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The Rational Proof of God's Existence

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phildwyer said:
*Everyone* in the Western world, to varying degrees, benefits from capital, just as virtually everyone sells their labour for wages. We are all simultaneously bourgeois and proletarians, and the contradiction between capital and labour is manifested in our minds, not in class struggle.
And there's the reactionary political stuff right on time.

In what sense is the queen a proletarian? How about the major shareholders of trans-national corporations? In what sense is your average factory worker a capitalist? When the aforementioned shareholder decides to shut down the factory and move it to the third world, putting the aforementioned factory worker into poverty, in what sense is this 'in our minds'?

Obfuscating, mystical, reactionary shite that could only come from somebody who lives a ridiculously privileged life and doesn't have a fucking clue how the world works for most people.
 
gurrier said:
And there's the reactionary political stuff right on time.

In what sense is the queen a proletarian? How about the major shareholders of trans-national corporations? In what sense is your average factory worker a capitalist? When the aforementioned shareholder decides to shut down the factory and move it to the third world, putting the aforementioned factory worker into poverty, in what sense is this 'in our minds'?

Anyone who earns income from investment, even if only through a pension scheme, home ownership or savings account, is *to that extent* a capitalist. Anyone who sells their labour-pwer for wages, not matter how small a proportion of their income that provides, is *to that extent* a proletarian. As I said, the vast majority of people in the twenty-first century West are both. This is a very different situation to the one pertaining a hundred years ago, when the vast majority were either one or the other.

A better argument, from your perspective, would be to claim that the bourgeis/proletarian opposition has been refracted into a first world/third world relationship. There is a lot of truth in that, empirically, but it still doesn't speak to the true nature of the capital/labour contradiction. That contradiction is *logical,* not (or not necessarily) empirical: capital is alienated labour-power. I believe that it is when we lose sight of that basic fact that our politics becomes compromising and reactionary.
 
Where are you Phil?

Should I take your leapfrogging my reply, as an acknowledgement of a perception of the truth contained therin?

That said I am enjoying watching this teleological debate unfold.... Its kind of like fencing with words. :D
 
deeplight said:
Should I take your leapfrogging my reply, as an acknowledgement of a perception of the truth contained therin?

That said I am enjoying watching this teleological debate unfold.... Its kind of like fencing with words. :D

Christ, between you and Garfield a man never gets a moment's peace. I will answer everyone's comments, but I am a bit busy right now. Just be patient, please.
 
phildwyer said:
I will answer everyone's comments, but I am a bit busy right now. Just be patient, please.

You've not answered either of my comments. And your post above claiming western people are both proles and bourgeois contradicts your ludicrous idea that atheism is the default position of the western bourgeois (given that 76% of british people claim to identify with a religion - remember).

And the small matter of roman coinage being worth more than the silver is contained.

Come on Phil, you're not just ignoring me are you?
 
You are far too vague with your classification phil. I think it's pretty clear that power in this country is not distributed evenly amongst of us bourgeois proles.

Obfuscation sums this all up.

And a tad Ickey.
 
phildwyer said:
Anyone who earns income from investment, even if only through a pension scheme, home ownership or savings account, is *to that extent* a capitalist. Anyone who sells their labour-pwer for wages, not matter how small a proportion of their income that provides, is *to that extent* a proletarian. As I said, the vast majority of people in the twenty-first century West are both. This is a very different situation to the one pertaining a hundred years ago, when the vast majority were either one or the other.
At least 80% of the population of all western countries earn negative net income from profits, rents and interest (income from capital) and still depend for 100% of their 'financial value' on their labour. Interest earning pension funds, savings accounts and so on do not change this fundamental fact and are largely irrelevant to the class structure of society. Besides, building societies and credit unions were among the first innovations of the proletariat. There has never been a proletarian class which did not have interest earning savings accounts.

On the other side of the coin, the owners of capital have often chosen to work to maximise their profits. Your distinction is sophistic and purposely obfuscating - similar in its aims to the same point when made by Tony Blair.

phildwyer said:
A better argument, from your perspective, would be to claim that the bourgeis/proletarian opposition has been refracted into a first world/third world relationship. There is a lot of truth in that, empirically, but it still doesn't speak to the true nature of the capital/labour contradiction. That contradiction is *logical,* not (or not necessarily) empirical: capital is alienated labour-power. I believe that it is when we lose sight of that basic fact that our politics becomes compromising and reactionary.
I have never subscribed to the Maoist theory of labour aristocracies and the proletariat of the third world is similarly complex to the proletariat of the first world, with savings accounts, interest raising loans and so on (even on the tiny scales that they deal in). Your apparent belief that as soon as somebody earns a cent in interest, they are no longer a proletariat, would probably rule out over 90% of the world's working class, present and historical.

The sort of nit-picking definition that you are using to define classes here makes no sense. In the domain of the social sciences, trends, relations, forces and generalisations are the limit of our ambitions. There never was a homogeneous, well-defined working class and bourgeois. The concepts describe general classes based on the dominant relations to capital and labour that the members of the classes have.
 
Accept it, Phil, your argument is fucked. From every direction. When you've accepted it, GET A LIFE. A life = something that is not only useful to you, but is useful to SOCIETY.
 
IMHO said:
Accept it, Phil, your argument is fucked. From every direction. When you've accepted it, GET A LIFE. A life = something that is not only useful to you, but is useful to SOCIETY.

