly knowing 
desperation,  never fully grasped the depth of what it meant to 
enlighten peasant society that never knew the experience of individual 
freedom. They grasped the tiger by the tail, and the tiger swallowed 
them. A Western Marxist, however untouched by or liberated from the 
deadening influence of Soviet Marxism, can barely apprehend the weight 
of the strangulating atmosphere of Soviet mental life as Mamardashvili 
characterizes it.

Not that Americans have never experienced it, or continue to experience 
it, but the relationship of the individual to the universe of knowledge 
comprised by a diverse publishing industry--even at the worst periods of 
repression--such that the problem is the relationship of the isolated or 
suppressed individual to the zones of freer thought that exist. To take 
an example: Richard Wright as a young black man in the South 80 years 
ago was not allowed to borrow books from the public library, and had to 
engage in trickery to check books out. His discovery of the possibility 
of an intellectual life under conditions of extreme repression--the 
American South being the first fascist state--had to do with 
restrictions imposed upon his social environment, but not upon the 
publishing industry and the universities in the nation at large in the 
way that state censorship and monopolization of publishing and 
distribution of information with one official ideology imposed upon all 
of intellectual life would institute. These are my preliminary thoughts, 
anyway. They do, in any case, invite comparisons among all kinds of 
social environments and situations.

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Merab Mamardašvili online

[Ralph Dumain]

You can listen to M.'s lectures in Russian on YouTube, but in English 
here's what you get, for starters.

Merab Mamardashvili - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merab_Mamardashvili

"THE CIVIL SOCIETY: An Interview With Merab Mamardashvili", /The Civic 
Arts Review/, Vol. 2, no. 3, Summer 1989.
http://car.owu.edu/pdfs/1989-2-3.pdf

ISFP Gallery of Russian Thinkers: Merab Mamardashvili
http://www.isfp.co.uk/russian_thinkers/merab_mamardashvili.html

Uldis Tirons, "I come to you from my solitude", Eurozine, 2006-06-22
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-06-22-tirons-en.html

Andrew Padgett, "DASEIN AND THE PHILOSOPHER: RESPONSIBILITY IN HEIDEGGER 
AND MAMARDASHVILI," FACTA UNIVERSITATIS:
Series: Philosophy, Sociology and Psychology Vol. 6, No1, 2007, pp. 1 - 21.
http://facta.junis.ni.ac.rs/pas/pas2007/pas2007-01.pdf

"Foreword: In Memory of Merab Mamardashvili" by Bakar Berekashvili,
/A Different View/, no. 21, March 2008, p. 4-5.
http://iapss.org/downloads/ADV/A_Different_View_March_2008.pdf

Deyanov, Deyan. "Foucault and Mamardashvili: The Critique of Modernity 
and the Heritage of the Enlightenment (Towards a Sociology of the 21st 
Century)," Sociological Problems (XXXIV/2002), pp. 32-40.
Abstract:
http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/issuedetails.aspx?issueid=b2873705-8ee1-11d6-a01b-0020eda6408d&articleId=b2873709-8ee1-11d6-a01b-0020eda6408d
 



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[Marxism-Thaxis] Re: Mamardašvili & Soviet philosophical culture

[Ralph Dumain]

A couple of interesting references from the footnotes:

20 For a recent, somewhat impressionistic 
rendering of Russian anti-Cartesianism, see 
Lesley Chamberlain, Motherland; A Philosophical 
History of Russia (London: Atlantic Books, 2004), 
ch. 8, ‘Rejecting the View from Descartes’.

Mamardas^vili, Merab K. ‘‘Analysis of 
Consciousness in the Works of Marx’’ in Studies 
in Soviet Thought, Vol. 32, 1986, pp. 101–120.

Berry, Ellen E., and Epstein Mikhail. 
Transcultural Experiments; Russian and American 
Models of Creative Communication, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1999.

At 08:05 PM 3/6/2010, Ralph Dumain wrote:
>Evert van der Zweerde, “Philosophy in the Act: 
>The Socio-Political Relevance of Mamardašvili’s 
>Philosophizing,” Studies in East European
>Thought (2006) 58: 179­203.
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[Marxism-Thaxis] Mamardašvili & Soviet philo sophical culture

[Ralph Dumain]

Evert van der Zweerde, “Philosophy in the Act: The Socio-Political 
Relevance of Mamardašvili’s Philosophizing,” /Studies in East European 
Thought/ (2006) 58: 179–203.

‘. . . Loneliness is my profession . . .’

   — Merab Konstantinovic( Mamardašvili (1930–1990)

‘Loneliness is my profession,’ is the title of an interview the
Latvian philosopher Uldis Tirons conducted with Mamardas?vili in
1990. 35 In this interview, Mamardašvili pointed out that his
loneliness was of a personal character – ‘‘I am a chronic specialist
in loneliness since early childhood’’ – as well as of a professional
nature: ‘‘And then, loneliness is my profession ... (OMP, p. 69)’’36
Leaving the first form to biographers, we can, I think, distinguish
two senses of this professional loneliness of the philosopher, one
structural, the other contextual. In the first sense, intended by
Mamardas?vili himself, philosophy is a ‘lonely activity’ in any
case, as some of his definitions of philosophy make clear:
‘‘Philosophy is just a fragment of the smashed mirror of universal
harmony that has fallen into an eye or a soul (OMP, p. 64).’’ And:
‘‘... philosophy is a reaction of the dignity of life in the face of
anti-life. That’s it. And if there is a pathos of life, then man
cannot be a non-philosopher (OMP, p. 67).’’

In a second sense, his was a lonely position because, unlike most of
his colleagues, he did not actively deal with the problem of
Marxist–Leninist dogmatics or with Marxism as the official ideology
in the Soviet Union.

