Lenin’s Tomb
Its kind of like strong and army strong ...
There's gullible, and then there is voter gullible.
Well no shit Sherlock, the corrupt good cop bad cop fake government in the UK (that is an almost carbon copy of the corrupt good cop bad cop fake government in the US), holds crooked elections.
Sheesh -- no shit!
Do they give you folks in the Uk a little stick on badge that says, "I voted!"? Kind of like a little gold star in grade school.
They are gangsters, its all corrupt, get over it!
Voting takes the concept of 'wanting to believe' beyond sanity. When you vote you only validate the gangsters and their corruption. Give it up!
Do you have a show called British Idol in the UK?
God bless the fucking rule of law!
Hooray!
Roll the sticky badge presses; "I voted, I'm fucking stupid and gullible!"
i on the ball, you seem to see yourself as someone who has crossed over to the other side. You've crap-detected, you've seen through the fraud, you've drawn back the curtain and seen that the Wizard of Oz is a fake. Great. The problem always remains is that the majority of people haven't crossed over. They believe (and are encouraged to do so every day) that all in all, the state and all its institutions and processes are essentially benign and carried out in the interests of the 'people as a whole'. There are sufficient examples, corners, parts of the state which most of us would defend, that make a total blank slate-wiping condemnation foolish. So we are left with a constant struggle to fight for the defence of services but to fight against the ways in which the state controls us and facilitates oppression. One small corner of the UK saw George Galloway puncture the consensus. Part of the process of puncturing and undermining that consensus is to show how the state defends itself when faced with a sizeable popular revolt (albeit in this case local). It's important not only to win, which GG did, but also to show what was done to try and prevent him winning. It's not our shock-horror that we're talking about. It's exposing the shite they threw in order to prevent, yes, the 'will of the people.'. You might have heard it all before. 'We' might have heard it all before. Many haven't.
I love it when people contribute constructive posts.
so much for the "effiency" of
private enterprise - voting in the local MP's name is pretty average, I would have thought.
I don't think that people who vote are 'gullible'. What a stupid starting point.
Do you think that the Police will actually do anything about this? This is from the Respect site.
"Councillor Abjol Miah, leader of the RESPECT group, said today: 'It is a disgrace that Tower Hamlets tolerates this flagrant abuse of democracy.
RESPECT has brought this challenge at much personal sacrifice by our members, to expose the rotten regime in our Council in relation to voting. This needs to be swept clean immediately, and we call on the police to make sure this fraud is ended now.'
Wouldn't it be better to involve the community, have a lively demo of the council etc?
I remember the Australian comedian Andrew Denton got a crowd roaring with laughter before the 1993 election, in a televised "comedy debate" over the question of whether voting was a waste of time. His point was that you didn't vote for a candidate but against the candidate you hated the most.
It was an election which our local Tories were not supposed to be able to lose - so hated was the incumbent Labor PM, Paul Keating. They chose the most radical right-wing candidate they could with a complete slash and burn neo-liberal set of policies.
The turning point was an American-style TV debate which the TV channel filmed in front of a audience. Every audience member was encouraged to reveal their leaning to or against a candidate by pressing a lever. The result was a line (dubbed "the worm") that appeared at the bottom of the screen during the debate.
Every-time Keating tried to defend his record the worm plunged away from him. Whenever he got stuck in to attacking his opponent (Keating had a good line in invective and had once described the said Dr Hewson - a former professor of economics - as a "feral abacus") the worm revived.
He then went on to run a negative campaign attacking the slash and burn policies of the abacus and won a stunning victory.
I think that's what motivates a lot of voters in modern politics. There's little enthusiasm left for any of the parties. But the pleasure of voting out a Thatcher of a Bush is genuine, regardless of the fact that the replacement is bound to disappoint.
Of course, in the case of Galloway, you have a candidate who represented something positive, so cynicsim about the elctoral process is even more out of place.
What are the police doing about voting fraud? Regardless of whether it influenced the election of result, it is still a crime. I stood in a local council election a few years ago and the Returning Officer was insistent that every candidate, even no-hoper independents, provide all the details of expenses and was so diligent that he ordered recounts in wards where there were clear winners. All the postal votes were counted separately and examined diligently in front of us. It was frustrating for the candidates and tiring for those counting the votes, but it ensured that the vote was as free and fair as possible. The Returning Officer is ultimately responsible for allowing electoral fraud in Tower Hamlets, either due to his incompetence or corruption.
I've seen better run elections in India, where the Electoral Commission uses electronic voting machines that make it virtually impossible to influence the vote illegally - they also deliver election results faster, so that nobody has to suffer those long tedious nights of counting. Elections in the UK are archaic and vulnerable to corruption and the electoral system is a joke.
The Returning Officer is ultimately responsible for allowing electoral fraud in Tower Hamlets, either due to his incompetence or corruption.
"Her", in this case: Christine Gilbert, wife of Home Office minister Tony McNulty, former Tower Hamlets chief executive and returning officer - now chief inspector of schools.
Other than that, however, your assessment is utterly accurate. (See also: "abused her powers" here, and Galloway's speech here (derided at the time, entirely perspicacious in hindsight), for starters.)
(Incidentally, this puff-piece, in case anyone is wondering, misses the point: the improvement in Tower Hamlets' GCSE results, if I correctly recall Private Eye a few months back, was driven by Gilbert's decision to allow local headteachers to enter students for single NVQ courses that counted as five GCSEs on the school league tables. The Guardian euphemistically calls this "stricter targets for schools coupled with greater freedom for heads".)
"I've seen better run elections in India, where the Electoral Commission uses electronic voting machines that make it virtually impossible to influence the vote illegally - they also deliver election results faster, so that nobody has to suffer those long tedious nights of counting."
There's gullible, and then there is voter gullible.
Sheesh -- the Wizard is having a field day!
When you vote you only validate the gangsters and their corruption.
When you vote you only validate the gangsters and their corruption.
When you vote you only validate the gangsters and their corruption.
Meaders: Jeez, I didn't know it was that bad. The wife of Tony McNulty, of all people - a man who has all the appeal of a prison governor. Where does Labour get these people? The front bench is full of freaks, like that criminally patronising Patricia Hewitt.
There's gullible, and then there is voter gullible.
Don't be such a berk.
"Do you have a show called British Idol in the UK?"
S'called Pop idol, we came up with it unfortunately.
Votings ok, elections are the once in a while where everyone in the country is talking about politics for a while.
I'm not sure what the patriot guy is trying to say. Like many people, I would prefer to vote than not to vote, despite the deficiencies in the political system I may not be able to change the world by voting, but nobody would have any influence without it. If you want to abolish government, then I'm afraid it is more than likely to stay than go. Better to be politically active - including in electoral politics - than moaning from the outside like well-intentioned anarchists.
