DJP
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Incidentally, if you look through Marx the only time you will find “abolishing money” mentioned is when he criticises Proudhon. Obviously, we don’t have to copy everything from Marx mindlessly but I think there is a strong indication here. We need to explain clearly what the problem is, and that way people can work out for themselves what the solution is.
Jumping straight to some effect or feature of socialism is to put the cart before the horse and can lead to gross misunderstanding.
Isn’t this similar to the arguments about “abolishing the state”?
I.e:
1. Money and the state cease to exist as a consequence of something else happening first – the abolition of private property and the institution of production for use.
2. Something can cease to be without it being “abolished”. And in reverse – you can’t “abolish” something which no longer exists.
This is just a question of language, and all that matters is which phrasing gets the idea across most clearly – and the answer to that could be different in different contexts.
“To say otherwise suggests that money will have some sort of function in socialism.”
That doesn’t follow.
Money exists because of a certain kind of social relation. Once that form of social relation is ended money ceases to be. There’s no need to add the extra step of ‘abolishing money’ – such a concept is superfluous when it comes to socialist revolution.
Can please people stop posting links to that junk website “Global Research”.
“For the interested, titles of all articles in International Review, 1936-1938 can be seen here”
There also seems to be a, possibly incomplete, collection at the Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. Would be possible to access articles as scans for a fee.
https://search.iisg.amsterdam/Record/1355011
If someone has too much time on their hands it would be worth getting these scanned and put online somewhere. This journal has more or less faded into obscurity.
“The notion of simulation requires a simulator”
That is true. But radical scepticism is about what we can know (epistemology), not about what there is.
To bring my joke comment back to the real world: I still wonder how much foreign influence (whether malicious or unintentional) contributed to the spread of misinformation at the start of these disturbances. I don’t think it was *the* determining factor, but it must have been one among many.
“it’s always the same, the government’s to blame. amirite?”
I think my favourite conspiracy theory right now is the one that Putin died from covid and has been replaced by a body double. Using the principle of “who benefits?” this can clearly be related back to the riots. Russia benefits from any disorder in Europe and so they clearly manufactured the whole thing. The slight delay in the ten-year pattern can be put down to the body double having to learn the ropes…
Fault my logic.
“The infinite universe could never be picked up by the God squad, because for them the universe has to be a created, finite thing. Only their God is infinite.”
So you’ve never read Spinoza?
“As to “simulation”, what a load of crap spawned by The Matrix crowd, who are conspiraloons.”
The Matrix is a series of fictional films which are in themselves just a modern update of Descartes arguments for radical scepticism. Descartes ‘evil demon’ just gets swapped for a computer simulation.
“Someone on X….”
Be mindful of how much time and energy you give to these platforms. They are not neutral means of communication but capitalist enterprises that exist for the purpose of generating advertising revenue. And they do that by mining their users data, and manipulating them to spend as much time on the platform as possible.
By chance, this came up in my podcast stream:
It mentions Pannekoek’s “Marxism and Psychology” which examines the relationship between Marxism and Freudianism. https://aaap.be/Pages/Pannekoek-en-1938-Marxism-And-Psychology.html
Also, my supervisor for the last 4 years was a respected Adorno scholar. I still don’t know that much about Adorno but this review details the relation between Adorno and the Holocaust. Adorno refers to it as providing a new categorical imperative – we should arrange our actions so that the holocaust doesn’t happen again. No mention of the “death instinct”
https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/adorno-s-practical-philosophy-living-less-wrongly/
“Here’s the opposite extreme”
And the happy middle is the local self-organisation of those who would have been affected by the intrusions. I think in the contemporary age of social-media networking this was the predominant factor that got people out into the streets. Leaderless street demonstrations are a common thing now, but are not sufficient to bring about socialism of course.
Yes, that article does read like someone bragging about how big and strong they and their mates are.
But visible displays of solidarity, such as those that happened on Wednesday, are an important factor in demonstrating that the racist far-right are not the “silent majority” and that the wider community will come out in defence of themselves and minorities.
After all, we shouldn’t imagine that a rising socialist movement wouldn’t face organised intimidation from reactionaries. Working-class community solidarity is something that should be lauded.
