04.18.08
Posted in Tibet, Ultra Far Left, 1848+ at 5:55 pm by nemo
Comment from left on Tibet.
Thanks for the feedback, but, speaking from the left, what is the connection of China with the left at this point?
Let me suggest the ultimate insult/slap in the face to the left: Tibet might have fared better under the British empire system (cf. The Youngsblood expedition period….). They would probably have emerged relatively intact, with their independence, and without the attempt to destroy Buddhism.
Speaking from the left that’s a ‘helluva’ statement. And I hold no brief whatever for the British empire, of course, save that, if we look at India, the British, at least, whatever their other depradations, didn’t try to exterminate Indian religion.
The destruction of Tibetan Buddhism will end up as still another black mark on the left, and perhaps the final nail in its coffin.
Whatever the case, we have to move on and reinvent what we mean by the left.
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03.23.08
Posted in Ultra Far Left, 1848+, Critique of Evolutionary Economy at 4:33 pm by nemo
Is Marxism deterministic?
PHIL GASPER argues that Marx’s theory of history is vital for understanding social change, but it doesn’t claim that socialism is inevitable
While one can welcome attempts to clarify distortions of Marx the attempt to evade the determinism question is too little too late, and not really fair to the historical record which shows the dominance of ’scientific Marxism’ throughout the Second Internationale. To say that Marx has been misunderstood here requires explaining the fact that virtually the entire Marxist movement was wrong throughout. That tokens an extraordinary misunderstanding of Marx. Perhaps Marx wasn’t able to clarify his own ‘theory’. Popper and Berlin’s critiques of ‘historicism’ and ‘historical inevitability’ attempted to expose the contradiction in the thinking of the revolutionary left. Fair or not, the era Engels to Lenin was clearly in hopeless confusion as to the relationship of activism and historical laws.
Read the rest of this entry »
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12.12.07
Posted in Ultra Far Left, Critique of Evolutionary Economy, Evolution at 9:28 pm by nemo
ISR debate between Gasper and Arnhart
Gasper insists that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels accepted Darwin’s science, which shows that the ideology of the socialist Left is compatible with Darwinism.
Having criticized Arnhart’s almost ludicrous Social Darwinist classical liberalism in a previous post, I think a similar critique is needed for the crippled Marxism of the classic left.
First, it is not true that Marx fully accepted Darwin’s theory, his first reaction being a notable suspicion about natural selection. (See the discussion in Alan Megill’s Karl Marx, first chapter)
The Darwinization of Marxism occurred later, and the influence of Engels here is notable. Thus I am completely suspicious about something missing here. Perhaps Marx simply suppressed his suspicions as the crystallization of Marxism proceeded.
In any case, we don’t have to bother anymore with the premature and confused views of the first Marxists. Nor do we have to take as gospel their definitions of socialism. In fact, the reductionist scientism that overtook the biologists also heavily influenced the post-Feuerbach left, leaving it unable to produce a sufficiently broad anthropology.
The tragedy here is that the left swallowed the disguised ideology of classical liberalism masquerading as a theory of evolution. There is something grostesque about this, and we don’t have to accept any of this as definitional for the left. Unfortunately, the so-called left as we see it is really a disguised variant of the bourgeois ideologies used to deceive and coopt real change.
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12.07.07
Posted in Ultra Far Left, 1848+, Booknotes at 6:00 pm by nemo
Looking through: The Parallax View (Short Circuits) (Hardcover).
by Slavoj Zizek (Author)
After yesterday’s post on Marxism:
http://darwiniana.com/2007/12/06/ok-lets-talk-firing-squadsthe-brain-dead-left/,
I came across Zizek’s work, The Parallax View.
I have to admit I picked up this book with a sour attitude, in no mood for any more Marxist bullshit, hence I am unlikely to consider it fairly. Actually, the book is morbidly interesting in its type, but finally I think the question is simple: historical materialism doesn’t work as a theory, and trying to cover this up with Hegelian sophistries and fancy foot work on the dialectic isn’t going to work.