Mamardašvili declared that he was not a Marxist, but he also said he was 
not an anti-Marxist either. Van der Zwerde endeavors to explain the 
unique position of this philosopher within Soviet philosophical culture. 
Van der Zwerde is the author of an important study, /Soviet 
Historiography of Philosophy: Istoriko-filosofskaja Nauka 
/ (Boston: Kluwer Academic 
Publishers, 1997 [Sovietica; v. 57]), which I reviewed in 2003:

Soviet Historiography of Philosophy: Review Essay
http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/sovphilhist.html

I wrote more about Soviet philosophical culture in my diary of December 
2003 - January 2004:

http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/diary0401a.html#soviet

Van der Zwerde sets out to explain two things: the philosophical culture 
in which M. was active, and his central concepts--form, thought, and 
culture. First, he demystifies Western presuppositions about Soviet 
philosophy, and he provides a biographical summary of M., who indeed 
became a hero of Soviet intellectuals seeking autonomy and integrity. M. 
himself commented on the changing role of the intelligentsia, drawing on 
Gramsci, while rejecting the conceit of the intelligentsia as arbiters 
of enlightenment. M. also selectively engaged Marx, in a non-trivial 
fashion. For M., the role of the intellectual in society was to was to 
claim a presence for /thought /in culture and society. There must be 
conditions for thought to be able to take place--a public space.

M. criticized Russian culture for a neglect of form, for example of the 
formal character of legal systems and of democracy, though his position 
did not devolve into a pure formalism.  M.'s second preoccupation is the 
process of thinking--when thinking becomes alive and a presence in the 
world, not just closed up in itself. Engaging the past of philosophy is 
to make its thoughts come alive again, not that past philosophies are 
absolutes in themselves, but that they create spaces in which thinking 
beings 'reconstitutes' itself.

Descartes is a prime example. Russian philosophy has systematically 
degraded Descartes and Kant. (190-1). But, taking a cue from Hegel, M.. 
rejected "Robinsonades".

M.'s third central concept is 'culture', and here the cosmopolitan 
notion of 'transculture' (not 'multiculturalism'!) becomes important.

In the 1980s M. took on the issue of 'civil society', which became a big 
theme in late Soviet society. M., criticically discussing Hegel in 1968, 
had already broached this subject. Once again, M. is concerned with the 
live act of thought and its conditions of possibility.

In his conclusion Van der Zweerde cautions against romanticizing 
dissenting heroes or demonizing the philosophical culture of the Soviet 
system, given that any social system tends toward rigidity and requires 
independent criticism. M. has been characterized as the Georgian 
Socrates, interestingly, since M. in his youth was lucky enough to 
circumvent the proscription of Socrates demonized at the hands of Stalinism.
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Speaking of the disaffected...

[Ralph Dumain]

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

This guy reminds me of the Unabomber, also what it means that 
Americans are totally lacking in political and social consciousness. 
While other people are just as fucked up in their own ways, white 
people of this type have a peculiarly apolitical view of their own 
victimization. They can't see their situation as anything more than 
an individual problem, as lone individuals being abused by the 
system, as individuals who can only act alone, and who are victimized 
by bad people running a system that is supposed to work but who have 
betrayed something they thought they were part of and was supposed to 
be functioning properly.

This kind of recklessless is also very middle class. It's what was 
wrong with "Thelma and Louise", which didn't have a thing to do with 
feminism: it was all about class, class, and nothing but class, and 
serves as a very bad example of the recklessness and irresponsibility 
that ensues when middle class people become rebellious.

At 04:43 PM 2/19/2010, waistli...@aol.com wrote:
>..
>
>
>Comment
>
>I asked  myself, why would a human being work a 100 hour week voluntarily?
>Seven days 12  hours a day is only 72 hours. Add another 28 hours and one
>has no family life  and ultimately no wife or children one can maintain a
>relationship with. Here is  a man that earnestly believed that 
>capitalism could
>work for him and it did work  pretty good in the post WW II period. Things
>stated going to hell a very long  time ago for the proletariat majority. New
>layers of American society is being  ruined.
>
>The real proletariat in America thinks out things very different, and their
>  spontaneous drift to the right barely leads to terrorist acts on this
>level.  Massive economic ruin does generate an initial response of increased
>family  abuse, bouts of rage and individual suicide. Then depending on the
>ability of  communist to impact the movement with a sense of purpose, the
>implosive subsides  and becomes an outer explosion of activity.
>
>I  feel no sympathy for this man who drives an airplane into a building
>because he  is angry with the system. Did he own the plane? This angry man
>thought thinks  out as a little capitalist, rather than proletarians still
>clinging to bourgeois  views. 


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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] [marxistphilosophy] Piaget & dialectic (1)

[Ralph Dumain]

e any such category meaningless. Linguistics is in an
>extreme state of flux today and if you're working in the field you might
>want to steer a path between buying, lock stock and barrel into one of
>the schools on the one hand, or a kind of colourless eclecticism on the
>other. In my own work I try to borrow from different linguistic theories
>(plus philosophy) that are around and build up an original body of work
>that hangs together. It's a challenging thing that I enjoy. My article
>of last year in the Journal of Pragmatics 41(2) refers, 'Adherence and
>Abstraction in Discourse Processes' -- if you'll pardon the
>advertisement. I'll try to attach the pdf offprint and see if it comes
>through.
>Tahir
>
>
> >>> Ralph Dumain  02/17/10 5:30 PM >>>
>Parts of this book can be read on google books:
>
>http://books.google.com/books?id=YGo9IAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=chomsky+piaget&source=bl&ots=PtCM75V5KH&sig=0gj-qLNzFXTFTGCLgSeNid6AJt4&hl=en&ei=Ifl7S-3KEZGd8Aac5vi6BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=&f=false
>
>I addition, there are a number of interesting
>secondary sources, several on the web, e.g.:
>
>KENJI HAKUTA, Book Reviews: LANGUAGE AND
>LEARNING: THE DEBATE BETWEEN JEAN PIAGET AND NOAM CHOMSKY
>edited by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini.
>http://www.stanford.edu/~hakuta/www/research/publications/%281980%29%20-%20LANGUAGE%20AND%20LEARNING%20THE%20DEBATE%20BETWEEN%20JEAN%20PLAGE.pdf
>
>. . . and even better:
>
>A classic non-debate
>http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/FILES/faculties/ppsw/1999/j.w.de.graaf/c2.pdf
>
>. . . which is a chapter of:
>
>Graaf, Jan Willem de. Relating new to old: a
>classic controversy in developmental psychology
>(dissertation, University of Groningen, 1999).
>http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/faculties/ppsw/1999/j.w.de.graaf/
>
>"The central question in this thesis is whether
>or not developmental psychology is in principle
>able to describe and explain the emergence of new
>forms (novelty) on the ontogenetic timescale
>- the time-scale of individual development."
>
>This analysis is fascinating, and at first
>glance, convincing. This is the sort of critique
>I've been looking for. At the very least, it
>shows up the bulk of "marxist" linguistics as
>well as poststructuralist notions of language as
>utterly worthless, while at the same time
>revealing the fault lines of radical nativism.
>
>
>At 02:34 AM 2/17/2010, Tahir Wood wrote:
> >
> >For anyone who may be interested there is a very good Routledge book
> >called Language and Learning: The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam
> >Chomsky, edited by Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini (1983). It is actually
>a
> >set of verbatim debates and also includes contributions from the
>floor
> >and postscripts by a range of others including Fodor, Sperber,
>Putnam,
> >Thom, Petitot and more.
> >Tahir
> >
> > >>> Ralph Dumain
> >
>
>
> > 02/17/10 8:09 AM >>>
> >First, a fairly crappy article from the standpoint of dialectical
> >materialism:
> >
> >Piaget and Marxist Philosophy
> >by A. J. Durak
> ><http://marxistphilosophy.org/PiagetDurak.pdf>h 
> ttp://marxistphilosophy.org/PiagetDurak.pdf
>
> >
> >
> >Nontheless, Durak highlights some problems with Piaget that are
> >better dissected in an article by an Objectivist (disciple of the
> >loathsome Ayn Rand), believe it or not:
> >
> ><<http://hubcap.clemson.edu/%7Ecampber/piaget.h 
> tml>http://hubcap.clemson.edu/%7Ecampber/piaget.html>Jean
>
> >Piaget's
> >Genetic Epistemology: Appreciation and Critique by Robert Campbell
> >(2006)
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] African-American History Month Program (4 & 5)

