[Young Master Smeet]

Marx, Letter to Annenkov, 1846, wrote:

…those who produce social relations in conformity with their material productivity also produce the ideas, categories, i.e. the ideal abstract expressions of those same social relations. Indeed, the categories are no more eternal than the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products. To Mr Proudhon, on the contrary, the prime cause consists in abstractions and categories. According to him it is these and not men which make history. The abstraction, the category regarded as such, i.e. as distinct from man and his material activity, is, of course, immortal, immutable, impassive.

http://hiaw.org/defcon6/works/1846/letters/46_12_28.htmlI can't help but notice that in this quote provided by Lbird, Marx twice refers to the material, and gives that precedence over the ideal (the categories he refers to).  Humans do indeed produce ideas, abstract expressions of material relations and activities.An independently minded person would assume that when Marx talks of "material productivity" and "material activity" he means "material productivity" and "material activity", not "socially produced".  The onus is on Lbird, as an honest interlocutor, to prove that when Marx said material, he didn't mean material.Now, linguistic philosophers would tell us that 'material productivity' and 'material activity' pressupose matter and its existence.  The onus is on Lbird, as an honest interlocutor, to prove that when Marx said material, he didn't mean material.

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird wrote:

Read robbo's post following yours, YMS. And then tell me what he says. He doesn't mention workers' democracy, only elites, who are 'bound to know' better than the rest of us.

But he doesn't say "only a materialist minority can determine 'truth'"

LBird wrote:

Well, here's your big chance to clarify, for everyone reading.1) YMS, do you agree that only the class conscious, democratically organised proletariat can elect 'truth' (ie. 'truth-for-them')?2) If you don't agree, that's fine, but then you must tell us who or what will determine 'truth' in your 'socialist' society – and so, by extension, who else than the self-developing workers within bourgeois society, as they build for socialism.3) Only the class conscious, revolutionary, democratic proletariat can build socialism. Or do you disagree? If so, who are 'the builders of socialism', in your political ideology?

1: No, I dispute the "only".2: You can't handle the truth.3: Hunter gatherers can build socialism.  Modern socialism can come about through the democratic needs and activity of the working class, but peasants, in certain circumstances, could contribute.To come back to automation: I'll use this juncture to throw in the Morrisian point that without the drive of the declining rate of profit, wa future socialist society may elect to do away with automation. Some interesting footage in this video of an automated car plant in France:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxGauhTIRXQ

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird wrote:

You keep insisting that only a materialist minority can determine 'truth'

Can you site one instance where anyone other than yourself has said that?  For instance, I would sugest that Robbo has never said that, and I certainly haven't in all our long long discussions.

[Young Master Smeet]

The bottom line is capitalism rewards capital, and profits flow towards teh greatest concentrations of capital (often denuding the smaller piles of the stuff).The most that can be said is that an increasing concentration of capital in a country will drive up demand for labour, if transport links or political boundaries do not allow other workers to enter into the market.  Even then, that is a gain from the exploiter, not an exploitation of the foreign worker.

[Young Master Smeet]

JUst reading Varoufakis' stuff on the 'Global Minotaur':https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_MinotaurFar from exporting capital (per the classic Leninist MOdel), the US actually impots capital, as well as goods and services, relying on countries (Germany, Japan, China) with tradining surpluses to reinvest their capital in the US, and thus make the deficits sustainable (this was pre-2008).On the article, it does indeed fail to take into account the differencebetween prices and values.Take coffee, for instance, the EU (unless things have changed since I last checked) imposes tarriffs on ground coffee, but not on beans.  This means the value adding task of grinding for the EU market can only happen in the EU, essentially.Part of that process will be that the price of production for raw coffee will be below its value, some of that additioanl value will be realised in the grinding process (for simplicity's sake, lets assume that the price of production, plus average profit, is therefore above the value added by grinding).The workers in both countries will have sold their labour power at the going market rate, i.e. at its full price.  It is the capitalists who take the extra surplus value as their profit.  The only way in which workers in the advanced country can benefit from such as trade is if some of the value in the coffee isn't realised as price at any stage, and thus reaches the end consumer.

