Oh that's alright then. Me too. Cheers!
Neo Marxism
- Thread starter Shevek
- Start date
Oh that's alright then. Me too. Cheers!
ISince when did a '' smilie indicate denial?
To be honest, I've no idea what any of these fucking smilies mean. They confuse the hell out of me. I remembering arguing with WoW, who uses more smilies than words, which I think was the cause of many sad misunderstandings between us. So now you know how to drive me mad.
= I approve
= I am confused 
= What in the name of holy fuck? = I approve, in a slightly different way from the first one
= what I just said doesn't necessarily mean precisely what it literally means, although it may doThe rest I leave as an exercise for the reader.
Hot verdomme yes. The Dutch did actually get there first, but the English overwhelmed them by being much more numerous. Cromwell proposed a union between England and Holland, which would have excluded Scotland, and I think that made a lot of sense. Even the C17th Dutch language was closer to English than C17th Scots.
Mind you, a union between Holland and Scotland would *really* have been something. That would have knocked the English on their arses.
gorski
customised free radical
Phil said:
Indeed, sad but true: on the Continent, and at least since the Ancient Greeks, that attitude, at least in Philosophical circles, is what is called "zdravorazumski stav" or "commonsensical nonsense", where no thinking beyond the received wisdom is allowed by any means. No space for real thinking, i.e. going beyond the usual, what is commonly held to be true, i.e. Philosophy, sadly...
But most countries, where the multitude is considered, has a seriously sad attitude in that sense, I think...
The UK, SADLY, has a "special", "pragmatic" and "positivist" tradition, which make it that much harder...
Indeed, sad but true: on the Continent, and at least since the Ancient Greeks, that attitude, at least in Philosophical circles, is what is called "zdravorazumski stav" or "commonsensical nonsense", where no thinking beyond the received wisdom is allowed by any means. No space for real thinking, i.e. going beyond the usual, what is commonly held to be true, i.e. Philosophy, sadly...
But most countries, where the multitude is considered, has a seriously sad attitude in that sense, I think...
The UK, SADLY, has a "special", "pragmatic" and "positivist" tradition, which make it that much harder...
In fact none of the Anglo-Saxon countries has a tradition of what other places consider to be philosophy. Empiricism, positivism and pragmatism are anti-philosophies innit.
It is strange really, since the Anglo-Saxons are basically Germans, and the Germans have always been the Fuhrers of philosophy. Maybe they kicked out the Anglo-Saxons because of their philosophical ineptitude.
gorski
customised free radical
And then you have the audacity to tell people off with "hideous generalisations"...
Who said that?!?
gorski
customised free radical
You know, on these two quotes alone... he pretty much wins.And then you have the audacity to tell people off with "hideous generalisations"...
You are guilty of exactly the same intellectual misdemeanour of which you clumsily and ungramatically accuse other people.No, it isn't! If it is Empiricism, it si not worth the time invested.... I don't care if it's Austrian or English or Little Green Men's Empiricism!!!
'Lol', as I believe the kids are wont to say.
gorski
customised free radical
Learn to address the issues and not the messengers...
But seriously:
Grow up, FFS, what kind of shit, weakling behaviour is that, where you say something but you say nothing, so you're "safe" that no one will be able to catch you claiming anything... Honestly speaking, I have never seen a [greater part of a] country practising it more until I got to the UK... Shit, really!!!
But seriously:
Grow up, FFS, what kind of shit, weakling behaviour is that, where you say something but you say nothing, so you're "safe" that no one will be able to catch you claiming anything... Honestly speaking, I have never seen a [greater part of a] country practising it more until I got to the UK... Shit, really!!!
Can you explain a bit? What anglophone empiricism in particular do you find philosophically admirable?
Oh, I dunno. All that shit that gave us phones and electricity and the internet and central heating and machine tools and gas stoves and DVDs and whatnot. Brilliant!
And let's not forget the nuclear bomb and the destruction of the environment. Fabulous!
Spion
I hear ya
I'd like you to show me your evidence for this.
