Eonic effects, revolutionary outcomes
February 1st, 2018
It seems that a reluctance to promote the ‘eonic model of world history’ confronted with the marxist legacy is misguided and that a more forceful presentation of that is indicated. We can always up to a point have our cake and eat it too and place the components of the marxist legacy inside our model.
The advantages of this larger model are considerable but the tide of public opinion doesn’t really favor such things, and the frozen character of marxist thinking is another contraindication. But that is perhaps misleading. The shift in public views on evolution, the sense that marxism is now dated, the multiple critiques of marxist thought, all indicate the need for a new way to look at history. And historical materialism was always a very ‘risky’ theory, open at many points to refutation. We can absorb its basic insight into our model willy-nilly without the theoretical baggage.
It is a longshot to proceed this way but it is better to at least try rather than trying to create a misleading hybrid of the old and the new (we would do that anyway in a fashion that is not misleading hodgepodge). The question of virtual revolution is simply an examination of the place of revolution in the modern transition and the way that it remains an aspect of modern potential.
The advantages of this model are many:
the model is open to ideological interpretations without being propaganda: that is because the ‘idea of freedom’ and a ‘dynamic of freedom’ coexist inside historical description, an invaluable characteristic
the model resolves a ‘kantian’ paradox of the teleological: it is/is not teleological. We win either way…That’s because a discrete continuous model ‘stops/starts’, ‘aims at’/changes direction, has goals, but one open to free agents in the…the ‘telos’ is a freedom effect that might transcend the teleological implication…
the model is ultimately theoretical but stopped from theory by the incomplete nature of the evidence, a useful combination
the result is therefore empirically based with a clear hypothesis as to theory, another invaluable property
Use of the model does not require a proven theory and is more like the terrain survey by scouts on a battlefield: the challenge is to observe complex historical sequences
the model distinguishes free agency and system dynamics and this allows bypassing the hopeless confusion here of most attempts at a science of history
economic events are constructs of free agents which perhaps generate economic dynamics but in the end free agents are able to control the future of the system, at least in principle…
the model shows a clear solution to the ‘end of history’ muddle with a definite freedom dynamic, a plus in the direction of democratic emergence, revolutionary action, and an injection of a communist counterpoint
the emergence of capitalism is not a stage of history but a complex of economic and technological effects that creates a de facto but not inevitable stage of history: we can abrogate that phase as needed.
economic fundamentalism has no ultimate place in a construct/theory of history. The claims for free markets as the final stage of history is a gross distortion of facts and evidence. The phase of free markets was an anomaly from the start as many protested at once and within two centuries we can see that free markets are dangerous. Nothing in our model endorses or negates free markets. They are imposters in history and operate like gasoline to fuel an explosive fire…their dangers are suddenly evident at a time of climate catastrophe…Free markets are said to be more efficient than planning. The issue is so apparent on one level to its many converts that it is almost impossible to point out the fallacies. But we need adopt no ultimate stance on markets (our DMNC still allows some market effects). A system that has failed to resolve poverty, corrupted government, enriched an elite and threatens a whole planet cannot be called efficient.
in general economic systems are subsystems in a larger dynamic….much of the marxist legacy, apart from its brittle theories, is easy to restate inside our framework: the questions of class, theory and ideology transport easily into this framework…
there is more, but that it enough…
Darwiniana 