[Marxism-Thaxis] What is human knowledge?
Hi Human knowledge is founded on instinctive belief. It is this common sense belief that leads us to believe in an independent external world. This belief creates no difficulty for us. Neither have we any good reason to reject it since it simplifies and systematizes our experiences. Every principle of simplicity indicates that there are objects other than ourselves and our sense-data. They don’t depend on our continued perception of them. We start with what we can be certain of --our immediate experiences. We may doubt the table’s physical experience but not the sense-data that lead us to think there is one. There are grounds for thinking that these do indicate the existence of physical objects. We have no reason for accepting that life is a dream. This is because life as dream is more complicated than the common-sense one of external objects as source of our sensations. Intuitive knowledge is the basis of our knowledge of truths. Intuitive knowledge are beliefs for which we cannot give reasons. They are blindingly evident general principles such as the inductive principle and general logical principles. We know them instinctively or intuitively. These primitive intuitions are a product of the evolution through natural selection of the Stone Age human brain. The genetic make-up of the human brain hardwires this bundle of intuitions in us There are two forms of knowledge. Knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. Knowledge by acquaintance involves our direct awareness of things while knowledge by description is a derivative form of knowledge based in instinct. It concerns truths about things. We are acquainted with sense-data and memory. Sense-data is that which is given by the senses such as colours and sounds. There is also acquaintance through introspection. For example we are not directly acquainted with the table as a physical object. However our knowledge of it as a physical object is connected to our acquaintance with the sense-data that makes up its appearance. On the basis of our acquaintance with these we can formulate a description of the table or other objects which applies to only one object. Description makes it possible to go beyond private experience giving us knowledge of things we have not experienced. It also creates and develops a community of knowledge. Our acquaintance with sense-data enables us to infer the existence of physical objects and the external world. This is how we transcend our own private experience while establishing communal relations. To draw the relevant inferences there must exist general laws and principles. We rely on the principle of induction for predicting future events. The inductive principle enables us to extend our knowledge beyond the extremely limited sphere of our private experiences. General scientific principles depend on the inductive principle. Logical principles such as the Laws of Thought have to be accepted for any argument or proof to be possible. Again this constitutes one of the epistemic conditions for transcending private experience and establishing community. Since knowledge is a priori it can be known independently of experience. Mathematical and logical principles are examples of it. Experience cannot prove that mathematical and logical principles are true. Yet it is experience that elicits a priori knowledge through particular experiences. Through experience we become aware of these general principles. All applications of a priori general propositions involve an empirical element. Human knowledge is a combination of the empirical and the a priori. It is this combination that creates the conditions for communal knowledge that transcends private knowledge. In my view much of mainstream Marxism tends to ignore this combination and over-emphasise the experiential aspect of knowledge lending itself to some form of crude empiricism. Much of the above was inspired by the analytical philosopher, Bertrand Russell. Much of his philosophy has been of enormous significance. Even to this day much of his philosophy is still underestimated. It was eclipsed, in varying degrees, by younger philosophers and by some of his peers such as Wittgenstein and probably Carnap. And In Ireland mainstream Marxism is more influenced by continental philosophy than it is by analytical philosophy. Given that without modern symbolic logic, a product of analytical philosophy, there would have been no large scale computer technology in existence today we see its significance. The same cannot be said for the non-analytical philosophy continental philosophy. Paddy Hackett http://paddy-hackett.blogspot.com/search/label/Philosophy ___ 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 Bertie Bubble
of bombs and guns. It can destroy and colonise a country by subjecting it to financial attack. Hopefully in the meantime the European working class, becoming class conscious, will have mounted a struggle to seize power from the hands of the European bourgeoisie. Yours etc., Paddy Hackett Related Link: http://paddy-hackett.blogspot.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
[Marxism-Thaxis] A Workers Inquiry
Hi Sinn Fein rejected the Workers' Party stagist theory involving the call for a six county democratised state. Its view appeared to be that the six county sectarian state was a form of institutionalised sectarianism that is irreformable. Consequently this state had to be smashed as had the state south of the border. These states were to be replaced by a 32 county democratic socialist republic. Given Sinn Fein's acceptance of the Good Friday Agreement it is clear that the party has abandoned this position falling back on the position of the Workers Party --the stagist democratised sectarian free six county state. The abandonment of this position was made in the absence of any real discussion and debate. Instead the retreat was made by the backdoor --by sleight of hand. Rejecting the Eire Nua Programme as drafted by the O Bradaigh/O Connell leadeership formed a part of this process. If, as the present Sinn Fein leadership now assume, the six county state is reformable then the basis for an all-island Irish democratic socialist republic dissolves. This means that the Long War, involving death, injury and destruction was an aberration --the politics of illusion. So too was the conflict between the Provo IRA and the Officials. The working class, north and south of the border, should call for and execute an inquiry into the real nature of this war as led by the Sinn Fein/IRA. This people's inquiry must cover the dirty aspect of the war which was formed a decisive part of it. Paddy Hackett http://paddy-hackett.blogspot.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
[Marxism-Thaxis] Whats the difference?
Hi Essentially there is no real difference between the radical left and the right in general. The radical left call for more and more state spending as the means towards the solution of the problems of the working class. In other words they call for the growing expansion of the capitalist state as the solution to social problems. In other words the radical left wants a stronger more all-embracing capitalist state. This is precisely the corporatism that European fascism sought and largely achieved. Their references to a non-capitalist society that they more than times than not call socialism. They dont like to use the term communism, too strong. They also view socialism as more a more ambiguous term that implies for them some form of nanny state. But you cannot have a post-capitalist society that implies a political state. Today in the West the capitalist state has been in continuous growth. Even the Irish state has been subsidising much of the working class through the expansion in welfarism of one kind or another. It has subsidised capitalists too through what is called corporate dole. This takes many forms such as the state creation of industrial estates, roads, grants, tax breaks etc. One of the chief reasons the working class has failed to come in behind the radical left in any significant way is because capitalism has stolen the clothes of the left. It has been increasingly doling out diverse assistance to the working class and so called lumpenproletariat. What is needed is not a bigger radical left since it essentially supports the capitalist state. Indeed to support the radical left is to support capitalism. What is needed is a communist movement that challenges and opposes both capitalism and its state. Instead of calling on Cowan to increase state spending, as the Socialist Party and the SWP do, communists call on the working class to destroy the state and capitalism. ___ 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] why are white southerners so violent?
I cannot make sense of your piece below. Perhaps you will elaborate. Your etc., Paddy Hackett My blog address below: http://paddy-hackett.blogspot.com/ - Original Message - From: c b cb31...@gmail.com To: Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and thethinkers he inspired marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2010 4:39 PM Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] why are white southerners so violent? Chuck Grimes Oh, look at the larger picture. These same violent herding peoples are now running our armed forces, manning the wars against the inner violence of sheep herding cultures of Iraq and Afghanistan... where does it all end? The nuclear sheep bomb? CG CB: Yeah and think about all the peaceful shepherds that Jesus hung out with ? And check the below out. It will really blow your mind. Like my grandmother uses to say to the racist Irish in Philadelphia: You're not all white. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/secret/famous/gibsonfamily.html Gibson This page updated January 2004. The news that Senator Strom Thurmond had a mixed race daughter who had remained a secret to the outside world for several decades was not news for genealogists and historians. They've long known about the many great families of the South with mixed race histories. Arguably, the most notable among these is the great political Ur family of the South, the Gibsons. Why the early and rich history of this family has been so ignored would be amusing, if it were not such a clear cut example of how certain subjects can be too politically incorrect to handle. Gideon Gibson's family first appeared in the records when they applied for land in the Santee River area in South Carolina around 1730. Although some objected to their being free colored men with their white wives, in the end they were given permission by Governor Robert Johnson. Soon after, they became part of a sociological phenomenon which the few scholars who have looked at it have still not satisfactorily explained. Probably due to the difficulty of working land without recourse to labour (whether from slavery or indentured servitude) there occured in early South Carolina beginning sometime in the late 1740s and ending just prior to the Revolution, a rather surprising number of fairly substantial land holders who sold their properties and for lack of a better description, simply went 'bush.' Living together in the woods in loose communities, they refused to work and existed by poaching, theft and as they grew more desperate, highway robbery and raids on the homes and farms of their law abiding, hard working neighbours. Besides the women they abducted who became just as criminally proficient, their ranks swelled with a great many Indians and runaway slaves. In the end, these 'banditi' were brought to heel by the Gibsons and other farming families. Located too far from the centres of British colonial administration, they took the law into their own hands and eventually caused greater concern to the British government than the troublesome element they had initially gone up against. For these morally upstanding and highly industrious pioneers with the Gideon Gibson as their leader, go down in history as the country's first vigilantes - or'regulators' as they were known then. It was their initiative that instigated those movements which, a few decades later, would erupt into the most violent of that kind of action - lynching. It should be pointed out here, however, that the most aggressive force employed by this group was a good whipping which at that time in history was the standard legal punishment for the behaviour they were attempting to curtail. Incidentally, and I cannot help but find some amusement in the fact, this is what they also meted out to the British soldiers who were sent out to quell them. In what was then the only monograph written on these events, Richard Maxwell Brown's South Carolina Regulators, the author was aware of the colour of these ambitious and successful farmers such as the Gibsons, but he made no mention of it in his work. Obviously, he was not about to take responsibility for pointing out that the most terrifying sociological reaction to the black community in the early 1900s had been initiated by people of colour a century and a half earlier. Southern Families Other academics have skirted this history for another reason it seems. This group of mixed race plantation owners who finally subdued the 'bush' outlaws and whose descendants by the time of the Civil War had become some of the wealthiest and most politically influential figures of Georgia, the Carolinas, Kentucky and Tenesee - were of the same ethnic stock. The matrimonial alliances of one branch of the Gibson clan, for example, were contracted almost exclusively with congressional, senatorial and gubernatorial families of these southern states. Senator Gibson of Louisiana and the founder of Tulane University
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Rules are symbolic , built on symbols.