I wouldnt say that voting in elections makes you gullible, but rather believing that the Democrats or Republicans are ruling in "your" interest is the guillible part.
The "I Voted!" stickers are rather ridiculous, i think. I guess the state has to drum up support when in a local election you get 15% of people out to vote, and even in an important Presidential election you barely get over 50%.
One thing that would marginally improve US politics would be if local elections were partisan, instead of the nonsensical "non partisan" city councils, county boards, mayors, etc. All leads into the "oh i dont like politics I'm voting for Bush because hes a Good Guy and (for instance) Kerry is a ghoulish weirdo!!!!!"
And having a parlimentary system like in the rest of the world would alleviate the disgusting word of the decade : Bipartisan. In other words, dictatorship.
At least in the UK you dont have to put up with that, constant calls for all the main parties to line up together and support the same policies across the board because you need to "work together to get things done". Any politician with a clear position is regurally excouriated as a "partisan hack" because they're not "Reaching across the aisle" to give handjobs to their opposition. We're all Americans, we must walk in lockstep with each other. blah.
Yes, handjobs in lockstep. If you tried that while riding a bicycle that'd be some feat.
Mr Patriot, or I-on-the-ball if I may, you received an answer from Michael Rosen to your original post, but a little later you return to repeat the slogan of your first post as if nothing had been said to the contrary.
If you disagree with what Michael said, can you say why? Even one counter-argument would be progress. Otherwise why participate in a discussion?
I don't know what standing Lenin (the Bolshevik, not the blogger) has with you, but I think you'd agree that he wasn't a gullible reformist. Here's his reply to you (or rather your counterparts in Germany in 1920).
There's been a recent history here of people making statements, ignoring the refutations they receive in reply, and then dishonestly repeating the same statements a little later. It's incompatible with democratic debate. This is the technique used to wear George Galloway down at the Senate hearing. (I'm not aiming this particularly at Patriot.)
Anyway, Patriot, consider this. The 2 million marching against the war in Britain on 15/02/03 couldn't succeed by themselves. If the demo had been held in the midst of a wave of strikes (not necessarily called specifically over the war), I think you'd agree that the British ruling class would have been telling Blair that it was too risky to go ahead. But strike after strike is still undermined and sold out because of trade union leaders who still see no alternative to Labour (however much they may dislike Blair and his policies). Just one of the many reasons Respect exists is to give the unions that alternative. What would you suggest instead?
babeuf -- apologies for my flip and not very direct responses. Michael has pegged me somewhat correctly when he says;
"i on the ball, you seem to see yourself as someone who has crossed over to the other side. You've crap-detected, you've seen through the fraud, you've drawn back the curtain and seen that the Wizard of Oz is a fake. Great."
I do believe that I see the 'Wizard' rather clearly. Its really not "Great" of course, its fucking scary, frustrating, and cynicism inducing, especially when you realize that others are so afraid of the Wizard. It also tends to make one become flippant and intolerant, again my apologies.
I am not in agreement with Michael when he then says;
"The problem always remains is that the majority of people haven't crossed over. They believe (and are encouraged to do so every day) that all in all, the state and all its institutions and processes are essentially benign and carried out in the interests of the 'people as a whole'."
I don't believe that the majority of people are that ignorant and believe that the state is "benign". The majority of people are really pretty hip and know that 'people as a whole' are constantly getting fucked over by the government. I also believe that a greater part of that majority have in their own minds 'crossed over' and know full well what is going on. They would like to rid themselves of the gangsters that oppress them and begin again on a level playing field but do not have a means to do so and they are afraid. They are aware their government is corrupt, feel powerless, and (and this is key here), as long as they continue to get their own share of crumbs from the system that the gangsters control they will allow the corruption to continue and play their part in the game and not rock the boat. Fear of losing the crumbs metered out by the gangsters is the most inhibiting factor in all of this.
Feerie is correct, national elections in the US pull on average only fifty percent of the population to the polls in spite of massive media get out the vote drives and laying a, "You are not patriotic if you do not vote!", guilt trip on every one. Those who do not vote are not staying home because they are unpatriotic, nor are they in orgasmic bliss with the performance of their government. They stay at home because they know the system is a scam, but more importantly, it does not threaten them with the loss of their crumbs.
Now back to Michael;
"There are sufficient examples, corners, parts of the state which most of us would defend, that make a total blank slate-wiping condemnation foolish."
Yes, I call this the 'aggregate crumb factor'. The problem is that the state (constantly referring to gangsters as the 'state' also validates these fuckers), is presently realizing that they can run things at a greater profit by doling out fewer crumbs. You have to ask yourself how low will you go?
Again from Michael;
"So we are left with a constant struggle to fight for the defence of services but to fight against the ways in which the state controls us and facilitates oppression."
I believe that one of the key - PIVOTAL SAID HE FOR EMPHASIS - ways that the gangsters control us is through the electoral process. [Pointing out the corruption and flaws in the system is beyond the scope of this response. Google 'vote fraud' for starters if you really believe that elections are fair and not rigged.]
Actively boycotting that key process is a move that will present the gangsters with a sizable popular revolt. A voting boycott would in effect be a strike. It would be a popular vote of no confidence in the government. It would also capitilize on the fifty percent of those who already do not vote by allowing them to be counted in the no confidence group. It is also a move the masses could take without threatening an individuals crumb supply. And, it would force the gangsters into a counter action that would reveal their hypocrisy and corruption. They would probably make voting mandatory as it is in Austrailia. Hmmmmmm ... clever of that Aussie gang ...
babeuf - From Lenin in the 1920 piece you cited;
"The first sentence is obviously wrong, since action by the masses, a big strike, for instance, is more important than parliamentary activity at all times, and not only during a revolution or in a revolutionary situation."
People on strike- boycott the vote!
And yes, I have already sent my local supervisor of elections a letter telling her exactly why I would not, and did not, vote in the last election.
It was extremely satisfying to hear her on talk radio defensively bitching about "those who you can never please".
I love Michael Rosen's rewrite of "Left Wing Communism - An Infantile Disorder". Michael, have you ever considered rewriting the whole thing as a poem? The politics are wonderful, but it's not exactly written in the most appealing way.
(Didn't Brecht once propose rewriting the "Communist Manifesto" as a poem - I don't know if he ever did it.)
If voting was made mandatory, I would not vote. I don't like the state telling me how to behave. I don't like ID cards. I don't like having a microchip in my bin determining how much waste my household produces. I don't like finger-wagging politicians stamping my food with traffic light warning signs telling me that food I enjoy is deleterious to my health. I also don't like white middle-aged men preaching multi-culturalism, while turning a blind eye to the blatant and cruel exploitation of immigrants.
