KARL MARX SELF-DECEPTION
Alexander Abian
It takes a naive, incoherent and imbued in bovine exaltation and ecstasy
brain to proclaim (as Karl Marx did) that:
" Religion is an opiate of the masses"
and not to follow it immediately by saying that
"Communism is also an opiate of the masses"
The fact of the matter is that
"Every political ideology is an opiate of the masses"
There is no way out. And, Karl Marx's not asserting that shows that
he was totally anesthetized and stoned by the opiate of the
communistical propaganda! And what can you expected from a stoned brain!!!
Same goes for Nietzsche if he was the originator of the "Religion is
opiate of the masses" - Nietzsche's philosophy falls in the same category.
It is high time to realize that every socio-political organization
is essentially mass-terrorizing and enslaving and exploiting establishment!
No way out!!! And those who overthrow oppression become oppressors in
their turn!!! And Life is still extremely interesting - the technology
and progress are still the miracles of the human miraculous mind!!!
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
ABIAN MASS-TIME EQUIVALENCE FORMULA m = Mo(1-exp(T/(kT-Mo))) Abian units.
ALTER EARTH'S ORBIT AND TILT - STOP GLOBAL DISASTERS AND EPIDEMICS
ALTER THE SOLAR SYSTEM. REORBIT VENUS INTO A NEAR EARTH-LIKE ORBIT
TO CREATE A BORN AGAIN EARTH (1990)
Alexander Abian
In article <99-260797...@kmacmac.phys.uh.edu>,
Extremely Right <9...@spies.com> wrote:
Abian
> <snip>
>
>Would you rather have a system where if your wallet drops out on the
>street the people are likely to return it because of an internal moral
>compass that tells them they are doing something right... OR - a fear that
>someone is watching, or they would get caught and punished by the state.
>If you think about it, any efficient state, unless severely shackled,
>would tend toward totalitarian Big Brother natural answers:
Abian answers:
There is not much difference to have a Gestapo or a KGB watching you
from outside or to have it instilled in you under the name "conscience"
using the ruthless and tormenting weapon the so-called "guilt feeling" which
could terrorize you with no lesser degree than any other weapon of
torture!
Any religious, socio-economic-political, etc., etc ideology is
strictly a POLITICAL IDEOLOGY and is AN OPIATE OF THE MASSES. It was
naive of Marx and Co.to say that "Religion is an opiate of Masses" and not
to observe as Abian did and as Abian proclaimed hat "any ideology
be it religious, socio-economic-political, etc., etc is an opiate of
the masses" I repeat again that any ideology is essentially a strictly
political ideology!!
Alexander Abian
In article <33DBA0...@mail.atl.bellsouth.net>,
Ron Allen <ral...@mail.atl.bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>Ron Allen asks:
>Mr. Abian, do you regard an ideology for the people as nothing more than
>an opiate? Marx, for example, called religion an opiate only because,
>in his opinion, religion in a capitalist context functioned simply to
>justify and sanctify an unwholesome social reality. A holy faith
>willing to condone, overlook, or forgive "unholy" social arrangements
>and unhealthy social relations was, for Marx, an opiate.
Abian answers:
Yes, I do regard an ideology for the people as nothing more than an opiate
of the masses. Marx himself stoned by the opiate of his ideology and with
his anesthetized followers who tried and are still trying to establish
their political establishment in the NAME of FREEDOM just as any other
political organization everyone of which preaches FREEDOM, FREEDOM,
FREEDOM AT LAST and in reality, everyone of them looks for POWER,
POWER, POWER to subjugate to have control to tyrannized and ALL IN THE
NAME OF FREEDOM! To each according to his needs and from each according
to his abilities WHERE WE DO DETERMINE "need and ability" !!
Karl Marx and Co. use the same tactics of brain-washing and
propaganda as any political or religious organization does. Marx' s
statues and pictures and portraits are reproduced and revered as
statues and pictures and paintings of saints of various decadent bourgeois
religious organizations. And I am not yet mentioning the Mausoleums
built for Marxist saints where followers go kneel and get stoned!
Alexander Abian
><ral...@mail.atl.bellsouth.net> writes:
>>
> in the Soviet Union/E. Europe. I hate to say this, but I must:
> It is absolutely amazing, as well as amusing,
> that you cannot see this, but, like a fundamentalist Christian
> blinded by faith, you keep repeating the same pie-in-the-sky
> dream of Communism.
>
> Libertarius
Abian answers:
I do not hate to say this: that you in the name of Liberty under
the hypocritical endless repetition of your assumed piety and in
the most disgusting and repugnant sanctimonious way, you try to show
your phony blind devotion to "Liberty, Freedom, Libertarius for
the downtrodden masses - the pie-in-the-sky dream of Communism.
Mr Libertarius, I am not advocating any political system or ideology
except THE TOTAL AND COMPLETE DICTATORSHIP WHERE I AM THE DICTATOR.
So wake up I am not interested in pies in the skies. I am advocating the
Total and Complete Dictatorship where I am the dictator - and this
not in the skies but here on the planet Earth - understood ?!
Bryan Cowan
In article <5rfvgk$fp6$1...@news.iastate.edu>, ab...@iastate.edu (Alexander
Abian) wrote:
> In article <99-260797...@kmacmac.phys.uh.edu>,
> Extremely Right <9...@spies.com> wrote:
> Abian
>
> > <snip>
> >
> >Would you rather have a system where if your wallet drops out on the
> >street the people are likely to return it because of an internal moral
> >compass that tells them they are doing something right... OR - a fear that
> >someone is watching, or they would get caught and punished by the state.
> >If you think about it, any efficient state, unless severely shackled,
> >would tend toward totalitarian Big Brother natural answers:
>
> Abian answers:
>
> There is not much difference to have a Gestapo or a KGB watching you
> from outside or to have it instilled in you under the name "conscience"
> using the ruthless and tormenting weapon the so-called "guilt feeling" which
> could terrorize you with no lesser degree than any other weapon of
> torture!
>
> Any religious, socio-economic-political, etc., etc ideology is
> strictly a POLITICAL IDEOLOGY and is AN OPIATE OF THE MASSES. It was
> naive of Marx and Co.to say that "Religion is an opiate of Masses" and not
> to observe as Abian did and as Abian proclaimed hat "any ideology
> be it religious, socio-economic-political, etc., etc is an opiate of
> the masses" I repeat again that any ideology is essentially a strictly
> political ideology!!
That's why anarchism came about. Anarchists recognize that *ideology* can
be used as a tool of control. Marx may have been trying to convey the same
thought with his famous *religion is the opiate of the people* statement.
Without government no ideology can be enforced, and people are free to
make their own belief systems.
> --
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ABIAN MASS-TIME EQUIVALENCE FORMULA m = Mo(1-exp(T/(kT-Mo))) Abian units.
> ALTER EARTH'S ORBIT AND TILT - STOP GLOBAL DISASTERS AND EPIDEMICS
> ALTER THE SOLAR SYSTEM. REORBIT VENUS INTO A NEAR EARTH-LIKE ORBIT
> TO CREATE A BORN AGAIN EARTH (1990)
Uh, sure, whatever.
