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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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[Jim Farmelant]

On Fri, 26 Mar 2010 10:40:26 -0400 c b  writes:
> The Roy Rappaport mentioned here is the professor who got me into
> anthropology. I had anthro 101 with him. (It was during the 1970 
> BAM
> strike at University of Michigan, which we are commemorating in a
> couple of weeks. Rappaport held classes off campus to support the
> strike. He did an ethnography _Pigs for the Ancestors_ within the
> cultural adaptation/ecological paradigm, Papua New Guinea.

What was his relationship with Marvin Harris?
His views seem quite similar to Harris's.


Jim Farmelant
http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant

> 
> CB
> 
> Roy Rappaport
> 
> Roy A. Rappaport (1926–1997) was a distinguished anthropologist 
> known
> for his contributions to the anthropological study of ritual and to
> ecological anthropology.
> 
>

Hotel
Hotel pics, info and virtual tours.  Click here to book a hotel online.
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=6Y2Q4ZTzabTkq117h98GjgAAJ1AP8ttsZd_TbiVxkZxsC3mBAAYAAADNAAATRAA=

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] an·tag·o·nist Sorry Charlie , Just nailed it down

[c b]

Yes, antagonism is a contradiction that cannot be resolved without a
qualitative change in the system.

On 3/24/10, waistli...@aol.com  wrote:
> 7.5
>
>
> Antagonism:
>
> Antagonism is the basis of destruction and a form of transition to a new
> mode of production. It is a form of resolution of relations of production
> that  have entered into collision with qualitatively changing productive
> forces. (see  productive forces)
>
> In class society, the collision between qualitatively new productive forces
>  and old relations of production, cannot be resolved based on the struggle
> between the two classes constituting the old relations of production.
> Resolution takes place outside - external, the contradiction that is  the two
> classes constituting old relations of production. The external  agent is the
> new classes connected to the new means of production. Resolution is
> negation  by destruction of the two old classes and their property  form..
>
> "The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the
> social process of production – antagonistic not in the sense of individual
> antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social
> conditions of existence – but the productive forces developing within 
> bourgeois
>  society create also the material conditions for a solution of this
> antagonism.(Marx).  (see Dialectics: quantity, quality, the antagonistic  
> element.)
>
>
>
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[Marxism-Thaxis] Fidel Castro on THE US HEALTHCARE REFORM

[c b]

Reflections by comrade Fidel

THE US HEALTHCARE REFORM

Barack Obama is a zealous believer in the imperialist capitalist
system imposed by the United States to the world. ?God bless the
United States,? is the final phrase of his speeches.

   Some events hurt the sensitivity of the world public which
sympathized with the victory of the African-American over the
far-right candidate in that country. On the basis of one of the
deepest economic crises the world has known, and on the pain brought
on by the young Americans who lost their lives or were injured or
maimed in the genocidal wars of conquest unleashed by his predecessor,
he won with the vote of the majority of the 50% of Americans who cast
a vote in that democratic nation.

   Out of an elementary sense of ethic, Obama should have
refrained from accepting the Nobel Peace Prize when he had already
decided on sending forty thousand troops to an absurd war in the heart
of Asia.

   The warmongering policy and the plundering of natural
resources, as well as the unequal terms of trade of the current
administration toward the poor countries of the Third World are no
different from those of his predecessors, most of them from the
far-right, --with few exceptions?throughout the past century.

   The antidemocratic document imposed at the Copenhagen
Summit on the international community, which had given credit to his
promise to cooperate in the struggle against climate change, was
another one of those events that disappointed many people around the
world. The United States, the largest producer of greenhouse-gas
emissions, was not willing to make the necessary sacrifices despite
the flattering previous words of its president.

   The list of contradictions would be endless between the
ideas defended by the Cuban nation for five decades with great
sacrifices and the selfish policies of that colossal empire.

   Still, we don?t feel any animosity toward Obama, much less
toward the American people. We feel that the Healthcare Reform has
been a significant battle and a success of his administration.
However, it is really amazing that 234 years after the Declaration of
Independence proclaimed in Philadelphia in the year 1776, which drew
inspiration from the ideas of the great French encyclopedists, the
government of that country has approved medical care for the
overwhelming majority of its citizens, something that Cuba
accomplished for its entire population half a century ago despite the
cruel and inhuman blockade imposed --and still in force--  by the
mightiest country that has ever existed. In the past, it was only
after almost a century of independence and following a bloody war,
that Abraham Lincoln could obtain the legal emancipation of the
slaves.

   On the other hand, I can?t help but think of a world where
over one-third of the population have no access to medical care or the
basic medicines required to ensure health.  And this situation will be
aggravated as climate change, and water and food shortage worsen in a
globalized world where the population grows, the forests disappear,
the arable land decreases, the air is more polluted, and the human
species inhabiting it ?which emerged less than 200 thousand years
back, that is, 3.5 billion years after the first forms of life on the
planet?is running the real risk of annihilation.

   Even conceding that the Health Reform comes as a success
to the Obama administration, the current President of the United
States cannot ignore that climate change poses a threat to health, and
worse still, to the very existence of every nation in the world, as
the rise in temperature ?beyond critical limits which are already in
sight?melts down the water of the glaciers, and the tens of millions
of cubic meters contained in the enormous ice caps of the Antarctic,
Greenland and Siberia melt down within a few decades leaving under
water every port facility in the world and lands where a large part of
the world population lives, works and eats today.

   Obama, the leaders of the wealthy nations and their
allies, as well as their scientists and sophisticated research centers
are aware of this; they cannot ignore it.

   I understand the satisfaction expressed in the
presidential speech and his recognition of the contribution made by
the members of Congress and the administration to make possible the
miracle of the Health Reform, which strengthens the government?s
position vis-?-vis political lobbyists and mercenaries that curtail
the authority of the administration. It would be worse if those
responsible for tortures, murders on contract and genocide were in
charge of the US government again. As a man unquestionably smart and
sufficiently well informed, Obama knows there is no exaggeration in my
words. I hope the foolish remarks he sometimes makes about Cuba do not
cloud his mind.

   In the aftermath of his success in this battle for the
right

[Marxism-Thaxis] Univ of Mich BAM strike 40 years ago

[c b]

This is the Harvard Crimson's report on the Univ of Michgan Black
Action Movement strike for affirmative action.  Obviously the strike
could not have shut down the school without the support of most White
students, who were the overwhelming majority of the population
(obviously)

CB

^

 
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1970/4/10/on-strike-at-the-university-of/?print=1


April 10, 1970
On Strike at the University of Michigan
NO WRITER ATTRIBUTED
Finally, a list of eleven demands was submitted to the administration:

Ten per cent black enrollment by fall, 1963.( ? - CB)

900 new black students by fall, 1971 (450 freshmen, 150 transfers, 300
graduate students).

An adequate supportive services program including financial aid to
finance black students' education.

Graduate and (nine) undergraduate recruiters to recruit blacks.

A referendum on the March Student Government Council ballot to have
students vote on assessing themselves $3.00 for one year for the
Martin Luther King Scholarship Fund.

Tuition waived for minority group students who are residents of the
State of Michigan and admitted under special programs.

The establishment of a community-located Black Student Center.

All work of a permanent nature on the Black Studies Program is to be
halted until a community-university forum and effective input is
established.

The creation of a university-wide appeal board to rule on the adequacy
of granting financial aid grants to students.

A revamping of the Parents' Confidential Statement.

One recruiter for Chicano students to assure 50 students by fall, 1970.

These demands seem quite moderate, but there are special circumstances
at Michigan which must be kept in mind for an understanding of the
conflict that followed. The University of Michigan is a state school,
supported and run by state taxes and tuition charges, which are higher
for out-of-state students than for residents of Michigan. The
governing body of the university is a Board of Trustees, an
eight-member body elected by the voting public of Michigan on a
state-wide basis for staggered terms of four years each. The Regents
are mostly businessmen, directors of corporations; seven are white and
one, as a young faculty member explained, is colored, not black.

Although considered liberal among Big Ten schools, Michigan's student
body is largely infected by Midwest conservatism. There are 36,700
students, with about 20,000 of those undergraduates, primarily in the
college of Literature, Science and Arts (LSA). There are seventeen
other schools and colleges in the University of Michigan.