If the state wants to rule us by close surveillance and thoughtcrime, they can return the favour with a bit of transparency - publish the attorney general's legal advice on war and corruption, stop rewarding party donors with seats in the House of Lords and PFI contracts, jail Harriet Harman for profiting from Italian mafia bribes, put Blair on trial for war crimes, etc, etc. If the politicians don't want to be put under close scrutiny, then why should we submit to the state's intrusion?
I am very angry because I've got to pay a £7,000 tax bill to Gordon Brown tomorrow. Bastard.
To clarify, I think that most people's attitude to the state is ambivalent and contradictory. Yes, many will say that they're corrupt, and yes I'm being screwed whilst eg working for the state, abiding by all the rules of the state, thinking that eg the cops are mostly OK, the army are doing a bad job well etc etc. However, blanket and total condemnation of the state doesn't move things on either. Some of the services the state provides are improvements on no state provision at all. If, in the UK, we have the vestiges of a universal, free health and education set-up, then surely our job is to defend what we've got, struggle for more, democratise what we have and win, fight privatisation? Where I live has just turned public secondary education into a set of millionaires' fiefdoms. In the next door borough there has been an incredible fight to try and prevent the same thing happening. At this very moment, the situation is that the 'people' have won to keep the fiefdoms out, but the state (municpal govt in truth) has overruled the majority vote. Is this a fight that should be avoided/abdicated/ignored? Because at heart it involves asking for more, not less, state intervention? I don't think so. Thousands of people are being drawninto a debate that is about who should own and control education. (plug here for local hero, Ken Muller!)
Thanks, patriot - I knew from your past performance that you could produce a bunch of counterarguments.
Regarding Lenin in Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder?, the quotation you give doesn't serve your purposes when it's taken in context - Lenin's aim in this section is, after all, to refute the arguments of revolutionaries who say that the existing institutions of bourgeois democracy should be boycotted. In the sentence you quote, Lenin is addressing comrades in the Netherlands who said that strikes and demonstrations had displaced electoral activity because of the revolutionary situation. Lenin says that he can't allow them this as a basis for their boycott argument, since strikes are "at all times" more important than parliamentary activity.
Since, alas, neither you nor I are living in a revolutionary situation at present, Lenin's arguments apply all the more: he was demolishing the boycott arguments precisely because they had begun to sound reasonable to many at a time when the possibility of a Europe-wide revolution seemed plausible not only to Communists, but to the ruling class.
I'll grant you, though, that what you say chimes better with the situation in the U.S. than with that of the U.K. - where you are, the unions throw away their members' dues on a party that has no basis at all in the unions and has always openly acted in the interests of big business. You also had the split between Nader and the Greens last Presidential election, when the Greens and the leadership of the anti-war movement fell for the pessimistic "anybody but Bush" line, which in practice had exactly the opposite effect because it enabled the Democrat leadership to field as pro-war and neo-liberal a candidate as they wished. On top of all that, there's fraud that is much more blatant and widespread than in the U.K. (although they didn't dare try to reverse the far-from marginal Democrat win in the Congressional elections). And laws and polling-station tricks that greatly reduce the number of eligible black voters.
Yes, on the basis of all that, I can well imagine why you don't see any worthwhile results coming from electoral work (that's not agreement but sympathy - in the regular, non-sarcastic sense). Still, it's not a good idea to abstract a universal principle from a particularly bad situation, and electoral activity remains an important element of class struggle from Caracas to Amsterdam, while still, as ever, being subordinate to the extra-parliamentary forces the working class can muster.
i on the ball patriot said: Actively boycotting that key process is a move that will present the gangsters with a sizable popular revolt. A voting boycott would in effect be a strike. It would be a popular vote of no confidence in the government. It would also capitilize on the fifty percent of those who already do not vote by allowing them to be counted in the no confidence group. It is also a move the masses could take without threatening an individuals crumb supply. And, it would force the gangsters into a counter action that would reveal their hypocrisy and corruption.
Have you ever come across José Saramago's 2004 novel Seeing, Patriot? What you've said above is very close to what he explores there. It's a kind of sequel to his earlier Blindness, whose politics stayed beneath the surface - I think he got pissed off with critics who sanitised it, so he made the politics of Seeing so explicit that they couldn't feign blindness this time.
It opens at a polling station in the capital city of an unnamed country on election day. Turnout is sluggish until the afternoon, when suddenly the bulk of the electorate decides to vote, in larger numbers than usual. But when the results come in, it emerges that nearly three-quarters of the electorate returned a blank ballot sheet. The two establishment parties ("right" and "centre") are alarmed, and unite in condemning the "criminal" actions of the capital's citizens. They fix another day for a re-run of the election, only to find that the proportion of blank papers is even higher (thanks largely to the voters of the small left-wing party switching to this tactic).
Saramago then spends the rest of the novel working out what the ruling class of a present-day bourgeois democracy would do in such a situation. Given his politics (he joined the Communist Party in Portugal when membership was still illegal), he has no doubts about how little respect such ruling classes have for democratic nicities once they feel threatened. But perhaps most interestingly, the election results were not brought about through any campaign or plot, but rather as the aggregate of the spontaneous actions of individuals who've had enough of the system.
This in itself is not supposed to be realistic: Saramago likes to take a startling, implausible event and then works out the consequences in a realist manner (although with plenty of Brechtian devices for foregrounding the artificiality of the narrative).
The government leaves the capital city, together with senior civil service and police. The army is used to place the city under a kind of seige - they consider the exemplary punishment of a citizenry that rejects the system to be more important than the damage this move will cause to the national economy. But because they have not yet been challenged by any force capable of overthrowing them, they are divided about how soon they should confront their own citizens with naked force.
Saramago makes it very clear that the absence of a mass movement means that the election results cannot by themselves overturn the system - the ruling class is in some disarray, but still has the upper hand. I won't give away the rest of the plot, but the novel isn't pessimistic (the stirrings of a mass movement are evident before the end).
I hope Babeuf your not implying that I did not respond to 'refutations' of my position on the 'debate' with Rosa. There were none. I stated that Wittgenstein's philosophy could arguably be thought to contain conservative elements (as could Gandhi's incidently) and the 'refutation' consisted of a roll call of Wittgenstein's left wing friends and visits to Russia. I pointed out that this was quite irrelevent to the point I was making.
