Lebowitz is a crusty old dude, but he's the man:

http://www.dsp.org.au/links/node/241

`Without worker-management, there is no socialism’

By Michael A. Lebowitz
On May Day 2005, I marched with workers in Caracas, Venezuela. The slogan workers were chanting was, “without co-management, there is no revolution”. Indeed, the main slogans for that May Day march, organised by the National Union of Workers, the main progressive union federation in Venezuela, were “co-management is revolution” and “Venezuelan workers are building Bolivarian socialism”.

We don’t hear much of that anymore. We don’t have masses of workers saying, “without worker-management, there is no socialism”, or that you cannot build socialism without worker-management. Nevertheless, I think that we have to recognise the essential truth of this proposition.

Let me stress, though, that I’m not simply talking about worker-management as workers making decisions in individual workplaces. That’s a necessary part of it, but it’s not enough. When we talk about the goals of production, they should be the goals of workers—but not in single workplaces. They should be the goals of workers in society, too—workers in their communities. The goals which guide production should be developed democratically in both communities and workplaces and based on the concept of solidarity. In this respect, it’s important to remember the different dimensions of what Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez has called the “elementary triangle” of socialism: units of social property, social production organised by workers, and production for the needs of communities. You can’t separate those in socialism. As I’ve written in the new edition of Socialism doesn’t drop from the sky, “Without production for social needs, no real social property; without social property, no worker decision-making oriented toward society’s needs; without worker decision-making, no transformation of people and their needs.”

The `capitalist triangle’

Capitalism, of course, involves a different triangle. The “capitalist triangle” is private ownership of the means of production, the exploitation of wage labourers, for the purpose of profits. And what is the situation of workers in this context? They work to achieve capital’s goal; they submit to the authority and will of capital; and, they produce products which are the property of capital. The products of workers are turned against them and dominate them as capital. The world of wealth, Marx commented, faces the worker “as an alien world dominating him”. And, that alien world dominates the worker more and more because capital constantly creates new needs to consume as the result of its requirement to realise the surplus value contained in commodities. For workers, producing within this relationship is a process of a “complete emptying out”, “total alienation”. And, we fill the vacuum of our lives with things -- we are driven to consume.

But that’s only one way that capitalism produces defective people. In Capital Vol. 1 (Penguin Books edition, 1976), Marx described the mutilation, the impoverishment, the “crippling of body and mind” of the worker “bound hand and foot for life to a single specialised operation” which occurs in the division of labour characteristic of the capitalist process of manufacturing. Did the development of machinery rescue workers under capitalism? No, Marx stressed, it completes the “separation of the intellectual faculties of the production process from manual labour”.

And, in this situation, head and hand become separate and hostile: “every atom of freedom, both in bodily and in intellectual activity” is lost. The worker is distorted “into a fragment” of a person, degraded and “the intellectual potentialities of the labour process” are alienated from them. In short, in addition to producing commodities and capital itself, the product of capitalist production is the fragmented, crippled human being whose enjoyment consists in possessing and consuming things.

Is that inevitable? Is the only way to escape the effects upon us of capitalist production by lowering the work day? There is an alternative. It is the society that Marx (Capital Vol. 1, 1976: 772) described as characterised not by the capitalists’ drive to increase the value of their capital but, rather, by “the inverse situation in which objective wealth is there to satisfy the worker’s own need for development”. That society oriented to the full development of human beings is socialism. It is the society where, instead of this crippling of body and mind of the worker and the alienation from the worker of all “the intellectual potentialities of the labour process”, there is the re-combining of head and hand, the uniting of mental and physical labour. In this way, workers develop their capabilities through their practice. The partially developed individual is “replaced by the totally developed individual, for whom the different social functions are different modes of activity he takes up in turn” (Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 1976: 617-8). The combination of thinking and doing, Marx stressed, is “the only method of producing fully developed human beings” (Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 1976: 613-4, 643).

That can’t happen, though, when you work for capital. Even if workers have complete control in the workplace. If the interconnection of workers in production “confronts them, in the realm of ideas, as a plan drawn up by the capitalist, and, in practice, as his authority, as the powerful will of a being outside them” (Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 1976: 450), how can workers develop all their capabilities? Without “intelligent direction of production” by workers, without production “under their conscious and planned control”, in other words, without worker-management, workers cannot develop their potential as human beings (Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 1976: 173). Clearly, for “the worker’s own need for development” to be the goal and to be the result requires an economic system quite different from capitalism, a socialist system which is the inversion of capitalism.

This brings me, though, to the question of worker-management and what we should learn from the efforts to build socialism in the 20th Century. Let me suggest three propositions:

1. When workers don’t manage, someone else does.

2. When workers don’t develop their capabilities through their practice, someone else does.

3. However much you may think you have banished capitalism from the house, when production is not based upon the relation of production of associated producers, sooner or later capitalism comes in: first, through the backdoor, and then it marches openly through the front door.

Lessons from the Soviet Union

Let’s think about some experiences in the attempt to build socialism in the 20th century. Consider the position of workers in the Soviet Union from the 1950s onward. Workers there had job rights. Not only was there full employment, but they also had significant protection against losing their jobs, or having their individual jobs altered in a way which they didn’t like. That was real job security. And, they weren’t tied to their jobs—in this situation of full employment they could move to better jobs when they wanted; e.g., 30% of industrial workers moved to better jobs in any one year. This certainly was not the situation for workers under capitalism, where the reserve army of unemployed is regularly reproduced and reinforces the dependence of workers upon capital.

What more could workers want? Well, think about what Soviet workers did not have. First of all, they had no power to make decisions within the workplace—they had the right to submit proposals on how to improve work, but the managers decided which, if any, suggestions they would accept. Those workers had no independent and autonomous voice: the trade unions, which protected their individual job rights, had their leaderships selected from above and played the role principally of transmission belts to mobilise the workers in production.

What was the result of the powerlessness of the Soviet worker? One result was the effect upon workers—they were alienated, cared little about the quality of what they produced or about improving production, worked as little as possible (except at the end of plan periods when there was the possibility of getting bonuses) and used the time and energy they had left to function in the second economy, or informal sector.

There was another effect, though, of the denial of opportunity for workers to manage their workplaces and to develop their capabilities. Someone else did—the enterprise managers and their staff. This was a group which maximised its income by its knowledge of production, its ability to manipulate the conditions for obtaining bonuses and its development of alliances. Over a period of time, the leadership at the top of the Soviet Union became increasingly dependent on the managers and came to accept their perspective on how to solve the increasing problems in the economy. The managers, whose perspective was quite different from that of workers, emerged as the capitalist class of the Soviet Union.

Yugoslavia

This was not the only model for building socialism. Many experiences in the 20th Century were variations on the Soviet attempt to build socialism. In Yugoslavia, though, there was a real contrast, especially with respect to the situation of workers. In 1949, the Yugoslav leadership described the Soviet model as state capitalism and bureaucratic despotism; and they argued that the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union had become a new class. To build socialism, the Yugoslavs stressed, you need worker-management, self-management. So, in 1950, they introduced a law making managers responsible to workers’ councils; and they argued that it was necessary to move from state ownership to the higher form, social ownership.

It was a real experiment. Would it work? Marshal Tito, President of Yugoslavia, pointed out that many people worried that “the workers will not be able to master the complicated techniques of management of factories and other enterprises”. His answer, though, was that workers will gain the necessary experience through practice. We recognise only practice, he said. Only through practice will they learn.

Well, over the next few decades, workers did learn much about their enterprises, especially because there was a principle of rotation on the workers’ councils both at the enterprise and shop levels. But, they learned much less than Tito and other leaders anticipated at the beginning. One key reason is that there was not a sustained effort to educate workers in the workplace as to how to run their enterprises. So, the result was that the distinction between thinking and doing remained—the workers’ councils tended to accept the recommendations of the managers and the experts on the key decisions for these self-managed enterprises. Why? Because they felt the experts knew better. The workers’ councils had the legal power but they didn’t exercise it.

It is important to understand that these Yugoslav self-managed enterprises functioned in the market and were driven by one thing—self-interest. Although the enterprises were state owned and were viewed as social property, there was no focus upon the needs of society and there was no concept of solidarity. Rather, in every enterprise, the goal followed was to maximise income per member of the individual enterprise. They competed against each other, they used their economic strength to dominate each other and they fought against paying taxes. (In fact they attacked the state as engaging in Stalinist exploitation of workers by taxing them.)

Further, these self-managed enterprises tended to introduce advanced, machine intensive technology—so they could be more productive and generate more total income without adding more members to their collective. So, they were productive, but they didn’t generate many new jobs. Not surprisingly, unemployment was high because people coming from the countryside couldn’t find jobs; so, they went to countries in Western Europe as “guest workers”—in 1971, there was 7% unemployment plus 20% of the labour force was working outside the country for this reason.

Legally, these enterprises were called “social property”, but social property means that everyone in the society has equal access to the means of production, and benefits from it. The unemployed had no access to the means of production, and some workers had access to much better means of production than others. In fact, what had happened was that, in the context of the market, a new productive relation had emerged in fact—group ownership of these enterprises, group property. The workers felt that they (and only they) were entitled to the income generated by the sale of their commodities.

And, in their competitive struggle for income, the workers’ councils accepted the recommendations of the managers about investments, new products and new ways of producing because the managers had the same self-interest—maximising the income for the enterprise. Of course, all members of these collectives weren’t really equal—it was the managers and technical experts in these enterprises who understood about marketing and selling commodities; it was the managers and technical experts who knew about investments, about placing the funds of the enterprises in banks and establishing links with other enterprises, creating mergers, etc. Workers didn’t know these things; they knew that they were dependent upon the experts.

By the 1970s, there was the recognition in Yugoslavia that something unanticipated had happened: a “techno-bureaucracy” had emerged. In the struggle against state bureaucracy, they had forgotten about battling against capitalism. So, the government tried to introduce a number of new measures and constitutional changes to strengthen workers against this techno-bureaucracy; however, these measures never went very far—because they continued to stress self-interest as the only way to development, and they did not focus upon communal needs and purposes. They never challenged the new relations of production that had emerged. In the end, it was, of course, the managers who emerged as capitalists, leaving the workers as wage labourers.

`Without worker-management, there is no socialism’

The Yugoslavian case demonstrates that the existence of workers’ councils—even with the legal power to make all decisions—is not the same as worker-management; and, that the focus upon the self-interest of workers in individual enterprises is not the same as a focus upon the interest of the working class as a whole. They had workers’ councils, but the division between thinking and doing that cripples people continued.

So, I come back to my three propositions:

1. When workers don’t manage, someone else does.

2. When workers don’t develop their capabilities through their practice, someone else does.

3. However much you may think you have banished capitalism from the house, when production is not based upon the relation of production of associated producers, sooner or later capitalism comes in: first, through the backdoor, and then it marches openly through the front door.

Let’s come back to that elementary triangle of socialism: units of social property, social production organised by workers, for satisfaction of communal needs and purposes. Of course, we know that this can’t all be put into place at once. Of course, we know that it is a long process of struggle to develop each side of that triangle. But, we also know that if we are not actively building each side, we inevitably infect the whole process … sooner or later.

How can you build socialism without real workers’ management? How can you build fully developed human beings without protagonistic democracy in the workplace and community?

In my book, Build it Now, I quoted a line from an old song by Bob Dylan— ‘he not busy being born is busy dying’. So, I have to say to you how sad it is to recognise how things have changed since 2005. I look forward to being able to march once again with masses of workers on May Day chanting, “without worker-management, there is no socialism”.

[A talk given at the two-day seminar “Workers Management: Theory and Practise”, held on October 26 and 27, 2007, organised by the Human Development and Transformative Praxis Program at the Caracas-based Miranda International Centre. Lebowitz is the director of the program. A detailed report by Green Left Weekly’s Kiraz Janicke on the seminar is posted at http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2784 ]

Middle-class Marxists can go over to the proletariat and bring all of their stupid prejudices and dumb-ass demands with them... only now they become proletarian demands, contingent only on the "degree of development" of the working class.

"Socialism", which many thought was a property relation, turns out to be a mere chapter in the political correctness handbook.

It is truly wonderful to have "crusty" commentators who can explain to the workers what chants are necissary to make "true socialism".

I guess it is the last logical stage though - a bourgeois proletariat.

We should have workers democracy, too... just like in Amerika only by the workers if they can just get "developed" enough.
.

Middle-class Marxists can go over to the proletariat and bring all of their stupid prejudices and dumb-ass demands with them... only now they become proletarian demands, contingent only on the "degree of development" of the working class.

"Socialism", which many thought was a property relation, turns out to be a mere chapter in the political correctness handbook.

It is truly wonderful to have "crusty" commentators who can explain to the workers what chants are necissary to make "true socialism".

I guess it is the last logical stage though - a bourgeois proletariat.

We should have workers democracy, too... just like in Amerika only by the workers if they can just get "developed" enough.
.

Three things

1. If you'd seen Lebowitz you wouldn't question his crustiness

2. I thought the parts about worker management in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were at least interesting

3. My bet is Lebowitz is defining socialism as the interim step between capitalism and communism, which might be off kilter with your reading of him. It seems like you have read an awful lot into this beyond what he actually states.

Middle-class Marxists can go over to the proletariat and bring all of their stupid prejudices and dumb-ass demands with them... only now they become proletarian demands, contingent only on the "degree of development" of the working class.

"Socialism", which many thought was a property relation, turns out to be a mere chapter in the political correctness handbook.

It is truly wonderful to have "crusty" commentators who can explain to the workers what chants are necissary to make "true socialism".

I guess it is the last logical stage though - a bourgeois proletariat.

We should have workers democracy, too... just like in Amerika only by the workers if they can just get "developed" enough.
.

Three things

1. If you'd seen Lebowitz you wouldn't question his crustiness

2. I thought the parts about worker management in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were at least interesting

3. My bet is Lebowitz is defining socialism as the interim step between capitalism and communism, which might be off kilter with your reading of him. It seems like you have read an awful lot into this beyond what he actually states.

Three questions:

1. Are you ever going to tire of people who are all for socialism except for where it has actually existed?

2. Are you ever going to argue with me over what I say rather than with what you prefer I say?

3. Are you ever going to try laying out a basic logic in English before trying it simultaneously in Urdu, Hittite, and ancient Greek?
.

Middle-class Marxists can go over to the proletariat and bring all of their stupid prejudices and dumb-ass demands with them... only now they become proletarian demands, contingent only on the "degree of development" of the working class.

"Socialism", which many thought was a property relation, turns out to be a mere chapter in the political correctness handbook.

It is truly wonderful to have "crusty" commentators who can explain to the workers what chants are necissary to make "true socialism".

I guess it is the last logical stage though - a bourgeois proletariat.

We should have workers democracy, too... just like in Amerika only by the workers if they can just get "developed" enough.
.

Three things

1. If you'd seen Lebowitz you wouldn't question his crustiness

2. I thought the parts about worker management in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were at least interesting

3. My bet is Lebowitz is defining socialism as the interim step between capitalism and communism, which might be off kilter with your reading of him. It seems like you have read an awful lot into this beyond what he actually states.

Three questions:

1. Are you ever going to tire of people who are all for socialism except for where it has actually existed?

2. Are you ever going to argue with me over what I say rather than with what you prefer I say?

3. Are you ever going to try laying out a basic logic in English before trying it simultaneously in Urdu, Hittite, and ancient Greek?
.

You crack me up. Seriously.

Anyway, I don't really see it as arguing so much as bouncing stuff off of you. Now granted I may not take your meaning straightaway or I may not "like" your response, but the intent is never to argue just for the sake being argumentative.

