twc
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pgb wrote:
- [Marx and Engels] understood the role of nationality in shaping class-based movements, and that distinctive cultures, languages and ‘ways of life’ are embodied in nations and permeate all aspects of peoples lives.
In the Communist Manifesto’s famous Chapter I “Bourgeois and Proletarians”, Marx and Engels deal exclusively with the class war, and see “the role of nationality, etc.” as an impediment to the class war.
The Communist Manifesto is about as anti-nationalist as you can get.
It defiantly sees “national interest” as a backwards capitulation to the interests, and so thought patterns, of the class enemy.
- The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood.
All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe.
In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations.
And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
Marx and Engels did take sides (inconsistently with the Manifesto) in some national struggles, where they backed the side they thought might break feudal strangleholds or (ambitiously) hasten socialism along.
But they never “understood the role of nationality, etc.” as grounds for justifying nations retaliating against each other. Capitalism is universal retaliation.
So when they wrote in the Manifesto
- Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.
they were asking (in 1848) a national proletariat to engage in class war with its national bourgeoisie, and not to go out of its way to join forces with it.
Sorry.
I appreciate it’s a mere sideline to the main thing—world socialism.
But perhaps it’s a minor improvement on (or diversion from) the vitriolic attacks against world socialism from recent opponents (purportedly made from a “socialist” standpoint).
- Paula: “…loving your selection of music!”
Thank you. The following selection, alas, is not conventionally loveable.
The opera (2005), by US composer John Adams, about Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project is the polar opposite of Tom Lehrer’s satire on the “bomb”.
I’m ducking serious consideration of whether Adams’s subject is a suitable one for musical theatre and whether he has even half-way succeeded.
Oppenheimer’s confrontation with the constructed bomb is a soliloquy setting of Elizabethan poet John Donne’s guilt-ridden salvation cry “Batter my Heart”.
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Batter my heart, three person’d God; For you
As yet but knock, breathe, knock, breathe, knock, breathe
Shine, and seek to mend;
Batter my heart, three person’d God;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, break, blow, break, blow
burn and make me new.
—
I, like an usurpt town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue,
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy,
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.Chapter IV of The Class Struggle is Kautsky’s commentary on Article 5 of the Erfurt Program, the 1891 political platform of the German Social Democratic Party.
Engels , though preoccupied with preparation of Capital Volume III for the press, was involved on the sidelines.
The young bloggers are commenting on Kautsky’s Chapter IV.
Erfurt Program Article 5 reads
- “Private ownership in the instruments of production, once the means of securing to the producer the ownership of his product, has to-day become the means of expropriating the farmer, the artisan, and the small trader, and of placing the non-producers—capitalists and landlords—in possession of the products of labor. Only the conversion of private ownership of the means of production—the land, mines, raw materials, tools, machines and the means of transportation and communication—into social ownership and the conversion of commodity production into socialist production, carried on for and by society, can production on a large scale and the ever-increasing productivity of social labor be changed from a source of misery and oppression for the exploited classes, into one of well-being and harmonious development.”
It’s fascinating to hear how Kautsky’s 19th century social-democratic socialism pleasantly shocks the young commentators, and how much of it rings true in the 21st century to people, presumably schooled to see “socialism” through a Leninist lens.
The discussion reveals much anti-socialist confusion Lenin has wrought!
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“Most people don’t have any inclination to listen to these explanations.
It’s a bore to them.
And they continue to misuse the[se] words, just as they misuse the term socialism.”
Agreed that “most people” are resigned—albeit grudgingly—to tolerating their subjugation to capital.
Social experience convinces “most people” that subjugation is eternal, natural and inevitable.
For a socialist to disabuse “most people” of the “illusion of the [capitalist] epoch” might seem pointless activity—but that’s precisely the only activity now open to socialists.
In that context, a soporific disquisition on the inevitability of language creep to confuse and obfuscate the socialist message is boring.