The usual hysterical and irrational abuse and name calling followed including putting my full name on both the thread and on her site without my permission. This just IS the practice of HP and the thought of historians, social scientists, or political philosophers being subjected to this kind of philistine abuse (complete with accusations of 'dishonesty', which I suspect are simply expressions of incomprehension) does not seem to me in principle that much better then the kind of thing biologists were subjected to during the Lysenko affair. Its something I would actively fight (and indeed it needs to be fought and is fought every day on such terraines: its a neccessary part of the ideological struggle against the philosophy of the class enemy).
One persons clarity: the other persons muddle.
Since this thread seemed to have petered out before the latest message thanks to several interesting new posts further up the Tomb homepage, I don't think there will be too many objections if I reply to johng.
Here, so that any remaining readers can judge for themselves, is johng's characteristic approach to argument.
johng said: I think the boot is on the other foot. Is someone can demonstrate how post-Fregean logic can help resolve genuine difficulties associated with scholarship on historical change I'd be agog.
And then a few hours later on the same day, johng said: ... Again, you've said absolutely nothing in a single post here relevent to anything I've said, and seem quite incapable of the usual rational proceedures associated with argument ... what relevence does 'post-Fregean logic' have to the analyses of historical processes? A time waster.
[due to haloscan problems, the continuation appears in my following message - babeuf]
[continuation of my previous message - babeuf]
Now who would ever guess from the second comment that this message (from me) had appeared immediately after johng's first?: ..."Post-Fregean logic" has no relevance at all for explaining historical change, neither for workers studying the history of class struggle, nor for professional historians, Marxist or otherwise.
This statement implies no praise or denigration of modern logic - it only says that the explanation of historical change lies outside its scope.
You, Meaders and others have kept demanding what ontology, or epistemology or methodology our alternative metaphysical system provides. The answer is none, because we are not proposing any such system to replace Dialectical Materialism, and we have repeately argued why it would be mistaken to do so.
Marxist historical writing, from Marx onwards, has managed perfectly well with everyday language, supplemented with technical concepts such as "class" and "exploitation" from historical materialism or Marxist economics (both of which, according to Marx are sciences, not metaphysical systems - I agree).
We are pointing to this existing practice, which we think is in no more need of metaphysical props than farming or civil engineering. If you take DM seriously, both these latter practices are also inexplicable without DM. I'm sure I'd be "agog" at your DM explanation of how three-field crop rotation or steel-frame structures emerged.
This is johng's characteristic method, used repeatedly during that recent "debate" on Dialectical Materialism. I don't put it down to some character flaw - rather, it's the kind of technique people resort to when they have to defend the indefensible (which is why it's also characteristic of ruling-class public discourse).
No doubt the method meets with some success, since you need to be following a thread very closely to notice the trick - anyone reading more casually will simply clock another point up to the trickster rather than spend 10 or 20 minutes looking for evidence to the contrary.
And I expect the same trick will be used again shortly under this message (or even above it if someone's very fast off the mark).
Nice response Babeuf, but, as you note, it will sail over the heads of our 'born again' comrades.
This is entirely ridiculous. My riposte was to Rosa not to you, as anybody can see reading the thread. All the way through the discussion (if it can be called that) there has been a deliberate attempt by Rosa to evade issues.
1) Were Marcuse's shortcomings due to his adherence to Rosa's strawman DM (I argued not, no response).
2) Is Rosa's view of anti-philosophy the same as Wittgenstein's (I argued not, and this also relates to the question of Wittgenstein's philosophical agenda). No response aside from the suggestion that it would require a Phd to answer the question (Rosa's opponents apparently should be able to answer in a line or two).
3) Related to the above were questions related to Wittgenstein's often conservative critique of modernity (see Culture and Value etc) not for that reason to be dismissed (at least by me). Irrelevent stuff about who is friends were and were he went on holiday was the only response.
4) Following on from this long passages about kettles and stuff that had nothing whatsoever to do with any of the questions I raised.
5) Your own response was again question begging. I stated the boot was on the other foot. You said it wasn't because of your very special take on these questions (I believe a reference to your wrong views about metaphysics).
Or could it be that I finally managed to pre-empt any further repetition? (for now, on this thread). If so, then there truly must be a God in materialist heaven (um ... so to speak).
Nah, just seen the response now - the usual confusion when moderation is turned on.
Of course there's no God in materialist heaven, but clearly the demons of idealist hell are tireless.
johng, trying it on again, says: This is entirely ridiculous. My riposte was to Rosa not to you, as anybody can see reading the thread.
So, Rosa would have had to repeat what I said before you would acknowledge you'd received a response to your question?
Funny you didn't seem to be worried about this : when you put the question: Is someone can demonstrate how post-Fregean logic can help resolve genuine difficulties associated with scholarship on historical change I'd be agog.
"Someone", you said, "someone". Think I qualify there, John, you'll have to grant me that at least.
I was intending, in reply to you, to go on to discuss how you began your adventures in Wittgenstein with an elementary confusion (you implied that he was an empiricist) that would earn a first-year undergrad a fail in his/her term-1 paper. Then you did a little homework on W, and reappeared having recruited W as your friend, to be used against Rosa and me etc., etc. But why should I bother when, at your own convenience, you can disregard whatever I say on the grounds that somebody else didn't say it instead?
What is the point of all this chicanery? Is there some secret Cadre Of The Year Award (Dialectical Category) that you're hoping to pick up? Perhaps now you only need to have the last word in this comments box and its yours? Go ahead, then. I'll try to resist the urge to respond so you can have a little gold-fist figurine on your mantelpiece. Well ... gold-plated.
Jesus fuckin' wept. The Dialectical Debate is fast becoming as stupid, nasty, point-scoring and thread-consuming as the late unlamented 9/11 Truth Debate. Take it outside, you guys. Seriously.
Reluctant as I am to reply to this born again comrade, for reason I have already aired, I find I must respond his latest 'deposit':
1) Marcuse's book I called a 'classic' (in response to a post by our esteemed host); it would have been far better had he left out ch. 7. This chapter by and large re-tails the crass conclusions of Ernest Gellner (an anti-Marxist), and is based on a superficial reading of a few passages wrenched out of Wittgenstein's work.
2) My views are my own, but they are based on Wittgenstein and Marx's anti-philosophy. The reply to Meaders was aimed at him, not you.
I do not reply to you for reasons I told you 2 years ago, and repeated here: you are a waste of time in this one area. This is because you think you know what you are talking about, but your manifest lack of knowledge of this current in philosophy (evidenced by your crass view of Wittgenstein, and incapacity *even to quote him correctly*, or to recognise the serious distortion this introduces into his ideas, and in addition to the other things Babeuf has highlighted), compounded by your total ignorance of logic -- aggravated by bombast and a neurotic tendency to waffle and wander off into irrelevances (which you demand we take seriously).
Now, if Meaders wants to ask me things, I will reply to him with due respect, since he is, unlike you, fair-minded.