Black students from the various schools joined together to form the
Black Action Movement (BAM) in order to present their eleven demands
to the university administration. After receiving vague responses from
university president Robben Fleming, BAM presented the list of demands
to the Regents at their bi-monthly meeting on Thursday, March 19. The
Regents' response was very unsatisfactory. They promised an admissions
goal "aimed at ten per cent enrollment of black students and
substantially increased numbers of other minority and disadvantaged
groups" by 1973-74. The problem with this promise was that the Regents
allotted only three million dollars to the program at the end of four
years, an amount which would allow, as Fleming admitted, five or six
per cent black admissions. Other additional funds to reach the "goal"
of ten per cent were to be solicited from outside sources. In other
words, the university had committed itself only to five to six per
cent black enrollment while superficially announcing a goal of ten per
cent. Most of the other BAM demands were left unanswered; they were to
be referred to a committee which would be set up under the Regents'
decision.

THE BAM response was to call a student strike. A mass demonstration at
about 800 students on Thursday after the Regents' ruling ended in a
violent confrontation with state and local police. Some windows at the
administration building were broken by thrown rocks and police moved
in to arrest four persons.

Friday, March 20, was the first full day of the strike. It was marked
by the beginnings of an amazing coalition of white student groups
pledged totally in support of the BAM demands: International
Socialists, SDS, New Mobe, Student Mobilization Committee, Young
Democrats, and Phoenix Anarchists formally backed the BAM demands and
joined the call for the strike. Women's Liberation and ENACT
(Environmental Action) also organizationally backed the strike and the
demands, though less formally. The official Student Government
Council, the representative student government, voted support for the
demands, joined the strike, and gave BAM some $2,200 worth of
duplicating materials and supplies.

Leaders of all these groups joined together and formed the Coalition
to Support BAM, a group with incredibly broad-based support amon

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[c b]

Memes, and Related Ideas about the Evolution of Culture
31 Dec 2009 16:57



Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man. But they don't bite everybody.
---Attrib. Stanislaw Lem
Just what is a meme? Dawkins calls it an imitable behavior, but most
people who use the notion are more concerned with ideology than how to
lay the table, and even Dawkins cites religion as a bundle of memes
--- "viruses of the mind," is his phrase. Which brings me to:
Metaphorical uses, as opposed genuine research. Spread of the
meme-meme (just the other year I saw in the cultural studies section
of the local bookstore a tract called Media Viruses whose palpitating
dust-jacket makes it appear as though the secret workings of the world
are to be laid bare by the author using the magic tool of "viruses of
the mind"; and whose index and bibliography don't even mention
Dawkins.) And thought-cliches. And pseudo-events. And propaganda. Is
the reputation of The Selfish Gene as a piece of crude Social
Darwinism a meme?
How far back does the contagion analogy for ideas go?

Can one have a "memetic illness," the same way some people have
genetic illnesses? What would it look like? Organized religion? A
millenarian movement?

See also: Archaeology; Evolution; Evolutionary Economics; Evolutionary
Epistemology; Historical Materialism; Religion; Sociology; Universal
Darwinism.

Recommended:
J. M. Balkin, Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology [Full text free online]
Raymond Boudon [Studies of the mechanisms which make people receptive
to ideas, especially bad ideas, by giving them what seem like good
reasons to believe them --- sometimes they even are good reasons.]
The Analysis of Ideology
The Art of Self-Persuasion
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, ch. 11
Daniel Dennett
Darwin's Dangerous Idea
"The Evolution of Evaluators"
"Memes and the Exploitation of the Imagination"
"Memes: Myths, Misunderstandings and Misgivings"
Herbert Gintis, Game Theory Evolving
The on-line Journal of Memetics
Stanley Lieberson, A Matter of Taste: How Names, Fashions, and Culture
Change [See under sociology.]
Aaron Lynch
Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads throug Society [This would be
one of the best books on memetics, even if there were more than, oh,
say, five of them. Review: The Case for the Meme's Eye View]
"Units, Events and Dynamics in Memetic Evolution," Journal of Memetics
2 [Lots of sound math, few metaphors]
Franco Moretti
"On Literary Evolution," the last essay in Signs Taken for Wonders
(2nd ed. only) [Interesting things to say about how literary forms
evolve, but some of his ideas about organic evolution are strange,
e.g., that natural selection does not act during radiations.]
"The Slaughterhouse of Literature", Modern Language Quarterly 61
(2000): 207--227
Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History
W. G. Runciman
The Social Animal [Primer on sociology, from an evolutionary/memetic
point of view. Summary and revision of the highlights of his Treatise
on Social Theory.]
WGR, "On the Tendency of Human Societies to Form Varieties,"
Proceedings of the British Academy 72 (1986): 149--165 [The 1986
Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthropology. An early version of
his general theory. The title, of course, deliberately echoes that of
the paper by Darwin and Wallace announcing natural selection.]
WGR, "The 'Triumph' of Capitalism as a Topic in the Theory of Social
Selection," New Left Review 210 (March-April 1995): 33--47
[Application of the theory to the classic problem of historical
sociology (see: Marx, Weber).]
Michael Rustin, "A New Social Evolutionism?," New Left Review 234
(May-June 1999): 106--126 [Exposition and critique, from the
standpoint of the weird mix of Marx, Nietzsche and Althusser that NLR
is into these days]
WGR, "Social Evolutionism: A Reply to Michael Rustin," New Left Review
236 (July-August 1999): 145--153
"Socialising Darwin," Prospect, April 1998 [Summary of The Social
Animal; no longer available online to non-subscribers]
"The Diffusion of Christianity in the Third Century AD as a Case-Study
in the Theory of Cultural Selection", European Journal of Sociology 45
(2004): 3--21 [Nice illustration of one of Runciman's goals, in that
it "eschews any attempt at" "law-like cross-cultural generalizations
... in favour of a selectionist analysis explicitly focused on the
particular historical environment", while in no way doubting "the
existence of universal psychological capacities and dispositions".]
Dan Sperber, Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach [Review: How
to Catch Insanity from Your Kids (Among Others); or, Histoire
naturelle de l'infame. Though Sperber would disclaim being a
memeticists, this is one of the two best books on memetics. Sperber
also ties all this in neatly to evolutionary psychology.]
Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding, vol. 1, The Collective Use and
Evolution of Concepts [Genuinely evolutionist --- as in,
varia

[Marxism-Thaxis] Left critique of New Atheism

[c b]

Article

Culture & Barbarism
Metaphysics in a Time of Terrorism

Terry Eagleton


-clip-
If Marxism once held out a promise of reconciling culture and
civilization, it is partly because its founder was both a Romantic
humanist and an heir of Enlightenment rationalism. Marxism is about
culture and civilization together-sensuous particularity and
universality, worker and citizen of the world, local allegiances and
international solidarity, the free self-realization of flesh-and-blood
individuals and a global cooperative commonwealth of them. But Marxism
has suffered in our time a staggering political rebuff;

^
CB: but not a significant philosophical/theoretical one.

^^^

 and one of the places to which those radical impulses have migrated
is-of all things-theology.


^
CB: Like to Jesse Jackson ? MLKing ?

^

In theology nowadays, one can find some of the most informed and
animated discussions of Deleuze and Badiou, Foucault and feminism,
Marx and Heidegger. That is not entirely surprising, since theology,
however implausible many of its truth claims, is one of the most
ambitious theoretical arenas left in an increasingly specialized
world-one whose subject is nothing less than the nature and
transcendental destiny of humanity itself. These are not issues easily
raised in analytic philosophy or political science. Theology’s
remoteness from pragmatic questions is an advantage in this respect.



We find ourselves, then, in a most curious situation. In a world in
which theology is increasingly part of the problem, it is also
fostering the kind of critical reflection which might contribute to
some of the answers. There are lessons that the secular Left can learn
from religion, for all its atrocities and absurdities; and the Left is
not so flush with ideas that it can afford to look such a gift horse
in the mouth. But will either side listen to the other at present?
Will Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins read this and experience
an epiphany that puts the road to Damascus in the shade? To use two
theological terms by way of response: not a hope in hell. Positions
are too entrenched to permit such a dialogue. Mutual understanding
cannot happen just anywhere, as some liberals tend to suppose. It
requires its material conditions. And it seems unlikely these will
emerge as long as the so-called war on terror continues to run its
course.

