Yeah, I should really learn a way to stop making connections between ideas and set out a clear goal for myself as I understand this is just terrible to be so verbose. I'm not very good of thinking in terms of boiling things down to a particular point to the exclusion to all that is seen as necessary. Rather I'm prone to see connection between things and keep expanding it infinitely.
Feel free to ignore out of prioritizing and valuing your time.
I tend to just explore things rather than reach firm conclusions in that I haven't really resolved the subject for myself. I think you've touched on valid points throughout though.
Though I would assert that it be a an agreed upon point that waged are pressed down by immigration when one considers the vulnerability of immigrants and things like status rather than more narrow economic models.
mikema63 wrote:I'm a little short for time so I can't address the whole thing but there is a thing or two I'd like to pull out and address.
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NAFTA is overly maligned. While yes there have been issues due to comparative advantage overall mexico's trade rose, it's trade deficit fell, and foreign investments into it's economy went up. American agricultural subsidies (which I think we should end) and our growing trade with china have done a lot to hobble this growth, however the trade deficit was worse before NAFTA and both of these factors would still be true had NAFTA not been signed.
It's important to emphasized how badly subsidized US corn harmed Mexico. A lot of the immigration we saw (which has recently gone down to net 0) was due to the damage it caused to mexico's more traditional decentralized agricultural industry. They have however increased their manufacturing sector and in the long run, despite the damage our subsidies did to accelerate the process to a dangerous and damaging level, this transition is going to be to the benefit of mexico.
More to the point many of the criticisms of NAFTA are ultimately just criticisms of capitalism. Which is fine if you are going to just overthrow capitalism, but from within a capitalist system NAFTA is and was perfectly reasonable policy and one that Mexico wanted and pushed for at the time.
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This is a little bit of what I mean. It's all well and good that you want to promote policies that will damage capitalism, but we live in capitalist governments and I have to deep desire to see a shock doctrine approach to fundamental economic change. Transitioning from capitalism should be a long, slow, technologically, and culturally driven process. Not one that requires mass bloodshed and probable failure for trying to make the future happen now before it's time. These are the ultimate failures I see in communist movements is to attempt to socialize and centrally control the economy before the proper tools to do so existed.
For instance Now we have big data stuff that can sort of sometimes predict what consumers will want in the future (and advertise to them) and we can see how such algorithms could in the future be powerful enough to predict production and demand trends, but we don't have such tools now and a bureaucratic effort to produce consumer goods is doomed to failure without them.
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My argument isn't purely a moral one, there is strong evidence that overall capitalist economies benefit from immigration. The fundamental disagreement is that I'm working from evidence on effects within a capitalist society now and in the future and the other sides goal is not to strengthen but to weaken capitalist societies.
Immigration is a valuable thing, from a practical standpoint, for a capitalist economy.
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I think we also can't come to an agreement because my position is fundamentally not to overthrow capitalism. Which is a goal of the other side.
Indeed it is a criticism of capitalism and industrialization is something that I believe many leftists welcome, in spite of it's inherent brutality as many aren't reactionary socialists.
A MARXIST CRITIQUE OF THE ANTI-GLOBALIZATION MOVEMENT.And this brutality is accepted as a reality as long as we exist under capitalism, the appeals to a softer capitalism as nonsensical, the solution of course lays in overcoming capitalism. Because such problems are inherent to a global capitalist economy and so there are no real solutions to such problems as long as capitalism exists and also is ideologically accepted as unchangeable.
The post-Washington Consensus: the unraveling of a doctrine of developmentTo which you acknowledge that the mass immigration is a direct result of the forcing of free trade for the interests of companies in the US.
https://nacla.org/article/displaced-people-nafta%E2%80%99s-most-important-productEconomic crises provoked by NAFTA and other economic reforms are uprooting and displacing Mexicans in the country’s most remote areas. While California farmworkers 20 and 30 years ago came from parts of Mexico with larger Spanish-speaking populations, migrants today increasingly come from indigenous communities in states like Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Guerrero. Domínguez says there are about 500,000 indigenous people from Oaxaca living in the United States, 300,000 in California alone.
Meanwhile, a rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment has demonized those migrants, leading to measures to deny them jobs, rights, or any pretense of equality with people living in the communities around them. Solutions to these dilemmas—from adopting rational and humane immigration policies to reducing the fear and hostility toward migrants—must begin with an examination of the way U.S. policies have both produced migration and criminalized migrants.
Which I only want to link back to the point that one can't address immigration with a substantive solution if we're to accept such policies, but because you're right we exist under capitalism this is the tendency of what will occur. Though I take it that in your pragmatism your point is that the drive for the free flow of capital necessarily leads to such affect. And that in the end, since we have to tolerate such disruptive and destructive tendencies of capitalism, it is still reasonable to allow many immigrants in on the basis that they come from a more extreme poverty than the average American. And so in some sense it's to a greater good to a great net group. The focus then being that should find some sweet spot, but it should then be clear that the actual benefit is most clearly for the capitalist class that gets to severely exploit workers.
As I took the
side that immigrants do put a downpard pressure on real wages, neither the American worker nor Mexican worker is actually being helped by having the life of the Mexican worker destroyed in the interests of capital. But then it seems that you're not concerned with this act in itself as you displace the good of such things to some long term end goal.