I may be wrong but I am suspicious Zizek is an unrepentant semi-totalitarian….???
Mr. Zizek, you tell me, is this going to help us with the crisis of democracy in the age of neoliberalism?
And I notice from Arts & Letters a link:
Modern China is not an oriental distortion of capitalism, says Slavoj Žižek, but the repeat of capitalism’s development in Europe itself…
Why should authoritarian capitalism be inevitable? I thought it was the left’s job to fight this possibility.
But of course, the last stage of the great Marxist contribution to humanity is China’s labor system.
The most systematic exploitation of labor in history, from the supposed champions of labor.
Thus I don’t quite figure where Zizek is coming from? Give up without a fight?
Read the rest of this entry »
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12.06.07
Posted in Ultra Far Left, 1848+, Critique of Evolutionary Economy at 5:49 pm by nemo
Marx and Lenin for today
Paul Le Blanc
Marx, Lenin, and the Revolutionary Experience: Studies of Communism and Radicalism in the Age of Globalization
Routledge, 2006
337 pages $30
Review by HELEN SCOTT
Since my advice to the left is to read more books on Marx, critical of Marx, I should say that I haven’t read this book (but would be glad to, for sure, I have one thousand thirty dollar bills in my pocket for all the books I would be glad to read), and might be unfair. But on the basis of this review I would categorize it fairly quickly as in the ‘obsolete Marxist rhetoric’ genre. OK, no big deal, but…
I wish the left would simply sit down and read all the critiques of Marxism outstanding since the publication of Capital, and acquaint the public of this, truthfully, without distortion.
Read the rest of this entry »
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11.03.07
Posted in Ultra Far Left, 1848+ at 11:00 pm by nemo
Death of the American Dream
By: Julio Martínez Molina
Email: corresp@jrebelde.cip.cu
2007-11-02 | 10:44:59 EST
http://www.juventudrebelde.co.cu/columnists/2007-11-02/death-of-the-american-dream-/
The American dream is dead, said famed Nobel Prize laureate in
Economics Joseph Stiglitz a few days ago. The passing of that dream
is seen not only by him, but also by many Americans.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Ultra Far Left, Critique of Evolutionary Economy, Evolution at 1:58 pm by nemo
Marxism, Darwin, and Jerry Fodor’s Flying Pigs
I will comment later on this one, but it is downright sad that the left is so stuck on Darwinism. Dialectics of natural selection? C’mon. Engels’ Dialectics of Nature? I will be polite.
Actually, if you want dialectics, why not an Hegelian account of NS? Or a natural selection of leftisms.
It’s time for the left to simply drop Darwin and pick up where Marx left off: this theory is the prime ideology of the bourgeoisie.
The ruling ideas of the epoch are those of the bourgeoisie…and they have apparently ruled Marxists to boot.
This article will look at his arguments as presented in “Why Pigs Don’t Have Wings” from the 18 October 2007 issue of The London Review of Books. I will try to establish that his arguments against natural selection are not convincing and are based a mechanical interpretation of Darwin that is a characteristic of contemporary Western thought. That when Darwin is read dialectically, as he was by Marx and Engels (cf. Engels’ Dialectics of Nature) the objections to natural selection as the main motor of evolutionary change evaporate.
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10.21.07
Posted in Ultra Far Left, 1848+, Critique of Evolutionary Economy at 5:31 pm by nemo
The Times has two reviews one of Krugman’s, one of
Reich’s books on economics, or rather, political economy, no, the politics of the current economy, else, the economics of Bush’s brain. These are cogent and important books (I am still reading both), and we need all the help we can get, but I have to wonder at this point, and Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine is in the back of my mind, if the we aren’t in another instance of (probably to be abortive) radicalization of context, economic or otherwise. That’s a nice way of saying we are getting electrocuted by a sudden sense of reality as we snap out of the theoretical mesmerization of conventional economic logic. No one plying OP ED’s is believable anymore.
Mainstream liberal economists have been trying hard to keep us afloat with tinkering patches for a generation, but, look, it’s all getting worse for the same reason the Amazon basin is getting worse.