Mostly I saw a post on this thread by you, making light of the article using what seemed like borderline non-sequiturs as ammunition. It was good for a laugh, I give you that. However, it is often difficult to pin down exactly what you do say, regardless of what I might prefer, because you tread so heavily on implication and innuendo.

In particular I fail to see your issue with his talk about workers developing themselves. Someone only browsing this thread might take your remark to indicate he is talking along spiritual or New Agey lines of personal self-improvement yada yada.

New age, huh?

Sorry kiddo - that's you.

Since I can't even begin to make myself say it on the other thread, I'll tell you.

There are no ghosts, no goblins, no wood nymphs, no gods and no spirits.

There is no spirituality, no metaphysics, and no things that go bump in the night.

If you got any of those, show them to me.

If you can't show them to me, you have two choices:

Either you explain how these live in our domain and yet cannot be "seen"

OR

You explain how these live in another domain and live by rules different than our own.

AND

If there are different rules, how are these knowable?

But, if "collective spirtuality" is oxymoronic through this device, then "personal spirituality" is simply moronic.

Your agnosticism cannot help you here.

Because, there is a hierarchy of the unknown just as there is one of the known.

We may have degrees of knowledge in practice. It is probably a bad idea to go to sleep on the railroad tracks. That conclusion may come to us because of our generic understanding of the fact that trains run on tracks or it may come from a specific knowledge of railway schedules on that particular line. In either case, it is entirely possible that no train may show up.

Yet... and this is the point... though unfullfilled, our fear that a train might appear is of an entirely different order than our fear that, say, a rocket powered blue whale on roller skates might show up to run us down.

Finally, what goes for the spirit also goes for the flesh...

You think that secular religion consists in the belief in the completeness or in the closed system of science, but that is a tiny sliver of the real secular religion. The real spirits are in the phenomonology of the above... In the endless repetition of "common knowledge" which as old Hegel would say, "isn't known at all", just by dint of being "common".

You're a sucker for that shit every time, verbal gymnastics notwithstanding.

Wanna play 3-card monty?
.

New age, huh?

Sorry kiddo - that's you.

Since I can't even begin to make myself say it on the other thread, I'll tell you.

There are no ghosts, no goblins, no wood nymphs, no gods and no spirits.

There is no spirituality, no metaphysics, and no things that go bump in the night.

If you got any of those, show them to me.

If you can't show them to me, you have two choices:

Either you explain how these live in our domain and yet cannot be "seen"

OR

You explain how these live in another domain and live by rules different than our own.

AND

If there are different rules, how are these knowable?

But, if "collective spirtuality" is oxymoronic through this device, then "personal spirituality" is simply moronic.

Your agnosticism cannot help you here.

Because, there is a hierarchy of the unknown just as there is one of the known.

We may have degrees of knowledge in practice. It is probably a bad idea to go to sleep on the railroad tracks. That conclusion may come to us because of our generic understanding of the fact that trains run on tracks or it may come from a specific knowledge of railway schedules on that particular line. In either case, it is entirely possible that no train may show up.

Yet... and this is the point... though unfullfilled, our fear that a train might appear is of an entirely different order than our fear that, say, a rocket powered blue whale on roller skates might show up to run us down.

Finally, what goes for the spirit also goes for the flesh...

You think that secular religion consists in the belief in the completeness or in the closed system of science, but that is a tiny sliver of the real secular religion. The real spirits are in the phenomonology of the above... In the endless repetition of "common knowledge" which as old Hegel would say, "isn't known at all", just by dint of being "common".

You're a sucker for that shit every time, verbal gymnastics notwithstanding.

Wanna play 3-card monty?
.

Man, someone was working late last night. You outlasted me lol

Anyway, Mike doesn't want a rehased debated on scientism, you're hung up on "No Gods, No Monsters", Chlamor cringes at the G-word, Rusty hasn't gotten into this one yet, Wolf considers Abram the first capitalist pig, and you've already inked me in as an agnostic (which I'm..umm, not).

So thats about seven different subplots tangled together going nowhere, although Wolf has produced a compelling body of writing on the subject.

I think we'll have a chat about metaphysics one day but not now. I also think, though, it'll involve taking your advice and starting from the beginning because you've thrown a kitchen sink's worth of ideas into the mix here, some on very solid footing, some..less so.

FWIW, prominent physicists including Stephen Hawking disagree with you on the "no metaphysics" statement, at least if you take meta-physics to mean outside the boundaries of traditional physics (ie based on forces and chemistry etc). I would be interested to hear how you contrast what you say above with determinism.

PS I hope everybody's having a great holiday!

I've been very slowly doing some reading/research, that probably pertains to the "verbal gymnastics" above. I think it is more than that, worse than that, and I would like to differentiate what I am trying to say from that category.

If you read RigInt or PI or any of a thousand other sources, one of the things you will encounter is New Age craziness thrust onto Quantum Mechanics and physics, "consciousness causing wave form collapse", "human observation determining reality", matter becoming energy and vice versa, etc. That to me is verbal gymnastics at its duplicitous best.

But I would like to consider Lenin's materialism as a counter to the above. In fact, I don't think that it is, at least not credibly. Anax earlier asked me where I had seen the dual-realms argument (ie physical, and spiritual) before, implying that it was his own via Thomas Aquinas. I was fumbling to express the exact nature of my objection.

It's this: what else was Lenin's materialism? Did he not say that reality is independent of our minds and that this principle thus prevents philosophical forays into science? It seems to be a major departure from the dialectical perspective, and a step back from Hegel.

Lenin (or maybe its fairer to say the Soviets generally I guess) rejected phenomenalism, empiricism, pragmatism (although it hadn't been given that proper name at the time obviously). This is best seen in his Theory of Reflection which rejects the claim that we can know external reality as it truly exists. It is a claim that what we observe is a passive "reflection in consciousness" So for Lenin knowledge was extremely tenuous and relativized. In retrospect, after a great deal of reading and reflection, this seems not so different from Popper, never one to be confused with Hegel, Jr.

I understand that the above might be tantamount to heresy within Marxism, but I am not so clear on where it is mistaken.

It seems to me that objectiveness implies conscious reflection ON reality not a reflection OF reality within consciousness. It is realized through action, not the pasive act of receiving (acquiring) the world around us. In fact, Hegel's system of logic is subdivided into objective and notional types with objective logic being applied without conscious reflection. So it is objective because it can only be considered in two ways: Just Doing It or as an object of reflection afterwards.

I think what Anax earlier called a mishmash gets directly to the point: the natural sciences are a perfect barometer of this intellect/practice dichotomy. The natural sciences do not, can not, provide an ontology. Nothing is free from inspection and the arbiter of "truth" is empirical observation in the form of experimentation. Anything past this is rightly regarded as pure speculation -- Newton's mechanical clock-work universe, the GUT of Einstein and Hawking (since renounced) meant to preserve orderliness of the universe and, really, a backdoor entrance for God and religion. And yet those three are pillars of the edifice that we call "science".

I think the practice of separating empirical science from metaphysics/theology in this was dates back to the Royal Society. Neo-Kanitianism at work, ironically enough.

Partially I think what is at issue here is that it is very easy to speak imprecisely which is a fatal flaw when attempting these sorts of formulations. So, in a very backward way, I end up agreeing with Anax that it is a great error to separate theoretical statements from the activity which was responsible for their formulation in the first place. Theoretical statements describe truly existing things and actions but they are neither immutable or forever.

So if Anax's (extended) point is that theories of Being must acknowledge the interactive Subject/Object relationship and reflect the constant interplay between practice and thought to be in 'good standing', then I concede the point.

EDIT: however, I don't believe any of the above constitutes a legitimate criticism of the RCC. But Mike has covered that already, short of the discussion of "Christ" Communism.

I've been very slowly doing some reading/research, that probably pertains to the "verbal gymnastics" above. I think it is more than that, worse than that, and I would like to differentiate what I am trying to say from that category.

If you read RigInt or PI or any of a thousand other sources, one of the things you will encounter is New Age craziness thrust onto Quantum Mechanics and physics, "consciousness causing wave form collapse", "human observation determining reality", matter becoming energy and vice versa, etc. That to me is verbal gymnastics at its duplicitous best.

But I would like to consider Lenin's materialism as a counter to the above. In fact, I don't think that it is, at least not credibly. Anax earlier asked me where I had seen the dual-realms argument (ie physical, and spiritual) before, implying that it was his own via Thomas Aquinas. I was fumbling to express the exact nature of my objection.

It's this: what else was Lenin's materialism? Did he not say that reality is independent of our minds and that this principle thus prevents philosophical forays into science? It seems to be a major departure from the dialectical perspective, and a step back from Hegel.

Lenin (or maybe its fairer to say the Soviets generally I guess) rejected phenomenalism, empiricism, pragmatism (although it hadn't been given that proper name at the time obviously). This is best seen in his Theory of Reflection which rejects the claim that we can know external reality as it truly exists. It is a claim that what we observe is a passive "reflection in consciousness" So for Lenin knowledge was extremely tenuous and relativized. In retrospect, after a great deal of reading and reflection, this seems not so different from Popper, never one to be confused with Hegel, Jr.

I understand that the above might be tantamount to heresy within Marxism, but I am not so clear on where it is mistaken.

It seems to me that objectiveness implies conscious reflection ON reality not a reflection OF reality within consciousness. It is realized through action, not the pasive act of receiving (acquiring) the world around us. In fact, Hegel's system of logic is subdivided into objective and notional types with objective logic being applied without conscious reflection. So it is objective because it can only be considered in two ways: Just Doing It or as an object of reflection afterwards.

I think what Anax earlier called a mishmash gets directly to the point: the natural sciences are a perfect barometer of this intellect/practice dichotomy. The natural sciences do not, can not, provide an ontology. Nothing is free from inspection and the arbiter of "truth" is empirical observation in the form of experimentation. Anything past this is rightly regarded as pure speculation -- Newton's mechanical clock-work universe, the GUT of Einstein and Hawking (since renounced) meant to preserve orderliness of the universe and, really, a backdoor entrance for God and religion. And yet those three are pillars of the edifice that we call "science".

I think the practice of separating empirical science from metaphysics/theology in this was dates back to the Royal Society. Neo-Kanitianism at work, ironically enough.

Partially I think what is at issue here is that it is very easy to speak imprecisely which is a fatal flaw when attempting these sorts of formulations. So, in a very backward way, I end up agreeing with Anax that it is a great error to separate theoretical statements from the activity which was responsible for their formulation in the first place. Theoretical statements describe truly existing things and actions but they are neither immutable or forever.

So if Anax's (extended) point is that theories of Being must acknowledge the interactive Subject/Object relationship and reflect the constant interplay between practice and thought to be in 'good standing', then I concede the point.

EDIT: however, I don't believe any of the above constitutes a legitimate criticism of the RCC. But Mike has covered that already, short of the discussion of "Christ" Communism.

You ain't ready to debate me on this shit, kid... let alone to wake up the slumbering Mr. Ulianov. If you think the above helps you in any way to overcome your earlier crapola about the dichotomy of "traditional physics" and metaphysics, you are sadly mistaken. For that you would need a deathbed testimonial from Hawking that he had arrived at his conclusions exclusively through faith and revelation. You have taken a minor dispute over train schedules and declared it to be proof positive, yet again, of the imminent arrival of skating whales. In the process, you are now making stuff up faster than I can laugh at it. This ain't an oral exam that you can bullshit your way through like in Junior High School. For that, you can go to RevLeft.

Or do you really want to tell me again about "Thomism"?

Let me state it again. Religion is like any other social institution. It is not one thing but many and all of these "things" exist in specific context. "Theism", on the other hand - and its ornaments like "personal spirituality" - is just simple, self-indulgent horseshit. Ain't none of that t'all. You don't like that? Then prove your fuckin' case OR simply defend your "right" to "believe" any stupid fuckin' thing you feel like.

In any case, I don't do social networking. No headway? No work.
.

In any case, I don't do social networking. No headway? No work.

So you're rejecting my myspace friend invite? :wah:

ON EDIT: A different tack

What is materialism? If it is the claim that there is only matter, which directly clashes with idealism, what do we make of dualism, non-reductionism, realism, emergence (which, as originally defined, sounds alot like dialectics by the way)? Are idealism and theism necessarily tied together?

What does "material" mean? Laws of chemisty, laws of biology, electrical engineering, the four physical forces?

But it is not quite so simple because the mainstream scientific position -- accepted by right wingers, agnostics, marxists, theists -- is that things are (probably) not mind-independent at some level (ie QM)

More than that, what about our social reality? Is class mind-independent or not? What the hell does "reality" mean? These are not fatuous questions. Do we just make a list of thing starting at the subatomic level and working up to galactic superclusters? Do we then make a separate list of language, society, culture, politics and states? Throw 'em in a blender and you have reality?

Do the premises Marx and Engels worked from when they talked of "external reality" still stand? Couldn't Descarte have had this same conversation, more or less? Are we partitioned off from "external reality" inside our own minds?

And we've only just gotten started here..

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... /index.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/religion/index.htm)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... ations.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/religion/book-revelations.htm)


Religion must be declared a private affair. In these words socialists
usually express their attitude towards religion. But the meaning of these
words should be accurately defined to prevent any misunderstanding. We
demand that religion be held a private affair so far as the state is
concerned. But by no means can we consider religion a private affair so far
as our Party is concerned. Religion must be of no concern to the state, and
religious societies must have no connection with governmental authority.
Everyone must be absolutely free to profess any religion he pleases, or no
religion whatever, i.e., to be an atheist, which every socialist is, as a
rule. Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious
convictions is wholly intolerable. Even the bare mention of a citizen's
religion in official documents should unquestionably be eliminated. No
subsidies should be granted to the established church nor state allowances
made to ecclesiastical and religious societies. These should become
absolutely free associations of like-minded citizens, associations
independent of the state. Only the complete fulfilment of these demands can
put an end to the shameful and accursed past when the church lived in
feudal dependence on the state, and Russian citizens lived in feudal
dependence on the established church, when medieval, inquisitorial laws (to
this day remaining in our criminal codes and on our statute-books) were in
existence and were applied, persecuting men for their belief or disbelief,
violating men's consciences, and linking cosy government jobs and
government-derived incomes with the dispensation of this or that dope by
the established church. Complete separation of Church and State is what the
socialist proletariat demands of the modern state and the modern church.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/w ... dec/03.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/dec/03.htm)

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/dunbarortiz091106.html

Oh, God, I need to make an Anax disclaimer here: I don't totally agree with any of the above but it should make an interesting reading list as we get into "who is arguing what they prefer someone else said instead of what was said", who is "making stuff up" and who is "bullshitting their way through".

New age, huh?

Sorry kiddo - that's you.

Since I can't even begin to make myself say it on the other thread, I'll tell you.

There are no ghosts, no goblins, no wood nymphs, no gods and no spirits.

There is no spirituality, no metaphysics, and no things that go bump in the night.

If you got any of those, show them to me.

If you can't show them to me, you have two choices:

Either you explain how these live in our domain and yet cannot be "seen"

OR

You explain how these live in another domain and live by rules different than our own.

AND

If there are different rules, how are these knowable?

But, if "collective spirtuality" is oxymoronic through this device, then "personal spirituality" is simply moronic.

Your agnosticism cannot help you here.

Because, there is a hierarchy of the unknown just as there is one of the known.

We may have degrees of knowledge in practice. It is probably a bad idea to go to sleep on the railroad tracks. That conclusion may come to us because of our generic understanding of the fact that trains run on tracks or it may come from a specific knowledge of railway schedules on that particular line. In either case, it is entirely possible that no train may show up.

