[Marxism-Thaxis] Rosa Lichtenstein vs. Andrew Kliman on dialectics
http://marxisthumanistinitiative.org/2009/05/05/brief-comments-on-the-relationship-between-marxism-and-the-hegelian-dialectic/ Best Weight Loss Program - Click Here! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTFoYd8dOsnewwT0QfdeIISpTkQxJtOUEwXTKGTcquKkdXmegqfK4g/ ___ 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] Thirty Death Threats per day
The right-wing hate speech polluting the debate over health care is generating more and more threats against President Obama, some truly frightening. CNN anchor Rick Sanchez reports that when President Obama visited Phoenix, Ariz. on August 17, local minister Steven Anderson of the Faithful World Baptist Church, who strongly expresses hatred for Obama in many of his sermons, told his congregation that he wished him dead. In a disturbing twist, it was discovered that Chris Broughton, the man who brought an AR 15 assault rifle to the Phoenix rally where Obama spoke, had attended Anderson's sermon. In a later interview, Broughton said he concurred with his pastor's wish to see Obama die and go to hell. As many as twelve men were seen walking around the Phoenix Convention Center with guns on that day. President Obama faces 30 death threats a day, a 400 percent increase from former President Bush, according to Ronald Kessler, a veteran investigative journalist and conservative who recently authored a book about the Secret Service. Kessler notes that funding cutbacks have already left the first African-American president in U.S. history particularly vulnerable. The book, which alleges that the cash-strapped Secret Service is endangering the president by cutting corners, has sent shockwaves through Washington. There's no question his life is in danger. Tomorrow, Obama could be assassinated ... simply because the Secret Service was not doing what it used to do, said Kessler. We have half the number of agents we need, but requests for more agents have fallen on deaf ears at headquarters, a Secret Service agent told Kessler. There's a tremendous feeling within the Secret Service that they are risking an assassination, Kessler told Canadian TV. http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/protect_obama/?rc=alternet1 As CNN's Rick Sanchez said on the air, This looks serious. This almost looks like this is coming to the point where we are even beyond maybe where this nation was on November 22 of 1963, when JFK was assassinated, when there was also an environment of hate in this country. As racist attacks increase and protestors continue to bring guns to presidential events, it is strikingly clear that President Obama is vulnerable to harm. Are the Secret Service and FBI doing enough to protect him? Will they confront and investigate those who threaten our president so that they can be prosecuted and jailed? We cannot allow funding problems to weaken the organizations charged with protecting the life of our nation's president. In 2003, the Secret Service and FBI became part of the Department of Homeland Security and now must compete with 20 other agencies for oversight from their chief, Janet Napolitano. She must use her authority to ensure that the Secret Service and FBI put more agents on the ground to protect President Obama and confront and investigate those who threaten him. It is time for Americans of every stripe to insist that the Secret Service and FBI operate at the highest levels of effectiveness. Sign your name to this petition so that Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security hears the message loud and clear. And please pass this message on to your friends and colleagues. It is a difficult time in America, and we have to stand up and make sure our president is safe. http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/protect_obama/?rc=alternet1 ___ 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] Rosa L
Here part of my old exchange with Rosa. The same issue of the contradiction in John is a man came up in Kliman's exchange with her Rosa gets CB Charles Brown charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Thu Aug 23 09:48:11 MDT 2007 I may be lliterate, but at least she admits I'm logical. CB ^^^ Logical Illiterates Strike Again A year or so ago I had the great misfortune to correspond with an irascible fellow who could not resist making ill-informed comments about my Essays, all the while refusing to read them. I refused to continue to correspond with him on that basis, and, it seems, he has been sulking ever since. Last year I had occasion to slap some materialist sense into him (here), but I fear that this incorrigible Idealist is beyond even my help. Despite several attempts to inoculate him from his own folly, Mr B has once again demonstrated that he is immune to the influence of modern logic, preferring his own brand of sub-Hegelian make-believe. Commenting on an argument of mine, he had this to say: CB: The sentence 'John is a man' means John is both the same and different from Joe, Jack, Rosa, Charles... It is precisely the 'is' of predication that is a unity and struggle of opposites. The 'is' of identity 'He is John.' -- that is not a tautology. CB: This should be 'that is a tautology'. [Quotation marks changed to conform to the conventions adopted here.] This odd piece of reasoning was exposed for what it is here, and here. Despite this, Mr B hopes to neutralise my arguments by referring merely to his own not inconsiderable authority in this field -- that is, the field usually occupied by Popes and assorted dictators whose word is law. And in matters logical, that should be enough for us. It certainly is for Mr B. He now deigns to comment on the musings of my colleague Babeuf; here is an example of truly innovative historical materialism: CB: Another fundamental activity was the raising of children. I'm thinking language/culture emerged between parents and children. It is reasonably clear that Mr B has shot from the hip again -- or rather shot from the holster and into his foot --, for if the above were the case, not only would parents and children confront each other like Pentecostal ecstatics, mouthing incomprehensible noises at one another, no two families would share the same idiolect. Communication between families would thus be impossible. In that case, 'culture', as Mr B sees it, would soon begin to resemble that cacophony which constantly sounds in his head. Now, in Essay Twelve Part One, I asserted that most Marxists give lip-service to the idea that language is a social phenomenon, but fail to think through the implications of that fact, and talk and write as if language were a private affair. Mr B has shown once again that when it comes to getting things wrong, he is keen to elbow his way to the front of the queue. How language can be social, but remain a family affair is perhaps another one of the 'contradictions' that still compromises his thought processes: Before I had even heard of dialectics -- living in the a mental (sic) world of strict formal logic -- I started to 'run into' lots of contradictions and paradoxes. My own road to dialectics was a posteriori, not a priori. Mr B here confuses matters biographical with matters logical; unless --, of course, he thinks paradoxes are a posteriori. But, even if he were right, this otherwise commendable public confession of his own confused thought should not be read as mere humility. On the contrary, the road to Hermetic-enlightenment -- a path which all true dialecticians have to pass along in order to qualify as adepts (and the reasons for this are exposed here) -- elevates them way above the rest of us mortals. This means that if ever they regain power somewhere they can screw-up once more in a truly almighty and awe-inspiring manner. After all, they have a suitably screwy theory to help them on their way. But what is this? It is none other than our old friend Mr D, who volunteers a riposte so devastating I hesitate to post it here for fear it might affect the reader's sanity: This is just stupid, even more stupid than the Trotskyist recitations of dialectics. Mr D, someone who is not known for his ability to string a clear argument together -- but a well-respected expert at drawing attention to that fact --, probably does not know that the material about which he is commenting has to be compressed into a three minute slot, and has to be kept to a level that makes it comprehensible to mere workers. And here he can be forgiven, for over the years, at his site, he has developed an enviable skill at repelling such lowly types, and to the extent that he has probably forgotten their limitations. One of which is that they find the mystical ideas he spouts incomprehensible. It's a good job then that we have substitutionists of his calibre
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Rosa Lichtenstein vs. Andrew Kliman on dialectics
I can't make a lick of sense out of Andrew Kliman's side of the debate with Rosa. But note that none of it has any relationship to dialectical materialism or the Marxist-Leninist notion of dialectical logic, which is really all that pedestrian Rosa has to argue against. And in that arena Rosa and Charles deserve one another. Rosa = sectarian Trotskyism plus Wittgenstein: a formula for mediocrity is ever there was one. At 01:08 PM 9/8/2009, farmela...@juno.com wrote: http://marxisthumanistinitiative.org/2009/05/05/brief-comments-on-the-relationship-between-marxism-and-the-hegelian-dialectic/ ___ 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