They have however increased their manufacturing sector and in the long run, despite the damage our subsidies did to accelerate the process to a dangerous and damaging level, this transition is going to be to the benefit of mexico.
And I think your right is that the disagreement is one in an acceptance or rejection of capitalism. Though as seen in the Marxist critique of anti-globalization, not all who oppose capital are necessarily progressive but reactionary.
Many points would indeed be indeed facile based on expressed point of not being against capitalism. Though I speculate that you have a somewhat ambivalent position on accepting capitalism, but then maybe that's just my poor comprehension of your view.
I would like to explore this attitude because you seem to acknowledge this acceptance about capitalism. But then you posit a kind of gradualism/stagism or something that seems to be your reason for tolerating it, that it'll eventually be done away with. Or at least you specifically seem tolerant or accepting of the existence of the mass immigration as a problem, to which the perceived inevitability of it leads to a rejection of the root cause and a focus on dealing with it's effect.
I'd like to make the focus a certain attitude just on the off chance that it'd be an area of interest for you. As you do seem to be a genuinely curious person and one who speaks in good faith.
This attitude...
Transitioning from capitalism should be a long, slow, technologically, and culturally driven process. Not one that requires mass bloodshed and probable failure for trying to make the future happen now before it's time.
is one comparable to that expressed by revisionist Edward Bernstein and he posited 'evolutionary socialism'.
A few things come to mind about Edward Bernstein's view and I think is one characterized by the optimism of positivists that have returned through the years in their different variations.
Firstly, Bernstein simply gave up on the relationship between means and end and it might be an interesting thought to consider whether you feel a hopelessness towards the idea that capitalism can be challenged and overturned.
I think you actually maintain a desire to do good things, but it of course has necessarily been confined to desires that only extend as far as adjusting the 'settings' of things within capitalist production and policy.
Marxist GLossary: Me - Means and EndsEduard Bernstein (the former collaborator of Marx and Engels, for whom the term “revisionist” was first coined) said: “To me that which is generally called the ultimate aim of socialism is nothing, but the movement is everything.” [Evolutionary Socialism] This is going to the other extreme and is equally as wrong as “the End justifies the Means.” If a movement has no “end” – an ideal or vision – which is in contradiction to existing conditions, including the movement itself, then such a movement can be nothing more than a celebration of existing conditions and a support for the status quo. The deception involved in the idea of the “movement is everything,” the rejection of any ideal which contradicts what exists, is not only incompatible with Marxism; such a reconciliation with the existing world is actually contrary to human life itself, which is always striving for something.
A concern is that one gets stuck in an alternating position between an emphasis on the values of what ought to be and a rational analysis of what is and the difficulty in reconciling the two.
Which I think is what can end up feeling nihilistic, to which Hegel's dialectics might be the way to get beyond this. THis I raise as a general issue in that I think unless we actually reach a sort of dialectical view, we likely alternate between the two or strictly adhere to one side or the other problems.
Anyway, is a useful point that there is a kind of nihilism that arises in not being able to resolve contradictions that arise out of ordinary thought, the many dualities one necessarily ends up at when exploring things. Something which Hegel's philosophical project apparently resolved in figuring out how the contradictions that arise can develop into a richer/fuller conception.
http://braungardt.trialectics.com/philosophy/philosophy-in-the-19th-century/hegel/hegels-grand-synthesis/Put very generally, the great merit of scepticism is that it sees the contradictory character of things, that is, that any determination is conditioned by its opposite, or that any proposition is dialectically in conflict with equally compelling, opposing propositions. Scepticism is “the art of dissolving all that is determinate” (HPh 2:329), and as such it demonstrates the inherent flux and discord of reality which is so important in Hegel’s philosophy. This is for Hegel a deep insight into the unity of opposites and the insufficiency of viewing things as simple self-identities. Hence, scepticism is “the far-seeing power [of thought] which is requisite in order to recognize the determinations of negation and opposition everywhere present in everything concrete and in all that is thought” (HPh 2:365). But this “art of dissolving all that is determinate” is also the root of nihilism, and this is the great defect and danger of scepticism, that “it remains content with this purely negative result of dialectic,” just as Kant did with his antinomies and the dialectic of reason, and thus “mistakes the true value of its result” (SL -82 Zusatz). The question now arises as to how Hegel rises above this “purely negative result” — which, however negative, he calls necessary and true — and in what sense dialectic can achieve this transcendence without the simple abolishment of its insight and truth.
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Dialectic, then, may be employed in different ways. When employed by the understanding, it results in the polarizing of mutually excluding determinations which leads to the nihilism of scepticism. When employed by reason, dialectic brings these opposing determinations together in a “completer notion” which reflects the “immanenter Zusammenhang,” the immanent connectedness {SL -81 Anmerkung), of the opposing determinations. The interesting point is that the employment of dialectic by the understanding dialectically overcomes itself and points beyond itself to the “higher sense of dialectic,” dialectic as employed by reason. For the analytic method of the understanding leads to contradictions which the understanding can neither avoid nor resolve, [73] and thus reveals its own limitations. The dialectic of the understanding, then, is a way of thinking which, in seeing only the differentiation and opposition between things, becomes burdened with a sense of discord — the “dismembered world” — without any glimmering of harmony. But this is a burden which thought is finally incapable of sustaining, and which internally collapses and transcends itself towards a rational-dialectical way of thought which sees the interconnections and mediations between opposing phenomena, and hence the harmony at the heart of discord. [74]
A point often made, is that many of the humanistic goals people aspire to that seem quite moderate would necessarily require changing capitalism so much as to not be capitalism in order to achieve it.
