Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein
> Also, do you think other animals have an ability to use language > across generations? It has been noted how groups of animals within a > species will display their own 'culture'. I should have stated it more carefully considering what you had written earlier. I mean, do you think animals can do what humans do across generations without imitation? For example, might an ape see the tools another ape has used and seen the results (leftover food) and figured out to use the tools to , for example, crack nuts, without being shown? OTOH, the sort of indirect, transgenerational 'symbolling' you are talking about, how important is it to human culture? It seems important for well developed technologies and some special skills (but most are taught directly). And isn't it really a secondary result of our more primary abilities to communicate using language and symbolic representation (either arbitrary and/or motivated or a mix of both) and more direct interaction (although modern multi-media makes it difficult to say what is and what is not direct). 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] Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein
>>Language actually is the most efficient of these "death barrier crossers". However, language need not be _spoken_, it can be gestures, i.e. sign language. Or it could be a form of "written", but non- alphabetical language, as in abstract use of material objects as the symbolic elements, tokens. Anyway, my hypothesis suggest spoken or sign language had to be very early at the origin of our species, because, story tellikng would be the most effective death barrier crosser.<< Well have already had the discussion about language being both arbitrary and motivated, with motivation often stemming from how interconnected 'speaking' a language is with our bodies and our gestures. I would suppose in the oral tradition stories crossed individuals, generations and the death barrier because they were enacted and remembered and then enacted again. And enactment might include verbal explanation in narrative form, drawings in the dirt, dance, chanting and song--and cave paintings. I wonder how much practical knowledge survives because we have supplemented our abilities with literacy. But on the other hand, how literacy (and now literacy on computers) means the death of oral traditions (certainly ones that go beyond families into a tribal or nation level). Also, do you think other animals have an ability to use language across generations? It has been noted how groups of animals within a species will display their own 'culture'. 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
[Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein
CB: On your comments below, notice I said language and culture. Material culture might be thought of as the products of "gestures". In my hypothesis , the nature of symbols as the use of something to represent something it is not is critical. The critical communication is not between living humans, except that between adults and children, but the communication between living and dead generations. More specifically I am thinking symbols allow the dead generation to teach the living generation ( or the living generation to teach the unborn generations) in a way that teaching through imitation cannot occur. Birds and monkeys and humans can learn by imitation - monkey see, monkey do. But only humans can through symbols, whether speech, gestures or material cultural items. Symbols can cross the boundary between the living and the dead ( in a non-mystical sense), in a way that imitations cannot. Why ? Because the dead are no longer present themselves to be imitated. But if the dead are represented, if the experineces of the dead are represented by something that is not the dead, by a symbol, then the something that is not the dead , that is not "dead", can get across the death barrier. Language actually is the most efficient of these "death barrier crossers". However, language need not be _spoken_, it can be gestures, i.e. sign language. Or it could be a form of "written", but non- alphabetical language, as in abstract use of material objects as the symbolic elements, tokens. Anyway, my hypothesis suggest spoken or sign language had to be very early at the origin of our species, because, story tellikng would be the most effective death barrier crosser. This is why I think Rosa's opposition between representation and communication can be "happily" resolved at the origin of language and human thinking, because originally language was representational or symbolic in order to be communicative across generations, between dead and living. CeJ jannuzi >>Interesting that Rosa should mention Lamarckianism in this context, as I have argued that culture and language give humans a Lamarckian-like adaptive mechanism. Culture and language , symboling, allow inheritance of acquired, extra-somatic , characteristics.<< I think that would be a genetic mutation, except a genetic mutation really only seems to transcend soma, and doesn't actually (Lamarck and Lysenko weren't completely wrong). The ability to gesture complexly emerged from our biology and brain capacity, and this ability to systematize, embed meaning and communicate symbolically then colonized our well-developed phonetic abilities (we could chatter like the birds and then we learned to communicate). Instead of asking what separates us from the apes, we ought to ask what separates us from a mockingbird or parrot? Corballis's fascinating book could have been made better had he collaborated with an articulatory phonologist, like someone at Haskins Laboratory. Michael Corballis is a psychologist with a strong interest in lateralization, handedness, and the origins of language. In this book, he puts these interests together with a solid and comprehensive survey of other background material relevant to the origins of language. The book also pushes Corballis' own specific hypothesis, that human languages were implemented mainly in manual gestures until about 50,000 years ago, at which point largely vocal language took over as an invented cultural innovation. This is an argument about the medium in which linguistic messages were expressed. ___ 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] Changing sides, political ideology and a Conversation with Stalin
In history and as historical character, I was in the camp of the anarcho-syndicalist deviation (without quotes) in 1919 and 1920 Russia. While I never abandoned this political ideology, several of Lenin articles and the strength of his personality convinced me of the danger of belonging to a political faction. In Russia of 1920 a political faction did not mean comrades with a different view who fought for their views. A political faction meant a separate organization within the party formed on the basis of a political ideology; with a separate press and publishing capacity; a separate dues structure because all distinct political groups must raise money to exist, and more than less secret cells, within the cells of the party. A faction does not mean the existence of different and coherent body's of thought. In history, from 1920 to the early 1990s, my anarcho political orientation, with it romantic and intoxicating visions of industrial workers councils and industrial general strikes storming the citadels of capital, began a fundamental collapse and restructuring. Not as the result of some spiritual like change in political ideology, but because all political ideology - without exception, is connected to and expresses something material, that in the last instance is bound up with the productive forces and the interplay of classes as they collude and collide. I understood Lenin's meaning but my reality ran against the grain of his theoretical underpinning. I most certainly understood myself to be planted firmly within Engels writings and