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[c b]

Marxism-Thaxis] Alan Carling's synopsis of *TheProofofthePudding:
Reason and Value in Social Evolution*
Charles Brown CharlesB at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us
Tue Feb 19 13:19:37 MST 2002







http://rjohara.uncg.edu/darwin/logs/1996/9609a.html

Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 14:56:22 CST
From: ggale at CCTR.UMKC.EDU
To: DARWIN-L at RAVEN.CC.UKANS.EDU
Subject: evolutionary thinking in archeology




In this week's _Science_ (30 August 96) is a review
of book, _Zapotec Civilization_, which might interestDarwin-Listers.
Here is a salient passage from the review:
"Building on the theoretical foundation laid by his anthropological
predecessors at the University of Michigan--Leslie White, Elman Service,
and Marshall Sahlins, among others--Flannery made the concepts of adaption
and selection from the theory of biological evolution central to explaining why,
under certain environmental and cultural conditions, some forms of
social, political, and economic institutions tended to
develop while others withered away." (p. 1178)



CB: Kent V. Flannery is one of the major archaelogist in the cultural
evolutinonary school.

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[c b]

Alan Carling's synopsis of *The Proofofthe Pudding: Reason and Value
in Social Evolution*
Charles Brown CharlesB at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us
Wed Feb 20 13:43:09 MST 2002





Here is what seems to be a significant error in Diamond's thesis ( I
quote Carling's discussion of Diamond)

Kottak points out in his basic anthro text ( _Cultural
Anthropology_,1991) that domestication of plants and animals begins
somewhere between 12 and 10,000 years ago in Southwest Asia ( "Middle
East") . European world dominance only arises about 300 years ago.
Before that "Europe" ( Northwest Asia) was a backwater for much of the
time.  So, whatever distribution of  plants and animals "Europe" had
did not cause it to "expand" anymore than any other region until
almost 10,000 years after the first human domestication of plants and
animals. This shoots a pretty big hole in Diamond's white supremacist
thesis.

In fact , using one of the theses from Sahlins and Service's
_Evolution and Culture_, " the law of evolutionary potential", we
might hypothesize that Europe rose in dominance about 3 - 500 years
ago because it was the most backward society in its neighborhood, not
the most advanced. The law of evolutionary potential states that the
least specifically adapted society has the most potential to make the
next general advance ( Recall Sahlins thesis on specific and general
advance). I think Service says they got this from Trotsky or Lenin on
the analogy of Russia being the weakest link in the capitalist chain.
The logic is that the society that is least adapted is most
dissatified with the status quo, and would be more amenable to
whatever new comes along. Thus , Europe adopted capitalism first,
because European feudalism was the most unstable society in the world
or region; it had the most evolutionary ( or revolutionary) potential
because it was the most backward, not because it had the richest
natural environment. In fact , there are a number of studies , I
believe that show that rich natural environments tend to promote
stability, the reasoning being that natural abundance promotes
satisfaction and deters change, the change that is necessary for
"advances" of the type Diamond discusses.

Charles Brown



"Diamond s evidence will be considered in detail in Chapter 7. The
main point to note here is that the rise and spread of agricultural
societies depended on the original distribution, and subsequent
geographical spread, of the animal and plant species that were
amenable to domestication by humans. The secret of  Europe , and of
subsequent European expansion is that European flora and fauna
included a uniquely numerous and diverse set of wild yet domesticable
species, including wheat, peas and olives on the plant side; sheep and
goats among the beasts.

Domestication increased the productivity of agricultural societies,
which led in turn to the development of social stratification, the
growth of city and state formations, and so on. As these more highly
productive societies encountered less productive hunting-gathering
societies, it was the latter that gave way systematically to the
former, which is precisely the outcome that Competitive Primacy
predicts. This is the general pattern, but there are some fascinating
exceptions that serve to support the theory too. These are instances
in which populations with an inherited tradition of bio-technology and
culture regressed technologically because the environments into which
they migrated were relatively impoverished. Occasionally the
competition between social types went back and forth over long periods
of time, with no clear winner. Sometimes societies would meet in which
each society had a technological advantage in some respect but not in
others, and a synthesis might emerge with elements of both. The
Polynesian archipelago is a particularly fertile source of such
examples, because of the isolated nature of the island communities,
coupled with their variety of habitat and climate. The region provides
Diamond with a kind of natural laboratory for social evolution akin to
the role played by the Galapagos Islands for Darwin and his finches. "

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[c b]

Marxism-Thaxis] Alan Carling's synopsis of *The Proof of the Pudding:
Reason and Value in Social Evolution*
Charles Brown CharlesB at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us
Wed Feb 20 07:55:49 MST 2002



Mr. Carling,

If I might comment further on your thesis, I think you ignore the
first clause of Marx and Engels famous aphorism below in your
development of a sort of absolute "unintentionality" in the
development of human society. M and E say people "make their own
history...". This implies some intention. This is in unity and
contradiction with the statement "but they do not make it just as they
please."  As they are dialecticians, we should not be surprised that
their statement contains a contradiction. But my point here is that
they are saying that the development of society is both intentional
and unintentional.

The important issue for your thesis is that you do not have to discard
all impact of human intention in the development of social forms.

So when you say:

"It seemed appropriate to call this mechanism Competitive Primacy (of
the forces of production) and to support its claims against
alternative conceptions, especially Intentional Primacy (of the forces
of production).[30] The latter conception envisages the deliberate
creation of relations of production of a type that will enhance the
development of the forces of production. It says essentially that
relations attached to superior forces prevail because people have
taken successful collective action designed to bring about this
result, motivated by the economic and social benefits superior
productivity brings in its train. But this requires the intentional
creation of social structure, which has been ruled out by the
arguments of Chapter 4. So the only theoretically defensible version
of historical materialism is the one that centres on the concept of
Competitive Primacy. "

Arguments by intention should not be absolutely ruled out. They can
play a role in contradictory unity with arguments by unintentional
selection. In other words, there is something of a "LaMarckian"
mechanism at this level as well.

Charles Brown



"According to Marx s celebrated saying, people  make their own
history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make
it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances
directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. [1] The
purpose of this book is to do justice if possible to both sides of the
contrast introduced by Marx: to explore the relationship between the
received circumstances of history on the one hand, and its active
making on the other. "

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[c b]

Marxism-Thaxis] Alan Carling's reply
Charles Brown CharlesB at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us
Wed Feb 20 07:44:50 MST 2002



>>> farmelantj at juno.com 02/20/02 04:55AM >>>

- Forwarded message --
From: Alan Carling 

Carling says:
The final set of questions you pose seem to me the central ones for any
21st Century egalitarian.  My worry is essentially this: if  Competitive
Primacy is true (as I now think may be the case), do there exist
egalitarian alternatives to capitalism which are capable of competitive
survival against it?  If the answer to this question is 'No', then
(successful) Marxist theory has (ironically, or tragically) ruled out
Marxian politics, and the Marxist/socialist/enlightenment egalitarian
project is dead in the water. So I have a considerable personal and
intellectual investment in the answer being 'Yes', and I regard the
various
market socialist  proposals as promising candidates in this respect. But
even if one or other of these proposed solutions could survive in the
globally-competitive environment created by contemporary capitalism, can
it
be brought into existence by intentional political action?



^

Charles B: This competition with capitalism is the reason that the
state cannot whither away in socialism until there are no more
capitalist states.

On the issue of intentional politics, the general answer is that with
Marxism the question of intentionally shaping society turns into its
opposite, i.e.it becomes possible to consciously guide the development
of society, contra Carling's general proposition against Intentional
Primacy or "Human Intention" in his four ways that the appearance of
design can come about. In other words, Marxism is an objective
understanding of human society. Once one has an objective science of
human society ( as no previous society did) it becomes possible to
consciously and intentionally guide its development. In other words,
Marx and Engels's discovery allows the overcoming of one of their
propositions concerning all previous society. To apply Engels approach
on science in general, to know something is to be able to make it.
Once we know society , we can make it.