I hope its not a rude question but I can't help noticing that the more, er, *passionate* of your posts are always made in the wee wee hours of the morning, whereas your more earnest messages, in which you try to be part of the conversation, are universally made in the early afternoon. In other words: you're pissed, aren't you?
 
gurrier said:
At least 80% of the population of all western countries earn negative net income from profits, rents and interest (income from capital) and still depend for 100% of their 'financial value' on their labour. Interest earning pension funds, savings accounts and so on do not change this fundamental fact and are largely irrelevant to the class structure of society. Besides, building societies and credit unions were among the first innovations of the proletariat. There has never been a proletarian class which did not have interest earning savings accounts.

On the other side of the coin, the owners of capital have often chosen to work to maximise their profits. Your distinction is sophistic and purposely obfuscating - similar in its aims to the same point when made by Tony Blair.


I have never subscribed to the Maoist theory of labour aristocracies and the proletariat of the third world is similarly complex to the proletariat of the first world, with savings accounts, interest raising loans and so on (even on the tiny scales that they deal in). Your apparent belief that as soon as somebody earns a cent in interest, they are no longer a proletariat, would probably rule out over 90% of the world's working class, present and historical.

The sort of nit-picking definition that you are using to define classes here makes no sense. In the domain of the social sciences, trends, relations, forces and generalisations are the limit of our ambitions. There never was a homogeneous, well-defined working class and bourgeois. The concepts describe general classes based on the dominant relations to capital and labour that the members of the classes have.

I’m temporarily “leapfrogging” over other objections, because this one is the most threatening to my case. I don’t want to downplay the importance of class struggle, and clearly there are people whose interests are primarily connected to capital, just as there are those whose interests lie with labour. The gap between rich and poor is of tangential interest only here. We must not lose sight of the fact that capital and labour (more precisely, value and labour-power) are *logically* opposed. There can never be any compromise between these forces (whereas there can between social classes) because one of them *negates* the other. Capital *is* labour in alienated form. This irreconcilable opposition is only the latest form of a wider contradiction between labour and alienated labour: indeed the history of civilization is nothing more than the appropriation of the labour of the many by the few. But capitalist society displays this opposition in an unprecedented, stark fashion. In our society, capital is revealed as a truly *inhuman,* or more accurately, *anti-human* power. The contradiction between life and death has never before taken such a glaringly obvious form.

There was an historical epoch, from say 1848 to 1945, in which the class struggle seemed poised to abolish this contradiction. But that opportunity, which peaked in 1917-21, was missed. After the second world war, the western working class was itself rendered semi-capitalist, and as I have suggested, what was previously an external opposition was largely internalized. Anyone who still sees the proletariat as the grave-digger of capitalism is simply deluding themselves. If capitalism has a grave-digger (which I doubt) it lies within the *minds* of the people. After all, financial value does not exist, and nothing would be easier to abolish it. No revolution is necessary, a simple act of collective will would suffice. If we don’t believe in it--its gone. So, to my mind, the interesting question becomes: what is preventing us from this cessation of belief? It is here that the concept of “Satan” will be useful, of which more anon.
 
angry bob said:
hmmm ... the xtian god made man in his own image which I don't think was supposed to be read as 'look like him' but rather have some sort of ... I dunno ... let's call it soul.

and it is presumably the xtian contention that it is this soul which gives us free will?
But that's utterly incoherent. What does it actually mean?
 
phildwyer said:
You can leapfrog backwards.
No you've confused me. Are you saying that your going to skip out and not do something that you have already done? In that case are you implying that you are going to go through the whole argument backwards? Or you can travel through time and undo something which you have done? :confused:
 
Anyone who earns income from investment, even if only through a pension scheme, home ownership or savings account, is *to that extent* a capitalist. Anyone who sells their labour-pwer for wages, not matter how small a proportion of their income that provides, is *to that extent* a proletarian. As I said, the vast majority of people in the twenty-first century West are both. This is a very different situation to the one pertaining a hundred years ago, when the vast majority were either one or the other.

Dear me, tired capitalist apologetics. It's almost Randian :eek:

Where's Blueskybollocks when you need him?
 
In Bloom said:
Would you care to explain what that has to do with anything?

Let me guess, the usual "Quantum Mechanical indeterminacy implies free will" bullshit.


Not at all. When I said that I didn't accept a deterministic universe you replied "tough bloody luck" and stuck your tongue out at me.

I took this to mean that you were saying it is deterministic and is generally accepted as such whether I like it or not.

So my reply was to say that the universe is not deterministic ... or at least that it is not that clear cut whether it is or not.
 
Fruitloop said:
My comment was related to the bit I quoted. Obviously :confused:

That bit was hardly Randian either. You ever read her? She's into a Nietzschean entrepreneur-as-superman thing. Incredibly, she's taken quite seriously as a philosopher over here (although nowhere else AFAIK).
 
phildwyer said:
That bit was hardly Randian either. You ever read her? She's into a Nietzschean entrepreneur-as-superman thing. Incredibly, she's taken quite seriously as a philosopher over here (although nowhere else AFAIK).

I've read her...which book would you like to discuss? Atlas Shrugged? The Romantic Manifesto? The Virtue of Selfishness?

I agree with Fruitloop btw. :p
 
nino_savatte said:
I've read her...which book would you like to discuss? Atlas Shrugged? The Romantic Manifesto? The Virtue of Selfishness?

I agree with Fruitloop btw. :p

You would. I've only read The Fountainhead, but my God, what a load of tosh. I'm appalled to find that she's actually taught on some American philosophy syllabi--that's a far bigger joke and scandal than teaching "Intelligent Design" in science classes. I assume that no-one takes her seriously in the UK?
 
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