Socialists have always had to combat the language of capitalist epochal illusions, and Marx crafted the scientific arsenal for us to carry on waging the task of our capitalist epoch.
Rather than tamely submit to—tolerate—the language of capitalist illusion—the illusion we aim to expose—socialists hold that
- We must clarify what we mean—the underlying concepts—by socialist technical terms:
idealism and materialism;
capitalism and socialism.
Nevertheless, the confused philosophical and obfuscated political use of these terms — promulgated by the left-wing — has barely shifted from the time of Marx and Engels.
Well, disabuse them of their philosophical-and-political confusion and obfuscation.
That is the Party’s stated role — socialist education.
Engels confronted this same philosophical-and-political confusion and obfuscation over the abuse of the terms “idealism” and “materialism” in his day.
Here is an abbreviation of Engels’s socialist stance in “Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy”.
- It need only be added here that Starcke [the author of the book on Feuerbach that Engels is reviewing] looks for Feuerbach’s idealism in the wrong place.
—
“Feuerbach is an idealist; he believes in the progress of mankind…”
—
“Are not compassion, love, and enthusiasm for truth and justice ideal forces?”
— - Engels responds —
“The French materialists … held this conviction to an almost fanatical degree, and often enough made the greatest personal sacrifices for it. If ever anybody dedicated his whole life to the “enthusiasm for truth and justice” … it was [materialist] Diderot.”
— - “This merely proves that the word materialism, and the whole antagonism between the two trends, has lost all meaning for him.”
— - “Starcke … makes an unpardonable concession to the traditional philistine prejudice against the word materialism resulting from its long-continued defamation by the priests.”
— - “By the word materialism, the philistine understands gluttony, drunkenness, lust of the eye, lust of the flesh, arrogance, cupidity, avarice, covetousness, profit-hunting, and stock-exchange swindling…”
— - “By the word idealism he understands the belief in virtue, universal philanthropy, and in a general way a “better world”…”
The abuse of these terms is not so much of “today” as of capitalism.
- Re: “No one knows what idealists and materialists are.”
Really? What’s wrong with the following:
- Materialists hold that nature produces thought
- Idealists hold that thought produces nature
Expressed in “Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy” by Frederick Engels (1886).
- ”Materialism conceives nature as the sole reality”
“The question of the relation of thinking to being, the relation of the spirit [thought/thinking] to nature — the paramount question of the whole of philosophy”
“The answers which the philosophers gave to this question split them into two great camps.”
- “Those who asserted the primacy of spirit to nature … comprised the camp of idealism”
- “The others, who regarded nature as primary, belong to the various schools of materialism”
“These two expressions, idealism and materialism, originally signify nothing else but this.”
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding your point. But for me, in all simplicity, —
There are no credible grounds for socialists to abet philosophical confusion over the meaning of the terms “materialism” and “idealism” as for socialists to abet political obfuscation over the meaning of the term “socialism”.
Lizzie45:
—Energy bills to drop £440 a year
—according to new price cap forecast.
Read on …-
according to analysts at Cornwall Insight which has built a reputation of accurately predicting energy price levels.
That is due to the Government’s Energy Price Guarantee, which sees the [Government] pick up some of the tab for consumer gas and electricity bills.
But horror …
- Cornwall Insight thinks energy bills could then start to rise slightly later this year.
No worries …Government mules love to courier Government money to private corporations.
For mules, couriering Government money to its intended recipient is the height of “social welfare”.
And willing mules are correct …
Class welfare for private corporations is the gold-standard of social welfare in the Thatcherite “only game in town”.
-
Thank you for choosing me,
—
Your money gratefully couriered,
—
Tina—
Robbo:
—I would far sooner aspire to a better society
— even if it is unlikely to come in my lifetime.
Lizzie45:
—So would I, and I do.
No you can’t, and no you don’t!Your Thatcherite TINA-ism denies a better society, and mocks aspiring to it. Your “aspiration” is disingenuous.