So socialism can intentionally compete with capitalism.

cc: Alan Carling



On 3/26/10, c b  wrote:
> Marxism-Thaxis] Alan Carling's reply
> Jim Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com
> Wed Feb 20 02:55:29 MST 2002
>
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>
> 
>
> - Forwarded message --
> From: Alan Carling 
> To: Jim Farmelant 
> Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2002 18:30:04 +
> Subject: Re: Selectionism:  Me, Popper, and Hayek
> Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20020102183004.00a4d310 at pop.brad.ac.uk>
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>
> Dear Jim,
>
> I was very pleased to receive your perceptive message, especially as it
> was
> apparently sent on Christmas morning (Maybe you were trying sensibly to
> escape from the festivities!). The questions you pose are very pertinent
> ones, to which I don't have any very satisfactory answers.
>
> As you will have gathered, I reached the position that the only
> plausible
> version of historical materialism is a selectionist one through an
> engagement with Jerry Cohen's work, and Analytical Marxism more
> generally.
> It was only subsequent to that realisation/discovery that I saw a
> parallel
> with the work of the 'bourgeois' social selectionists you mention.  I
> think
> Dennett is wonderful on the general power of the selectionist paradigm,
> Dawkins is always interesting, and Blackmore is slightly derivative. The
> 'meme' idea I do not find especially persuasive however, and by far the
> most impressive of the bourgeois selectionists in my view is
> W.G.Runciman.
> I'm in the middle of writing a critique of his Treatis

[Marxism-Thaxis] 5 Marxism-Thaxis members have posted 14 papers on Academia.edu

[Richard Price]

Dear Marxism-Thaxis members,

We just wanted to let you know about some recent activity on the
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Founder of Academia.edu

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[c b]

Marxism-Thaxis] Alan Carling's reply
Jim Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com
Wed Feb 20 02:55:29 MST 2002

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- Forwarded message --
From: Alan Carling 
To: Jim Farmelant 
Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2002 18:30:04 +
Subject: Re: Selectionism:  Me, Popper, and Hayek
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Dear Jim,

I was very pleased to receive your perceptive message, especially as it
was
apparently sent on Christmas morning (Maybe you were trying sensibly to
escape from the festivities!). The questions you pose are very pertinent
ones, to which I don't have any very satisfactory answers.

As you will have gathered, I reached the position that the only
plausible
version of historical materialism is a selectionist one through an
engagement with Jerry Cohen's work, and Analytical Marxism more
generally.
It was only subsequent to that realisation/discovery that I saw a
parallel
with the work of the 'bourgeois' social selectionists you mention.  I
think
Dennett is wonderful on the general power of the selectionist paradigm,
Dawkins is always interesting, and Blackmore is slightly derivative. The
'meme' idea I do not find especially persuasive however, and by far the
most impressive of the bourgeois selectionists in my view is
W.G.Runciman.
I'm in the middle of writing a critique of his Treatise on Social
Theory,
and I'd be happy to send you a copy when it's finished if you are
interested.

Although I've obviously known about Popper and Hayek in general terms
for
a
long time, I've only  recently appreciated their direct relevance, and I
don't know enough about them to answer your question. It may be that my
gardening is not all that different from Popper's piecemeal social
engineering, and I will no doubt have to give this issue serious
attention
in any book that appears.

The final set of questions you pose seem to me the central ones for any
21st Century egalitarian.  My worry is essentially this: if  Competitive
Primacy is true (as I now think may be the case), do there exist
egalitarian alternatives to capitalism which are capable of competitive
survival against it?  If the answer to this question is 'No', then
(successful) Marxist theory has (ironically, or tragically) ruled out
Marxian politics, and the Marxist/socialist/enlightenment egalitarian
project is dead in the water. So I have a considerable personal and
intellectual investment in the answer being 'Yes', and I regard the
various
market socialist  proposals as promising candidates in this respect. But
even if one or other of these proposed solutions could survive in the
globally-competitive environment created by contemporary capitalism, can
it
be brought into existence by intentional political action?

My impression is that the exponents of market socialism do not generally
engage with this crucial question of transition (which brings Popper
back
into the frame). The problem is that revolutionary socialists had (a few
still have!) a dogmatically-held and ultimately indefensible (though
personally sustaining) set of answers to this question, centred around
the
proletariat, the  party apparatus, and their favourite version of
Leninism
(or Trotskyism). Analytical Marxists and others have rightly abandoned
the
dogmatism and Leninism, but they haven't elaborated any alternative
theory
of political agency. Neither have I, but this is the problem on which my
sights are now set firmly. I would hope to say something useful about it
in
the book. The fundamental point is that the theory of political agency
(whatever it is) must be woven from the same cloth as the theory of
social
evolution, since to act politically is to intervene in the reproduction
of
social structures.

Perhaps I could close by asking some questions of you. You are obviously
very knowle

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[c b]

Marxism-Thaxis] Alan Carling's synopsis of *The Proofofthe Pudding:
Reason and Value in Social Evolution*
Charles Brown CharlesB at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us
Tue Feb 19 12:29:02 MST 2002

Marxism-Thaxis] Alan Carling's synopsis of *The Proofofthe Pudding:
Reason and Value in Social Evolution*
Charles Brown CharlesB at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us
Tue Feb 19 12:29:02 MST 2002

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Proof ofthe Pudding: Reason and Value in Social Evolution*
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*TheProofofthe Pudding: Reason and Value in Social Evolution*
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More on the anthropological school of thought that has delved into
Carling's hypothesis at length.  Note White's energy capture thesis
which is based on an interpretation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

Charles Brown



Neoevolutionism
Leslie White began working with evolutionary theories in the 1930's.
At the time, unilineal evolution was unpopular with anthropologists
because generalizations were made based on little evidence. Also,
unilineal evolution seemed to encourage racist ideas by equating
evolution with progress. However, it was being observed that cultures
did change, or evolve. White began studying evolution to attempt to
understand why evolution in cultures occurs. Neoevolutionism is
characterized by this attempt to find a mechanism for cultural change,
which is typically environmental adaptations.

White also believed that evolution is a unilineal process. However, he
eliminated the use of racial terms and ranking of cultures. He also
came up with a mechanism for evolution. He felt that cultures evolved
as a result of their ability to capture and use more energy. His
equation describing this is C=E × T. C stands for culture, E stands
for energy and T stands for technology. White thought of societies as
sociocultural systems and studied sociocultural change on a global
scale, so his theories are called general evolution.

Julian Steward felt that White was too broad in his theories. Steward
instead focused on how individual cultures evolved and how environment
affects culture. Because Steward emphasized the role environment
plays, he became the first proponent of cultural ecology, and his
ideas influenced later cultural materialists. He felt that similar
environmental challenges resulted in similar cultural outcomes. He
tested this theory by studying the evolution of the earliest
agricultural societies. Steward felt that while it is true that all
cultures evolve, they don't all necesarily evolve in the same way. He
called his approach multilinear evolution, as opposed to Tyler and
Morgan's unlineal evolution, and what he called White's universal
evolution.

Marshall Sahlins and Elman Service formed an evolutionary theory that
unified White's and Steward's approaches to evolution. They defined
two forms of evolution, specific evolution and general evolution.
Specific evolution refers to specific societies and relates to
Steward's approach. General evolution encapsulates White approach and
refers to a general prograss of human society, in which higher forms,
which capture more energy, arise from and surpass lower forms.



More on the anthropological school of thought that has delved into
Carling's hypothesis at length.  Note White's energy capture thesis
which is based on an interpretation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

Charles Brown



Neoevolutionism
Leslie White began working with evolutionary theories in the 1930's.
At the time, unilineal evolution was unpopular with anthropologists
because generalizations were made based on little evidence. Also,
unilineal evolution seemed to encourage racist ideas by equating
evolution with progress. However, it was being observed that cultures
did change, or evolve. White began studying evolution to attempt to
understand why evolution in cultures occurs. Neoevolutionism is
characterized by this attempt to find a mechanism for cultural change,
which is typically environmental adaptations.

White also believed that evolution is a unilineal process. However, he
eliminated the use of racial terms and ranking of cultures. He also
came up with a mechanism for evolution. He felt that cultures evolved
as a result of their ability to capture and use more energy. His
equation describing this is C=E × T. C stands for culture, E stands
for energy and T stands for technology. White thought of societies as
sociocultural systems and studied sociocultural change on a global
scale, so his theories are called general evolution.

Julian Steward felt that White was too broad in his theories. Steward
instead focused on how individual cultures evolved and how environment
affects culture. Because Steward emphasized the role environment
plays, he 

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[c b]

[Marxism-Thaxis] Alan Carling's synopsis of *The Proof ofthe Pudding:
Reason and Value in Social Evolution*
Charles Brown CharlesB at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us
Tue Feb 19 07:40:35 MST 2002



Following up the below, as I  was walking home last night I realized
that there has been an enormous empirical project in pursuit of the
general experimental design suggested by Carling has been carried out
in cultural and evolutionary materialist anthropology, following
Leslie A. White and others. The culminating theoretical book of that
school is _Evolution and Culture_, by Marshall Sahlins and Elman
Service. ( Sahlins is no longer sanguine about the approach). There
the adaptive metaphor from Darwinism is applied fully to cultures.
Many , many anthro and archaeology profs and grad students have done
field work and writing based on this schema.

