[Marxism-Thaxis] Engels is demystifying not denying use
Erwin Marquit: Engels is not arguing that imaginary numbers should not be used. He is arguing against their mystification. In my view, the complex plane (real and imaginary axes) has a one-to-one correspondence with a two-dimensional vector space, so their logical structure is identical, which is why the complex plane can be used for mathematical derivations of the properties of physically real systems, Erwin ^^^ CB: Exactly ! Demystification came to me this morning as I was thinking about this The book you have at Marxist Educational Press is _Marx demystifies calculus_ On Jan 14 2009, Charles Brown wrote: Erwin, Do you have any response to the below ? Charles Natural Science and the Spirit World[1] To: a-l...@xxx Subject: Re: [A-List] Natural Science and the Spirit World[1] From: Jim Farmelant farmela...@ Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:15:50 -0500 ï On Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:34:47 -0300 Nestor Gorojovsky nmg...@x writes: Dear friend and comrade Jim Farmelant: I am afraid that Engels did not poke fun, as you say, at multidimensional spaces or imaginary numbers themselves, but at their usage as a proof that there exists Another World. In this sense, you are unfair with him. The way I read Engels's essay, he did indeed make fun of imaginary numbers in the following passage: It is the same with mathematics. The ordinary metaphysical mathematicians boast with enormous pride of the absolute irrefutability of the results of their science. But these results include also imaginary magnitudes, which thereby acquire a certain reality. When one has once become accustomed to ascribe some kind of reality outside of our minds to v-1, or to the fourth dimension, then it is not a matter of much importance if one goes a step further and also accepts the spirit world of the mediums. It is as Ketteler said about DÃllinger[7]: âThe man has defended so much nonsense in his life, he really could have accepted infallibility into the bargain!â As I said before, Engels's grasp of mathematics left something to be desired (Marx, on the other hand, seems to have had a better handle on that subject including what were then the latest developments in the foundations of the calculus). Having said that, Engels did have a very exceptionable grasp of the natural sciences of his time, such that the Harvard philosopher of science, Hilary Putnam, used to call Engels the most learned man of the nineteenth century. Certainly, one of the other essays included in *The Dialectics of Nature*,The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man, is deservedly revered as a work of genius, despite the fact that Engels cast his reasoning in Lamarckian terms. Stephen Jay Gould in his book, *Ever Since Darwin*, wrote: Indeed, the nineteenth century produced a brilliant exposà from a source that will no doubt surprise most readers - Frederick Engels. (A bit of reflection should diminish surprise. Engels had a keen interest in the natural sciences and sought to base his general philosophy of dialectical materialism upon a 'positive' foundation. He did not live to complete his 'dialectics of nature', but he included long commentaries on science in such treatises as the Anti-DÃhring.) In 1876, Engels wrote an essay entitled, The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man. It was published posthumously in 1896 and, unfortunately, had no visible impact upon Western science. Engels considers three essential features of human evolution: speech, a large brain, and upright posture. He argues that the first step must have been a descent from the trees with subsequent evolution to upright posture y our ground-dwelling ancestors. 'These apes when moving on level ground began to drop the habit of using their hands and to adopt a more and more erect gait. This was the decisive step in the transition from ape to man.' Upright posture freed the hand for using tools (labour, in Engels' terminology); increased intelligence and speech came later. As to his critique of empyricism, I will read HumeÂs essay and answer later. EngelsÂs criticism was that without rising to dialectics and what the empyricists consider metaphisical nonsense, it is not possible to dismiss paranormal phenomena. Witness, in this sense, the fSU and the permanent resurgence of scientists who tried to grasp that paranormal behavior. This may well be one of the most important pointers to the abstract and utilitary role that Diamat, that is the barbarized and schematic dialectical materialism that was taught there, played in the self-defined Marxist discourse of the USSR. But canÂt go ahead without reading Hume. farmela...@ escribiÃ: Engels was, course, quite right to debunk belief in
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Obama Generation: How Youth Trumped Race (BS)
