DJP
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I can’t see how you are getting “language can only be verbal” from anything I’ve said.
I’d guess that the person that said “words are just sounds” didn’t mean that either. They where probably trying to claim that words are not acts. But that is not always the case. As in “I pronounce you husband and wife”, “I promise I’ll pay you back next week” etc – what they call “speach acts”
The above examples are very good and interesting.
But there’s still a herculean leap from “some” to “all”.
language is communication
Depends how technical you want to get. But strictly speaking I would have thought “language” and “communication” are separate categories. A language is something that has a certain logical structure. (In theory you could invent a language on your own without communicating it to anyone). And there are types of communication which are not language – a fire alarm going off communicates something, but it would be a bit of a push to describe that as a language.
All living beings have language.
If you say that, then it seems to me you are using the word “language” in a very loose kind of way.
But yes, of course words are not ‘just sounds’. Sometimes a saying something *is* also a doing something, what we might call a ‘speech act’
A bit of good news here on the freedom to criticise Zionism issue
Not to be confused with another David Miller, from Oxford, who is famous for his writing on ‘market socialism’ and ‘liberal nationalism’. I just had to do a double-take!
Marx was certainly influenced by Hegel his whole life. But I doubt in his mature years he would have liked to be called a ‘Hegelian’. It was an influence he adapted rather than blindly imitated. The Hegelian Marxism stuff is a step backwards, not forwards.
Though remember, in one of the prefaces to Capital he famously says (speaking of Hegel) “I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him.”
FWIW, as I’ve said before, the influence of Stirner on the development of anarchism has been grossly over-inflated. A couple of individualist anarchists mention him as an influence, and Bakunin mentions him in ‘Statism and Anarchy’ but not to claim him as an anarchist or an influence on Anarchism. It’s largely from hostile and inaccurate sources (unfortunately some early articles in the Standard fall into this category) that this link has been popularised.
As a reference see Zoe Baker’s ‘Means and Ends’ which has now been published (I’d say this and ‘Black Flame’ are the best books about Anarchism). Stirner gets a mention on page 42, and that’s it.
“I think you’ve just outed yourself as someone who looks up ‘SPGB’ on YouTube.”
So you don’t think I spend my time looking up K-pop? Surely that’s presuming
Surprisingly, The SPGB have become popular in the world of K-pop. For those that can’t understand the Korean, the lyrics are a perfect word-for-word translation of the DOP.
“Barltrop made the telling point that if it were not for the Bolshevik revolution, today Marx would be as well known as Lassalle or Duhring or Proudhon to name but three. He would be by and large unknown.”
I think this has got to be true. However, the association has been a curse rather than a blessing.
“So my question is what do we do if they vote to ban LGBT in an area that previously had it legalised? How do we react if they do not respect the rights of women or actively roll them back?”
This sounds like a description of what the Christian nationalist far right is trying to do in some US states. Should we therefore assume all Christians or all people from the US want to do the same?
What you are referring to is the “paradox of tolerance”. The question of how far should democracies tolerate intolerant views.
I’ll suggest that creating a permanently excluded underclass of people from certain religious or geographical backgrounds would only compound the problem.
For one thing, a strengnthed right of exit would actually weaken conservative and fundamentalist movements. If those you are trying to repress can easily go somewhere else the amount of power that can be exercised over them is reduced.
Refugees wanting to settle in the UK usually do so because of historic, family, or language ties. That is only a small drop of the world’s refugees.
What you are describing doesn’t sound like a world co-operative commonwealth. Democracy would be something that happens within the workplace as much as in the community. Creating a two tier system where some don’t get a say would not be socialism.
Both reactionary religious beliefs, and biggoted xenophobia of the type above, is something that a socialist movement will have to overcome or you won’t get socialism.
Why think everyone wants to come the British Isles? It’s just some grey and rainy rock on the edge of Europe. Hardly the centre of the universe.