Intwresting piece Kind regards Paddy hackett On 9 Jun 2010, at 07:44, CeJ jann...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627621.000-language-lessons-you-are-what-you-speak.html?full=true Language lessons: You are what you speak excerpt: LANGUAGES are wonderfully idiosyncratic. English puts its subject before its verb. Finnish has lots of cases. Mandarin is highly tonal. Yet despite these differences, one of the most influential ideas in the study of language is that of universal grammar. Put forward by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s, it is widely interpreted as meaning that all languages are basically the same and that the human brain is born language-ready, with an in-built program that is able to decipher the common rules underpinning any mother tongue. For five decades this idea has dominated work in linguistics, psychology and cognitive science. To understand language, it implied, you must sweep aside the dazzling diversity of languages and find the common human core. But what if the very diversity of languages is the key to understanding human communication? This is the idea being put forward by linguists Nicholas Evans of the Australian National University in Canberra and Stephen Levinson of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. They believe that languages do not share a common set of rules. Instead, they say, their sheer variety is a defining feature of human communication - something not seen in other animals. And that's not all. Language diversity is the crucial fact for understanding the place of language in human cognition, Levinson and Evans argue. In recent years, much has been made of the idea that humans possess a language instinct: infants easily learn to speak because all languages follow a set of rules built into their brains. While there is no doubt that human thinking influences the form that language takes, if Evans and Levinson are correct, language in turn shapes our brains. This suggests that humans are more diverse than we thought, with our brains having differences depending on the language environment in which we grew up. And that leads to a disturbing conclusion: every time a language becomes extinct, humanity loses an important piece of diversity. Since the theory of universal grammar was proposed, linguists have identified many language rules. Although these are supposed to be universal, there are almost always exceptions. It was once believed, for example, that no language would have a syllable that begins with a vowel and ends with a consonant (VC), if it didn't also have syllables that begin with a consonant and end with a vowel (CV). This universal lasted until 1999, when linguists showed that Arrernte, spoken by Indigenous Australians from the area around Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, has VC syllables but no CV syllables. Other non-universal universals describe the basic rules of putting words together. Take the rule that every language contains four basic word classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Work in the past two decades has shown that several languages lack an open adverb class, which means the number of adverbs available is limited, unlike in English where you can turn any word into an adverb, for example soft into softly. Others, such as Lao, spoken in Laos, have no adjectives at all. More controversially, some linguists argue that a few languages, such as Straits Salish, spoken by indigenous people from north-western regions of North America, do not even have distinct nouns or verbs. Instead they have a single class of words to encompass events, entities and qualities. Even apparently unassailable universals have been found wanting. This includes recursion, the ability to infinitely embed one item in a similar item, such as Jack thinks that Mary thinks that... the bus will be on time. It is widely considered to be a characteristic that sets human language apart from the communications of other animals. Yet Dan Everett at Illinois State University recently published controversial work showing that Amazonian Pirahã does not have this recursive quality (Language, vol 85, p 405). The more we learn about languages, the more apparent the differences become (see Tower of Babel). While most linguists have somehow lived with these anomalies, Evans and Levinson believe they cannot be ignored. The haul of clear and empirically impeccable universals, after decades of searching, is pitiful, Evans notes. He and Levinson argue that the idea of universal grammar has sent researchers down a blind alley. We should embrace linguistic diversity, they say, and try to explain the forms that languages actually take. To that end, they published a paper outlining their theory in Behavioral and Brain Sciences last year (vol 32, p 429). Everett has described it as a watershed in the history of linguistic theory. If languages do
[Marxism-Thaxis] The working class and Habermas
Hi The proletariat provides the socio-ontological conditions for emancipation from ideology and exploitation. This is based on the proletariat's unique relationship to the production process as source of wealth, value and capital-the very material basis for the existence of capitalist society. This peculiar oppression of the proletariat is what gives it its truth conditioning property. Given this Jurgen Habermas mistakenly attributes this emancipating property to language or what he calls communicative action. This constitutes an idealist anti-working class stance typical of the Frankfurt critical theorists. Habermas' centering of language in the form of communicative interaction is not as he would claim the discovery and establishment of the authentic basis for liberation from oppression. Habermas in line with Frankfurt critical theory has dismissed the working class as agent of revolution. He has employed the category or concept of communication as the conceptual means of marginalising the working class. This had the effect of conceptually undermining the concept of the working class from within its own theoretical problematic. Habermas' ideology is intended to conceptually underpin the strategy of marginalising the working class movement. Indeed it has, in a sense, formed part of a coordinated attempt to conceptually and politically gut the working class. And to a large extent he has been successful in promoting this cause. Habermas' theory of communicative action abstracts from the class question. It suggests that successful resistance to capitalist oppression is conceptually and socially independent of the working class. It suggests that resistance can be organised on a cross-class basis - liberal movements. No longer can there be what might be called a proletarian problematic or proletarian centered theoretical framework by which society, history and change is rendered intelligible. He centers communicative action at the heart of liberation from oppression. The proletariat is embedded within reification. Reification by producing the proletariat within it produces within itself the source of truth, knowledge and social revolution and thereby its own demise. Reification is ultimately based on nature or matter. It is the latter that leads to natural science, together with its methodology, and then social science and sociology. An examination of Comte's work provides evidence of this. In a sense, then, reification produces its own antithesis in the form of the modern working class --conditions that lead to the critique of political economy in the form, among other things, of Marx's Capital. Marx's work is a critique of reification as economics and is thereby the proletariat's critique. Reification produces the source of both critique and its own dissolution. This process produces within itself the working class, the material source of the communist movement, and the theory of the working class. The working class, the bourgeoisie's polar opposite, is the fountainhead of ideologically free consciousness -revolutionary class consciousness. The source of truth is the working class and the source of deception is the capitalist class. However the latter is the spawning ground of the ruling ideas -the ideas of the ruling class. Under capitalism humanity is reified by its bifurcation into the capitalist class and the working class. Habermas seeks to dissolve Marx and communism by replacing anti-reification in the form of the communist working class with reified communicative action. For Habermas distorted communicative action has within it a liberationist quality. This means that bourgeois ideology is convertible into liberation theory. Ideology does not have to be combated and dissolved. Communication, discourse or dialogue forms the basis for forming alliances with outright reactionary elements such as the Roman Catholic pope. Communicative action is now to be substituted for class struggle. Social reconciliation is realisable through conversations with the enemy to arrive at consensus. Instead of combating fascists we talk with them. Habermas argues that reason in its instrumental form is a form of ideology. This means that ideology, for Habermas, is a form of reason and thereby not irrational. For Habermas then ideology is not authentic ideology. It contains within itself the opposite of ideology -reason. It merely requires to be reconstructed or subjected to revision. The source of ideology is the ruling class otherwise known as the capitalist class. Truth, on the other hand, has its source in the working class the polar opposite to the capitalist class. This perspective is what gives ideas their material basis. One form is grounded in the oppressor while the other is grounded in the oppressed. The ideas based in the working class are a form of class-consciousness. Consequently the working class is the fountainhead of revolutionary change. Diverse conceptual frameworks overlap and compete with each other
[Marxism-Thaxis] Literature and pain
Hi As Dead As Doornails is an interesting book on the subject of literary life in Dublin during the 40s and 50s particularly in relation to Anthony's experience of Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh and Brian O'Nolan. It is a gray work from which springs the comic and the absurd. For, in a way, the trio of writers above are inherently comic and absurd. Cronin's book, in many ways, ought perhaps be presented as a model for works from this genre. In his chronology Cronin displays a unique literary style. He seems to make it an aim of the book the use of language in a way that has a certain originality. Consequently his vocabulary has an unusual character unique to Anthony. Individual words frequently shine out like jewels from the pages of this book of his. But you see this too when he has contributed to discussion on radio broadcasts. Indeed Tom McGurk's interview with him displayed these same qualities. It is a pleasure to listen to Anthony Cronin even if you don't agree with his underlying philosophy or politics. In his book Anthony Cronin outlines the individual character of three figures that have loomed large in modern Irish literature. His outline is realistic and unsentimental. He refused to glamorise them. Yet the comic character of their lives shines through rendering the chronology more colourful. In the book they come across as damaged and deeply troubled individuals with many limitations. Each one of them has a problem with the drink and in their ability to relate to other people. Their personalities are riddled through with contradiction. They do not even get along with each other and even end up physically attacking each other. Yet it was these very limited and damaged individuals that have been the source of Irish artistic beauty. It is sad... But in a sense this is just where art has its source -in pain, damage and turmoil. If Ireland were a happy place then art could not exist there ( the passion of Christ). Art can only exist under conditions of pain. Nor is art meant to make us happy. True artists cannot be happy people. The conditions under which these artists emerged are aptly described by Cronin as bleak and oppressive. This was the economically backward Ireland of the forties and fifties. There was much turmoil and poverty among the masses. Pain and suffering were endemic in this oppressive Church ridden society. Yet these again were the very conditions that made possible the blossoming of Irish literature, of beauty, in the form of the work of these tragi-comic trio. Like Behan, Kavanagh and Myles the society from which they popped up was also damaged and limited. And that damage and limitation never really went away. Contemporary condition in the aftermath of the economic bubble in Ireland are evidence of this. In a sense then limitation is what makes Irish art possible. Now many of the so-called Irish artists seek to present themselves as well balanced rounded people that constitute the successes of Irish society -part of the Irish glitterati. But are they artists? Related Link: http://paddy-hackett.blogspot.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 SWP and underconsumptionism
Obama, the Fed and the Treasury are underconsumptionist as is, to a degree, Western Europe. The massive injection of billions of dollars into the economy is an expression of underconsumptionist ideology. But this merely helps postpone the judgment day. The capitalist needs an unprecedentedly deep slump. By these unprecedented injections the slump has been postponed. But the problem has not been solved. Washington has created another bubble type phenomenon. The problem is that there may not be enough gas to blow up to the previous dimensions --a floppy bubble. This is something I am not qualified to answer. Washington has simply done what the Fed was doing under its last boss. Propping up the system artificially by providing more apparent spend. Those Marxists like Michal Kalecki or Paul Sweezy (under the influence of Keynes) who embraced the underconsumptionist thesis did not hold that capitalist states would automatically adopt looser fiscal and monetary policies in order to stop or even to prevent economic downturns. On the contrary, they held that capital would be quite resistant to the general adoption of such policies because they would undermine the political power and the social status of capital. Kalecki, for instance, argued that under normal circumstances, capital would be resistant to the adoption of Keynesian-style full-employment policies, even if it was manifestly clear that such policies would boost business profits. That's because, according to Kalecki, such policies would less the social status of businessmen and weaken their political power. Capitalists, in Kalecki's opinion, feared the loss of social status and political power even more than they feared the loss of profits. Hence, their tendency to form political alliances with rentiers (whose incomes would be directly threatened by such policies) in order to oppose full-employment policies. See his famous 1943 paper, Political Aspects of Full Employment can be found online here. http://tinyurl.com/ykxusra Paul Sweezy echoed Kalecki's arguments in his early book, The Theory of Capitalist Development. Later on, both Kalecki and Sweezy pointed out how, what may be called, military Keyensianism provided a way to make Keynesianism work in a way that would be acceptable to capitalists. That of course is not to say that the underconsumptionists were necessarily correct, but rather to point out that Marxist underconsumptionists do not accept the thesis, that even if Keynesian economic analysis is basically correct, that we can ever expect capitalist states to use the tools of fiscal and monetary policy to balance out the business cycle. In their view, the class interersts of capital militate against this happening over the long term. Having said that it must be admitted that the Keynesian influence on Sweezy has always been a bone of contention for other Marxists. Back in the late 1960s, Paul Mattick wrote a critique of Keynesianism, in which Sweezy, was at least by implication, one of his targets. Marc Linder et al. in their book Anti-Samuelson, while primarily (as the title suggests) targeting Paul Samuelson's brand of Keynesianism, also took time out to critique Sweezy precisely for his Keynesianism. And more recently, James Heartfield has simiarly criticized Sweezy Jim Farmelant -- Original Message -- From: Paddy Hackett rashe...@eircom.net To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] The SWP and underconsumptionism Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:50:38 - Myth 2: But the government has to borrow over ?20 billion and so cutbacks are necessary. If we don't take the 'hard medicine' now, it will be worse later. The huge government deficit is a symptom but not the cause of the crisis. Before 2007, for example, there was no deficit as government revenue was ?65.1 billion and spending was ?64.6. The economic crash has wiped out many tax revenues. VAT rates have fallen; PAYE taxes are down, property taxes tumbled and more is being spent on social welfare payments. But the cutbacks have made matters worse. You can see this easily through simple figures.In October 2008, the government claimed that the budget deficit would rise to 6.5 percent of GDP and that cutbacks were needed. But in January 2009, the budget deficit had risen to 9.5 percent - and so more cuts were demanded in an April budget.Yet, after all these rounds of cutbacks, the budget deficit has now risen to 13 percent. In other words, all the sacrifices have been wasted because the debt is even higher. The reason why this occurs is simple. If personal consumption is already depressed through unemployment and wage cuts, reductions in government spending only add to the slow down in the economy. There is even less money to go around and a spiral of economic depression sets in. So instead of digging a deeper hole, we need to embark on a jobs programme that puts people back to work The above argument
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Irish Socialist Workers Party has split.