[Young Master Smeet]

Per Meek, :

Meek wrote:

The followers of Jesus have often been called ‘peasants’, but that is a very imprecise use of the term, which in its most direct and simplest sense denotes ‘free men and women whose chief activity lay in the working of the land with their own hands’.23 The gospel traditions depict Jesus himself as a tekton¯ or the son of one (Mark 6:3; Matt 13.55), thus of a family of independent carpenters or builders. Among his disciples are sons of fishing families with slaves and hired workers; one is a ‘tax collector’ (Mark 1:16–20; 2:14). Support for the itinerant band is provided by women who evidently have some means, including the wife of a commissioner of the tetrarch (Luke 8:2–3). In the cities, as we have seen, the patronage of householders, some of whom had wealth and even civic status, like Gaius and Erastus of Corinth, was indispensable. There were slaveholders as well as slaves among the faithful.

Though, this from another chapter may be telling

Freyne wrote:

 On the basis of scattered pieces of information from Josephus, as well as from archaeological surveys, the trend was towards larger estates, and thus a move away from mere subsistence farming of the traditional Jewish peasant class. Pressure could fall on small landowners as the ruling aristocracy’s needs had to be met. In a pre-industrial context, land was the primary source of wealth, but it was in short supply in a Galilee that was densely populated by the standards of the time (BJ 3.41–3). Increased taxation to meet the demands of an elite lifestyle meant that many were reduced to penury. These landless poor and urban destitute correspond to the lowest level on Lenski’s pyramid (Vit. 66f ). The slide from peasant owner to tenant farmer, to day labourer – all recognisable characters from the gospel parables – was inexorable for many and, thus, gave rise to social resentment, debt, banditry and, in the case of women, prostitution.

and

Freyne wrote:

It is not surprising, then, that the first century saw an increase in social turmoil in the Judaean countryside: banditry, prophetic movements of protest and various religious ideologies which can be directly related to prevailing conditions. Thus the Essenes’ practice of a common life in the Judaean desert away from the city, as well as the Pharisees’ espousal of a modest lifestyle (AJ 18.12 and 18.18) represent classic counter-cultural responses to the prevailing aristocratic ethos, treating poverty as an ideal rather than shameful. A similar stance seems to have been adopted by the Jesus movement both in its Galilean and later, Jerusalem, forms, as we can infer from the earliest strata of the gospels as well as from Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:44–7, 4:32–5).

Freyne, S. (2006). Galilee and Judaea in the first century. In M. Mitchell & F. Young (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Christianity (Cambridge History of Christianity, pp. 35-52). Cambridge: Cambridge University So, it wasn't so much the poorest, perhaps it was the just-about-managing…

[Young Master Smeet]

Roman, I think the Meek article (post #94) I cited disputes that the early Christians were peasants, the section I quoted stated:

Meek wrote:

The range of social status in the early Christian groups thus seems very nearly to replicate that of the society at large, omitting the two extremes – the Roman aristocracy and the agricultural and mining slaves and the landless peasants.

this is published in a CUP resource, so hardly fringe scholarship, so it's unsustainable to maintain  that the scholarship is in that teh early Christians were exlusively among the poor.  The wider citation from Meek mentions that non-Christian patrons, as with other cults would have provided locales for gathering of christian cells.Another chapter tells us:

Vinzent wrote:

A variety of different Christian communities is attested by Hermas, who constantly pleads for unity. The mid-second-century material suggests a number of small communities, based in households, only loosely held together, often led by immigrants. ‘Schools’, too, such as that of Justin, would have been house-based. This situation continued for a long period of time, with different congregations acknowledging one another by passing around a portion of the communion bread, but actually remaining fairly independent.43 The ‘fractionalised’ house churches were scattered around various districts,44 each with its own leadership, while the secretary or president of the overarching forum of presbyters and teachers was spokesperson for the Roman congregations collectively in relation to churches elsewhere in the empire, and perhaps also the co-ordinator of relief for the poor

Vinzent, M. (2006). Rome. In M. Mitchell & F. Young (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Christianity (Cambridge History of Christianity, pp. 397-412). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

[Young Master Smeet]

Meeks wrote:

