I hope you know that when someone tells me that they have no idea what
something is I have a compulsion to explain it. It is that pent up
teacher in me. So don't complain about my going into teaching mode. You
brought it on yourself. First, I really don't like calling it
philosophical materialism. I just started adding a modifier after I had
that very confusing conversation with a man who could not conceive that
materialism is anything but a strong desire to acquire expensive
consumer goods. The word is materialism and it is half of the great
philosophical schism between idealism and materialism. At one time
philosophy was viewed as a hodgepodge of differing philosophies without
any clear dividing line between one kind of philosophy and another.
Specifically, their was no attempt to distinguish between religious and
secular philosophy. Philosopher names are escaping me right now and I
don't want to pause to look them up, but if you are interested you can
look up the names of the ones who were responsible for the contentions
that led to the schism. What it comes down to is all the varying
philosophies were gathered under two main categories. One is idealism.
The name does not necessarily describe all the philosophies under that
heading, but the point was that it included philosophies which held
ideas alone as supreme. That is, if you just sit around and think about
how the universe around us should be interpreted without actually
consulting that universe then your philosophy is superior. All
religions are based on idealist philosophy. Every time you hear someone
talk about spiritual things you are hearing the explication of some form
of idealism. By the way, certain words that had meant the same thing
were divided up between the idealists and the materialists. For example,
the idealists speak of spirits, souls, ghosts and similar concepts.
Materialists speak of minds, thoughts, cognition and so forth. Idealists
tend to attribute thought to the supernatural and think it is separate
from the corporeal body and they seem to think that there can be
disembodied minds that they call spirits or gods. Materialists hold that
thought is a function of the brain. The word materialism comes from the
idea that it is assumed that all that is real is material and that
supernatural concepts are simply false and not real at all. In a
literal sense that is not exactly what materialists believe and my
example of dialectical materialism is an illustration that material
objects are not all there is. But just like idealism can be divided into
many and various religions and other superstitious systems of thoughts,
materialism can be divided into different kinds of materialism too.
There are materialist philosophies that go by names like empiricism,
pragmatism, mechanical materialism, dialectical materialism and so
forth. I will also include objectivism, but I think that one is horribly
misnamed. It is the materialist philosophy promoted by Ayn Rand. But
since we were just talking about mechanical materialism let me say a bit
about that. The whole idea is that the universe works with clockwork
like mechanics. That is, one particle bumps another particle causing it
to bump another particle and everything that ever happens in the
universe can be predicted accordingly. Let me allude to the comment that
Engels made about it in his book The Dialectics of nature. He said that
the idea of mechanical materialism would have it that if we knew the
exact position and momentum of each constituent particle of the original
solar nebula then we could theoretically predict that a flea bit me last
night at three o'clock rather than at two o'clock. I have noticed that a
lot of people seem to think that mechanical materialism is the only kind
of materialism and dismiss it claiming that materialism has been proven
wrong. That ignores the other kinds of materialism, but it is true that
mechanical materialism suffers some problems that have largely
discredited it. The two main problems are the theory of quantum
mechanics and chaos theory. Putting aside those main problems, I am not
a mechanical materialist in the first place, but I think that if it can
be revived it could be a part of dialectical materialism because it does
not actually deny the concepts of dialectics. Furthermore, I think there
is a chance for its revival under certain conditions. For one thing, I
don't think that quantum theory is complete and its incompleteness is
why we observe these subatomic phenomena that are called quantum
weirdness and the fact that quantum theory is not compatible with
relativity theory indicates that both are incomplete. If we could see
what is going on in the sub-Planc world we just might be able to
reconcile them. However, so far there is no way to observe anything that
might happen in the area smaller than the Planc length, not even
theoretically. Now, with that said, let me allude to dialectical
materialism. I have explained this before, but since I am explaining
materialism let me skim over it again. Dialectical materialism gives a
dynamic to the universe, or at least explains the dynamic that the
universe clearly has beyond the mere process of entropy, and it gives
room for concept to have realness too. It is the materialist philosophy
of the unity of opposites. Here is my favorite example of a dialectical
relationship. A slave cannot exist without a master and a master cannot
exist without a slave. Without the other each would stop being either a
master or slave. That gives them a unity, but their roles are entirely
different and are contradictory. The slaves interests are in opposition
to the interests of the master and the master's interests, by necessity,
oppose the interests of the slave. But by their interdependence on each
other for their existence as master and slave they have to interact with
each other and thereby change one another. The interaction is an
interaction of struggle against one another. That is, change itself is a
necessity and it is always ongoing. If you look around you can see lots
of dialectical relationships and witness the ongoing change they result
in. This unity of opposing forces largely describes how the entire
universe works and it even describes entropy, which is more often cited
as the motive force of change in the universe. So then, so much for your
assumption that I am somehow stuck in the past and do not recognize
change. But I hope this has done something toward explaining what
philosophical materialism is.
