Neo Marxism

[gorski]

You need an empire to qualify for the status of reduced humanity and mental capacity I think. So just the British, Mongols, French, Dutch, Portugese, Arabs, Chinese (Qing, Ming, Han and Tang). I may have missed a few....

See above: you have missed completely. You possibly missed the House of Reason, too...

 

[Fruitloop]

What is it about the English Channel that makes the English and the Dutch so different to, say, the Hungarians and the Poles?

 

[gorski]

Ooooo, I dont know, the whimsical stuff like geography, culture, history, "tradition" and Tradition, institutions etc. etc. etc.

 

[Fruitloop]

I can think of those myself, I just don't understand why you draw a massive line of demarcation along a body of water across which it is possible to swim (as long as you're both insane and smothered in goose fat).

Anyway, only this hilarious banter and an unfinished cup of tea were keeping me feigning productive employment. I really must leave now.

Have a lovely Christmas, if such things are your style.

 

[Knotted]

No it isn't, not at the highest level!!!



Show me exactly where I stated we [the formally trained Philosophers on this thread] are going to the highest levels of Philosophy in a hurry... Such a poor troll you are...

And now to the point I MADE, as opposed to what you insinuated, as per usal, fighting your very own strawmen:

It'll be £50 an hour for your private tutorials with me... [And still: none of you are going anywhere in Philosophy!]

Btw, if I'm in a good mood I may even include an autograph in the price...

Chuckle. I charge £15 an hour for private tutorials, anything more and that's just a con. You may be able to fool some people with more money than sense, but you don't fool me.

 

[Knotted]

You have no idea: Nietzsche was the only one ever acknowledged... But never mind...

Almost every original philosopher was in effect an amateur. Its easier to name those who weren't. Plato, Heidegger and Hegel to an extent. They were drawing on previous philosophy without being entirely derivative. Most other great philosophers were truly original ie. amateurs in their new fields.

 

[Knotted]

One last point for gorski. If I had pretended to be a professor of philosophy, you would have believed me and treated me with the usual sycophancy that you reserve for academics. I was so tempted to do this when you quized me about my qualifications, but regretably I resisted...

 

[gorski]

K, you couldn't fool a first year student at any semi-decent Uni on the Continent, FFS...

As for the charge: that's only for the pig-headed and hell bent on taking the Mickey and thinking how clever a troll they are... Special discount, even!!

Enjoy yerselves in your right not to work, guys...

 

[butchersapron]

Hypocrite: when we were debating the Irish vote on the EU referendum you stated that you needn't bother reading any of it because you're Irish. Your arrogance and idiocy are really showing through.

You are quite quite mad, not to mention dishonest and devious, to turn my rejection of your claim that Irish were too uninformed to be able to vote on the revamped Lisbon treaty into your absurd presentation above. The thrust of my point was the exact opposite of what you claim.

(from post # 52 onwards if any gives a shit - full thread)

 

[gorski]

...my rejection of your claim that Irish were too uninformed to be able to vote on the revamped Lisbon treaty...

Oh, no, I said no such thing - quite the opposite, together with Phil and co.: I said anyone [within reason, i.e. not the psycho-socially disturbed and handicapped, of course] can be perfectly capable of making such complex decisions, given the time, good will and a proper, informed debate. You went bonkers when I drew a parallel with a trial by jury standing again abolishing those and claiming that service is for all!!!

Which makes you either:

1) STUPID AS HELL

2) MEAN AS A LITTLE LYING BARSTEWARD

Have a pick and have fun with that...

[And since I am a Hegelian: you mean twat!!!!]

 

[butchersapron]

No, you said (and it was the assumption of ignorance behind it that i was attacking):

The point was that the Irish have said NO mostly on the basis of not knowing, not being informed...