Actually the below discusses this in summary
http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/material.htm

_Evolution and Culture_ is circa 1960 not 1988

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORIES:
A GUIDE PREPARED BY STUDENTS FOR STUDENTS
Dr. M.D. Murphy

AMERICAN MATERIALISM

KAREN SMITH


Basic Premises
 Key Works
 Accomplishments
 Sources and Bibliography

Points of Reaction
 Principal Concepts
 Criticisms
 Relevant Web Sites

Leading Figures
 Methodologies
 Comments


Basic Premises

Materialism, as an approach to understanding cultural systems, is
defined by three key principles, cultural materialism, cultural
evolution, and cultural ecology, and can be traced back at least to
the early economists, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (see Principal
Concepts).

These basic premises, defined below, have in common attempts at
explaining cultural similarities and differences and modes for culture
change in a strictly scientific manner. In addition, these three
concepts all share a materialistic view of culture change. That is to
say, each approach holds that there are three levels within culture
--- technological, sociological, and ideological --- and that the
technological aspect of culture disproportionately molds and
influences the other two aspects of culture.

Materialism is the "idea that technological and economic factors play
the primary role in molding a society" (Carneiro 1981:218). There are
many varieties of materialism including dialectical (Marx), historical
(White), and cultural (Harris). Though materialism can be traced as
far back as Hegel, an early philosopher, Marx was the first to apply
materialistic ideas to human societies in a quasi-anthropological
manner. Marx developed the concept of dialectical materialism
borrowing his dialectics from Hegel and his materialism from others.
To Marx, "the mode of production in material life determines the
general character of the social, political, and spiritual processes of
life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their
existence, but on the contrary, their social existence determines
their consciousness" (Harris 1979:55). The dialectic element of Marx's
approach is in the feedback or interplay between the infrastructure
(i.e., resources, economics), the structure (i.e., politcal makeup,
kinship), and the superstructure (i.e., religion, ideology). The
materialistic aspect or element of Marx's approach is in the emphasis
placed on the infrastructure as a primary determinate of the other
levels (i.e., the structure and the superstructure). In other words,
explanations for culture change and cultural diversity are to be found
in this primary level (i.e., the infrastructure).

Marvin Harris, utilizing and modifying Marx's dialectical materialism,
developed the concept of cultural materialism. Like Marx and White,
Harris also views culture in three levels, the infrastructure, the
structure, and the superstructure. The infrastructure is composed of
the mode of production, or "the technology and the practices employed
for expanding or limiting basic subsistence production," and the mode
of reproduction, or "the technology and the practices employed for
expanding, limiting, and maintaining population size" (Harris
1979:52). Unlike Marx, Harris believes that the mode of reproduction,
that is demography, mating patterns, etc., should also be within the
level of the infrastructure because "each society must behaviorally
cope with the problem of reproduction (by) avoiding destructive
increases or decreases in population size" (Harris 1979:51). The
structure consists of both the domestic and political economy, and the
superstructure consists of the recreational and aesthetic products and
services. Given all of these cultural characteristics, Harris states
that "the etic behavioral modes of production and reproduction
probabilistically determine the etic behavioral domestic and political
economy, which in turn probabilistically determine the behavioral and
mental emic superstructures" (Harris 1979:55,56). The above concept is
cultural materialism or, in Harris' terms

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[c b]

http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2002-February/017522.html

[Marxism-Thaxis] Alan Carling's synopsis of *The Proof of the Pudding:
Reason and Value in Social Evolution*
Charles Brown CharlesB at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us
Mon Feb 18 14:35:57 MST 2002

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Jim,

I read this paper when you posted it on Marxmail. Thank you again.

I think the answer to Carling's question in the following passage is ,
in part, that language, symbolic behavior, what cultural
anthropologist generalize to culture,  is a mechanism by which
acquired characteristics can be inherited ( non-biologically of
course). In other words , culture is a LaMarckian mechanism. It should
be obvious why a LaMarckian mechanism would meet Carling's requirement
that what he is looking for is an adaptive mechanism that is not a
Darwinian selective mechanism.

Culture or language and symbolling allow the experiences of one
generation to be the basis for learning without going through the same
hardknocks of experience for future generations. This is a much more
rapid process than Darwinian selective adaption.



Carling says on page 4:
"But now the special explanatory puzzle presented by this case becomes
clear. Given an overarching commitment to Darwinian explanations for
the existence of all mental traits (modular and non-modular alike),
how does it come about that it was in the genetic interest of
proto-humans that certain of their behaviours (i.e. the ones governed
by non-modular mental processes) were released from genetic control?
Or, putting the puzzle in even more pointed terms: why did natural
selection act so as to work genes out of a job? We are seeking, in
short, a neo-Darwinian explanation for the non-applicability of
neo-Darwinian sociobiology.

It was noted above that the premise of this problem is the existence
of some non-modular human mental traits, without the need to specify
in detail which traits are modular and which are not.[7] But we also
know enough to know that the principal traits at issue are those that
involve language, meaning and reference. This focus on the means of
symbolic communication reflects an emerging consensus about the
central distinctiveness of the human species.[8] "

Later in the essay Carling says:

"But the existence of such consequences is a plausible contention,
since, as Engels expressed the point, ideas are a material force. To
drive the point home, imagine a proto-human world populated by egos
and alters.[10] In this world, ego s thoughts and beliefs affect what
ego does (including ego s speech acts), and what ego does or says
affects what alter thinks and believes, and therefore what alter does,
which has possible consequences for ego too. And the same goes not
just for alter 1, but alters 2, 3 and 4. The emergence of symbolic
communication thus allows the output of each brain to become an input
to many other brains, and this creates a network of interaction
effects. "


CB:Here Carling addresses what I term the "expanded sociality" that
symbolic use and language allows. However, the biggest expansion of
sociality is that between generations in the non-genetic inheritance
that culture allows.

Seems to me that complexity theory's notion of self-organization is
supported by things like crystal structure in rocks.  It seems to be
the principle of aesthetics in nature. A beautiful sunset is
self-organizing. So, I agree with Carling that they can be a factor in
a process but not a replacement for selection. However, symbolizing
can include such aesthetics and therefore some culture has order in it
which is not related to selection.

Of course the following is controversial in that many believe that
Marx and Engels etc. had already given their theory a "coherent
theoretical statement". Perhaps it is better said that Cohen clarified
things for himself , Carling and others. But isn't Marx's theory one
of class struggle determinism, not technological determinism ?

"It is widely agreed that the most significant event in the recent
history of Marxist scholarship was the publication in 1978 of
G.A.Cohen s Karl Marx s Theory of History: a Defence.[28] Two of the
book s multiple achievements stand out in the present context. First,
it was shown that the classical Marxist theory of history, as
summarised most perspicaciously in Marx s 1859 Preface, can be given a
coherent theoretical statement. This statement centred on the role
played by the (technological) forces of production in either promoting
or inhibiting the historical development of the (social) relations of
production. The treatment was analytical in its mode of presentation
and classically Marxist in content, althoug

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[c b]

Alan Carling is the one with the selectionist theoretical approach to
cultural evolution.

Charles

http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2002-February/017520.html


Marxism-Thaxis] Alan Carling's synopsis of *The Proof of the Pudding:
Reason and Value in Social Evolution*
Jim Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com
Sun Feb 17 08:13:32 MST 2002

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defies expectations
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On September 12, Alan Carling presented a paper at the Marxism
Conference 2001 of the Political Studies Association in which
he presented a synopsis of a new, yet to be published book,
in which he develops and defends his selectionist version
of historical materialism, and relates his theorizing concerning
historical materialism and Darwinism with the work of
various bourgeois thinkers who have been attempting
to relate Darwinism to the human sciences including
the sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists,
Karl Popper with his evolutionary epistemology,
the social evolutionism of F.A. Hayek, and memetics
as proposed by folk like Richard Dawkins, Susan
Blackmore, and Daniel Dennett.   Carling discusses
and critiques these folks' work and attempts to
make a case as to why his own selectionist historical
materialism represents a superior approach to the
problems that these other people have been attempting
to deal with.

