Forum Replies Created
-
In The Grand Hotel Abyss, the author talks about the Jewish intellectuals of the Frankfurt School, and how they, early on, battled with their parents, the first or second generation of assimilated Jews in Germany. They rebelled against them for many reasons, but mostly because they thought they had “assimilated” far too much.
A Freudian analysis might make this an Oedipal conflict. A Bloomian one might say it was a battle over “the anxiety of influence.” Either way, they rejected the idea that to be a successful human being — or the unsaid “real man” — meant tremendous success in business, with few other exceptions.
Breaking that down further, there was a lot of talk at the time about the dominant role of the Father in Protestant Christianity, and how this led to capitalism, versus the ancient concept of “Mother Right,” and how that led to (or could lead to) real socialism.
From Stuart Jeffries’ bio (on Eric Fromm, at this point):
“As an adult, Fromm became steeped in the work of the nineteenth-century Swiss Lutheran jurist Johan Jacob Bachofen, whose 1861 book Mother Right and the Origins of Religion provided the first challenge to the prevailing orthodoxy that patriarchal society represented a natural state of affairs, and thereby validated capitalism, oppression and male hegemony, as Fromm’s biographer Lawrence Friedman argues. Reading Bachofen also encouraged Fromm to reflect that the mother-child bond was the root of social life and that in a matriarchal society there was no strife, conflict or even private property, reflections that were decisive for his developing socialist humanism. In Bachofen’s description of matriarchal societies they functioned as what Fromm called ‘primitive socialist democracies,’ in which sociability, generosity, tenderness, religiosity and egalitarianism prevailed.”
Good article, WV.
Both Dewey and Morris were amazing thinkers, though I probably lean more toward Morris overall in outlook . . . I think he’d be comfortable calling himself a “libertarian socialist,” which is the closest label to my own views, if I have to take one . . . but he also used just “socialist,” or “communist,” or “anarchist-communist” at times.
Have mentioned the book before, but to me, it’s a must-read for leftists. And it’s short (to help the time-stressed) — too short, in my view, cuz it was excellent and I wanted more. The author’s focus is on the Paris Commune of 1871, which was a profoundly important event for Morris . . . and several other left-anarchist thinkers in the book, especially Elisee Reclus and Petr Kropotkin, along with Morris.
Dewey was an American pragmatist, so I can see him thinking we should educate based on what’s doable here and now, but as the article says, radically expanding our imaginations was key for both men . . .
This passage debunking erroneous definitions of “utopian thinking” is key as well. IMO, leftists are doing the political right’s work for it when they glibly bash that expansion of the imagination, that search for a better formation of society by using “utopian” as a slur. Marx did this at times, too, and he shouldn’t have. It’s a misunderstanding of the project.
Neither Morris nor Dewey ever contended that utopia is an ideal fixed-state society of perfection, or that it could promise unalloyed happiness and a colorless
end to history. On the contrary, utopia is a process the outcomes of which cannot be guaranteed and, therefore, the role, for example, of fate, suffering, and tragedy in human affairs must be taken into account.From this point of view utopian thinking is neither an exercise in futile dreaming nor is it nostalgia for a world or theoretical system that has been lost. Instead, utopian thought aims at what Ruth Levitas refers to as the imaginary reconstitution of society and it is best understood
as method. Thus, utopianism is less concerned at the theoretical level with specific an education
in conceiving alternative modes of life—imagination as hypothesis rather than as the provision of static blueprints.In this respect, an evident experimentalism and
lack of dogmatism marks out their understandings of experience. As approached by Morris and Dewey the utopian process, as a matter of course, acknowledges the
contingent, the prosaic, the tentative, and the provisional in human affairs. In words that I think both Morris and Dewey would admire, utopian experience and education can be said to be crafted from “things with which [we are] familiar, simple things . . . recognizable as the things touched by the hands during the day . . . All
drawn with admirable simplicity and excellent design — all a unity —.” These words express a common attitude that marks their respective approaches to utopianism and utopian education.Well, you guys have said it all, pretty much. Yep. The Dems are cowards and spineless. That’s been the case for nearly 50 years, at least. With few flashes of sunshine during those dark days. Not that they were exactly consistent profiles in courage before that. But they at least supported their own center-left agenda. They tended not to run screaming from their own base/core ideas, etc. Now they do. Or mock them.
Really good book on one of the first — but not the first — signs of this betrayal: Walter Karp: Liberty Under Siege: American Politics 1976–1988. New York: Franklin Square Press. ISBN 1-879957-11-6.
First bumped into the book in this must-read for leftists:
George Scialabba’s What Are Intellectuals Good For?
I agree with the point about networking. I believe that is probably the most important outcome of the March. Not just creating contacts, but the expansion of awareness of related issues. There is no way to educate people on all of these issues efficiently. The best way is through conversations that take place when people’s interest is aroused, like these marches. So hopefully a lot of the Marchers who aren’t socialist feminists had their eyes open to a wide range of issues. That’s the best outcome of all of these demonstrations in my opinion.
————-
Well, it couldn’t hurt.But my own experience at marches is that there
aint much ‘education’ goin on. There’s speeches, and walking, and goofing around, and smiling, and laughing and gawking, and people-watching, and chatting, some music… maybe some drugs maybe some alcohol. Some painted faces. Some signs. Lots of photos.But i haven’t seen a whole lot of ‘education’ or networking, myself. I aint marched in a decade or so though.
w
vWV,
On a possibly lighter note . . . didn’t you try Ayahuasca years ago at one of those marches? How did all of that go? Did you get a sudden urge to listen to Jim Morrison a lot?
The cigarette can be a potent symbol and extended in all kinds of directions to great effect. Again, I haven’t read the author before, so I have no idea what he’s done with it in the past. But I think he wasted a good opportunity in the article above.
It speaks to the immorality of the capitalist system — to be all too generous, its amorality — that it would use, and needs to use, such marketing techniques. Why? Because capitalism is the first economic system in human history to make exchange-value paramount and to require endless growth and the expansion of new markets. No previous economic system required these things or was inherently imperialistic. Capitalism was the first.
We used to make things ourselves, at home, or within a community, as needed (within independent, autonomous local markets). As in, use-value. Capitalism, OTOH, as our first M-C-M economic system, made use-value meaningless and irrelevant and replaced it with exchange-value.
Literally, anything for a buck. Doesn’t matter if it kills you. Can you market it? Sell it? Brainwash enough people to believe they want it or even need it? Who cares if it has one iota of use-value, or if it sends you to an early grave.
So Bernays and company figured if they can just make women believe it’s a great show of “freedom and emancipation” to be just like men and smoke yourself to death, a few humans will make vast fortunes while millions die to make that happen. And they had a lot of help from Hollywood in the process.
The history of capitalism is littered with hundreds of millions of dead people all in the name of profits for the few. And that’s not hyperbole.