The key to the urban Christian strategy was the private household. Not only do we hear several times in Acts of the conversion of some person ‘with all his [or her] household’ (16:15, 31–4; 18:8; cf. 10:1; 11:14; John 4:53), but Paul also recalls baptising households (1 Cor 1:16; cf. 16:15–16), and in his letters he several times expressly mentions ‘the assembly (ekklesia ¯ ) at N’s house’ (1 Cor 16:19; Rom 16:5; Phlm 1; Col 4:15). However, the ‘basic cell’13 of the Christian movement in the cities was not simply the household gathered for prayer. Some groups formed in households headed by non-Christians, like the four named in Romans 16:10, 11, 14, 15, not to mention the familia Caesaris (Phil 4:22). Conversely, not every member of a household always became a Christian when its head did, as the case of the slave Onesimus shows (Phlm 8–21). It was not unusual for a householder of some wealth to become the patron of one of the clubs or guilds that flourished so abundantly in the early Roman empire. Sometimes cultic associations with such patronage incorporated much of the household, as in the famous Dionysiac association founded by Pompeia Agrippinilla in Tusculum (early second century ce).14 In other instances, the patron had no direct connection with the group he assisted, save for the honours that the clients returned for the favours rendered; for example, a number of synagogue inscriptions record benefactions by pagans (cf. Luke 7:5). The formation of the Christian ‘assemblies’ thus followed a familiar pattern.15

Meeks wrote:

The range of social status in the early Christian groups thus seems very nearly to replicate that of the society at large, omitting the two extremes – the Roman aristocracy and the agricultural and mining slaves and the landless peasants. If there is anything peculiar about the social complexion of the Christians, it is precisely the mixing of these varying levels in such intimate communities, though efforts were made in many cases, as we have seen, to maintain a sense of hierarchy within the groups. There is some evidence, moreover, that a mixing of status indicators characterised many of the individuals who were attracted to Christianity – especially those who became its leaders. In the Pauline mission, which is the only circle of the movement for which we have substantial evidence, those individuals prominent enough to be identified either in the letters or in the Acts are typically persons of inconsistent status. That is, they rank high in some indicators of status, such as wealth or prestige within the sect, but low in others, such as servile origins, mercantile sources of their wealth or the fact that they are women.24 More general statements in the early Christian letters and other paraenetic literature give us the impression that a great many of the converts were free traders or artisans, some of whom were reasonably well off, but many of whom could identify with ‘the poor’ – not merely the working poor, Greek penetes ¯ , but the destitute ptochoi ¯ – whose cause is often upheld in early Christian aphorisms and admonitions, as it had been in Jewish wisdom literature.

Meeks, W. (2006). Social and ecclesial life of the earliest Christians. In M. Mitchell & F. Young (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Christianity (Cambridge History of Christianity, pp. 144-174). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Osiek wrote:

Tertullian gives quite a bit of detail about the common fund of charity collected in the church of Carthage in his day. A monthly voluntary offering from everyone goes not towards common banquets, as was customary in the burial clubs and trade guilds of the time, but to the feeding and decent burial of the poor, to the support of boys and girls without parents or property (oddly, he does not mention widows), for old domestic slaves presumably abandoned by their owners, for shipwrecked sailors, and for those in prisons or condemned to the mines, or in exile on an island for the sake of their Christian identity (Apol. 39.5–6). Here is a treasure of information about Christian charitable enterprises. We would like to know if those abandoned slaves and shipwrecked sailors were all Christians; probably they were. The common funds of charity were undoubtedly intended for members of the community only, and were in fact one of the attractive things about Christianity. Tertullian goes on to quote the familiar saying about Christians: ‘See how they love one another’ and ‘See how they are ready to die for one another’ (39.7)

Osiek, C. (2006). The self-defining praxis of the developing ecclēsia. In M. Mitchell & F. Young (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Christianity (Cambridge History of Christianity, pp. 274-292). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Doesn't sound much like communism, or is just the later degenerated form?