Yet... and this is the point... though unfullfilled, our fear that a train might appear is of an entirely different order than our fear that, say, a rocket powered blue whale on roller skates might show up to run us down.

Finally, what goes for the spirit also goes for the flesh...

You think that secular religion consists in the belief in the completeness or in the closed system of science, but that is a tiny sliver of the real secular religion. The real spirits are in the phenomonology of the above... In the endless repetition of "common knowledge" which as old Hegel would say, "isn't known at all", just by dint of being "common".

You're a sucker for that shit every time, verbal gymnastics notwithstanding.

Wanna play 3-card monty?
.

Ain't no metaphysics, it's all one thing, some things we understand, some we don't. We are limited by our senses, honed to the degree necessary to provide a succeeding generation but not "designed" for such highfalutin speculation. Consider how based upon the revelations of new devices which expanded human sensory capability that our world and our understanding of such has been greatly expanded. The telescope and microscope are obvious examples. Science ain't no done deal. Some shit that we think we understand will turn out to be coincidences and other ruling principles will have to be brought back to reality(thinking of Skinner's Behaviorism there). And I expect there's some shit we haven't conceived of yet. Materialism is a good working hypothesis, but as it ain't fully understood and possibly never will be, guess that makes me agnostic.

In any case, I don't do social networking. No headway? No work.

So you're rejecting my myspace friend invite? :wah:

ON EDIT: A different tack

What is materialism? If it is the claim that there is only matter, which directly clashes with idealism, what do we make of dualism, non-reductionism, realism, emergence (which, as originally defined, sounds alot like dialectics by the way)? Are idealism and theism necessarily tied together?

What does "material" mean? Laws of chemisty, laws of biology, electrical engineering, the four physical forces?

But it is not quite so simple because the mainstream scientific position -- accepted by right wingers, agnostics, marxists, theists -- is that things are (probably) not mind-independent at some level (ie QM)

More than that, what about our social reality? Is class mind-independent or not? What the hell does "reality" mean? These are not fatuous questions. Do we just make a list of thing starting at the subatomic level and working up to galactic superclusters? Do we then make a separate list of language, society, culture, politics and states? Throw 'em in a blender and you have reality?

Do the premises Marx and Engels worked from when they talked of "external reality" still stand? Couldn't Descarte have had this same conversation, more or less? Are we partitioned off from "external reality" inside our own minds?

And we've only just gotten started here..

How do we organize debate designed to shed light?

The issue is not the certainty of any particular conclusion but how one gets there. Having denied agnosticism, you regurgitate the crudest and most primitive of agnostic positions, right down to the subjectivity involved in the "excitation of the optic nerve". The "learned" attempt to decorate this is just more silliness.

If we are uncertain about the limits of our knowledge, doesn't that open the door to metaphysical certainty... through spiritual method, revelation, innate knowledge? No.

The "debate" is not between certainty and uncertainty but between two different certainties. In fact, this discussion slams the spiritual door shut with a power that is a trillion times greater than any doubt we might have over any particular logical thread, and this by the very same method used above.

If we're not certain of the train, can't it be whales? The conflation is the message. And, that "message" is a hundred times less evolved than the one long ago undertaken by old Tom.

Oh yeah, then there is the "self-indulgent" part. You meander aimlessly because you mean to. That is entirely optional. You could much more easily claim your philistine "right" to believe anything you want to. Perhaps you could also proclaim that "right" for others as proof positive of your belief in post-modern Amerikan values. That is, after all, your objective... to bring comfort and solace to crazy ideas that you find convenient.

And why not? If certainty is uncertain, surely we can find room for our own bankrupt bullshit.
.

In any case, I don't do social networking. No headway? No work.

So you're rejecting my myspace friend invite? :wah:

ON EDIT: A different tack

What is materialism? If it is the claim that there is only matter, which directly clashes with idealism, what do we make of dualism, non-reductionism, realism, emergence (which, as originally defined, sounds alot like dialectics by the way)? Are idealism and theism necessarily tied together?

What does "material" mean? Laws of chemisty, laws of biology, electrical engineering, the four physical forces?

But it is not quite so simple because the mainstream scientific position -- accepted by right wingers, agnostics, marxists, theists -- is that things are (probably) not mind-independent at some level (ie QM)

More than that, what about our social reality? Is class mind-independent or not? What the hell does "reality" mean? These are not fatuous questions. Do we just make a list of thing starting at the subatomic level and working up to galactic superclusters? Do we then make a separate list of language, society, culture, politics and states? Throw 'em in a blender and you have reality?

Do the premises Marx and Engels worked from when they talked of "external reality" still stand? Couldn't Descarte have had this same conversation, more or less? Are we partitioned off from "external reality" inside our own minds?

And we've only just gotten started here..

How do we organize debate designed to shed light?

The issue is not the certainty of any particular conclusion but how one gets there. Having denied agnosticism, you regurgitate the crudest and most primitive of agnostic positions, right down to the subjectivity involved in the "excitation of the optic nerve". The "learned" attempt to decorate this is just more silliness.

If we are uncertain about the limits of our knowledge, doesn't that open the door to metaphysical certainty... through spiritual method, revelation, innate knowledge? No.

The "debate" is not between certainty and uncertainty but between two different certainties. In fact, this discussion slams the spiritual door shut with a power that is a trillion times greater than any doubt we might have over any particular logical thread, and this by the very same method used above.

If we're not certain of the train, can't it be whales? The conflation is the message. And, that "message" is a hundred times less evolved than the one long ago undertaken by old Tom.

Oh yeah, then there is the "self-indulgent" part. You meander aimlessly because you mean to. That is entirely optional. You could much more easily claim your philistine "right" to believe anything you want to. Perhaps you could also proclaim that "right" for others as proof positive of your belief in post-modern Amerikan values. That is, after all, your objective... to bring comfort and solace to crazy ideas that you find convenient.

And why not? If certainty is uncertain, surely we can find room for our own bankrupt bullshit.
.

OK, sometimes I can't really tell, but I take it you are being all business in this post. So, only one question..what in the hell are you talking about?

First, it ain't crude, primitive, or even "vulgar". Can you define materialism or not? In a way that isn't hopelessly obtruse (a la Engels and "Nature" whatever that is)?

Second, do you know anything about the debates that have raged within and about Quantum Physics for most of the last century? I'm not talking about the cobbled together psuedo-philosophic take of Marxist halfwits like Rob Sewell or Alan Woods either.

Your debate about metaphysical certitude is not with me. I prove that by asking you to demonstrate a single instance where I've advanced or defended or, honestly, even broached any such thing. I've meandered enough where it surely would've come out by now (maybe even involuntarily), right ;)?.

The conflation is the message I think you should be very careful with language. Something you are much better at when you are on your own turf. You've heaped quite a bit of derision on a division between traditional physics and metaphysics. Phsyics at its root involves only ONE hypothetical: force. In addition it has ONE measurable in acceleration. This is assuming that we are allowing a spatiotemporal framework for discussion. Mass = inertial mass = resistance to force (by definition). By Einstein's most famous equation, energy is the amount of force required to achieve maximum (observeable) acceleration. There is no such thing as energy. Prove this to yourself by trying to produce a thimble full.

I don't know what your contorted definition of metaphysics means, I suspect it has its origins in trying to disguise anti-clericalism as "learnedness" though. How's that for conflation?


Oh yeah, then there is the "self-indulgent" part. You meander aimlessly because you mean to. That is entirely optional. You could much more easily claim your philistine "right" to believe anything you want to. Perhaps you could also proclaim that "right" for others as proof positive of your belief in post-modern Amerikan values. That is, after all, your objective... to bring comfort and solace to crazy ideas that you find convenient.

And why not? If certainty is uncertain, surely we can find room for our own bankrupt bullshit.

This is how I know you're too emotionally involved in this particular issue. Plenty of ideas championed on this very site are far crazier, bankrupt and self-indulgent than anything you can accuse me of. Some of Chlamor's stuff is downright dangerous coming as it is from the left. But, even when spurred on by me, that gets a virtual pass by you.

But what do I know, you'll pop in on schedule in a couple days and tell me this whole post is solipsism :D

Can you define materialism or not? In a way that isn't hopelessly obtuse (a la Engels and "Nature" whatever that is)?


What's hard about materialism?

A view of the world that makes no allowance for the 'spiritual' nor even for consciousness itself.

That about sums it up, IMO. I don't find that remotely unclear, and that is not because I am the laziest thinker here either.

Can you define materialism or not? In a way that isn't hopelessly obtuse (a la Engels and "Nature" whatever that is)?


What's hard about materialism?

A view of the world that makes no allowance for the 'spiritual' nor even for consciousness itself.

That about sums it up, IMO. I don't find that remotely unclear, and that is not because I am the laziest thinker here either.

No its definitely not defined as a negative, and it definitely does allow for consciousness. Its not only about stamping out the unsightly remnants of Idealism either (ie spiritualism). See if you go back to Freuerbach, and we all should sometime because he is credited by Marx and Engels as most responsible for their atheism, you get a very different picture.

See, Freuerbach normally gets the credit for the "pre-materialism" that inspired Marx. What gets left out is how important he was as a thinker in his own right and, more particularly, how influential he was on 20th century theology. That was because theologians and scholars were trying to counter his repudiations of theology. But there is an ironic twist: for Freuerbach EVERYTHING should boil down to religion -- he wanted to sublate all of philosophy into religion.

This is not just a historical footnote either, because it bears on exactly where M&E were coming from (albeit indirectly)

Going further though, Engels in his Dialectics of Nature detailed how materlism (now dialectical materialsm) is the interplay between man and his natural environment (Nature). It turns out this is very fuzzy because of the question of what the hell Nature "is". Anax calls it agnosticism, but I honestly don't know. Keep in mind that differential calculus had/has a profound impact on any and every scientific worldview and Engel's working knowledge of that appeared to be substandard vs other giant thinkers of his time. Marx is reputed to have been more learned on the subject, but I have no real evidence on that either way.

I won't move on to Lenin since anax says I'm not ready to wake that slumbering giant.

EDIT and that is not because I am the laziest thinker here either.

You're not the laziest thinker here, I am. I'm not even trying to be an independent thinker lol 8p

...Engels in his Dialectics of Nature detailed how materlism (now dialectical materialsm) is the interplay between man and his natural environment (Nature). It turns out this is very fuzzy because of the question of what the hell Nature "is".

I fail to see what is confusing about the term 'nature' as Engels uses it. Nature is the tableau upon which the dialectics work themselves out, be it in man versus himself or man versus 'nature' (i.e. not man). Again, that seems as plain and basic to me as if could ever be. Perhaps my skooling is sufficiently limited as to allow me to see this matter in a very basic, black-and-white way, but whatever the case I do not at all follow you over the cliff when you ask 'what is nature' repeatedly over the course of this discussion.

Just puttering around, I found this piece that would seem right up your alley and may help us to get off the sky fairies and onto the discussion of science which you have also broached:

Impossible! This is the general reaction of most people familiar with dialectics (either as Hegelians or as Marxists), or of those studying nature (i.e., the scientists). As a dialectician, so runs the argument, you are dealing essentially with a subjectively constituted schema that has validity for the conceptual process, but not as such for nature “out there.” Thus, Hegelians remain abstract, while most Marxists regard dialectics as an ideology or, at best, as a methodology to be “used.” The scientists, on the other hand, see nature as an objective process not intrinsically reflective of any such “subjective” logic as dialectic, and, at most, regard the dialectic as a curiosity giving “intuition” but not real insight. All miss the concrete immediacy of the dialectical process, i.e., the way in which dialectic expresses the dynamics of whatever is immediately present, be it thoughts, feelings, sensations or intuitions in the shape of objects, equations or people.

Hegel, first and foremost, is the philosopher who regarded dialectical movement as his “object” of knowledge winding up with the absolute. However, having discovered the dynamics of dialectic, Hegel tried to “distill” the essence of this dynamics out of the immediacy of the world situation from which dialectics emerges into awareness. Thus, the philosophic insight of Marx lies precisely in his intuition that the logic of dialectic and the immediacy of the world context must themselves be in a dialectical relation, lest dialectic be reduced to a mere empty form, and immediate existence reduced to a blind play of forces. Hence, “dialectical materialism,” regarded not as a party slogan or as an ideology, is but a way of giving expression to the concrete immediacy of “existence” displaying its “essence” as lying in a dialectic of relations, such that “reality” is at once immediate and dialectical (i.e., a “mediation” of relations).

Therefore in order to present a meaningful “dialectics of nature,” and a “unified field theory of the sciences” — which includes all sciences (both “natural” and “humanistic”) — Marxist dialectic must be reconsidered as its basis. However — and this is essential — precisely because Marxism as concrete dialectic is a philosophy of dialectic and therefore a philosophy of transformation, creation and movement, Marxism itself must be a dialectical philosophy, and not an abstract “position” or ideology forcing the world around it to conform to a given pattern. Any perspective of dialectical movement must itself be within that movement, lest the dialectic turn out to be only a partial and abstract account of the world, ignoring the fact that any perspective outlined by an individual or a society is paradoxically within the very world it is “describing.”

This paper is divided into three sections. The first section outlines the philosophic basis necessary to present a dialectic of the sciences as a possibility. The second section then considers the revolution of perspective necessary for such a dialectic to manifest itself as an integral aspect of scientific practice. This revolution is a revolution of consciousness, and thus part of a fundamental change in both personal and social awareness and modes of being — i.e., in both subjective and intersubjective orientations. Finally, in section three, a concrete presentation of a dialectics of nature and a unified field theory of the sciences is given — detailing what such a perspective means for the major natural and social sciences, and indicating how such a perspective can itself become a science — with its own principles and theories subjected to the test of history for validation and modification. In concluding this section, I briefly outline a new theory of relativistic quantum mechanics based upon a dialectics of nature, and present it as a concrete example of what can be done in one field, i.e., physics.
http://www.thenewdialectics.org/dialnat.htm

I'm going to read the whole thing. Maybe you and Anax can go trainskating over it later.

Dammit I had a long write up that got deleted somehow. Its important enough that I will try and retype it though

EDIT: I'm going to watch the game for a while but the basic problem is that Nature can't have an abstract essence. That is the big advance of Marx over the materialism that preceded him. Man is a product of Nature and it is impossible to separate the two.

Also, what BP said a few posts up gets right to it: for materialism to even BE an ideology there has to be an element of the unknown. Anax has contorted himself in so many different directions, I'm hard pressed to say for sure, but I think he agrees with that. Marx says as much in The German Ideology and The Critique of Hegelian Philosophy, when he states that the sensuousness of human agency -- realized through labor -- can never be expressed adequately by even the most advanced and refined of dialectics.

Wait, let me beat the rush: I'm just making stuff up :rolleyes:

Quickly, since I had this all worked out before it got deleted --

If dialectics -- conscious or not, intentional or not -- are driven by the unity of experiential transivity and Idenity -- then this is also the foundation of all (rational) activity. An easy example is that a pound is never equal to a pound outside of a certain tolerance, but there is still a unit of measurement called the pound. So even though things are temporally ephemeral, they can nevertheless be categorized. This is the contradiction.

In his discussion of Being Hegel makes this point when he tells us that A != B logically. This is borne out by human experience (the cliche that you never step in the same river twice)

I'll try and fix this up later because its a little random at the moment and I don't want to "meander" too much :D

EDIT: also Rusty, no one tries to define Nature within Marxism, objectively. Its understood that our understanding of Nature is only as good as our proximate contact with Nature. That is in addition to the above of understanding Man as part and parcel of Nature. So what I was trying to draw out from Anax is HOW he proposes to apply dialectics to Nature and it is entirely dependent on how he regards Nature in the first place.

