The answer to the following question might be somewhere on this blog but, if so, I can't find it. Who are these two historical characters?
A Frenchman from around 1820 converses with an Arabic-speaking North African Muslim. The latter says that, when desert nomads enter a civilization, they revitalize it with their "'...spirit of fellowship and obligation...'" (p. 113) but eventually are corrupted and enfeebled. The Frenchman replies that entire species can become extinct because they change either too well or too slowly to fit their environments but adds that societies must be as capable as species "'...of successful evolution...'" (p. 114)
Francois Villon tells the narrator:
that these two guys are among the greatest ever natural philosophers (we now call "natural philosophy" empirical science);
that the Frenchman wants to understand biology and the Muslim to understand humanity;
that both need information that will not be discovered until after their deaths;
that, therefore, they achieve nothing.
The Frenchman sounds as if he is discussing Darwinian evolution by natural selection but he can't be. The Muslim sounds as if he is making shrewd observations about social interactions but maybe he does not fully understand underlying economic or other factors? But, ok, I admit to a lamentable ignorance as to their identities.
(Charles Darwin and Adam Smith came later.)
43 comments:
The North African Muslim sounds like what little I know about this guy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Khaldun
The Frenchman might be:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Lamarck
who proposed a version of evolution, but didn't think of natural selection.
Lamarck talking about evolution but not knowing about natural selection. That makes sense.
Sean: that was what I thought when I read the story.
Incidentally, Teddy Roosevelt was a Lamarckian and thought acquired characteristics could be inherited.
The problem was that there was no secure understanding of genetics and genetic patterns of inheritance at the time.
Mendel had developed a fairly accurate idea of this in the 1860's, but his work fell into obscurity and wasn't rediscovered until the late 1890's and didn't become widely known until shortly before WW1.
And it wasn't until cellular nuclei and chromosomes were discovered (from the 1890's on) that there was a physical basis to support Mendel's research, either.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Well, you meant Jim, but no matter! (Smiles)
Exactly, you had Abbot Gregor Mendel's pioneering work in genetics in mind. Which you beat me to mentioning. The great weakness of the work of Lamarck and Darwin was their inability to figure out how natural selection works. And the papers Fr. Mendel pub. in 1866 about what came to be called genetics were not understood by the scientists of that time.
A pity Mendel was not one of the guests at the Old Phoenix!
Ad astra! Sean
Lamarck knew about evolution but not about natural selection. Darwin and another guy worked out natural selection but did not know about genes.
Wallace.
Kaor, Paul!
I have heard of Wallace, but Darwin is usually given priority when it comes to evolution and natural selection. And Wallace agreed that was just.*
And none of these three men had either heard about or understood Fr. Mendel's pioneering work in genetics.
Ad astra! Sean
*Btw, Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles, also had some thoughts and speculations coming close, in some ways, to what his grandson worked out in THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.
Ideas are generally "in the air" when they become influential.
OTOH, Mendel was a bit premature -- which is why his discoveries were met with incomprehension and mostly forgotten for a long generation.
Note that a new idea takes a while to "sink in" even when it's taken up enthusiastically.
Note how early (and alas, many subsequent) Darwinists confuse evolution with -progress- or -improvement-.
In fact it's about successful reproduction, and nothing else.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree that ideas leading to natural selection and evolution were floating around France and the UK in the later 18th/early 19th centuries.
Ditto, what you said about Fr. Mendel. But still a pity his work was met with bafflement.
And we both know what a bloody catastrophe it was when "social Darwinism" was taken up by the "progressives," eugenicists, Marxists, and Nazis!*
Ad astra! Sean
*Btw, IIRC, Darwin himself refused Marx's request that he dedicate one of his works, I think DAS KAPITAL, to the author of THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.
Darwin discovered natural selection as the explanation of biological change. Marx discovered class struggle as the explanation of historical change. They are indeed complementary.
Kaor, Paul!
Marx contributed NOTHING of any value or use to the world. He gave us nothing that far better men as varied as Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Charles Darwin himself, etc., gave us. His ideas and ideology were literally bloody catastrophes to the entire world.
I suggest looking up Barzun's critique of Marx in DARWIN, MARX, WAGNER.
Ad astra! Sean
Paul: you're falling into the teleological fallacy. Change is constant; progress is a Victorian delusion.
Change is constant, but it has no -direction-.
