Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Soviet Cultural Psychology
All of which brings to mind something I saw at MR--which I do not subscribe to, but do read the MRZINE occasionally. http://monthlyreview.org/nfte091201.php In this issue we are reprinting C. Wright Mills’s “Psychology and Social Science” from the October 1958 issue of Monthly Review. The argument of this piece was subsequently incorporated in Mills’s Sociological Imagination, which appeared fifty years ago this year, and constituted a powerful indictment of mainstream social science. Both “Psychology and Social Science” and the larger Sociological Imagination were strongly influenced by “the principle of historical specificity” as described in Karl Korsch’s Karl Marx. Mills used this to construct a radical challenge to the prevailing notion of a permanent “human nature,” applicable to all societies and social situations. He later referred to The Sociological Imagination — in a letter to an imaginary Soviet correspondent (part of a work he was writing, to be called Letter to a Russian Intellectual) — as “a kind of ‘Anti-Duhring,’” constituting his radical break with ahistorical social science. Mills — author of White Collar (1951), The Power Elite (1956), and other iconoclastic works — was both a resolutely independent left thinker and what Todd Gitlin (in his afterword to the fortieth anniversary edition of The Sociological Imagination) has called “the most inspiring sociologist of the second half of the twentieth century.” In his last few years, he emerged as the single most important figure in the launching of the intellectual New Left, with the publication of “Letter to the New Left” in the New Left Review in September-October 1960. The Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 widened the split within Marxism, with official Soviet ideologues more and more separated from independent Marxists, particularly in the West. Mills increasingly identified with the latter, labeling himself in his final book, The Marxists (1962),as a “plain Marxist,” which he defined as someone who views Marxism not as a dogma but as a critical tool, to be employed in historically specific terms. He associated this perspective with such diverse names among his contemporaries (in what generally came to be known as “Western Marxism”) as G.D.H. Cole, Georg Lukàcs, Isaac Deutscher, Joan Robinson, Jean-Paul Sartre, Edward Thompson, William Appleman Williams, Paul Sweezy, and Erich Fromm — authors who, with the exceptions of Lukàcs and Fromm, were all Monthly Review and Monthly Review Press writers. In a November 1956 letter to his close friend Harvey Swados (also an MR author), Mills wrote: “Let’s not forget that there’s more [that’s] still useful in even the Sweezy kind of Marxism than in all the routineers of J.S. Mill [i.e., modern liberal ideology] put together.” Mills was struck by Sweezy’s critical assessment of The Power Elite in theSeptember 1956 issue of Monthly Review, which Mills saw as somewhat “doctrinaire,” but “no less so than all the liberal stuff,” and “much more generous as well.” Sweezy was later to be acknowledged by Mills as one of the individuals to whom he was beholden for helpful criticisms of the earlier manuscript version of The Sociological Imagination. In May 1958, Mills chaired Monthly Review’s ninth birthday gathering in New York, with G.D.H. Cole as the main speaker, attracting a crowd of 1,100. At the time of his death at age forty-five in 1962, he was planning a lunch at his home in West Nyack, New York, which was to include his close friend Ralph Miliband, soon to become cofounder of The Socialist Register, together with Monthly Review editors, Leo Huberman and Sweezy. The central event in the last three years of Mills’s life (and for Monthly Review at the time) was the Cuban Revolution and the Bay of Pigs invasion. Mills visited Cuba and strongly defended its socialist path in his powerful polemic Listen Yankee! (1960), written in six weeks of frantic, around-the-clock effort. Mills was slated to engage in a debate on Cuba with a major liberal figure, A.A. Berle, on NBC television December 10, 1960, but was struck by his first heart attack the night before. As Miliband wrote in his tribute to Mills in Monthly Review (September 1962), the Bay of Pigs invasion filled Mills with “bitter, helpless shame. In fact, it broke his heart….It was altogether fitting that, when Mills died fifteen months later, Fidel Castro should have sent a wreath to the funeral. For Mills was a casualty of the Cuban Revolution, and of the revolution of our times.” Among Mills’s most lasting legacies was his critique of what he called “liberal practicality,” which he believed was a major hindrance to the development of meaningful left action. This was a central theme of The Sociological Imagination and continued to occupy him in all his subsequent works. Those who wish to continue along his path would do well to start there. (See John Bellamy Foster, “Liberal Practicality and the U.S. Left,” Socialist Register, 1990. For an