Also, Rusty, there's a rule for guys like Mike Kosok: don't bullshit the bullshitters

I've looked him up at least once in the past and it seems like he may have written some articles for TELOS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TELOS_(journal)

EDIT: he cites some of those articles in the link you gave too

But that was in the 60s

Anyway, his stuff is so much New Agey garbage afaik. Or rather, not garbage exactly, because you probably can pull out a nugget of insight if you polish up the turds he so generously gifts us with.

It would be intersting to compare his stuff to the Phenomenology of Husserl, but first you have to decipher this guy (to say nothing of Husserl). To some extent this is a great find though, because I think my own arguments are more sympathetic and similar to his positions than most would be, but ultimately hes full of fucking shit. Nobody who has anything legit to say writes it like that, except an asshole.


So, I'm pretty sure there's some worthwhile stuff there BUT how do you get it out of the fucker without fucking your head in the process? Subject-Obect conceptions of the world in particular are a big deal, I think the most astute of the commentators would be the Soviet Evald Ilyenkov.

You have to understand we are also far afield from anything important from a pragmatic perspective since these type of philosophy debates are always circular firing squads manned by charlatans, degenerates and gasbags. I'm all three, how 'bout you ;) ?

EDIT: I found a bunch of links written by this POS if you want em, one is about fucking.

[quote]In any case, I don't do social networking. No headway? No work.

So you're rejecting my myspace friend invite? :wah:

ON EDIT: A different tack

What is materialism? If it is the claim that there is only matter, which directly clashes with idealism, what do we make of dualism, non-reductionism, realism, emergence (which, as originally defined, sounds alot like dialectics by the way)? Are idealism and theism necessarily tied together?

What does "material" mean? Laws of chemisty, laws of biology, electrical engineering, the four physical forces?

But it is not quite so simple because the mainstream scientific position -- accepted by right wingers, agnostics, marxists, theists -- is that things are (probably) not mind-independent at some level (ie QM)

More than that, what about our social reality? Is class mind-independent or not? What the hell does "reality" mean? These are not fatuous questions. Do we just make a list of thing starting at the subatomic level and working up to galactic superclusters? Do we then make a separate list of language, society, culture, politics and states? Throw 'em in a blender and you have reality?

Do the premises Marx and Engels worked from when they talked of "external reality" still stand? Couldn't Descarte have had this same conversation, more or less? Are we partitioned off from "external reality" inside our own minds?

And we've only just gotten started here..

How do we organize debate designed to shed light?

The issue is not the certainty of any particular conclusion but how one gets there. Having denied agnosticism, you regurgitate the crudest and most primitive of agnostic positions, right down to the subjectivity involved in the "excitation of the optic nerve". The "learned" attempt to decorate this is just more silliness.

If we are uncertain about the limits of our knowledge, doesn't that open the door to metaphysical certainty... through spiritual method, revelation, innate knowledge? No.

The "debate" is not between certainty and uncertainty but between two different certainties. In fact, this discussion slams the spiritual door shut with a power that is a trillion times greater than any doubt we might have over any particular logical thread, and this by the very same method used above.

If we're not certain of the train, can't it be whales? The conflation is the message. And, that "message" is a hundred times less evolved than the one long ago undertaken by old Tom.

Oh yeah, then there is the "self-indulgent" part. You meander aimlessly because you mean to. That is entirely optional. You could much more easily claim your philistine "right" to believe anything you want to. Perhaps you could also proclaim that "right" for others as proof positive of your belief in post-modern Amerikan values. That is, after all, your objective... to bring comfort and solace to crazy ideas that you find convenient.

And why not? If certainty is uncertain, surely we can find room for our own bankrupt bullshit.
.

OK, sometimes I can't really tell, but I take it you are being all business in this post. So, only one question..what in the hell are you talking about?

First, it ain't crude, primitive, or even "vulgar". Can you define materialism or not? In a way that isn't hopelessly obtruse (a la Engels and "Nature" whatever that is)?

Second, do you know anything about the debates that have raged within and about Quantum Physics for most of the last century? I'm not talking about the cobbled together psuedo-philosophic take of Marxist halfwits like Rob Sewell or Alan Woods either.

Your debate about metaphysical certitude is not with me. I prove that by asking you to demonstrate a single instance where I've advanced or defended or, honestly, even broached any such thing. I've meandered enough where it surely would've come out by now (maybe even involuntarily), right ;)?.

The conflation is the message I think you should be very careful with language. Something you are much better at when you are on your own turf. You've heaped quite a bit of derision on a division between traditional physics and metaphysics. Phsyics at its root involves only ONE hypothetical: force. In addition it has ONE measurable in acceleration. This is assuming that we are allowing a spatiotemporal framework for discussion. Mass = inertial mass = resistance to force (by definition). By Einstein's most famous equation, energy is the amount of force required to achieve maximum (observeable) acceleration. There is no such thing as energy. Prove this to yourself by trying to produce a thimble full.

I don't know what your contorted definition of metaphysics means, I suspect it has its origins in trying to disguise anti-clericalism as "learnedness" though. How's that for conflation?


Oh yeah, then there is the "self-indulgent" part. You meander aimlessly because you mean to. That is entirely optional. You could much more easily claim your philistine "right" to believe anything you want to. Perhaps you could also proclaim that "right" for others as proof positive of your belief in post-modern Amerikan values. That is, after all, your objective... to bring comfort and solace to crazy ideas that you find convenient.

And why not? If certainty is uncertain, surely we can find room for our own bankrupt bullshit.

This is how I know you're too emotionally involved in this particular issue. Plenty of ideas championed on this very site are far crazier, bankrupt and self-indulgent than anything you can accuse me of. Some of Chlamor's stuff is downright dangerous coming as it is from the left. But, even when spurred on by me, that gets a virtual pass by you.

But what do I know, you'll pop in on schedule in a couple days and tell me this whole post is solipsism :D[/quote:3tpa3yjo]

We'll see if I pop back in two days or twenty. That remains to be seen. For today though, my patience is at an end. You don't get any more answers to your questions. It's my turn. The question on the table is further up thread. Are there gods and spirits and unknown things that go bump in the night? If so, what leads you to think so? If not, why do you begin to chant the mantra of uncertainty each and every time that question comes up?

You bounce around like a ball in a pachinko machine but I know where it all ends up. I can name that song in four notes. Prove me wrong. Let's hear the positive case if you know how to make it as you claim. Everything else that you have brought up is just background noise, made louder by unrelated quotations and subjects whose relevance you have not even stated, let alone proven. The simple case first, please... and in your own words.

And by the by, I don't have to wait to call you a solipsist. I already have. How is solipsism different from agnosticism except by degrees?

Finally, you really should cite your sources as has been mentioned before. I can't tell if you are citing Tucker or Althusser, an earlier "adherent", or a post-modern plagerist on Feuerbach. In any case, let's defer the matter lest it rob you of focus in answering my question first.
.

Are there gods and spirits and unknown things that go bump in the night? If so, what leads you to think so? If not, why do you begin to chant the mantra of uncertainty each and every time that question comes up?

When was the last time that question was relevant to anything Anax? About the time Karl Marx and others were militantly pushing for atheism and materialism. Scientism, positivism, empiricism, whatever you want to call it won out. No one but some crazy fundamentalists push God as the cause of anything anymore.

But


Are there gods and spirits and unknown things that go bump in the night?

No


If so, what leads you to think so?

I don't


If not, why do you begin to chant the mantra of uncertainty each and every time that question comes up?

Short answer: I'm not

Longer(ish) version: Its about cosmology. Or ontology depending on who's using what definitions. Lets stick with cosmology. The predictions and conclusions of astrophsysics -- dealing with stars, galaxies, nebulae, planets, superclusters, the Big Bang, Black Holes and other topics on the grandest scales we know of -- surprisingly spring from analysis of the tiniest bits in many cases (subatomic particles). No one has any firsthand information and definitely no one has any hard empirical evidence. The question is whether these findings are "knowledge", "theories", "speculation" or "revealed from on high".

Lets say that science is, in some sense, human activity encapsulated in thought. Almost by definition, this has no limit or boundary or "destination". In particular for Marxism, since that would be almost teleological. It is surely safe to conclude/concede that there is much beyond the scope of present-day science, yes? Marx, as I mentioned above, has tagged the representation of human practice as a literally forever-ongoing task. What category would you like to assign these unknowns to? Many an astrophysicist would allow only four -- the four fundamental forces of nature. Does that even *sound* right?

Further, as much as it is scientific (and God knows how anyone defines that), the dialectic is a tool for probing unknowns -- by letting us compartmentalize things that are fleeting and intangible in nature into neat categories and to thus "know" the ineffable.

Finally, I admit that I can rarely judge tone on the internet right, but it seems like you are a little sore over this conversation. You've criticized me rather heavily on this topic when it appeared I was destined to be a spectator to a grudge match between you and Mike or Wolf. I took this in the spirit of jocularity and tried to have some fun with it, but you seem to be frustrated as though I've truly been dodging your questions above. I guess it doesn't matter. Take it for what you will.

If you feel I'm spouting nonsense, I await your rebuttal in your inimitable, (impenetrable) style :)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch03.gif

This is from the Wikipedia entry, although I grabbed it sometime ago and don't know if it is still up:


In two works of this period, Pierre Bayle (1838 and Philosophie und
Christentum (1839 , which deal largely with theology , he held that he had
proven "that Christianity <http> has
in fact long vanished not only from the reason but from the life of mankind,
that it is nothing more than a fixed idea" in flagrant contradiction to the
distinctive features of contemporary civilization. This attack is followed
up in his most important work, Das Wesen des Christentums (1841 ), which was
translated into English (The Essence of Christianity
<http> , by George Eliot
<http> , 1853 , 2nd ed. 1881 ),
French and Russian . Its aim may be described shortly as an effort to
humanize theology. He lays it down that man, so far as he is rational, is to
himself his own object of thought. Religion
<http> is consciousness of the infinite.

Religion therefore is "nothing else than the consciousness of the infinity
of the consciousness; or, in the consciousness of the infinite, the
conscious subject has for his object the infinity of his own nature." Thus
God <http> is nothing else than man: he is, so
to speak, the outward projection of man's inward nature.

Feuerbach's theme was a misunderstanding of Hegel's speculative theology in
which the Creation remains a part of the Creator, while the Creator remains
greater than the Creation. When the student Feuerbach presented his own
theory to professor Hegel <http> , Hegel
refused to reply positively to it.

In part I of his book Feuerbach develops what he calls the "true or
anthropological essence of religion." Treating of God in his various aspects
"as a being of the understanding," "as a moral being or law," "as love" and
so on, Feuerbach shows that in every aspect God corresponds to some feature
or need of human nature. "If man is to find contentment in God," he claims,
"he must find himself in God." In part 2 he discusses the "false or
theological essence of religion," i.e. the view which regards God as having
a separate existence over against man. Hence arise various mistaken beliefs,
such as the belief in revelation which he believes not only injures the
moral sense, but also "poisons, nay destroys, the divinest feeling in man,
the sense of truth," and the belief in sacraments
<http> such as the Lord's Supper
<http> , which is to him a piece of
religious materialism of which "the necessary consequences are superstition
and immorality."


This one is from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/#4


But in the second part of his book, Feuerbach leveled a number of criticisms at Christianity that do not depend on this paradigm. Here the crucial term is not "alienation" but "contradictions" and the latter arise when the naïve and involuntary projection of religion is made into an intentional object of theology. Among these contradictions are those doctrines that exhibit the paradoxes of the religious illusion, logical contradictions which arise out of mutually incompatible predicates attributed to the deity, and, finally, incompatible virtues that are inherent in religious faith. For example, Feuerbach argues that one of the contradictions in Christianity is that it teaches that the truth will make human beings free but it also corrupts the "sentiment of truth" by claiming that God revealed himself only at a particular time and place and enables some to believe and not others. This necessarily leads to superstition and sophistry.

Two of these contradictions are especially important. The first is that the theological notion of God contains two incompatible types of predicates: metaphysical and personal. On the one hand, the divine being is said to be omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and impassible; on the other hand, this God is a loving, compassionate being moved by human suffering. Contemporary critics of theism have often remarked on this, especially process philosophers, but Feuerbach tried to explain why the contradiction is inherent in theistic religions. He argues that the metaphysical predicates spring out of the objectification of the human attribute of reason while the personal predicates arise out of the projection of love. The second contradiction is not so much intellectual as psychological. It is the "inward disunion" that arises out of the difference between the virtues of faith and love. Faith, Feuerbach argued, depends on a determinate intellectual judgment as to what is true and false. The concept of heresy is inherent in a religion when faith is made the primary virtue. It follows that those who do not accept the Christian revelation are not merely in error but damned. Faith is essentially partisan. This is why Christians have a special obligation to evangelize non-believers and to reject those among themselves who do not adhere to correct belief, to dogma. But so construed, faith stands opposed to love because love is by its very nature universal and inclusive. This contradiction accounts for why Christian theologians themselves have from the beginning attempted to soften or marginalize the concept of Hell.

Feuerbach was willing to acknowledge that Christian faith does give "a person a peculiar sense of his own dignity and importance" (GW V:413; EC 249). In this sense he might have agreed with Kierkegaard who later argued that the notion of an individual recognized by the Creator of the Universe stretches individual consciousness to its extreme limits. But he also argued that this same belief is not only narcissistic but contributes to the arrogance and fanaticism of Christianity. Furthermore, this dignity is conveyed circuitously, so speak. Believers do not possess dignity in themselves but only acquire it mediated through a deity just as a servant sometimes identifies himself with the social class of the employer.

Theses On Feuerbach


Karl Marx 1845


Theses On Feuerbach

________________________________


Written: by Marx in Brussels in the spring of 1845, under the title “1) ad
Feuerbach”;
Marx’s original text was first published in 1924, in German and in Russian
translation, by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Marx-Engels Archives,
Book I, Moscow. The English translation was first published in the Lawrence
and Wishart edition of The German Ideology in 1938. The most widely known
version of the “Theses” is that based on Engels’ edited version, published
as an appendix to his Ludwig Feuerbach in 1888, where he gave it the title
Theses on Feuerbach;
Translated: by Cyril Smith 2002, based on work done jointly with Don
Cuckson.

________________________________


1


The main defect of all hitherto-existing materialism — that of Feuerbach
included — is that the Object [der Gegenstand], actuality, sensuousness, are
conceived only in the form of the object [Objekts], or of contemplation
[Anschauung], but not as human sensuous activity, practice [Praxis], not
subjectively. Hence it happened that the active side, in opposition to
materialism, was developed by idealism — but only abstractly, since, of
course, idealism does not know real, sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach
wants sensuous objects [Objekte], differentiated from thought-objects, but
he does not conceive human activity itself as objective [gegenständliche]
activity. In The Essence of Christianity [Das Wesen des Christenthums], he
therefore regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human
attitude, while practice is conceived and defined only in its dirty-Jewish
form of appearance [Erscheinungsform]. Hence he does not grasp the
significance of ‘revolutionary’, of ‘practical-critical’, activity.


2


The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is
not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the
truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-sidedness [Diesseitigkeit] of
his thinking, in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of
thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.


3


The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and
upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed
circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change
circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this
doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior
to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human
activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally
understood only as revolutionary practice.