[Ralph Dumain]

Like your presentation, but as usual, I wonder 
about your projections for the future:

"The  destitute proletariat will tackle questions 
for itself when it learns it has no other recourse."

Where are the signs that this is happening? I see 
fascist mass movements as a likelier outcome.

At 01:16 PM 2/17/2010, waistli...@aol.com wrote:
>V. I want to try to be clear to avoid 
>misunderstanding about  what legal segregation 
>actually meant. For 50 years - between 1920  and 
>1970, Detroit had an extra legal curfew imposed 
>on the black where they had  to be off the 
>streets at sun down or risk being jailed and 
>shot. It was extra  legal because no laws 
>existed on the books but the “curfew law 
>existed in fact”  and was enforced by the 
>police and understood by every level of 
>local  government. Exceptions were made for 
>workers on the night shift and weekends  when 
>traveling to entertainment events. Literally, if 
>you stood on  the corner talking, the police 
>would drive up, roll down the window and 
>say,  “give me that corner.” This was a 
>warning to disperse or be “beat  down.”   An 
>elaborate system of communications developed 
>where you  were informed the police were 2 
>blocks away and closing in fast, allowing one 
>to  take to the alley ways. Black power is what 
>it was, as the demand  for entry into the 
>political system. In this sense the struggle of 
>the blacks  was no different than the struggle 
>of the Irish, Italian or any other 
>“national  group“ that becomes large enough 
>in a jurisdiction to take control of 
>the  “machine.” The color factor complicated 
>the struggle of the blacks, meaning all  the 
>various groupings dominating the “city 
>machine” had to be fought because  their unity 
>was based on the isolation and exclusion of the 
>blacks. Black Power  meant black political power 
>or the politics of combating, inheriting and 
>taking  over the “city machine” in the North 
>and the local political jurisdictions in  the 
>South enforcing fascist segregation. Thus, the 
>path of the fight could only  take place on the 
>basis of the post legal Jim Crow segregated 
>voting market,  because white voters as a 
>general rule could not and would not elect a 
>black.  The refusal of whites to elect blacks 
>during this period cannot be  causally spoken of 
>as “just” racism without qualification. 
>Beneath the color  factor is “the 
>city  machine factor,“ or the system of spoils 
>and payoffs  in every American city. Jobs in the 
>police force and all levels of governments  and 
>city services are at stake. Awarding contracts 
>for city services involves  more than the actual 
>workers hired and require the system of 
>lawyers,  accountants and land speculators every 
>time a new road is built or a new 
>housing  development is proposed. This system 
>evolved before blacks entered the  industrial 
>class and is based on nationality or the 
>immigrant status of waves of  European 
>immigrants. The Irish had to built up their mass 
>in a jurisdiction as  did the Italian and Polish 
>to grab hold of the city machine. Pretty much 
>the  same with the blacks + the color factor. 
>The demand for black  police officers was an 
>exceptionally brutal and violent struggle in 
>Detroit and  Cleveland. This was a period of 
>desegregation that birthed the “Black 
>Guardians”  within police departments in the 
>major cities. The Black Guardian were 
>black  police officers literally forced to fight 
>the semi-fascist polices of their  local police 
>departments. More often than not, the Black 
>Guardians played an  exemplar role in protecting 
>the social movement from fascist attacks by 
>segments  of the police department. This was 
>certainly the case in Detroit. The point 
>is  that at a certain stage in the change 
>process the structures of control 
>become  paralyzed and at odds with itself. An 
>example of this I experienced was the case  of 
>protesting at Cooly High school in Detroit and 
>not the one in Chicago named  after the movie. 
>In the process of the demonstration a police 
>care literally ran  into a mass of people 
>injuring many. The police pull out their guns to 
>shoot us.  The Black Guardian on the scene 
>pulled out their gun and aimed them at the 
>heads  of the other officers and told them if 
>they fired one shot they would shoot  them. This 
>happened because our struggle was just. Then 
>there was the tip off to  many of us that the 
>police were in the process of preparing to raid 
>the Black  Panther office and kill them. This 
>tip off allowed people to go to the 
>Panthers  office along with the press to halt 
>the attack. We are poised to  experience a new 
>form of the social movement and need to be 
>mindful of how  things happen. At the end of the 
>day the majority of the people of our 
>country  are going to line up with the 
>proletarian revolution because it is 
>just.  Control of the police force 

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] [marxistphilosophy] Piaget & dialectic (1)

[Ralph Dumain]