3) Your incapacity to engage with the evidence I have posted on this merely confirms the above. You ignore the direct links Wittgenstein had with Marxism, the positive things he said about the 1917 revolutions (and the fact that he said of himself that he was a communist at heart, etc. etc.), the radical influence he had on a whole generation of Cambridge Marxists (do you honestly think that some of the best minds among these comrades would have flocked around a conservative?!), and that he admitted that the most important influence on his mature work was Sraffa (and thus Gramsci).
Your total lack of honestly is further revealed by the way you re-interpret Wittgenstein's desire to live in Russia (as an act of solidarity with the new regime) as a choice of 'holiday' resort!
Do you wonder why I do not take you seriously when you make such brainless comments?
You totally ignore the fact that he was offered the chair at Lenin's old university -- not something the Stalinists in 1935 would have offered a non-red!
Sure, his notebooks contain some odd things; but he chose not to publish these. Engels's Notebooks contain odd things too, and so do Marx's.
But, he himself said he hoped to bring and end to traditional philosophy -- that is not the aim of a conservative.
I merely re-cast this as an endeavour to end 2500 years of boss-class theory (my words, not his) -- of the sort you have swallowed too.
4) That was for Mike Rosen, not you. Once more, I did not attempt to respond to you since you are dishonest. The others here are not.
VC, fair enough!
Comrades (other than MrG) are welcome to come over to RevLeft and debate this with me to their heart's content:
http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/
By the way VC, I hope you are not comparing the debate over dialectics with that over 9/11?!?
Sure, it's off-topic here; but you might like to recall that according to the dialecticians amongst us, everything is interconnected (including alleged voter fraud and philosophy).
And these interconnections are 'logical' not causal; so they are not affected by distance, real or metaphorical.
Of course, if this means we have won you over to the idea that not all things *are* connected (or perhaps certainly not with the meaningless sentences of philosophy), or that the 'internal relations' of dialectics are not 'logical' (but are causal, and thus can be discarded as knowledge grows -- and in the limit ignored altogether), then that is all to the good.
Even repenting Chekkists are a welcome sight.
Again Rosa, you seem to simply misunderstand the word conservative. I was using the word in two senses. First of all in the sense that Wittgenstein at times expressed hostility to what might be called modern scientific civilization (cf culture and value as well as the debate about the relationship between his ideas and theology).
I'm not at all convinced that Stalin's Russia might not have offered him a post simply because he was a prominant philosopher. This was the era of the popular front. But I think you know so little about political ideologies that its hardly worth pursuing (although its disturbing in relationship to your very grand claims about Marxism and its (un)relationship to philosophy).
Secondly I referred to the fact that the dominant reading of Wittgenstein and the later evolution of Ordinary Language philosophy was conservative in the traditional sense of closing down radical avenues of enquiry (whether or not as individuals people supported Labour governments). There were always dissenting voices (Cavell etc) but a Marxist would surely have something to say about this, and poor old Marcuse could hardly be blamed for taking the dominant interpretation as the one he had to fight.
I was also concerned about what you meant by your claims about "anti-philosophy" on which your whole argument rests, and which you suggest derives from your reading of Wittgenstein. For there can be much debate about how to take his 'anti-philosophy', particularly in relationship to that question of 'scientism' (just as there can be much debate about how to take Marx 'dispensing with philosophy').
It is entirely unclear that Wittgenstein believed that science could replace philosophy (one way in which both thinkers have been understood) or that this is how his project should be understood.
These are important questions because your claims are based on the idea of the possibility of social theory with no epistomology, no ontology, and indeed, no philosophy. And you claim that such a thing is possible/desirable, based on your reading of Wittgenstein. Its unclear that Wittgenstein thought any form of social theory at all was possible.
I have of course never claimed that Witgenstein was an empiricist (indeed I would enjoy a response from the anti-philosophers on what exactly his 'objects' in the Tractatus refer to) but it is true that the philosophical crisis he was responding to had been deeply shaped by that tradition deriving back to Hume, which insofar as analytical philosophers admit to being part of a tradition, is very much part of it.
One thing I notice again and again in these arguments. There is no desire to clarify questions, there is no desire to teach anything, there is just this endless braying and denunciation.
It is quite simply the language of anti-marxism in the philosophical academy dressed up as Marxism. But if either of you don't believe this (you seem a multi-headed beast) why on earth can't you engage in a civilized way with these objections.
I actually think there is a strong parrallel with the 'truthies' actually. Its just like a conversation with Warszawa.
"I merely re-cast this as an endeavour to end 2500 years of boss-class theory (my words, not his)"
How exactly is anyone supposed to respond to this kind of nonsense? Why 2500 years exactly? Why not 1500 years? Or 3000 years? Why not 200 years? So 'the bosses' since developments in the ancient greek world, have been responsible for mystifying social relations (oh sorry metaphysical language) and Rosa has now come along to explain everything.
This is Marxism?
Suprised to see Rosa defending a philosophical ontology of atomism above (ie deeply hostile to the idea of the connectedness of the (social?) world). Is this on the basis of scientific observation or is it merely another philosophical theses?
I think we should be told.
Ah. So Rosa has 'banned' me from taking part in discussions presumably because I don't agree with her. In which case kindly remove my real name from your blog. I actually think Rosa should be banned for this, but I know that people are strangely tolerent of this lunacy.
Mr G: I refer the honourable born again comrade to my earlier response to him (paraphrased):
"I refuse to debate with you until your learn what the word 'honesty' means".
I do not even read your posts anymore.
I have responded to Mr G here:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ros...in%
20Mystic.htm
Should he want to reply, he can set up his own website and do so.
...presumably a good way to avoid having to deal with arguments. All in line with those democratic standards of debate someone was going on about.
J:
"...presumably a good way to avoid having to deal with arguments. All in line with those democratic standards of debate someone was going on about."
Well stop doing it then.
The main way in which the Dialectical Debate has come to resemble the 9/11 Truth Debate - the way that at least one side descends to nasty, ad-hominem abuse of their opponents. (See link above.) And then that side says things like "We don't care who we offend or alienate", which makes them wonder why they're having the argument in the first place. I always remember warszawa telling me that if I was put of 9/11 Truth by the fact that its practitioners were downright nasty, then that meant I was weak-willed or pathetic or something, not "tough" like the
Truthies. Sadly Rosa and babeuf seem to have the same attitude - that if you are squicked by the nasty, personal way they go after "the DM mystics", you must be a DM mystic yourself and need the same kind of punishment.
IOTBP is bothersome. I was gonna construct a big post refuting her arguments about not voting, but in accordance with her absentionist policy, i'll refrain from doing so.