4


Feuerbach starts off from the fact of religious self-estrangement
[Selbstentfremdung], of the duplication of the world into a religious,
imaginary world, and a secular [weltliche] one. His work consists in
resolving the religious world into its secular basis. He overlooks the fact
that after completing this work, the chief thing still remains to be done.
For the fact that the secular basis lifts off from itself and establishes
itself in the clouds as an independent realm can only be explained by the
inner strife and intrinsic contradictoriness of this secular basis. The
latter must itself be understood in its contradiction and then, by the
removal of the contradiction, revolutionised. Thus, for instance, once the
earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former
must itself be annihilated [vernichtet] theoretically and practically.


5


Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thinking, wants sensuous
contemplation [Anschauung]; but he does not conceive sensuousness as
practical, human-sensuous activity.


6


Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man
[menschliche Wesen = ‘human nature’]. But the essence of man is no
abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the
ensemble of the social relations. Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a
criticism of this real essence is hence obliged:

1. To abstract from the historical process and to define the religious
sentiment regarded by itself, and to presuppose an abstract — isolated -
human individual.

2. The essence therefore can by him only be regarded as ‘species’, as an
inner ‘dumb’ generality which unites many individuals only in a natural way.


7


Feuerbach consequently does not see that the ‘religious sentiment’ is itself
a social product, and that the abstract individual that he analyses belongs
in reality to a particular social form.


8


All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to
mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the
comprehension of this practice.


9


The highest point reached by contemplative [anschauende] materialism, that
is, materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical
activity, is the contemplation of single individuals and of civil society
[bürgerlichen Gesellschaft].


10


The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of
the new is human society or social humanity.




11


Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the
point is to change it.



________________________________

Deutsch | 1938 Translation | Engels’ edition
Engels on Feuerbach | Image of Thesis 11 | Works Index

Ludwig Feuerbach And The End Of Classical German Philosophy Part 3: Feuerbach by Frederick Engel

he real idealism of Feuerbach becomes evident as soon as we come to his philosophy of religion and ethics. He by no means wishes to abolish religion; he wants to perfect it. Philosophy itself must be absorbed in religion.

“The periods of humanity are distinguished only by religious changes. A historical movement is fundamental only when it is rooted in the hearts of men. The heart is not a form of religion, so that the latter should exist also in the heart; the heart is the essence of religion.” (Quoted by Starcke, p.168.)

According to Feuerbach, religion is the relation between human beings based on the affections, the relation based on the heart, which relation until now has sought its truth in a fantastic mirror image of reality — in the mediation of one or many gods, the fantastic mirror images of human qualities — but now finds it directly and without any mediation in the love between “I” and “Thou”. Thus, finally, with Feuerbach sex love becomes one of the highest forms, if not the highest form, of the practice of his new religion.

Now relations between human beings, based on affection, and especially between the two sexes, have existed as long as mankind has. Sex love in particular has undergone a development and won a place during the last 800 years which has made it a compulsory pivotal point of all poetry during this period. The existing positive religions have limited themselves to the bestowal of a higher consecration upon state-regulated sex love — that is, upon the marriage laws — and they could all disappear tomorrow without changing in the slightest the practice of love and friendship. Thus the Christian religion in France, as a matter of fact, so completely disappeared in the year 1793–95 that even Napoleon could not re-introduce it without opposition and difficulty; and this without any need for a substitute in Feuerbach’s sense, making itself in the interval.

Feuerbach’s idealism consists here in this: he does not simply accept mutual relations based on reciprocal inclination between human beings, such as sex love, friendship, compassion, self-sacrifice, etc., as what they are in themselves — without associating them with any particular religion which to him, too, belongs to the past; but instead he asserts that they will attain their full value only when consecrated by the name of religion. The chief thing for him is not that these purely human relations exist, but that they shall be conceived of as the new, true, religion. They are to have full value only after they have been marked with a religious stamp. Religion is derived from religare [“to bind”] and meant, originally, a bond. Therefore, every bond between two people is a religion. Such etymological tricks are the last resort of idealist philosophy. Not what the word means according to the historical development of its actual use, but what it ought to mean according to its derivation is what counts. And so sex love, and the intercourse between the sexes, is apotheosized to a religion, merely in order that the word religion, which is so dear to idealistic memories, may not disappear from the language. The Parisian reformers of the Louis Blanc trend used to speak in precisely the same way in the forties. They, likewise, could conceive of a man without religion only as a monster, and used to say to us: “Donc, l’atheisme c’est votre religion!” [“Well, then atheism is your religion!”] If Feuerbach wishes to establish a true religion upon the basis of an essentially materialist conception of nature, that is the same as regarding modern chemistry as true alchemy. If religion can exist without its god, alchemy can exist without its philosopher’s stone. By the way, there exists a very close connection between alchemy and religion. The philosopher’s stone has many godlike properties and the Egyptian-Greek alchemists of the first two centuries of our era had a hand in the development of Christian doctrines, as the data given by Kopp and Bertholet have proved.

Feuerbach’s assertion that “the periods of humanity are distinguished only by religious changes” is decidedly false. Great historical turning-points have been accompanied by religious changes only so far as the three world religions which have existed up to the present — Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam — are concerned. The old tribal and national religions, which arose spontaneously, did not proselytize and lost all their power of resistance as soon as the independence of the tribe or people was lost. For the Germans, it was sufficient to have simple contact with the decaying Roman world empire and with its newly adopted Christian world religion which fitted its economic, political, and ideological conditions. Only with these world religions, arisen more or less artificially, particularly Christianity and Islam, do we find that the more general historical movements acquire a religious imprint. Even in regard to Christianity, the religious stamp in revolutions of really universal significance is restricted to the first stages of the bourgeoisie’s struggle for emancipation — from the 13th to the 17th century — and is to be accounted for, not as Feuerbach thinks by the hearts of men and their religious needs, but by the entire previous history of the Middle Ages, which knew no other form of ideology than religion and theology. But when the bourgeoisie of the 18th century was strengthened enough likewise to posses an ideology of its own, suited to its own class standpoint, it made its great and conclusive revolution — the French —, appealing exclusively to juristic and political ideas, and troubling itself with religion only in so far as it stood in its way. But it never occurred to it to put a new religion in place of the old. Everyone knows how Robespierre failed in his attempt [to set up a religion of the “highest being”].

The possibility of purely human sentiments in our intercourse with other human beings has nowadays been sufficiently curtailed by the society in which we must live, which is based upon class antagonism and class rule. We have no reason to curtail it still more by exalting these sentiments to a religion. And similarly the understanding of the great historical class struggles has already been sufficiently obscured by current historiography, particularly in Germany, so that there is also no need for us to make such an understanding totally impossible by transforming the history of these struggles into a mere appendix of ecclesiastical history. Already here it becomes evident how far today we have moved beyond Feuerbach. His “finest” passages in glorification of his new religion of love are totally unreadable today.

The only religion which Feuerbach examines seriously is Christianity, the world religion of the Occident, based upon monotheism. He proves that the Christian god is only a fantastic reflection, a mirror image, of man. Now, this god is, however, himself the product of a tedious process of abstraction, the concentrated quintessence of the numerous earlier tribal and national gods. And man, whose image this god is, is therefore also not a real man, but likewise the quintessence of the numerous real men, man in the abstract, therefore himself again a mental image. Feuerbach, who on every page preaches sensuousness, absorption in the concrete, in actuality, becomes thoroughly abstract as soon as he begins to talk of any other than mere sex relations between human beings.

Of these relations, only one aspect appeals to him: morality. And here we are again struck by Feuerbach’s astonishing poverty when compared to Hegel. The latter’s ethics, or doctrine of moral conduct, is the philosophy of right, and embraces: (1) abstract right; (2) morality; (3) social ethics [Sittlichkeit], under which are comprised: the family, civil society, and the state.

Here the content is as realistic as the form is idealistic. Besides morality, the whole sphere of law, economy, politics is here included. With Feuerbach, it is just the reverse. In the form he is realistic since he takes his start from man; but there is absolutely no mention of the world in which this man lives; hence, this man remains always the same abstract man who occupied the field in the philosophy of religion. For this man is not born of woman; he issues, as from a chrysalis, from the god of monotheistic religions. He therefore does not live in a real world historically come into being and historically determined. True, he has intercourse with other men; however, each one of them is just as much an abstraction as he himself. In his philosophy of religion we still had men and women, but in his ethics even this last distinction disappears. Feuerbach, to be sure, at long intervals makes such statements as: “Man thinks differently in a palace and in a hut.” “If because of hunger, of misery, you have no stuff in your body, you likewise have no stuff for morality in your head, in your mind, or heart.” “Politics must become our religion,” etc.

But Feuerbach is absolutely incapable of achieving anything with these maxims. They remain mere phrases, and even Starcke has to admit that for Feuerbach politics constituted an impassable frontier and the “science of society, sociology, was terra incognita to him”.

He appears just as shallow, in comparison with Hegel, in his treatment of the antithesis of good and evil.

“One believes one is saying something great,” Hegel remarks, “if one says that ‘man is naturally good’. But one forgets that one says something far greater when one says ‘man is naturally evil’.”

With Hegel, evil is the form in which the motive force of historical development presents itself. This contains the twofold meaning that, on the one hand, each new advance necessarily appears as a sacrilege against things hallowed, as a rebellion against condition, though old and moribund, yet sanctified by custom; and that, on the other hand, it is precisely the wicked passions of man — greed and lust for power — which, since the emergence of class antagonisms, serve as levers of historical development — a fact of which the history of feudalism and of the bourgeoisie, for example, constitutes a single continual proof. But it does not occur to Feuerbach to investigate the historical role of moral evil. To him, history is altogether an uncanny domain in which he feels ill at ease. Even his dictum: “Man as he sprang originally from nature was only a mere creature of nature, not a man. Man is a product of man, of culture, of history” — with him, even this dictum remains absolutely sterile.

What Feuerbach has to tell us about morals can, therefore, only be extremely meagre. The urge towards happiness is innate in man, and must therefore form the basis of all morality. But the urge towards happiness is subject to a double correction. First, by the natural consequences of our actions: after the debauch comes the “blues”, and habitual excess is followed by illness. Secondly, by its social consequences: if we do not respect the similar urge of other people towards happiness they will defend themselves, and so interfere with our own urge toward happiness. Consequently, in order to satisfy our urge, we must be in a position to appreciate rightly the results of our conduct and must likewise allow others an equal right to seek happiness. Rational self-restraint with regard to ourselves, and love — again and again love! — in our intercourse with others — these are the basic laws of Feuerbach’s morality; from them, all others are derived. And neither the most spirited utterances of Feuerbach nor the strongest eulogies of Starcke can hide the tenuity and banality of these few propositions.

Only very exceptionally, and by no means to this and other people’s profit, can an individual satisfy his urge towards happiness by preoccupation with himself. Rather, it requires preoccupation with the outside world, with means to satisfy his needs — that is to say, food, an individual of the opposite sex, books, conversation, argument, activities, objects for use and working up. Feuerbach’s morality either presupposes that these means and objects of satisfaction are given to every individual as a matter of course, or else it offers only inapplicable good advice and is, therefore, not worth a brass farthing to people who are without these means. And Feuerbach himself states this in plain terms:

“Man thinks differently in a palace and in a hut. If because of hunger, of misery, you have no stuff in your body, you likewise have no stuff for morality in your head, in your mind, or heart.”

Do matters fare any better in regard to the equal right of others to satisfy their urge towards happiness? Feuerbach posed this claim as absolute, as holding good for all times and circumstances. But since when has it been valid? Was there ever in antiquity between slaves and masters, or in the Middle Ages between serfs and barons, any talk about an equal right to the urge towards happiness? Was not the urge towards happiness of the oppressed class sacrificed ruthlessly and “by the right of law” to that of the ruling class? Yes, that was indeed immoral; nowadays, however, equality of rights is recognized. Recognized in words ever since and inasmuch as the bourgeoisie, in its fight against feudalism and in the development of capitalist production, was compelled to abolish all privileges of estate, that is, personal privileges, and to introduce the equality of all individuals before law, first in the sphere in private law, then gradually also in the sphere of public law. But the urge towards happiness thrives only to a trivial extent on ideal rights. To the greatest extent of all it thrives on material means; and capitalist production takes care to ensure that the great majority of those equal rights shall get only what is essential for bare existence. Capitalist production has, therefore, little more respect, if indeed any more, for the equal right to the urge towards happiness of the majority than had slavery or serfdom. And are we better off in regard to the mental means of happiness, the educational means? Is not even “the schoolmaster of Sadowa” a mythical person? [A]

More. According to Feuerbach’s theory of morals, the Stock Exchange is the highest temple of moral conduct, provided only that one always speculates right. If my urge towards happiness leads me to the Stock Exchange, and if there I correctly gauge the consequences of my actions so that only agreeable results and no disadvantages ensue — that is, I always win — then I am fulfilling Feuerbach’s precept. Moreover, I do not thereby interfere with the equal right of another person to pursue his happiness; for that other man went to the Exchange just as voluntarily as I did and in concluding the speculative transaction with me he has followed his urge towards happiness as I have followed mine. If he loses his money, his action is ipso facto proved to have been unethical, because of his bad reckoning, and since I have given him the punishment he deserves, I can even slap my chest proudly, like a modern Rhadamanthus. Love, too, rules on the Stock Exchange, in so far as it is not simply a sentimental figure of speech, for each finds in others the satisfaction of his own urge towards happiness, which is just what love ought to achieve and how it acts in practice. And if I gamble with correct prevision of the consequences of my operations, and therefore with success, I fulfil all the strictest injunctions of Feuerbachian morality — and becomes a rich man into the bargain. In other words, Feuerbach’s morality is cut exactly to the pattern of modern capitalist society, little as Feuerbach himself might desire or imagine it.

But love! — yes, with Feuerbach, love is everywhere and at all times the wonder-working god who should help to surmount all difficulties of practical life — and at that in a society which is split into classes with diametrically opposite interests. At this point, the last relic of the revolutionary character disappears from his philosophy, leaving only the old cant: Love one another — fall into each other’s arms regardless of distinctions of sex or estate — a universal orgy of reconciliation!

In short, the Feuerbachian theory of morals fares like all its predecessors. It is designed to suit all periods, all peoples and all conditions, and precisely for that reason it is never and nowhere applicable. It remains, as regards the real world, as powerless as Kant’s categorical imperative. In reality every class, even every profession, has its own morality, and even this it violates whenever it can do so with impunity. And love, which is to unite all, manifests itself in wars, altercations, lawsuits, domestic broils, divorces, and every possible exploitation of one by another.

Now how was it possible that the powerful impetus given by Feuerbach turned out to be so unfruitful for himself? For the simple reason that Feuerbach himself never contrives to escape from the realm of abstraction — for which he has a deadly hatred — into that of living reality. He clings fiercely to nature and man; but nature and man remain mere words with him. He is incapable of telling us anything definite either about real nature or real men. But from the abstract man of Feuerbach, one arrives at real living men only when one considers them as participants in history. And that is what Feuerbach resisted,and therefore the year 1848, which he did not understand, meant to him merely the final break with the real world, retirement into solitude. The blame for this again falls chiefly on the conditions them obtaining in Germany, which condemned him to rot away miserably.

But the step which Feuerbach did not take nevertheless had to be taken. The cult of abstract man, which formed the kernel of Feuerbach’s new religion, had to be replaced by the science of real men and of their historical development. This further development of Feuerbach’s standpoint beyond Feuerbach was inaugurated by Marx in 1845 in The Holy Family.