No, we are getting confirmation of the views, I am sorry to say it, of Karl Marx. He accurately described our problem in the 1840’s to 70’s. Like it or not.
Don’t get me wrong. Although I consider myself a sympathetic leftist (whatever that is, I am unwelcome on the left as such), and have been as critical of marxism as anyone, and have reviewed ten plus books critical of the marxism at Amazon to prove it, one thing I have never lost is the unsettling memory of the things Marx got right in the muddle of bad theories that have haunted and crippled the left, beside the bad theories proposed as economic science. We are seeing powerful confirmation of the warnings and analyses of that crotchety mole of the British Museum library, toiling away over the blue papers of the British captains of industry.
And that worries me, my fellow citizens (let me get rhetorical for emphasis). Why? Because the mole of the British museum library, toiling away over the blue papers of the British captains of industry, held out no hope for the capitalist system and advocated we do something else. You can stick your head up your ass and kiss yourself goodbye.
I dunno, there seems little hope we can bring out the sans-culottes at this point, but its hard to see how tinkering is going to work either.
It might help to simply stop being a believer in market logic. As Klein makes obvious in her book, behind the illusion of theory, for a whole generation, lie kooks like Friedman in league with torturers. This kook was a buttoned down academic complete with booby prizes.
I am not advocating Marx’s praxis from Marx’s critique of ideology, I couldn’t even if I wanted to, so call off the goon squad. I am apparently irresponsible, and advocate nothing, but one thing that can help is shake yourself and be rid of the illusion of economic science, and the mythology of markets. Then you can think.
And that same holds true for that twin piece of ideology, Darwin’s Social Darwinian pseudo-theory.
But, of course, everyone would rather go to hell in a basket than surrender these illusions.
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10.10.07
Posted in Ultra Far Left, 1848+, Critique of Evolutionary Economy, Evolution at 5:02 pm by nemo
The New Atheism: An Interview with Mitchell Cohen
Tenacity of the Darwin paradigm shows itself when otherwise intelligent magazines go blink blink on the issue of Darwinism.
The starting point of any scientist is that he/she can be proven wrong?
Don’t bet on it. The belief system of Darwinism is the mirror image of religious faith/belief. This article regurgitates the same old garbage about how Herber Spencer, not Darwin, is the source of Social Darwinism.
Darwin the objective scientist? Come on, what about his views in the era of the Reform Bill?
As to Marxism, I am as critical as anyone, but the fact remains that its critique of ideology should have sounded a warning on Darwin, and in fact, Marx’s first reaction shows he saw through Darwin at once.
(The eonic model shows the way to reconstruct liberal/left philosophies of history and their teleological confusions on a sound foundation). Read the rest of this entry »
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09.16.07
Posted in Ultra Far Left, 1848+, Critique of Evolutionary Economy at 4:05 pm by nemo
In my somewhat slapdash discussion of Islamic Socialism, reply to Ahmedinajad
I promised a humus recipe,
…we would be better off exchanging humus recipes…
.
Actually, I will toss in the towel to Islamic chefs here, and confess that my recipe is:
Get a can of garbanzo beans, pilfer a handful of squeegee ketchup packets from MacDonalds, salt and pepper, and eat the result from a can.
That’s a bit basic, but I am too busy to bother with complicated herbs and spices stuff. Good for the late show, delicious
OK, we can grant the problematic with Late Capitalism, but the current collation of Islamic and Socialist thought doesn’t quite compute. However, I have a bad feeling about it. One needs to study this confusion defensively. People keep head-scratching about resurgent fundamentalism.
The dynamics are not really about religion. Ultra Far Left, indeed. Is the CIA listening?
I am a liberal in good standing.
This post? : a preamble to next post
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08.12.07
Posted in Ultra Far Left, 1848+, Critique of Evolutionary Economy at 4:06 pm by nemo
Posts on Gregory Clark’s new book.
The time is coming/has come when standing up to Darwin propaganda becomes a civic duty. Do we really want to let the (Social) Darwinists con