Greetings Economists,
On Dec 1, 2007, at 9:04 AM, Jim Devine wrote:
His point was that he wasn't putting forth a gospel that should be
followed. He was also trying to separate himself from those who
invoked his name to defend their mechanistic analyses of the world.
Doyle;
I understand that. The problem is two-fold; one most people haven't
got a clue what mechanistic means anymore. The origin in European
history in the likes of Leonardo, or Descartes has so faded that high
tech now means genetics and computing. The shift toward
'reductionism' is an effort to keep alive that point, but the
metaphysics behind Descartes is collapsing. The mechanistic point of
view is not being crushed because the left knows better, there is no
effective left in the U.S., it's being crushed by a shift toward
automating knowledge production from the time when knowledge was
mostly a writing system. Where a split between manual labor and
brainwork was practicable if full of contradiction.
Two, there is in your statement implied you know what gospel or
worship means in terms of knowledge production. The word, gospel,
seems to me repeating verbatim the words of god. The critique of
words in my view has shifted from this. The math derived concept of
interactivity crushes the gospel because knowledge production tech
like video games build knowledge in a not repeating fashion in the
sense that a literal word of god implies. I do not have to blather
about worshipping sects if I get concrete about how interactivity
shapes knowledge production. I can say that knowledge that is
networked, collaborative, is necessary, falls under a regime that
Marxist used to call the dialectic, but is more supple and points
toward a way to rip Christian cognitive theory out of socialist
contexts. So that the battle to find the deviant capitalist roader
will o' the wisp comes to an end, and we start thinking about a
socialist culture that creates a single unified world wide regime in
which language is viewed as not the word of god, but a process of
building social connection with people that is dynamical. A process
in motion defies the rigid concept of God's word.
you;
If Chávez calls himself a Marxist, it's fine to call him that....
me,
We agree here completely. Well said.
you,
My impression is that when Lenin coined the term ultra-left, he was very
specific about what he meant by it and what the implications of
ultra-left politics were. That's the way to go.
me,
Well he said it was an infantile disorder. That means to me his sense
of the cognitive network structure of groups was lacking. The basic
thrust of Lenin's comments is that the narrow base of the ultras could
not sustain a movement. Pure reason, idealism disconnected from
practice is not going to work. And that the threat from reaction is
they use ultras as a weapon to break the left because people are
susceptible to the concept of 'dogma'. While that rule of thumb is
understandable to me, it tells me nothing about what dogma is. I
would say in a general sense practice helps to dispel dogma, but then
how do very large scale organizations get dogmatic since they do their
national practice every day? Then the argument suddenly becomes
fraught with ambiguity and lack of realistic means to apply to large
group clashes. So what if I tell the police I think they are
dogmatists. Their rigidity is defined by the state as the rule of
law. Find me a way to dynamically reform the 'law', and I'll say you
have solved the ultras problem.
you,
The problem occurs when the insults
are based on lies and/or misunderstandings. The problem is the lies
and misunderstandings, not the insults themselves.
Doyle;
I think you are wrong here. You use reason as a tool to sort out
understanding how breaking working solidarity works to prevail from
the lies and insults of the right. Reason cannot form solidarity.
Words and fine arguments cannot substitute for working together
cooperatively and learning to make a community out of that. Insults
in themselves support kinds of groups against other groups. And one
cannot but help to find the parental injunction. sticks and stones may
break my bones, but words will never hurt me, as not getting how well
emotional structures do work outside of words. It is the emotion
structure (the glue of human groups) in insults that works not the
words. And not being able to reason against emotion structure is an
extremely common experience we have about dogmatists. The emotion
structure won't fluidly or dynamically shift when the group needs to
adapt to changes in practical matters.
Neither Marx, nor Lenin could do without Christian methods of social
organization. The practices stripped of Christian dogma, the meeting
hall, the pamphlet, the march, the leader shouting at the crowd from a
raised platform are all long historical techniques the Christian
used. The underlying knowledge production methods are no longer
useful nor revealing about how to address the issues. The word of god
in written documents falls before interactive media content. Our
times allow us to address 'socialist solidarity' as a socialist
project not an amalgam of pre-socialist knowledge production
techniques. Especially changing 'Christian style unchanging words' to
dynamical media objects build by the hundreds, thousands, millions at
once.
thanks
Doyle Saylor