---
Carl Sagan
“ Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. ”
― Carl Sagan
On 6/22/2019 9:24 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Good morning Roger,
I think you're correct. Our frames of reference are different. By the way, I
have no idea what philosophical materialism means. It sounds very abstract. I
suppose that I would say that you think and talk in abstractions, but these
abstract concepts have reality for you. I think in very concrete terms. We may
both be concerned about the same phenomena, but we come from very different
places.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Friday, June 21, 2019 10:09 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Clueless and Shameless: Joe Biden, Staggering
Frontrunner
The more I think about it the more I think I got it right when I said that
talking to you was like talking to that guy in a bar that I told you about. We
are on entirely different wave lengths. I am talking about one thing and you
are assuming that I am talking about an entirely different subject. Then I get
frustrated because no matter how many times I explain something you still do
not understand it. I am now thinking that you do not understand it because you
are assuming that I am talking about something other than what I am. You would
be correct that certain terminology would be inappropriate when discussing
certain subjects, but if I am not discussing those subjects and am discussing
another subject the terminology is likely to be completely appropriate.
Think about the situation I told you about. I was discussing philosophical
materialism and the other person was discussing a desire to acquire expensive
consumer goods. Just how could anything but confusion result from such a
conversation? Frankly, that conversation caused me to change my verbal
formulation a bit. Ever since then I have made a point to call it philosophical
materialism instead of materialism. I have also learned that if I ask someone
if he understands materialism, whether I call it materialism or philosophical
materialism, and if he says yes that I should not assume that he really does.
In this case the understanding of materialism is not at issue except that I
began to realize what the problem is when I started to explain why dialectical
materialism is not the same as mechanical materialism, but we are still talking
about entirely different things. If I am talking about people's individual
situations or the personal effects of being in a certain economic class or
interpersonal relations I would not use the terminology that you object to
either. However, that is not what I am talking about when I use that
terminology. We are simply not on the same wavelength.
---
Carl Sagan
“ Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. ”
― Carl Sagan
On 6/21/2019 9:20 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
OK. So it wasn't Marx. These were names that people used in the country where
he lived, at the time when he lived. I'm not offended by these words. You're
free to use them. But they are not words in current usage by most people in the
US in 2019. You said that Marx used the terms because they were in current
usage at the time so he felt they would effectively communicate his ideas.
Well, that was more than 100 years ago. Now, it is a small group of scholars of
socialism who are familiar with these concepts and terms, and who find them
meaningful.
You're correct. I do not regularly engage in economic class analysis. Neither
do most other people. I never heard of the term, labor aristocracy. I am not a
member of the small group of people who read the kind of material in which one
would find these terms. But if I had studied all of this stuff and if I wanted
to engage in political organization today, I would definitely avoid using this
kind of esoteric language. I'd find simple, everyday terms in which to describe
the phenomena that I wanted people to understand and I would avoid negativity
if they didn't seem to understand me or if they didn't agree with what I was
saying.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Friday, June 21, 2019 8:25 PM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Clueless and Shameless: Joe Biden,
Staggering Frontrunner
Miriam wrote: "Those are names that Marx gave them back in what year? In what
country?
"
Here we go again. Marx did not give them those names. Marx wrote about
classes that were already named and he did not either invent those
names or give them any new definitions. He analyzed interactions
between classes and he called those classes what everyone else called
them so that everyone else could understand what he meant. Sometimes
he used modifiers that had not been used before to make a point about
class relations, but where did you ever get the idea that Marx named
classes himself? He wanted to be understood, not found some secret
lodge with secret handshakes and secret languages. In fact, some of
the modified names were not even necessarily used by Marx or else he
used them very rarely. Labor aristocracy is more associated with
Trotsky, for example. But Trotsky was not trying to found some secret
cabal either. He was talking about a highly paid section of the labor
force that identified itself more closely with the owning classes. I
suppose if you do not regularly study or engage yourself in economic
class analysis you may be unfamiliar with some of the jargon of the
field, but do you become so offended when you hear unfamiliar jargon
from other fields? I have medical appointments and the doctor often
uses terminology that I do not understand, but that are probably
everyday words to him. I do not become offended. I just ask him what
it means and accept his answer. Do you become offended when your
doctor uses a word that is unfamiliar to you? ---
Carl Sagan
“ Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. ”
― Carl Sagan
On 6/21/2019 5:27 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Roger,
You say that if we talk about economic classes, we must name them and
then you give them names like national bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie,
petty bourgeoisie, proletariat, lumpen proletariat labor aristocra
peasantry, proletarianized peasantry and so forth. These are simply
names that describe classes in a capitalist economic system
Those are names that Marx gave them back in what year? In what country?