I do not argue that either evolution or history is progressive. Evolution moves in every direction. Microbes, worms, plants and animals coexist, all providing an environment for each other. Some organisms are completely adapted to a single environment and go extinct as soon as the environment changes. Other organisms are active and can adapt their behaviour. Out of that second group, on Earth, came human intelligence but this might not have happened elsewhere.
Marx and Engels wrote in the Manifesto that class struggle leads either to a revolutionary reconstitution of society or to the common ruin of the contending classes. Thus, progress was not inevitable.
Marx presented explanations for ideology, profit, the declining rate of profit and alienation. I do not suggest any single book for understanding such a complicated subject! BTW, to claim that he explained certain phenomena is not of course to claim that everyone accepts his explanations. That is impossible. The subject, dealing as it does with us and our social relationships, is inherently conflictive and controversial. It cannot be otherwise. But I confidently predict that, however often Marx's ideas are debunked to the satisfaction of the debunkers, others will continue to refer to those ideas as long as this kind of society exists.
There is a large annual "Marxism Festival" in London. This year, Noam Chomsky will speak. There is a story that a tabloid newspaper sent a reporter to attend, then write a joke report about the nut jobs. According to the story, he went back and told them, "I cannot write a joke report. Those are intelligent, informed, serious people." I cannot verify that story but it certainly rings true.
Kaor, Paul!
Then we cannot agree. I reject Marx, Marxism, and all its bloody works and catastrophes and consequences roots, stock, and branches.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
You seem to have invested a lot personally in denying that there can possibly be anything of value in anything that Marx thought, wrote or did. This is unnecessary. There are a lot of different informed views on how those roots connect to all the "branches." But, if you insist on dismissing everything from the roots up, then discussion becomes difficult or impossible.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I'm sorry if I got too heated. My visceral reaction to "Marx" or "Marxism" is one of horrified disgust. I immediately think of things like the Great Terror of Lenin and Stalin, the Cheka and KGB, the gulags, terror famines, brutal forced industrialization, etc. And of how other Marxists behaved with similar brutality in the nations where they seized power or were placed in power as puppets.
EVERY Marxist regime, without exception, has been cruel and tyrannical. Shouldn't you be asking what it is in Marxism makes it so easily an instrument of totalitarian tyranny?
Also, even simply as a theory of economics, Marxism doesn't WORK, it doesn't fit the observed facts of how people actually behave when it comes to economics. I've been recently mentioning Jacques Barzun's DARWIN, MARX, WAGNER because of how he went into some detail critiquing Marx's economics, precisely because it does not work. Barzun explained why he believed Marx's labor theory of value is false while the marginal utility theory of value taught by the Austrian school is not.
Thanks for your patience with me!
Sean
Sean,
Marxism is a set of ideas that can be seized on and quoted by anyone who opposes an existing regime and who aims to set up an alternative regime. It is one thing for a party or clique, quoting Marxism or anything else, to seize power and to replace an ousted regime with a new regime. It is another thing entirely to organize among workers, to encourage them to see that, with their collective power, they can control production, bringing an end to their exploitation by any top-down power structure. My point here is not that you are going to accept this perspective. You are not. My present point is only that those who are interested in Marx's ideas are not obliged to support, defend or apologize for any tyrannical regime that calls itself "Marxist" and there are far too many such regimes, unfortunately. They make it all too easy for opponents of Marxism to mount an apparently unassailable case.
Of course arguments about and against Marxist economics will continue. Indeed, they continue at that Marxism Festival that I mentioned. My present point is only that such disagreements will indeed continue. There are economists who are fully informed on these issues and who continue to think that Marxist economics does work and that rival schools do not. That one school does or does not work cannot be emphatically stated as a matter of fact. It is a matter of interpretation. Book titles can be cited on either side.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
You are correct, I disagree with almost every point you made here. For one thing the "workers" you talked about has never been a monolithic bloc. Many have been anti-Marxist or opposed to all forms of socialism. And there is no such thing as "labor power," only attempts at cartelizing or monopolizing workers.
I also disagree that people who call themselves Marxists are not obliged to either defend or make sense of why EVERY Marxist regime has been so cruel and tyrannical. Many of their rulers were steeped in the works of Marx and Engels, claiming to be interpreting and implementing their ideas. My question remains: what in Marxism makes it so easily an instrument of tyranny?
Those economists who argue Marxist economics works are obviously themselves Marxists, so I would expect them to think like that. It remains my belief that socialist economics has been empirically shown by actual experience to NOT work. It's also my belief that the marginal utility theory of value convincingly shows why the labor theory of value is false.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
And I have given the best answer to that question that I can. If you want me to give not just the best answer that I can but an answer that you will accept, then of course I cannot do that.