Though I admit I'm a bit unclear to what extent you desire things that might be argued as unachieavable under capitalism or simply not sustainable.
This is something Zizek repeats from previous thinkers about Piketty.
This is generally expressed I guess in what would be naive progressive views. But then, you seem to accurately express notions that are amicable to capitalism, so perhaps this is all misguided. But then you still made an expressed point of things gradually improving which makes me think you do hold out for some better end not yet realized.
And another concern with Bernstein's Evolutionary Socialism beyond political appeals is I think it is simply inadequate philosophically. It seems to be implicated in a kind of determinism and doesn't struggle to recognize the necessity of human agency to achieve socialist revolution.
[spoiler]
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10867/1/VWills_ETD_2011.pdf p. 98
One of the earliest and most influential of Marx's interpreters who have argued for combining Kantian morality with Marxist theory is the German social democrat Eduard Bernstein. Bernstein was a member of the German Social Democratic Party and wrote throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s, developing his theory of “evolutionary socialism”: a reformist socialism which eschewed revolutionary activity. Bernstein interpreted Marx as an economic determinist who saw communism as the necessary result of a crisis-ridden capitalist society doomed to collapse. However, Bernstein took the relative prosperity of German society at the end of the 1800s to be proof that capitalism would continue to expand, workers' living standards would continue to rise, and therefore it was more preferable for the working class to limit its political program to gradual reforms of capitalism, than to a revolutionary overthrow of it. These gradual reforms would eventually add up to a communist society. But if communism was not inevitable, as Bernstein understood Marx to have assumed, then it would have to be shown that it was a good moral choice. Since Bernstein understood Marx's theory to be deterministic, he argued that it did not have the resources for a moral philosophy on its own. That moral philosophy would have to be lifted from somewhere—from Kant.
We can already see that there are two important errors in Bernstein's argumentation. The first is that the fact of present economic expansion, taken by itself, by no means invalidates the thesis that capitalism is inherently crisis-ridden, as Bernstein, and no doubt, everyone else in Europe found out not so long after the 1899 publication of Bernstein's Evolutionary Socialism76. Secondly, Marx never subscribed to the crude economic determinism that Bernstein attributed to him. Although it is true that Marx thought crises were inevitable, he by no means committed himself theoretically to the view that communism was also inevitable.
Marx I think believe isn't vulnerable to the attack of a strict detereminism, and a radical like MLK Jr, was able to see come to a similar conclusion in his poetic oration.
http://www2.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/BlackHistoryMonth/MLK/CommAddress.htmlSomewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals. Without this hard work, time becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always right to do right.
The point being that, change requires human agency, even the maintenance of our society requires constant laboring. History should not be seen as progressing by itself, it instead reflects the struggles of mankind against one another and the necessities of reality upon them. Though human agency is a difficult matter conceptually itself, but it's clear that what ever freedom is to be for determinant (empirical, existing real beings) is to be mediated through the real world and our psychology (hence the importance on theorizing about consciousness and ideology for Marxists).
This issue of detereminism is even a problem among self identified Marxists, who take Marx's Capital as gospel, insensitive to the incompleteness of his ambitious project.
As some suspect that Marx may have intended or at the very least left out the agency of workers within the scope of Capital. Something that seems crucial to sense that the proletariat are the agents of the revolution but most likely would've been developed later, but Marx ran out of time.
https://monthlyreview.org/press/interview-lebowitz-ozcan-erdagi/Thus, we see the wage-labourer first as a distinction within capital, as capital’s opposite, and as the mediator for capital in achieving its goal of growth. However, we must also consider the other side, the side about which Capital is silent—the worker as a being for self. Once we consider the side of the wage-labourer in its sphere of circulation (where the sale of labour-power occurs) and in its sphere of production (where use-values are consumed to produce the worker able to re-enter the sphere of circulation), we see that the wage-labourer has her own goals and struggles to achieve them. Class struggle from the side of the worker is present once we consider the worker as a being for self. Nevertheless, as wage-labourer, capital is a necessary mediator for the worker: she is dependent upon capital within this relation to achieve her goals. The dialectical moment here is the recognition of the unity of capital and wage labour in capitalism as a whole, a totality characterised by two-sided class struggle.
Once we now consider the worker as subject, we have moved far beyond the determinism which often passes for Marxism. Now, we necessarily must bring within this theory of capitalism as a whole the way workers transform themselves in their struggle. One-sided Marxists, though, call a halt to the theoretical project and declare that whatever is in Capital is theory and whatever is not in Capital is politics or lesser levels of abstraction. They think they can take Capital by itself. As I argue in my chapter on ‘One-Sided Marxism,’ however, by failing to develop the side of wage-labour, they understand neither capital nor wage-labour; in short, they do not understand capitalism as a whole.
