>
> Eva,
>
> Thanks for all of the work. You were very articulate and I enjoyed the read. If
>your
> premise is correct then the rest of that post is unnecessary. There are those in
>every
> movement who state that the original premise has been betrayed. I think the Free
> Marketeers would say the same about their ideas. They certainly would argue with
>you about
> genuine Capitalism ever being tried in the world.
>
Complementing me won't hide the fact that you
did not bother to read my my post,
as you are not responding to the
points I made; I had given reasons for my arguments,
I hadn't just re-stated them like you do here.
(patiently and optimistically:)
The original premise has not been betrayed,
well demonstrated conditions created
a well demonstrated pattern. Different conditions
would have made a different outcome.
Every theory have to be defined over a given and
limited domain to work; Marx was good enough
to define it for us, but if he didn't we
would had to do the work of making it
more universal. Just like relativity
being more inclusive than newtons laws,
not negating but making it more understandable
as a special case of a more general framework.
I haven't seen a systematic analysis of
capitalism by free-marketeers or by capitalists
as a development from past systems and as a
pointer to a next phase. Free markets lead to
child-labour etc, super-exploitation of humans
and the environment, I yet to see an analysis
why it didn't work in the pre-welfare past.
Also, the free-marketists
usually embrace social Darwinism that is ready to
dispence with the "loser" majority of human
kind which is totally against the trend of
human development so far.
> I am aware of the specifics of what you were speaking but it was not the subject of
>my
> questions. I would contend that the teacher (apart from a school which is a kind of
> "education of scale") IS responsible for the success of their product. They are also
> responsible for the failure. If they do not wish to be known as such, then they
>should not
> accept the job of teaching that particular student. Or should forgo writing the
>book. I
> certainly do hold the founders of the various schools of religious, political and
>economic
> thought responsible for the chaos expressed in their names. I contend that without
>the
> original seed, the genetics stop there. Responsibility is, in my culture, one of
>the
> primal ideas. That is why we burn anything that has not been sold or given away by
>the
> dead.
>
If the student is hungry and hasn't got the
book which even if he had he cannot read,
would you still blame the author of the book
for any outcome?
Uptil now history just happened TO people,
so you cannot blame them - any of them - for it,
it was like an outside, wild law of nature.
Only now we have first time the option to
act responsibly with both the information and
the economic/technological conditions
satisfactory for actively form our future.
> If you wish to go the route of Marx as founding the idea that "economics is the
>bottom of
> all human life and interactions" then I would have another, actually harsher set of
> questions since I consider it a statement not grounded in all of the facts of human
> civilization. In short, it is 19th century "romantic idealized thought." Thought
>from a
> time that had no idea of the foolishness implications inherent in their arguments.
>As I
> pointed out with the Hammerklavier fugue, even in the system of 18th and 19th century
> harmonic theory, there is the issue of time. When the system has been achieved it is
> replaced by another with different rules. In the 19th century they believed in A
>system, A
> morality, A religion, A universal theory of economics (their own), A Universal Art
>based
> upon European principles.
>
Economics is the base of society,
the efficiency and distribution
of the human necessities make the rest go round -
surely this is somewhat evident.
In what way can you see marxism to be
linked to morality and religion of the
19 hundreds? It has a
totally different look at the family, art
and culture than his contemporaries -
the problem is, he's even too new for you...
> The absurdity of this should be apparent to anyone who has studied the various
>languages of
> the world. But from Johnson's Dictionary up through Marx's era it was the common
>belief
> that Latin grammar was the basis of all advanced languages. This lasted until
>modern
> psycho-linguists had to admit that it didn't fit English all that well either.
>Like the
> Sioux skull to the Phrenologists.
>
I don't know if Marx signed up for this idea,
he happened to have opinions on most sciences he
was aware of, but
even if he did a bit of liguistics,
I can't see the significance.
Galileo was wrong about heliocentriity
because his contemporaries had a few wierd beliefs?
If someone managed to nail a piece of reality,
it just doesn't matter when and why it happened.
You should know this, it especially valid
for artists...
> But you can't keep claiming that the theory is OK when it keeps coming up with failed
> applications based upon excuses. I find idealism a useful tool but only a tool. It
>has to
> be balanced with truthfulness. What do you know? Truth and Beauty. Why don't we
>try
> that for awhile? When you think about truthful practice plus an evolving, humane,
> respectful idealism, most civilizations work.
>
Ray, you are babbling in a repetitive manner...
We cannot eat respectful idealism.
now I am going to play table-tennis, probably
a more useful activity than trying to
get you to read my stuff thoughtfully
Eva
> I would suggest, as I have to libertarian members of this list and others, that the
>best way
> to prove your point is to form a community of like minded people willing to work
>within the
> discipline of your principles. Show with your intelligence, humanity, culture and
> prosperity the value of your principles and their implications.
>
> Otherwise I would place all of these writings that we have discussed along with the
> "Republic" and Frank Lloyd Wright's "Usonia" as fantasy writing. Although they
>have been
> tried, adjusting them to the real human condition has been a failure. Even the
>beautiful
> houses of Frank Lloyd Wright became a dull landscape in Usonia. Personally I
>would prefer
> New York's urban clutter to any of the ugly inhumanity that I have seen in Greenbelt
>or
> Columbia Maryland or in the attempts to create the worker's paradise.
>
> Year's ago I read the Bible and worked in Churches for awhile (13 years) building
>artistic
> music programs. After a while I had to admit that the book was being betrayed by
>the
> people. Were the people wrong? No, I found later in Synagogues, the context for
>the book
> and the people that it came from. That taught me that religion, like art, is
>time/space
> specific. It springs from a context and meets the needs of a group. Often the
>context
> changes within a few years and the book, although filled with beauty and wisdom, is
>no
> longer applicable to the new situation.
>
> My people were both Democratic and Communitarian. They succeeded because they were
>family,
> but the outside world tore them apart. Life tore us apart. I've heard the same
>said
> about Bologna. Italy is beautiful and Bologna is unique. But the Libertarian can
>always
> find someone in Little Italy in New York who escaped the "terrible lack of freedom"
>in
> Bologna while others are freed to do their real work by the Communist government in
> Bologna. (But maybe it wasn't Marxist either.) Eventually it will have past its
>time
> and then something else will take its place.
>
> To me, what you have described and what I remember from my studies of Marxist
>thought, is
> like "land" and yet time and culture are like water. You can't push water, all you
>can do
> is live with it and be subtle in its ways. The problem with both Marxist thought,
>as I
> understand it, and Free Market Capitalism, is that they tend to need big
>applications or
> they have no possibility of working. Is this your understanding of it?
>
> Thanks again for the effort and clarity.
>
> As for the self-employed. Tell me what your work is and we can think on the future
>of it.
>
> REH
>
>
>
>