Alexander Abian
In article <moo-280797...@sl3.midtown.net>,
Bryan Cowan <m...@NOSPAM.midtown.net> wrote:
>In article <5rfvgk$fp6$1...@news.iastate.edu>, ab...@iastate.edu (Alexander
>
>> In article <99-260797...@kmacmac.phys.uh.edu>,
>> Extremely Right <9...@spies.com> wrote:
>>
>> > <snip>
>> >
>> >Would you rather have a system where if your wallet drops out on the
>> >street the people are likely to return it because of an internal moral
>> >compass that tells them they are doing something right... OR - a fear that
>> >someone is watching, or they would get caught and punished by the state.
>> >If you think about it, any efficient state, unless severely shackled,
>> >would tend toward totalitarian Big Brother natural answers:
>>
>> Abian answers:
>>
>> There is not much difference to have a Gestapo or a KGB watching you
>> from outside or to have it instilled in you under the name "conscience"
>> using the ruthless and tormenting weapon the so-called "guilt feeling" which
>> could terrorize you with no lesser degree than any other weapon of
>> torture!
>>
>> Any religious, socio-economic-political, etc., etc ideology is
>> strictly a POLITICAL IDEOLOGY and is AN OPIATE OF THE MASSES. It was
>> naive of Marx and Co.to say that "Religion is an opiate of Masses" and not
>> to observe as Abian did and as Abian proclaimed hat "any ideology
>> be it religious, socio-economic-political, etc., etc is an opiate of
>> the masses" I repeat again that any ideology is essentially a strictly
>> political ideology!!
>
>That's why anarchism came about. Anarchists recognize that *ideology* can
>be used as a tool of control. Marx may have been trying to convey the same
Abian answers:
Provided an ideology is not made of "anarchism" - which seems almost
impossible. Even if there are 10, or even 2 (or even 1) anarchists
they will have their rules and regulations (such as "not having any
rules" - which is paradoxical) and pretty soon their they will have
their police, bureaucracy, etc., etc and administrator of anarchism
with their imposition of "anarchism" agenda, upon others.
Graham W
Alexander Abian <ab...@iastate.edu> wrote in article
<5rdr5r$9s9$1...@news.iastate.edu>...
> Same goes for Nietzsche if he was the originator of the "Religion is
> opiate of the masses" - Nietzsche's philosophy falls in the same
category.
Yes, yes, and Nietsche realised that his philosophy was subjective too...
Graham
Graham W
Alexander Abian <ab...@iastate.edu> wrote in article
<5rfvgk$fp6$1...@news.iastate.edu>...
> Any religious, socio-economic-political, etc., etc ideology is
> strictly a POLITICAL IDEOLOGY and is AN OPIATE OF THE MASSES. It was
> naive of Marx and Co.to say that "Religion is an opiate of Masses" and
not
> to observe as Abian did and as Abian proclaimed hat "any ideology
> be it religious, socio-economic-political, etc., etc is an opiate of
> the masses" I repeat again that any ideology is essentially a strictly
> political ideology!!
Marx wasn't naive at all. He recognised that his "ideology" was subjective,
not objective. In other words, he recognised that the moral judgements he
made (such as those about capitalism being evil) weren't objectively true -
they were only subjectively true from the point of view of the working
classes.
Since the working classes were the only people he was trying to convince,
that didn't matter from his point of view.
In other words, Marx proclaimed exactly what Abian proclaimed. But Marx got
there first.8-)
Graham W
Bryan Cowan
In article <5rigme$uue$1...@news.iastate.edu>, ab...@iastate.edu (Alexander
Abian) wrote:
> In article <moo-280797...@sl3.midtown.net>,
> Bryan Cowan <m...@NOSPAM.midtown.net> wrote:
> >In article <5rfvgk$fp6$1...@news.iastate.edu>, ab...@iastate.edu (Alexander
>
> >
> >> In article <99-260797...@kmacmac.phys.uh.edu>,
> >> Extremely Right <9...@spies.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> > <snip>
> >> >
> >> >Would you rather have a system where if your wallet drops out on the
> >> >street the people are likely to return it because of an internal moral
> >> >compass that tells them they are doing something right... OR - a fear that
> >> >someone is watching, or they would get caught and punished by the state.
> >> >If you think about it, any efficient state, unless severely shackled,
> >> >would tend toward totalitarian Big Brother natural answers:
> >>
> >> Abian answers:
> >>
> >> There is not much difference to have a Gestapo or a KGB watching you
> >> from outside or to have it instilled in you under the name "conscience"
> >> using the ruthless and tormenting weapon the so-called "guilt
feeling" which
> >> could terrorize you with no lesser degree than any other weapon of
> >> torture!
> >>
> >> Any religious, socio-economic-political, etc., etc ideology is
> >> strictly a POLITICAL IDEOLOGY and is AN OPIATE OF THE MASSES. It was
> >> naive of Marx and Co.to say that "Religion is an opiate of Masses"
and not
> >> to observe as Abian did and as Abian proclaimed hat "any ideology
> >> be it religious, socio-economic-political, etc., etc is an opiate of
> >> the masses" I repeat again that any ideology is essentially a strictly
> >> political ideology!!
> >
> >That's why anarchism came about. Anarchists recognize that *ideology* can
> >be used as a tool of control. Marx may have been trying to convey the same
>
>
> Abian answers:
>
> Provided an ideology is not made of "anarchism" - which seems almost
> impossible. Even if there are 10, or even 2 (or even 1) anarchists
> they will have their rules and regulations (such as "not having any
> rules" - which is paradoxical) and pretty soon their they will have
> their police, bureaucracy, etc., etc and administrator of anarchism
> with their imposition of "anarchism" agenda, upon others.
Well, I guess it's unavoidable that the people will want to have rules.
But the above is a pessimistic view, presuming that rules have to come
from above instead of from the people themselves. Without government, the
people will be free to have whatever regulations they choose, and these
rules will be enforced by the people, not by a state. *Police* and
*bureaucracy* both imply statism, and without the state there will be no
police or bureaucracy as we know them. The rules that the people
voluntarily agree to follow will be *enforced* by vigilance committees and
collectives, but this is not really comparable to statist enforcement of
laws because the people as a community will have agreed to these rules,
making miscreants rare.
Scott D. Erb
In article <01bc9b37$236d6650$87b78fc2@grahamwpc>, graham@x#ara.com
says...
>Alexander Abian <ab...@iastate.edu> wrote in article
><5rdr5r$9s9$1...@news.iastate.edu>...
>> Same goes for Nietzsche if he was the originator of the "Religion is
>> opiate of the masses" - Nietzsche's philosophy falls in the same
>category.
>Yes, yes, and Nietsche realised that his philosophy was subjective too...
>
>Graham
An aside -- I loved the Calvin and Hobbes comic where Calvin runs across
the phrase "religion is the opiate of the masses," and doesn't it
understand what it means.