The Obama Generation: How Youth Trumped Race by Gwen Ifill The Wall Street Journal, JANUARY 15, 2009. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123197804827983661.html?mod=rss_Politics_And_Policy adapted from The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama by Gwen Ifill. Campaign Used Whites to Convince Blacks and the Young to Convince Elders That They Should Set Aside Their Skepticism. The unseen moral of the story is, no matter what color you are, if you are a mainstream politician or talking head, you live in a closed bourgeois world of self-deception and ideological delusion. This article also reveals that both the elder generation of black politicians of the civil rights era, beholden to Hillary Clinton until Obama rocked their world, is ideologically bankrupt, and that the younger generation of buppie opportunists is even more ideologically bankrupt. Youth did not trump race; the younger generation's Clintonism trumped their elders' Clintonism, and both trumped progressive politics and the jettisoned social democratic legacy of the New Deal and the civil rights movement. Expanded opportunities for buppie Democrats are predicated on the destruction of the black working class. That veterans of the civil rights generation have nothing to say about this development, except that they have to give way to a younger generation that put a brother in the White House, irrespective of what he or they stand for in practice, suggests that perhaps the old farts never really understood anything other than their own upward mobility. One can't expect any better from Gwen Ifill, who has bored the shit out of us alongside coma-inducing Jim Lehrer for years peddling Washington insider pabulum. A minor tidbit: Cornel West disciple Eddie Glaude, Jr., another prophetic pragmatist gasbag, chimes in here as well: We look different, we sound different, and what's so striking about the way in which the old guard responds to us is that they don't know what to do with us [. . .] And what's so striking to me as well is, we don't quite know what to do with ourselves either. What a jackass. For my view of Glaude, see: http://reasonsociety.blogspot.com/2008/12/eddie-glaude-jr-bankruptcy-of-black.htmlEddie Glaude Jr. the bankruptcy of the black religious intellectual and http://autodidactproject.org/blog/culture/index.php/2007/04/tavis-smiley-meets-eddie-glaude-black-pragmatism-in-action/Tavis Smiley meets Eddie Glaude: Black pragmatism in action ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] The battle for concession under the Obama Regime
1). The working class is tied to the capitalist class because they are employed by them. Individuals rise and fall in and out of employment. Some are able improve their wages and standard of living. The tend is an increasing mass of underemployed, low wage labor and unemployment. The question being posed is: what is the meaning of class struggle in America and how can we win concessions from the capitalists? 2). There is an identity of interest between capital and labor because they constitute the meaning of capital. Without this identity of interest capitalism - as a mode of production, could not exist. The dominating feature of the capital-labor relationship is bonding (unity). It is only at specific moments that struggle, or a rupture takes place, carrying the working masses to the threshold of political revolution. The struggle within and between these major classes, has been for the past century (in America) to reform the system in favor of one or the other. To extract more wages, political liberties, desegregate, send kids to better schools and college and then, go back to work. 3). National health care is the perfect example of a winnable concession because of the identity of interest between workers, capitalist and unemployed, and everyone else. A fight inside the UAW has been over the refusal to organize our members to demand a national health care system outside the responsibility of the company - employer. The refusal to battle for national health care as mobilization of the ranks is cowardice - fear, of the membership and setting in motion a wave of discontent. Inside the UAW today, at the highest level, the individuals at the commanding heights of power are not facing some ideological opponent preventing them from acting. The individuals (as a group process), are cowards, ignorant and some simply do not care. Their Chrysler, Ford, GM pension plus ten years of service in the International union, will give them pensions of a little over $7,000.000 (seven thousand) a month. Yet, winning national health care is highly probable because it unburdens direct expenditure for health care cost. Rather than protest union leaders place the cost burden on the backs of retired workers and cut backs in programs. Winning national health care does not and will not mean that Obama will be pushed to the left or right, or that he is good or bad for that matter. Winning national health care means we have been successful in pinpointing what is possible based on a reading of class identity, class alignments, the relative strength of contending forces within classes and so on. An organized fight for national health care will put steel in the backs of th wavering and scared. A section of capital desperately needs the government to foot the bill for national health care and so does the working class as a whole. 4). This identity of interest dynamic apply to housing demands on one level and certainly food stamps. A grouping within capital are most certainly sending their lobbyists to the heights of constitutional authority screaming that the people are hungry and need food. Retail business from Wal Mart to Publics and all the supermarket chains are going to impact the body politic demanding expanded food production and consumption, aligning themselves with the masses. Increase my capital, or rather the masses food consumption. The food processing industry wants the people to eat and buy their products. Concession can be won and are worth fighting for in the here and now. Winning them does not mean you pushed someone to the left, or made an incremental step along the path to political power. Nor does it means we have won an increment of socialism. What can be won is food. The same can be said to a degree concerning extension of unemployment benefits. Unemployment tends to beget more unemployment as a cycle. The people need