by Harry McIntyre from Indymedia Ireland --- Split centred around Belfast The Socialist Workers Party has split. There has been some speculation on Indymedia and elsewhere that the SWP was having internal difficulties in Belfast. The dust has now settled, and the bulk of their Belfast organisation is now outside of the party. The SWP has been having a tough time of it in Belfast in recent years. In the early years of the decade, the Belfast SWP was the success story of the organisation, building a number of branches and a strong student group. Then a period of decline followed, with branches merging, the student group weakening and the loss of some key activists. Now an organised split has taken most of the active, politically hardened, remaining members, leaving the Belfast SWP with an occasionally visible prospective election candidate and a handful of his associates. The arguments flared up around electoral strategy. The Dublin leadership wanted to run Sean Mitchell, the excitable young member who got a small but respectable vote in West Belfast last time out. The Belfast committee, essentially a joint branch committee for the two mini-branches the party was operating in the city, wasn't so sure. Most of its members were of the view that Mitchell had been insufficiently active in the area over the last year. It was, in other words, a minor tactical difference of a sort that a democratic organisation could easily accomodate within its ranks. Unfortunately for the SWP, it is not such an organisation. With typical heavy handedness, the Dublin leadership came down on the local dissidents like a ton of bricks. Vitriolic arguments ensued and the Belfast committee was wound up to shut up those who disagreed with the Political Committee. The writing was on the wall after that. The people who had held the SWP together in Belfast over a long, hard, period were told in no uncertain terms that either they did as they were told and shut up complaining or they'd be expelled. They decided to jump before they were pushed and resigned as a group. As the dust settles, Barbara Muldoon, chair of the Anti-Racist Network, Gordon Hewitt, Mark Hewitt and their allies have found themselves outside of the organisation they helped build. It is understood that they are in the process of setting up a new organisation, based on the fundamental politics of the SWP tradition but with a greater commitment to internal democracy. A name, a platform and their first public statements are expected in the next couple of weeks. Meanwhile, the SWP in Belfast has been reduced to Mitchell, a couple of other students and an American academic. Donal Mac Fhearraigh, the SWP's Dublin full time office functionary has been sent North to shore up what's left and try to begin the process of rebuilding. It's worth looking at the wider implications of this split in one city. The splinter group are long standing SWP members with personal and political connections to SWP across the island. They could very easily make a nuisance of themselves to the SWP across the island by offering SWP members the option of an organisation with SWP politics but a less dictatorial internal regime. The big question will be whether they can gain support outside of their home city. For the SWP it further hammers home their weakness outside of Dublin. There isn't one strong branch left outside the Republic's capital. Historic strongholds like Belfast and Waterford are down to a handful of members. Cork and Galway are hanging on by a thread. There's nothing at all in Limerick. Derry has Eamon McCann, which means a high profile, but a weak branch. It wouldn't take much more of a retreat to reduce the party to a regional organisation. Perhaps more interesting for the wider left is what this incident reveals about the SWP's approach to left unity. Firstly, while the SWP is very weak outside of Dublin they do at least maintain a tenuous presence, which can't really be said for the rest of People Before Profit. In Dublin, the SWP are the dominant force in the alliance, but there are others present and involved. Elsewhere the SWP simply are the alliance. South Tipperary may become a dramatic exception when the Workers and Unemployed Action Group announce their adherence, although it is not yet clear if that affiliation will involve taking on the PBP label and fully integrating into the alliance or if it mostly represents a formal commitment to continuing their existing work together. The Belfast split remember came to a head over what candidate to stand and in what constituency in the next Westminster elections. This discussion was carried on entirely in SWP branches and committees. But they weren't talking about standing an SWP candidate, they were deciding on who and where PBP should stand. There is no People Before Profit structure in Belfast, just the SWP using the name and taking whatever decisions it
[Marxism-Thaxis] Can Ireland have a successful communist revolution?
It is not possible to achieve a communist society in Ireland through social revolution. This is because, if such a society were realized, it would be easily crushed by the imperialist states that surround it. A communist Ireland is sustainable only if communism has been realized in the UK and(or) Western Europe. So any attempts to set up a revolutionary communist party in Ireland makes no sense. It is utopian to claim that in the Irish Republic the politics of social revolution are realisable and sustainable. Consequently soi disant Marxist groups such as the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Party are misleading elements within the working class by claiming that a workers republic can be established and consolidated within the 26 counties of Ireland. The setting up of a workers' republic would, every bit as much an Irish communist society, be duly crushed by the forces of imperialism encircling it. This would almost certainly lead to great human suffering including the loss of many Irish lives. In the light of this James Connolly was equally utopian when he fought for a thirty two county Irish workers' republic at the beginning of the 20th century. The conclusion is that the promotion of Marxist politics in Ireland is a utopian project that misleads the Irish working class filling it with false optimism. Communism can only be an option for the Irish working class within the context of European social revolution that eventually involves world revolution. Generally speaking communism can only be universal in character. The most that communists in Ireland can do is create a communist organization of intellectuals that contributes to the development of communist theory. In a large country like the UK or France it makes more sense to struggle to build a communist political party within the context of building an international communist political party. The working class of a powerful country like Britain, France or the USA has a much better chance of launching a communist revolution than the weak Irish working class. Revolutions from these individual countries can serve as the basis for the successful launching of social revolution in Ireland. Generally social revolution can never begin in a small weak country such as the Irish Republic. We now have a situation where people like Kieran Allen present themselves on radio and TV effectively clamouring for a state-capitalist solution to the problem of the Irish debt crisis. Yet the Socialist Workers Party, of which Kieran is a member, have perennially criticized the character of the former Soviet Union because of its alleged state capitalist character. A state capitalist solution is a tautology for a national solution. There is essentially no difference between this SWP position and the ambiguous position being held by ICTU bosses Jack O Connor and David Begg. Indeed there is no significant difference between the position of the SWP, the Socialist Party, the ICTU and the Fianna Fail party in relation to state indebtedness. All want a capitalist solution within a national, thereby bourgeois, framework. Differences between the different parties are rooted in mere modifications as to how wealth is to be distributed. Modifications in wealth distribution fails to render change in class relations. None of the above elements want a revolution in the character of the production process --a communist solution. This is because there cannot be a communist solution to the debt crisis except within an international framework. In short the Irish working class need the revolutionary mobilisation of the British, French and German working class if the debt crisis is to be solved through revolution. In a sense the Iris debt crisis is a problem for the entire European working class. Other than that a capitalist solution is the only solution possible. Kieran Allen and Joe Higgins mislead the Irish citizenry when they claim to have a socialist alternative to the policies of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Labour Party. Their differences only exist in a merely distributionist context. The nationalist policies of the SWP and the Socialist Party are not sustainable. Consequently the SWP and the Socialist Party are incapable of implementing bourgeois nationalist policies nor social revolution. The essential nature of their politics dooms them to political bankruptcy which is why their political character is inherently opportunist. Paddy Hackett Paddy's Blog: http://paddy-hackett.blogspot.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
[Marxism-Thaxis] Do the Irish working class have the leadership they deserve?