Carling's paper can be found online at

http://www.psa.ac.uk/spgrp/marxism/carling.htm

Jim Farmelant

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko -- A Query

[c b]

On 3/26/10, Carrol Cox  wrote:
> I haven't been able to follow this thread, and dobutless the query I
> have has already been discussed.
>
> Lysenko constitutes TWO quite separate/independent questions.
>
> The first is raised by his scientific theories. Judging them is of great
> interest no doubt, but they do not constitute the real problem.
>
> The second question is one that Levins & Lewontin raised: the political
> methods by which his theories were made an orthodoxy. That would have
> hampered biolgoical theory even if his science had been 100% correct.
> Science cannot flourish in an authoritarian atmosphere.
>
> Carrol
>


^^^
CB: I agree that there is some separation of the questions, although ,
and I have to go back and think it through, but there is some level of
philosophy of science/epistemological debate in Lysenko, Stalin etc.
position. The potrayal of Stalin as a philosophical fool is Hollywood
silent movie  simplistic villain thinking.

As to whether science can "flourish in whatever, a lot of science very
much flourishing in the Soviet Union during Stalin's time. It
anti-Soviet, anti-Communist lies in the face of overwheming evidence
before the whole world that the Soviet Union led in many areas of
science. So that dog won't hunt.  Remember the atom bomb, Sputnik .
Those are just the "sexy" examples. There are many many more.  Science
is one area that definitely flourished in the history of the SU.

Vernadsky was in an authoritarian atmosphere under Czarism.


Vladimir Vernadsky

Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky


Born March 12, 1863 (1863-03-12)
Saint Petersburg, Russia
Died January 6, 1945 (aged 81)
Moscow, Soviet Union

Residence Russian Empire
Soviet Union
Nationality Russian
Ethnicity Ukrainian and Russian
Fields Mineralogist, geochemist
Institutions Moscow State University
National Academy of Science of Ukraine
Alma mater Saint Petersburg University
Known for Noosphere
biogeochemistry
Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (Russian: Владимир Иванович Вернадский,
Ukrainian: Володимир Іванович Вернадський; 12 March [O.S. 28 February]
1863 – 6 January 1945) was a Russian and Soviet mineralogist and
geochemist who is considered one of the founders of geochemistry,
biogeochemistry, and of radiogeology.[1] His ideas of noosphere were
an important contribution to Russian cosmism. He also worked in
Ukraine where he founded the National Academy of Science of Ukraine.
He is most noted for his 1926 book The Biosphere in which he
inadvertently worked to popularize Eduard Suess’ 1885 term biosphere,
by hypothesizing that life is the geological force that shapes the
earth. In 1943 he was awarded the Stalin Prize.

Contents [hide]
1 Biography
2 Works (selected)
2.1 Diaries
3 Notes
4 See also
5 References
6 External links


[edit] Biography
Vernadsky was born in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, on March 12,
1863, of mixed Russian and Ukrainian parents. His father, a descendent
of Ukrainian Cossacks,[2] had been a professor of political economy in
Kiev before moving to Saint Petersburg, and his mother was a noble
woman of Russian ethnicity[3] (Vernadsky himself considered himself
both Russian and Ukrainian, and had some knowledge of the Ukrainian
language[4]).

Vernadsky graduated from Saint Petersburg University in 1885. As the
last mineralogist had died in 1887 in Russia, and Dokuchaev, a soil
scientist, and A.P. Pavlov, a geologist, had been teaching mineralogy
for a while, Vernadsky chose to enter Mineralogy. He wrote to his wife
Natasha Vernadsky on 20 June 1888 from Switzerland:

"...to collect facts for their own sake, as many now gather facts,
without a program, without a question to answer or a purpose is not
interesting. However, there is a task which someday those chemical
reactions which took place at various points on earth; these reactions
take place according to laws which are known to us, but which, we are
allowed to think, are closely tied to general changes which the earth
has undergone by the earth with the general laws of celestial
mechanics. I believe there is hidden here still more to discover when
one considers the complexity of chemical elements and the regularity
of their occurrence in groups..."
While trying to find a topic for his doctorate, he first went to
Naples to study with the crystallographer Scacchi, who was senile at
that time. The senility of Scacchi lead Vernadsky to go to Germany to
study under Paul Groth. There, Vernadsky learned how to use the modern
equipment of Groth who had developed a machine to study the optical,
thermal, elastic, magnetic and electrical properties of crystals, as
well as using the physics lab of Prof. Zonke, who was also working on
crystallisation.

Vernadsky first popularized the concept of the noosphere and deepened
the idea of the biosphere to the meaning largely recognized by today's
scientific community. The word biosphere was invented by Austrian
geologist Eduard Suess, whom Vernadsky had met in 1911.

In Vernadsky's theory of how the Eart

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko -- A Query

[Carrol Cox]

I haven't been able to follow this thread, and dobutless the query I
have has already been discussed.

Lysenko constitutes TWO quite separate/independent questions.

The first is raised by his scientific theories. Judging them is of great
interest no doubt, but they do not constitute the real problem.

The second question is one that Levins & Lewontin raised: the political
methods by which his theories were made an orthodoxy. That would have
hampered biolgoical theory even if his science had been 100% correct.
Science cannot flourish in an authoritarian atmosphere.

Carrol

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[c b]

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.


CB: How self-serving to your phantom arugments for _you_ to decide
that people you disagree with are ignoramuses and that Engels is
muddled and confused.

Where are your arguments ?  Not too many people care much about what
you have decided in private or among some small group of geniuses.
Repeatability of results is an aspect of the objectivity standards of
science and logic.

You don't exhibit much logical prowess around here.

^^^

(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.


CB:  Without which crash industrialization all intellectual activity
would have been subordinated to the task of building fascism after the
Nazis conquered the SU.

Where do you get that there is supposed to be scientific work
autonomous of the state power in socialism under major imperialist
seige.  Get a motherfucking clue. You are living in your head, it's
obvious and you don't even realize how far that is from the Marxism of
Marx.

^^^

(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.

^^^
CB; Poor unappreciated genius, under  a Cassandra curse.

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[c b]

Re-evaluating Lysenko
Ralph Dumain rdumain at autodidactproject.org
Fri Mar 26 00:04:27 MDT 2010

Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko
Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]



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,


^^^
CB: Like where specifically ?

This is a conclusory assertion unsubstantiated by argument.

^^^


 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.

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[c b]

Wow !

CB

". Interestingly, this method applies a Lamarckian model of genetics,
in which environmental adaptations of an individual's phenotype are
reverse transcribed into its genotype and become heritable traits
(sic). "



^^^
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/76804/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

Automated docking using a Lamarckian genetic algorithm and an
empirical binding free energy function

Garrett M. Morris 1, David S. Goodsell 1, Robert S. Halliday 2, Ruth
Huey 1, William E. Hart 3, Richard K. Belew 4, Arthur J. Olson 1 *
1Department of Molecular Biology, MB-5, The Scripps Research
Institute, 10550 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, California
92037-1000
2Hewlett-Packard, San Diego, California
3Applied Mathematics Department, Sandia National Laboratories,
Albuqurque, New Mexico
4Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of
California, San Diego, La Jolla, California

email: Arthur J. Olson (ol...@scripps.edu)

*Correspondence to Arthur J. Olson, Department of Molecular Biology,
MB-5, The Scripps Research Institute, 10550 North Torrey Pines Road,
La Jolla, California 92037-1000

Funded by:
 National Institutes of Health; Grant Number: GM48870, RR08065

Keywords
automated docking • binding affinity • drug design • genetic algorithm
• flexible small molecule protein interaction


Abstract
A novel and robust automated docking method that predicts the bound
conformations of flexible ligands to macromolecular targets has been
developed and tested, in combination with a new scoring function that
estimates the free energy change upon binding. Interestingly, this
method applies a Lamarckian model of genetics, in which environmental
adaptations of an individual's phenotype are reverse transcribed into
its genotype and become heritable traits (sic). We consider three
search methods, Monte Carlo simulated annealing, a traditional genetic
algorithm, and the Lamarckian genetic algorithm, and compare their
performance in dockings of seven protein-ligand test systems having
known three-dimensional structure. We show that both the traditional
and Lamarckian genetic algorithms can handle ligands with more degrees
of freedom than the simulated annealing method used in earlier
versions of AUTODOCK, and that the Lamarckian genetic algorithm is the
most efficient, reliable, and successful of the three. The empirical
free energy function was calibrated using a set of 30 structurally
known protein-ligand complexes with experimentally determined binding
constants. Linear regression analysis of the observed binding
constants in terms of a wide variety of structure-derived molecular
properties was performed. The final model had a residual standard
error of 9.11 kJ mol-1 (2.177 kcal mol-1) and was chosen as the new
energy function. The new search methods and empirical free energy
function are available in AUTODOCK, version 3.0.   © 1998 John Wiley &
Sons, Inc.   J Comput Chem 19: 1639-1662, 1998




