Re: Re: Hume the Postmodern Grin without a Cat (wasRe: pomoistas)
Last time I checked, Hume's price-specie flow model is still taught in university economics classes to measure price and money supply dynamics under a gold standard. Not a bad concoction for someone whose "universe" implies that "identities in general are fiction, subject only to customs." Do we really need to abstract economic implications from the /philosophy/ of one of the most influential political economists of the 18th century? Ben Day On Sun, 10 Sep 2000, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Hume is just saying that it's impossible to rationally demonstrate that, because X has always followed Y in the past, it will do so in the future. This is a bit far afield of pen-l, though, I suppose. Ben Not so afield of PEN-L, in that Hume's philosophy -- his view that there are no dependent entities, hence there is no absurdity in a grin without a cat (or a Robinson Crusoe, an abstract individual absolutely free from autonomous of social relations) the future is radically uncertain -- is a sign of the times: "Everything solid melts into air," the transition from feudalism (where dependence is universal Aristotle's final causes assure the sense of order) to capitalism (where dependence is exceptional products of human labor become divorced from human ends in the anarchy of capitalism, which Adam Smith covers up with the surreptitious reintroduction of Providence which transvalues private vices into public virtues). In the Humean universe, personal identities in particular identities in general are fiction, subject only to customs, hence to radical self-fashioning -re-fashioning. The age of (pre-modern) allegories with type names ends; the epoch of novel with proper names -- for instance, Robinson Crusoe Moll Flanders, self-made man woman -- begins. For elaboration of this theme, see, for example, Ian Watt, _The Rise of the Novel_: "Just as the modern study of society only began once individualism had focussed attention on man's apparent disjunction from his fellows, so the novel could only begin its study of personal relationships once _Robinson Crusoe_ had revealed a solitude that cried aloud for them[I]t is appropriate that the tradition of the novel should begin with a work that annihilated the relationships of the traditional social order, and thus drew attention to the opportunity and the need of building up a network of personal relationships on a new and conscious patterns; the terms of the problem of the novel and of modern thought alike were established when the old order of moral and social relationships was shipwrecked, with Robinson Crusoe, by the rising tide of individualism" (92). Hume himself, however, backed off from the most radical implications of his own philosophy: "We can form no wish which has not a reference to society" (_Treatise of Human Nature_). And yet his pragmatic acceptance of what he thought of as dictates of nature customs is at odds with the rest of his philosophy in which nothing is logically dependent for existence on anything else. He couldn't solve this aporia* (and didn't even try to), for it cannot be solved in philosophy -- abstract individualism is real ideological at the same time, as Marx teaches us. In other words, Hume left us a problem that can be only solved in collective political practice. Deliberating with oneself wouldn't do. *a-po'-ri-a from Gk. aporos "without a passage" diaporesis addubitatio, dubitatio addubitation, doubht, the doubtfull Deliberating with oneself as though in doubt over some matter; asking oneself (or rhetorically asking one's hearers) what is the best or appropriate way to approach something. http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/Figures/APORIA.HTM Yoshie
EXPAND THE DEBATE TEACH-IN SERIES - Boston, MA (Distribute Widely)
The first Presidential Debate in the U.S. has been scheduled to come to the University of Massachusetts-Boston on October 3rd. All third party candidates, and with them a broad spectrum of positions, ideas, and options will be excluded from the debate. The values of diversity and plurality - essential to any democracy - have been increasingly violated in the U.S. as its two major parties lean towards the same platform, funded by and catering to corporate interests and big money. UMass Boston's Radical Student Alliance has assembled a series of seven panels of speakers and a debate on independent progressive politics to scrutinize important issues which will find no dissenting voice in the mainstream debates or media, as well as to challenge the political structure that supports such monopolitics. Please, join us and find out whether alternative politics offer a more just and fair alternative for you! UMass Boston's Radical Student Alliance Presents: EXPAND THE DEBATE TEACH-IN SERIES [All seven teach-ins will be held in the Lipke Auditorium at UMass Boston - directions listed below.] THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES IN AMERICA Friday September 15 - 2:30-5:00 * Ben Day from UMass Boston's Radical Student Alliance. * Thomas Ferguson author of Golden Rule, Senior Associate Provost at UMass Boston. * Reverend David Carl Olson Minister of the Community Church of Boston. MILITARY SPENDING AND FOREIGN INTERVENTION Monday September 18 - 2:30-5:00 * Anthony Arnove of South End Press and the International Socialist Organization, editor of Iraq Under Siege. * Kim Foster from the Rainforest Action Network. * Mathew Knoester from the Colombia Support Network. CONTINGENT LABOR AND SOCIAL WAGE Friday September 22 - 2:30-5:00 * Diane Dujon Director of Independent Learning, CPCS at UMass Boston. * Barbara Gottfried Field organizer with the American Association of University Professors. * Jason Pramas Associate Director, Campaign on Contingent Work. * Gary Zabel Co-Chair, Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor. PUBLIC EDUCATION AND PUBLIC SPENDING Monday September 25 - 2:30-5:00 * Annie Zirin from the Lynn Teachers Union and the International Socialist Organization. * Jonathan King MIT Professor and Chair, Mass. Labor Party Education Committee. * Representative from Fair Test. HEALTH CARE AND SOCIAL SECURITY Wednesday September 27 - 2:30-5:00 * Judith Atkins President, District 2, United Electrical Workers Union. * Phil Mamber President, Mass. Senior Action. THE U.S. AND GLOBALIZATION Thursday September 28 - 7:00-10:00 * Michael Albert editor of Z Magazine. * Hardip Man from South Asian Women For Action * Arthur MacEwan author of Neoliberalism or Democracy?, Professor of Economics at UMass Boston. * Robert Naiman Senior Policy Analyst at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (DC). THE DEATH PENALTY (Organized by the Coalition for Mumia.) Friday September 29 - 6:30-9:30 * Moderated by City Counselor Chuck Turner. * Taped message from Mumia Abu Jamal on death row. * Ramona Africa from MOVE. * Steven Hawking lawyer for Mumia's federal appeal. * Laywer Johnson former MA death row inmate. * Monica Moorehead presidential candidate for the Workers World party. * Professor Becky Thompson of Simmons College and Academics for Mumia. * Kazi Toure former political prisoner. (For directions to the UMass campus: http://www.umb.edu/about_umb/directions.html ) (To find Lipke Auditorium on a map of the campus: http://www.umb.edu/campus_tour/science/second.html ) SEE ALSO: "WHERE DOES INDEPENDENT PROGRESSIVE POLITICS GO FROM HERE?" Monday October 2 - 4:30-6:30 ... a debate between representatives of: * The Green Party (Howie Hawkins) * The Labor Party (Ed Bruno) * The Socialist Party (Eric Chester) Moderated by: Marisa Figueiredo of Redstockings of the Women's Liberation Movement. To be held at: MIT - 25 Ames St. - Room 66-110 (Down the street from Kendal Square.) (For more information and other events: http://www.expandthedebate.org )
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: summary of calculationdebate
On Sat, 22 Jul 2000, Bill Rosenberg wrote: Socialism is discredited largely (rightly or wrongly) because of the fall of the USSR and Eastern Europe. It comes down to: what is the alternative to the market? If you tell them: "a planned economy", they will ask where it has worked. The kind of theoretical answers we've seen in the recent discussions on this list won't convince: what empirical evidence people have about those alternatives frightens them to hell rather than attracts them. It's interesting to note that the socialist presence within the anti-corporate/anti-capitalist movement has been overwhelmingly anarchist, and I suspect that this is precisely why: a socialism adverse to planning can, to a large degree, wash its hands of the disasters you mention. This last Mayday, for the first time ever (I'm fairly certain), anarchists outnumbered communist at the Mayday march in France. This especially bizarre given that the former isn't even a parliamentary party, while the latter is! Needless to say, the anarachist presence in Seattle and D.C. was also large (although the "Black Bloc" expanded its ideological constitution, slightly, for D.C.). So, when you deliver your speech (or carry out your debate), be careful not to equate "socialism" with "planned economy," as much of the movement you're speaking of is composed of those backing the former, but shunning the latter. I suspect you're right Rob about a mixed planned/market system (though as the discussions on PEN-L have shown, that is scarcely a straightforward concept either). That of course will be heresy to those I am speaking to. Well, for this I imagine people would turn to China, our very own "market socialism" (as it describes itself). This is an example with enough peculiarities and specificities to make it difficult as a potential model, though. Ben