There is a big problem facing the Irish working class.It is an ideological and cultural problem.The consciousness and culture of the working class is persistently bourgeois. It sees the capitalist system as the natural society. Consequently it sees all economic and social problems as solvable within the framework of capitalism.It has been under the illusion that it can have an indefinite affluent existence under capitalism.It cannot see that most of the problems that beset the working class are a product of the inherent limits of capitalism. It thinks problems can be solved outside of the need to engage in class struggle.Indeed much of the class don't even see themselves as forming part of a class. This is why it supports bourgeois parties such as the Fianna Fail party, the Fine Gael party and the Labour Party and their satellites such as the Green Party and others.The political and social consciousness of the Irish working class is effectively bourgeois. Irish capitalism has a bourgeois working class. This is why too the Irish,dare I say, proletariat have a trade union leadership that collaborates with the government and the state in general. Indeed the Irish state is a neo-corporate state in which the labour organisations are integrated into the state. Given the way in which developments are proceeding there is no need for fascism. The growing authoritarian neo-corporate Irish state fortified by the EU does the job well enough for capitalism. No need for fascism. The Cowan government has successfully made cut backs in the living standards of the working class on an unprecedented scale. Yet there has been little resistance from the workers. A few squeaks here and there --nothing significant. About a year later the organised working class looks like its going to mount mass pressure on the government.And even this was of a rather limited character.The demands,being made by the leadership of the planned protests and strikes, had a distinctly reformist ring to them. It must be remembered too that much of the working class is not even organised in unions.This appalling is a product of disillusionment with these bureaucratised labour organisations that,much of the time, collaborate with whatever government happens to be in power. It is also a result of the lack of political class consciousness of much of the working class.This is partly a result of the relatively generous welfare benefits and assistance that has been provided by the state.It is intended as a sop that keeps the class quiescent.Many working class families contain one or two young adults that are availing of these hand-outs by the state. Many of them have been obtaining handouts through fraud that render many of them relatively comfortable.But then you have others who have worked hard and obtain few,if any,of these handouts. Clearly they cannot feel much class solidarity for the scammers (lumpen elements) who have little or no interest in working class politics. Many workers see the Fianna Fail government as incompetent and unscrupless.But Brian Cowan has been showing quite some leadership. He has succeeded in pushing through massive cuts in the living standards of the working class and only meeting with very marginal resistance. Generally speaking moaning on the Joe Duffy show is about as far as the resistance has gone. The Joe Duffy show is the modern substitute for popular resistance.Indeed the Cowan government succeeded in demobilising mass protests that were to be mounted over six months ago. He is trying it again by engaging in current talks with the trade union leadership. Don't they just luv when Brian calls them in to talk with him. How they suck up to him. In short there is really nothing positive that can be said about the working class in the Irish Republic. It is bourgeois,egoistic and even reactionary.It has little interest in subversive politics and never really questions anything.It is not even religious. It is in many ways just nothing.It exists, in a sense, from the shoulders down.Formal education is just seen as a matter of getting a good job. It is because of the impoverished character of the Irish working class that the radical left in Ireland is correspondingly so weak and impovershied. It is almost all cut from the same cloth --little diversity. Paddy Hackett Related Link: http://paddy-hackett.blogspot.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
[Marxism-Thaxis] Irish Bank Nationalisation
For the working class the debate over whether to nationalize Irish banks or support NAMA is a false debate. It is a debate that has been whipped up by the bourgeois media and a substantial component of the bourgeois political establishment together with sections of the radical left. Neither NAMA nor nationalisation can serve the class interests of the working class. Either policy is essentially bourgeois in character. Consequently the debate is really a debate within the bourgeoisie as to what option best suits its class interests. Much of the Irish Left support nationalization. Some with the qualification of nationalization under workers' control. But such qualifications make little difference to the essential nature of the policy of nationalization as a bourgeois policy. Under capitalism the workers can never control the banks. It is a contradiction to suggest that banks can be controlled by the working class. By definition workers can never nationalise the banks under workers' control. They can only annihilate them by destroying capitalism without which banks cannot exist. The planned march for the month of September against NAMA is an attempt to organize the working class around the wrong issues --an issue from which the working class have nothing ultimately to gain. It is similar to organising a march against the Fianna Fail party and for the Fine Gael party. The left that promotes this march are playing the working class right into the hands of capitalism by rallying the workers around an issue that is about the class interests of the bourgeoisie and thereby against the class interests of workers. There is a strategy afoot by People before Profits and the Socialist Party to misdirect the working class into a struggle against itself. The prospective NAMA march is just this. Mass marches should have been held months ago against the income levy --admittedly there was the odd isolated protest in the absence of the general active support from the trade union leadership as a whole. The ICTU and other elements within the labour movement successfully obstructed attempts to organise a mass strike and demonstration. This was a decisive piece of treachery. It has seriously weakened the working class struggle. There need to be rallies and other forms of mass activity against the cut back in the living standards of the working class. A gigantic rally is needed to express popular opposition to the forthcoming slash and burn budget. Protests, rallies and strikes need to be linked into each other to create a continuum of struggle culminating in mass opposition to the forthcoming budget. Slogans expressing the class interests of the working class are needed. If old age pensioners can successfully organize against the abolition of the free medical cards for OAPs swiftly then the labour organizations can surely organize at least as swiftly against the income levy and many other class issues. So far the Irish state and its bourgeoisie have had an easy run. There has been minimal resistance to the crassly anti-working class policies of Fianna Fail and the Greens. If anything the bourgeois left have been at most fertilising the conditions for alternate capitalist parties gaining power -Fine Gael and Labour et al. Paddy Hackett My blog's address: http://paddy-hackett.blogspot.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
[Marxism-Thaxis] Is Ireland's Economic Crash
global nature of capitalism today a national plan cannot solve the economic depression that has engulfed Ireland. The solution to the economic crisis that has ripped through the Irish economy must be global in character either from the perspective of capitalism or communism. It is not possible to introduce a national plan, such as Kieran's, as a solution to Irish economic problems. Given that the Irish economy is merely a minuscule component of the world capitalist system radical solutions within a national framework cannot be realised. There must be a global challenge to capital from the world's working class. This means that workers in Ireland must struggle for a united communist federation of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland as a platform for the global communist revolution. Despite the fundamental weakness of the politics of Trotsky he was spot on when he made the following remarks: The forces of production which capitalism has evolved have outgrown the limits of nation and state. The national state, the present political form, is too narrow for the exploitation of these productive forces. The natural tendency of our economic system, therefore, is to seek to break through the state boundaries. The whole globe, the land and the sea, the surface as well as the anterior has become one economic workshop, the different parts of which are inseparably connected with each other. This work was accomplished by capitalism. But in accomplishing it the capitalist states were led to struggle for the subjection of the world-embracing economic system to the profit interests of the bourgeoisie of each country. What the politics of imperialism has demonstrated more than anything else is that the old national state was created in the revolutions and the wars of 1789-1815, 1848-1859, 1864-1866, and 1870 has outlived itself, and is now an intolerable hindrance to economic development. (Leon Trotsky. The War and the International ; Author's Preface vii) Nation states promoted the development of capitalism in the past and constituted the framework, in a sense, for the solution to economic and even social problems. Today the nation state is an obsolescent political form that reinforces economic problems while obstructing their solution. The solution to the present general crisis of capitalism can only be solved globally whether on the basis of capitalism or communism. To finish: Kieran Allen's book exposes the opportunism of his politics and that of the SWM of which he is a leading member. It is an obscurantist book in which he likes to have things both ways. This allows him to be a winner irrespective of what side wins. He advances a plan of action which he suggests is realisable under capitalism while at the same time he seems to mildly suggest that it may not be quite realisable under capitalism. He claims that neoliberalism has failed while hinting that it has worked. His aims are thereby rendered ambiguous which confuses workers rather than help provide them with clarity. He follows the same approach in his economic analysis. He claims at one moment that the falling rate of profit is the cause of the crisis and then at another time hints that some other factor. At another point he bellows out that a tiny minority of bankers, developers builders and the Irish government are responsible for the latest crash while he contradictorily hints that other factors may have played a role. Although his book is a source of great confusion it is clear too that Kieran may himself be the unfortunate victim of great confusion. In his book Kieran is all over the place making it difficult to pin down what it is he is really saying. Paddy Hackett ___ 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] Taxes and Workers
The capitalist state and taxation. The capitalist state forces revenue out of the workers in the form of taxation. There is no such thing as taxpayers' money! Paddy Hackett We are constantly bombarded with the soundbyte --taxpayers money.This contains the assumption that the revenue collected by the capitalist state in the form of taxation is taxpayers' money.This obviously implies that the taxpayer in someway owns this money. In the first place the taxpayer is a category that can include all classes since each of the social classes pays taxes.This constitutes an attempt to suggest that there obtains a deep unity between the classes. Assuming that this basis exists then there is only a short way to go to politically creating an all class alliance. But the point is that state revenue in the form of taxation is just that --state revenue. It is revenue that is controlled and owned by the state. It is not the revenue of the taxpayers. This is why the expression taxpayers' money is so misleading in the struggle against capitalism. It misrepresents the class interests of the working class and seeks to subordinate those interests to that of the capitalist class in an all class alliance. The point is that taxation is extracted from the working class by the force of the state. The working class have no choice in the matter within the context of capitalism. The working class have only choice within the context of an alternative --the alternative between capitalism and communism. This means that the workers, to challenge this imposition of tax on it, must mount an attack on the political state as part of an integral programme to attack and destroy capitalism. Paddy Hackett ___ 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] Irish deficit and Crises
