Wez
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For me the master of polemical music was Gil Scott Heron. Listen to his song Vildgolia from the Bridges album to see what I mean.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDxSDYbj9Zc
I recently sighted a UFO and asked on a neighborhood website if anyone else had seen it. The response was a mixture of comical indulgence and outright hostility. It suddenly occurred to me that many have had such sightings but choose not to speak about it for fear of the contemptuous response. As it turned out what I saw was the meteor that recently crashed into our planet and a lot of my ‘neighbours’ had to apologise for their contemptuous remarks. The whole episode reminded me of people’s response when they find out that I’m a socialist – pure contempt. The fear of the unknown is real and potent.
I wonder if these towns are also ‘sanctuaries for the newly born’ given the levels of poverty and widespread lack of medical insurance in the USA.
‘The defeat of the English Revolution, for those not interested in history, society, philosophy… politics.’
Now LBird is venturing into history with, it seems, an equally fragile hold on the facts. How was the English Revolution defeated? As he himself states bourgeois ideology had triumphed as did their ‘New Model Army’. The Restoration was only possible with the consent of the capitalists and the concessions of the king. The attempted counter revolution in 1688 was totally crushed. Explain yourself master Bird.
‘Quite so, but that truism isn’t exclusively applicable to LBird…’
In its way that is also a truism since all ideologies are founded on an ignorance of the class struggle – but perhaps that’s what you meant Z?
‘You are a thoroughgoing idealist determinist and have shown this over and over again, despite paying spurious lipservice to Marxism’
Exactly robbo – I have believed this from the start. It is curious that many intelligent people (like our feathered friend) have no insight into their own ideological motivation and perspective.
“But what is the point of this thread? To show that the rest of the working class are dumb and that we are therefore never going to get socialism?
Yes! There’s more chance of Homo Sapiens joining the estimated 99% of species that ever existed and which are now extinct.
Zusammenhang – So scientists, doctors, engineers, pilots, nurses etc, are all ‘dumb’ (stupid)? Clearly socialist consciousness cannot just be a matter of intelligence as there are millions of workers who are more ‘intelligent’ than we are. The idea that consciousness will arrive spontaneously out of dire need sounds suspiciously like Leftist dogma to me. It seems obvious that there is more to it than IQ and education. The ‘elephant in the room’ is the conditioned need for authoritarian social structures and leaders – shared by both Left and Right. Understanding this infantile emotional need born of alienation has to be understood before we can progress.
P.Albelard – Just to point out the obvious. The great majority of well ‘educated’ people are anti-socialist. This implies that education/intellectual intelligence is not the major component of socialist consciousness. An ability to imagine the alternative to authoritarian social structures is primarily the realm of psychology.
‘The active, conscious subject creates its object for itself. There is no ‘nature’ outside of human conscious activity, outside of humanity’s social production.’
The Idealist Manifesto right there – Marx would have laughed at such absurdity.
‘Whilst I acknowledge the influence of marketing on music, I would argue that with greater creative access you get greater musical creativity and that creativity always out does the marketing strategy of capitalism.’
That’s a very optimistic attitude emphasising the liberating power of music (art) and it is something I would embrace however creativity is not enough – art is a conversation and needs an audience. Understanding this zeitgeist is not entirely to do with marketing but also with cultural and class conditioning. Claiming that it is purely subjective is like believing in ‘free will’ and we know how determinism works culturally and politically in all aspects of life.
DJP – Are you missing my point? BD was suggesting musical taste was an individual decision whereas I’m pointing out the power of marketing and cultural conditioning that lays behind aesthetic taste (or the lack of).
‘Which goes to show the individuality of musical taste’
Not really BD, if that was the case then how do you explain the ubiquity of the meaningless crap that characterizes popular music today?One of the many strange assumptions of LBird is that the failure of the Soviet Union was a failure of ‘materialism’. He keeps insisting that Lenin’s so-called ‘materialist’ ideology was somehow important in the Bolshevik power grab in 1917 and its subsequent hold on power. Lenin’s attempt to turn Marxism into an ideology had no significance (apart from confusing the Left) in the rise to power of that bunch of opportunist thugs called Bolsheviks.