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Bailout prediction
On 12/3/09, CeJ jann...@gmail.com wrote: Using the examples of what already happened under earlier presidents, there is nothing that surprising at all about the bank bailouts. As for the idea that it was unprecedented to bailout AIG (no one actually knows what to call it except it's something like GE without an industrial arm), I would counter with: but Clinton bailed out a hedge fund. Cripes, for all we know he bailed out a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme. I guess we are all supposed to remember this guy as the child actor who became the Laetrile man. CJ CB: Before that there was the S L bailout. Chrysler was bailed in 1979. However, this latest one strikes me as a quantitative change that is turning into a qualitative change, to coin a phrase. The Financial Times wrote months ago that the bailout was $ 11 trillion; and I think more money has gone out to the finance capitalists since. What were the amounts on the long term capital gain hedge fund and S L bailouts ? I think they may have been an order of magnitude or two less. They may have said the hedge fund out was because it was too big to fail , but that might have been bs'ing. The latest one , I'm not so sure it wasn't a systemic threat. Also, this chapter of this book suggested , I think, that this is a main way in some sense of making dough by finance capital. I think the money making was predominantly in other ways at the time of the hedge fund bailout. But maybe not. Did the banks who have had failed loans to the Third World over the last forty years get bailed out ? What happened to the lenders to Argentina when it bailout out on them ? Were the banks bailed out ? Are we in the phase of finance capitalism when banks make more money by failed loans than perfominng loans ? The Bailout phase Finance Capital. The meeting to plan having the Federal Reserve is interesting because it is a sort of snapshot of a central committee meeting of the bourgeois ruling class of the time. Investigation into such organs of the ruling class are discouraged nowadays under the anti-conspiracy theory canard on the left. As far as I can tell from the names, the majority of the central committee meeting were not Jewish. I think de rothchilde may have been the only represented. I have to check that when I get the book. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._Edward_Griffin The Creature from Jekyll Island Griffin's 1994 book, The Creature from Jekyll Island, draws parallels between the Federal Reserve and a bird of prey, as suggested by the Great Seal of the United States on its cover.Griffin enrolled in the College for Financial Planning in Denver, Colorado,[23] became a Certified Financial Planner in 1989, and described the U.S. money system in his 1993 movie and 1994 book on the Federal Reserve System, The Creature from Jekyll Island.[1] This popular book[24][25] has been a business bestseller;[26][27] it has been reprinted in Japanese, 2005, and German, 2006. The book also influenced Ron Paul during the writing of a chapter on money and the Federal Reserve in Paul's New York Times number-one bestseller, The Revolution: A Manifesto, which recommended Griffin's book on its Reading List for a Free and Prosperous America.[28] The title refers to the November 1910 meeting at Jekyll Island, Georgia, of seven bankers and economic policymakers, who represented the financial elite of the Western world.[29][30] The meeting was recounted by Forbes founder B. C. Forbes in 1916,[31] and recalled by participant Frank Vanderlip as the actual conception of what eventually became the Federal Reserve System.[32] Griffin states that participant Paul Warburg describes the Jekyll Island meeting as this most interesting conference concerning which Senator Aldrich pledged all participants to secrecy.[33] Griffin's work stresses[34] the point which Federal Reserve chair Marriner Eccles made in Congressional testimony in 1941: If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn't be any money.[29] Griffin advocates against the debt-based fiat money system on several grounds, stating that it devours individual prosperity through inflation and it is used to perpetuate war. He also described a framework of central bankers underwriting both sides of an ongoing war or revolution.[35] Griffin says that the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the World Bank are working to destroy American sovereignty through a system of world military and financial control, and he advocates for United States withdrawal from the United Nations.[10] Edward Flaherty, an academic economist,[36] characterized Griffin's description of the secret meeting on Jekyll Island as conspiratorial, amateurish, and suspect.[37] Griffin's response was that Flaherty had miscategorized the book with other publications and had labeled all criticisms of the Federal Reserve as the results of conspiracy theory.[38] Griffin's dreams of a free-market, private-money system superior to the
