Greetings Economists, On Aug 21, 2006, at 10:18 AM, Michael Perelman wrote:
But shouldn't we be looking to build community without having to construct it on a religious foundation?
I once was talking to a blind communist in Canada about how in the Eastern States when communism was shaken a lot of the comrades went scurrying back to religion as the only social structure still able to communize the masses. What I took from that is not religious strengths but a lack of a materialist understanding of community/. It simply said is that there is no adequate materialist theory of emotion structure. That the familiar reaction is LP's don't psychologise organize. That suffices where states can depend upon small workshop knowledge production worksites like party branches, where face to face conversation can bind comrades together. But large states require more larger scale social community connection and how are we to step out of the moralism that Marxist have always considered arch bullshit? We first say that morality is word description of emotion structure. Therefore morality knowledge production cannot substitute for producing large scale emotional bonds for the whole of society, the whole of the working class. Further we need mass scale tools of emotion production like computing that can produce bonds on a scale much larger than face to face knowledge workshops can. We must reject a reliance upon one to many tools of knowledge production in favor of networked information structures based upon emotional bonding on a large scale rather than a small scale. So that the 'whole' of the working class is held together. Michael writes; but churches as such are hardly where we should be looking for models. Doyle; Why not? Let's take the Islamic dress code of the Burka. What are they trying to do? They hide the woman's face to prevent social connection outside the home. Marxism offers a 'universal' social connection of the whole working class. So we are going to say the religious cannot provide large scale connection appropriate to the civilization of Socialism. thanks, Doyle Saylor
