ALB
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Of course physicists know what gravity is. It’s the attraction between things that have mass. Here’s a simple explanation (but note the error that Newton presented his theory in 1867 rather than 1687):
But nobody knows what “Eros” or “Thanatos” or “Qi” is.
If that’s too simple try this on quantum quackery:
https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/1997/01/22165024/p37.pdf
I believe the advice is that, if you are in hole, you should stop digging. But now you are saying that “Eros” and “Thanatos” are like gravity or magnetism.
But these are measurable and can be explained in physical terms. So how are Freud’s “psychological forces” measured and how can they be explained in physical terms?
By the way, quantum mechanics is an explanation of phenomenon observed in the movement of sub-atomic particles and has no application outside that field.
By coincidence yesterday BBC Radio 4 broadcast a discussion about an exchange of correspondence in 1932 between Einstein and Freud on why war and what to do to stop it. This gives this thread some contemporary interest rather than being a subject of abstract curiosity of a forum member.
The programme can be listened to here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001tr2s
Einstein was writing as a pacifist. One of the passages from Freud that was read on the programme was that humans are born with “the instincts to destroy and kill, which we assimilate as the aggressive or destructive instincts”. By “we” he meant “psychoanalysts” and which rules out as completely utopian a free society without a repressive state. That was why Reich rejected the existence of such “instincts”, though on philosophical rather than scientific grounds.
“Reich said that by the age of ten in this society most children have at least one type of neurosis.”
I wasn’t going to take part in this thread (as we’ve been here before) but this is too much. Why do you keep quoting Reich as if he was any sort of authority on the subject. We know he ended up a raving lunatic seeing sexual energy as the basis of the universe but even before that he was engaged in dubious speculations.
It may well be true “by the age of ten in this society most children have at least one type of neurosis” (depending on what you mean by “neurosis” — and BD will be able to advise whether this is still a concept psychiatrists use) but it won’t be for the reason Reich gave — misdirection of some mysterious “sexual energy” that has never been found any more than the “qi” of traditional Chinese medicine has.
We missed this one. Well-known leftie Owen Jonas has left the Labour Party and now opposes it but not reformism of course. In fact his case seems to be that the Labour is longer a reformist social-democrat party.
Said to be the last Corbynista in any high office Jamie Driscoll, the North of Tyne Mayor, has an article in this weekend’s i paper. He was deselected for talking to Ken Loach and is standing against Labour as an Indeoendent.
Of course his programme is just common or garden reformism but he does have a point about the “magic growth bunny”.
Reeves herself has admitted that if there is no growth — if she can’t magic it into existence – the Labour government will be in an impossible situation and will have to impose austerity:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68602668.amp
Governments can’t decree growth. That depends on how capitalist enterprises judge the prospect of making an adequate profit. She might be lucky and growth might happen but it wouldn’t be anything to do with the Labour government might do. It would just be a coincidence.
On the other hand, she might be unlucky ..
Report from Medway (Kent):
40 people at a protest meeting this morning outside the factory gates of the arms manufacturer BAE Systems in Chatham who supply guidance systems for the Israeli planes bombing Gaza and its population. Green Party flag and local Trades Council banner evident and chants of “Stop arming Israel”. No other leafletting except us.
One of our opponents in Barnet & Camden:
I think I posted this the last time we discussed this:
I second that motion. It seems a fair and objective assessment.
More on the vote of Russians outside Russia. Apparently, Davankov beat Putin in Israel and Serbia:
Russian Elections: In Israel, UAE, Expats’ Loyalties Divided Between Putin and Opposition
Of course most Russians voted for Putin and are just as oblivious of their class interest as workers in the West (as in fact were those who didn’t vote for him).
The trouble with biological explanations as to which this is so (and Freud, Reich and Marcuse are offering biological explanations based on posited sexual energy) is that they prove too much — if workers have been biological manipulated to support capitalism how could they be changed to reject it? And how did we manage to escape this?
A more plausible explanation of nationalism would be that humans are social animals who seek and need a sense of community and that nationalism currently meets this. In other words, it provides a false community. Its antidote being the real community that socialism will be.
The nomination papers for our candidate in Barnet & Camden were handed in this afternoon at Barnet Council Offices in Colindale and were accepted.
So we’re off. The full list of our opponents will be published on 2 April.
We have contested elections, national and local, many times in parts of Camden but the only previous chance that voters in Barnet in North-West London bordering on Hertfordshire had to vote Socialist was in 2009 when we contested all-London in the European Parliament elections that year (and got 4,050 votes).
In another of her speeches, yesterday, to reassure big business that it had nothing to fear from a Labour government, among the names dropped by Rachel Reeves was Joan Robinson:
“As Joan Robinson understood when she wrote sixty years ago, economics is not just about quantitative models and abstract theory – it is about values, rooted in political, philosophical and moral questions, about human nature and the good society.”
Robinson (1903-1983) probably did vote Labour in her time but here’s what her Wikipedia entry says of her:
“Robinson also made several trips to China, reporting her observations and analyses in China: An Economic Perspective (1958), The Cultural Revolution in China (1969), and Economic Management in China (1975; 3rd edn, 1976), in which she praised the Cultural Revolution. In October 1964, Robinson also visited North Korea, which was effectively a single-party Communist state, and wrote in her report “Korean Miracle” that the country’s success was due to “the intense concentration of the Koreans on national pride” under Kim Il Sung, “a messiah rather than a dictator.” She also stated in reference to the division of Korea that “[o]bviously, sooner or later the country must be reunited by absorbing the South into socialism.”
Reeves needs to be careful whose names he drops. Otherwise, there is going to be a headline in the Daily Mail: REEVES INFLUENCED BY ECONOMIST WHO SAID NORTH KOREA WAS SOCIALIST.
Incidentally, Robinson is credited with getting academic economists to take Marx seriously with her 1942 book An Essay on Marxian Economics, reviewed in the January 1944 Socialist Standard. It is very critical but mentions at the end:
“In spite of her academic outlook it must be conceded that Joan Robinson admits the exploitation of the workers, and here and there hints at expropriation of the capitalists as the remedy ….”
I don’t know whether this — the result of the vote of Russians living outside Russia in the presidential elections there — is of interest:
https://tass.com/politics/1762879
According to my calculations, this means that 6.86% of those who voted cast a blank or spoiled ballot paper. Which is quite high for any election and presumably mainly reflects the response of the “non-system” opposition in Russia to do so. In Russia the number of such ballots was declared to be 1.37%.
They also called for a vote for “anyone but Putin”. Which might explain the relatively good score — 16.65% — of the candidate who came second (inside Russia he got only 3.9% and finished third, behind the Communist Party’s candidate.) This suggests that perhaps up to 18% of overseas Russians voted against Putin and his policies.
