Tuesday, November 25, 2014

STATE-Capitalism [PSEUDO-Socialism] versus ‘Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY'.


Dear Reader,


On behalf of Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [ www.dialectics.info ] and the Equitist Advocacy Group [ www.equitism.org ], I am campaigning, all over the internet -- now, including here -- with the message reproduced below.

For Global Renaissance!


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For more information regarding these Seldonian insights, please see --

 

www.dialectics.info

 

 

 

 

 

For partially pictographical, ‘poster-ized’ visualizations of many of these Seldonian insights -- specimens of dialectical artas well as illustrated books by the F.E.D. Press, see --

https://www.etsy.com/shop/DialecticsMATH

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

¡ENJOY!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Regards,

 

 

Miguel Detonacciones,

 

Voting Member, Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [F.E.D.];

Elected Member, F.E.D. General Council;

Participant, F.E.D. Special Council for Public Liaison;

Officer, F.E.D. Office of Public Liaison.

 

 

 

 

YOU are invited to post your comments on this blog-entry below!













‘‘‘The Psychohistorical-Dialectical Equations’’’: 
Police-State, Totalitarian, ‘Humanocidal’ STATE-Capitalism [PSEUDO-Socialism] vs.

Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY --

I have become aware of a new development in Marxian Theory, using a new “organon”; a new, more powerful “instrument of thought”, or tool for “universal labor” [Marx] -- an “intensional”, ‘intuitional’, ‘contra-Boolean’ algebraic dialectical logic, a key theorem of which is a STRONG contrary to Boole’s “Fundamental Law of Thought” -- a new ‘algorithmic heuristic’ that has enabled those who use it to develop a categorial progression, ontologically-heterogeneous series solution model of ‘‘‘The Dialectic of Nature’’’, with a new, distinct orthogonal mathematical dimension assigned to each new ontological category; a progression of ‘solved singularities’;  of a mounting ‘meta-genealogy’, driven by a self-recurring “aufheben” process, that they have named ‘self-meta-unit-ization’, ‘self-meta-monad-ization’, or ‘self-meta-holon-ization’, and that continuingly creates qualitatively different, NEW KINDS of units -- new ontology -- rising from pre-nuclear “particles” as units, all the way up to human societies as units, with a prediction as to what is coming next; a model of the historical dialectic of natural history as totality, “A Dialectical Theory of Everything”.

The dialectical categorial progression of the axioms-systems of these dialectical arithmetics, of which the ‘contra-Boolean arithmetic’ forms the second, yields, by its seventh system of arithmetic, an axioms-system of ‘quanto-QUALITATIVE’ ARITHMETIC, in which division by zero is UNproblematic, yielding a new kind of number, a [meta-]finite value, that achieves ‘singularity semantification’ for apparently “meaningless” or, worse, for ‘infinitely erroneous’, predictions by the fundamental equations of physics, etc., grasping division-by-zero singularities as incomplete models, and markers, of ontological REVOLUTIONS in Nature, and also yielding an arithmetic for the first known ‘non-syncopated’, fully-ideographical-symbolic version of “dimensional analysis”.

“Inside” that totality-model, they have also derived a model of the history of what Marx called “the social forces of production”, and “the social relations of production”, within “human pre-history” [Marx], culminating in the capital-relation/wage-labor-relation, as fundamental social relation of production, as the very core of capitalist society, and in the self-cleavage of that society into the wages-/salaries-class vs. capitals-class class-struggle, that we, by daily reproducing this “social relation of production”, impose upon ourselves, until the capital-relation-incented growth of the “social forces of production” internally destabilizes that capitals-system, due to ‘technodepreciation’-losses-driven falling net profitability, the ruling-class reaction to which produces the present ‘descendance-phase’ of capitalist civilization, the phase which began around 1913.

Their models also predict/reconstruct the “lawful” emergence of a ‘HUMANOCIDAL’, ‘capitalist-anticapitalist’ [totalitarian STATE-capitalist] ruling class in ‘descendance-phase’ capitalism.
 