Well consider the argument that capital is alienated labor-power. Something material and something metaphysical are actually the same thing. The "interpenetration of opposites" it's called, I think it's the second rule of dialectics or something. Anyway, the basic idea is that it is illogical to reduce a mutually definitive binary opposition to one of its poles, and matter/ideas is a mutually definitive binary opposition.
Personally I reckon the idea originates from the attempts of Judaic and early Christian theologians to explain how a benign omnipotent deity could be responsible for evil, but that's another discussion.
As I say, you have a good point with regard to Engels, and also Lenin, neither of whom understood dialectcial logic. But Marx did.
Spion
I hear ya
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past."
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Karl Marx, 1852
Which appears thoroughly materialist to me.
The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.
Marx, Preface to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)
And that appears to me to give being the primacy over consciousness. The idea doesn't come first. It is as you say an epiphenomenon of being.
Why? Such circumstances would include ideas as well as material conditions.
Now here's one for you. Marx, third Thesis on Feuerbach:
"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."
Spion
I hear ya
As the pair of them made clear ideas become a material force as they grips the masses. But as they are equally clear ideas do not come from nowhere. They are strictly limted by the material social conditions (inc ideas) of the times and trying to trace the development of 'the idea' without reference to the socio-economic conditions that give rise to it is, well, plain silly
I agree. Ditto re the limits I refer to above
Spion
I hear ya
Actually I'd say capital and alientated labour power are both metaphysical, though they may have narrowly (ie, physical) marterial manifestations. I think you have too narrow a definition of 'the material'.
I can see how ideas quite literally define matter but as for matter defining ideas, well, no. Matter giving rise to ideas I have no problem with tho.
Anyway, I'm still waiting for a concise explanation of your idea that 'materialism' gave rise to the gulags etc etc
gorski
customised free radical
You know who gave you electricity [and a helluva lot more]: Nikola Tesla! A Yugoslav!
Phone? Again, a Yugoslav was instrumental in it: Mihajlo Pupin.
Etc.
FFS...
On the other hand: a nuclear bomb? Well, mostly Germans, including Jews... Ahem...
Material in Marx means "Revolution", i.e. History - that's the real material of his research: revolutionary praxis [not narrowly defined!] as an intersection of theoria, praxis [in a narrow meaning of the word] and poiesis...
None of that stuff is reducible to simple ingredients and the temporal primacy is NOT on the menu!!! Indeed, thinking philosophically [methodical primacy being a must!] is a necessity when reading Marx, as he is a philosopher, first and foremost. That is where he comes from and that is where he got his notions and methodology from!
But it is so easy to try to make it all too simple and forget about all the other elements, especially those that "do not fit" and seem to be somewhat "inconvenient"...
Basically I think that their pseudo-Darwinian conviction that human beings are merely animals with no souls is what enabled otherwise fairly humane men among the Bolsheviks to slaughter millions of people. As Trotsky put it: "We must put an end once and for all to the papist-Quaker babble about the sanctity of human life."
And why not? The possession of a soul is all that separates human beings from animals. So if we decide that human beings have no souls, the objection to slaughtering them comes down to nothing more morally forceful that the vegetarian objection to slaughtering animals.
Spion
I hear ya
Belief in god, the soul etc didn't stop millions being slaughtered by those that marched behind the cross in WW1 or in the conquest of the colonies, did it? What an utterly nonsensical argument you make.
And really, the soul?
It seems your idealism has popped out into the full glare of daylight.
Spion
I hear ya
Well, the version I've got goes: "As for us, we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the “sacredness of human life.” "
He's saying - to Kautsky, who was condemning the Red Army - 'we are not pacifists'.
He also says: "When a murderer raises his knife over a child, may one kill the murderer to save the child? Will not thereby the principle of the “sacredness of human life” be infringed? May one kill the murderer to save oneself? Is an insurrection of oppressed slaves against their masters permissible? Is it permissible to purchase one’s freedom at the cost of the life of one’s jailers? If human life in general is sacred and inviolable, we must deny ourselves not only the use of terror, not only war, but also revolution itself."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/terrcomm/ch04.htm