VC, thanks for your *tough* response, but we have (and especially not Babeuf) never said we do not mind who we alienate, only that such alienation/irrational response, if and when it occurs, is only to expected, given the alien-class theories from which DM originates --, and more especially since, as Marx said, such mysticism will only be eradicated by a revolutionary working class ending the conditions that cause it.
And ad hominem abuse has not been monopolised by the anti-DM crew, either. We/I give as good as we/I get, sometimes better. 50/50 up to press, I estimate. Maybe 60/40, if you just concentrate on my posts (and 99/01 at my site).
[I must confess that my working-class hatred of the mystical/elitist theories retailed by the Hegel-groupies who post here surfaces no matter how hard I try to supress it. (I do not try very hard.)]
And ad hominem arguments are not all invalid, especially if they reveal the inconsistencies in an opponent's arguments (despite what bad old logic books tell you, and despite the ubquitous use of this descriptor on countless web sites (often by those who know no logic) -- indeed, I have lost count of the number of times I have read this cliche/cannard).
"that if you are squicked by the nasty, personal way they go after "the DM mystics", you must be a DM mystic yourself and need the same kind of punishment."
Eh?
Yeah Chekist its fairly futile.
The only thing I enjoy about it is that it makes me go back to reading genuinely interesting stuff. I had a dogeared copy of the tractatus and was re-reading Russell's introduction, and then some of the sections he refers to on 'mysticism' etc.
There is a lovely line about 'the will' in which its suggested that given that we can hardly will having a 'will' such discussions are'nt part of the essential structure of the universe.
Most interesting is the frequently expressed scepticism about science (at one point he seems to compare it to religion) and then in conclusion the belief that anyone with philosophical problems should just be confronted with propositions from natural science. Unsurprisingly this means that the question of what he was actually saying has been the subject of considerable debate.
I would say that most of this debate is about whether or not Wittgenstein should be taken as suggesting that all questions about 'life, the universe, god and everything' are logical nonsense, or whether he is saying that whilst these questions cannot be spoken about (only made 'manifest' or 'shown') it is actually science and logic that are limited in dealing with these issues (perhaps such issues are far more important then the things we can speak logically about).
Also fascinating questions about continuity between this earlier work and his later work arise, in the sense that he also seems to think that he has shown something which cannot be said and is therefore non-sense. Again how to understand this is the subject of some debate.
Its all rather more interesting then the pea-brained Rosa complaining that ordinary people don't understand that 'ad hominem' arguments are sometimes justified, apparently down to their not understanding 'logic' (although she offers no justification as apparently claiming that she's motivated by 'working class hatred' is supposed to trump everything).
Its really all quite demented. Hegel says somewhere that one difficulty with Enlightenment philosophy is that despite claims about 'justified belief', very often such beliefs turn out to be held for almost religous reasons. So begins the long enquiry into questions of knowledge, ideology, power and political modernity which were to yield such fruit in the writings of Marx.
Wittgenstein reminds me of someone who feels trapped by dominant sets of assumptions and is wriggling his way out of them throughout his entire career. Those dominant assumptions were the ideas of the modern world: not the ancient. But I think many of his deepest thoughts powerfully express the predicaments of modern thought in ways which Marxists could benefit from investigating.
One drawback of more traditional forms of Hegelian Marxism is that it has tended not to take the revolution in philosophy that occurs in the late 19th century seriously (preferring to see everything as a long running contest between idealism and materialism: Rosa is of course still heroicly battling Plato). I think this is a little like debates about the novel, which for some people are fixed in the early part of the 19th century.
It is a great shame that it is not possible to learn from, or have serious discussions with, people who have spent a large part of their lives inside the philosophical universe of this late 19th century revolution, largely because they have ironically Hegelian ideas about it simply being the 'truth' rather then like all ideas, being mediated by ideological and social realities, in this case capitalism.
The struggle to escape philosophy is a fascinating ideological episode, but seems to have been ultimately, a failure. If this is inevitable, if this is ideological, or if there are more substantive problems it would be interesting to find out. Rosa et al, because of their reading of Wittgenstein think these are not even questions and therefore they can't have answers.
As a Marxist I differ.
VC, I thought you had given us all a heavy hint not to continue to fill this thread with this stuff?
If Mr G want to inflict his aimless thoughts on humanity, let him set up his own website, as I have done.
I have, however, responded to the above 'thoughts' here:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/
ros..._his_errors.htm
Chekist these were some of the interesting things I found. First of all on the question of 'ontology' in the Tractatus (even the language is highly traditional):
2.026 There must be logic if the world is to have an unalterable form.
2.027 Objects, the unalterable, and the subsistant are one and the same.
2.0271 Objects are what is unalterable and subsistant; their configuration is what is changing and unstable.
The discussion of pictures and representation that follows is fascinating including this (albeit out of context) line:
2.151 Pictorial form is the possibility that things are related to one another in the same way as the elements of a picture.
which was proceeded by some ways back:
2.033 Form is the possibility of a structure.
But crucially:
2.172 A picture cannot, however, depict its pictorial form: it displays it.
This might be taken to indicate what he is actually trying to do. Displaying rather then saying. On the questions of mysticism and science, these were the passages which fascinated me:
6.371 The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion
that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.
6.372 Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as God and Fate were treated in past ages. And in
fact both are right and both wrong: though the view of the ancients is clearer insofar as they have a clear and acknowledged terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if EVERYTHING were explained.
6.373 The world is independent of my will.
6.374 Even if all that we wish for were to happen, still this would only be granted by fate, so to speak: for there is no LOGICAL connection between the will and the world which would guarantee it, and the supposed physical connection itself is surely not something we could will.
(so Wittgenstein here is suggesting that 'the ancients' had a superior understanding then the 'moderns': at least I can see no other way of reading this).
Here he argues for the transcendental basis of ethics:
6.4 All propositions are of equal value.
6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: IN it no value exists - and if it did exist it would have no value.
If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie WITHIN the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental. It must lie outside the world.
6.42 So to it is impossible for their to be propositions of ethics. Propositions can express nothing that is higher.
6.421 It is clear that Ethics cannot be put into words. Ethics is transcendental (Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same).
6.422 When an ethical law of the form 'Thou shalt...', is laid down, ones first thought is, 'And what if I do not do it? It is clear however, that ethics has nothing to do with punishment and reward in the usual sense of the terms. So our question about the CONSEQUENCES of an action must be unimportant.-At least these consequences should not be events. For there must be something right about the question we posed. The must indeed be some kind of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but they must reside in the action itself (and it is also clear that the reward must be something pleasent and the punishment something unpleasent).