"What does this mean?" He asks a puzzled Hobbes.
The Television set in the background, however, is thinking "It means Karl
Marx aint seen nothing yet!"
cheers, scott
Giovanni 8
> Alexander Abian wrote:
>> Extremely Right wrote:
>> Would you rather have a system where if your wallet drops out on
>> the street the people are likely to return it because of an
>> internal moral compass that tells them they are doing something
>> right... OR -
>> a fear that someone is watching, or they would get caught and
>> punished by the state. If you think about it, any efficient state,
>> unless severely shackled, would tend toward totalitarian Big Brother
>> natural answers:
> There is not much difference to have a Gestapo or a KGB watching you
> from outside or to have it instilled in you under the name "conscience"
> using the ruthless and tormenting weapon the so-called "guilt feeling"
> which could terrorize you with no lesser degree than any other weapon
> of torture!...
There's a huge difference between objective morality with liberty,
and imposition of guilt from outside. The second is arbitrary
and incompatible with human life, while the first is necessary
for human life.
"Peace is not the absence of conflict. Peace is the presence of justice."
--- James Matthews (?) (Harrison Ford) in "Air Force 1"
screen-play by Andrew W. Malone & others
$$$
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government
has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't
enough criminals, one MAKES them. One declares so many things to
be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without
breaking laws... Create a nation of law-breakers, and then you
cash in on the guilt." --- Ayn Rand 1957 _Atlas Shrugged_
$$$
"A rational man never distorts or corrupts his own standards and
judgement in order to appeal to the irrationality, stupidity, or
dishonesty of others." --- Ayn Rand
$$$
"For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those
who claimed that your life belongs to God & those who claimed
that it belongs to your neighbors, between those who preached
that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven
& those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the
sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your
life belongs to you & that the good is to live it." --- Ayn Rand
1957 "This is John Galt Speaking" _Atlas Shrugged_ pp 1011-1012
$$$
"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy.
The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe.
Civilization is the process of setting man free of men." --- Ayn Rand
1943 _The Fountainhead_ pg 715 (reprinted in Ayn Rand 1961
"The Soul of an Individualist" _For the New Intellectual_)
--
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Uncle Al Schwartz
G. Mohamad wrote:
>
> Does Economy shape a countrie's culture? Do oil countries have a culture
> that is shaped by oil and because of that reason different than
> agricultural countries? Does the diversification of income resources
> reflect on the culture of the country..as opposed to countries that depend
> on more or less on one source? I appreciate your insights about this
> subject. Thank you.
>
> Ghaida'a
Understanding is a three-edged sword - your side, their side, the truth.
You can make almost any profound or silly (eye of the beholder)
statement and make it stick through the processes of dialectic,
critique, statistical analysis, and bold flim-flam (e.g., Jacques
Derrida). Dissertation Abstracts/Liberal Arts is gorged with it. Ask
yourself whether you wish to accomplish something sustainable in the
real world.
Oil is easy money and vast amounts of it. Remember to consider Alaska.
Langauge and State religion are much more important sculpters of
behavior and expectation. Oil allows both to proceed sheathed in
innocent stupidity - the worst mistakes (e.g., war) are smoothed over by
another few million barrels of oil. I reference you to OPEC production
controls in the 1970s. Increasing the price of Mideast oil inflated
Western currencies. The VALUE of revenues received by OPEC producers,
not the dollar amounts, did not nearly increase in kind. Motivated to
consider higher efficiencies in use, the First World became a less avid
customer. A little backroom bluster and some bribes would have been
more effective. Look what Vietnamese negotiators did to the US in Paris
with a wooden table. (The US then gathered up its blue jeans and went
home. Saigon has been hurting ever since. Note the lesson here.)
Arab culture has become more cosmopolitan - outside Official purvue and
behind closed doors, anyway. It is Officially anchored in the 14th
century. Like Keuffel & Esser sliderules when the H-35 came along, this
is only a temporary hiatus before greater forces of science, technology,
and engineering find a way around the energy constriction. Current oil
producers cannot live nearly so opulently on petrochemical feedstreams
(rather than bulk fuels). Even the largest easy cashflow cannot sustain
inept government. The piper will be paid.
Oil revenues serve as insulation against the nature of physical
reality. If a nation wishes to support First World population densities
living in First World affluence (water on tap, centralized sewage
disposal; power, communication, and entertainment utilities;
transportation, consumerism...) it has three choices:
1) adopt US culture (Europe is a polyglot, poly-religiosity,
infrastructural shambles),
2) reshape its own culture to fit rational engineering and social
constraints,
3) follow God and aboriginal tradition into the flaming pits of Hell.
(2) is to be preferred. It has a nasty habit of leading to (1),
complete with loudly boorish teenagers. The safe path is (3), except
for the arrival.
My opinion is that oil per se does not shape culture. There hasn't been
time, nor will it sustain. Oil allows culture to pursue its whims
without constraint. One difference between healthy tissue and cancer is
recognizing limits. Western culture has always had difficulty
circumscribing appetites while avoiding necrosis (consider the Edsel and
Welfare). Eastern culture has never managed to sustain material
improvement within its philosophy of philosophical balance. Texan or
Arab, you still get insular jerks.
--
Uncle Al Schwartz
Uncl...@ix.netcom.com ("zero" before @)
http://www.ultra.net.au/~wisby/uncleal.htm
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children, Democrats, and most mammals)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" The Net!
Scott D. Erb
In article <33E954...@hotmail.com>, howards...@hotmail.com says...
>Why is Marx still being given airtime? His work is now, universally
>unread. The Left long ago took Nietzsche as it's spiritual source, depite
>him being a man of the Right.
Yikes, I don't Nietzsche as a spokesperson of the "left"?! Where are you
getting your info?
And Marx is read and discussed -- both his strengths (he added a lot to
social theory and his analysis of capitalism's dynamics inform
neo-classical "capitalist" economics) and his weaknesses (he committed the
error of over-determination -- relying too much on one variable, and
showed that historical theories like the dialectic don't work to project
into the future). He was an important 19th century social scientist.
Wrong on most counts, but his track record was as good as most from that
era (and he certainly would not have supported communism Soviet-style),
and we can learn from his mistakes.
>Nietzsche and Heidegger are the giants underpinning most of the century's
>most influential disciplines, viz. existentialism, phenomenology, Nazism
>(oops!),structuralism, post structuralism, deconstruction, et al.
Well, I would point out that some of the above are very different than
others, so putting them all in the same boat is a bit misleading.
Structuralism and deconstrutionism are very, very different -- imagine
Derrida debating a structuralist! And many of these are hardly on the
left, especially Nazism is right wing. Phenomenology and
post-structuralist ideas are often tied into epistemological issues within
philosophy of science, and can lead to methodological critiques and not
world views. So you're vastly over-simplifying.
>Marx is an embarrassment that has been sidelined; Marxism has little to
>do with the work of Marx who was, in truth, a political economist,in
>regard to which he was as Samuelson memorably called him, " a minor post
>Ricardian". IE. Marx was neither original or an important thinker within
>his lifetime.