This sort of determinism I tend to associate with mechanical materialism, an inferior conception of materialism that's posited in the
traditional materialism versus idealism duality.
https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/e.htmMechanical Materialism refers to those forms of materialist thinking which gained strength from the gains of natural science beginning from the work of Newton and others in explaining the world in terms of the action of objects upon one another according to fixed laws of nature, expressed in terms of forces. Mechanical materialism is the science of things rather than of processes (i.e. of external action rather than internal change), it emphasises exact science at the expense of holistic knowledge, and separates absolutely the subject ("observer") and object.
But this is inadequate for the flux that is inherent in reality, which I think is the point about dialectics, is that I think it's meant to be a more adequate conception of change as a process, rather than static objects that magically shift into something different.
Such a conception of time leads to the sort of contradictions and paradoxes we see in Zeno's thought experiments. Which is an
interesting discussion in itself.
I also worry that you come towards things in too abstract a way, like we all abstract but a big emphasis of Marx is '
concrete abstractions' that which appropriately sees the relations that constitute things. As to abstract a thing out of it's relations leads to nonsense such as...
https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/bukharin-on-the-subjectiveobjective-value-debate/Because modern bourgeois theory traces a path of causality from the isolated individual to the social it finds all of the categories of modern capitalist society present in the individual. This is an abstract individual with no specific social context. Bohm-Bawerk’s examples are a man sitting by a stream of water, a traveler in the desert, a colonist alone in the primeval forest, etc. In order to deduce the laws of capital from such an absurdist starting point the laws of capital must already exist in the mentality and actions of these individuals. Thus any choice our desert traveler makes is a utility maximization which produces a subjective profit!
Bukharin rightly points out the absurdity of such a starting point since the isolated individual is the not a historical precursor to society and hence, any theoretical abstraction of the isolated individual will naturally just read modern categories into his/her mentality. In reality individual choices and actions always are conditioned by pre-existing conditions.
The concern comes from this quote, though I think my speculation is on a weak grounds off it alone...
Immigration is a valuable thing, from a practical standpoint, for a capitalist economy.
The talk of benefit to a capitalist economy reminds me of how national interests are universalized as if they're everyone's interest but they concretely reflect the interests of a capitalist class more often than that of the workers.
https://www.guernicamag.com/john_berger_7_15_11/The word we, when printed or pronounced on screens, has become suspect, for it’s continually used by those with power in the demagogic claim that they are also speaking for those who are denied power. Let’s talk of ourselves as they. They are living in a prison.
The point here isn't that you're naive to such real world differences but that the lack of class specificity can hide the difference where many things are purely in the interest of capitalist class and at best are minor benefit to working class. Many things can be done that mean absolutely nothing for the workers of the country. Though of course it is a important point that I think you do recognize that the capitalist economy absolutely requires such cheap labor to be competitive on the world market. Which is why there will be no wall or what ever measure to stop immigrants.
Because even if it was successfully done, things would go the way of industry moving to china. Which is part of why certain reforms are unsustainable. People oppose unions and wages on the basis that it is detrimental to the capitalist class competition and then the idea is if we're not sensitive to that then we'll shoot ourselves in the foot by hurting our masters too severely.
And thus we merely engage in the same mistakes, same wars that serve not the workers of the world but the capitalist class. A slave's highest aspiration shouldn't be that one's master treats them kindly, they should be so bold as to demand and assert their right to freedom. But of course the pessimism around achieving this is also that if it doesn't flow into a world revolution, then things will simply remain or revert back to a capitalist economy, adherent to it's strict rules of value.
The point here is we should see the particularity of the capitalist class which asserts itself as universal (though it's universal are abstract rather than concrete, in that one may speak of everyone but the content of their thoughts only reflect their particularity)
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ot/zizek1.htmThe key question thus concerns the exact STATUS of this externality: is it simply the externality of an impartial “objective” scientist who, after studying history and establishing that, in the long run, the working class has a great future ahead, decides to join the winning side? So when Lenin says “The theory of Marx is all-powerful, because it is true,” everything depends on how we understand “truth” here: is it a neutral “objective knowledge,” or the truth of an engaged subject? Lenin’s wager — today, in our era of postmodern relativism, more actual than ever — is that universal truth and partisanship, the gesture of taking sides, are not only not mutually exclusive, but condition each other: in a concrete situation, its UNIVERSAL truth can only be articulated from a thoroughly PARTISAN position — truth is by definition one-sided. (This, of course, goes against the predominant doxa of compromise, of finding a middle path among the multitude of conflicting interests.) Why not, then, shamelessly and courageously ENDORSE the boring standard reproach according to which, Marxism is a “secularized religion,” with Lenin as the Messiah, etc.? Yes, assuming the proletarian standpoint IS EXACTLY like making a leap of faith and assuming a full subjective engagement for its Cause; yes, the “truth” of Marxism is perceptible only to those who accomplish this leap, NOT to any neutral observers. What the EXTERNALITY means here is that this truth is nonetheless UNIVERSAL, not just the “point-of-view” of a particular historical subject: “external” intellectuals are needed because the working class cannot immediately perceive ITS OWN PLACE within the social totality which enables it to accomplish its “mission” — this insight has to be mediated through an external element.