Are there gods and spirits and unknown things that go bump in the night? If so, what leads you to think so? If not, why do you begin to chant the mantra of uncertainty each and every time that question comes up?

When was the last time that question was relevant to anything Anax? About the time Karl Marx and others were militantly pushing for atheism and materialism. Scientism, positivism, empiricism, whatever you want to call it won out. No one but some crazy fundamentalists push God as the cause of anything anymore.

What planet are you livin' on kiddo?

Have you missed Creationism, Intelligent Design, the rise of the Religious Right, prayer in schools, the Islamic Revival, the abortion debate, and the replays of the Scopes trial? Do you completely ignore California mysticism, New-Agism, the "Secret", Wicca, Dalai-Hindu-Tantra-Buddhist clowning, Mother Earth spirits and "personal spirituality"? Have you forgotten how we got here from PI and the unending pyramid pandering and insufferable claptrap of the joint? Are you not aware of what passes for "thinking" not just on the web but in society? What is the "spirtual pillar" of the phrase, "moronification", which everyone seems to like so much, if it is not the broadest and most cockamamy acceptance of this most baseless bullshit?

What you mean to say is that the question is not relevant for you and you have other fish to fry. The problem is, of course, that Marxism was never meant to be an abstract "ism" but, rather, was intended as a weapon. Nothing could be clearer in the theses you reproduce above. That should tell you who I am "sore" at:


Finally, I admit that I can rarely judge tone on the internet right, but it seems like you are a little sore over this conversation. You've criticized me rather heavily on this topic when it appeared I was destined to be a spectator to a grudge match between you and Mike or Wolf. I took this in the spirit of jocularity and tried to have some fun with it, but you seem to be frustrated as though I've truly been dodging your questions above. I guess it doesn't matter. Take it for what you will.

I don't agree with anybody on this site about everything... perhaps even about most things. Chlamor and I used to fight like cats and dogs on PI. You can guess what I don't agree with Mike or Wolf on. As for seeing "white lights" and all that, you don't even have to guess. It makes me start wonderin' where I'm going next. Yet, I'm not "sore" about any of that. So why you?

Because knowledge brings responsibility. And if, as you say, you know a little somethin', then you have a hundred times the responsibility to share it when it matters and not to be absorbed in your own belly lint, instead. Fuck me, lookit how long it took to drag just the above simple statement outta you and you are still bitchin' about what you care about. You are the guy at Darwin's witch trial who, when it comes to him, says "and, yeah, I've gotta a gripe with Charlie about what he said about one a dem finches..."

That makes me sore...
.

Have you missed Creationism, Intelligent Design, the rise of the Religious Right, prayer in schools, the Islamic Revival, the abortion debate, and the replays of the Scopes trial? Do you completely ignore California mysticism, New-Agism, the "Secret", Wicca, Dalai-Hindu-Tantra-Buddhist clowning, Mother Earth spirits and "personal spirituality"? Have you forgotten how we got here from PI and the unending pyramid pandering and insufferable claptrap of the joint? Are you not aware of what passes for "thinking" not just on the web but in society? What is the "spirtual pillar" of the phrase, "moronification", which everyone seems to like so much, if it is not the broadest and most cockamamy acceptance of this most baseless bullshit?
.

I don't care about any of that, except and as it impacts politics. Live and let live. People are going to explore this stuff, always have. No different than writing fiction or composing music, that I can see, so long as we know what it is we are talking about. Am I missing something?

What you mean to say is that the question is not relevant for you and you have other fish to fry. The problem is, of course, that Marxism was never meant to be an abstract "ism" but, rather, was intended as a weapon. Nothing could be clearer in the theses you reproduce above. That should tell you who I am "sore" at:

OK, OK. Halfway through reading your reply I "got it". Seems like you went the long way to coax me into figuring it out though. The difference I see in now vs then is, at the end of the day eople have to concede the fact that email works. Which is hard to explain with magical thinking. I will let my issues lie for a while, if you'll talk about the following:

I thought we were talking solely about theism, and the grab bag of stuff you threw out encompasses alot more than just theism. I guess my final question is whether/why you think the militarized approach is really an effective strategy. I'm sorry for all the rigamorale I guess, this is a look I really hadn't anticipated. Where's the dividing line between "tactic" and the (pointless I guess) philosophical 'debate' refining of personal positions?

Btw, you're merciless dude ;)

(Oh, and tell me where/what I got scambled re: Feuerbach if/when you finish flogging me on everything else)

I guess my final question is whether/why you think the militarized approach is really an effective strategy.

In these times, H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, you even have to ask?

I guess my final question is whether/why you think the militarized approach is really an effective strategy.

In these times, H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, you even have to ask?

Militarized materialsim and atheism

[quote="Kid Of The Black Hole":2lyp58zu]I guess my final question is whether/why you think the militarized approach is really an effective strategy.

In these times, H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, you even have to ask?

Militarized materialsim and atheism[/quote:2lyp58zu]

I guess I am just -lost-

I see a chasm between theism and materialism that, despite my awareness of some smart folks who believe otherwise, is unbridgeable. As for a militarized approach, it is my proposition that revolutionaries are not by their own dint innately violent/militaristic. Rather they are so out of necessity because the reactionary forces against progress dictate the rules of the game, and those rules are violent to the point of being no rules at all. Play to win, dontcha know?

Now how does that concern theism? I wish I really knew. But in general, I think materialism is ALWAYS the sharper, more credible way to make a political observation and prescription for progress. Progress is not necessary because it is morally right. It is right because it is necessary.

[quote="Kid Of The Black Hole":1qt9z18x]I guess my final question is whether/why you think the militarized approach is really an effective strategy.

In these times, H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, you even have to ask?

Militarized materialsim and atheism

I guess I am just -lost-

I see a chasm between theism and materialism that, despite my awareness of some smart folks who believe otherwise, is unbridgeable. As for a militarized approach, it is my proposition that revolutionaries are not by their own dint innately violent/militaristic. Rather they are so out of necessity because the reactionary forces against progress dictate the rules of the game, and those rules are violent to the point of being no rules at all. Play to win, dontcha know?

Now how does that concern theism? I wish I really knew. But in general, I think materialism is ALWAYS the sharper, more credible way to make a political observation and prescription for progress. Progress is not necessary because it is morally right. It is right because it is necessary.[/quote:1qt9z18x]

hmmm..I'm not using the right word(s) is the problem here. Basically what I mean is this (and Anax will be along to tell me how sadly mistaken I am so that'll be a highlight): in the 1850s, hardcore materialism -- ie no gods, spirits, monsters under your bed, etc was an important position to take and defend very stridently because many scholars still were trying to push God as a causal aspect of the universe. This was a significant threat to scientific progress, let alone the effect it had on the average joe who bought into that stuff.

Today though, the difference I see, is that it is no longer credible to dismiss the accomplishments of science (if there is nothing to scientific knowledge, how do you propose to explain the fact that you can send an email for instance?). So even the religious folks are forced to concede that science DOES have supremacy in its own demesne. Now what counts as scientific territory is always in dispute and there are plenty of people still pushing all sorts of quackery of course, but its much harder to credibly convince people that God is the cause and source of everything.

Anax is disagreeing with the above and basically saying that we have to fight for the victory of a materialist worldview , inch by inch, all over again. And, remember, we're not talking about any exotic version of materialism, just the basics that everything boils down to matter and that horny anthropomorphic deities hurling lightning bolts from the top of Mt Olympus, friendly boos, or demons straight from the mind of Stephen King (other than in his mind).

A non-understanding of the above has produced most of the controversy about this topic. Anax says he is wielding materialism as a weapon, that is what I was referring to as "militarized" for lack of a better term.

...Today though, the difference I see, is that it is no longer credible to dismiss the accomplishments of science (if there is nothing to scientific knowledge, how do you propose to explain the fact that you can send an email for instance?). So even the religious folks are forced to concede that science DOES have supremacy in its own demesne. Now what counts as scientific territory is always in dispute and there are plenty of people still pushing all sorts of quackery of course, but its much harder to credibly convince people that God is the cause and source of everything.

Anax is disagreeing with the above and basically saying that we have to fight for the victory of a materialist worldview , inch by inch, all over again. And, remember, we're not talking about any exotic version of materialism, just the basics that everything boils down to matter and that horny anthropomorphic deities hurling lightning bolts from the top of Mt Olympus, friendly boos, or demons straight from the mind of Stephen King (other than in his mind).

A non-understanding of the above has produced most of the controversy about this topic. Anax says he is wielding materialism as a weapon, that is what I was referring to as "militarized" for lack of a better term.

OK, I think I already kinda followed you then.

So, materialism is a weapon. OK, I'm down.

Against what?

Reaction.

Theism, does it equal reaction?

Often yes. Always though?

Dunno.

Or is theism merely a weapon of the reactionaries (recalling that the clerics in the capitalist pyramid are captioned "We fool you")?

Again, often yes.

Or is theism a weapon used by reactionaries and by progressives, e.g. Liberation Theology which has been mentioned here? A weapon like the dialectic, one that can be Hegelian or concrete-hard?

With Anaxarchos being the most educated and the most strident Marxist I am likely to ever have made contact with, I think I can safely play Monty Hall and know he is going for what is behind curtain number two - theism is a weapon of mass distraction by the forces of reaction. And, generally, I lean that way too although not merely because of licking his boots. Rather, that is something that has been in my gut as long as I have felt my gut.

I have always had deep, deep conflicts about religion coming from a background of some deeply religious and deeply fooled reactionary folk whom I loved very much and learned a lot from.

I want casserole when I die. I want community. I want the warmth of being "sure."

But I cannot abide the silliness that is believing in sky fairies other than by growing a tumor myself in order to keep those around me who do believe from growing one themselves.

I went to my mother's church for the first time in a million askings a few weeks back. My main goal was to use that as the first day of test driving the car I had just given her to make sure everything was OK (it was and the thing is a nice old MB boat, but it is every bit as old as it is nice) and of course to make her happy too.

As I often feel whenever I find myself in sucha situation, I just wanted to cry.

To cry at how pathetic the whole thing is. To cry at how wonderful it would be if it were true. To cry at how much I wish I were part of such a community, this group of people who have indeed been very, very good to my mother at times when she needed help and no one else could help her (e.g. Thousands of dollars of electrical work at a deep discount by church members). To cry because people still fall for that shit and all the support the troops reich wing bullshit that comes with it, all because it seems to be a beacon of justice and community in a cold, cruel world.

I know there will one day be a just world, a REAL and just world. And I grieve the road block that is the fairy tales in between here and there. Yet I also know too very well the lure of them. They have been flittering around me all my life. Yes, I want casserole when I die. I want community. I want the warmth of being "sure."

I believe it was Anax, coinkidinkly, who commented in rating me on PI that I was a real "seeker of the truth" or something similar. Could be wrong about that, but if memory is correct is was prescient indeed. As time has passed and I have learned more from this person whose handle I hardly really recognized then, I am quite confident I do at least have a solid, if still rudimentary, grasp of the way things go now. Things make sense to me now in a way they never did before. And because of that, I am not nearly as emotionally caught up in them as I used to be. It is easier to be clear, cold even, when one can actually see wtf is goin' on.

About that essay I linked the other day, I did not bother to read it all after you pronounced it bullshit. But I will re-post what I thought was eye catching to me:


As a dialectician, so runs the argument, you are dealing essentially with a subjectively constituted schema that has validity for the conceptual process, but not as such for nature “out there.” Thus, Hegelians remain abstract, while most Marxists regard dialectics as an ideology or, at best, as a methodology to be “used.” The scientists, on the other hand, see nature as an objective process not intrinsically reflective of any such “subjective” logic as dialectic, and, at most, regard the dialectic as a curiosity giving “intuition” but not real insight. All miss the concrete immediacy of the dialectical process, i.e., the way in which dialectic expresses the dynamics of whatever is immediately present, be it thoughts, feelings, sensations or intuitions in the shape of objects, equations or people.

Hegel, first and foremost, is the philosopher who regarded dialectical movement as his “object” of knowledge winding up with the absolute. However, having discovered the dynamics of dialectic, Hegel tried to “distill” the essence of this dynamics out of the immediacy of the world situation from which dialectics emerges into awareness. Thus, the philosophic insight of Marx lies precisely in his intuition that the logic of dialectic and the immediacy of the world context must themselves be in a dialectical relation, lest dialectic be reduced to a mere empty form, and immediate existence reduced to a blind play of forces. Hence, “dialectical materialism,” regarded not as a party slogan or as an ideology, is but a way of giving expression to the concrete immediacy of “existence” displaying its “essence” as lying in a dialectic of relations, such that “reality” is at once immediate and dialectical (i.e., a “mediation” of relations).

Therefore in order to present a meaningful “dialectics of nature,” and a “unified field theory of the sciences” — which includes all sciences (both “natural” and “humanistic”) — Marxist dialectic must be reconsidered as its basis. However — and this is essential — precisely because Marxism as concrete dialectic is a philosophy of dialectic and therefore a philosophy of transformation, creation and movement, Marxism itself must be a dialectical philosophy, and not an abstract “position” or ideology forcing the world around it to conform to a given pattern. Any perspective of dialectical movement must itself be within that movement, lest the dialectic turn out to be only a partial and abstract account of the world, ignoring the fact that any perspective outlined by an individual or a society is paradoxically within the very world it is “describing.”

And it is for that reason that there is no fortune-telling going on for mankind by Fred n Karl, at least in my opinion. Seems to me, they go right up to the end of history. The end as we can hope to know it anyway. From there, its a whole new gig. Do they even posit a dialectic relevance at that point forward? Not that I know of so far.

But until that so-called end of history, this dialectic seems to my simple mind to be exceptionally suited to making things clear whether describing the past or the present or, for me, inspiring my aspirations for our future. And via that view, I have very little room to fit in the immaterial. When I talk to sister Mary across the street, I know she thinks we are resonating because of God, and I won't try to disabuse her of that entirely for then my well will run dry. It's enough to burp up some of the drink now and again instead.

But the real reason I resonate with her is because she was a primitive communist until at least the age of 23, living in east Texas in an agrarian extended family in the country where there literally was no money of any kind and everyone worked together to make it. She may think the totality of her is from nigh 70 years of Christian practice, and maybe a bit of it is, but to me the totality of her is in having grown up never having learned to save because her mamma saw no reason to teach her something so ridiculously irrelevant and then learning to bite two dimes to make a dollar when she came to this town, the beating heart of racism and struggle for people like her. I know how her granny died. I know a lot about this woman. And most of all what I know is that her consciousness came from her social conditions in the first decades of life. That confirms commieness in a very deep way to me.

But of course she had somma that gawd stuff the whole run too, so natch I am just seeing what I want to see and not really seeing whatever simply IS. I believe that lands the ball firmly back in your court - so firmly in fact that it is as though it never got lobbed to me in the first place.

Fuck me.

Anaxarchos commented here at popindy sometime back, I think it was in an exchange with BP about Baltimore and union activity forty years ago, that he really thought "This is it. It is happening" at the time. That's not really lost on me. It made a real impression. I would never want to make that same misapprehension, not any more than I would want to miss "it" if "it" really does commence.

But it seems to me that the strength of that desire and that will, one so strong that it overshown the true material conditions those many years ago, is of the same magnitude as saying simply that Marxism is a weapon. There is indeed a war. And a weapon of the ultimate sharpness is needed. No one is arguing that as far as I can tell. Discerning (and I choose that word with precision) who to wield it against is a big fucking challenge though.

I think the "We fool you" crowd deserves every volley we have. But I dunno what to do about the fooled. That is indeed fucking tough...