That's not true -- his synthesis of different modes of thought and
painstaking work and influential writing put him head and shoulders above
most 19th century proto-social scientists. I personally prefer people
like Simmel, Weber, and the non-Marxist social scientists, but Marx cannot
simply be so easily dismissed. I think his failures are something we can
learn a lot from, and that in and of itself is worth something.
>Leftists of course have a romantic attatchment to Marx, but if we all
>agreed to stop talking about him at the same time, he could literally
>disappear to the footnotes of history.
Of course, that would never happen, since a lot of us are going to
continue talking about him...not romantically, but as a historical figure
with strengths and weaknesses, who made an impact on the world. The fate
of communism shows where good intentioned utopian schemes can lead if they
are not grounded in reality. And Marx's vision of a communist utopia
didn't even follow from his own logic -- a flaw a lot of people can learn
from when they try to extend their "isms" into visions of utopia.
cheers, scott
jer...@creighton.edu
The economy shapes culture. More specifially, the way in which a society
produces is resources will influence society. I am not familiar with the
culture of oil production nations, so cannot apply this theory to these
nations.
Further, a dynamic exists between economics and culture. The demands of a
culture will influence the economy. If blue jeans are in fashion, people
will demand them, thus the culture effects the economy. Good luck
unraveleing cause and effect.
Scott D. Erb
Staunton
You clearly share one of Marx's great faults; namely the inability to
formulate economical, coherent arguments. What are you talking about.
Examine your posting; what is it really saying that couldn't have been
left unsaid. eg."if things had been different, then things would have
turned out differently ". This is your level of argument, truth be told.
Mike Wooding
Staunton wrote:
> Why is Marx still being given airtime? His work is now, universally
> unread.
Not universally. Hang around these newgroups long enuf and you'll
find posters who can quote Marx chapter and verse as readily as a
baptist minister quotes scripture. Old religions never die.
--
mi...@wse.com (Mike Wooding)
Charles Stewart
Staunton <howards...@hotmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
> If you are unaware of Nietzsche's influence on leftist thought, it
> is you who are out of touch. Perhaps you mean the few bedraggled
> Marxists left, but that only emphasises my point concerning the
> sidelining of Marx. Your mention of Weber is interesting, because
> undoubtedly he was a major influence. Unfortunately, I am not in
> sympathy with the current ideologies prevailing in sociology,
> political theory, anthropology et al.
Certainly Nietzsche's heirs have had a formidable influence on
left-wing thought, but you are mistakened in believing that only a
`few bedraggled Marxists' are left: what about Terry Eagleton, Eric
Hobsbawm, Frederic Jameson, Raymond Williams, and so? Much wider are
the number of thinkers who, though they depart from a whole-hearted
embrace of marxism, agree that Marx has made contributions of critical
importance to how we view culture, history and society (Habermas,
MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, etc.). If it wasn't for Marx, you wouldn't
have been able to use the word `ideology' as you just did.
My personal opinion is that the crop of Nietzsche's thought belongs to
the category of paranoid philosophy, mistrusting our most important
intuitions about our world, and so of little value to those of us who
might wish to go beyond soul-searching and polemic. Marxist economics
may be in an unhealthy state, but at least there is such a thing.
> There are many formidable critics of these movements but leftists
> are very shy of debating their record.
Simply not true.
> I am well aware of the differences between structuralism and
> deconstruction etc, but my point was simply to demonstrate N. and H.
> influence. One might say the extremely different conclusions they
> come to is typical of abstract thought. One has an idea perhaps, and
> one builds a whole philosophy around it. One protects it from
> criticism's etc. ie. Popper's critique of psuedosciences.
> I am not someone who dismisses all left wing thought, nor am I
> someone who believes that one must uncritically accept all movements
> are worthy of equal attention. Dostoyevsky is my hero in this
> regard. He attacked the determinist, rational egoist (associated now
> with the Right) socialism of his time when it seemed the whole
> intellectual elite of Europe was falling for it.
Dostoevsky is a wonderful writer, but he was a political reactionary
who wanted to turn back the clock of history. Intellectuals may be
prone to fashions, but sometimes even the most educated can be
convinced by ideas because of their merits.
Charles
ccam...@swbell.net
>G. Mohamad wrote:
>>
>> Does Economy shape a countrie's culture? Do oil countries have a culture
>> that is shaped by oil and because of that reason different than
>> agricultural countries? (snip)
>> Ghaida'a
>
(snip for brevity)
>My opinion is that oil per se does not shape culture. There hasn't been
>time, nor will it sustain. Oil allows culture to pursue its whims
>without constraint. One difference between healthy tissue and cancer is
>recognizing limits. Western culture has always had difficulty
>circumscribing appetites while avoiding necrosis (consider the Edsel and
>Welfare). Eastern culture has never managed to sustain material
>improvement within its philosophy of philosophical balance. Texan or
>Arab, you still get insular jerks.
>
>--
>Uncle Al Schwartz
>Uncl...@ix.netcom.com ("zero" before @)
>http://www.ultra.net.au/~wisby/uncleal.htm
> (Toxic URL! Unsafe for children, Democrats, and most mammals)
>"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" The Net!
What a well expressed opinion, Uncle! Another point to consider,
Ghaida'a, is that cultures generally determine the economy in the
fundamentals - resources determine the shape those fundamentals will
be expressed in.
For example, has oil in the Middle East changed it's fundamental
spread base of wealth and power? Has it altered, independant of any
other influences, the hierarchical structure of authority?
I think you'll find that oil may have changed the current focuses
slightly, but that the relationships of power and wealth inside the
culture have not changed. Of course, I could be wrong, so feel free
to shoot me down! ;-)
-cc
Roger Dapson
You might even learn from the points he had right. The exploitation of
labor has destroyed more "isms" than Communism. There is a basic problem
with many learning processes, since frequently theories are extracted
from failed philosophies without regard to the underlying reasons for the
causes of the failures. If the extracted theories were developed on
the presumptions of the basic philosophy their basis may be flawed as
well.
Bryan Cowan
In article <99-050897...@kmacmac.phys.uh.edu>, 9...@spies.com
(Extremely Right) wrote:
> In article <moo-290797...@sl18.midtown.net>, m...@NOSPAM.midtown.net
> (Bryan Cowan) wrote:
> > Well, I guess it's unavoidable that the people will want to have rules.
> > But the above is a pessimistic view, presuming that rules have to come
> > from above instead of from the people themselves. Without government, the
> > people will be free to have whatever regulations they choose, and these
> > rules will be enforced by the people, not by a state. *Police* and
> > *bureaucracy* both imply statism, and without the state there will be no
> > police or bureaucracy as we know them. The rules that the people
> > voluntarily agree to follow will be *enforced* by vigilance committees and
> > collectives, but this is not really comparable to statist enforcement of
> > laws because the people as a community will have agreed to these rules,
> > making miscreants rare.