Lizzie45:
—Unfortunately there are far too many idiots who don’t
—[aspire to a better society].So, I’m copping out. Don’t blame me for my attitude. It’s the fault of “far too many idiots” with aspiration well-and-truly belted out of them.
Not so!
Everyone has normal aspirations for righting perceived social wrongs, and is raring to deliver—incredulous that nobody ever thought of it before—a solution.
- If only they [or “we”] would do this; if only they [or “we”] had done that, capitalism would be marvellous.
For socialists, who seek to transcend the “only game in town”, normal human aspiration is the seed of revolutionary comprehension.
For socialists, disingenuous TINA activism is the stuff of dreams of a pipe smoker.
Wherefore no surplus value?
The stark reality of the “only game in town”—
“Only gamers” might dole out equal-handed sympathy for those beneficent capitalists whose capital is not playing by the rulebook of “the only game in town”.
“Only gamers” might shed tears for those:
- generous landlords who are struggling to collect their “only game” entitlement — an honest month’s rent;
— - magnanimous bankers who are struggling to collect their “only game” entitlement — an honest month’s repayment on outstanding loans.
But then “the only game in town” never plays by its sanctified academic rulebook.
If we analyse the coronation’s symbolic ceremony and sacred oaths, we glimpse their ancient precendent.
A few instances…
- Phenomenon
The Archbishop of Canterbury extracted from Charles a solemn oath of subservience to God and a binding promise to become the Church [of England]’s faithful servant before ever moving toward crowning him.
Glimpse
Antique power relations between church and state.
— - Phenomenon
The king, “long may he reign over us”, extracted undying loyalty from his successor-in-waiting, his son, the Prince of Wales.
Glimpse
Fragility of the royal court.
— - Phenomenon
The antique military presence and ceremony.
Glimpse
Eternal class politics.
Is AI the Productive Force that ends the Capitalist Mode of Production?
According to a leaked document from Google, proprietary AI models are a dead end.
Open-source AI models are innovating faster than ChatGPT (Microsoft) and Bard (Google). They are based on code that was leaked from Meta [Zuckerberg].
https://natural20.com/google-ai-documents-leak/
The prospect of an ascendant open-source future changes the AI landscape;
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It [potentially] exposes the algorithms that “nobody understands how they work” to scrutiny, for rational formal comprehension.
This is the goal of some AI research (https://www.quantamagazine.org/cynthia-rudin-builds-ai-that-humans-can-understand-20230427/).
— -
It [potentially] prevents AI from being turned into capital — unique for a socially disruptive productive force under the capitalist mode of production.
If so, the commercial pressure to turn open-source AI into capital will be enormous.
—
It [potentially] makes AI commonly owned and its use democratically controlled by society as a whole.
If so, the political pressure to monopolise open-source AI’s use and control will be enormous.
Granted the disruptive role of AI coupled with the ascendance of its implementation in non-commercial open-source, it is no longer far fetched to ask…
-
Is AI [potentially] the marxian productive force that shatters the capitalist superstructure and puts our social demand for common ownership and democratic control of the world’s resources fairly and squarely on the world’s agenda?
John Brown’s Body
From Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” [1852].
-
ST. CLARE [plantation slaveholder]:
——I’ve something to show you.
MISS OPHELIA [his sentimental cousin]:
——What is it?
ST. CLARE (dragging a little negro girl):
——I’ve made a purchase …MISS OPHELIA saw, on the back and shoulders of the child, great welts and calloused spots, ineffaceable marks of the system under which she had grown up
- MISS OPHELIA:
—— How old are you, Topsy?
TOPSY [little slave girl]:
——Dun no, Missis,
MISS OPHELIA:
—— Who was your mother?
TOPSY:
—— Never had none!
MISS OPHELIA:
—— Where were you born?
TOPSY:
—— Never was born!
——- I spect I grow’d.Union Marching Song of the Civil War (1861-65)
John Brown led a doomed slave revolt in 1859, on the eve of the American Civil War.
A white man provoking a slave revolt sent shockwaves across the nation.