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In his Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx already deploys something like the logic of hegemony: the emergence of a “universal class,” a particular class which imposes itself as universal, engendering global enthusiasm, standing for society AS SUCH against the ancien regime, anti-social crime AS SUCH (like bourgeoisie in the French revolution). After follows the disillusion so sarcastically described by Marx: the day after, the gap between universal and particular becomes visible again, capitalist vulgar profit as the actuality of universal freedom, etc. — For Marx, of course, the only universal class whose singularity (exclusion from society of property) guarantees its ACTUAL universality, is the proletariat. This is what Ernesto Laclau rejects in his logic of hegemony: for Laclau, the short-circuit between the Universal and the Particular is ALWAYS illusory, temporary, a kind of “transcendental paralogism.”12 However, is Marx’s proletariat really the negative of positive full essential humanity, or “only” the gap of universality AS SUCH, irrecoverable in any positivity?13 In Alain Badiou’s terms, proletariat is not another PARTICULAR class, but a SINGULARITY of the social structure, and AS SUCH the universal class, the non-class among the classes.
Things are spoken of as a benefit to the US, to it's economy, providing food, culture and such, but not much from the frame of how it helps workers as a class. Of course this is expected because that's not the goal, what ever benefit the receive is periphery. Because the focus becomes rather abstract in a focus on things such as culture and the health of the economy. Which I suppose could be drilled in on some bit of how the health of the capitalist class helps maintains a interest for workers in developed countries against others.
But their benefit is in fact the result of the deprivation of those in others countries.
http://burawoy.berkeley.edu/Marxism/Marxism%20As%20Science.pdfThus, Lenin, never one to ignore the importance of nationalism, anticipated that a major challenge to capitalism would come from wars of national liberation in the colonized Third World. In the core countries, on the other hand, Lenin argued that the spoils of imperialism would trickle down to the working class to create an aristocracy of labor. Therefore, certain sections of the working class had a definite material interest in imperialism. and this was the material basis of the "refo-sm" of social democratic parties and of their support for national wars. Lenin also saw how the expansion of capitalism into backward countries would uproot the population and provide a pool of cheap labor, further balkanizing the labor movement in advanced capitalist countries. In characterizing the world system in terms of core, colonized and semi-independent nations Lenin had already anticipated contemporary world systems analysis.
This is perhaps where I kind of speculate that capitalists are indeed to powerful at present, and that it'll set up conditions for the unity of such disparate groups of people as it equalizes the subsistence and deprivation of developed countries as we see with falling wages, lack of unions and labour organization. The idea is that the developed country workers are going to be on par with workers being severely exploited elsewhere. In which case, that would set conditions that make xenophobia and such meaningless for the working class and more easily united. But then, if people were helped in their own countries in opposition to things like NAFTA such as with groups like the Zapatistas or what ever, it would disrupt the interests of capital in a way that hurts people in the more powerful economies and would lead them into a crisis that wasn't as readily blamed on the foreign workers. Hmm but then there is the tendency that a xenophobia always arises in economic crisis because people are overly concerned with form/appearance and unable to see a collective interest/class consciousness due to the lack of organizations since the cold war. I've gone around in circles on the immigration issue, I don't know really what position I take because capitalist do what they do with their power and influence. And the conditions are never ideal and have to struggle around that regardless, as no matter the immigration policy, the conditions of workers will never be ideal.
eh, tangent, reset... loading...
Okay, so back to Bernstein XD
His sentiment is characterized by that which doesn't see the the relations between things and thus the tensions or contradictions between/within them.
I think this should help one's conceptualization in that it's Evald Ilyenkov reviving Lenin's attack on the positivist Machists as a sort of veiled way of criticizing the positivism that pervaded in the USSR. Because the philsophy I see underpinning the likes of Bernstein and the Machists is a view that doesn't conceive of the tensions/conflicts/contradictions in relations of things.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/positive/positii.htmThe reader has probably already managed to notice how often and persistently the magical word equilibrium is repeated in the quotations from those texts. Yes, here we are dealing not simply with a word, but a genuine symbol – a symbol of faith, a fundamental and key category of the logic of their thinking. No matter where their arguments originate, or where they lead to, they inevitably begin with equilibrium and end with equilibrium.
From their works the reader discovers that equilibrium is not simply or solely an equal balance on the scales with which everyone is familiar from personal experience, but it is something much more important and universal, something metaphysical.
It turns out that this magical concept contains within it both the secret of life and the secrets of the functioning of social organisms, and even the mysteries of all cosmic systems and events. It turns out that all these mysteries, secrets and enigmas are simple and easy. One only has to apply to them the magical 'lock pick' – and they become transparent and simple.
It turns out that the entire infinite Universe strives to achieve equilibrium. Thus the history of mankind, the history of social organisms (people, lands, states and civilisations), is directed towards and yearns for equilibrium.
Immediately, everything becomes clear: both the condition of economic and political relations and the organisational principle of the living body of the frog, and the direction of the evolution of the solar system.
It is remarkable that in not one of the works of the Machists will we find an intelligible explanation of the meaning of this word. They all prefer to explain it by means of examples. But throughout the entire system of such examples, the actual meaning of this 'empirio-symbol' clearly shines through: it is first of all a state of inviolable rest and immobility. It is the absence of any noticeable changes or deviations, the absence of motion.
Equilibrium means the absence of any state of conflict, of any contradictions whatsoever, i.e. of forces which pull in different, contradictory directions. And where is this seen? You will never see such a state, even in the shop, even in the example of the scales. Even here equilibrium is only a passing result, an ephemeral effect, which is achieved at precisely that moment because two opposing forces are directed at each end of the lever: one presses upward, and the other presses downward.