Parts of this book can be read on google books:

http://books.google.com/books?id=YGo9IAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=chomsky+piaget&source=bl&ots=PtCM75V5KH&sig=0gj-qLNzFXTFTGCLgSeNid6AJt4&hl=en&ei=Ifl7S-3KEZGd8Aac5vi6BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=&f=false

I addition, there are a number of interesting 
secondary sources, several on the web, e.g.:

KENJI HAKUTA, Book Reviews: LANGUAGE AND 
LEARNING: THE DEBATE BETWEEN JEAN PIAGET AND NOAM CHOMSKY
edited by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini.
http://www.stanford.edu/~hakuta/www/research/publications/%281980%29%20-%20LANGUAGE%20AND%20LEARNING%20THE%20DEBATE%20BETWEEN%20JEAN%20PLAGE.pdf

. . . and even better:

A classic non-debate
http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/FILES/faculties/ppsw/1999/j.w.de.graaf/c2.pdf

. . . which is a chapter of:

Graaf, Jan Willem de. Relating new to old: a 
classic controversy in developmental psychology 
(dissertation, University of Groningen, 1999).
http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/faculties/ppsw/1999/j.w.de.graaf/

"The central question in this thesis is whether 
or not developmental psychology is in principle
able to describe and explain the emergence of new 
forms (novelty) on the ontogenetic timescale
- the time-scale of individual development."

This analysis is fascinating, and at first 
glance, convincing. This is the sort of critique 
I've been looking for. At the very least, it 
shows up the bulk of "marxist" linguistics as 
well as poststructuralist notions of language as 
utterly worthless, while at the same time 
revealing the fault lines of radical nativism.


At 02:34 AM 2/17/2010, Tahir Wood wrote:
>
>For anyone who may be interested there is a very good Routledge book
>called Language and Learning: The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam
>Chomsky, edited by Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini (1983). It is actually a
>set of verbatim debates and also includes contributions from the floor
>and postscripts by a range of others including Fodor, Sperber, Putnam,
>Thom, Petitot and more.
>Tahir
>
> >>> Ralph Dumain 
> <<mailto:rdumain%40autodidactproject.org>rdum...@autodidactproject.org> 
> 02/17/10 8:09 AM >>>
>First, a fairly crappy article from the standpoint of dialectical
>materialism:
>
>Piaget and Marxist Philosophy
>by A. J. Durak
><http://marxistphilosophy.org/PiagetDurak.pdf>http://marxistphilosophy.org/PiagetDurak.pdf
> 
>
>
>Nontheless, Durak highlights some problems with Piaget that are
>better dissected in an article by an Objectivist (disciple of the
>loathsome Ayn Rand), believe it or not:
>
><<http://hubcap.clemson.edu/%7Ecampber/piaget.html>http://hubcap.clemson.edu/%7Ecampber/piaget.html>Jean
> 
>Piaget's
>Genetic Epistemology: Appreciation and Critique by Robert Campbell
>(2006)
>
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[Marxism-Thaxis] Piaget revisited

[Ralph Dumain]

As this subject was brought up some time ago, I 
figured I would stick in another two cents here. Also, I need a favor.

First, a fairly crappy article from the 
standpoint of dialectical materialism, mentioned before:

Piaget and Marxist Philosophy
by A. J. Durak
http://marxistphilosophy.org/PiagetDurak.pdf

Nontheless, Durak highlights some problems with 
Piaget that are better dissected in an article by 
an Objectivist (disciple of the loathsome Ayn Rand, believe it or not):

Jean 
Piaget's Genetic Epistemology: Appreciation and 
Critique by Robert Campbell (2006)

Favor:

In re:

Jean Piaget (1968), "Structuralism and 
Dialectic", in The Essential Piaget, in H.E. Gruber & J.J Vonèche, eds. (The
Essential Piaget: An Interpretive Reference and 
Guide (New York: Basic Books, 1977), pp. 775-779.

I'm missing the first page--p. 775--and I need 
someone to scan it for me, either as a raw image 
or as an OCR'd file (in RTF format, with no 
mistakes). If this can be conveniently done, please let me know.
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Wiki Lenin

[Ralph Dumain]

Some oddities. Seems to be a largely pro-Lenin narrative, rather than 
anti-, or neutral as mandated. I do not know who the "traditional" 
Marxists are that think Lenin deviated from Marxism.

I'd like to know why Lenin's gramophone recording against 
anti-Semitism was suppressed. Given what Russia was, I'm guessing few 
copies would be sold.

There is remarkable objectivity about the Red Terror, an object of 
controversy in the discussion of this entry.  Oddly, though, there is 
less controversy over the article than I would have expected, from 
either those who hate Lenin or those whol still feel the need to lie 
on behalf of the USSR.

At 08:52 AM 2/16/2010, c b wrote:
>When I made corrections in the Coleman Young article, they put back in
>what was up before my corrections. When I wrote to the person who
>seemed to be one of the moderators for that particular wiki-biography,
>I never heard back.
>
>The corrections I made to the Victor Perlo site were deleted and
>previous distortions reiterated.
>
>I can imagine what would happen if one tried to correct Lenin's site. smile
>
>Wiki might not quite be as advertised , but i'm not exactly surprised.
>Smile
>
>On 2/16/10, farmela...@juno.com  wrote:
> >
> > Well, feel free to make corrections
> > in that article.
> >
> > Jim Farmelant
> > http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
> >
> > -- Original Message --
> > From: c b 
> > To: a-l...@lists.econ.utah.edu,  Forum for the discussion of 
> theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and the thinkers he inspired 
> 
> > Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Wiki Lenin
> > Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 08:38:08 -0500
> >
> > I wonder if wikipedia distorts Lenin biography.
> >
> > CB


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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Leibniz & Ideology (3): Bibliography

[Ralph Dumain]

OK, I see your links viz. Leibniz & Deleuze.  I don't see a reference 
to Negri's writing on Leibniz, however.