He was captured by Robert E. Lee and condemned to hang. In prison he bombarded a willing national media with anti-race-slavery messages that pushed the nation to the brink of Civil War.
Here’s the song’s first published text (1861):
-
John Brown’s body
——lies a mouldering in the grave. (x3)
His soul’s marching on!
CHORUS
Glory, Hally, Hallelujah! (x3)
His soul’s marching on! (x2)Part of the song’s appeal is the brash bravado of a Union soldier making light of “mouldering in the grave” while marching in the footsteps of a martyr to the cause of black emancipation. This is how to steel a white man into fighting for what seems to be some-one-else’s cause.
But then you can’t discount the appeal of the song’s mock evangelical Hallelujah chorus, better known than even Handel’s and Leonard Cohen’s.
Battle Hymn of the Republic
A refined reclamation of the song was written by Julia Ward Howe (1862).
The evangelical Union soldier now marches into battle in order to visit God’s vengeful wrath—the grapes of wrath—upon the slave-holding South:
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MINE eyes have seen the glory
——of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage
——where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning
——of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
CHORUS
Glory, Glory Hallelujah (x3)
——His truth is marching onMark Twain
Mark Twain was brought up in the antebellum South, as he explains …
The orgy of the launching of the Sword
In 1901 Mark Twain wrote an anti-war parody of the Battle Hymn, which lay unpublished until 1958. It starts at timestamp 1:00.
- Mine eyes have seen the orgy
——of the launching of the Sword;
He is searching out the hoardings
——where the stranger’s wealth is stored;
He hath loosed his fateful lightnings,
——and with woe and death has scored;
His lust is marching on.
. . .
As Christ died to make men holy,
——let men die to make us rich—
Our god is marching on.____________________
Like Topsy, the song “Tom Brown’s Body” grow’d …
- an 18th century oral-tradition hymn
- a 19th century battle cry to follow a white martyr into battle for a black cause
- a 20th century parody like Mark Twain’s
- Ralph Chaplin’s borrowing of its tune for Solidarity Forever (1915)
- 21st century parodies like…
It still keeps marching on.
Joseph Bologne de Saint-Georges (1745–99)
Joseph Bologne was born in the decade after Haydn and before Mozart.
He was the Caribbean child of a multi-racial union between a French plantation owner and a Senegalese slave.
His father paid for a top Parisian education, where the grateful son out-competed his aristocratic contemporaries in accomplishments they cherished—fencing, shooting, dancing, running, swimming, riding, violin-playing and musical composition.
He attracted European and American admiration—a “black Mozart”—as well as racial slurs—a “mulatto”.
His exotic appearance conveyed him into the intimate circle of the French royal family (especially Queen Marie Antionette).
During the French Revolution, as a child of slavery, he created a black regiment to fight on the side of the revolution against slavery (his regiment included the black father of Alexandre Dumas, author of “The Three Musketeers”).
His aristocratic associations caught up with him during the Reign of Terror, and condemned him to execution which, through sympathetic intervention on his behalf, was eventually waived.
The movie Chevalier that opens this month is modelled on his fascinating life. Here is its trailer (the fictional violin duel is with Mozart).
The opera Ernestine (1777)
—Music: Chevalier de Saint-Georges
—Libretto: Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
——(author of Les Liaisons dangereuses)The audience to his first opera Ernestine booed it off the stage, and the critics panned it mercilessly, “a talented young American who is also the most skilful gun shooter in France” has ground a much-loved novel into pulp.
Musical fragments that survive the French Revolution come across today as rivetting 18th century drama.
-
Ernestine, what will you do?
Have you probed the depths of your heart?Trapped inside your bitter retreat
See how vain regret
And endless anguish follow you
And ever deepen your unhappiness.Cruel love, cruel happiness!
Don’t fight the necessary sacrifice,
Delay sharpens the horror. - It need only be added here that Starcke [the author of the book on Feuerbach that Engels is reviewing] looks for Feuerbach’s idealism in the wrong place.