Economists who argue that Marxist economics work are Marxists? That's a tautology, isn't it? It is also tautologically true that economists who argue that capitalist economics work are pro-capitalist.
It remains your belief that... Well, yes. It is vanishingly unlikely that an exchange such as this will change beliefs. Something has been convincingly shown? But everyone has not been convinced. I try to conclude an exchange by clarifying why we still disagree. You try to conclude it by stating that you are right. This is unnecessary. Disagreements will continue.
EVERY Marxist regime has been tyrannical? Every alleged Marxist regime has been tyrannical. If Marxism is ever implemented, then it will be in a social change that is not any kind of familiar "regime." But can it indeed be implemented? That is a serious question after all this time has passed...
Paul.
BTW, of course workers disagree! They are people, members of society and subjected to the same opinion-shaping forces as everyone else. Most of the time, they accept the way things are. If most people most of the time did not accept the status quo, then it would not remain the status quo. Workers can come to see that they are united by common interests but that needs a lot of experience and struggle to counteract received ideas. It is far from easy and no mere change of government or regime will bring it about.
Paul: reading Marx, what struck me forcefully (back in my undergraduate days) was that his schemata of history was a thinly secularized version of Christianity, complete with the struggle at the end of time and the paradise thereafter. Very linear.
Also, of course, while fairly well-read by the standards of his day, his understanding of history was laughable, because the standards of his day didn't include all that much history.
He commented that Greece and Rome were the "infancy" of the human race, for example -- because when he was writing, they were thought to be among the earliest civilizations. In point of fact they weren't even fourth or fifth-generation.
The other striking feature is the mid-Victorian level of scientific and philosophical understanding: he's a classical-liberal in many respects... and his "blank slate" conception of human nature is positively Lockean, as is his naive empiricism.
Sort of a mutant Enlightenment type.
I could go on and on.
The basic reason he's been influential is the same one that accounts for the continuing influence of religion: it's complex, but boils down to "wishful thinking".
That there is some escape from the travails of human existence, and some structure/meaning that is an objective truth.
Both of these are simple delusions, to which human beings are unfortunately prone.
It's "no accident" that the USSR, frozen in time by the Marx's mid-Victorian mutant Lockeanism, outlawed genetics and fell victim to the charlatan Lysenko, who's alternative was slightly rewarmed Lamarckianism, complete with inheritance of acquired characteristics.
(Mao's Great Leap Forward, one of the worst disasters in China's disaster-prone history, comes from the same conceptual frame.)
It's all a form of hubris; and after hubris, nemesis, but madness opens the door for it.
There are people who are working to update and apply Marx's ideas. I am sure that many of your criticisms would be accepted, particularly regarding lack of historical knowledge. It is true in every age that we are limited to the knowledge that is accessible in that age although, fortunately, there are ages in which knowledge grows instead of remaining static.
My problem is this. Some of us accept arguments and evidence that workers as a class, a social force, have the ability to reorganize society and, further, that it is in their collective interest to do this so it should be possible for this to happen but yet at the same time decades, generations and lifetimes pass without workers getting organized to take this decisive step. In Sudan, it was hoped that neighbourhood committees could provide the basis for a new kind of popular power but now people are fleeing from civil war between two military groups.
OK. There is a continuing struggle and the outcome is not guaranteed.
Paul: who wins a particular struggle is contingent; but that there will -be- a struggle is not. There is no end to struggle, to contention.
Human beings form groups and the groups fight, and they do it the way dogs pee on tree-trunks. They just can't help it. It is their nature.
(Which is why Locke's conception of humans as a tabula rasa/blank slate formed wholly by environmental influences is so harmful, btw. It leads to monstrous crimes when someone with power tries to treat human beings that way.)
The terminology and conceptualizations of the struggling groups differ, but the phenomenon itself does not.
Because that is simply a function of what human beings -are-.
I would suggest if your hopes that the 'working class' will somehow change things are continually disappointed, the rational response is to go back and start questioning the reasoning on which those hopes were based. Not trying to 'save the appearances'.
For example, social classes exist; but the notion that they are somehow more 'real' or 'fundamental' than other human collective identities (hence the all-excusing concept of 'false consciousness') is laughable.
