Spion
I hear ya
The fact you think it is complicated makes me suspect you have a forest/trees cognition problem, but I'll await your reply before fixing on that conclusion
Neo Marxism
- Thread starter Shevek
- Start date
Spion
I hear ya
I thnk you may be fetishising forms here when we need to get to a concrete and holistic analysis of the things we're looking at
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
no, it is not a seperate entity. any 'meme' is propagated through the real actions of real people- I'm not saying ideas don't have power but they do only have the power granted to them by physical actions and real people.
Well, yes, it's a well known spiritual law that whatever people put their faith in acquires power. People have put more faith in mammon than in God, and indeed made the body and blood of christ illegal, so it's hardly surprising that mammon rules the world, and it's all going to hell.
Spion
I hear ya
This whole God/Satan business and the fetishisation on witchcraft, indulgences etc has the stench of structuralism about it - ie, a fixation on forms that appear to be randomly selected (ie, we're not told why they are *the* phenomenon we should examine) and fails to locate them in their social context and give them meaning derived from that. Hence there's no explanation rooted in historical evidence, about how their meaning changed over time.
That is precisely my feeling on the matter. The reason why Satan is a more appropriate metaphor than Loki or Mercury is that capitalism is an *evil* phenomenon, as in one that is likely to cause the extinction of the human race. Which is Satan's aim, mythologically speaking, but not Loki's or Mercury's.
In addition, there is the fact that belief in Satan really only becomes important during the early years of capitalism--he hardly features in Christianity from the Bible up until Luther.
Spion: there are two kinds of materialism. The stupidest and most popular is "eliminative materialism," which argues that matter is all that exists--ideas are actually changes in brain chemistry and similar nonsense. The more sophisticated kind I suppose we might call "orthodox Marxist materialism," and it holds that ideas do exist, but are merely epiphenomena caused by material circumstances.
Spion
I hear ya
And what do you disagree with in that?
Hey Spion, why don't you go and reread the thread on immigration in UK politics where I first encountered you, .. then maybe you'll understand why I don't read any of your posts any more.
And also in the process to torture humanity, and to degrade us, setting us against each other, and making us believe the worst of each other.
Spion
I hear ya
If you can't be arsed to communicate with me directly I can't be arsed going to trawl through old threads and try and read your mind. I'm really not that interested
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
Capitalism:
Somehow he just doesn't seem quite as scary.
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
Dejected capitalism, post credit-crunch:
No it's people who are dejected, not capitalism.
Mammon's jsut had a big blood transfusion that should keep it going for the foreseeable future hasn't it?
Mammon's jsut had a big blood transfusion that should keep it going for the foreseeable future hasn't it?
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
Sometimes capitalism is sexy:
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
Sometimes I like to dress up as capitalism:
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
Yesterday I asked a small child to draw capitalism, and this is what they drew:
Which proves it really.
Which proves it really.
What does it prove exactly?
That Brainaddict is a moron. Somehow I think I could have guessed that anyway.
I explained that last week on the "Question for Commies" thread, post 305. You'll have to forgive me if I don't go through it again, especially now that Brainaddict has turned up again with his usual thread-wreaking tactics.
In fact, I wonder if it mightn't be possible to ban Brainaddict from the TPH forum? All he does is destroy conversations that he cannot understand. I really don't see the benefit of keeping him around.
Well he started a good thread once: called the problem with christianity is not what you think.
Spion
I hear ya
I'm glad you reminded me to go and look at that thread.
This says nothing about materialism as it makes no reference to where concepts come from.
OK, so we're starting to get onto the subject but still you hedge around the issue of what comes first, how the two interact, what, if any, are the limits of the latter in the context of the former etc.
But which one? Ideas can't exist without matter, but matter can exist without ideas. So what is the relationship between them? That's what I want to hear you tell me.
No it's not and your assertion does not follow from the vague nonsense you've said above.
I don't know what kind of crap you've been reading. Marx and Engels were very clear about ideas being dependent on the material world (with the NB that ideas become a material force also).
"Men make history but not in circumstances of their own choosing" etc
You're a very silly man
Matter can exist without ideas in itself, but not for us, not for human beings. In order to experience matter, or anything else, we have to form an idea of it. It is foolish to speculate about the nature of things in themselves, for that is something that, by definition, human beings can never know. Human beings can only know how things appear to human beings, and things appear to human beings by means of ideas.