Even if I chose to think about contemporary issues only in terms of economic
class, as if no other variables influenced what is happening in today's world,
there is no rule that says that I must use those names. Those names are not
relevant to America in 2019, not as far as I'm concerned. And I haven't heard
any current Marxist economists use them either. Not that they may not have used
them as they were learning Marxist theory, but if they want to communicate with
their fellow Americans, they need to use language and concepts that feel
relevant to people's everyday lives.
You write about how class can be used to understand people's economic
situation. You said, The categories of what is commonly called class is there
to let us know what economic role people play in economic relations and how
they relate to each other on an economic basis. Ethnicity, religion or even the
specific job one performs are mostly irrelevant to this.
I cannot imagine how it is relevant to talk about people's financial situations, about
who has more privileges or more power, about who ends up homeless or incarcerated,
without taking ethnicity, race, religion, and personal psychology into account. I suspect
that what you are referring to, is a very mechanistic formula of economic theory like,
"dialectic materialism" or some other economic theory, the reverse side of
market theory, which doesn't take real people and their thoughts, feelings, or
motivations into account.
In fact, one of the criticisms made of Bernie Sanders by some of his detractors
on the left, is that he doesn't talk enough about how race impacts people's
economic situation. I don't agree with that particular criticism of him, but I
do think that one can't look at class status in the United States without
analyzing the impact of race, religion, and ethnicity on just who is a member
of which economic class.
We also have, in this country wide differences in philosophical viewpoints
regarding religion, sexuality, and civil liberties and this divergence of
viewpoint exists among the very wealthy. So although in some ways George Soros
and the Koch brothers have similar self interests, in other ways, they use
their money in very different ways when it comes to influenceing events.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, June 21, 2019 3:24 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; Miriam Vieni
<miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [blind-democracy] Re: Clueless and Shameless: Joe Biden,
Staggering Frontrunner
Okay, you are getting into some of those quibbles that I alluded to that I have
with what Carl had to say, but your quibbles come from an entirely different
perspective. I will have to agree that it is over simplistic to divide everyone
into two classes, the ruling class and the working class. However, this talk
about different ethnicities, religions and things like that does not even
address the whole point of dividing people into classes at all. In some
contexts the word class means category and that is what you seem to be talking
about. You can divide people according to their ethnicity. You can divide
people according to whatever shade their skins are. You can divide people
according to whether they prefer to play chess or checkers. But if you divide
people by any of those criteria or any of the vast number of criteria available
for you to divide them by you have to ask the question of why are you dividing
them. Any such division you come up with may very well have some usefulness in
some study or endeavor like psychology, sociology marketing studies or
whatever, but you are still talking about categories as opposed to class. Okay,
dividing people into classes is categorical too, but the purpose of doing so
will not be the same as dividing people into the categories of people who stand
under five feet and people who stand over five feet. The categories of what is
commonly called class is there to let us know what economic role people play in
economic relations and how they relate to each other on an economic basis.
Ethnicity, religion or even the specific job one performs are mostly irrelevant
to this. As I have said before, you can be either a lumper or a splitter and
varying degrees of lumping or splitting may be more or less appropriate for
whatever you are doing with your categories. You could pick out at random any
two people from the human population of the earth and compare them and find
that one or the other has some advantage over the other with some amount of
greater power or privilege, but to what purpose would you be making that
comparison? The only thing I can think of is that you might be studying
individual psychology, but that doesn't have much to do with what is ordinarily
meant when the word class is used. This comparison of just one person to
another, though, is an extreme example of splitting. What Carl has explicated,
though, is an extreme example of lumping. Okay, there is the ruling class. They
are called the ruling class because they rule. They control how the economic
system is conducted and they have life and death power over a lot of people.