Received: 3 February 1998; Accepted: 24 June 1998
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1002/(SICI)1096-987X(19981115)19:14<1639::AID-JCC10>3.0.CO;2-B  About DOI




On 3/26/10, c b  wrote:
> Science 7 April 2000:
> Vol. 288. no. 5463, p. 38
> DOI: 10.1126/science.288.5463.38
>  Prev | Table of Contents | Next
>
> News Focus
> GENETICS:
> Was Lamarck Just a Little Bit Right?
> Michael Balter
> Although Jean-Baptiste Lamarck is remembered mostly for the
> discredited theory that acquired traits can be passed down to
> offspring, new findings in the field of epigenetics, the study of
> changes in genetic expression that are not linked to alterations in
> DNA sequences, are returning his name to the scientific literature.
> Although these new findings do not support Lamarck's overall concept,
> they raise the possibility that "epimutations," as they are called,
> could play a role in evolution.
>
>
>
> Read the Full Text
>

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[c b]

Science 7 April 2000:
Vol. 288. no. 5463, p. 38
DOI: 10.1126/science.288.5463.38
 Prev | Table of Contents | Next

News Focus
GENETICS:
Was Lamarck Just a Little Bit Right?
Michael Balter
Although Jean-Baptiste Lamarck is remembered mostly for the
discredited theory that acquired traits can be passed down to
offspring, new findings in the field of epigenetics, the study of
changes in genetic expression that are not linked to alterations in
DNA sequences, are returning his name to the scientific literature.
Although these new findings do not support Lamarck's overall concept,
they raise the possibility that "epimutations," as they are called,
could play a role in evolution.



Read the Full Text

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[c b]

Roy A. Rappaport
(1926-1997, United States)

Roy A. Rappaport was a cultural materialist who explained cultural
phenomenon in terms of material factors among people and the
surrounding natural environment. One of his famous books, Pigs for the
Ancestors, was an example of his cultural materialistic approach. This
book describes the role of a religious ceremony among Tsembaga, a
community of horticulturalists in New Guinea. This community conducted
a ritual, called kaiko, when they won new land from warfare. In the
ceremony, the Tsembaga planted ritual trees on the border of new
territory and slaughtered a large number of pigs for pork. The
Tsembaga explained to Rapapport that they slaughter pigs in order to
offer the pork to their ancestors, and they plant ritual trees in
order to create a connection with ancestral souls on their new land.
In addition to describing Tsembaga’s point of view, Rappaport
calculated caloric exchanges among the community, the natural
environment, and neighboring populations.

As a result of this calculation, Rappaport found that the kaiko ritual
was articulated with the ecological relationship among people, pigs,
local food supplies, and warfare. Warfare and the succeeding kaiko
ritual occurred every couple of years and this cycle corresponds with
the increasing pig population. In other words, the ritual kept the
number of pigs within the capacity of the natural environment and
prevented land degradation. At the same time, the kaiko ceremony
distributed surplus wealth in the form of pork and facilitated trade
among people.

Rappaport’s analysis on kaiko ritual is typical of cultural
materialist point of view. In general, religious ceremonies are
strictly cultural and can be explained in terms of values and other
non-material concepts. However, Rappaport revealed how the kaiko
ritual is interrelated with material aspects of the Tsembaga society
and their surrounding natural environment.

Biography of Rappaport

Sources:
Barfield, Thomas 1996The Dictionary of Anthropology. Malden: Blackwell.


McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms 2004  Anthropological Theory: An
Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[c b]

The Roy Rappaport mentioned here is the professor who got me into
anthropology. I had anthro 101 with him. (It was during the 1970 BAM
strike at University of Michigan, which we are commemorating in a
couple of weeks. Rappaport held classes off campus to support the
strike. He did an ethnography _Pigs for the Ancestors_ within the
cultural adaptation/ecological paradigm, Papua New Guinea.

CB

Roy Rappaport

Roy A. Rappaport (1926–1997) was a distinguished anthropologist known
for his contributions to the anthropological study of ritual and to
ecological anthropology.

Rappaport received his Ph.D. at Columbia University and then held a
position at the University of Michigan. One of his publications, Pigs
for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People
(1968), is an ecological account of ritual among the Tsembaga Maring
of New Guinea. This book is often considered the most influential and
most cited work in ecological anthropology (see McGee and Warms 2004).
In that book, and elaborated elsewhere, Rappaport coined the
distinction between a people's cognized environment and their
operational environment, that is between how a people interpret their
ecological niche and how their reality actually exists.

Rappaport served as Chair of the Department of Anthropology,
University of Michigan, and as a past president of the American
Anthropological Association. Rappaport died of cancer in 1997.

[edit] Works
McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms (2004) Anthropological Theory: An
Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Rappaport, R.A. (1968) Pigs for the Ancestors. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Rappaport, R.A. (1979) Ecology, Meaning and Religion. Richmond: North
Atlantic Books.
Rappaport, R.A. (1984) Pigs for the Ancestors. 2nd edition. New Haven:
Yale University Press.
Rappaport, R.A. (1999) Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[edit] External links
Biography by Julia Messerli
Obituary, The University Record (University of Michigan), October 15, 1997.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Rappaport";
Categories: 1926 births | 1997 deaths | American anthropologists |
Anthropologists of religion | Psychological anthropologists |
University of Michigan faculty | Columbia University alumni
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http://courses.washington.edu/anth457/cultadap.htm


CULTURE, ADAPTATION, & MEANING



A Philosophical Prologue

According to Rappaport (1971:246),

Nature is seen by men through a screen composed of beliefs, knowledge,
and purposes, and it is in terms of their cultural images of nature,
rather than in terms of the actual structure of nature, that men act.
Therefore...if we are to understand the environmental relations of men
[it is necessary] to take into account their knowledge and beliefs
concerning the world around them, and their culturally defined motives
for acting as they do. But...although it is in terms of their
conceptions and wishes that men act in nature it is upon nature
herself that they do act, and it is nature herself that acts upon men,
nurturing or destroying them.

Rappaport (p 247) goes on to say that in order to deal with
discrepancy between cultural beliefs about the environment and the
environment as it really is, the anthropologist must construct 2
models of reality: one = the "cognized model," the other = the
"operational model"

He argues that the cognized model is part of a human population's
"distinctive means of maintaining itself in its environment" (p 247)

Thus, a cognized model should be judged not on how accurate it is
(i.e., in comparison with the operational model) but on its
"functional and adaptive effectiveness" -- the extent to which it
motivates behavior which favors the biological well-being of the
population and its ecosystem (ibid)

What Rappaport is wrestling with here is an example of recurrent
tension between emic & etic analyses in the human sciences:

?emic (after phonemic, and rhyming with it) = description or analysis
in terms meaningful to member of a given culture (Rappaport's
"cognized model")

?etic (after phonetic, and ditto) = description or analysis in terms
meeting logical & empirical criteria of natural science (Rappaport's
"ope

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[farmela...@juno.com]

Up through the 1920s and 1930s,
neo-Lamarckianism was still quite
a respectable viewpoint in biology.
The experiments that discredited it
were not done until the late 1930s
and into the 1940s.  So during
the lifetimes of Michurin and
Pavlov, neo-Lamarckianism was
still scientifically respectable.
And that was still the case when
Lysenko first came on the scene.
The problem was that Lysenko with
the baking of the Soviet regime
continued to hang on to neo-Lamarckiansm,
and more importantly was able to
coerce other Soviet scientists into
hanging on to it, long after it
had been discredited in the West.
That caused immeasurable harm
to Soviet biology, especially
when that led to scientists like
Vavilov being imprisoned for
being Mendelians.

One consequence of this was that
after Lysenkoism fell in 1965,
there was a backlash against
anything that was seen as
smacking of Lyensenkoism.
Conversely, Soviet scientists
and intellectuals became very
enthusiastic supporters of
Mendelian genetics and of
anything that could be
portrayed as being grounded
in it. Thus, when E.O. Wilson 
began publishing on sociobiology, his
work received a generally favorable
reaction in the Soviet Union.
Many Soviet scientists and officials
during the 1970s and 1980s began
to publicly avow hereditarian
explanations for social problems
like crime. This hereditarianism
was used to exculpate Soviet
social institutions of responsibility
for the persistence of social problems
like crime, alcoholism, shiftlessness etc.