[Young Master Smeet]

http://i-cias.com/e.o/mazdakism.htmMazdak is an interestign character from history, and we have about, it apppears, as much evidence for his existence as Jesus' (certainly, the wikipedia page for King Kavadh features his coin, so we can attest to him).However, his existence is also disputed:https://www.hs.ias.edu/files/Crone_Articles/Crone_Mazdak.pdf

[Young Master Smeet]

Kautsky wrote:

THE factual core of the early Christian reports about Jesus is at best no more than what Tacitus tells us: that in the days of Tiberius a prophet was executed, from whom the sect of Christians took their inspiration. As to what this prophet taught and did, we are not yet able, even today, to say anything definite. Certainly he could not have made the sensation the early Christian reports describe, or Josephus who relates so many trivialities, would certainly have spoken of it. Jesus’ agitation and his execution did not get the slightest attention from his contemporaries. But if Jesus really was an agitator that a sect honored as its champion and guide, the significance of his person must have grown as the sect grew. Now a garland of legends began to form around this person, pious minds weaving into it anything they wished their model had said and done. The more this idealization went on, the more each of the many currents within the sect tried to put into the picture those features that were dearest to it, ill order to lend them the authority of Jesus. The picture of Jesus, at it was painted in the legends that were first passed from mouth to mouth, and then put down in writing, became more and more the picture of a superhuman person, the epitome of all the ideals the new sect developed; but in the process it became an increasingly contradictory picture, whose several features no longer harmonized.

And, of course, an long section on the communism of the early church:https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1908/christ/ch09.htm#s3

[Young Master Smeet]

Obviously, special mention needs to go out to Karl kautsky's book on Christianity:https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1908/christ/index.htm(he is very skeptical regarding Josephus)

[Young Master Smeet]

Anyway, according to the historical texts we can chase up around the time of Mohammed, we believe there were preachers in the wilderness saying similar things to him  So a socio/political account is much more important than any biographical (also, and this is my personal take, it is significant that his generals became the first two Caiphs, and their roles in the formation of the Umma seem to me to be critical, and can be subjected to materialist analysis).Finding out who the early christianms were, and the bext quality evidence we can for them, seems better than a sterile debate about the man Jesus (excepting to the extent that such a debate is necessary to clear the way, a little for getting past the myths).We are on firm ground to simply dismiss the miracles, the biographical info as given is patchy (was there a planned uprising, was there an armed struggle, etc.?).

[Young Master Smeet]

Dave,the point is at the time of Jesus, everyone was just an oral rumour: information sources were thin on the ground.  People would just have believed a story that there was a bloke far away who was killed.  What we can say with certainty is that there was a group of people at the time, telling the stories to each other that now enter into the sundry Gospels (and I don't actually think the evangelists count as four  independent sources, but that is by-the-by).This is the point of interest, how the particular christian group fitted in with similar religious formations and their stories: the proselytic Jews, the Hellenic mystery cults, etc.Likewise, we have very little evidence for the life of Calligula, as a matter of historical perspective, we don't care if he was having an incestuous relationship with his sister, what matters is that the historians that came after felt they should include such stories, and there is no evidence of any attempt at rebuttal at that time.I'd add it is possible for Jesus to be both a man and a myth: we only have the myth (and I would include crucifixion in the myth column).

[Young Master Smeet]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_JesusThe "reconstructed" kernal of what Josephus probably did write is instructive:

reconstruction wrote:

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and many of Greek origin. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

Also, note, Josephus was writing about 60 years after Jesus' death, so we have time for the legend to grow.This would apply even for the version we have

Josephus wrote:

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.Flavius Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, Chapter 3, 3

[Young Master Smeet]

Just running across an interesting book, that tries to estimate the size of the pool of witnesses to Jesus' life (they estimate is about 60,000 possible ey witnesses to the ministry, given the estimated popultion of ancient Judeah).  Around half of these would have been alive thirty years later when the Gospels started to be written.(MEMORY, JESUS, AND THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS, McIver, Robert K. (Robert Kerry),c2011.)  As McIver notes, the various gospls contain aphorisms which are pretty consistent with a single teacher being behind them (IIRC the Gospel of Thomas is pretty much all aphorisms).  Clearly, there was a Jesus group, but whether he did much more than teach them isn't clear.

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