Not that people were ignorant and should be, as per your presentation of what i said. You're continuing the mispresentation here as well, as my going 'bonkers' amounts, in full, to asking:

Have they?

in response to your above post. I don't really care though, it's all in the record on that thread if anyone cares enough to read it (god knows why they would though) - you brought it up and have brought it up repeatedly over the last 6 months and each time i correct you just ignore it. So i'm just putting in my correction here once more and ignoring any waffle you'll come back with as a result.

 

[gorski]

Bullshit!!! My claim was that because they were not informed they had the right to say NO, FOOK OFF, we have the right to know what we are signing to...

Now you fook off, wanker and a liar!!!!

 

[phildwyer]

You lot really have no clue... no idea what you're talking about... It would take you a few years of study before you can be anywhere close to being vaguely qualified to criticising Phil with any mild precision and relevance... And I am not kidding!

You go too far here, amigo. There are some very clever and well-read people on this thread, as well as a few idiots. For example, I know you hate BA but he falls into the first category, as does Kyser. I suspect Knotted is one of the latter, cos he waves around his academic credentials as evidence of the superiority of his argument. Which I could certainly do with far more justification than him, but wouldn't because that would be stupid.

Anyway it looks like you guys have given me a couple of days' work replying to all this, so it may take me a while, but I'll get back to you eventually.

 

[phildwyer]

The world is not the deeply rational place you want it to be, so to dismiss withcraft as having gone away in any society is deeply, deeply premature.

However, I would apply the same criticism to phil's argument that witchcraft is making a comeback, or in decline, in developing socities - it never went away anywhere, so

It certainly never went away, but it was de-criminalized. Prosecutions for witchcraft were banned undr colonial rule. Now they are being revived, and many anthropologists argue that this is a response to the monetarization of such societes.

Let us remember that many kinds of witchcraft really do involve crimes that anyone would regard as real: murder, sexual abuse, cannibalism etc.

Anyway, the issue is not whether witchcraft "exists:" of course it does, always and everywhere. The issues are (a) how to define witchcraft? Should it for example include capitalism?) and (b) what is the ethical status of witchcraft, and what should our response to it be?

 

[phildwyer]

I can't even tell which one you think is material and which one you think is metaphysical. They could both be spun either way.

[This with regard to my statement that the capital/labor power opposition is also a physical/metaphysical one]

No they could not "both be spun either way." Labor-power is physical, while capital is metaphysical. If you think about this for a while you will see that I am right.

 

[phildwyer]

My response to Phil re witchcraft (or more precisely on the belief in it as demonstrated by witch trials etc) was specifically to counter his assertion that as capitalism arose evidence of witchcraft (and therefore evidence of 'satan', in his argument) became more common. The historical record - the facts of the matter - point in quite the opposite direction. IE, that evidence of witch trials is a phenomenon of the pre-capitalist 16th and 17th century. Namely under a regime in which religious/obscurantist beliefs were the ruling ones, and that after the 1640s it dies away rapidly in England and Scotland.

Yes, and I answered your point by saying that witchraft did not disappear. What changed was our ethical evaluation of it. Between 1500 and 1700 (for it was a long and fraught process) we decided that it was not evil or Satanic to attempt to influence the objective world by means of the manipulation of symbols.

So far from disappearing, witchcraft conquered the world. A world that it now rules with obviously disastrous ethical consequences. Is there a figure in the Western tradition who symbolizes the malign ethical consequences of practicing witchcraft? I think you'll find that there is.

Kyser has already made the same point with regard to alchemy (and among many others I've made it elsewhere myself): it did not disappear because it failed but because it succeeded.

 

[phildwyer]

My issues with the use of Satan is, as I said, it's too centred around specific cultural origins. It's clearly a Hegelian argument - the 'spirit' of humanity but the bad, evil part of us - but by using an exclusively Xtian view, you're not only ignoring much of the world, but also this stupid argument that 'only' specific types of philosophy could have produced it; rubbish! Our culture is the sum of all our creations - modern capitalism is the result of ALL of the European traditions, not just the anglo-saxon! FFS, the whole notion of 'markets' as some kind of entity is Hegelian, and it's talked about blithley by 'anglo saxons' all the time.