money to buy things and keep the economy functioning. A huge section of capital is clamoring for help, but so are the workers. The points of intersection of class interest is where communists apply the most force. Not because we can win socialism in increments, but because these issues are the spontaneous program of the workers. There is a list of points of identity. Everyone understands this process on one level of another, but it is never presented as a coherent theory of real class collision and collusion. Instead, one tendency is to look at the individual in office (Roosevelt for instance) and pin ones hope on them being the image of the Second coming of Christ. Capital is bonded to labor as the foundation of the system. Capital and labor are bonded in such a way that only the individual can walk out of this relationship, but not an entire class. The mutual struggle within their primary bonding is what drives classes and society through
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Towards A Left
The period of the 60's involved huge intersecting layers of interest between the bourgeoisie and the working class via the Negro Peoples struggle. This struggle did reform the system. Today there are no reforms left in the capital relations. Meaning we are more than less on our own; without the huge financial network provided by various capital and middle class interest in the 1960. I believe we are in a period of history where everyone discovers the difference between winning reform of the system and concessions. The ballot box socialist believes that reform of the system is possible, and an accumulation of reforms = revolution. Reform is defined as concessions. The last great reform was the destruction of Jim Crow. That was the reform. The concessions buttressing the reform was in legislation like the Voting Rights Act, Fair Housing, expansion of Social Security etc., The reform realigned the relations between and within classes. The concessions further implemented goals needed to stabilize the reform. One thing for sure, Obama is not on the left. Not one single reform shall we receive. Nada. The concept of the left needs to be filled with a new content. WL. **A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy steps! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/10075x1215855013x1201028747/aol?redir=http://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx?sc=668072%26hmpgID=62%26bcd=De cemailfooterNO62) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Realm of Necessity
On Materialism ( speaking of Mao), there are two levels of the relationship between thought and being: economics and physics. While society remains in the Realm of Necessity , ruling classes control masses by conditioning fulfillment of the _material_ needs of the exploited classes on the exploited classes ' producing surpluses for the ruling , exploiting classes. The materialism (determinism by the material) at this level derives from the coercive use of conditional provision of material needs. In all societies, including those in the Realm of Freedom ( socialist, communist future and ancient) , all people must , of course, obey the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, physiology, objective reality etc. physics, in the general sense. How do Foucault, Butler, and other Post-moderns differ with these materialist principles ? Charles This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] the battle for concession under the Obama Regime
3). National health care is the perfect example of a winnable concession because of the identity of interest between workers, capitalist and unemployed, and everyone else. Yeah, right, it's just around the corner, like the withdrawal from Iraq is. CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Motown turns 50/James Brown
Every so often in a field or endeavor, someone comes along and revolutionizes standards or reshape the rules of the game. Such people are considered innovators and revolutionary. Then you have a chance element that defies convention and requires new language be created to encapsulate new shapes and new boundaries. James Brown is the chance element in American music that defies description. Consequently, what James Brown contributed to American music is the James Brown. James singing and stage show defied convention to a degree that everyone agrees that what he was doing is The James Brown. James Brown changed the way American music was played and understood. II Michael Jackson is the premier singer entertainer of the 20th Century. Mr. Jackson does not defy description, and to this very day one can chart the evolution of his sound from his Motown experience. Van Halen's screaming guitar on Beat It, has its expression in the Jackson Five's I Am Love. Mr. Jackson's dance form - minstrel show if you will, mirrors such artists as Gene Kelly and Bob Fosse. James Brown performances were snatched from the ether of history and made flesh. To witness Brown’s performance is to spend moments with ones mouth open. James Brown did what he felt and was never content to do only what he or anyone else understood. James altered our sensory perception and collective experience with the space time continuum. James Brown made the world dance different. Where Motown was male masculinity recreating the male barroom singers in the Sinartra mode, and a certain Northern snobbiness, James Brown was raw male sexuality cutting across national boundaries and national cultures. James Brown wore tight pants in a period where no self respecting Yankee (Motown) would have ever, been caught in public without their Northern gloss. James apologized