>
>
> You should realize that you are defining government, a point Albian was
> relating. The only problem is how much or how big... and who is the
> ultimate authority. When the state takes unauthorized power from the
> people, it becomes dangerous. The people, who gave power to the "state" to
> enforce certain prescribed rules (like in the constitution), when usurped,
> must rectify or abolish that corrupt state and remake the necessary
> provisions in a government that secures their security and liberty. ###8up
Actually, I define government as an elite that exercises authority over
the people. You correctly note that ultimate power rests with the people,
and that the people surrender this right to government-in effect, giving
their human rights over to an elite. I simply propose that the people keep
control of their lives and rights and dispense with the elite. No elite
will secure the liberty of the people, because once entrenched, the elite
inevitably wishes to protect its newfound power at the expense of the
rights of the people. If you want to call an anarcho-collectivist system
*government*, you have that right, but I beg to differ.
>
>
> "When all government domestic and foreign, in little as in great things,
> shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render
> powerless the checks of one government on another, and will become as
> venal as the government from which we seperated."
> <Thomas Jefferson 1821>
Staunton
Does your computer have an echo function?
If you are unaware of Nietzsche's influence on leftist thought, it is you
who are out of touch. Perhaps you mean the few bedraggled Marxists left,
but that only emphasises my point concerning the sidelining of Marx. Your
mention of Weber is interesting, because undoubtedly he was a major
influence. Unfortunately, I am not in sympathy with the current
ideologies prevailing in sociology, political theory, anthropology et al.
very shy of debating their record.
Ford
>
>
>Does Economy shape a countrie's culture? Do oil countries have a culture
>that is shaped by oil and because of that reason different than
>agricultural countries? Does the diversification of income resources
>reflect on the culture of the country..as opposed to countries that depend
>on more or less on one source? I appreciate your insights about this
>subject. Thank you.
>
>
>Ghaida'a
>
Religion probably has much more effect in determining a country's
culture that oil or any commodity or lack thereof.
F. Prefect
>
>
>
> <><><>
When your pet bird sees you reading the newspaper, does he wonder why
you're just sitting there, staring at carpeting?
Staunton
Dostoyevsky WAS a wonderful writer, but the left like to say he was a great artist but
poor thinker. Your use of the term 'reactionary' is amusingly typical of my point. In
Dostoyevsky's days it was used by exactly the people he criticised, ie. the Ru7ssian
intelligentsia who borrowed their ideas wholesale from abroad. Similarly now, leftists
nearly always carry exactly the same arguments and critiques, borne not from their own
ideas and experiences, but swallowed whole.In fact Dostoyevsky in his emphasis on
anti-intellectualism, non determinism etc. was the true revolutionary, not them.
Your sly attempt to embrace Marx, but with the proviso that he made mistakes etc. is
wholly typical of the realignment of the left. Most leftists were very reluctant to
renounce the security of Marxism well into the 1980's when the Soviet experiment had
clearly failed. It wasn't till it's fall that sheeplike the deserted the sinking ship,
and rewrote history. BTW do you remember that when the Eastern bloc imploded we were
urged ie. Western capitalists and rightists, not to crow triumphantly. What a cheek!
Most leftists now go under the umbrella of culture criticism, and the fragmentation of
post Heideggerian post structuralism and post modernism.
I share your distaste for these, and the implications they have, but my philosophy is
based on quite different criteria.
I do not know whether Marx coined the term 'ideology', but the substance of this idea was
hardly original. Of course you are right that Marx had a very large influence on modern
culture (that is self evident); my point is that his ideas are damaging. EG. let's take
the idea of ideology, a phrase that can explain everything...and therefore nothing.
Alexander Kojeve 'the most intelligent Marxist of the century' (hence largely unknown)
was forced to treat Marx as a mere intellectual who disseminated with a few changes the
thought of the real philosopher, Hegel. (Another rightist. BTW my point on N. and H. in
relation to Nazism was a joke intended to show the irony of their appropriation by the
left.)
Of course this debate is academic now and all this serious debate is quite lighthearted,
but only 30 years ago many serious people thought Marxism was winning. Remember the 60's
riots in Paris,when the students called on the workers to join them on the streets, and
the workers told their children to stop being silly!
Libertarius
In <33EA38...@wse.com> Mike Wooding <mi...@wse.com> writes:
>Staunton wrote:
>> Why is Marx still being given airtime? His work is now, universally
>> unread.
>
> find posters who can quote Marx chapter and verse as readily as a
> baptist minister quotes scripture. Old religions never die.
===>You will also find lots of believers in "creation science".
John Bicketts
>
>
>Does Economy shape a countrie's culture? Do oil countries have a culture
>that is shaped by oil and because of that reason different than
>agricultural countries? Does the diversification of income resources
>reflect on the culture of the country..as opposed to countries that depend
>on more or less on one source? I appreciate your insights about this
>subject. Thank you.
>
I'd say it most definitely does. Cultures all over the world are
determined by their economic structures. In ancient times, the
differences between pastoralist and agricultural societies were
largely due to two different economic means of subsistance. The vast
cultural changes of the advent of agriculture and civilization were
caused by a change in economics. Likewise with the Industrial
Revolution.
>
>Ghaida'a
>
>
>
>
>
> <><><>
>
--John Bicketts
Mailto:sfei...@mach3ww.com
Charles Stewart
(Posted and e-mailed)
In article <33EAA2...@hotmail.com>,
Staunton <howards...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Dostoyevsky WAS a wonderful writer, but the left like to say he was
> a great artist but poor thinker. Your use of the term 'reactionary'
> is amusingly typical of my point. In Dostoyevsky's days it was used
> by exactly the people he criticised, ie. the Ru7ssian intelligentsia
> who borrowed their ideas wholesale from abroad. Similarly now,
> leftists nearly always carry exactly the same arguments and
> critiques, borne not from their own ideas and experiences, but
> swallowed whole.In fact Dostoyevsky in his emphasis on
> anti-intellectualism, non determinism etc. was the true
> revolutionary, not them.
Dostoevsky was against progress, and so by definition he was a
reactionary. Nor was anti-intellectual Christian conservatism exactly
unheard of at his time. Although I oppose his politics in practice, I
think his views are important as a criticism of the deterministic
instrumentalist mode of thought that was then prevalent.
Anti-intellectualism is usually a cover for some variety of
irrationalism or mysticism, and Dostoevsky is not an exception. If
we are interested in overcoming the defects of classical Enlightenment
thought without succumbing to irrationalism, then we must look
elsewhere.
> Your sly attempt to embrace Marx, but with the proviso that he made
> mistakes etc. is wholly typical of the realignment of the left. Most
> leftists were very reluctant to renounce the security of Marxism
> well into the 1980's when the Soviet experiment had clearly
> failed. It wasn't till it's fall that sheeplike the deserted the
> sinking ship, and rewrote history. BTW do you remember that when the
> Eastern bloc imploded we were urged ie. Western capitalists and
> rightists, not to crow triumphantly. What a cheek!
I was not attempting to be sly, but rather to point out that there are
plenty of important marxist theorists and Marx-influenced theorists.
