ALB
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Thanks. That was what I thought was the case. In an earlier post you said that
karma too can be taken in the crude, popular, religious sense, or in a different sense, the sense of genetic “memory”, evolutionary “memory.”
I don’t understand the word “genetic” here unless you simply mean the cultural heritage of humanity in terms of acquired technological and other knowledge that is passed down from generation to generation. I don’t see what this has to do with karma and certainly not with genes.
As a matter of interest, do the Eastern religions that preach reincarnation say that it involves retaining memory of a previous life? I thought their assumption was that the “soul” (whatever that is) was immortal and moved from one body to another. If “souls” retained the memory of all their past lives the brain of their current life would be overwhelmed by this.
The whole doctrine is just mumbo jumbo but it did serve a social purpose for the privileged classes — by teaching the poor that they were poor because they had behaved badly in a past life and would in the next one too if they weren’t “good” in their present one. In other words, a similar social purpose as the doctrine of heaven and hell of christianity and islam. But in a sense it is worse as it also implies that the rich and powerful are this because they had been good in their previous life and so deserved to be rich and powerful. A very convenient doctrine for them.
I thought this was an interesting and useful guide to some modern radical economists. I have answered how I think we would answer the questions in red
Here are the questions:
“In his book The Long Depression Michael Roberts asks four key questions from which he derives eight possible answers about the nature of economic turmoil or even whether there is a crisis at all.
1) Is capitalism subject to economic crisis? Yes
Within the camp which says no, a second question is answered.
1b) Do periodic fluctuations need fixing?
If the answer is “yes” you are a Keynesian like Paul Krugman. If the answer is “no” you are a libertarian like Milton Friedman. For the libertarians capitalism only goes through “business cycles”.
Within the camp that says “yes”, that capitalism is subject to crisis, a second question is asked:
Is the kernel of the crisis found in production? Yes
If the answer is “no” you are an underconsumptionist like Marxists David Harvey or Rosa Luxemburg.
If the answer is “yes” about the kernel of the crisis found in production, there is another question:
2b) Are crises more than struggle over wages and profit shares? Yes
If no, you are a profit-squeeze supporter. Economics associated with this are Baron and Sweezy and Richard Wolff.
If the answer to the kernel of the crisis is found in production is “yes”, a further question should be:
3a) Are crises integral to the accumulation crisis? Yes
If the answer is “yes” you follow Marx’s argument about the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. This is advocated by Michael Roberts, Anwar Shaikh and Robert Brenner.
If the answer to the question is crisis integral to the accumulation process is “no” then a further question is asked.
4a) Does extra-consumption come from outside the system? No
If the answer is “yes” you are a follower of Rosa Luxemburg or David Harvey and claim that capitalism has limited resources and needs imperialism to survive.
If the answer is “no” to the question then there is second question.
4b) Does extra consumption come from state intervention? No
If the answer is “yes” you are a post Keynesian such as Steve Keen.
If the answer is “no” you are a Malthusian.”A couple of points. I don’t see why answering Yes to question 3a commits you to thinking that crises are caused by a long term tendency for the rate of profit to fall. I assume that answering No to question 4b makes you a “Malthusian” in the sense that you are saying that total consumption can only increase through an increase in population.
I am not sure that Harvey qualifies as a Marxian economist. Not only does he not stand for socialism but he comes across as a more of a leftwing Keynesian.
So far only read the introduction quoting Michael Roberts’s guide to other radical economists. I want to quote this but want to check first that the newly-introduced facility here to use red works.
It does
Maybe but they knocked out a NATO team (Portugal) so making an all non-NATO final theoretically possible. But for that they need to beat France. It looks like the main hope for delivering your karma to NATO, for engineering the exclusion of Russia and arming the Ukranian nasties, will be Argentina.
When I lived in a Belgium a law was still in force fixing a maximum price for bread. The boulangeries complied for a basic loaf but concentrated on producing and selling fancy breads at a higher price. I would think this would happen again if this was introduced in other countries. The law was only abolished in 2004.
I thought that, as a German-speaker, you might be able to contribute something useful to this thread. For instance, as which Reich the “Reichsbürger” consider they own allegiance to. Apparently not.
Anyway, now you know my birthday you can send me a card.
Can I suggest a separate thread or even section on Trolls and Trolling where we can discuss the psychology and motivation of trolls, in general as well as particular ones, without derailing the discussion on other threads.
Make of this what you will but, if true, it places the Ukraine regime in a bad light:
They are not Nazis, just Nasties. Meanwhile Biden calls a Russian arms dealer released in exchange for a basketball player a “merchant of death”. But what does that make him who’s been sending arms to keep the war going in Ukraine for free: The Father Christmas of Death?
Although the OHCHR can’t be regarded as an entirely neutral body, that extract confirms what I surmised — not all, not even a majority, of those in the “mass graves” were civilians fighting or helping the Ukrainian army to fight the Russian army (though some were), as the term suggests and is meant to suggest in NATO and Ukranian propaganda.
Their neutrality will be tested if ever NATO and its proxies conquer the Donbass and Crimea which would be bound to involve more mass graves and another mass exodus of refugees. But that’s the “war aim” that the politicians and the tame media are asking us to support.
The whole war is an example of the barbarity of capitalism. It’s an atrocity in itself.
Why do we have to accept NATO and Ukrainian propaganda about what is supposed to have happened at Bucha? “Mass grave” conjures up the idea of civilians being rounded up, shot and dumped in a pre-dug hole in the ground. But there are other possibilities of what happened. The mass grave could be filled with people who died in the crossfire, even some who died from natural causes, and who had to be buried quickly for health reasons. It could also include some armed civilians and scouts for the Ukrainian armed forces who were discovered and captured by the Russian armed forces and summarily shot. That would be a “war crime” but remember that at the time the Zelensky regime was irresponsibly urging civilians to confront Russian tanks with Molotov cocktails. And we know that the Ukrainian propaganda machine and Zelensky and his wife are constantly exaggerating and making things up.
I am afraid that engaging the Voice of Moscow here on this sort of thing is allowing him to land a few punches (besides distracting from the main aim of this forum).
The present British prime minister also believes in karma. He must regard himself as having led a very virtuous life last time to end up with so much money and as prime minister. And that all those in poverty must had been very bad in their previous life. Combined with re-incarnation, karma is a nasty and obnoxious doctrine.
The German plotters seem to have a different justification for not obeying the German state — that they owe their loyalty to a previous incarnation and regard the present one as illegitimate.
The IRA used to regard itself as the government of the whole of Ireland on the basis of elections in 1918 (which meant that Ireland was a military dictatorship) and presumably its various offshoots still do. Nobody else did but it was the philosophical basis for their violence.