At 10:55 AM 2/7/2010, CeJ wrote:
>I don't know if the little bit of info. Amazon offers will give any
>clue as to the value of these works. There is no info. about the Negri
>book.
>
>http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0816636702/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk
>
>http://www.amazon.com/Spinoza-Practical-Philosophy-Gilles-Deleuze/dp/0872862186/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b
>
>http://www.amazon.com/Expressionism-Philosophy-Spinoza-Gilles-Deleuze/dp/0942299515/ref=pd_sim_b_1
>
>
>
> From Library Journal
>In this intricately argued work, Deleuze claims that expression is a
>key to understanding Spinoza's philosophy: If A expresses B, then A
>perfectly reproduces all of B's essential characteristics. Nature, for
>instance, expresses God's essence. Deleuze thinks that Spinoza's use
>of expression revolutionizes philosophy; God is no longer seen as the
>world's creator but is identical with it. Furthermore, expression
>characterizes not only the nature of reality but also the manner in
>which Spinoza presents his philosophy, for the order in which Spinoza
>presents his conclusions is supposed to copy the movement of reality.
>Deleuze maintains that Leibniz shared Spinoza's revolutionary stress
>on expression. By their use of this idea, they founded modern
>philosophy. In Deleuze's view, Descartes counts as pre-modern, since
>he did not use the notion of expression. While Deleuze's grasp of
>Spinoza's thought is penetrating, his study is suitable only for
>scholars.
>- David Gordon, Bowling Green State Univ., Ohio
>Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to
>an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
>Product Description
>Expressionism in Philosophy is both a pivotal reading of Spinoza's
>work and also a crucial text within the development of Deleuze's own
>thought. It was the culmination of a series of monographic studies by
>Deleuze (on Hume, Bergson, Nietzsche, Proust, Kant, and
>Sacher-Masoch), and it prepared the transition from these abstract
>treatments of historical schemes of experience to the nomadology of
>Capitalism and Schizophrenia. In this extraordinary work, Deleuze
>reflects on one of the thinkers of the past who most influenced his
>own sweeping reconfiguration of the tasks of philosophy. For Deleuze,
>Spinoza, along with Nietzsche and Lucretius, conceived of philosophy
>as an enterprise of liberation and radical demystification. Gilles
>Deleuze is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Paris
>VIII, Vincennes/Saint Denis.
>
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Leibniz & Ideology (3): Bibliography

[Ralph Dumain]

I'm aware of Deleuze's and Negri's books on 
Spinoza. I found The Savage Anomaly unreadable. 
But folks can judge for themselves:

http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpnegri17.htm

I'm not aware of these authors' takes on Leibniz. 
Please point me to the appropriate writings.

Any comments on Negri's book on Descartes?

Antonio Negri
Political Descartes: Reason, Ideology and the Bourgeois Project
Translated and introduced by Matteo Mandarini and Alberto Toscano
Verso, January 2007.
Radical Thinkers 2
344 pages
http://www.versobooks.com/books/nopqrs/nopq-titles/negri_a_political_decartes_RT2.shtml
 


See also this review:

Reasonable ideology? Negri's Descartes
Issue: 114 International Socialism
Posted: 10 April 07
Dan Swain
Antonio Negri, Political Descartes: Reason, 
Ideology and the Bourgeois Project (Verso 2007), £6.99
http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=319&issue=114


At 10:42 AM 2/7/2010, CeJ wrote:
>Leibniz & Ideology (3): Bibliography
>
>
>I'm not sure what the criteria for inclusion is here, but if you are
>interested in modern philosophers who work with Leibniz's and
>Spinoza's philosophy, Deleuze and Negri make much of Spinoza and
>Leibniz. Deleuze's work had quite an impact on Negri apparently
>(notable because Negri is usually dismissive of most 'post-mo' stuff).
>A few years back I was delving into Machiavelli and Hobbes as a 'side
>project' and that led to taking another look at Leibniz and Spinoza,
>among others. I doubt if most Americans are used to thinking of
>Deleuze as an academic philosopher--nor Negri for that matter.
>
>
>
>Leibniz & Ideology (3): Bibliography
>
>Deleuze
>
>(1968) Spinoza et le problème de l'expression (Paris: Minuit); tr. as
>Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, by Martin Joughin (New York:
>Zone Books, 1990).
>
>
>(1981 [1970]) Spinoza: Philosophie pratique; (Paris: PUF); tr. as
>Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, by Robert Hurley (San Francisco: City
>Lights Books, 1988).
>
>(1988) Le Pli: Leibniz et le Baroque (Paris: Minuit); tr. as The Fold:
>Leibniz and the Baroque, by Tom Conley (Minneapolis: University of
>Minnesota Press, 1993)
>
>Negri
>
>Antonio Negri, Subversive Spinoza: (Un)Contemporary Variations, edited
>by Timothy S. Murphy, translated by Timothy S. Murphy, Michael Hardt,
>Ted Stolze, and Charles T. Wolfe, Manchester: Manchester University
>Press, 2004.
>
>
>Online stuff of Deleuze
>
>http://www.webdeleuze.com/php/liste_texte.php?groupe=Leibniz
>
>http://www.webdeleuze.com/php/liste_texte.php?groupe=Spinoza
>
>
>A wiki piece about that one term that often comes up in modern/post-mo
>discourse about discourse--'multitude'. The wiki piece doesn't seem
>too well written, but
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitude
>
>Multitude is a political term first used by Machiavelli and reiterated
>by Spinoza. Recently the term has returned to prominence because of
>its conceptualization as a new model for organization of resistance
>against the global capitalist system as described by political
>theorists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in their international
>best-seller Empire (2000) and expanded upon in their recent Multitude:
>War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004). Other theorists which
>have recently used the term include political thinkers associated with
>Autonomist Marxism and its sequelae, including Sylvère Lotringer,
>Paolo Virno, and thinkers connected with the eponymous review
>Multitudes.
>Contents
>[hide]
>
>* 1 History
>* 2 Reiteration by Negri and Hardt
>* 3 See also
>* 4 External links
>
>[edit] History
>
>The concept originates in Machiavelli’s Discorsi. It is, however, with
>Hobbes's recasting of the concept as the war-disposed, disolute pole
>of the opposition between a Multitude and a People in De Cive, that
>Spinoza’s conceptualization seems, according to Negri, contrasted
>(See: The Savage Anomaly pp. 109, 140).
>
>The multitude is used as a term and implied as a concept throughout
>Spinoza's work. In the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, for instance,
>he acknowledges that the (fear of the) power (potentia) of the
>multitude is the limit of sovereign power (potestas): ‘Every ruler has
>more to fear from his own citizens […] than from any foreign enemy,
>and it is this “fear of the masses” […that is] the principal brake on
>the power of the sovereign or state.’ The explication of this tacit
>concept, however, only comes in Spinoza's last and unfinished work
>known as the Political Treatise:
>
>It must next be observed, that in laying foundations it is very
>necessary to study the human passions: and it is not enough to have
>shown, what ought to be done, but it ought, above all, to be shown how
>it can be effected, that men, whether led by passion or reason, should
>yet keep the laws firm and unbroken. For if the constitution of the
>dominion, or the public liberty depends only on the weak assistance of
>the laws, not only will the citizens have no security fo