So while I agree with the concept of capital=Satan, and think that long term you're right about materialist Marxism having to re-engage with 'spiritual' issues in some way (Marxism is never going to help you cope with a loved one dying) but restricting your Hegelian argument to a Judeo-Xtian image is wrong IMO.

It's an Islamic image as well, remember. And arguably a Socratic one too (Plato being basically a monotheist with a dualistic ontological and ethical system placing spirit above matter). So that's an awful lot of humanity, human culture, human history included therein.

But your point is a strong one, and I've thought about it a lot. I suppose that writing from within the monotheist tradition, it would be inevitable to come up with a monotheist argument. Everyone else has (and I include Nietzsche and the postmodernists in that--they're monotheists, they just prefer Satan to God).

However, while I admit to knowing nothing of polytheistic faiths like Hinduism, I'd also probably end up making the argument that they are not religions in the same way as are the monotheisms--they are more like ways of life, or social systems, in the sense that there is nothing outside or opposed to such religions.

But correct me if I'm wrong about that.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I feel the same way actually. My Schenkerian analysis is probably pretty damn rusty compared to my colleagues who are still in the biz. Ask me about computational complexity theory though and I can bore the socks off you.

Is this what Stephen Wolfram talks about - his grandiose 'Theory of Computational Equivalence'? I've been grappling with his cellular automata in the past couple of weeks. A very powerful way of looking at things – the way he relates it to the mechanism of evolution is particularly pertinent, I think. I may start a thread about it.


Getting back to the silly argument about qualifications, I also try to avoid citing credentials on here. In philosophy of all things, all that matters is the ideas, so there is no need to bring in one's training.

It's hard sometimes – I was provoked into mentioning that I had studied Spanish history on another thread in defence against what I considered to be wrong-headed objections. But this, at least, was an argument with an empirical basis. Philosophy has none so it is open to everyone to do it, I would have thought. The concept of a 'professional' philosopher makes about as much sense as that of a professional poet.

I've never attended a philosophy class in my life, but it seems to me that all a 'training' in philosophy does is teach you some obscure words that don't in fact mean anything particularly profound, and learn how to talk about the ideas of others using these obscure words. I don't see how a qualification in philosophy in any way helps you to actually 'do' it.

What probably betrays me as an amateur is that sometimes I may misuse a word slightly, and I may also end up unwittingly reinventing the wheel. Hopefully it also leaves me free of any undue reverence for the ideas of the 'greats'. I'm arrogant enough to think that my own ideas have merit.

 

[phildwyer]

Philosophy has none so it is open to everyone to do it, I would have thought. The concept of a 'professional' philosopher makes about as much sense as that of a professional poet.

A good deal less sense in fact. As Gramsci said: "everyone is a philosopher." But not everyone is a poet, thank God.

 

[Knotted]

[This with regard to my statement that the capital/labor power opposition is also a physical/metaphysical one]

No they could not "both be spun either way." Labor-power is physical, while capital is metaphysical. If you think about this for a while you will see that I am right.

Its easier to spin it in the opposite direction if anything.

Labour-power is an economic category. Nowhere does there exist an atom of labour-power. Labour power has no chemical composition. Labour power has no mass. On the other hand capital is always material in one form or another. Machinery, labour, hard cash, even electronic states on a computer. Capital always has an empirical existence. Labour power never has an empirical existence it is always an idealisation of the reality.

The point is that all these economic categories do not have a simple abstract character. Money is a measure of value, money is also a real commodity in its own right. If you see money as simply a measure then it is not real money, it is ideal money, but then it appears mysterious that money has any effect on the world. See money as simply real and it appears mysterious that commodities can be priced without a transaction. The philosophical spin doctoring derives from seeing these categories as this type of philosophical abstraction rather than another, but this type of metaphysical thinking is exactly what the dialectic is supposed to get rid of.