In the Russian language, equilibrium means: 'A state of immobility, of rest, in which a body is under the influence of equal and opposing forces.' But according to the logic of Machism, the presence of opposing forces exerting pressure at one point (or on one body) is already a bad state of affairs. It resembles the state which is designated in Hegelian language as contradiction, as 'a body's state of discomfort', in which two opposing forces exert pressure, either squeezing the body from two opposite sides or tearing it in half.
Such an understanding of equilibrium is therefore unacceptable for the Machists. How could it possibly be that equilibrium turns out to be only the passing and quickly disappearing result of contradiction, the result of the action of opposites applied at one point, i.e. the very state which every living organism tries to escape as soon as possible, and by no means the state which it supposedly is striving to achieve.
Here then arises the concept of equilibrium which the Machists want to counterpose to contradiction, which is the presence of two opposing forces. It is a state in which two opposing forces have ceased to exist and therefore no longer squeeze or tear apart the ideal body (or the equally ideal point of their application). The forces have ceased to exist and have disappeared, but the state which they have established at a given point still remains. Equilibrium is a state of this kind. A state characterised by the absence of any opposing forces whatsoever, be they internal or external, physical or psychic.
In this form, equilibrium is the ideal. It is the ideal model of the cosmos and the psychics, the fundamental philosophical category of Machism, and the starting point of Machist arguments about the cosmos, about history, and about thinking. The aspiration to escape once and for all from all contradictions whatsoever from whatever kind of opposing forces, is the striving for equilibrium.
In addition to all the rest, equilibrium finds under these conditions all the characteristics which ancient philosophy describes with the words 'inner goal', 'objective goal', and 'immanent goal'. According to Machist logic, equilibrium is by no means a real state, given in experience, even if in passing, but only the ideal and the goal of nature, man, and being in general.
Such an equilibrium is static, complete, disturbed by nothing, an equilibrium of rest, an equilibrium of immobility, a state of 'suspension in the cosmic void'. It is the ideal model of the Machist Bogdanovian concept of equilibrium.
This also should help in the connection to mechanical materialism and a sense of forces that is deterministic and the point that things exist in tension with opposing forces.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch02-s06.htmlThe cause-effect connection can be conceived as a one-way, one-directional action only in the simplest and most limited cases. The idea of causality as the influence of one thing on another is applied in fields of knowledge where it is possible and necessary to ignore feedback and actually measure the quantitative effect achieved by the cause. Such a situation is mostly characteristic of mechanical causality. For example, the cause of a stone falling to the ground is mutual gravitation, which obeys the law of universal gravitation, and the actual fall of the stone to the ground results from gravitational interaction. However, since the mass of the stone is infinitely small compared with the mass of the earth, one can ignore the stone's effect on the earth. So ultimately we come to the notion of a one-way effect with only one body (the earth) operating as the active element, while the other (the stone) is passive. In most cases, however, such an approach does not work because things are not inert, but charged with internal activity. Therefore, in experiencing effect they in their turn act on their cause and the resulting action is not one-way but an interaction.
In complex cases one cannot ignore the feedback of the vehicle of the action on other interacting bodies. For example, in the chemical interaction of two substances it is impossible to separate the active and passive sides. This is even more true of the transformation of elementary particles. Thus the formation of molecules of water cannot be conceived as the result of a one-way effect of oxygen on hydrogen or vice versa. It results from the interaction of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. Mental processes are also a result of the interaction of the environment and the cortex.
To sum up, all processes in the world are evoked not by a one-way or one-sided action but are based on the relationship of at least two interacting objects.
Just as various paths may lead to one and the same place, so various causes lead to one and the same effect. And one and the same cause may have different consequences. A cause does not always operate in the same way, because its result depends not only on its own essence but also on the character of the phenomenon it influences. Thus, the heat of the sun dries out canvas, evokes extremely complex processes of biosynthesis in plants, etc. Intense heat melts wax but tempers steel. At the same time an effect in the form of heat may be the result of various causes: sun rays, friction, a mechanical blow, chemical reaction, electricity, disintegration of an atom, and so on. He would be a bad doctor who did not know that the same diseases may be due to different causes. Headache, for instance, has more than one hundred.
The rule of only one cause for one effect holds good only in elementary cases with causes and effects that cannot be further analysed. In real life there are no phenomena that have only one cause and have not been affected by secondary causes. Otherwise we should be living in a world of pure necessity, ruled by destiny alone.
And beyond not seeing the contradictions/tensions of things, I think this leads to a sentiment of gradualism, that one progresses slowly.
And it's from this conception that it asserts itself a progressive task which in practice will be reactionary because it imagines that we'll simply progress to the better society. To which I suspect it may also, rather than alone be an issue of philosophical assumptions/ideological outlook, is also an aversion to the radical conclusion that is driven by aspiring to our highest ideals.
An aversion we see in your post
Not one that requires mass bloodshed and probable failure for trying to make the future happen now before it's time.
This is what would be dubbed in Robespierre's words, wanting a 'revolution without revolution'.