[Marxism-Thaxis] Leibniz & Ideology (3): Bibliography

[Ralph Dumain]

Here's a new bibliography as an inroad to the subject of Leibniz's 
biography, political activity, political and legal ideas, 
metaphysics, theology, and logic as an object for ideological 
analysis and insight into the contradictions of the Enlightenment and 
modernity:

Leibniz & 
Ideology: Selected Bibliography

The best popular introduction to Leibniz as a social actor, in 
contrast to a very different sort of social actor, is:

Stewart, Matthew. 
The Courtier 
and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern 
World. New York: Norton, 2006.

This is an exceptionally good specimen of the recent genre of popular 
philosophical biography, and provides good insight into the 
ideological illusions under which Leibniz operated. For stray 
comments on this and on some of Leibniz's writings, see my:

Leibniz 
blog entry

Again, for what promises to be a major historiographical revision:

Drischler, William Fr. 
The
 
Political Biography of the Young Leibniz in the Age of Secret 
Diplomacy. Charleston, SC: BookSurge Publishing, 2005.

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Political Biography of the Young Leibniz (2)

[Ralph Dumain]

ceptual grasp of the
   complicated constitutional structure of the German Reich.

These findings tend to confirm my assertions that the Muscovites and 
the Russifying Maritime Powers (England and the Netherlands) were 
self-consciously studying and promoting German Protestant 
particularism and that the special expertise concerning the German 
constitutional structure Leibniz displayed in his political magnum 
opus of 1677 (exerpted in Riley, 'Leibniz. Political Writings' 
[Cambridge Press]) played a role in the philosopher's ascendancy in 
the secret diplomacy network.  The best confirmation one could hope 
for is from a source that does not necessarily share all of one's 
ideological predispositions.

   


On to your specific queries.

1) Marx's Leibniz Museum

After the move to Hampstead Heath, Marx set up a Leibniz museum and 
-  for a fee -  displayed and lectured on the Leibniz memorabilia he 
had privately collected. The security structure Old Moor set up was 
most interesting. Everyone in the world who could pay the fee was 
welcome - except Germans (!). Visitors from the old country had to 
provide identification which Marx scrutinized before admitting them. 
Marx had been so often harassed by Prussian spies -  especially after 
he turned down flat Bismarck's offer for him to join the government 
-  that Germans made up a separate category. Even visitors from 
Marx's 'most hated nation' -  Mother Russia -  didn't have to put up 
with an identification check.  As one might expect, there was a touch 
of the cultic about the late Marx's Leibniz ruminations.  The Red 
Prussian stressed that Leibniz' intellect was broader than anyone's 
from the beginning of the Christian Era to the 17th century.

2) Hans Heinz Holz and Leibniz

Holz' standard work on Leibniz is his 'Leibniz' of 1958 (several 
later editions). It stresses metaphysics and takes issue with British 
Empiricist/Anglo-American interpretations of Leibniz such as those 
developed by Bertrand Russell. Holz also edited several volumes of 
Leibniz' philosophical writings. There is little political in any of 
them. Holz' chief political treatment of Leibniz is his intro to the 
volume 'Leibniz. Politische Schriften' (in two volumes).  There is 
much of value in the intro, but -  like a good Bolshevist-Stalinist 
-  Holz systematically evades Leibniz' relation to Russia and the 
Russo- Asiatic mode of production. Holz' editorial selections in the 
two volumes are something else again: quite unacceptable. He included 
nothing from Leibniz' magnum opus of 1677 and one might garner the 
impression from the collection Leibniz had never met Peter the Great. 
Since Leibniz' political influence increased steadily with time, the 
better approach is to stress his writings from 1677 on -  but Holz 
does just the opposite.  The Patrick Riley English-language 
collection of Leibniz' political writings is highly preferable to that of Holz.

3)  Jon Elster on Leibniz

Elster's volume on Leibniz is 'Leibniz et al formation de l'Espirit 
de Capitaliste'. I think there is an English translation. Elster 
writes next to nothing on Leibniz and Russia, so I have little use 
for it. Patrick Riley thought it was no great shakes either.

4)  Adorno volumes

Recent Adorno volumes dealing with the individual and philosophy 
include the 'Vorlesung ueber negative Dialektik' (Vol. 16 of Adorno's 
posthumous publications) and the 'Zur Lehre von der Geschichte u. von 
der Freiheit ' (2006).  Both run to nearly 500 pp. and there's no 
reason to expect an English translation soon.  I will work up a list 
of specific references to Leibniz on Adorno's part (and on the part 
of Horkheimer as well).  But I am above all looking forward to next 
month's paper on Leibniz and Adorno at the World Leibniz Conference in Hanover.

I realize this is quite summary of course, but I hope it was of some 
use to you.

Sincerely,

Wm. Fr. Drischler



At 10:38 AM 2/6/2010, Ralph Dumain wrote:

>This appears to be a Marxist work. It also appears that the author 
>himself made an appearance on marxism-thaxis in 2006. I'll have to 
>check into the archive and see what became of this thread. I also 
>have to put this book on my want list.
>
>The Political Biography of the Young Leibniz in the Age of Secret Diplomacy
>  By William Drischler
>BookSurge, LLC, 2005
>ISBN141961844X, 9781419618444
>Length 84 pages
>http://www.amazon.com/Political-Biography-Leibniz-Secret-Diplomacy/dp/141961844X
> 
>
>
>A political biography of the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm 
>Leibniz. Covers the Young Leibniz (1667-1676), the middle of Hanover 
>Leibniz

[Marxism-Thaxis] Political Biography of the Young Leibniz

[Ralph Dumain]

This appears to be a Marxist work. It also appears that the author 
himself made an appearance on marxism-thaxis in 2006. I'll have to 
check into the archive and see what became of this thread. I also 
have to put this book on my want list.