Btw I never talk about my academic credentials. Mine are completely irrelevant, that was my point. As are your's and gorski's. Its the content of what's said that counts.

 

[phildwyer]

Labour-power is an economic category. Nowhere does there exist an atom of labour-power. Labour power has no chemical composition. Labour power has no mass. On the other hand capital is always material in one form or another. Machinery, labour, hard cash, even electronic states on a computer. Capital always has an empirical existence. Labour power never has an empirical existence it is always an idealisation of the reality.

That is the precise reverse of the truth. Labor-power (as opposed to labor) is human subjective activity considered as a whole. It is in fact co-terminus with human life itself. That is why the sale of one's labor-power constitutes an alienation of one's very self. And obviously human life has an empirical, material existence.

We cannot say the same of capital, which is a pure abstraction existing nowhere but in peolpe's minds. Your attempt to equate capital with "machinery, labor" makes no sense. Capital is financial value invested at interest. It is alienated human life turned into representation and accorded a determining (and highly destructive) power over the human beings whose alienated existence it represents.

 

[Knotted]

That is the precise reverse of the truth. Labor-power (as opposed to labor) is human subjective activity considered as a whole. It is in fact co-terminus with human life itself. That is why the sale of one's labor-power constitutes an alienation of one's very self. And obviously human life has an empirical, material existence.

We cannot say the same of capital, which is a pure abstraction existing nowhere but in peolpe's minds. Your attempt to equate capital with "machinery, labor" makes no sense. Capital is financial value invested at interest. It is alienated human life turned into representation and accorded a determining (and highly destructive) power over the human beings whose alienated existence it represents.

Is. Equate. You continue to see these categories in metaphysical terms. One thing IS another, this EQUATES to that. You continue to fail to view these economic matters in terms of circulation and the different functions that are performed at different stages in the cycle.

Perhaps we could spin it this way indeed. Perhaps instead of consider it this way in terms of ideal capital rather than real captial. Capital IS financial value invested at interest ONLY WHEN it is considered as finicial value invested at interest ie. an ideal is an ideal. You raise tautologies with the pretence that they mean something. If capital IS satan, then this is an empty abstraction. Regardless of how silly this sounds, it tell us nothing.

 

[Luther Blissett]

Is. Equate. You continue to see these categories in metaphysical terms. One thing IS another, this EQUATES to that. You continue to fail to view these economic matters in terms of circulation and the different functions that are performed at different stages in the cycle.

Perhaps we could spin it this way indeed. Perhaps instead of consider it this way in terms of ideal capital rather than real captial. Capital IS financial value invested at interest ONLY WHEN it is considered as finicial value invested at interest ie. an ideal is an ideal. You raise tautologies with the pretence that they mean something. If capital IS satan, then this is an empty abstraction. Regardless of how silly this sounds, it tell us nothing.

At last, both sanity and clarity from Knotted as he unravels the mess that is Phil's false analogy.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

That is the precise reverse of the truth. Labor-power (as opposed to labor) is human subjective activity considered as a whole. It is in fact co-terminus with human life itself. That is why the sale of one's labor-power constitutes an alienation of one's very self. And obviously human life has an empirical, material existence.

You never addressed my objection to this in the questions for commies thread – namely that the only labour-power capital is interested in is productive labour-power, ie that labour power that could have some value to other people. So it is not in fact co-terminus with human life at all.

 

[Knotted]

That is the precise reverse of the truth. Labor-power (as opposed to labor) is human subjective activity considered as a whole. It is in fact co-terminus with human life itself. That is why the sale of one's labor-power constitutes an alienation of one's very self. And obviously human life has an empirical, material existence.

Spinning labour power as material is more difficult than spinning capital as metaphysical. Labour power is a potential. It is not something that is realised otherwise it would be labour. I have the labour power to dig a ditch, but that power is likely to go unused moreover if I break my arms tommorrow then this power would be lost - ie. my labour power is a potential based on ideal assumptions. Not that any of this has anything to do with metaphysics or idealism.