It is also not true that all marxists looked to the USSR: Trotsky and
the Frankfurt school are worth bearing in mind.
For my own part, I think that Marx's most important contribution is
his view of social change, which is both insightful and useful, unlike
most such theories. On the other hand, I don't believe that
proletarian revolutions can work in the way he described, and so I
think we are stuck with capitalism for the foreseeable future. Finally
I am somewhat ambivalent about his economics: it possesses many valid
criticisms of capitalism, but in the absence of a viable alternative
economic model, it is just a negative critique.
> Most leftists now go under the umbrella of culture criticism, and
> the fragmentation of post Heideggerian post structuralism and post
> modernism. I share your distaste for these, and the implications
> they have, but my philosophy is based on quite different criteria.
> I do not know whether Marx coined the term 'ideology', but the
> substance of this idea was hardly original. Of course you are right
> that Marx had a very large influence on modern culture (that is self
> evident); my point is that his ideas are damaging. EG. let's take
> the idea of ideology, a phrase that can explain everything...and
> therefore nothing.
<snip>
Ideology originally meant `the science of ideas', a usage which is now
defunct. The modern meaning of `the collection of ideas/paradigms
shared by a group of people' derives from Marx's technical usage as
the collective set of ideas that underly an economic system and permit
it to function.
Libertarians who believe that the `iron' laws of classical economics
apply equally to all cultures at all periods of history would do well
to consider what role the social understanding of and practices
associated with private property and contract play a part in economic
behaviour.
Charles
Aaron Boyden
On Wed, 6 Aug 1997, Scott D. Erb wrote:
> Yikes, I don't Nietzsche as a spokesperson of the "left"?! Where are you
> getting your info?
I believe it was Maudemarie Clark who first aptly described Nietzsche as a
rallying point for the epistemological left, the "there is no truth"
faction. The epistemological left is associated with the political left,
via the extremely un-Nietzschean bridge of concluding from the
non-existence of truth that all views are equally valid, and we should be
tolerant and PC and so forth.
---
Aaron Boyden
"Any competent philosopher who does not understand something will take care
not to understand anything else whereby it might be explained." -David Lewis
Ron Allen
Ron Allen answers:
And a lot of believers in a providential invisible hand.
Staunton
Libertarius, you have not found an easy bedfellow. I have seen some of
your other posts and am presuming you are a right wing libertarian.Right
wing is fine; libertarianism, a posture awaiting developments.
What this section needs is some original religious thinking, where the
ultimate questions will be tackled, and fallout from the 'death of god'
examined, both left and right.
(Exits offstage)
Staunton
I don't believe it! In this desert of inanity, an oasis of sanity and
well argued British commonsense. You must be an educated man, yes?
I cannot support this use of the word reactionary, which is derogatory.
Your unqualified use of the phrase progress, shows how even the most
sophisticated thinkers need recourse to simplifications. Of course one
cannot spend all one's time explaining one's terminology, but in this
case you must admit that D's critique of revolutionary(pre Marxist)
socialism was remarkably acute. Yes, I agree that 'reactionary'
conservatism was an existing body of thought, eg Carlyle was a strong
influence on the Slavophiles.
You must admit that the determinist mode of thought is still present.
I wish you luck in finding a rational post Enlightenment alternative, but
I won't hold out much hope. BTW, in relation to D., do you know the work
of Mikhail Bakhtin, the Russian literary critic. Or other critics well
known in Dostoyevsky criticism?
I think that a rationalist must be true to himself and admit the
shortcomings of his own position.
Sorry for poor quality of this; cannot gather my thoughts clearly, as I
have to go out in a while.
Libertarius
In <33EB1F...@hotmail.com> Staunton <howards...@hotmail.com>
writes:
===>I have no idea what a "right wing libertarian" might be.
As for the "death of god", I think the concept is best explored
by Walter Kaufman in his writings on Nietzsche.
Briefly, Nietzsche considered a belief in "God" a strong
controling force, and felt that, with the loss of that
force, unprecedented acalamities would befall upon the world.
Libertarius
Staunton
Yes, Kaufmann is an accessible writer on Nietzsche, who he considers
highly, but he is less impressed by Heidegger. I have already pointed out
the danger when talking about Nietzsche, of selective quoting giving his
unstructured, ever changing work. Compared to a professional philosopher
likeKant, who didn't possess N. literary skill, I have little sympathy
for Nietzsche.
Libertarius; you are of the right,yes? You believe that the individual is
primary in your approach to politics, ethics etc?
Scott D. Erb
In article <Pine.SUN.3.91.970808...@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu>,
650...@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu says...
>e it was Maudemarie Clark who first aptly described Nietzsche as a
>rallying point for the epistemological left, the "there is no truth"
>faction. The epistemological left is associated with the political left,
>via the extremely un-Nietzschean bridge of concluding from the
>non-existence of truth that all views are equally valid, and we should be
>tolerant and PC and so forth.
I've heard that view from the Left and the Right, but perhaps Thomas Kuhn
has more of an impact than Nietzsche. After all, from a philosophy of
science perspective it seems as if there are a number of schools of
thought which either claim truth is a human construction or at the very
least that we can never know the truth but only approximate it through
various modes of testing. Relativists and pragmatists vary in their
approaches, left or right, and positivists and realists at least recognize
the problem.
The idea that all views are equally valid, of course, belongs only to the
most radical relativist. Not knowing for sure if there is a truth or what
it is when we get there doesn't make all views equally valid.
However, the PC "all views are equally valid" section of the "left" isn't
much bigger than the "power creates truth" neo-fascist section of the
"right." Most on each side don't go to such extremes.
cheers, scott
Robert Vienneau
In article <5si1jf$qvg$3...@sol.caps.maine.edu>, scot...@maine.maine.edu
(Scott D. Erb) wrote:
> In article <Pine.SUN.3.91.970808...@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu>,
> 650...@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu says...
> [...]
> I've heard that view from the Left and the Right, but perhaps Thomas Kuhn
> has more of an impact than Nietzsche. After all, from a philosophy of
> science perspective it seems as if there are a number of schools of
> thought which either claim truth is a human construction or at the very
> least that we can never know the truth but only approximate it through
> various modes of testing.
> [...]
Howard Staunton,
Can you quote a few lines from the post to which you respond so one can
follow your responses somewhat easier?
Inasmuch as the left is an academic faction arguing that truth is
socially constructed, doing cultural criticism, and performing literary
criticism, the left is a failure. But I'm not sure that this Nietzsche-
influenced "left" is where the action is on the streets in the United
States. Think of how well-known Noam Chomsky is. Think of the attempts
to revive the AFL-CIO. Think of the current UPS strike.
But what I really wanted to write about is some history of thought
trivia that complicates Staunton's thesis in a different way, at least.
Instead of looking at continential philosophy, consider anti-realist
trends in Anglo-American (and Austrian) analytical philosophy -
Nelson Goodman, Hillary Putnam, Thomas Kuhn (mentioned above by
Scott Erb), and Paul Feyerabend, for example. I'm not sure about
Goodman, but the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy
is fairly obvious on the other three I listed.