Collective identities exist -because- people believe in them. People don't believe in them because they're real, they're real because people believe in them. And people are inherently prone to believe in group identities, with those most closely resembling the clan/tribe setup in which we evolved being the most attractive.
Particularly with a common enemy thrown in.
Note that Soviet planners thought national identities were a 'stage' through which groups must pass on the road to a pan-proletarian consciousness.
So they promoted 'national' groupings such as the Kazakhs and Uzbeks, often out of whole cloth, making up 'national' languages and histories, inventing heroes, etc.
But far from being stages, the groups in question (many of which were comprised of people who'd primarily identified before with their religion, immediate tribal descent group, local town, etc.) picked up the concept and ran with it.
It was like dropping a crystal into a saturated solution.
Once the genie was out of the bottle, it wouldn't be put back in... or superseded. Once a group identifies as a nation, that has consistently proven stronger than other group labels, social class being an example. Even stronger than religion, though a combination of religion and tribal/national identities supercharges the whole phenomenon.
Note that in 1914, Germans had a strong sense of national identity; Russians didn't yet, though they were moving in that direction. By 1941, they'd gotten there -- which was why the Czar's Russia shattered under the hammer, but Stalin's Russia bore up under even heavier blows, even though a detested tyrant was running it.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Stirling's comments, while I have a few quibbles with them, are so much better than anything I could have written responding to you that I'll say I agree with 98 percent of them.
Mr. Stirling: Many thanks for this fascinating mini essay you have given. You have explained very clearly why I can't agree at all with Marxism. And your comments on Locke's "tabula rasa"
influence on Marx explains why it's so hard to talk to Marxist minded leftists. Neither of us, for somewhat different reasons, believes mankind is a blank slate.
While writing to Paul I did think of how so many Marxists treated their beliefs like a religion, NOT a philosophy or a science. But I hesitated saying so, to avoid giving offense.
I do think you were a little too hard on Tsarist Russia. The winter of 1916-17 was actually a quiet time along the front lines between the Central Allies and Russia, almost a truce. Both sides were preparing for a resumption of the struggle, by April 1917. With the Germans and Austro-Hungarians dreading having to contend with the steadily growing military power of Russia.
In short, it was not German hammer blows and crushing defeats which brought down the gov't of Nicholas II in March 1917. What brought on the catastrophe of the Russian Revolution was the astonishing incompetence of the authorities in Petrograd, allowing trivial disturbances to get out of control. Yes, Nicholas II made mistakes, but his decisions were based on the tardy, incomplete, even DISHONEST reports he was getting.
Ad astra! Sean
An economic class has a common material interest although it might not realize it.
Certainly premises have to be questioned in the light of subsequent experience. Theory is grey. Life is green.
Of course there are "Marxists" who treat their theory as a dogma.
Historically, there has been a progression from hunting and gathering through slave-owning society and feudalism to capitalism. Theoretically, there is only one more step to take but who wins any conflict is contingent and, with weapons that can destroy the Earth, the next major conflict might be terminal.
Kaor, Paul!
No, there is no such thing as a monolithic "economic class." And many, even within such a "class," will have different desires, aspirations, etc. So I don't believe this.
Marxism is a useless and failed theory, which too many Marxists cling to because it's their religion.
Again, I don't believe in any kind of "inevitable progress." It was purely accidental that a subtle of very different factors and ideas led to the rise of both a true science and a truly rational understanding of how economics works. And I mean only the work of Adam Smith and his successors and not Marx or any other socialist.
We are under threat because human beings are intrinsically inclined to think in tribalist terms. we are inclined to being quarrelsome, aggressive, strife torn. These are features, not bugs, and can only be managed, not eliminated.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Of course members of a class have different desires. They have a common material interest but might not realize it.
My "religion"/spiritual practice is "just sitting" meditation. Marxism explains ideology, exploitation, alienation, economic crises and oppression.
Progress is not inevitable. I have said that it is not earlier in this thread. Accident that science arose: unfortunately true. Both Smith and Marx explain economics. This writing off of all socialists is far too wholesale. Has none of them ever said anything valid or of value?
Nothing is intrinsic in a perpetually changing world.
Paul.
Sean,
You clearly want to rubbish Marxism entirely. This is unnecessary. You need only say that it is a social philosophy that you disagree with.
Paul.
Paul: actually, while slavery is a ubiquitous institution -- from hunter-gatherers through to great empires, only becoming extinct in a large area in western Europe in the high Middle Ages -- slave -economies- are quite rare.