However, there are other people who have a lot of power too who are not quite
as powerful as the ruling class. Their own lives may be subordinate to the
ruling class, but they still have a high degree of privilege and they maintain
that privilege by implementing ruling class directives and by making their own
directives when not directly implementing ruling class directives. You have
powerful people who own the biggest manufacturing companies and who control
those companies. You have other powerful people who manage the transfer of
money who are the bankers. Below those kinds of people you have managers of
various levels and owners of smaller companies. You have company owners who not
only own and so implement their own power, but who also perform productive
labor themselves. Then you also have people who make their living only from
productive labor. Other people perform agricultural labor for a wage or perform
agricultural labor while owning the farm where they work. Then you have a
reserve of unemployed people who are maintained to keep the price of labor from
being bid up so high that the owners would fail to make a profit after paying
wages. Among those unemployed are a layer who have to resort to criminal
activity to make a living and may become professional criminals. There are a
lot of other gradations too and it has very little to do with their ethnicity,
religion or other characteristics that you mention. But my point in mentioning
all of these layers in the economic system is to illustrate just how over
simplistic Carl's division is. There are a lot of classes other than the ruling
class and the working class and just how far you are going to split or lump
them depends on what you happen to be doing with the information. Now, let me
add what I have been avoiding so far. These various classes have names.
If you are going to talk about anything and have it make sense you have to give
it a name. Oh, I suppose you could describe it every time you mention it, but
that would be very unwieldy. I know, Miriam, that you don't like it when I put
a name to these classes, but they have to be named in order to make sense of
what is being talked about. When someone calls classes by their names it does
not mean that there is an attempt to make you think in a certain way. It does
not mean that you are being looked down on. It does not mean that anyone is
dismissing your own cultural perspective. It does not mean that you are being
personally attacked or however you see it. It only means that the person who
uses those names is calling something by its name. The names of those classes
include names like national bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie,
proletariat, lumpen proletariat labor aristocracy, peasantry, proletarianized
peasantry and so forth. These are simply names that describe classes in a
capitalist economic system and the names were never given to any of these
classes to offend you or anybody else. And if we only call the class divisions
ruling class and working class we just cannot talk about the ways these varying
classes effect and relate to each other.
---
Carl Sagan
“ Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. ”
― Carl Sagan
On 6/21/2019 9:25 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
My feeling is that you can't just lump everyone together in, "the working
class". People have different levels of education, come from different ethnic and
racial and religious backgrounds, do very different kinds of work, have very different
kinds of life styles, and most importantly, have very different views of who they are and
what their place is in this world. You're talking about power and it's true that you
don't have any more power than the people with no education or who struggle to make a
living for their children. That is, you don't have any more power to influence whether or
not we have war or peace, or whether or not we get a single payer health system. But you
do have enough power so that you will be treated with more consideration by business
people, politicians, and police officers. To me, for people like us to say that there's
no difference between us and migrant workers or fast food workers or Walmart employees,
is to trivialize the kinds of problems that those working class people have. You're not
one of them. They know it and you know it.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2019 10:11 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Clueless and Shameless: Joe Biden,
Staggering Frontrunner
With all due respect, I continue to consider all of us who are not members in
good standing of the Ruling Class, to be members of the Working Class. Unless
we are homeless or chronically unemployed, which would put us in the Lower
Class.
Middle implies halfway between something and something else. In the economic structure
of the American Empire, there is no "Middle"
anything.
My wife and I earned, back in the early 1990's, a bit over $100,000
per year between us. So $100,000 would put us mid way between
$000,000 and $200,000. But in order to be midway between $000,000,000 and
$100,000,000, we would need to come in around $50,000,000.
Middle Class is just another make believe term that soothes the Soul, but means
absolutely nothing.
But hey! All of the rest of you can call it anything you want, because the
fact of the matter is that all of us who are not members in good standing in
the Ruling Class are owned by one or more members of that Ruling Class.
Remember, when you get set to disagree, a Monkey on a golden chain is just as
much of a prisoner as a Monkey on an Iron chain.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/20/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Clueless and Shameless: Joe Biden, Staggering Frontrunner By Norman
Solomon, Reader Supported News
20 June 19
Joe Biden just put a spotlight on his mindset when he explicitly
refused to apologize for fondly recalling how the Senate "got
things done" with "civility" as he worked alongside some of the
leading racist lawmakers of the 20th century. For Biden, the
personal is the political; he knows that he's virtuous, and that
should be more than good enough for African Americans, for women, for anyone.