 

[gorski]

Clarification...

You go too far here, amigo. There are some very clever and well-read people on this thread, as well as a few idiots. For example, I know you hate BA but he falls into the first category, as does Kyser. I suspect Knotted is one of the latter, cos he waves around his academic credentials as evidence of the superiority of his argument. Which I could certainly do with far more justification than him, but wouldn't because that would be stupid.

Anyway it looks like you guys have given me a couple of days' work replying to all this, so it may take me a while, but I'll get back to you eventually.

Well, it's very rare that I have to disagree with you, amigo but: for example, in the post where I showed that he bullshat about my position there are 2 options, as I have clearly shown, namely that he is either not so clever or is a liar, misrepresenting my position so badly it bites the brain from within...

If he is a liar then he is morally incompetent. And if he is not capable of understanding simple stuff then your post is simply incorrect, sorry...

Either way: it's bad!!!! Sadly!

K., on the other hand, thinks he is very clever trying to either be a troll or sometimes [rarely, I grant you] does understand things in this department [Philosophy, that is] and is justifiably trying to provoke a debate on some issues...

So, I am undecided: I don't know either of them personally but I DISAGREE with BA's atittude in general, first and foremost [nowt to do with cleverness], as well as K.'s atitude of trying to play the devil's role come what may...

I go for the best argument I may find, regardless where it may come from.

Stay well!

 

[phildwyer]

Is. Equate. You continue to see these categories in metaphysical terms. One thing IS another, this EQUATES to that. You continue to fail to view these economic matters in terms of circulation and the different functions that are performed at different stages in the cycle.

No I don't. Capital is labor-power at the stage of its alienation in symbolic form. So obviously, at that stage in the cycle, its not labor-power per se, it is labor-power in alienated and symbolic form. It's still labor-power though.

Perhaps we could spin it this way indeed. Perhaps instead of consider it this way in terms of ideal capital rather than real captial. Capital IS financial value invested at interest ONLY WHEN it is considered as finicial value invested at interest ie. an ideal is an ideal. You raise tautologies with the pretence that they mean something. If capital IS satan, then this is an empty abstraction. Regardless of how silly this sounds, it tell us nothing.

No, you tried to pretend that machinery or a factory or something could be called "capital," which is of course exactly what the capitalists want us to do. Next you'll be referring to labor-power as "human capital," as the capitalists do. To say that capital is financial value invested at interest is not a tautology but a definition.

 

[phildwyer]

You never addressed my objection to this in the questions for commies thread – namely that the only labour-power capital is interested in is productive labour-power, ie that labour power that could have some value to other people. So it is not in fact co-terminus with human life at all.

Yes it is. You're correct to say that capitalism doesn't purchase the *entire* labor-power of a person: that is slavery. But capitalism purchases only the amount of labour-power it needs, a much more efficient way of doing things. So typically a person will sell eight or nine hours of labor-power each day. Note that labor-power is co-terminus with time, and thus with life. So it seems that I was right after all.

 

[phildwyer]

Spinning labour power as material is more difficult than spinning capital as metaphysical. Labour power is a potential. It is not something that is realised otherwise it would be labour. I have the labour power to dig a ditch, but that power is likely to go unused moreover if I break my arms tommorrow then this power would be lost - ie. my labour power is a potential based on ideal assumptions. Not that any of this has anything to do with metaphysics or idealism.

Labor-power is *time.* When you sell your labor-power you sell yourself, your potential for activity or labor, for a determinate amount of time. And obviously time is material. Therefore, labor-power is material. So it would seem that I was right in the first place.

 

[phildwyer]

At last, both sanity and clarity from Knotted as he unravels the mess that is Phil's false analogy.

At last Luther Blissett drops the pretence and reveals himself as an ignoramus, relatively speaking like.