Usually slavery is a fairly marginal institution -- one of many forms of labor. This was true in all the really early civilizations. Ancient Sumeria, for example.
It wasn't until Greece and Rome that slavery became -predominant- in any large area.
And even in late-Republican and early-Imperial Rome, slavery was never the -majority- of the labor force.
Eg., there were large estates which used a lot of slave labor in Roman times. But even at the peak of the system, tenancy and hired labor were about as important.
Frex, large Roman estates never kept enough slave labor to harvest their grain crops, or their vines and olives where those were important cash crops.
Because those are highly seasonal tasks, and would mean underemployed slaves most of the year.
Instead Roman landowners usually hired migrant labor gangs -- hired them at very good wages, averaging over two denarii a day -- for harvest work. Some of those were tenant farmers, others were from heavily populated districts, nomad populations, towns and cities, etc.
This was a common pattern throughout the Roman world wherever commercial agriculture was prominent.
They kept enough slaves to meet the non-peak labor demands, the ones that provided fairly steady year-round employment.
Now, feudalism (as it evolved in post-Roman Europe) was a -regression- from the highly developed market economy of Imperial Rome.
For instance, Roman Britannia had a larger population than England (roughly the same area) was to attain consistently again until after 1600 CE.
The fundamental feature of the Roman economy was its high degree of marketization and monetization, with lots of specialization, massive long-distance trade, sophisticated financial systems and so forth.
Europe didn't achieve comparable levels again until well into the modern period. Just as the city of Rome in Antonine times (in 150-200 CE) had a larger population than any European city until London in 1800.
I know that there were free wage labourers in the Roman economy.
I welcome all this as showing that progress, when and if it happens, is not automatic or straight up. We might be able to agree that the Scientific, Industrial and new technological Revolutions constitute a kind of progress and that everything that has been gained is now seriously threatened.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Yes, Marxism should be "rubbished," totally rejected and abandoned. Because, not only has it failed as economics and as socialism, it has been shown over and over to have been an instrument of brutal tyranny where ever Marxists have come to power. That cannot be denied!
Stirling mentioned Mao Tse-tung's Great Leap Forward of 1958-62 as one example of how catastrophic Marxism has been. I did a little checking and somewhere between 15 and FIFTY FIVE million Chinese died of famine and violence during that time. Even Stalin didn't manage to kill that many people in only four years!
A big reason for why Marxism is so brutal goes back to its saying that human beings are a blank slate and that they can be remolded to fit a desired pattern (remember the Soviet bull twaddle about the "New Soviet Man"?). And since humans are NOT like that, but remain stubbornly human (including being quarrelsome and contentious), Marxist rulers respond by being cruel and tyrannical to these "evil tailless apes" (as Trotsky put it).
Mr. Stirling: Many thanks for that mini essay about the economy of the Roman Empire. I could tell, even in your draft version of TO TURN THE TIDE, how sophisticated and advanced it was. What the Romans needed was their own Adam Smith, to give a theoretical explanation for why free economics works and some advice on mistakes to avoid making.
But I can see the time travelers stranded in Antonine Rome translating Adam Smith's THE WEALTH OF NATIONS and Ludwig von Mises HUMAN ACTION into Latin!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
The purpose of Marxism is not for Marxists to come to power. When Mao's Communist Party seized control of China, that was in no way any kind of class revolution. The workers were told to keep on working as usual.
People I know who take Marxist ideas seriously do not think that human beings are blank slates and do not want to exercise bureaucratic state power in order to impose any bull twaddle about a New Man. They think that workers as they are now are capable of collective self-activity and creativity. Sure, you can disagree with that as well but it is the diametric opposite of "blank slate"-ism.
You keep telling me what Marxism is and denouncing it. There is a whole other side of Marxism that you clearly do not know about and do not want to know about. Please acknowledge at least that there are intelligent and informed people who disagree with you and have reasons to disagree with you. That alone does not establish that they are right and you are but such an acknowledgment would be the start of an exchange and a discussion as opposed to endless denunciation. Every time that you say that I think something (that progress is inevitable, that human beings are blank slates, that an economic class is already united by a common purpose) I have to reply that I do not think that and have already said that I do not think it.
Paul.
Missing word: wrong.
Kaor, Paul!
I still disagree, every Communist Party which exercised power took that power by force and violence, claiming to do so in the name of Marx and the "working class."