The Political Biography of the Young Leibniz in the Age of Secret Diplomacy
  By William Drischler
BookSurge, LLC, 2005
ISBN141961844X, 9781419618444
Length 84 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Political-Biography-Leibniz-Secret-Diplomacy/dp/141961844X

A political biography of the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm 
Leibniz. Covers the Young Leibniz (1667-1676), the middle of Hanover 
Leibniz (1676-1694)and the late or Russo-Leibniz (1694-1716).




The Political Biography of the Young Leibniz in
  The Age of Secret Diplomacy

Early Modern State Formation, 17th-Century Political
Discourse and Modern Political Biography Reconsidered

  William Fr. Drischler




ISBN No. 1-4196-1844-X




CONTENTS

Praefatio
ABSTRACT

   Part I. Introduction. Topicality of Leibniz Biography as a Whole

 Revolution A: The Old Political Biography

 Leibniz as de facto Head of State: Pinnacle-Level
 Diplomatic Interventionism in the Sir Roland Gwynne
 Affair in London
 Leibniz as East-West Influence Broker: The Net Inflow/
 Net Outflow Problem in the Relation of Russo-Asia
 to the West
 Leibniz as Unsullied Revolutionary Modernist:
 The Destruction of European Cultural Autonomy
 as a Revolutionary Act

 Revolution B: Early Modern State Formation

 Revolution C: The Denouement of 
17th-CenturyPolitical Theory. Leibniz' Dethronement of Hobbes

   Part II.  An Overview of the Three Stages
   of Leibniz' Political Biography
 Stage III - The Russo-Leibniz: Russification of Europe,
 Eurasianization of the World. The Consolidation of the
 Ango-Russian Secret Diplomacy State, 1694-1716
 Stage II - The Middle Leibniz: Constructing the Hanover
 Pivot, 1676-1694
 Stage I -  The Young Leibniz. The Intrepid Rheinbundler
 Slowly Wise, 1667-1676

   Part III.  Some Conclusions on the Political Biography
 of the Young Leibniz, 1667-1676

Appendix: Schema of Leibniz' Political Biography

Appendix: Early Modern State Formation without Witsen
and Secret Diplomacy? A Comment on Phillip S. Gorski's
'The Disciplinary Revolution'

=

BACK COVER COPY


William Fr. Drischler's 'The Political Biography of the Young Leibniz in the
Age of Secret Diplomacy' attempts significant revisions in three areas of
political analysis at once. In political biography the conventional wisdom
(common to Leibniz specialists and diplomatic historians alike) that the
gout-ridden philosopher was strictly subordinate to heads of state such
as George I of Hanover comes in for criticism; the little-known G.W. v.
Schuetz affair of 1714 -  wherein Leibniz went over the head of the
incoming King of England and entered into an alliance with the
Electoress Mother of Hanover and "Junto Whig" Lords Somers and
Wharton to intervene in succession deliberations at the London
Court of Queen Anne -  reveals Leibniz interacting with heads of
state as a virtual peer.
Also ripe for revolution is the field of Early Modern State Formation,
dominated by the "French paradigm" of a culturally autonomous
West, the indivisibly sovereign nation-state, and the balance of
power concept of international relations.  Building on the recent
path-breaking work of Benno Teschke ('The Myth of 1648: Class,
Geopolitics and the Making of Modern International Relations'),
Drischler argues that Leibniz & Co. finished off the French paradigm
by 1715 and that the actual foundation of modern international
relations was the "Anglo-Russian secret diplomacy state" based on
Eurasian cultural melding with Muscovy, promiscuous federalism and
secret hegemony of the federated nation of Russo-England. Not
merely is the claim made that the concept of the sovereign Western
state is a myth; 'The Political Biography of the Young Leibniz in the
Age of Secret Diplomacy' contends the concept is an ideological
concoction of the Anglo-Russian victors in the Great Northern War,
1700-1721, expressly designed to disguise their deoccidentalizing
regime. However -  and appropriately for a work based largely on
Marx's 'Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century' -
'The Political Biography of the Young Leibniz in the Age of Secret
Diplomacy' provides no comfort for contemporary neo-conservative
federalist thought either, since the core assertion of contemporary
federalists -  namely that federalism represents a novel and real
alternativ

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Rightwinger David Brooks

[Ralph Dumain]

I can't discern where this was published. It's 
miraculous that a little shit like David Brooks 
would be so perceptive about AVATAR, or maybe 
AVATAR really is just standard-issue 
entertainment for simpletons . . . including the left.