This is your strongest point, and it is true that Engels was a materialist. It is also true that Marx made several doctrinaire materialist declarations in his youth, while he was trying to wriggle away from Young-Hegelian idealism. It is however clear from his methodology that he is anything but a materialist. He is, as I said before, a dialectician and as such understood that ideas and matter form a mutually determining polarity.
You're a very silly man
On that we can agree.
gorski
customised free radical
Hehe...
The "material" that Marx was all about is History [making with consciousness], and more precisely, Revolution!!!! That is Marx's "material", that is the subject-mater of his musings...
Indeed, he did it in a Hegelian manner, i.e. dialectically... And the older he got the closer he got to Hegel, indeed!
Btw, what Brainaddict does is not exactly unique on U75 - many do it - if they don't understand it it's bound to be crap, so spit at it from on high... Really silly and sad!!! Really prejudiced and hence disrespectful to the bone. But it's a part and parcel of life in the UK. When I did some teaching in the UK the first thing they told me was "not to expect this [country] to be the Continent, where one walks in and the kids sit up and listen"... So, sure, it's a general problem, in this sense, where one can't grow, as there's nothing sacred and really worthwhile - unless, of course, it's money, power and career oriented and promising...
Sad!!!
The "material" that Marx was all about is History [making with consciousness], and more precisely, Revolution!!!! That is Marx's "material", that is the subject-mater of his musings...
Indeed, he did it in a Hegelian manner, i.e. dialectically... And the older he got the closer he got to Hegel, indeed!
Btw, what Brainaddict does is not exactly unique on U75 - many do it - if they don't understand it it's bound to be crap, so spit at it from on high... Really silly and sad!!! Really prejudiced and hence disrespectful to the bone. But it's a part and parcel of life in the UK. When I did some teaching in the UK the first thing they told me was "not to expect this [country] to be the Continent, where one walks in and the kids sit up and listen"... So, sure, it's a general problem, in this sense, where one can't grow, as there's nothing sacred and really worthwhile - unless, of course, it's money, power and career oriented and promising...
Sad!!!
Aye. The problem I have with Brainaddict is not his ignorance--everyone was ignorant once--but the fact that he seems to make a virtue of it. Any idea which is unfamiliar to him must, by his reasoning, be nonsensical, stupid, to be derided etc. Which attitude is guaranteed to ensure that he remains ignorant forever, which is a pity for he is not particularly stupid. Just closed-minded.
As for it being a characteristically British trait, I think there's a lot of truth in that. The Brits have historically been keenly attached to "common sense," Britain is the homeland of empiricism--if you can't touch it, it doesn't exist--and pragmatism--truth is "what works." It is of course no coincidence that Britain is also the homeland of capitalism.
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
Gorski, I don't bother having rational discussions with people who believe that the world is ruled by extra-terrestrial shape-shifting lizards either.
As for whether kids should respect their teachers, I like to think that teachers should earn respect before they get respect. And if teachers really want to earn respect, they should start by rebelling en-masse against the fucking travesty of an education system within which they are the cogs. Until then, I'm not sure why in hell kids should respect them.
So piss off with your dumb generalisations.
As for whether kids should respect their teachers, I like to think that teachers should earn respect before they get respect. And if teachers really want to earn respect, they should start by rebelling en-masse against the fucking travesty of an education system within which they are the cogs. Until then, I'm not sure why in hell kids should respect them.
So piss off with your dumb generalisations.
See, this is precsiely your problem. You caricature and deride ideas that are new to you. You are unwilling to question the received wisdom that your little niche in society (Bohemian, middle-class, liberal, "alternative" cutlure-consuming, hedonist, "1920s Paris" admiring etc) passes down to you.
That is why you will always remain ignorant. If I were you I'd give up on intellectual discussion altogether--its really not your style--and just concentrate on making money, to which your attitude is admirably suited. And I have no doubt that this is precisely what you will end up doing with your life.
What a cryptic little fellow you are. I take it you mean to deny that England is the homeland of capitalism? Well not only is it that, it is also the homeland of the empiricist and pragmatist philosophies that rationalize capitalism.
Since I'm feeling generous today I'll treat you to this quote from Spengler: "That which we call national economy today is built up on premises that are openly and specifically English. Credit-money, in the special form imparted to it by the relations of world-trade and export-industry in a peasantless England, serves as the foundation whereupon to define words like capital, value, price, property."
I can't be bothered to look up the reference, but Marx also makes the point, in the opening chapters of "Capital" that the very language used to describe capitalism is English, and often translatable into other tongues only with great difficulty.