Second paragraph: EVERY time Marxists held actual power they have treated people like blank slates to be reprogrammed. That kind of attitude is what makes sense of all those purges, failed Five Year Plans, and Great Leaps Forward. And stuff like "collective self creativity and activity" makes no sense. Only INDIVIDUALS can be creative. Anything "collective" has to be organized and under some kind of single direction or leadership. And that includes many kinds of organizations, large and small.
Last paragraph: I agree there are decent, well meaning people who are Marxists, but are they truly well informed if they keep waving away all the horrors we have seen from Marxism: centralized bureaucratic despotism, purges, gulags, killing fields, etc.?
My view is that some of the Marxist tyrants (and their associates) of the past century: Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, Stalin, Mao, Chou En-lai, the Kims of N Korea, Enver Hoxha, Castro, Pol Pot, etc., etc., may have been once well meaning idealists. BUT, a combination of fanaticism and frustration over how hard it was to implement Marxism, and the sheer intractability of human beings, made them cruel and tyrannical.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But the way to apply Marxism is not to seize power. It is much harder which is why it often doesn't happen or you don't hear about it. Members of a Marxist organization work in every profession and industry. They are active in working class organizations, trade unions and campaigns, e.g., against racism. They argue consistently that workers should defend their terms and conditions and should act in solidarity with other groups of workers, locally, nationally and internationally. Out of this workers' self-organization and activity can come a new society but it is a marathon, not a sprint. You, of course, disagree with this but it is a completely different process from the one you describe.
I am just about to go out so might have to cut this short.
Paul.
Very briefly: society needs leaders but not rulers; we do not wave away horrors but oppose them. You are always replying to something that has not been said.
I believe the Metis was Louis Riel. The Metis were descendants of French-Canadians and First Nations. Riel led a rebellion against "English" Canada in the late 19th Century. He lost and was hung.
The Tudor lady is Mary I, AKA Bloody Mary. The last part of France under English rule, Calais, was lost to the French during her reign. She's alleged to have said that when she died, the word Calais would be in her heart.
Kaor, Paul and Anonymous!
Paul: The mere fact so many Marxists were willing to seize power by force, and the hideous consequences of that seizure, has discredited Marxism. Many people, not just on the right but also the left, distrust Communists.
Frankly, if the USSR still existed, I would regard those Marxists working in every profession with wariness. The Soviets used ideological affinities with Marxists in other countries to recruit spies, deep cover agents, etc., to betray, undermine, subvert "bourgeois" nations. Including the UK and US.
I don't in the least believe some kind of mystic "Out of this workers' self-organization and activity can come a new society." No, not possible, not if they are still going to be HUMAN beings and thus prone to being quarrelsome, combative, strife torn, etc. People who dream like this are going to be bitterly disappointed.
I am not hung up about "rulers" versus "leaders," because I see little or no real difference between them. ALL organized societies are going to need gov'ts, no matter what forms they take. And that means, like it or not, leaders/rulers with institutionalized formal powers.
Anonymous: While I don't think I knew who that Metis was the first time I read "Losers' Night," I knew at once who that Tudor lady was.
And not just Queen Mary, but her successor Elizabeth also regretted the loss of Calais.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I know that Marxism is discredited in many people's eyes. I am disagreeing with the Marxists who seized power. Marxism became a convenient ideology for people like Mao who would in any case have been waging national liberation struggles, using some other ideology.
While the USSR existed, we denounced it as a tyranny and were in our turn denounced by the Communist Parties. Anyone who thought that we were pro-Russian was completely misinformed although of course that assumption was repeatedly made.
Human beings are capable of change. This is not mystic but material. You don't believe that a new society can be brought about. You are right not to believe it. We have not demonstrated it in practice yet. But we can keep arguing for an alternative to the present madness: nuclear stockpiles coexisting with avoidable deprivation.
Leaders and rulers are opposites. A ruler stays safe and sends others to be killed whereas a leader has no power to coerce but takes a risk and gives a lead. Every group of people has leaders but not necessarily rulers. Leadership happens when anyone makes a suggestion that is accepted. Many people might lead just once in their lives.
You disagree with many statements that I am not making, e.g., that progress is inevitable, and with some statements that I am making, e.g., that people can change themselves both individually and collectively. All that I am trying to do here is to differentiate between these two kinds of statements. (I shouldn't have to do this but unfortunately I do have to do it more than once.) When this issue has been clarified, the disagreement about the second set of statements will of course remain - and need not be endlessly repeated!
Paul.
Paul: Alexander the Great was a ruler... and first over the wall every time.
A guy who did both.
Post a Comment