The Irish budget deficit has rapidly grown to an enormous size. The growing budget deficit is a symptom of the deepening global economic crisis. It is not the cause of it. The crisis can only be solved by eliminating its cause. But a budget deficit, in itself, is not necessarily a problem for a particular capitalist economy. It largely depends on the economic circumstances embedding it. It is not unthinkable for a relatively strong and vibrant economy to have a budget deficit. There is no absolute prescription engraved in stone dictating that the state must, as promptly as is possible, eliminate its economy's deficit on the shoulders of the working class. There have been two policies advanced as to how to deal with the growing Irish deficit. Both policies are advocated as ways to solve the problems of capitalism. Ultimately both policies serve the class interests of the bourgeoisie. The first policy seeks to rapidly balance the budget through a mixture of severe tax increases and spending cuts. The other argues that the best policy is to reduce taxes and spend more. It suggests that the deficit can be compensated for by increased borrowing. This policy suggests that the outstanding national debt can be largely cleaned up when recovery gets under way. The first policy is being pursued by the Fianna Fail dominated government. In the short term it will inflict considerable pain on the working class and may even lead to an even bigger hole in the state finances. It may even lead to increased civil conflict. Demand may fall as a result of increased taxation and spending cuts. This reduced demand may lead to greater unemployment. This in turn may increase the size of the deficit. Therefore the policy of balancing the budget does not necessarily solve problems. The growing Irish budget deficit is a manifestation of an acute global profitability crisis. It is only when this crisis is solved can budget deficits such as the Irish one be eliminated (not that this necessarily needs to be done). To think that the Irish budget deficit can be solved by balancing the budget is to promote a forced separation between the world depression and specific problems of the Irish economy. Specific economic problems are a product of contradictions within the world capitalist economic system. Generally speaking they are not a product of subjective factors such as what the government did or did not do. The budget deficit and many other economic problems are not independent of each other. The deficit in the Irish finances will only be solved as a result of ongoing world economic recovery. This is because it is inseparably connected with the current world wide depression. The present strategy of the Fianna Fail led government is inflicting great pain on the Irish working class. It is a strategy not intended to eliminate the deficit. The deficit is the pretext for reducing the living standards of the working class and generally worsening its conditions of work. This, it is hoped, will make for a leaner and meaner capital that is more profitable. If Mr Cowan succeeds in achieving this he will have been a very successful Taoiseach (prime minister). The second policy is advocated by elements within the Irish Left. It suggests that reducing taxes may tend to increase demand thereby partly compensating for the falling demand due to depression itself. It calls for increased spending, public works, as a means of providing a stimulus to the economy in a time of contraction. It claims that the resulting deficit can be made up for by borrowing from, say, the European Union. It also claims that in the period of recovery the deficit will tend to shrink and can more easily be paid out of state revenues. Despite its plausible nature this policy is no more a solution than the previous one. In the short term it will tend to lessen the intensity of suffering inflicted on the working class. However it may tend to prolong the pain by lengthening the time over which the deficit is to be, supposedly, paid for by the working class. But there is a limit to borrowing. If this were not the case there would never be any need to be concerned over deficits. They could grow at any rate and to any size because borrowing can adequately compensate for both rate and size. The same understanding can apply to spending. Under these conditions there need never be depressions because money or credit can be flushed into economies to prevent the crisis from occurring. Such an economic ideology fetishises money and credit. It falsely suggests that the quantity of money or credit is the panacea for economic evils. Money then is presented as the determinant of economic expansion. Production is mistakenly presented as the derivative of money -not the reverse. This is to mistake the appearance of capital for its essence. The valorisation process, the production of surplus value, is the source of economic expansion --not money and credit. This policy represents a more
[Marxism-Thaxis] IMPACT Union and the workers
The action was voted down because many of its members are unhappy with the way in which the IMPACT official leadership and the official leadership of the trade union movement as a whole is leading its membership. There is little confidence in the existing union leadership. The character of the trade union leadership is such as to obstruct the working class in the struggle to defend living standards. They have failed miserably to effectively engage in the propaganda war against the working class. Trade union representatives hardly exploit the media to get the correct message across. Consequently they let diverse opposition elements take over tv, radio and print. Just listen to the Joe Duffy show to get a evidence of this. Leading up to the big march in Dublin the ICTU had hardly did much to actively publicise and encourage attendance at the march. They prefer to engage in secret talks with government and employer representatives concerning so called social partnership. Social partnership is merely a means to restrain wages and force workers to work more intensively. The union leadership has been deliberately damping down opposition against the government in the hope that it will reward them with a privately negotiated deal to effectively betray workers. Neither Fianna Fail, the Green Party, Fine Gael nor The Labour Party are against making workers pay for the economic depression. Each only differ as to how to make them pay. Even the trade union leadership is not against the imposition of taxes on workers nor cuts in wages. They merely call for fairness. But fairness means nothing. It is merely a word designed to fool the workers into accepting cuts in living standards. The working class needs to break with the union leadership replacing it with a leadership that advances its class interests. Paddy Hackett htttp:\\patrickhackett.blogspot.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
[Marxism-Thaxis] FW: Fianna Fail's strategy
The following is my opinion: The Fianna Fail party has a strategy. It is my opinion that Brian Cowan, as Taoiseach, is being increasingly viewed by the Fianna Fail Party as a transitory leader of the Party. The Party will sacrifice him to save its skin. He will be saddled, so it hopes, with all the blame concerning the harsh decisions that are currently being made by the Fianna Fail led government. Consequently, in true Stalinist fashion, he will be eventually sacrificed to the masses to save the Party. When he has done the dirty work he will be shouldered with the blame for Fianna Fail's lack of popularity. He will then be replaced by a new and shining leader. Since many of the nasty decisions will have already been taken by Cowan, the new leader will appear as free from such blame --a smiling and kinder figure -a people's person. It is hoped in this way that any popular support lost by the party will be recovered as a result of the election of its new leader. The mass media will give her/him the customary honeymoon period. In this way it is hoped that the party will win the next general election. Fianna Fail hopes to be able to claim too that it saved the nation from collapse under very adverse global economic conditions. In this way Cowan, as a figure from Greek tragedy, will have fallen on his own sword. The Party, by distancing itself from Brian Cowan, will have saved the day by exclusively holding Cowan responsible for having imposed harsh policies on the working class. There is no better party than Fianna Fail to successfully appeal to patriotism as a device for rallying the Irish people behind it. Paddy Hackett htttp:\\patrickhackett.blogspot.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
[Marxism-Thaxis] Economic Crisis and Ireland
in principle. Neither is he, in principle, against increased taxation being imposed on the working class. He merely calls for fairness in taxation. The Labour Party and Fine Gael claim that the cut backs in the living standards of the working class are necessary and correct. Their difficulty with Fianna Fail is their alleged lack of fairness together with the unscrupulous way in which they are imposed. The opposition of Fine Gael and Labour hinges on matters of ethics. Fine Gael presents itself as free from corruption unlike Fianna Fail. They oppose the form as opposed to the substance of Fianna Fail's politics. They thereby present a false opposition since ethically there can be no essential difference between the parties. Fine Gael and Labour would be largely as dirty as Fianna Fail were they in government under the same conditions as Fine Fail. It also claims that it would make a more competent party than Fianna Fail. Again this is a rather derivative difference and of no significance. In effect the main party in power and the opposition are similar. Consequently the opposition concentrate their opposition around matters of corruption and competence. These constitute matters of secondary importance that obstruct the healthy development of class politics. The voluntary reduction of salaries by high profile figures from the business and media world is merely a ploy designed to exert further pressure on the working class to accept living standards. The growing army of the unemployed means that the production of surplus value, total profits, has diminished. This means that fewer resources exist from which to pay for state expenditure. This forces the state to cut spending, increase taxes and borrowing. Borrowing is a form of future taxation with a difference. Interest must be paid which amounts to an addition to future taxation. This constitutes a further deduction from total profits which further adversely affects investment conditions. This tends to bring about a downwards spiral. Consequently the Irish economy is forced to further contract in order to reproduce the conditions for recovery. Spending cuts, taxation and borrowing must be further increased. The present depression is a result of the bourgeoisie's refusal to let the economic system follow its natural cyclical downswing whereby capitalism cleanses itself of less profitable forms of capital. This leads to a restoration of profitability and greater sustained economic activity. Instead the capitalist class through the medium of its state modified the downswings through counter-cyclical interventionist activity. The ruling class fear a generalised depression because its destabilising consequences may lead to revolution. In general the more the cyclical behaviour of capitalism is modified and prevented from completing its natural cycle the greater, more intense the crisis. The evidence suggests that the capitalist social system has plunged into depression. No amount of state intervention can arrest it from assuming an acute form this time round. We have now entered a new historical epoch. Politics can never be the same again. Under these new conditions of sustained and deep stagnation the class struggle sharpens. Consequently capitalism's obsolescent character becomes increasingly visible. At present the leadership of the working class (trade union and political leadership) has been offering solutions intended to rescue capitalism from its demise. Capitalism can only be rescued at the expense of the working class. There exist no significant political forces advocating a solution necessitating the transcendence of capitalism. Communists must endeavour to create communist current within the working class. This can begin by organising circles of communist intellectuals. Such a communist intelligentsia conducts an intellectual struggle to propagate communist doctrine. As this intelligentsia develops and spreads its influence it has the basis for linking into the more advanced sections of the working class to form a communist strand within the working class. This is the basis on which a revolutionary communist movement can be built. Under the present critical conditions a communist movement would draw up an action plan as the basis for struggle against this sustained attack on the working class. Paddy Hackett ___ 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] Finance Capital
Hi Anybody know where I can download Towards a Theory of Finance Capital by Hillel Ticktin. It was published in No 17 Critique Journal of Socialism. Paddy Hackett ___ 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] UK finances
Hi The recent developments in the UK, the state's injection of cash into the system, is going to put more heat on the share value of the Irish banks. The share price will fall sharply because of the markets seeking a similar injection of cash into the Irish banks. The problem is that the Irish state may not have the funds to provide that kind of liquidity required for the Irish economy. The coalition government's following the line of David McWilliam's will prove damaging to Irish capitalism -financial rescue on the cheap by nationalising the bankocracy's debts. Paddy Hackett ___ 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] Economic Downturn
Hi The growing recessionary conditions pertaining in the global capitalist economy will be used as a feeble pretext by the bourgeoisie to make sharp cut-backs of all sorts in order to increase the exploitation of the working class. The working class is to be made pay for the downturn in the global economy. The working class have now to pay for the bloated returns made by many elements among the bourgeoisie. The working class needs to politicize and organize itself in order to be able to successfully resist attempts to solve the downturn at the expense of the working class. The working class must on the basis of communist politics develop an action programme around which to engage in combat against the ruling class. Paddy Hackett ___ 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] communism mailing list
Perhaps you only say this Hans because I have highlighted what may be the hidden strategy. Get rid of the smallest mailing lists then proceed to the bigger ones. It is strange that you should want to close down the Communism List at a period when there is a global financial crisis and the probable prospects of more individuals questioning capitalism. The Communism List has existed for years and has been a quiet list for some time years now yet you never in all that time, except now, questioned the validity of the lists. If I recall correctly Spoon initially got rid of a specific Marxist list and then eliminated others so that there were none left. Yet they left that strange Foucault List its server. This is Duke University --I think. Paddy -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of ehrbar Sent: 04 October 2008 22:53 To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Cc: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] communism mailing list There is no danger that I will close down marxism-thaxis. Hans. ___ 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 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] communism mailing list