Jim Farmelant
http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant

-- Original Message --
From: c b 
To: Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and the 
thinkers he inspired 
Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 10:10:14 -0400

This from wikipedia says that Pavlov was a LaMarckian. So, maybe that
had some play in the Lysenko situation.

CB

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism


Neo-Lamarckism
Unlike neo-Darwinism, the term neo-Lamarckism refers more to a loose
grouping of largely heterodox theories and mechanisms that emerged
after Lamarck's time, than to any coherent body of theoretical work.




Home Improvement Projects
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[c b]

Darwin's Defenders Go Neo-Lamarckian
by Joy
Nick Matzke and Mesk made comments in several threads yesterday [Feb.
21] about how "information about the environment" is encoded in
genomes. This set me to thinking (look out!) about how positively
Lamarckian that sounds, even as used in purely defensive terms against
objections to the current theory's arbitrary restrictions on adaptive
"information" and its actual origin.

Matzke readily admits that life forms (and their genomes) "closely
match" – are adapted to – their environments. I doubt that many
biologists would dispute this, not even Richard Dawkins, who admits
that life "looks designed." The issues revolve around how life
acquired the appearance of design.


The currently favored model is Neodarwinism, simplified to the
mechanisms of random mutation and natural selection [RM-NS]. Darwin
himself favored a more Lamarckian version of variation (mutation)
called "pangenesis," and Herbert Spencer was a positive Lamarckian.
Neo-Lamarckism was very popular among American scientists at the turn
of the twentieth century, and served as one of the philosophical
underpinnings of 'scientific eugenics' in its positive forms. It has
survived in a number of evolutionary models among dissident scientists
chafing under the spiked bridle of "Darwinian Orthodoxy" as
discoveries pile up suggesting strongly that not all genes are
acquired by random mutation in old genes, that expression can be
enhanced or suppressed by epigenetic processes, and that the good ol'
Weismann barrier – which was proposed as means to prevent somatic
genome developments from crossing into germline cells – is
non-existent in cases where the acquired genes come with attached
promoters.

http://telicthoughts.com/darwins-defenders-go-neo-lamarckian/

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[c b]

[edit] Lamarckism and societal change
Jean Molino (2000) has proposed that Lamarckian evolution may be
accurately applied to cultural evolution.

^^^
CB: So, did Charles Brown , right here on Thaxis. I also wrote a
letter to Lewontin on this issue and he responded to me, which I
reported here. I'll have to find the posts in the archives.




 This was also previously
suggested by Peter Medawar (1959) and Conrad Waddington (1961). K. N.
Laland and colleagues have recently suggested that human culture can
be looked upon as an ecological niche like phenomena, where the
effects of cultural niche construction are transmissible from one
generation to the next.


CB: Exactly. There is a whole school of ecological cultural
anthropology. Yehudi Cohen published to readers of essays in this
vein.

The notion of culture as an extrasomatic adaptive mechanism unique to
the human species is fundamental to the cultural materialsim of Leslie
White and others.




^^^


One interpretation of the Meme theory is that
memes are both Darwinian and Lamarckian in nature,


^
CB: The Lamarckian principle doesn't "violate" Darwin's laws, but
Mendel's.  No inheritance of acquired characteristics is a Mendelian,
not Darwinian dogma.


Yes. Culture as a LaMarckian-like mechanism

 as in addition to
being subject to selection pressures based on their ability to
differentially influence Human minds, memes can be modified and the
effects of that modification passed on. Richard Dawkins notes (in
Blackmore 2000: The Meme machine, page 13), that Memes can be copied
in a Lamarckian way (copying of the product) or in a Weismann-type
evolutionary way (copying of the instruction) which is much more
resistant against changes.


CB: Jim F. found a fellow who uses selectionist model in this context.
 Will look to the archives.

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re-evaluating Lysenko

[c b]

This from wikipedia says that Pavlov was a LaMarckian. So, maybe that
had some play in the Lysenko situation.

CB

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism


Neo-Lamarckism
Unlike neo-Darwinism, the term neo-Lamarckism refers more to a loose
grouping of largely heterodox theories and mechanisms that emerged
after Lamarck's time, than to any coherent body of theoretical work.

In the 1920s, Harvard University researcher William McDougall studied
the abilities of rats to correctly solve mazes. He found that children
of rats that had learned the maze were able to run it faster. The
first rats would get it wrong 165 times before being able to run it
perfectly each time, but after a few generations it was down to 20.
McDougall attributed this to some sort of Lamarckian evolutionary
process.[citation needed] Oscar Werner Tiegs and Wilfred Eade Agar
later showed McDougall's results to be incorrect, caused by poor
experimental controls.[10][11][12][13][14]

At around the same time, Ivan Pavlov, who was also a Lamarckist,
claimed to have observed a similar phenomenon in animals being subject
to conditioned reflex experiments. He claimed that with each
generation, the animals became easier to condition. However, Pavlov
never suggested a mechanism to explain these observations.

Soma to germ-line feedback

In the 1970s the immunologist Ted Steele, formerly of the University
of Wollongong, and colleagues, proposed a neo-Lamarckian mechanism to
try and explain why homologous DNA sequences from the VDJ gene regions
of parent mice were found in their germ cells and seemed to persist in
the offspring for a few generations. The mechanism involved the
somatic selection and clonal amplification of newly acquired antibody
gene sequences that were generated via somatic hyper-mutation in
B-cells. The mRNA products of these somatically novel genes were
captured by retroviruses endogenous to the B-cells and were then
transported through the blood stream where they could breach the
soma-germ barrier and retrofect (reverse transcribe) the newly
acquired genes into the cells of the germ line. Although Steele was
advocating this theory for the better part of two decades, little more
than indirect evidence was ever acquired to support it. An interesting
attribute of this idea is that it strongly resembles Darwin's own
theory of pangenesis, except in the soma to germ line feedback theory,
pangenes are replaced with realistic retroviruses.[15]

Epigenetic inheritance

Forms of 'soft' or epigenetic inheritance within organisms have been
suggested as neo-Lamarckian in nature by such scientists as Eva
Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb. In addition to 'hard' or genetic
inheritance, involving the duplication of genetic material and its
segregation during meiosis, there are other hereditary elements that
pass into the germ cells also. These include things like methylation
patterns in DNA and chromatin marks, both of which regulate the
activity of genes. These are considered "Lamarckian" in the sense that
they are responsive to environmental stimuli and can differentially
affect gene expression adaptively, with phenotypic results that can
persist for many generations in certain organisms. Although the
reality of epigenetic inheritance is not doubted (as countless
experiments have validated it), its significance to the evolutionary
process is uncertain. Most neo-Darwinians consider epigenetic
inheritance mechanisms to be little more than a specialized form of
phenotypic plasticity, with no potential to introduce evolutionary
novelty into a species lineage.[16]

Lamarckism and single-celled organisms
While Lamarckism has been discredited as an evolutionary influence for
larger lifeforms, some scientists controversially argue that it can be
observed among microorganisms.[17] Whether such mutations are directed
or not also remains a point of contention.

In 1988, John Cairns at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, England,
and a group of other scientists renewed the Lamarckian controversy
(which by then had been a dead debate for many years).[18] The group
took a mutated strain of E. coli that was unable to consume the sugar
lactose and placed it in an environment where lactose was the only
food source. They observed over time that mutations occurred within
the colony at a rate that suggested the bacteria were overcoming their
handicap by altering their own genes. Cairns, among others, dubbed the
process adaptive mutation.

If bacteria that had overcome their own inability to consume lactose
passed on this "learned" trait to future generations, it could be
argued as a form of Lamarckism; though Cairns later chose to distance
himself from such a position.[19] More typically, it might be viewed
as a form of ontogenic evolution.

There has been some research into Lamarckism and prions. A group of
researchers, for example, discovered that in yeast cells containing a
specific prion protein Sup35, the yeast were able to gain new genetic
material, some of which g

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

[c b]

In the movie "Reds", John Reed gets imprisoned in Finland on his way
to Russia to join up with the Bolsheviks. When he gets to Moscow
released from prison, it is in exchange for some Russian
intellectuals. He is riding in a car with a young Bolshevik, who tells
him "Lenin said he would trade fifty petit bourgeois professors for
Comrade Reed."

On 3/26/10, Ralph Dumain  wrote:
> 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 sele

[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