[Marxism-Thaxis] Soviet Cultural Psychology
I believe Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit is a sort of psychology. After some of Blunden's discussion, I've been thinking that Spirit in Hegel is roughly culture in the modern anthropological sense - custom, tradition, a certain People or nation's history. So, the title below might be better _The Spirit of European Phenomenology or Personality type_ The Phenomenology of Spirit The title page of the original 1807 publication Part of a series on G. W. F. Hegel Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807) is one of G.W.F. Hegel's most important philosophical works. It is translated as The Phenomenology of Spirit or The Phenomenology of Mind due to the dual meaning in the German word Geist. The book's working title, which also appeared in the first edition, was Science of the Experience of Consciousness. On its initial publication (see cover image on right), it was identified as Part One of a projected System of Science, of which the Science of Logic was the second part. A smaller work, also titled Phenomenology of Spirit, appears in Hegel's Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, and recounts in briefer and somewhat altered form the major themes of the original Phenomenology. It formed the basis of Hegel's later philosophy and marked a significant development in German idealism after Kant. Focusing on topics in metaphysics, epistemology, physics, ethics, theory of knowledge, history, religion, perception, consciousness, and political philosophy, The Phenomenology is where Hegel develops his concepts of dialectic (including the Master-slave dialectic), absolute idealism, ethical life, and aufhebung. The book had a profound effect in Western philosophy, and has been praised and blamed for the development of existentialism, communism, fascism, death of God theology, and historicist nihilism.[1] Contents [hide] 1 Structure 1.1 The Preface 1.2 Introduction 1.3 Consciousness 1.4 Self-Consciousness 1.5 Reason 1.6 Spirit 1.7 Religion 2 Criticism 3 Hegelian dialectic 4 References 5 English translations of The Phenomenology of Spirit 6 Secondary literature 7 External links [edit] Structure The book consists of a Preface (written after the rest was completed), an Introduction, and six major divisions (of greatly varying size): Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, Reason, Spirit, Religion, and Absolute Knowledge. Most of these have further hierarchical subdivisions, and some versions of the book's table of contents also group the last four together as a single section on a level with the first two. Due to its obscure nature and the many works by Hegel that followed its publication, even the structure or core theme of the book itself remains contested. First, Hegel wrote the book under close time constraints with little chance for revision (individual chapters were sent to the publisher before others were written). Furthermore, according to some readers, Hegel may have changed his conception of the project over the course of the writing. Secondly, the book abounds with both highly technical argument in philosophical language, and concrete examples, either imaginary or historical, of developments by people through different states of consciousness. The relationship between these is disputed: whether Hegel meant to prove claims about the development of world history, or simply used it for illustration; whether or not the more conventionally philosophical passages are meant to address specific historical and philosophical positions; and so forth. Jean Hyppolite famously interpreted the work as a bildungsroman that follows the progression of its protagonist, Spirit, through the history of consciousness[2], a characterization that remains prevalent among literary theorists. However, others contest this literary interpretation and instead read the work as a self-conscious reflective account[3] that a society must give of itself in order to understand itself and therefore become reflective. Martin Heidegger saw it as the foundation of a larger System of Science that Hegel sought to develop[4], while Alexandre Kojève saw it as akin to a Platonic Dialogue ... between the great Systems of history.