Yeah, the ball is in my court I think. First I wasn't arguing above, I was just trying to clarify what I posted, which was me trying to convey where I feel Anax was going on this thread.

I actually want to tell you this story (tit for tat lol) but it will sound like a mixture of braggadocia and sleaze and I admit some of it is a little fucked up. It doesn't have a neat happy ending either.

But I'l postpone that because I have to think through how to tell it.

Anyway here's an open question. Consider auto-workers. Anax has no problems working with them, even though it is clear they do NOT currently have a revolutionary class consciousness and they're probably not (as a whole) very to close to attaining that either. How is that different from working with people within the Church?

There is no end of history btw, just epochs. We're barbarians. That may draw a lot of kvetching from most people, but its also indisputable.

EDIT: also what if the point of religion is not to fool people? What if that is merely the self-serving agenda of a very few? If religiousity is searching for answers and meaning in questions that have far outpaced our ability to address them in any direct fashion. There is no way you are going to remove that natural impulse from mankind -- to ask those questions, to speculate on the answers, to seek deeper meaning. Hell, what else is science but the same drive.

But it is equally possible that science is not the sole arbiter of knowledge, truth or verity. There are a great many movements afoot owing to the technocratic, heavy-handedness of today's scientific-thinking. I don't think that is necessarily an indictment on "Science" per se, because that is an abstraction. The advancement in human technical knowledge will certainly proceed albeit at a pace and direction dictated by the current order. But part of that advance while inexorably be a broadening of the deadening fortress walls it has currently enclosed itself inside of.

I think that has everything and nothing to do with Marxist philosophy. I don't know what it has to do with socialism because neither socialism or anything is poised to go around putting out each and every little fire that is blazing.

There is no end of history btw, just epochs. We're barbarians. That may draw a lot of kvetching from most people, but its also indisputable.

Oh, I think you know what I mean though. And I have no dispute with your characterization of us as barbarians at all. I was just in the other room burning a cow :)

There is no end of history btw, just epochs. We're barbarians. That may draw a lot of kvetching from most people, but its also indisputable.

Oh, I think you know what I mean though. And I have no dispute with your characterization of us as barbarians at all. I was just in the other room burning a cow :)

Anyone else and I'd think that was a new code word for toking ;)

Anyone else and I'd think that was a new code word for toking ;)

Right.

I need no euphemisms when I get blazed up... although in my dotage it ain't much to talk about, trust me.

The above is such a good conversation (in part) that I hate to interrupt it by trying to answer some of the 439 questions directed at me. But, I will get to them in due time. Please excuse me but I am VERY busy (yes, with politics) and will return as I can. Let me answer one while I am here:

My use of "theism" had a double meaning (that's the way I keep myself awake at night). On the one hand, I meant it as in common usage (i.e. the opposite of "atheism"). On the other hand, the older definition of "theism" is identical to "deism"... not so much the "belief in god or gods", as it is the great-granddaddy of most "personal spirituality" which is rooted in the criticism of and simultaneous acceptance of traditional religious belief, no matter what Hindu diety or wood spirit its descendents may currently claim for their own.

I'll teach you a trick in this regard. There is nothing better than the Catholic Encyclopedia for this type of background material. The Encyclopedia is scrupulously fair and unerringly accurate...

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04679b.htm
.

The young man's name was Sibu Das. He was 23 years old, and he begged alms for a living. The child was his six-month-old son, Rahul. He and his wife, Kalpana, also had a three month old daughter, Sukla, and their home was a small patch of pavement outside of Kalighat's main gate. At night they were allowed to sleep there undisturbed.

snip

Still, on a good day, Sibu managed to beg rupees equal to $4 US, and on those days he would be almost twice as well off as one-third of humanity, and so he would thank Kali. Those of us schooled in the disciplines of reason might sneer at such piety, but against the over-whelming evidence of modernity's colossal failure for people like Sibu Das and his family, all over the world, we would have no right at all. We have nothing to sneer about, not even in the face of the quackery at Kalighat, with it's priest who make offers over the internet to perform pujas at Kali's feet for you, in absentia, at 674 rupees per pujas. We have had our way, and the world has not been saved by Descartes or Darwin, Voltaire or Hobbes.

Not relevant to this discussion, I just liked the following paragraph:


We should take the helm. We should reclaim the legacy of the Enlightenmentfor everyone, everywhere. We should reclaim the rights and entitlements of citizenship that have been stripped away from so much of the world. We can expand the scope of democracy, everywhere, and in ways that will allow us to confront the forces behind monoculture, ecological collaspe, and all those other things that seem to lead to a field where people make the sign of the cross when they pass. The work will require great sacrifice, discipline, and violence. We cannot shy away from the moral duty of that work because of a fear of those things. It will be hard work. It is certainly not the sort of thing you would want to leave to the environmentalists.

Take that as you will.

The above quotes are copied from "The Sixth Extinction", by Terry Glavin. May the god of spelling forgive me.

....As for the TV commercial Huckabee is running in Iowa that opens by proclaiming him a "Christian leader," he said this is just because that's what he is -- not, mind, you, the former governor of a nearby state or even a weight-loss guru. But as he well knew, it is not his surprisingly moderate record as governor of Arkansas that so attracts Iowa's conservative Christian voters, it's his obdurate and narrow-minded religious beliefs.
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Romney has scheduled a speech for Thursday -- at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Tex., of all places -- to confront the religious issue. This is what JFK did back in 1960, but Kennedy had it easy. All he had to do was shoot down the canard about Vatican control, while Romney has to deal with reality: Mormonism is a significant departure from conventional Christianity. The Book of Mormon, like the Bible itself, is scripture to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- downright heresy to some conservative Christians. This is not a gap that can be easily closed.

It is absurd that Romney feels compelled to deliver a speech defending his beliefs and that Huckabee does not have to explain how, in this day and age, he does not believe in evolution. But it is singularly appropriate that Romney's speech be delivered at the Bush library. For it is the 41st president's underachieving son who put such emphasis on religious belief -- and has shown us all, with his appalling record, that faith is no substitute for thought. A mind honed on the whetstone of doubt might have kept us out of Iraq.

The Republican presidential field has some feeble minds and some dangerous ones as well, but none has done as much damage as Huckabee has. Religion does not belong in the political arena. It does not lend itself to compromise. It is about belief, not reason, and is ordinarily immutable. Romney is a shifty fellow, but he will always be a Mormon, and it will never make a difference. Should he become president, he will still light the national Christmas tree and pardon the Thanksgiving turkey and host the Easter egg roll on the White House lawn.

Inevitably, Romney's speech will be compared to JFK's. But when it comes to being beholden to a religious doctrine, it is Huckabee and not Romney who has some explaining to do. What's more, Huckabee is the one who is capitalizing on religious intolerance. He says he's a Christian leader, but the evidence proves otherwise. He's really a shameless follower.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01620.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/03/AR2007120301620.html)

....As for the TV commercial Huckabee is running in Iowa that opens by proclaiming him a "Christian leader," he said this is just because that's what he is -- not, mind, you, the former governor of a nearby state or even a weight-loss guru. But as he well knew, it is not his surprisingly moderate record as governor of Arkansas that so attracts Iowa's conservative Christian voters, it's his obdurate and narrow-minded religious beliefs.
ad_icon

Romney has scheduled a speech for Thursday -- at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Tex., of all places -- to confront the religious issue. This is what JFK did back in 1960, but Kennedy had it easy. All he had to do was shoot down the canard about Vatican control, while Romney has to deal with reality: Mormonism is a significant departure from conventional Christianity. The Book of Mormon, like the Bible itself, is scripture to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- downright heresy to some conservative Christians. This is not a gap that can be easily closed.

It is absurd that Romney feels compelled to deliver a speech defending his beliefs and that Huckabee does not have to explain how, in this day and age, he does not believe in evolution. But it is singularly appropriate that Romney's speech be delivered at the Bush library. For it is the 41st president's underachieving son who put such emphasis on religious belief -- and has shown us all, with his appalling record, that faith is no substitute for thought. A mind honed on the whetstone of doubt might have kept us out of Iraq.

The Republican presidential field has some feeble minds and some dangerous ones as well, but none has done as much damage as Huckabee has. Religion does not belong in the political arena. It does not lend itself to compromise. It is about belief, not reason, and is ordinarily immutable. Romney is a shifty fellow, but he will always be a Mormon, and it will never make a difference. Should he become president, he will still light the national Christmas tree and pardon the Thanksgiving turkey and host the Easter egg roll on the White House lawn.

Inevitably, Romney's speech will be compared to JFK's. But when it comes to being beholden to a religious doctrine, it is Huckabee and not Romney who has some explaining to do. What's more, Huckabee is the one who is capitalizing on religious intolerance. He says he's a Christian leader, but the evidence proves otherwise. He's really a shameless follower.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01620.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/03/AR2007120301620.html)

One objection to that analysis. BushII's religious beliefs, real or apparent, have little to do with policy, though a lot to do with politics. Whatever puppet is on stage will read the script handed to them.

http://www.horrormasters.com/Text/a0293.pdf


THIS article is an amplification of a preface written for the new edition of G. V. Plekhanov's Fundamental Problems of Marxism. Its theme is the problem of the relation of Spinozism to materialism or, more precisely, an elucidation and interpretation of the theological elements — what Plekhanov called the 'theological trappings' — in Spinoza's system. This limitation is made in the realization that a study of the materialistic elements in Spinoza's philosophy would form a substantial and comprehensive work. A complete analysis of the theological elements alone would require much space. I shall therefore limit myself to indicating the path which an investigator of this problem should follow in order to elucidate the subject adequately.

http://www.sovlit.org/lia/Texts/LIA_Spinoza1925.pdf


What is Enlightenment?

"Sapere Aude!" -- Immaneul Kant

(Dare to think for yourself)

About that essay I linked the other day, I did not bother to read it all after you pronounced it bullshit.

Actually I did go ahead and read the whole thing. I'm still not that high on Kosok but:

the first part is pure academic philosophy, and really has very little relevance to us since we are not advancing Marxism as a campus-based field of study. That lets us cast off the question of whether its decipherable or not (and on a reread its not as bad as I though, especially compared to other works of philosophy. Husserl should be getting some royalties though because some of its a total ripoff). I think he's right about structuralism though. A much easier way of thinking of his argument might be this:

The atomic "classical" realm and the subatomic quantum realm are treated separately in physics. The question though is where is the boundary between the two. Where does quantum uncertainty end and predictable Newtonian mechanics begin? Its not a straightforward question at all.

Anax guffawed when I brought up Thomism earlier, but its a pretty simple way of understanding "syntactical" relationships. For instance, the color red would syntactically be a property of some other thing, which is red. Its substance/accident metaphysics. I don't know whether "thesis" and "antithesis" are syntax to him or not, I think so.

His talk about fields seems to be geared towards the his kooky science stuff that comes in a later part. Whether he is just manipulating words there is a good (unanswered) question.

The thing that really pops into my mind through his discussion is Markov Chains. I don't know if anybody has enough enough mathematical background to know what those are but its sort of like a factorization

The number 42 is itself but it is also 2*3*7 and so you see a whole factored into its component parts. Markov Chains are similar only you use Matrix algebra and they normally model probability states. This is actually very similar to some of the foundational formulae in Quantum Physics (VERY similar)

You can see where the New Age stuff can slip in here, because it is really easy to turn numbers games into bad metaphors for crap philsophy. Thats not limited to New Agers of course.

EDIT: a perfect example, almost as good as Think Like A Mountain:


Have you ever really allowed yourself to experience a tree or rock instead of merely observing it with projections, fantasies, or designs and then reducing it to an object‑complex of feelings, forces, numbers or symbols

I'm going to eat but I'll edit in some more. My problem is you have to take this shit paragraph by paragraph and some of it is definitely this guy's own fantasy camp.

EDIT #2: this is some really whacked out psuedo-Eastern crap right here although it comes by way of the French too (Bergson's elan vital). Maybe I'm a sucker for this kind of talk, but even I ain't buying the following:


e “other” or “other minds” only appears if you really think (Laing notwithstanding) that experience is private and in need of being communicated, i.e., that experience can be “owned” like a commodity. Emotional reactions, thoughts, and object modifications are not examples of experience, but rather products of experience, and qua product, they are indeed distinctions giving uniqueness. We are so used to regarding ourselves in terms of our results (past and future) that the activity of direct experience, and therefore the creation of forms, is eclipsed from view. Once trapped into thinking that we are defined by our products or results, the only thing left to do is to see all elements of the universe in terms of behavior patterns of created structures — be they what we call persons, societies, mathematical equations, atoms or galaxies. The act of creation and genuine subjectivity is suppressed. Wisdom, and love (and therefore philosophy as the “love of wisdom” and life as the “wisdom of love”) is integral and total when it ceases to succumb to its own results and products, by either identifying with them positively or by rejecting them and consequently identifying with them negatively as that which must be ignored or destroyed. Growth and genuine transcendence comes only when one can re‑grasp the relation that exists between the process of experience and its products, realizing that products and results are neither ends (positive or posited goals), not something to be denied (negative goals) but are rather the vehicles and means through which experience can enrich its self‑mediated state of concrete immediacy and express itself in visible forms.

That right there, thats all garbage. But in a fine bit of irony the very next paragraph is very interesting:


The usual interpretation of Marx’s acrobatics is that dialectic idealism was replaced with dialectic materialism. As a result, a thought‑centered, mind‑oriented dialectic making all matter a function of mind was replaced by a matter-centered dialectic making all thinking and mind a function of matter. Such a simplistic interpretation of subjectivity and objectivity is directly denied by Marx’s first thesis on Feuerbach. The significance of the reversal of Hegel lies in another dimension. It is not a question of unsettling the reci*procal phenomenology between subject and object, mind and matter, or ego and environment, which actually both Hegel and Marx never departed from. In this sense, a critical reading of both reveals that neither ever reduced anything to an abstract one‑sided element. The difference lies in the fact that Hegel’s dialectic of mutual mediations and continual negations and negations of negations represents only products of concrete immediacy in its state of direct‑presence and not the process of immediacy itself. As products, dialectic relations appear as objectifications, idealizations or abstractions of becoming — presented as an atemporal logic of relations — instead of revealing the actual dynamics of becoming. In Hegel, the concept of becoming and not becoming itself as an immediate experience (e.g., through the act of reading, thinking, feeling, doing) is one’s concern, and therefore his “application” or “manifestation” of this becoming in nature is unconvincing and incomplete, having left out nature, space and time from the logic of becoming as originally presented. Genuine dialectic, however, is always both concrete‑immediate and reflective‑mediated; both an immediate state of objective interaction (defining for us the field of subjectivity!) and the idealized objectifications and products of that interaction. Thus, Marx stood Hegel on his head not by making the subject or ego‑states only a function of the object and matter, but rather by seeing that their mutuality as an objective‑interaction state of concrete immediate experience must be prior to their appearance as products of experience, manipulated in an atemporal state of suspension. Experience does not derive from its objectifications and concepts, but the other way around. This is the philosophic ground of Marx’s ideas on fetishism and alienation.

That seems like it has to be mostly right to me. Maybe not 100% but pretty close.