I believe that our commitment to the highest ideals inevtiability lead to radical conclusions if we're honest.
http://www.lacan.com/zizrobes.htm To break the yoke of habits means: if all men are equal, than all men are to be effectively treated as equal; if blacks are also human, they should be immediately treated as such. Recall the early stages of the struggle against slavery in the US, which, even prior to the Civil War, culminated in the armed conflict between the gradualism of compassionate liberals and the unique figure of John Brown:
African Americans were caricatures of people, they were characterized as buffoons and minstrels, they were the butt-end of jokes in American society. And even the abolitionists, as antislavery as they were, the majority of them did not see African Americans as equals. The majority of them, and this was something that African Americans complained about all the time, were willing to work for the end of slavery in the South but they were not willing to work to end discrimination in the North. /.../ John Brown wasn't like that. For him, practicing egalitarianism was a first step toward ending slavery. And African Americans who came in contact with him knew this immediately. He made it very clear that he saw no difference, and he didn't make this clear by saying it, he made it clear by what he did. [11]
For this reason, John Brown is the KEY political figure in the history of US: in his fervently Christian "radical abolitionism," he came closest to introducing the Jacobin logic into the US political landscape: "John Brown considered himself a complete egalitarian. And it was very important for him to practice egalitarianism on every level. /.../ He made it very clear that he saw no difference, and he didn't make this clear by saying it, he made it clear by what he did." [12] Today even, long after slavery was abolished, Brown is the dividing figure in American collective memory; those whites who support Brown are all the more precious - among them, surprisingly, Henry David Thoreau, the great opponent of violence: against the standard dismissal of Brown as blood-thirsty, foolish and insane, Thoreau [13] painted a portrait of a peerless man whose embracement of a cause was unparalleled; he even goes as far as to liken Brown's execution (he states that he regards Brown as dead before his actual death) to Christ. Thoreau vents at the scores of those who have voiced their displeasure and scorn for John Brown: the same people can't relate to Brown because of their concrete stances and "dead" existences; they are truly not living, only a handful of men have lived.
Because otherwise we reveal an insulting reality to those who we profess solidarity with as it seems to express that a people's emancipation must wait.
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.htmlI must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
http://www.popmatters.com/review/james-baldwins-resounding-words-in-i-am-not-your-negro/During a debate at Cambridge University in 1965, Baldwin is asked to comment on Robert Kennedy’s suggestion that the US might have a “Negro president” in 40 years. Baldwin is patient and deliberate, turning before the camera when he explains, “That sounded I suppose like a very emancipated statement to white people,” he says, reminding his audience, the white faces behind him and the rest of us, that perspectives are different, that the condescension, pain, and ignorance wound up so tightly within that suggestion (“In 40 years, if you’re good, we may let you become president”), is stunning to hear again now, in the brutality of its truth and its understanding.
And no doubt these radical notions can often be rebuked as wanting that which isn't realistic, but it's debatable about how legitimate this point is. Because whilst we must reject those that decide things purely on empty principles, it's also the case that one's ultimate aim/ideal should maintained it's radicalness, to be what one truly aspires to, although appropriately mediated by an approximate assessment of what is the existing conditions.
http://isj.org.uk/marxism-and-ethics/A similar argument was developed by Gramsci. In an allusion to a phrase from Marx’s preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy he wrote that “the scientific base for a morality of historical materialism is to be looked for, in my opinion, in the affirmation that ‘society does not pose for itself tasks the conditions for whose resolution do not already exist’. Where these conditions exist ‘the solution of the tasks becomes “duty”, “will” becomes free’”.100
Though this would of course have to be unpacked further, but there is the inherent distinctly different world view, which isn't just a matter of what facts we share but rather the very framework we use to give meaning/sense to those facts.
And this aversion to violence makes no sense since the system of capitalism requires it, but one has to appraise why one sees certain types of violence as legitimate. When the state crushes a group of people, one could perceive the very same objective reality but believe it different in significance to another person.
But this is but the minor form of a prevalent violence that has been maintained in any society for stability and order, in which the irrationality and illegitimacy of a status quo is based on it being a fetter of a better potential.
But the larger concern should be that war is necessary for capitalism and thus can't posited itself on some moral high ground of violence, it will butcher the working class in it's pursuit.
http://burawoy.berkeley.edu/Marxism/Marxism%20As%20Science.pdfLater in The Accumulation of Capital ([19 131 195 1) Luxemburg developed a theory of the extension of crises of overproduction to the world level. Searching for outlets for their commodities capitalists would seek out new markets through forcible incorporation (colonialism) of countries into an international capitalist order. When the whole world is divided up, capitalist countries would be forced into wars to redivide it, thereby intensifying class struggle. Luxemburg was the first to recognize the close link between the expansion of capitalism and militarism.
...
Influenced by Hilferding's classic, Finance Capital ([I9101 1981), Lenin argued that the concentration of capital took place not only in industry but also in finance. He postulated a new stage of capitalism, monopoly capitalism, defi by the rise of a financial oligarchy which bound together international finance and industrial cartels. Whereas the earlier stage of capitalism was characterized by the overproduction of consumer goods, this new stage saw the overproduction of capital, which sought "superprofits" through export to backward countries. When the whole world had been divided up among cartels and there was no further outlet for excess cavital. . , then only through imperialist wars could tenitories be redistributed among capitalist nations. The instability brought about by the uneven development of capitalism on a world scale would lead inevitably to imperialist wars among the most powerful capitalist countries. National wars would precipitate civil wars between classes as the working class realized the costs of supporting their own bourgeoisie.