This leads to the thought:
6.43 If the good or bad excercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the world, not the facts - not what can be expressed by means of language. In short the effect must be that it becomes an altogeather different world.
It must, so to speak, wax and wane as a whole.
The world of the unhappy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.
Note here that it would be rather foolish to imagine that Wittgenstein regards what cannot be said (ie nonsense) as unimportant. But what can he possibly mean by juxtaposing the inability of good and bad will to change the facts, with the idea of the same creating an entirely different world?
The clue I think is in the final paragraph of people inhabiting different worlds according to their ethical behaviour (ie not a consequence).
so to:
6.431 So too at death the world does not alter, but comes to an end.
6.4311 Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experiance death. If we take eternity to mean not infinate temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in just the way that our visual field has no limits.
6.4312 Not only is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the soul, that is to say of its eternal survival after death; but in any case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the purpose for which it has always been intended. Or is it some riddle that is solved by surviving for ever? The solution of the riddle of life lies outside space and time.
(it is certainly not the solution of any problems of natural science that is required).
6.432 HOW things are in the world is a matter of complete indifference for what is higher. God does not reveal himself IN the world.
6.4321 The facts all contribute only to setting the problem, not to its
solution.
6.44 It is not HOW things are in the world that is mystical, but THAT it
exists.
6.45 To view the world sub specie aeterni is to view it as a whole - a
limited whole.
Feeling the world as a limited whole-it is this which is mystical.
Its fairly clear to me, whatever all this means (and actually typing it out it seems a lot less mysterious: I think what makes it mysterious is that
those like Rosa simply can't confront the reality), it is in no sense the scientistic 'modern' refutation of 'ontology' longed for by some. Quite the reverse in fact.
6.52 We feel that even when all POSSIBLE scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer.
6.521 The solution to the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem (Is not this the reason why those who have found, after a long period of doubt that the sense of life becomes clear to them have then been unable to say what constituted that sense?).
(the sense of life is unimportant for Wittgenstein? I hardly think so: in his view it simply can't be said, and for Wittgenstein those things are 'mystical' and transcedent:
6.522 There, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They MAKE THEMSELVES MANIFEST. They are what is mystical. So in the end the following paragraphs may not be seen as advocating science at all.
But pointing the way to mysticism:
6.53 The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said i.e propositions of natural science - i.e something that has nothing to do with philosophy -and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. Although it would not be satisfying to the other person - he would not have the feeling we were teaching him philosophy - THIS method would be the only correct one".
In the end might this be taken as a kind of therapy to recognise the meaninglessness of what can be said (ie sense) rather then nonsense:
6.54 My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognises them as nonsensical, when he has used them - as steps - to climb up beyond them (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climed up it.)
He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.
7 What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
Perhaps, on this basis, Rosa should just shutthefuckup (I'm no Wittgenstein).
Rosa who continues to run away from arguments by posting slander on her website which it is not possible to reply to, now seeks to close down all debate on the subject. I'm interested in finding out more about Wittgenstein so I am continuing a discussion with someone else. I'm uninterested in your dogmatic and ridiculous misreadings of what I say (in one part Rosa seems to suggest that Wittgenstein is a dog returning to his vomit, and the passage about themes to which he never returns is odd from someone who presumably has read the second half of the philosophical investigations).
But anyway if anyone is interested in having a discussion about the significance of Wittgenstein's remarks here (which clearly demonstrate that Rosa is quite wrong to dismiss as absurd suggestions that there were conservative strains in his thinking, including his published thinking) I'm happy to continue. Rosa has however disqualified herself from serious discussion of the subject by her utterly unfraternal and unsocialist behaviour.
VC, why is this dilettante allowed to spam, while I and Babeuf are told to desist?
I have added a response to Mr G's latest outburts, here (at the foot of the page):
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/
ros..._his_errors.htm
[Keep it up G-man, you are helping to create great interest in my work, all the while making yourself look stupid!!]
No Rosa. When I said the LATE 19th century I was referring to the phenomenological and linguistic turns in philosophy which produce Hurssel, Frege, and what I suppose, ultimately, one might call analytical philosophy (although the phenomenological 'other half' of this development are not usually seen in this way but see Dummet's 'Origins of Analytical Philosophy). Wittgenstein clearly comes along in the wake of all this. It was this that I described as a philosophical revolution and which you misread, and called 'a dog returning to its vomit'.
Is there any point in a debate which involves this constant misrepresentation? I personally have my doubts. But if anybody is interested in these questions I would genuinely welcome a debate (as opposed this absurd slanging match).
Thanks Mr G; more hype for my site!
I have responded to the above here (again, at the foot of the page):
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/
ros..._his_errors.htm
You call that a 'response'?
I don't quite understand how I'm supposed to have 'forgotten' to mention that Wittgenstein was a 20th rather then a late 19th century philosopher. One might have thought that you would get the reference to the late 19th century in the first place (hardly the period of 'traditional philosophy' rather the gestation of the 'new'). So Dummet needs balencing. How very interesting. Perhaps you could simply say what you actually think.
I enjoyed as well the attempt to dismiss the passages from the tractatus as the result of 'trauma' (presumably you have'nt read the second half of PI although I suppose trauma might linger), neglecting the fact that the other bits of the tractatus were composed at the same time, and seem to fit quite well actually. I am aware that Wittgenstein didn't like Russell's introduction but for the life of me can't see how this is supposed to be a criticism of me or anything I said.
The Stalinist regimes philosophical astuteness was also good to hear about. The possibilty that one of the most famous philosophers leaving the west to join their academy might have been something of a coup (being a 'red' wasn't always helpful as Volosinov, and many others, found out) is apparently 'the least likely account'.
All this though revolves around your refusal to acknowledge that a philosopher who believes fate more decisive then natural laws might be described as having 'conservative' strands in his philosophy, strands deriving not perhaps from his 'trauma', but from his actual thought (including an obviously deep engagement with Shopenhauer).
C'mon lets have some answers Rosa. What do YOU think of a transcendental ethics? (don't worry some are quite into it: Callinicos in his less dialectical moments, and Badiou in others, who also by the way knows a thing or two about set theory). What do you think of the idea of 'substance'? If your going to attack mysticism at least have a bit of balence.
It turns out that there is more then enough to go around.
I thought this an interesting muddle and now see where you cut and pasted your articles from onto this site.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/
ros...ittgenstein.htm
Would quite like some references for your take on Dummets Origins of Analytical Philosophy though (which will no doubt be similarly hollow).
Particularly vague is the discussion of 'mysticism' which contains the phrase 'apologist for mysticism' without ever discussing the substance of this in his actual philosophy and the quoted statement 'in theory he was opposed to Marxism but in practice he supported it'. Is it not his substantive philosophical writing that is under discussion?