This next part needs some explaining but I think the idea is right. This is just me talking here though


We can, in fact, summarize the fundamental position of dialectic phenomenology as a concrete working philosophy in terms of two mutually related “principles”: the principle of “concrete presence” and the principle of “dialectic necessity.” The first principle gives expression to the reversal just mentioned, i.e., to the need to regard the immediacy of concrete presence and experience as a non‑localized field and process, within which events, mediations, objectifications, abstractions and concepts appear. Thus, the process of experience is prior to its products. This field or subjectivity, itself not localized, is the condition of its own localizations. The second principle then expands upon the relation between any field and its localizations, showing that by dialectic necessity, the mutuality between context and objects — or any elements mutually conditioned — must reflect this single mutuality (of concrete presence and immediacy) relative to each element. Thus, any relation between two elements, X and Y, is productive not only of a direct relation between them, XY, but of a counter‑relation: the Y within X relating to the X within Y. This will generate levels of oposition between terms, and between relations of terms which become higher order terms for higher order relations giving birth to the dialectic matrix. It also gives expression to the mutual co‑determination between all elements of a field such that each element is a function of the whole field, and the whole field, in turn, a function of each element. Together, these two principles give a “working definition” or perspective to phenomenology and dialectics respectively, making it possible to practice dialectical phenomenology within any situation without requiring a complex “rule structure” to which one “fits” in experience. Dialectic phenomenology is a way of experiencing both immediate experience and the reflection or mediation of experience as a single self‑mediated immediacy. Experience, then, is not a mere passive happening or an arbitrary active imposition from the standpoint of reflection, but an integrative state of interaction and self‑development in which both the “being of knowledge” and the “knowledge of being” — immediacy and reflection — mutually co‑determine each other as a single dialectic phenomenology.

This sounds like a really awkward, high-falutin version of Mae Wan Ho. She's really great IMO. Anyway the idea, is that: if you observe any large system -- an ant colony, a city's traffic system, Pisarev's bee hive, anything like that -- exhibits very regular and quantifiable statistical patterns on the macro level. But each individual constituent has relative freedom within this system. Now there are "degree's of freedom" obviously but no atomic element of the system obeys and strict statistical rules like the overall system does.

Ho explains this as local autonomy <--> global coherence, a rule that she also applies to QM systems like entanglement.

Statistically, from observations of all kinds of complex systems, this is very well-established. How well it ports into philosophy -- or even physics -- is maybe not so clear. Quantum entanglement does more or less adhere to this model FWIW.

That believe it or not is what Kosok is saying above, stripped of all the verbiage and psuedo-philosophical babble.

Last thing about part I, the next two parts are so different in focus they need to be talked about separately and I probably don't have the energy for it tonite but this part is important IMO


Concluding our philosophical introduction to the dialectics of nature — our particular analysis of intersubjectivity — we can see that precisely because subjectivity is beyond any objectification or product, it must appear as a mutual and universal field of seeing and being seen. Thus, it must appear as intersubjectivity. Subjectivity must be objectively self‑reflective and self‑referential lest it appear objectified into the possession of an exclusive owner (called Ego, Society, God, or the Devil) thereby de‑subjectifying both owner and that which it owns — both Master and Slave. It is only through the dialectic of self‑world interpenetration that a self achieves genuine self‑determination or self‑consciousness (i.e., self‑seeing) through the world it is in resonance with, in the form of a corelative circular state of “seeing and being seen” when this mutual state is explicitly experienced as a singular non‑linearity. This is not to be confused with a mere sum of two linear acts (as Sartre would have it) in which first I see (and objectify) the world, and then the world or the other‑in‑the‑world sees and objectifies me: “two looks do not a mutual-looking make... nor a single look, a look at all.” A single look “as such” is merely a linear, one-dimensional relation. Hence, it is an abstraction and an alienation from the mutuality of interrelation. Two, three, four and so on, looks are merely a collection of linear acts (productive of paranoid vision). A mutual looking, on the other hand, is a singular, paradoxical, non‑linear experience of subjectivity in a process of creativity, whose products and results are event-complexes or objects within and among the ego‑bodies and natural bodies constituting its content.

I don't know if this guy has read John McDowell or not, but its sure reminiscent of him to me. I will try to explain in VERY loose terms since its a real mind-fuck trying to peg this down.

His wiki is here and worthing checking out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McDowell

OK, so his idea/theory/whatever says this: if our experience of things is sensory via sense-data through the five senses (Kant) there is a slight hitch. The general consensus is that the brain interprets said sense-data. BUT if sense-data is all there is to work with, what tool does the brain use to interpret it with? Instead, McD says that objects are "pre-conditioned". IE a chair is already a chair before we perceive it to be so or maybe even regardless of if we DO perceive it to be so. The information on what an object IS is is actually encoded into the object itself. A bad example would be if you click on Properties of an MP3 it will call up a box with its name, album its from, track number, artist, etc. No one superimposes that infor after the fact, its literally part of the file. Bad example, I know, sorry.

So thats my really crude way of saying it and doesn't do it any justice, but theres the premise in a nutshell. Kosok is saying the same thing above even though it may not sound like it at first blush. I give him a pass for the obtruseness here, because it is HARD to convey. I don't know if its brilliant, but he makes some strong connections here IMO and if he just flaked out a bit less he'd really be onto something.

One cannot help but get the impression that philosophy ain't nothin' but an effort to render the obvious obscure. Forgive me, I am but an unlearned old turtle hustler, but it seems you're going Dada on me.

One cannot help but get the impression that philosophy ain't nothin' but an effort to render the obvious obscure. Forgive me, I am but an unlearned old turtle hustler, but it seems you're going Dada on me.

Well said I'd say.

One cannot help but get the impression that philosophy ain't nothin' but an effort to render the obvious obscure. Forgive me, I am but an unlearned old turtle hustler, but it seems you're going Dada on me.



Haha, no argument here about the efficacy of philosophy. I was mainly writing that for Rusty and to see if I could induce hypertension in Anax.

That said:


Well said I'd say.

Didn't you post a Slavoj ZIZEK article?? ;)

One cannot help but get the impression that philosophy ain't nothin' but an effort to render the obvious obscure. Forgive me, I am but an unlearned old turtle hustler, but it seems you're going Dada on me.

Well said I'd say.

The Kid does it on purpose... He can't win an argument straight so he has the entire category disqualified. Why the characters he quotes say "Marx" every few lines, I have no idea. They might as well say "oatmeal".
.

One objection to that analysis. BushII's religious beliefs, real or apparent, have little to do with policy, though a lot to do with politics. Whatever puppet is on stage will read the script handed to them.

Amen.

I think if we want to understand the impact that religion has on politics, we need to understand the relationship between the two.

A demagogue says "God wants us to vote Republican" and a certain number of people then vote Republican, and another certain number of people will then therefore be "against religion" because of that. "See? Religion is causing all of our social problems! That proves it! The preacher is telling them to vote Republican!" The people in the second group mock and ridicule the people in the first group, for believeing and obeying imaginary beings. But the people in the second group are much more stupid and have bought into the lie much deeper. They give the demagogue and the Republicans a pass, and bite at the distraction - religion - and attack and antagonize everyone in the first group. Even were the goal to destroy religion, rather than advance a political cause, it would be more quickly accomplished going at it the other wat around. Attack religion and the religious people and they are driven closer to the demagogue. Attack the demagogue, and the right wingers, and leave the relgion and the religious people alone, and the power of fundamentalism over people would be broken.

I am seeing more and more attacks against the RCC on the blogs and boards and in the media. I donlt care if people criticize the RCC, I certainly do mand much more tellingly and effectively than any critic on the outside ever could. But these attacks have nothing to do with advancing the political left, and nothing to do with advancing rationality. They are nothing new, nothing revolutionary. They are absolutely consistent with the sentiments and agendas of the dominant WASP culture, promoting commercialism, moral relativism, and the aristocracy of the "enlightened" modern individual - smarter, hipper, cooler. What we are seeing is the logical final step of the convergence of commerical corporate capitalism with the Reformation; each individual as an island unto themselves, unrestrained by the past, disdainful of their presumed inferiors. Each man a church of one, and now the ultimate freedom: we are free of even needing to call our religion a religion. We can each make it all up for ourselves and call it whatever we like.

The Kid does it on purpose... He can't win an argument straight so he has the entire category disqualified. Why the characters he quotes say "Marx" every few lines, I have no idea. They might as well say "oatmeal".
.
He is younger, he is intimidated. Hope he doesn't mind me saying that. When he doesn't have an audience, or on the rare occasion that he isn't looking over his shoulder for one of us to knock his dick in the dirt when he posts, he writes the clearest, most concise and sometimes truly brilliant stuff I see anywhere. He's doing OK.

The Kid does it on purpose... He can't win an argument straight so he has the entire category disqualified. Why the characters he quotes say "Marx" every few lines, I have no idea. They might as well say "oatmeal".
.
He is younger, he is intimidated. Hope he doesn't mind me saying that. When he doesn't have an audience, or on the rare occasion that he isn't looking over his shoulder for one of us to knock his dick in the dirt when he posts, he writes the clearest, most concise and sometimes truly brilliant stuff I see anywhere. He's doing OK.

Is obvious... There is not one of him but many. Fuckin' martians...

.

One objection to that analysis. BushII's religious beliefs, real or apparent, have little to do with policy, though a lot to do with politics. Whatever puppet is on stage will read the script handed to them.

Amen.

I think if we want to understand the impact that religion has on politics, we need to understand the relationship between the two.

A demagogue says "God wants us to vote Republican" and a certain number of people then vote Republican, and another certain number of people will then therefore be "against religion" because of that. "See? Religion is causing all of our social problems! That proves it! The preacher is telling them to vote Republican!" The people in the second group mock and ridicule the people in the first group, for believeing and obeying imaginary beings. But the people in the second group are much more stupid and have bought into the lie much deeper. They give the demagogue and the Republicans a pass, and bite at the distraction - religion - and attack and antagonize everyone in the first group. Even were the goal to destroy religion, rather than advance a political cause, it would be more quickly accomplished going at it the other wat around. Attack religion and the religious people and they are driven closer to the demagogue. Attack the demagogue, and the right wingers, and leave the relgion and the religious people alone, and the power of fundamentalism over people would be broken.

I am seeing more and more attacks against the RCC on the blogs and boards and in the media. I donlt care if people criticize the RCC, I certainly do mand much more tellingly and effectively than any critic on the outside ever could. But these attacks have nothing to do with advancing the political left, and nothing to do with advancing rationality. They are nothing new, nothing revolutionary. They are absolutely consistent with the sentiments and agendas of the dominant WASP culture, promoting commercialism, moral relativism, and the aristocracy of the "enlightened" modern individual - smarter, hipper, cooler. What we are seeing is the logical final step of the convergence of commerical corporate capitalism with the Reformation; each individual as an island unto themselves, unrestrained by the past, disdainful of their presumed inferiors. Each man a church of one, and now the ultimate freedom: we are free of even needing to call our religion a religion. We can each make it all up for ourselves and call it whatever we like.

Did anybody else see the PBS special hosted by John McLaughlin with some New Agey PhD tonight? My Dad did. I wasn't paying it much attention but I can out to roll my eyes at it and, get this, my Dad was paying rapt attention to this bullshit.

He liked that it "wasn't religious" even though this guy name dropped Buddha about 1000 billion times. He said this was what the 60s was all about. He really went for the inner peace and keeping your mind focused stuff. Best of all he knew this guy was a "real man" because he was a kayaker.

In this part of Florida you don't get alot of exposure to that stuff firsthand, but my Dad had absolutely zero idea of the context this guy was talking in. I asked if that kind of individualism was really what we wanted to push and he said "Why not, let everyone think what they like!'

The whole thing is cult-like and its bizarre to watch someone come unhinged before your very eyes. He was lapping this shit up. Its like every word Mike just wrote literally personified.

The Kid does it on purpose... He can't win an argument straight so he has the entire category disqualified. Why the characters he quotes say "Marx" every few lines, I have no idea. They might as well say "oatmeal".
.
He is younger, he is intimidated. Hope he doesn't mind me saying that. When he doesn't have an audience, or on the rare occasion that he isn't looking over his shoulder for one of us to knock his dick in the dirt when he posts, he writes the clearest, most concise and sometimes truly brilliant stuff I see anywhere. He's doing OK.

Is obvious... There is not one of him but many. Fuckin' martians...

.

There's actually only four different Mes but who's counting..


he writes the clearest, most concise and sometimes truly brilliant stuff I see anywhere

See? Proof there are Mes on here even I don't know about..

The Kid does it on purpose... He can't win an argument straight so he has the entire category disqualified. Why the characters he quotes say "Marx" every few lines, I have no idea. They might as well say "oatmeal".
.
He is younger, he is intimidated. Hope he doesn't mind me saying that. When he doesn't have an audience, or on the rare occasion that he isn't looking over his shoulder for one of us to knock his dick in the dirt when he posts, he writes the clearest, most concise and sometimes truly brilliant stuff I see anywhere. He's doing OK.

Is obvious... There is not one of him but many. Fuckin' martians...

.

There's actually only four different Mes but who's counting..


he writes the clearest, most concise and sometimes truly brilliant stuff I see anywhere

See? Proof there are Mes on here even I don't know about..

Despite Mikey's honeyed and sentimental defense, I keep wantin' to smack one of 'em.
.

Did anybody else see the PBS special hosted by John McLaughlin with some New Agey PhD tonight? My Dad did. I wasn't paying it much attention but I can out to roll my eyes at it and, get this, my Dad was paying rapt attention to this bullshit.

He liked that it "wasn't religious" even though this guy name dropped Buddha about 1000 billion times. He said this was what the 60s was all about. He really went for the inner peace and keeping your mind focused stuff. Best of all he knew this guy was a "real man" because he was a kayaker.

In this part of Florida you don't get alot of exposure to that stuff firsthand, but my Dad had absolutely zero idea of the context this guy was talking in. I asked if that kind of individualism was really what we wanted to push and he said "Why not, let everyone think what they like!'

The whole thing is cult-like and its bizarre to watch someone come unhinged before your very eyes. He was lapping this shit up. Its like every word Mike just wrote literally personified.

I can just picture my father doing the same thing. "Best of all he knew this guy was a 'real man' because he was a kayaker" and "let everyone think what they like" yeah, that would be it - I can just hear it. How did "the 60's" affect my parents more than it did me? My folks grew up in the depression and WWII - how did they turn all fluffy bunny New Agey?

The Kid does it on purpose... He can't win an argument straight so he has the entire category disqualified. Why the characters he quotes say "Marx" every few lines, I have no idea. They might as well say "oatmeal".
.
He is younger, he is intimidated. Hope he doesn't mind me saying that. When he doesn't have an audience, or on the rare occasion that he isn't looking over his shoulder for one of us to knock his dick in the dirt when he posts, he writes the clearest, most concise and sometimes truly brilliant stuff I see anywhere. He's doing OK.

Is obvious... There is not one of him but many. Fuckin' martians...

.

There's actually only four different Mes but who's counting..


he writes the clearest, most concise and sometimes truly brilliant stuff I see anywhere

See? Proof there are Mes on here even I don't know about..

Despite Mikey's honeyed and sentimental defense, I keep wantin' to smack one of 'em.
.

Only one?

Pretty good % if I must say so myself

There is not one of him but many
.

That's all right. It helps boost membership.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51G41QCF8CL._AA280_.jpg

Am I getting close? :)

BTW, when youse guys get to yammering on that stuff I am fascinated and intimidated, way out of my league. Maybe if I burn a cow or toast a goat or something I might get a clue.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51G41QCF8CL._AA280_.jpg

Am I getting close? :)

BTW, when youse guys get to yammering on that stuff I am fascinated and intimidated, way out of my league. Maybe if I burn a cow or toast a goat or something I might get a clue.

The entrails of a slightly toasted goat are perfect for reading, yes indeedy

You'll know its slightly toasted when it can't stand on its feet anymore and all of its "Baaaaaaaaa"s are all slurred