Hi Hans sent me an email informing me that he is going to close down the communism list. Already at least ten of its subscribers have expressed their view that it should be left open. One of the reasons by him for closing it down is the fact that the word communism is in its name. He says that this is or could be a liability. He also said that the archives are only open to subscribers is another difficulty. I would not be surprised if Hans intends to close thaxis down too. I urge you to make your views known on the issue of closing the communism list down. This resembles the Spoon situation some years ago. The Marxism lists were all closed down by Spoon --another university. Paddy Hackett Moderator of communism list ___ 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] Ossetians
Has nothing to do with individualism. Merely claiming that Dost talking about the suppression of difference which can vover individualism and ethnic identity among other things. And am merely speculating. Paddy - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Friday, August 15, 2008 2:58 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Ossetians OK, but I don't see what ethnic conflict has to do with individualism or the suppression thereof. On individualism and Marxism, see my bibliography: http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/marxind1.htmlMarx the Individual Reconsidered At 05:53 PM 8/14/2008, Paddy Hackett wrote: This is just my point concerning the significance of Dostoevsky. He believed that under contemporary socio-economic conditions pertaining then spirit, free will, individuality was denied any presence. By covering over difference, ethnic distinctions, individuality with the ideology of the common good the prevailing conditions failed to facilitate the difference. Soviet ideology and culture merely denied its existence and the existence of defiance. The West, in a sense, fares no better. Under Western conditions false difference and individuality has increasingly replaced authenticity --authentic difference and individuality. Marxism may have failed too in this regard. We have got to seriously examine the matter of authentic individuality in the context of positive social, economic and technological developments. Paddy Hackett -- Culturally it seems that the socialist states did not get to grips with the reality of racist friction but covered it over with an ideology of common good, which was then subject to attack as hypocrisy. - just my impressions. Chris Burford London ___ 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 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] Marx and individualism
- Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Friday, August 15, 2008 4:00 PM Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Marx and individualism Ossetians Paddy Hackett rasherrs at eircom.net Fri Aug 15 06:11:20 MDT 2008 Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Ossetians Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Ossetians Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] Previous message should have read: Has nothing to do with individualism. Merely claiming that Dost talking about the suppression of difference which can cover individualism and ethnic identity among other things. And am merely speculating. Paddy CB: On Marx and individualism , there is a poster to a couple of related lists - lbo-talk and pen-l - Ted Winslow , who has a very developed and forceful theory on Marx's ideas on universally developed individuals as a premise for a successful socialist society. He has written tens of posts on the subject, and essays as , I think, a professor. 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 ___ 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] Amazon and time
Thanks But why does it take four weeks and more to deliver to Ireland from the UK? Yours etc., Paddy Hackett Hackett Blog http://hakett.blogspot.com/ Communism List http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/communism - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Monday, August 28, 2006 4:48 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Amazon and time What about this? http://www.amazon.co.uk/ At 03:38 PM 8/27/2006 +0100, Paddy Hackett wrote: Besides Amazon does anybody know of a similar company based in Britain or Ireland? Amazon seems to be based in the US which makes its shipping costs of books and the time greater. I live in Ireland. Yours etc., Paddy Hackett Hackett Blog http://hakett.blogspot.com/ Communism List http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/communism ___ 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 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] Verdun
So would you extend this conjecture to suggest that the reason hundreds of thousands of workers were pitted against each other in both world wars is because these workers were principally based in the working class of colonialist countries. To extend this further would it suggest why layers of the working class from non-imperialist countries were prepared to join the imperialist armies then. They represented privileged indigenous elements within the colonised countries -layers that may have indirectly benefited from imperialism's nd development. These layers were to be found in countries such as Ireland, India and Africa. Yours etc., Paddy Hackett http://hakett.blogspot.com/ I guess that is the $64 billion dollar question for Marxists. Back in his day, Engels noted that British workers thought about British foreign policy in much the same way as did the British bourgeoisie, which meant that they were supportive of imperialism. As at least a partial explanation, Engels proposed the hypothesis that there existed within the British (and other European working classes), a stratum of relatively privileged workers, that he called the labor aristocracy. Since they were generally much better off than other workers, they would tend to be more conservative politically, and would have a moderating influence over the workers movement. In other words, this stratum would tend to be favorable to a politics of class collaboration. ___ 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] Verdun
Hi I have been watching two programmes on the battles of Verdun and the Somme fought during he First World War. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were killed during these battles. Perhaps we could discuss the significance of these deaths in relation to today. Would the working class have been as compliant as they appeared to be in both Germany, France and Britain. I know there were mutinies such as the mutiny in the French army. It still seems to be that there was still a lot of compliance on the part of the working class. Yours etc., Paddy Hackett Hacketthttp: //hakett.blogspot.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
[Marxism-Thaxis] Framing McKevitt
Michael and Bernadette's names and photographs were printed. While in custody, Michael was told that his arrest was a political decision. When Bernadette was told that her husband was charged, the Garda officers mocked her telling her she would no longer be able to continue with her political work now. (This was indeed proven true sometime afterward. As a result of the framing of her husband, Bernadette's energies were diverted to campaigning on behalf of Michael. That combined with the rearing of their children single-handedly left her unable to continue with her role in the 32 County Sovereignty Movement.) On the 30th March 2001 Bernadette was released without charge. Michael was taken before the non jury Special Criminal Court (SCC) in Dublin and charged with directing the activities of an illegal organisation and membership of the same organisation namely the IRA. Three days later Michael received a document via his solicitor from the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), outlining the charges against him. This document pointed out that bail would be denied for a number of reasons, principally because they claimed he hadn't rebutted the allegations made against him in the newspapers. This was inaccurate as Michael and Bernadette had rebutted the allegations through their solicitor however the vast majority of the news media did not report the denials. In addition to this the BIRW compiled a report refuting these allegations on Michael and Bernadette's behalf. The DPP document also stated that an MI5 and FBI informant David Rupert would give evidence against him in any future trial. From the outset there was an ongoing steady stream of leaks through the media about Michael's case. Most were complete fabrications without foundation and had been designed to promote an image of guilt to the public prior to Michael's trial. Some reports claimed that emails had been sent between Michael and Rupert and that these would be used as evidence. Other reports claimed that there was surveillance video evidence of Michael meeting Rupert. These reports were completely false. Prior to the original trial date Michael was contacted by his legal representatives who conveyed an offer of a deal on behalf the DPP. The offer was as follows, if Michael pleaded guilty to the membership charge, then the charge of directing terrorism would be dropped. Despite the fact that this offer would have resulted in a lesser sentence - the charge of directing terrorism carried a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, Michael refused the offer on the basis that this was an attempt by the prosecution to conceal the stitch-up and also bolster the civil case. . Yours etc., Paddy Hackett http://hakett.blogspot.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
[Marxism-Thaxis] Fw: Chomsky and Capital
Noam Chomsky claims that capitalism is state capitalism. He argues that without the existence of the state capitalism would not be thriving as it has.Much of the productive technology, he suggests, is a product of state research and investment. The countries that are relatively prospering economically are the ones that follow the US model of state-corporate capitalism: Japan and South East Asia along with parts of South America. The countries that cut back on state spending, following the IMF's advice, are the ones that have been in decline. He seems to believe that the capitalism of Das Kapital is an anachronistic artefact from the past. He never systematically follows his thesis up. Paddy Hackett ___ 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] Radio Stations
Hi Can any of you be so kind as to give me the website address of left and progressive radio stations. I know about Mother Jones but no others. Paddy Hackett ___ 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] DaVinci Code
_ Hi I read the DaVinci code some time ago. I folowed this up with a visit to the flicks to see it in film form. I was much disappointed --book much better. Anybody any view on this? Yours etc., Paddy Hackett Hackett Blog http://hakett.blogspot.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] Kant Bhaskar
Paddy Hackett: I dont see how any serious marxist can forge an argument by using Kant's categorical imperative. Charles Brown: I am presently preparing/reworking the chapter in which I put forward my case for egalitarianism (my thesis is a critique of the New Classical Model and Liberal Capitalist orthodoxy - in particular the way in which both legitimise inequality) and I am trying to forge my argument by using Kant's categorical imperative and especially his deontology in contrast to utilitarianism, and consequentialism... Still trying, need a lot of help... runing late on deadline. Paddy Hackett ___ 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] Brown and philosophy
Charles Brown: Moreover, the moral injunction of the categorical imperative, namely act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. Paddy Hackett: I cannot see how the struggle for the abolition of wages through the struggle for real increases in the price of labour power can have anything to do with the categorical imperative. This is struggle entailing both the defence and advance of living standards. It is dictated by the specific limits of a specific capitalist society and the necessity to transcend those limits through communism. This is both a bread and butter issue and an issue of human realisation. Consequently it has nothing to do with the categorical imperative with its subjectivist limitations. Paddy Hackett ___ 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] Kant Bhaskar
It is just an idea. I could just as easily say the idea of humans as not ends in themselves. Paddy Hackett - Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx andthe thinkers he inspired' marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2006 8:29 PM Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Kant Bhaskar That's somebody else whose writing on Kant's categorical imperative. Is the idea of humans as ends in themselves alien to Marxism ? What is the idealist error in that. Charles Paddy Hackett: I dont see how any serious marxist can forge an argument by using Kant's categorical imperative. Charles Brown: I am presently preparing/reworking the chapter in which I put forward my case for egalitarianism (my thesis is a critique of the New Classical Model and Liberal Capitalist orthodoxy - in particular the way in which both legitimise inequality) and I am trying to forge my argument by using Kant's categorical imperative and especially his deontology in contrast to utilitarianism, and consequentialism... Still trying, need a lot of help...runing late on deadline. Paddy Hackett ___ 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 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 Informer
Hi I have just finished reading The Informer by Liam O Flaherty. It is a novel published in the 1920s. It is set at the turn of the 20th century in Ireland during a period of political turmoil. For me the novel makes for interesting reading. Has anybody else read it. Perhaps you might offer some comments on it. O Flaherty was an Irish writer. He was also involved prominently in the struggles of the 1920s. He apparently led an occupation of a building in Dublin as a part of the struggle of the unemployed for rights. He was, I believe, a founding member of the Communist Party of Ireland. I have just purchased a recently published novel written by Dermot Bolger. It is titled The Family on Paradise Pier. Paddy Hackett ___ 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] Adams and Republicans
This piece is from The Blanket. Provisional Pushover Tom Luby • 26 November 2004 They are two of the most intriguing questions swirling around Gerry Adams. Why does he keep on denying that he was and is in the Provisional IRA, something that the proverbial dogs in the street, from Ballymurphy to Ballyholme, know full well? And why does he keep attacking those in the media with the temerity to say so? The first of those questions is the more difficult to answer for it requires a journey deep into a mind that not every investigator would wish to explore, an expedition not for the faint-hearted! It can’t be because of fear of self-incrimination, for those days have gone forever. Indeed it would not be stretching credulity too far to suggest that if tomorrow the British or Irish governments were to stumble upon a filing cabinet stuffed with signed confessions of IRA membership, the Great Bearded One would never have to stand in front of a judge and the filing cabinet would be disappeared as quickly and completely as...well, Jean McConville. The reason the GBO denies any connection to the IRA, that he disavows responsibility and deeds that other comrades are obliged, and occasionally happy to admit, can only be speculated upon but there can be little doubt that he does so because it suits his interests. It enables him to lie during negotiations with Unionists and the British about his influence over issues like decommissioning and to take refuge in the fiction that he must go to the IRA” to get approval for every concession. As important, it creates a public relations-friendly image of a peaceful political activist who intervened to escort misguided colleagues out of the cul-de-sac of violence, an image that goes down well with the “useful idiots” who fawn over him in places like Hollywood. Would Martin Sheen and Fionnuala Flanagan be so eager to host cocktail parties for the GBO in their Beverly Hills homes if they thought this is the man under whose leadership the Belfast IRA developed and perfected the car bomb now used by Jihadists around the world? Or that this is the man who was disappearing people when General Pinochet was only a faint glint in Henry Kissinger’s eye? And it sets the stage for that day, perhaps in seven years or so, when he makes his bid to become tenant of that mansion in Phoenix Park currently occupied by Mary McAleese. To win the presidency of Ireland, to take his place alongside Dev as the modern giant of peace, the GBO must by then have completely bleached his image of any association with Jean McConville or the devices that wrought such carnage in Donegall Street or on Bloody Friday. That’s where the second question comes in, the reason why he bullies the media every time one of its number raises the issue of his links with the Provisional IRA. He does this, quite simply, because bullying the media per se in these days of the peace process works. It works because the Irish media are terrified of being labelled “unhelpful” to the process, terrified of being accused of aiding dissidents or weakening the Provisionals’ peace camp by asking awkward questions. A startling example of the GBO’s growing ability to bend the Irish media to his will has come in a dispute between Gerry Adams and the Irish Times’ Northern Editor, Gerry Moriarty over that journalist’s use of the tag “Provisional” when writing about Sinn Fein and/or the IRA. Last July 20th, Adams sent an angry letter to the paper’s editor, Geraldine Kennedy, protesting Moriarty and the paper’s practice. He wrote: “My position is straightforward and consistent. A paper of record should be just that. There is no such organisation as Provisional Sinn Fein. Gerry Kelly is not a Provisional Republican. He is a republican, full stop. He is also a North Belfast MLA. A paper of record should reflect that.” Leaving aside the fact that if the Irish Times were truly a paper of record it would also report that Adams sits on the Provisional IRA's Army Council and that Gerry Kelly is a very recent Adjutant-General of that body, it is clear that Adams’ admonition of the paper and its Northern Editor had a quite remarkable effect. The evidence is there in a simple Lexis-Nexis search of the Irish Times before and after Adams’ wrote his ill-tempered missive. In the three months before Adams’ letter, that is between April 20th and July 20th 2004, Moriarty, either by himself or in a joint byline, wrote 56 articles about Sinn Fein and/or the IRA of which 9 used the term “Provisional” or “Provisionals” - that is 16 per cent of the time. Now the dispassionate observer might wonder what Adams was making all this fuss about, after all using the “P” word in sixteen out of every hundred articles is not exactly excessive. But nonetheless the Irish Times reacted as if it had
[Marxism-Thaxis] Re: The Selfish Gene: Thirty Years On [fwd]
Interesting. Many biologists, if not most of them, claim that the Darwinian basis of biology will never change. Yet they claim that science is based on tests. But if science is only as valid as the last supportive test then there cannot be special claims made for neo-Darwinism. Paddy Hackett 1 April, 2006 Quote from Ralph Dumain Furthermore, the metaphorical, analogical extensions of scientific ideas in this case are even more egregious than the mystifications by some physicists of their own science, as these mystifications are philosophical and not intrinsic to the science, while the pseudoscientific pretensions of Dawkins and co. compromise the scientific claims themselves. 1. If you have the time I would be interested if you can expand on why you think the extensions, mystification, social claims, of Dawkins are intrinsic or might compromise the science. 2. I am not quite sure about your first claim about physics. It seems to me that historically, there were certain metaphysical (loosely speaking) claims made by physics that seemed then to be intrinsic to science-itself, that were later found to be without foundation. (Claims about continuity, reduction, etc.) For instance I just read Arnold Thackray's very interesting book *Atoms and Powers: An Essay on Newtonian Matter-Theory and the Development of Chemistry*. One of the main arguments of that book is that the more philosophical and pseudoscientific extensions of Newtonian theory all but strangled chemistry and took scientists who were not trained in the established Newtonian orthodoxy to take chemistry seriously. Further, to extend this, Chemistry, continued to be suspected of being unscientific by many physicists until Linus Pauling showed in his sketch of quantum chemistry, that it was the Newtonians who had mischaracterized the problem by propounding what can be now seen as metaphysical conditions for proof. It seems to me, just looking at the science that Dawkins and Company lay claim to, (though again I would look at the less popular writings of George Williams for claims that are scientifically, broad but socially more limited) they are making some of the same mistakes as the Newtonians. They simply believe without question, that science is not science without both theoretical reduction and realist reduction. They also believe that their model of scientific theory *must* explain all other similar phenomena with a theory that is similar (if not exactly the same) as the gene-centric model. The intellectual mistakes seem to me to be very similar to the extensions of physicists to other areas. The problem is that when we talk about genes and evolution we are not only talking about ants, orchids, aphids, and lizards, but about human beings. Thus the ideological consequences are directly felt in arguments about the possibilities of human individuals and societies. So if the kind of gene-centered notions are extended in the exact same manner as Newtonian matter-theory was extended the consequences are not only felt by the squelching of certain kinds of scientific and philosophical thinking, but also as a problem of where to draw the political lines. If I am wrong in this it is because I am highly sympathetic to the uses of the gene-centered theory. Thus I think that ideological lines are very important to draw and I also think that the ideological lines an be drawn without losing the theory. Jerry Monaco ___ 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 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] Angela Davis
Hi The posting on Angela Davis was an interesting and informative one. Paddy Hackett ___ 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] Catholic Church admits fallibility of Bible!
I have been reading the the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. So far it is making for a good read. It is also interesting. Anybody have any views on the novel. Paddy Hackett Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent THE hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true. ___ 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] Snobbery Sapiens
Homo sapiens today suffers from species snobbery or a related infection. This is why it devotes so much energy to the issue of the discovery of alien forms of intelligent life. It is as if the discovery of alien intelligent life forms is something to be sought after more than other life forms or even forms of nature. The point is that it is not necessarily a matter of significance to find life on a par with our intelligence or not. It may be just as great a scientific achievement to find life forms whether in the form of intelligent or non-intelligent forms. Scientifically and philosophically there cannot be a difference. The only basis from which there can be a difference is in terms of exploitation or companionship. Scientifically neither forms matter. Finding non-intelligent life maybe just as scientifically significant if not more since the scope for greater scientific development may be muich greater than when as otherwise. It just makes no sense scientifically as to why it is more important to discover intelligent life forms than other life forms or even non-living forms of nature. To privilege one over the other is to be both unobjective and ideological. This is then a philosophical and not a scientific postion. We then need to understand the philosophical basis underlying this outlook. Scientifically homo sapiens nor other intelligent life forms, supposing they exist, can merit no more attention than other natural phenomena. Indeed the view that homo sapiens and any other intelligent life forms merit special attention by science contains a form of speciasm. It suggests that scientifically speaking this caegory is at the centre of being and is what really matters. But given the nature of science this cannot be a scientific position but a philosophical one. And if this position is one that much of the scientific community has adopted then it has to be said that science is being dominated and restricted by a particular philosophy. This means that scientific inquiry is not motivating science but a particular philosophy. But science cannot be determined by a particular prejudice, a particular philosophy, but by science itself. Such a situation can distort the scientific enterprise and even obstruct its progress. Paddy Hackett ___ 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] Aliece in Wonderland
Does anyone have views on the book Alice in Wonderland? What, if anything,
is it saying regarding society.
Paddy
Paddy Hackett
- Original Message -
From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: 'PEN-L list' PEN-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU; [EMAIL PROTECTED];
'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marxand the
thinkers he inspired' marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu
Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 5:17 PM
Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Union labor under attack
From the unionbusting Detroit News,...
CB
^^
Union labor under attack
Givebacks threaten workers' good life
By Ron French, Louis Aguilar and Brett Clanton / The Detroit News
Image
http://www.detnews.com/pix/2005/08/23/asec/a023-nwpicket-0805y_08-23-2005_V
282KEN.jpg
Brandy Baker / The Detroit News
Northwest mechanics: The airline keeps running without striking workers such
as Carolyn Andreis.
http://www.detnews.com/pix/folios/dot.gif
http://www.detnews.com/pix/folios/cybersurveymidsizeclear.gif
Give back or give up?
Detroit, the cradle of the labor movement, is ground zero in a battle for
the soul -- and survival -- of organized labor. Unions are losing pay,
losing members, and even losing the sympathy
http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0508/23/A01-289731.htm of
supporters like Roth to the corporations that employ them. Are the
concessions being asked of the unions out of line?
Yes
No
Get results and comments
http://info.detnews.com/feedback/lettersindex.cfm?topic=Give_back_or_give_u
pforum=dnletters
As a daughter of public school teachers in Brooklyn, Megan Roth once spent a
month making signs, picketing and shouting slogans demanding better pay for
her parents and their co-workers. It was a blast, recalls the 43-year-old
Southfield resident.
So when a striking Northwest mechanic handed her a pamphlet asking her to
boycott Northwest Airlines, she read it intently. Then the financial adviser
proceeded to check into her Northwest flight to Atlanta.
I feel for them, Roth said. But who is right or wrong? I honestly don't
know how to answer that.
It's tough times for organized labor.
Membership is at its lowest in a century. Locally, teachers and auto workers
are being pressured to take pay and benefit cuts. Mechanics for Northwest
went on strike Saturday and watched helplessly as replacement workers took
their place and members of other airline unions crossed picket lines.
Detroit, the cradle of the labor movement, is ground zero in a battle for
the soul -- and survival -- of organized labor. Unions are losing pay,
losing members, and even losing the sympathy of supporters like Roth to the
corporations that employ them.
The cracks in the House of Labor are spreading well beyond the picket lines
and union halls. Last month, 4.6 million workers from the Teamsters, the
United Food and Commercial Workers, and the Service Employees International
Union split from the AFL-CIO, the biggest rift organized labor has seen in
70 years.
If the power and popularity of unions continues to decline, it will make an
enormous difference to the average American, warned labor expert Harley
Shaiken, professor at the University of California at Berkeley. An erosion
of unions today is an erosion of wages and benefits tomorrow.
Union leaders have not been able to organize workers fast enough to stem the
losses. Labor groups have repeatedly failed to sign up workers at Wal-Mart
stores or the foreign-owned auto assembly plants popping up throughout the
South.
The threat of a strike no longer strikes fear in CEOs the way it once did.