I wonder how puzzled Rosa would be if she came across Cobbet. Probably she'd imagine that he couldn't have conservative ideas because he identified with the rural poor. Also there is a failure to distinguish between the different ways in which analytical philosophy can be thought conservative (particularly poor is the attempt to present an amalgam of potential views, but it IS interesting that here we find an admission that many of his 'disciples' took his philosophy in a conservative direction: something which Rosa was busily denouncing me for pointing out.
A sorry and demented excercise Rosa. I suppose I just write because when you see this kind of distortion you just get driven to. The will and the world and all that. Virtue being its own reward.
Way to go G-baby!
Several more days of this, and it will be a record month for visitors to my site!
For those who have suffered their way through yet another missive from Mr G, but who want him put in his place once more, I suggest you go here (bottom of the page again)
Catch the latest updates near the foot of the highly popular "Bumbler" page at the Anti-Dialectics website (going by the number of hits).
That's all. I'm off to polish my truck.
Once more, keep this up Mr G!
You are a real pal!
[my latest answer to the above 'thoughts' of the Tomb's favourite waffler can be found here:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ ros..._his_errors.htm]
Ok, the link I posted seem to have been copied badly.
Comrades who are interested can follow the link Babeuf has kindly posted
*sigh* In response to Rosa, I do not feel myself entitled to start trashing this thread, as long as my fellow moderators see fit to allow the posts through in the first place. But I will make the big hint again to ALL THREE proponents in this thread. It's boring and annoying. It's patrick vs. warszawa over and over again.
"that if you are squicked by the nasty, personal way they go after "the DM mystics", you must be a DM mystic yourself and need the same kind of punishment."
Eh?
Rosa, the point is that babeuf assumed that I was a fan of dialectics when I pointed out that I didn't have the time and energy to do anything but skimread the anti-dialectic site. Assuming that anyone who criticises is the dread enemy is a dead giveaway of a sectarian attitude.
VC, thanks for your well-mannered reply.
Forgive me for not following your drift.
I am not sure about this, though:
"Assuming that anyone who criticises is the dread enemy is a dead giveaway of a sectarian attitude."
Depends on the criticism; from what I can recall, your comments were not neutral, but skewed slightly in favour of DM.
But, as I have said before, I am glad to learn you are not a fan of that Hermetic doctrine.
Finally, sicne I refuse to debate with Mr G here (and have confined my comments to my site), this cannot be a reprise of the Warszawa episode.
That is quite apart from the fact that you cannot surely equate a core Marxist theory (I refer to the sort of materialism I and Babeuf are championing) with 9/11 fantasy.
Even if we are thoroughly mistaken, we are trying to help in our own small way end the steady deline of the SWP. [Witness, for example, the fact that after 3 months, the last appeal reached only 3/4's of its stated target -- back in the 80's we reached our target within weeks. One small sign....]
That is our sole aim.
"But I will make the big hint again to ALL THREE proponents in this thread. It's boring and annoying. It's patrick vs. warszawa over and over again."
Agreed. Am interested in hearing the politics (especially relating to RL's last post above), but not the personal stuff.
Well, BM, you will note that it is Mr G who is spamming.
I have moved 95% of my remarks to my site, and for that reason.
And Mr G knows about my politics, too -- he told me so 2 years ago (when he began to read my Essays). But that has not stopped him from regarding me as an enemy a al 'Popular Front for the Liberation of Plalestine'/Monty Python fame -- I am more hated than the real enemy.
I find it sad that Rosa destroys the possibility of Marxists engaging seriously with Wittgenstein (refusing to engage and then posting slander about me on her own website which its not possible to reply to). I have to say that I resent being accused of being somehow responsible for this.
I would say though, to make a point more important then this row, that this following passage from the second part of PI aptly describes what Rosa is actually doing, as well as indicating why engagement with Wittgenstein is interesting both for Marxists and those engaging with modern social theory:
In criticising a particular view of language and meaning W says:
"The mind seems able to give a word meaning" - Isn't this as if I were to say "The carbon atoms in Benzene seem to lie at the corners of a hexegon"? But this is not something that seems to be so; it is a picture
The evolution of the higher animals and of man, and the awakening of consiousness at a particular level. The picture is something like this: Though the ether is filled with vibrations the world is dark. But one day man opens his seeing eye, and there is light.
What this language primarily describes is a picture. What is to be done with this picture, how it is to be used, is still obscure. Quite clearly, however, it must be explored if we want to understand the sense of what we are saying. But the picture seems to spare us this work: it already points to a particular use. This is how it takes us in".
What Rosa seems to be doing is presenting us with a set of 'pictures' from Hegel, to the history of modern philosophy. She is furious that anyone might want to explore these pictures (not excluding her own). I think, from the assumptions of modern liberal philosophy to Marxism itself its very important not to spare yourself work and not to be taken in.
Its extraordinary that Rosa presents herself as an anti-dogmatist. To me, and I apologise if comrades think I'm out of order, Rosa is arguing straightfoward modern bourgoise philosophy, and her failure in discussions of Wittgenstein to distinguish between his personal beliefs and his philosophical writings, is perhaps one reason why she can't adopt a critical stance to the pictures which she regurgitates (whether these be liberal fairy tales about the modern versus the traditional, superstition versus rationality, or indeed the Enlightenment belief that false consiousness was the result of priest craft in the service of vested interests).
Jonathan Hari today provides the superstructure of which Rosa (unwittingly) provides the base (ie the transfer from philosophy of an idea about transparency to an idea of social struggles as an ahistorical battle between religion and superstition). The reason ideas are important is precisely because they can exert a hold on us without our realising they do so.
Thats why comrades have a right to engage in philosophical polemic even if the issues seem intitially obscure. They're not. They're quite central to the problems of our age because, contra Rosa, Philosophy does not only deal with problems of philosophy. Whatever its self denying ordinances its part of a much wider circuit of human practices and beliefs.
For all those keen Wittgenstein scholars, who regularly haunt threads on voter fraud in Tower Hamlets, and who are, even now, failing to discuss Mr G's excellent guff just because of little old me stopping them debating it with him --, you might like to read my response to the above random thoughts here:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/
ros...rikes_Again.htm
More hype Mr G, please!
You are doing my site a world of good.
[People will think I am paying him to make a fool of himself in public just to boost my site. You know, as part of some sort of crazy Tractarian Ontology publicity stunt, right where it *really* counts: in a thread on voter fraud in Tower Hamlets!
But, I am not. Mr G is doing this off his own back. Honest!
And, the good thing is, even my pointing this out won't stop him.
Quite the reverse, in fact.
He is so predictable....]
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