profusely about his impact on other cultures, seeking only to uplift the human spirit. James was a mans man! James Brown fought the police. James Brown never sold out. James was too big for Motown. James Brown was a balladeer extraordinary. His performance of This is a Man’s World at the London Palladium in the mid 1980’s (offered on video by Sony and on U Tube) is a tour de force. His words are replaced by vocal notes/pitches and moans, only for one to collapse unto and into the other. Defying history James Brown leaped outside every musical convention that constituted American music. Most would agree that American music is defined as a peculiar mixture of European harmonic structure and African Rhythm gestation in the bowels of American slavery. Gordy amplified European harmonic structure and stabilized African rhythm as a time keeping mechanism, while demanding the guitar also keep time. Your Precious Love by Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell, witness the time keeping role of the guitar as well as the Miracles. I Like It Like That. Motown made one clap their hands and pat yo feet. James Brown did the impossible. James Brown forces harmonic structure within and into rhythm, forever altering convention. To carry out this bold act, American music’s time frame (reference) had to be changed. James knew what he was doing. Night train conforms to traditional American music. It has a one, two, three, stop, repeat beat. James Brown did . . . . and it is mind boggling, . . . He . . . . changed the time frame and shifted our bodily relations in the space time continuum. The transitional song indicating a radical shift in space/time was Outta Sight. Papas Got A Brand New Bag was proof positive of a new musical form and essence that was timed to a one, two, three, four, stop, repeat beat. James Brown record label refused to put and distribute Outta Sight, stating that the music made no sense. Several versions of Papa Got A Brand New Bag exist with the early version in mono, rather than stereo. The owners of the record label did not understand the music and James had to personally put his music on the market. This new articulation of European harmonic structure and African Rhythm was birthed with no name. Having no name has a hideous connotation in American/Negro culture. One should consult James Baldwin on this matter. When asked what he called his music James would say, it sho (sure) is funky. The music was being defined by a different sense perception organ - smell, rather than hearing. James Brown created funk, in the same way another generation would create phat (fat) and New Jack swing. The Brown revolution split the ranks of The Detroit Sound, now re-mastered as the Motown Sound. Leading the rebellion was the Parliaments, a Temptation clone quintet. The Parliaments morphed into the Funkadelics and I Want To Testify (their early hit) shifted to Good Old Funky Music. A decade later the Isley Brothers would emerge as a
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] the battle for concession under the Obama Regime
3). National health care is the perfect example of a winnable concession because of the identity of interest between workers, capitalist and unemployed, and everyone else. Yeah, right, it's just around the corner, like the withdrawal from Iraq is. CJ Iraq is different from the issue of health care. Lets see what happens WL **A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy steps! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/10075x1215855013x1201028747/aol?redir=http://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx?sc=668072%26hmpgID=62%26bcd=De cemailfooterNO62) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] the battle for concession under the Obama Regime
Why does our working class behaves the way it does? What is the prospect for political revolution? What does revolution in the mode of production means for us in real time.? Why is it possible to win some concessions something, but nothing at other times? What is the meaning of reform? Why has no industrially advance country gone into political revolution? What does social relations of production mean? What does it mean for us? What is class in theory and for us in reality? Can socialism - meaning changes in the property relations, be won incrementally? How does one determine what is a winnable fight? What determines a winnable reform or concession? On and off I have thought about questions like these for 40 years. Only in the last 15 years has American history begun to make sense to me. Communists fight better and harder when things makes sense or when they can gain more clarity into history and events. Marx and Engels are fine. Lenin and Mao are cool and Stalin logic contains its own rationale. None of them can help us at the end of the day. At the end of the day one has to sift through their own history. WL. In a message dated 1/15/2009 10:29:55 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, waistli...@aol.com writes: 3). National health care is the perfect example of a winnable concession because of the identity of interest between workers, capitalist and unemployed, and everyone else. Yeah, right, it's just around the corner, like the withdrawal from Iraq is. CJ Iraq is different from the issue of health care. Lets see what happens WL **A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy steps! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/10075x1215855013x1201028747/aol?redir=http://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx?sc=668072%26hmpgID=62%26bcd=De cemailfooterNO62) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