Luxemburg had formulated an earlier version of this argument, but Lenin's was the most comprehensive reconstruction of the original Marxian theory of the dynamics of capitalism. It addressed a number of anomalies and made a number of predictions, some of which indeed came to pass. Thus, Lenin, never one to ignore the importance of nationalism, anticipated that a major challenge to capitalism would come from wars of national liberation in the colonized Third World. In the core countries, on the other hand, Lenin argued that the spoils of imperialism would trickle down to the working class to create an aristocracy of labor. Therefore, certain sections of the working class had a definite material interest in imperialism. and this was the material basis of the "reformism" of social democratic parties and of their support for national wars. Lenin also saw how the expansion of capitalism into backward countries would uproot the population and provide a pool of cheap labor, further balkanizing the labor movement in advanced capitalist countries. In characterizing the world system in terms of core, colonized and semi-independent nations Lenin had already anticipated contemporary world systems analysis.
I am highly skeptical of that which might posit that the capitalist class is somehow above the brutality that exists in all societies, it's dark underbelly.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htmThere has never been a document of culture, which is not simultaneously one of barbarism.
To which I like this rheotircal question by Alfred North Whitehead.
http://www.richardcurtisphd.com/pdf/academic/Process%20Via%20Marx.pdfHe [Whitehead] has a strong materialistic sense of history: ‘The great convulsions happen when the economic urge on the masses have dove-tailed with some simplified end.' He also recognizes why 'gradualism' may be insufficient: 'It may be impossible to conceive a reorganization of society adequate for the removal of some admitted evil without destroying the social organization and the civilization which depends on it.' Can war, for example, be eliminated without eliminating an economic system that seems to require war? (History 282)
Violence isn't equal and necessarily requires value judgements which will be partisan in nature. Though there are certainly those that like to equalize violence because they like to pretend themselves objective neutral observers, but in their supposed neutrality are barbaric in their impassivity to wrong doings because they're too afraid to commit themselves or they are committed to a ideologically obscured defense of one side or the other, unable to admit their partisanship.
Bascially the violence already exists and is inevitable, because soon as one asserts ones self, becuase one hasn't been constrained within the limits of an ideology, one requires force.
Like the father or domestic abuser that shows they've lost their ideological/psychological grip of a people and so requires more direct violence, as is true of every system of control that people are mostly controlled as good people who adhere to the rules, trouble makers are made an example of violently for traversing those rules. It's generally better that the population be passive and abiding by the rules forced upon them, rather than resistant.
https://monthlyreview.org/2011/12/01/alfred-hitchcock-presents-class-struggle/Unless its aggression is constant, capital does not get what it wants. But class aggression must meet cost-benefit analysis, like everything else. Thus, the less workers resist, the lower the costs of class aggression. In order for surplus extraction to proceed at maximum efficiency, that aggression must disguise itself. Generating and distributing illusion is a primary function of capital. It must propagate the belief that “the wealth and privileges of the few are based on natural, inborn superiority,”13 the belief that working people choose freely, that the existing system is efficient and just. Or, if not exactly efficient and just, it does not matter, because it is all there is. Thus not only is the system efficient—it is the only system. Even thinking about anything else is an invitation to chaos. Given the stakes involved, it is better for capital to erase the notion that there is a system at all. And that is indeed a common belief: there is no “system”—capitalism is simply reality, or nature, or the random workings of existence. It may not always have been there but it certainly always will be. Even the word “capitalism” must be handled with care: it is just “reality.” Since capitalism is not a system, whatever goes wrong is an accident or the result of the “bad choices” strangely popular with foolish victims.
In the end I haven't really effectively attacked some points in part because moral philosophy isn't a strong part of mine to really dissecting the nuances of the rightness or wrongness of certain policies, especially in relation to what is asserted Marx's sense of morality that isn't impotent or purely inhumane.
But I see your sense of how the severe poverty of the Mexican worker would in some felt sense work out better within an acceptance of capitalism. Which is the expected liberal compromise of ideals and reality, where not unrealistic to do open borders but not so inhumane as to think that the foreigners are without value. But then, also even if did believe in the capacity of socialist revolution and it's aims, would seem afraid of the what conclusions one might come to as necessary to reach such radical ends, afraid of the pain. Which isn't something so shameful, as I imagine most of us aren't so courageous and are often
doctrinaire socialists at best.
Though in the words of 'Charlie Bronson', sometimes you got to cut off a piece of yourself, no matter how hard it hurts, in order to grow
Haha, our growth is painful and if we really aspire to the greatest ideals of humanity, then we can't get it without doing the heavy lifting. Though I think a lot of good can be done in a radical sense without so directly a violent approach, but then violence within itself isn't something formally promoted or rejected but put in relation to the circumstances as they're presented. Sometimes violence is the answer, sometimes it's not.
eh, i've mused long enough. Hopefully if you've looked through this, can see some substance to spur some thoughts. It's not so direct, but I think these are pivotal things, deeper issues that underpin the divide. Philosophical matters whilst seemingly distant, are where the real changes occur as they give rise to the conclusions we have and so attacking conclusions is nonsense without trying to disrupt the sense one gives to reality.[/spoiler]
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics