Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels

You are correct about Lenin as well as Marx and Engels. Lenin was careful about communists' overstepping their bounds of competence. However, even during the 1920s, when activity in all areas was quite creative before Stalin's clampdown, certain bad habits got established. I don't recall exac

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels

I haven't been online since mid-afternoon, so I'm just now catching up. I hope others paid more careful attention to my recent posts. There are serious consequences when one allows oneself to get trapped in a narrow corner. It is incumbent upon anyone attempting to speak for the whole to attem

[Marxism-Thaxis] (no subject)

Another indication that what is taking place is not a pure-and-simple pro-imperialist "Orange Revolution." Note especially Walid Jumblatt's call on Hezbullah to join forces with him in the "opposition" and the fears of the neo-liberal, pro-imperialist forces that all is not going according to plan

[Marxism-Thaxis] Barkley Rosser's Home Page: Aspects of Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics

Barkley Rosser used to be on this list. http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb/ CB Barkley Rosser's Home Page Barkley Rosser CV COMPARATIVE ECONOMICS IN A TRANSFORMING WORLD ECONOMY

[Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels

They were probably doing good physics and math all along. Don't think they suddenly changed course and caught up and passed the rest of the world. Crude scientists would not have been able to pick up on the atom bomb so quickly. You know Sputnik and all that. Afterall, Marx, Engels and Lenin put

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels

At 2005-03-03 20.52, you wrote: Perhaps this is one reason Van Heijenoort got so disgusted with Marxists in the 1940s and decided to try his luck elsewhere. The notion that Marxists have a right to be provincial, sectarian, and ignorant has got to be stopped. Marxists should take as their pro

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels

I've got to run now, so briefly: At some point, a modus vivendi was worked out, which allowed the propaganda apparatus to do its thing while leaving scientists and mathematicians alone to do theirs. This has roots towards the end of the Stalin era, in the late 1940s, when formal logic was once

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels

We should find out more about what the Chinese have done. It would also be interesting to know if in some way, Marx's attempts to think through the problem based on outdated math books anticipated future developments. However, the account below looks silly to me. The existence of multiple mod

[Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels

I'm not sure that abstract mathematics was altogether "destroyed" in the Soviet Union's academics, because of some anecdotal evidence I have. When I was an undergraduate in 1968, the honors math majors ( the best math students) _had_ to take Russian language courses, because so much of the world's

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels

It's really sickening to have to read this sort of material, though I am interested in nonstandard analysis in China, about which I know nothing. First of all, the ignorant and destructive Stalinist nonsense against abstract mathematics shows up the obscene degradation of Marxism in backward,

[Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels

Abraham Robinson's nonstandard analysis adds more numbers, infinite numbers and infinitesimal numbers, to the numbers line. Just as Margaret Thatcher says that society does not exist, modern mainstream mathematics is based on the dogma that infinitesimals do not exist. Robinson showed, by contr

[Marxism-Thaxis] China's Human Rights Report - USA

The country has spent an average of 7 billion US dollars a year building new jails and prisons in the past 10 years. California has seen only one college but 21 new prisons built since 1984. Jails have become one of the huge and most lucrative industries, with a combined staff of more than 530

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels

Below is an interesting abstract I found concerning the reactions of Chinese mathematicians, during the period of the Cultural Revolution, to publication of Marx's mathematical manuscripts. - DOCUMENTA

[Marxism-Thaxis] Power to the People !

WL: I am actually smiling because you basically state that defining the mode of production as a set of property relations is AN INFERENCE. However, he who does not accept your particular understanding of this INFERENCE is outside '"THE MARXIST" definition as you understand it. CB: I'm smilin

[Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels

I've taken a look at some of Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels mathematical career. As to specifically the career and "reading list" aspect of the critique, the thought that occurs to me is that Van H. does not seem to consider that Engels may have had very advanced uses of mathematics as a capi