Now how did Wittgenstein come to develop his later philosophy? This is a
hard question to answer, but Wittgenstein said he's indebted to Piero Sraffa
for the most consequential ideas of _Philosophical Investigations_. Who was
Sraffa? An Italian economist exiled to Cambridge (U.K.) who, according to
one of his colleagues never departed far from Marx in his economics. His
philosophical views developed in debates with Italian communists, including,
especially, Antonio Gramsci. So perhaps there's a Marxist political dimension
to Wittgenstein's later thought. At any rate, it appears to view man more as
a social animal than his earlier thought. If one could make the case for a
Marxist element in the later Wittgenstein, then one might be able to argue a
Marxist influence on a trend parallel to the one Howard Staunton is tracing
from Nietzsche.
Furthermore, Gramsci is another Marxist intellectual with some influence on
contemporary thought. Havel mentioned his importance sometime around the
revolutions of 1989. Even the demagogue Rush Limbaugh quotes him to justify
that his followers should support a Republican cultural counter-revolution.
I'm of the opinion that any thoroughly educated Westerner should know
something about Marx, independent of whether or not one agrees with him.
--
Robert Vienneau Try my Mac econ simulation
removethis!rv...@future.dreamscape.com game, Bukharin, at
ftp://csf.colorado.edu/econ/authors/Vienneau.Robert/Bukharin.sea
Whether strength of body or of mind, or wisdom, or virtue, are always
found...in proportion to the power or wealth of a man [is] a question
fit perhaps to be discussed by slaves in the hearing of their
masters, but highly unbecoming to reasonable and free men in search
of the truth. -- Rousseau
Libertarius
In <33EC7C...@hotmail.com> Staunton <howards...@hotmail.com>
writes:
===>Liberals, who believe in personal freedoms, but not economic
freedoms, are of THE LEFT. Conservatives, who believe in
economic freedoms, but not personal freedoms are of THE RIGHT.
I am a LIBERTARIAN, and believe in BOTH personal AND economic
freedom. SO, I am of THE TOP. Communists, Nazis, other
authoritarians who believe in NEITHER are of THE BOTTOM.
(Ref. the NOLAN CHART).
But you read me correctly: I do indeed "believe that the individual
is primary in your approach to politics, ethics etc."
That is Libertarian!
FREE LIVES! FREE MINDS! FREE MARKETS!
=====================================================
THE LOVE OF POWER OVER OTHERS IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL
=====================================================
Libertarius
Libertarius
In <moo-070897...@sl18.midtown.net> m...@NOSPAM.midtown.net
will render powerless the checks of one government on another, and will
become as venal as the government from which we seperated."
Thomas Jefferson 1821
===>What a prophetic statement! Can you give a closer reference? -- L.
Nir Levy
In sci.logic, Ron Allen <ral...@mail.atl.bellsouth.net> saw fit to bestow on us:
Libertarius wrote:
>
> In <33EA38...@wse.com> Mike Wooding <mi...@wse.com> writes:
> >
> >Staunton wrote:
> >> Why is Marx still being given airtime? His work is now, universally
> >> unread.
[...]
Mike. Just to let you know. Plato's Idea Theory was also "proved"
wrong but is still studied in Universities around the world.
Same goes for Marx. Communism as a political philosophical theory
is one of the best-presented, well-thought, facinating theorys.
Take the time to read Marx, or it's critiques, and you'll find
out why.
/NL
--
Nir Levy, The above opinions are my own,
nl...@usa.net not my employer's.
--
Rule of Acquisition No. 223:
"Beware the man who doesn't make time for oo-mox."
--
Charles Stewart
In article <33EBF2...@hotmail.com>,
Staunton <howards...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I don't believe it! In this desert of inanity, an oasis of sanity and
> well argued British commonsense. You must be an educated man, yes?
Thank you for your kind comments, though I think I only appear
well-educated by contrast to the standards that prevail on USENET.
> I cannot support this use of the word reactionary, which is derogatory.
> Your unqualified use of the phrase progress, shows how even the most
> sophisticated thinkers need recourse to simplifications.
I rather think that the onus lies with those who deny the existence of
progress to explain why. Certainly the technological accomplishments
of modern society are extraordinary. Of those who argue that there
has been some cost attached to modernity, Marx's account of alienation
and ideology remains one of the least woolly.
> Of course one cannot spend all one's time explaining one's
> terminology, but in this case you must admit that D's critique of
> revolutionary(pre Marxist) socialism was remarkably acute. Yes, I
> agree that 'reactionary' conservatism was an existing body of
> thought, eg Carlyle was a strong influence on the Slavophiles.
I do think that Dostoevsky painted a compelling and accurate portrait
of a particular kind of disaffected revolutionary who thrived in
Russia. But I don't accept that this was the whole truth about
revolutionary socialism, even in 19th century Russia. (BTW, I don't
think it is accurate to call Carlyle a reactionary conservative, even
in scare quotes).
> You must admit that the determinist mode of thought is still
> present. I wish you luck in finding a rational post Enlightenment
> alternative, but I won't hold out much hope.
There is something of an Aristotelian renaissance underway in moral
and political philosophy, the arguments of which I find persuasive.
Alasdair MacIntyre's excellent `After Virtue' could be seen as its
manifesto, and if you are curious I recommend it. Interestingly
enough, MacIntyre's position came about from the difficulties he faced
in reconciling marxism and Christianity.
> BTW, in relation to D., do you know the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, the
> Russian literary critic. Or other critics well known in Dostoyevsky
> criticism?
I really only have a superficial grasp of 19th century Russian
literature, which is a shame as it is responsible for so many fine
works. I am aware of Bakhtin's name as it occurs in debates between
formalists and traditionalists, but not beyond this.
> I think that a rationalist must be true to himself and admit the
> shortcomings of his own position.
If by rationalist you mean someone who modestly argues that concepts
such as truth, meaning and goodness illuminate rather than obscure our
understanding of the world, then I am not too sure what the
shortcomings are.
> Sorry for poor quality of this; cannot gather my thoughts clearly, as I
> have to go out in a while.
I will be away from USENET for the next week and a bit.
Charles
Jim Wise
In article <5snt3q$5...@sjx-ixn7.ix.netcom.com>,
att...@ix.netcom.com(Libertarius) wrote:
>>Ron Allen answers:
>>And a lot of believers in a providential invisible hand.
>
>===>Come, come, Ron. You know that the "invisible hand" merely
> refers to the operation of natural law in a free market.
>
> One could also call the force of gravitation an "invisible hand".
Not if the forces of gravity depended on an armed coercive state to allow
them to function.
Let's be honest here. It may very well be that a form of capitalism would
work well in a non-coercive society. It is useless to pretend that our
current system would.
--
Jim Wise
jim....@turner.com
Staunton
Why read the monkey Marx, when we can read the organ grinder, Hegel. I
think many Jews won't allow Marx to be as totally discredited as he
deserves to be.