"There's not a racist bone in my body," Biden exclaimed Wednesday
night, moments after demanding: "Apologize for what?" His deep
paternalism surfaced during the angry outburst as he declared:
"I've been involved in civil rights my whole career, period,
period, period."
Biden has been "involved" in civil rights his "whole career" all
right. But at some crucial junctures, he was on the wrong side. He
teamed up with segregationist senators to oppose busing for school
desegregation in the 1970s. And he played a leading role - while
pandering to racism with a shameful Senate floor speech - for
passage of the infamous 1994 crime bill that fueled mass incarceration.
Such aspects of Biden's record provide context for his comments
this week - praising an era of productive "civility" with the
virulent segregationist Dixiecrat senators Herman Talmadge of
Georgia and James Eastland of Mississippi (known as the "Voice of
the White South"), who often called black people "an inferior race."
Said Biden at a New York fundraiser Tuesday night: "Well guess what?
At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn't
agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished."
To Biden, any assessment of his past conduct that clashes with his
high self-regard is unfair; after all, he really means well. On the
campaign trail now, his cloying paternalism is as evident as his
affinity for wealthy donors.
Biden shuttles between the billionaire class and the working class
- funded by the rich while justifying the rich to everyone else.
His aspirations are bound up in notions of himself as comforter-in-chief.
"I get it, I get it," Biden said during his brief and
self-adulatory non-apology video in early April to quiet the uproar
over his invasive touching of women and girls. He was actually
saying: I get it that I need to seem to get it.
"I want to talk about gestures of support and encouragement that
I've made to women and some men that have made them uncomfortable,"
Biden said in the video. "In my career I've always tried to make a
human connection - that's my responsibility, I think. I shake
hands, I hug people, I grab men and women by the shoulders and say,
'You can do this' . It's the way I've always been. It's the way
I've tried to show I care about them and I'm listening."
Weeks later, appearing on ABC's "The View," he declared: "I have
never in my life, never, done anything in approaching a woman that
has been other than trying to bring solace." It was not a credible
claim; consider Lucy Flores, or the countless other women and girls
he has intrusively touched over the years.
For several decades, Biden has made his way through the political
terrain as a reflexive glad-hander. But times have changed a lot
more than he has.
"What the American people do not know yet is whether Biden has
actually internalized any of the blowback he's earned over the
years for his treatment of women," journalist Joe Berkowitz wrote last week.
"So far, it's not looking good."
What's also looking grim is Biden's brazen adoration of wealthy
elites who feed on corporate power. His approach is to split the
rhetorical difference between the wealthy and the workers. And so,
days ago, at a fundraiser filled with almost 180 donors giving his
campaign the legal limit of $2,800 each - an event where he tried
and failed to get funding from a pro-Trump billionaire - Biden declared:
"You know, you guys are great but Wall Street didn't build America.
You guys are incredibly important but you didn't build America.
Ordinary, hard-working, middle-class people given half the chance
is what built America."
The formula boils down to throwing the "hard-working middle class"
some rhetorical bones while continuing to service "you guys" on Wall Street.
Given his desire to merely revert the country to pre-Trump days, no
wonder Biden keeps saying that a good future can stem from finding
common ground with Republicans. But for people who understand the
present-day GOP and really want a decent society, Biden's claims are delusional.
Biden sees his public roles of winking patriarch, civility toward
racists, and collaborator with oligarchs as a winning political
combination. But if he becomes the Democratic presidential nominee,
Biden will suppress turnout from the party's base while providing
Republicans with plenty of effective (albeit hypocritical) fodder.
Already the conservative press is salivating over the transparently
fraudulent pretenses of Lunch Bucket Joe, as in this headline
Tuesday in the right-wing Washington Examiner: "Biden Rubs Elbows With Billionaires
in $34M Penthouse."
When Bernie Sanders (who I continue to actively support) denounces
the political power of billionaires and repeats his 2020 campaign
motto - "Not Me. Us." - it rings true, consistent with his
decades-long record. But Biden can't outrun his own record, which
is enmeshed in his ongoing mentality.
And
so, the former vice president is in a race between his pleasant
image and unpleasant reality.
As the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Joe
Biden is the biggest threat to Joe Biden's political future. He
continues to be who he has been, and that's the toxic problem.
Email This Page
Norman Solomon is cofounder and national coordinator of
RootsAction.org. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California
to the 2016 Democratic National Convention and is currently a
coordinator of the relaunched independent Bernie Delegates Network.
Solomon is the author of a dozen books including War Made Easy: How
Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to
Reader Supported News.
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