At 11:04 AM 2/4/2010, c b wrote:
>Rightwinger David Brooks makes the anti-white 
>supremacy argument on "Avatar". Go figure. 
>(smile) Actually, the Indian meaning of Avatar 
>sort of supports the critics,”a deliberate 
>descent of a deity from heaven to earth” 
>Avatar From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Ten 
>avatars of Vishnu (clockwise, from upper left): 
>Matsya, Kurma, Varaha, Vamana, Krishna, Kalki, 
>Buddha, Parshurama, Rama & Narasimha, and 
>Krishna (centre)In Hinduism, Avatar or Avatāra 
>(Devanagari अवतार, Sanskrit for 
>“descent” [viz., from heaven to earth]) 
>refers to a deliberate descent of a deity from 
>heaven to earth, and is mostly translated into 
>English as “incarnation”, but more 
>accurately as “appearance” or 
>“manifestation”.[1] CB January 8, 2010 Op-Ed 
>Columnist The Messiah Complex By DAVID BROOKS 
>Readers intending to watch the movie 
>“Avatar” should know that major events in 
>the plot are revealed. Every age produces its 
>own sort of fables, and our age seems to have 
>produced The White Messiah fable. This is the 
>oft-repeated story about a manly young 
>adventurer who goes into the wilderness in 
>search of thrills and profit. But, once there, 
>he meets the native people and finds that they 
>are noble and spiritual and pure. And so he 
>emerges as their Messiah, leading them on a 
>righteous crusade against his own rotten 
>civilization. Avid moviegoers will remember “A 
>Man Called Horse,” which began to establish 
>the pattern, and “At Play in the Fields of the 
>Lord.” More people will have seen “Dances 
>With Wolves” or “The Last Samurai.” Kids 
>have been given their own pure versions of the 
>fable, like “Pocahontas” and 
>“FernGully.” It’s a pretty serviceable 
>formula. Once a director selects the White 
>Messiah fable, he or she doesn’t have to waste 
>time explaining the plot because everybody knows 
>roughly what’s going to happen. The formula 
>also gives movies a little socially conscious 
>allure. Audiences like it because it is so 
>environmentally sensitive. Academy Award voters 
>like it because it is so multiculturally aware. 
>Critics like it because the formula inevitably 
>involves the loincloth-clad good guys sticking 
>it to the military-industrial complex. Yet of 
>all the directors who have used versions of the 
>White Messiah formula over the years, no one has 
>done so with as much exuberance as James Cameron 
>in “Avatar.” “Avatar” is a racial 
>fantasy par excellence. The hero is a white 
>former Marine who is adrift in his civilization. 
>He ends up working with a giant corporation and 
>flies through space to help plunder the 
>environment of a pristine planet and displace 
>its peace-loving natives. The peace-loving 
>natives — compiled from a mélange of Native 
>Americcan, African, Vietnamese, Iraqi and other 
>cultural fragments — are like the peace-loving 
>natives you’ve seen inn a hundred other 
>movies. They’re tall, muscular and admirably 
>slender. They walk around nearly naked. They are 
>phenomenal athletes and pretty good singers and 
>dancers. The white guy notices that the 
>peace-loving natives are much cooler than the 
>greedy corporate tools and the bloodthirsty U.S. 
>military types he came over with. He goes to 
>live with the natives, and, in short order, 
>he’s the most awesome member of their tribe. 
>He has sex with their hottest babe. He learns to 
>jump through the jungle and ride horses. It 
>turns out that he’s even got more guts and 
>athletic prowess than they do. He flies the big 
>red bird that no one in generations has been 
>able to master. Along the way, he has his 
>consciousness raised. The peace-loving natives 
>are at one with nature, and even have a 
>fiber-optic cable sticking out of their bodies 
>that they can plug into horses and trees, which 
>is like Horse Whispering without the wireless 
>technology. Because they are not corrupted by 
>things like literacy, cellphones and blockbuster 
>movies, they have deep and tranquil souls. The 
>natives help the white guy discover that he, 
>too, has a deep and tranquil soul. The natives 
>have hot bodies and perfect ecological 
>sensibilities, but they are natural creatures, 
>not history-making ones. When the 
>military-industrial complex comes in to strip 
>mine their homes, they need a White Messiah to 
>lead and inspire the defense. Our hero leaps in, 
>with the help of a pack of dinosaurs summoned by 
>Mother Earth. As he and his fellow freedom 
>fighters kill wave after wave of Marines or 
>former Marines or whatever they are, he achieves 
>the ultimate prize: He is accepted by the 
>natives and can spend the rest of his life 

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Robotic Nation by Marshall Brain

[Ralph Dumain]

I refuse to use self-checkouts under any circumstances. Well, I've 
done it on Amtrak, but not in supermarkets or drug stores. Hopefully, 
live cashiers will not be eliminated completely.

At 12:12 PM 2/2/2010, waistli...@aol.com wrote:
>Robots  like these will come into  our lives much more quickly
>than we
>imagine --  self-service checkout  systems are the first primitive signs of
>the
>trend. Here  is one view  from the future to show you where we are headed:
>
>Automated retail systems like ATMs, kiosks and self-service checkout  lines
>
>marked the beginning of the robotic revolution. Over the course  of fifteen
>years  starting in 2001, these systems proliferated and  evolved until
>nearly
>every  retail transaction could be handled in an  automated way. Five
>million jobs in  the retail sector were lost as a  result of these systems
>
>(_http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm_
>(http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm) )


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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Setting the record straight

[Ralph Dumain]

The CPUSA wore itself out licking Brezhnev's balls for decades while 
operating social-democratically in American politics. I'm surprised 
it still exists after everyone left but Gus Hall, his chaffeur, and his dog.

It is however just one variant of the intellectual collapse of the 
left. All of the old tendencies lie exposed as bankrupt, as whatever 
sustained their fragile existence has been pulled out from under 
them, and what is left are hollow gestures.

Or perhaps someone thinks Chavez's Fifth International is something 
other than unintentional parody?

Another note on Obamaism: it pays to take a closer look at the logic 
of the interplay between the Dems and Republicans and how big capital 
wins either way, or perhaps with both being indispensable: i.e. the 
dynamics of the struggle between the moderate right (culturally more 
liberal) and the far right. The collapse of the American political 
system is becoming evident, way beyond the confines of the left, but 
how discontent is being channeled points to fascism.


At 04:42 AM 1/26/2010, CeJ wrote:
> >>Can anyone figure out what the CPUSA gets in
>return for its apparently unrecquited love
>for Obama and the DP?
>Jim F.<<
>
>That might assume a coherent agenda, something I didn't get from reading
>that drivel.
>
>However, perhaps by being less contentious on the issues than a Kucinich
>for Congress rally, they avoid FBI wire taps and harassment?
>
>Maybe they even get CIA funding like some SPs and CPs in occupied Iraq
>and Afghanistan.
>
>CJ


"People have so manipulated the concept of freedom that it finally 
boils down to the right of the stronger and richer to take from the 
weaker and poorer whatever they still have." -- Theodor W. Adorno


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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Setting the record straight

[Ralph Dumain]

Looks like the real story to me. Notice the entry ends with Gerald 
Ford. Social liberalism was killed off during the Carter 
administration. The secret of all mysteries lies in the '70s.

At 05:39 AM 1/26/2010, CeJ wrote:
>Sometimes in the American political lexicon, a 'liberal' is someone
>who espouses a very weak form of
>'social democracy' European style. Classical liberals, an
>understanding most Americans know nothing of,  have ended up over
>amongst the libertarians I suspect. I suspect the contradiction that
>lies within Barrage Obushwa is warpigism vs. social internventionist
>liberalism. A religious belief in America and its right to dominate
>the world is always the glue that keeps such incoherence going.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United_States
>
>History of modern liberalism in the United States
>...


_

"If you don't know the '70s, you don't know shit!" 


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