Libertarius
In <33EB9F...@mail.atl.bellsouth.net> Ron Allen
<ral...@mail.atl.bellsouth.net> writes:
>
>Libertarius wrote:
>>
>> In <33EA38...@wse.com> Mike Wooding <mi...@wse.com> writes:
>> >
>> >Staunton wrote:
>> >> Why is Marx still being given airtime? His work is now,
universally
>> >> unread.
>> >
>> > find posters who can quote Marx chapter and verse as readily as a
>> > baptist minister quotes scripture. Old religions never die.
>>
>> ===>You will also find lots of believers in "creation science".
>>
>>
>
>
>And a lot of believers in a providential invisible hand.
===>Come, come, Ron. You know that the "invisible hand" merely
refers to the operation of natural law in a free market.
One could also call the force of gravitation an "invisible hand".
Libertarius
P. Marks
Well as most (although not all) libertarians favour the "Austrian School"
which grow up out of an ATTACK on some of the basic doctrines of the
Smith-Ricardo school of "Classical Economics" (labour theory of value and
so on) some of the above is a bit odd.
Sure some libertarians are not full "rationalists" in that (for example
some have religious beliefs (I do) but people like Von Mises certainly had
no "mystical" beliefs.
Mises even rejected natural rights - the test of anything (to him) was
practical consequences. Many libertarians argue in the same tradition.
As for Conservatives, a look at M.J. Oakeshott's "On Human Conduct"
(1975) would explain (rather better than most of his more famous essays
do) the distinction that Conservatives make between people who use their
intellect and "intellectuals", and between being rational and
"rationalism".
As for the claim that economic law (as opposed to economic practice)
varies with time and place. Well price controls in Ancient Babylon would
have (did) created shortages just as price controls do now (and so on).
This is really the old "War of Method" between the German "Historical
School" and the Austrian School from about 1870 onwards.
Far from "not considering" such questions, a lot of people have been very
interested in them. For the Austrian side of the argument see such works
as Carl Menger's "The Errors of Historicism" (1883) and Ludwig Von Mises'
"Human Action" (1949 and 1966).
Paul Marks.
Staunton
Welcome P.Marks, I found your comments most interesting.
Yes, Hayek, Friedman, Keith Joseph, Thatcher seems to be the intellectual
passageway that bought Austrian economics to Britain.
DAVID ALLEN TORNHEIM
G. Mohamad (gha...@u.washington.edu) wrote:
: Does Economy shape a countrie's culture?
I consider the economy to be part of a country's culture.
I am a little confused by the question. Do you mean, "does the
economy affect art?" or "Does the economy affect belief systems?"
or "Does the economy affect dance?" etc.
It should be easy to show that these things are in some
ways dependent on each other and in some ways independent.
It would help if you were more specific about which aspects of culture
you are concerned with and why it is important to know a relationship
between them and the economy.
Maybe you'd be interested in the book "Postmodernism or the Cultural
Logic of Late Capitalism" by Frederick Jameson. Or perhaps Marcuse's
work.
-David
Charles Stewart
(e-mailed & posted)
P. Marks <pm...@york.ac.uk> wrote:
<snip my post>
> Well as most (although not all) libertarians favour the "Austrian School"
> which grow up out of an ATTACK on some of the basic doctrines of the
> Smith-Ricardo school of "Classical Economics" (labour theory of value and
> so on) some of the above is a bit odd.
> Sure some libertarians are not full "rationalists" in that (for example
> some have religious beliefs (I do) but people like Von Mises certainly had
> no "mystical" beliefs.
I rather enjoyed what little I have read of the Austrian economists,
and regret that I have not read more. Presumably what you consider
`a bit odd' about my previous post is the defence of historicism you
correctly infer from my post.
Historicism is simply the idea that all of our ideas are historically
conditioned. Meanings and concepts shift in time and vary across
cultures, and we are unable to understand what speakers from other
times and cultures mean unless we are able to look at the world from
their historical position.
Historicism is usually associated in modern writings with a scepticism
about the possibility of judging the worth of achievements in other
cultures, or of assessing the position of our own cultures, due to the
lack of any value-free standpoint from which to make such judgements.
Thus we have the German historicist rejection of theory and the
possibility of a successful social (or natural) science.
But not all historicists are so weakened. Hegel believed that history
was the expression of the Absolute Mind to which we are evolving, and
Marx's materialist praxis gave him the possibility of judging ideology
from below. It is my contention that such a non-sceptical historicist
account gives the best vantage point from which to judge social
change, even though I reject the precise formulations of Hegel and Marx.
> Mises even rejected natural rights - the test of anything (to him) was
> practical consequences. Many libertarians argue in the same tradition.
Von Mises may have rejected natural rights as a starting point, but most
libertarians depend upon them for their world-view. I, like Marx,
reject natural rights on the grounds that the claims as to what
natural rights exist follow the rise and fall of the various theories
that claim their existence. Instead rights are a matter of due
process, of great but contingent importance.
> As for Conservatives, a look at M.J. Oakeshott's "On Human Conduct"
> (1975) would explain (rather better than most of his more famous
> essays do) the distinction that Conservatives make between people
> who use their intellect and "intellectuals", and between being
> rational and "rationalism".
The irrationalism that I condemn is the idea that it is wrong to
attempt to attain as complete an understanding of the world as we can,
usually justified by the claim that there are certain kinds of
knowledge that man is unable/unfit to possess, or that the pastoral
life of the peasant and the toil of the labourer represent the most
perfect and well-rounded lives that are available. Intellectualism is
justified in so far as it rises above dogmatism; most of the worlds
great thinkers have been polymaths (Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes,
Hume, Kant, Marx, von Mises to name a few).
> As for the claim that economic law (as opposed to economic practice)
> varies with time and place. Well price controls in Ancient Babylon would
> have (did) created shortages just as price controls do now (and so on).
> This is really the old "War of Method" between the German "Historical
> School" and the Austrian School from about 1870 onwards.
> Far from "not considering" such questions, a lot of people have been very
> interested in them. For the Austrian side of the argument see such works
> as Carl Menger's "The Errors of Historicism" (1883) and Ludwig Von Mises'
> "Human Action" (1949 and 1966).
What I understand of this critique does not apply to Marx's
methodological approach. No doubt there are *particular* technical
criticisms that the Austrians make, but the attempt to justify a
sophisticated economic theory by its relation to productive practice
is one shared by both Marx and von Mises.
So I think historicism is defensible, given that it does not slide
into relativism. The problem with Austrian economics is
analogous to that with Marx: it sets out to prove a prior conclusion,
the validity (necessity) of free market economics, and so does not
subject its premises to proper critical analysis. A full
justification of economics needs a proper integration with sociology;
the instrumentalist rationality of von Mises does not go far enough.
--
Reference
P. J. Boettke ``What is wrong with neoclassical economics (and what is
still wrong with Austrian economics)'', in Fred Foldvary, ed., Beyond
Neoclassical Economics (Edward Elgar Publishing, 1996). Available at
URL http://www.econ.nyu.edu/user/boettke/wrong.htm
- A criticism of Austrian economics by a sympathetic author.