[5] It has even been called a philosophical rollercoaster ... with no more rhyme or reason for any particular transition than that it struck Hegel that such a transition might be fun or illuminating.[6] [edit] The Preface The Preface to the Phenomenology, all by itself, is considered one of Hegel's major works and a major text in the history of philosophy, because in it he sets out the core of his philosophical method and what distinguishes it from that of any previous philosophy, especially that of his German Idealist predecessors (Kant, Fichte, and Schelling). Hegel's approach, referred to as the Hegelian method, consists of actually examining consciousness' experience of both itself and of its objects and eliciting the contradictions and dynamic movement that come to light in looking at this experience. Hegel uses the phrase
[Marxism-Thaxis] Soviet Cultural Psychology
[edit] Consciousness Consciousness is divided into three chapters: Sense-Certainty, Perception, and Force and the Understanding. [edit] Self-Consciousness Self-Consciousness contains a preliminary discussion of Life and Desire, followed by two subsections: Independent and Dependent Self-Consciousness: Lordship and Bondage and Freedom of Self-Consciousness: Stoicism, Skepticism, and the Unhappy Consciousness. Notable is the presence of the discussion of the dialectic of the lord and bondsman. [edit] Reason Reason is divided into three chapters: Observing Reason, Actualization of Self-Consciousness, and Individuality Real In and For Itself. [edit] Spirit Spirit is divided into three chapters: The Ethical Order, Culture, and Morality. [edit] Religion Religion is divided into three chapters: Natural Religion, Religion in the Form of Art, and The Revealed Religion. [edit] Criticism Arthur Schopenhauer has criticized Phenomenology of Spirit as being characteristic of the vacuous verbiage he attributed to Hegel[7]. [edit] Hegelian dialectic The famous dialectical process of thesis-antithesis-synthesis has been controversially attributed to Hegel. Whoever looks for the stereotype of the allegedly Hegelian dialectic in Hegel's Phenomenology will not find it. What one does find on looking at the table of contents is a very decided preference for triadic arrangements. ... But these many triads are not presented or deduced by Hegel as so many theses, antitheses, and syntheses. It is not by means of any dialectic of that sort that his thought moves up the ladder to absolute knowledge. – Walter Kaufmann, Hegel: A Reinterpretation, § 37, Anchor Books, 1966 However, that does not mean that Hegel rejected a triadic process. Despite the popular misrepresentation of Hegel's triadic method which denies that Hegel used triads in his writings, Professor Howard Kainz (1996) affirms that there are thousands of triads in Hegel's writings. However, instead of using the famous terminology that originated with Kant and was elaborated by J. G. Fichte, Hegel used an entirely different and more accurate terminology for dialectical (or as Hegel called them, 'speculative') triads. Hegel used two different sets of terms for his triads, namely, abstract-negative-concrete (especially in his Phenomenology of 1807), as well as, immediate-mediate-concrete (especially in his Science of Logic of 1812), depending on the scope of his argumentation. When one looks for these terms in his writings, one finds so many occurrences that it may become clear that Hegel employed the Kantian using a different terminology. Hegel explained his change of terminology. The triad terms, 'abstract-negative-concrete' contain an implicit explanation for the flaws in Kant's terms. The first term, 'thesis,' deserves its anti-thesis simply because it is too abstract. The third term, 'synthesis,' has completed the triad, making it concrete and no longer abstract, by absorbing the negative. Sometimes Hegel used the terms, immediate-mediate-concrete, to describe his triads. The most abstract concepts are those that present themselves to our consciousness immediately. For example, the notion of Pure Being for Hegel was the most abstract concept of all. The negative of this infinite abstraction would require an entire Encyclopedia, building category by category, dialectically, until it culminated in the category of Absolute Mind or Spirit (since the German word, 'Geist', can mean either 'Mind' or 'Spirit'). [edit] References ^ Pinkard, Terry. Hegel's Phenomenology: the Sociality of Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 2 ^ Hyppolite, Jean; John Heckman (1979). Genesis and Structure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Samuel Cherniak (trans.). Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. pp. 609. ISBN 0-8101-0594-2. , 11-12 ^ Pinkard, Terry. Hegel's Phenomenology, 9 ^ Heidegger, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit ^ Alexander Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, ch 1. ^ Pinkard, Terry. Hegel's Phenomenology: the Sociality of Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 2 ^ If, therefore, one is provided with sufficient audacity and is encouraged by the pitiable spirit of the times, one will hold forth somewhat as follows: 'It is not difficult to see that the manner of stating a proposition, of adducing grounds or reasons for it, and likewise of refuting its opposite through grounds or reasons, is not the form in which truth can appear. Truth is the movement of itself within itself', and so on. (Hegel, Preface to the Phenomenology of the Mind, p. lvii, in the complete edition, p.36 [§ 48]) I do not think that it is difficult to see that whoever puts forward anything like this is a shameless charlatan who wants to fool simpletons and observes that he has found his people in the Germans of the nineteenth century. (Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume 1, Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real,
[Marxism-Thaxis] Soviet Cultural Psychology
CB:I believe Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit is a sort of psychology. After some of Blunden's discussion, I've been thinking that Spirit in Hegel is roughly culture in the modern anthropological sense - custom, tradition, a certain People or nation's history. So, the title below might be better _The Spirit of European Phenomenology or Personality type_ Or Culture of European Personality Types, Semiotics of European Personality Types or European Cultural Psychology. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Bailout prediction
Before that there was the S L bailout. Chrysler was bailed in 1979. However, this latest one strikes me as a quantitative change that is turning into a qualitative change, to coin a phrase. The Financial Times wrote months ago that the bailout was $ 11 trillion; and I think more money has gone out to the finance capitalists since. What were the amounts on the long term capital gain hedge fund and S L bailouts ? I think they may have been an order of magnitude or two less. They may have said the hedge fund out was because it was too big to fail , but that might have been bs'ing. The latest one , I'm not so sure it wasn't a systemic threat. The SL bailout is still not paid off and ran into the hundreds of billions of dollars--presumably added to the 'national debt'. I think the 'qualitative' shift happened with Clinton, when it was decided that a failed hedge fund (possibly crooked at that) would humiliate the administration, its treasury people, the SEC, Wall Street, and mainstream economics, among other things, because the hedge fund was supposed to be based on award-winning 'econometric modelling'. More than anything you call it the shift in Greenspan bailouts. QUANTITATIVELY, the shiftt came when Bush and both parties went to war after 9/11. Remember, in the name of 'national security', no debt was unthinkable. Defense, military, intelligence, security and law enforcement budgets (as well as the DEA and Colombia) went through the multi-trillion dollar roof, on a rocket to the moon. The so-called deals put together by Bush-Paulson and then Obama-Geitner are one-shot trillion dollar things. The 'security' budgets are ongoing--shifted higher about every 3-4 months, much of it actually covert. CJ -- Japan Higher Education Outlook http://japanheo.blogspot.com/ We are Feral Cats http://wearechikineko.blogspot.com/ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] In the Shadow of Hoover
In an interview with Fox News, the president said: It is important to recognize if we keep on adding to the deficit, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point people could lose confidence in the US economy in a double-dip recession. Maybe he didn't mean it. Or was merely nodding to Chinese leaders, our leading creditor, who had scolded him for profligate spending. Oh,well, he and Timmy and a few others at cabinet level say things like this because they hope that if they say such things they can cheapen the dollar without it collapsing and get a couple years break on having to sell ever more government bonds--long terms ones, they hope, in order to lock in 0% interest rates for debtors. I don't think HISTORY is going to be so kind to this manisfestation of hope (wishful thinking). Imperialists shouldn't wish, they should just drop bombs and get on with running the world. I suppose the Congress will get around to drafting an 'ally tax' and try to get Europe and E. Asia to pay for the 'wars' soon. CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