A work slowdown by mechanics of Northwest in 1999 brought Metro Airport and
the airline to a halt. Strikes in the 1980s and 1990s paralyzed airlines
like Pan American World Airways.But when mechanics went on strike Saturday,
Northwest shuttled in replacement mechanics and kept most of its planes in
the air. Northwest wants to cut the number of mechanics in half and give
remaining workers a 25 percent pay cut.
Members of other unions as well as passengers crossed the picket line, some
for the first time.
Michael Raymore is a 28-year-old Detroiter who has grown up in a period of
declining union clout.
The idea of job security is too foreign for me to understand, said
Raymore, a corporate trainer flying to Louisville on Monday. I'm already on
my second career, and I graduated from Western (Michigan University) four
years ago.
When I hear (strikers) say that their jobs and livelihoods are at stake,
I'm like, 'Well, yeah ... whose job isn't always on the line?'
'We've given enough'
Leaders of the United Auto Workers are meeting in Chicago this week to
discuss giving ground on hard-won pay and benefits in order to help General
Motors Corp. javascript:companybox('GM') and Ford Motor
javascript:companybox('F') Co. survive. The companies are struggling with
huge pension and health care obligations for current UAW workers and
retirees.
We've given enough, gee whiz, said Grant Muncy, chairman
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Worst Mistake
Hi Charles Your last reply would suggest that you now share my view concerning the nature of humans. This view is that they form a constituent part of nature just as much as elephants, crows and chimps. This means that homo sapiens adds nothing qualitatively different to reality despite the enormous technology that he has produced. Indeed this technology is essentially no different to nature itself. It may not even be as complex as much of nature especially its life forms. Just recall that despite computer technology humans are still not able to produce a product of the complexity of a squirrel. Recognition of this fact is highly significant. It means that the human species can no longer be conceived as a being distinct from nature containing some key feature -mind or soul-- that renders it qualitatively different from the world of animals. No longer is there any valid basis for religion or Cartesian philosophy. Now all description of man must be grounded in nature. This makes sense. If we were to claim that the human species is larger than nature then we would be logically compelled to provide a source that transcends nature as an explanation for the existence of human nature. Now this is superfluous. For years either in the form of traditional religion, philosophy and other ideological forms we were always brainwashed with the notion that humans transcend nature. Consequently we experienced humans as special. This left open lots of room for religion, magic, superstition and mysticism. This rendered an accurate and reliable description of the human species much more difficult. Such conditions, in many ways, assisted capitalist conditions. Failure to grasp the real nature of the human species investing it with transcendental powers helped obscure the real nature of the capitalist social system. Indeed the way in which capital appears actually tends to reinforce this illusion and thereby perpetuate capitalism. Given that the only thing that exists is nature --matter and energy-- there is no basis for attributing properties to man that transcend matter and energy. To argue that the human species transcends matter and energy it is necessary to introduce a feature that transcends them and is even their opposite. However in the absence of any scientific support for such a hypothesis it can only rely on an idealism which then justifies religion, mysticism and superstition. To realise this is not tantamount to denying that the species is a social tool-making species that engages in praxis. Indeed the very fact that humanity is limited by nature and can never transcend it means that the only way progress is achievable by it is by virtue of its possessing the aforementioned attributes. Traditionally the tendency has been the deification or mystification of the human species because of its achievements in the light of its being fixed in nature. Past inability to correctly explain human development prompted idealist descriptions. Social relations among humans is not something that separates humans off from other species. Indeed some animals, such as chimps, engage in social life. However it is true that homo sapiens takes social relations to a new complex height. But this does not necessarily generate a bifurcation between humans and the animal kingdom. Even their tool making capacity is not said to be unique to the human species. We can never with certainty concluded that the human species was destined to develop from being proto human to fully human. Contingency, as Gould suggests, may have been a decisive factor in the unfolding of events. Given that it is now realised that the human species is just one other species it is possible for humans to eventually establish their real relation to nature in general and other animals in particular. This raises questions as to the way in hich animals are treated under capitalist conditions. Paddy Hackett ___ 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
Fw: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Worst Mistake
Hi Charles Below is a rather hastily written reply to you last contribution. Sorry for the delay I have been otherwise engaged. Expressing a point of view is not the definition of idealism. To have posited language as opposed to point of view would have proven a better starting point. It is language rather than point of view which demarcates us from beasts. The point of view perspective is a rather narrow conception of epistemology. It effectively reduces epistemology to the abstract level of mere point of view. Scientific inquiry cannot be simply reduced to point of view. To do so is to reduce science to that of doxa. It means that Marx's Capital can have no more status than the point of view of any randomly chosen capitalist or worker. It means that the point of view of a fascist who claims that Hitler was right has necessaily the same status of a communist who describes Hitler as an extreme reactionary. As a point of view there is nothing to guarantee that your point of view offers any description of being. To guarantee this, what you call your point of view would have to possess more properties than that of point of view. It may have been a point of view that the sun orbits the earth because of the way in which reality can appear (sun's rising and setting) or that the earth is flat. However that does not give these claims the equale weight to Galileo's conclusions on the subject. This is just the point I have been arguing against. The basis for what is understood as human progress or development cannot be validly based on an unestablished subjective notion (looking out for ourselves.) It must be based on a logically epistemologically and ontologically consistent premise bearing an inherently objective character. It must be falsfiable. Equallly to qualify as scientific Marxism must be falsifiable. It must endlessly seeking to prove its hypotheses wrong. However in general marxism does not do this. Instead it tends to present itself as proven true. Many scientists entertain an opposite position Significantly the force driving these events has been both meaningless and unconscious. Consciousness is a result and not a sui generis of the course of nature. What produces consciousness cannot be produced by it. Consequently to suggest that a modest unestablished notion of humans 'obliged to look out for themselves' can serve as a driving force of the future being of man is not a valid assumption. Mere opinion cannot legitimately claim that consciousness must be used to decide what progress is. Since yours is a mere opinion it can carry no more status than the opinion of a fascist or a Buddhist. Everything for you is reduced to mere opinion --mere subjectivity. Since for you point of view is all that anyone can express there exists no basis for truth or even validity. Each of us is then our own opinion. Consequently logically there can exist an endless multiplicity of individual worlds constitued by personal opinion. All opinions are equally valid so all correspondingly equally exist. The fascist, the Buddhist, the Roman Catholic and the communist are equally valid universes. This viewpoint constitutes an unestablished form of naive idealism. It is this problem that is also at the heart of the problems and ambiguities of marxism. It is these matters that need to be thrashed out and settled. Darwin's dangerous idea is that it irrefutably demonstrated that consciousness, and thereby god, is an unnecessary element in any objective outline of naturaldevelopment. Instead nature explains itself by just being --by evolving. It does not logically require you, me or Marx to explain it. In so far as consciousness exists it is a product of evolution. Therefore consciousness exists within nature. It cannot exist outside nature. There is no radical bifurcation between nature and consciousness. No matter how consciousness develops it is circumscribed within it. Consciousness can never transcend nature. To do so is to become god. The vast majority of species that possess consciousness have been still constrained by the laws of nature. Evolution by natural selection entailing the fittest of the survival persisted. Of course consciousness has affected our relationship with nature. This is because it is a product of evolution --a feature of evolution by natural selection. Consciousness must affect our relationship with nature because it is itself nature -a complex form of nature. And this is just the matter which I have been raising but which is may be escaping people. The matter is the character of the relationship of society to nature. The nature of this relationship has to be identified and outlined. If Darwin is correct then this raises certain problems for marxism. One of which I have just mentioned. For Darwin the evolution of consciousness is a product of a meaningless unconscious evolutionary process. Nature is a spontaneous production process that lacks intelligent design. This is proof that production is not
[Marxism-Thaxis] Worst mistake
the bag of rice was bent under it, supporting its weight by a cord across her temples. As for the claim that agriculture encouraged the flowering of art by providing us with leisure time, modern hunter-gatherers have at least as much free time as do farmers. The whole emphasis on leisure time as a critical factor seems to me misguided. Gorillas have had ample free time to build their own Parthenon, had they wanted to. While post-agricultural technological advances did make new art forms possible and preservation of art easier, great paintings and sculptures were already being produced by hunter-gatherers 15,000 years ago, and were still being produced as recently as the last century by such hunter-gatherers as some Eskimos and the Indians of the Pacific Northwest. Thus with the advent of agriculture and élite became better off, but most people became worse off. Instead of swallowing the progressivist party line that we chose agriculture because it was good for us, we must ask how we got trapped by it despite its pitfalls. One answer boils down to the adage Might makes right. Farming could support many more people than hunting, albeit with a poorer quality of life. (Population densities of hunter-gatherers are rarely over on eperson per ten square miles, while farmers average 100 times that.) Partly, this is because a field planted entirely in edible crops lets one feed far more mouths than a forest with scattered edible plants. Partly, too, it's because nomadic hunter-gatherers have to keep their children spaced at four-year intervals by infanticide and other means, since a mother must carry her toddler until it's old enough to keep up with the adults. Because farm women don't have that burden, they can and often do bear a child every two years. As population densities of hunter-gatherers slowly rose at the end of the ice ages, bands had to choose between feeding more mouths by taking the first steps toward agriculture, or else finding ways to limit growth. Some bands chose the former solution, unable to anticipate the evils of farming, and seduced by the transient abundance they enjoyed until population growth caught up with increased food production. Such bands outbred and then drove off or killed the bands that chose to remain hunter-gatherers, because a hundred malnourished farmers can still outfight one healthy hunter. It's not that hunter-gatherers abandonded their life style, but that those sensible enough not to abandon it were forced out of all areas except the ones farmers didn't want. At this point it's instructive to recall the common complaint that archaeology is a luxury, concerned with the remote past, and offering no lessons for the present. Archaeologists studying the rise of farming have reconstructed a crucial stage at which we made the worst mistake in human history. Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny. Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and logest-lasting life style in human history. In contrast, we're still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it's unclear whether we can solve it. Suppose that an archaeologist who had visited from outer space were trying to explain human history to his fellow spacelings. He might illustrate the results of his digs by a 24-hour clock on which one hour represents 100,000 years of real past time. If the history of the human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly the whole of that day, from midnight through dawn, noon, and sunset. Finally, at 11:54 p. m. we adopted agriculture. As our second midnight approaches, will the plight of famine-stricken peasants gradually spread to engulf us all? Or will we somehow achieve those seductive blessings that we imagine behind agriculture's glittering façade, and that have so far eluded us? Paddy Hackett ___ 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] On Postone
Hi Charles I read with interest the piece you presented us with by Loren. An interesting piece. Do you know what Postone's politics are? Paddy Hackett ___ 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