critique of anarchism, and this was expressed by an undying loyalty to the dictatorship of the proletariat as it was expressed as the worker-peasant alliance - government, that gave shape to the proletarian state; the supreme guardian of, and extra legal terrorist organs that protected the new laws of society that prohibited virtually anything from passing to the hands of the consuming workers other than means of consumption. In 1922/4 I could not be part of the Left Opposition because of their program and misunderstanding of industry as a living organism that could not be housed in "militarization of labor." I had read about Mr. Trotsky and the nice things Lenin said. but I had also studied Lenin for years, even before the revolution and knew Mr. Trotsky was never really part of the Lenin Group, and therefore had no real future because the old heads tended to only really support the other old heads. Never being scared to express my views unwaveringly, I was not a factionalist. What would happen 70 years later in 1990's, was experiencing the waves of social consequences that was the destruction and transformation of the industrial system as I had known it and as it had been transferred to me through family and dad working for Ford Motor Company for more than 30 years. The platform on which was erected the "industrial ideology" of anarcho-syndicalism was being furthered shattered by Marx famous "progress of industry." Not all at one time. But when fundamental tings change, everything dependent upon that, which is fundamental, must in turn change incrementally. There will be workers strikes and general strikes to bring down the government and bring society to insurrection. However, until such strikes leap outside of the bounds of just strikes, nothing changes and only momentary concessions can be won. The October Revolution was not a gigantic strike. Most people went to work on the day Lenin seized power. Anarcho-syndicalism is of course a combination of ideological anarchism as an expression of a concept of the state withering away detached from the value relations and the dying off of classes attached to value production; and French syndicalism with it called for the general industrial strike as the supreme weapon to bring down the government. Hence, its over emphasis on trade union forms and self perpetrating workers councils, as the most personalized conception of the meaning of political democracy. I happened to personally know that the real proletarian masses hated these petty bourgeois concepts of democracy because they required endless meetings and after ten years of such meeting, you become aware of the "self contained political logic of meeting." This logic or rule is that you begin to meet to set up the next meeting and every comrade has experienced this. Plus, the real proletarian masses hated rotating leadership and understood democratic centralism to be no more or less that the inherent organization of th factory system. You stand at the political assembly line and contribute. I also discovered the secret to a meeting is 45 minutes and the meeting ends no matter what has not been covered on the agenda. Then you have an after meeting with music drinks, checkers or cards. Anarcho-syndicalism as political ide
[Marxism-Thaxis] the bipartisan way
I watched and recorded Obama speech last night focusing on three aspects of the economy, "health care, energy and education." I asked the question "what is Obama going to reform," in the system and apparently here is the answer. These three issues contain a deep and complex intersection of class interest for all of American society. Reforming health care, depending on how it is carried out, has the potential to change the living relations between and within classes in America, without changing the property relations, by altering all classes living relations and links to government. Also of interest was Obama stating the military budget will now appear as a regular "line item" on the national budget. Generally speaking, only Senator John McCain has over the past decades been able to attack military spending and survive politically. Still not sure about Obama's meaning about reforming Medicare and no mention of Medicaid. The "aid" in Medicaid means aid to dependent children and welfare recipients and the "care" generally deals with retired workers and the disabled. Obama projected an "up until now" not seen firmness and militancy in his rhetoric. His peculiar "cool" is bound up with the immigrant experience, and not simply "cool" as expressed by the blacks. However that are rules that govern politics and simply being against the bourgeois power because they are bourgeois, is fine, but fails to educate anyone in the "art of the possible." "The possible" is the recognition of where the greatest intersection of class interest runs through all the various classes and class sectors attacking the system from different sides of the social equation. Further, economic crisis cannot be fought out in the economy, only the political superstructure as the colliding and collusion of underlying spontaneous class striving. In my opinion, the weakness of a sector of the communist/Marxist pole, that for very different reasons and considerations as a pole, voted for Obama, with some actively campaigning for him, was a weakness in understanding and articulating an outline of intersecting class interest, making Obama's election possible. The President - any President and any real leader in any organization (from trade union to the local bingo club), inherits certain things: in the case of President a military and administrative bureaucracy, which, is fundamental to and indispensable to governing; and this administrative bureaucracy may not agree with him and dangerously hinder his capability. Most importantly, no one can govern a people who disagree with them. Here is the political context Obama is being tracked within. Obama's Presidency "teeters" on winning a section of the voting workers that have generally and historically voted Republican. Here is why the running stats on what sections of the population ARE NOT hostile to the Obama administration is important as a gage in the art of the possible. It is not falling under the spell of bourgeois politics to track real events with a generalized political equation that keeps ones political pole on track and riveted to the science of society. Last point: Michelle Obama is the point man - no quotes, in the politics of wining the government administrative bureaucracy to the Obama administration and policy change domestically. Her importance and political capacity should not be under estimated. Roughly 10 days ago she gave an impressive speech realigning government policy with respects to the various Indian nations, speaking of developing infrastructure projects like schools and water works. Barack Obama story is that of the immigrant, and his has inspired a huge section of America that contains and embody such history. Michelle historically specific history is that of the Negro in its purity. Surely, no one can mistake the meaning of the word Negro in this context. Such an alignment as the "top" of American government has never occurred in American history. Mr. Cool + Michelle = . . ."something!!," . . . as a specific method of rule that has not yet come of fruition. Things get interesting. Unite or Perish. WL. >>So a sizable majority wants Obama to pursue his policies with our without Republican support. Meanwhile, a huge majority says that Republicans should emphasize working with Obama in a bipartisan way over pursuing their policy ideas: Which do you think should be a higher priority for Republicans in Congress right now — working in a bipartisan way with Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress or sticking to Republican policies? << -- -- Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. **Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (ht