They predict a terminal, paradoxical, ‘descendance-phase’ ruling class ideology which is simultaneously ‘capitalist anti-capitalist’, ‘human anti-humanist’, and, in seeking to reverse the historic rise of “the social forces of production”, ‘anti-marxian marxianist’ as well.

This ruling-class’s ‘human anti-humanism’ ideology initially spawned “Eugenics”, but, after their debacle with their state-capitalist, Eugenics ‘servant-dictatorship’, become ‘Franken-dictatorship’ -- the Hitler Eugenics regime, which turned against them, and tried to seize world domination from them -- they switched to their “Big Money” perversion of the global grass roots anti-pollution movement, i.e., into the “People Are Pollution” neo-pseudo-religion of ‘Earthism’, attacking global working class living standards on PSEUDO-ecological grounds.

The “lawful” self-degeneration of ‘ascendance-phase’, competitive, representative-democratic capitalism into totalitarian, ‘humanocidal’ STATE-capitalism [the ‘Orwell/Marx Law’], in the “advanced” capitalist nation-states, is ENABLED by the primary result of capitalist competition -- the hyper-concentration of capital-money in ever fewer hands -- which, at length, totally obliterates the “checks-and-balances” among the POLITICAL branches of representative-democratic government, as the ‘descendance-phase’ plutocracy prostitutes all three branches, plus the news media, and the industries of food and medicine, as well as of science, and other crucial social institutions.

But the desperate, DRIVING MOTIVE behind the descendance phase plutocracy’s rush to TOTALITARIAN ‘HUMANOCIDE’ is a deep secret, still not discerned by most observers and theorists.

Using those models, these developers have derived detailed features of the probable successor social system to capitalism, i.e., of the HIGHER, successor “social relation of production” to the capital-/wage-labor-relation, which they call the ‘GENERALIZED EQUITY social-relation-of-production’, or ‘political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY’ -- the ‘citizen externality equity / citizen birthright equity / citizen stewardship equity HUMAN RIGHTS’-relation, which is decidedly NOT a form of pure-state-bureaucratic-ruling-class proto-STATE-capitalism, a la Leninism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, Maoism, CeauČ™escuism, Hoxhaism, Castroism, ILism, UNism, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

From a juridical standpoint, ‘GENERALIZED EQUITY’, ‘The EQUITARIAN Reform/Revolution’, or ‘EQUITISM’, is an outgrowth of the “Equity”, or “Equitable Jurisprudence” branch of Anglo-American law, as distinct from both the common-law branch and the statute-law branch, and of analogous elements in the Napoleonic Code, the Swiss Civil Code, etc., of the Civil Law traditions.

The key to re-establishing ‘Social Equity’ -- “Social Justice” -- in late capitalism is to RESUSCITATE CHECKS AND BALANCES on POLITICAL power, as well as to create NEW CHECKS AND BALANCES against concentrated ECONOMIC power, by instituting unprecedented ECONOMIC CHECKS AND BALANCES, thereby also irrupting new social-relations-of-production ‘socio-ontology’ that transforms capitalism beyond itself -- 


CITIZEN EXTERNALITY EQUITY.  The ‘Associations of [popularly elected, mandated, popularly recallable] Public Directors’ bodies, implementing the ‘Citizens EXTERNALITY Equity’ [‘GRASS ROOTS, democratic regulation of, e.g., deadly local pollution’] Human Right, are an ‘institution-ization’ of the historical experiences of the self-organized, revolutionary, territorially/residentially-grounded “community councils”, or citizen assemblies, that have manifested repeatedly in contra-capitalism revolts of the last century.  This Human Right “contains” & constrains the propensity for abuse of society by externalities production that is inherent in the capital social relation of production, by constructing a “container” of new, generalized equity based social relations of production, surrounding, supervening over, & subsuming capital-equity.

An “Externality”, as an “external cost”, is a “cost”, or harm, imposed, by the operations of an enterprise, upon “third parties” -- “parties”, “publics” who are neither “first parties”, e.g., owners, nor “second parties”, e.g., consumers, with respect to that enterprise, and with respect to its outputs [for example, that form of harm, or “cost”, known as “pollution”].

The institutions of Citizen Externality Equity replace, or supplement, the inadequate forms of state-bureaucracy-based and citizens-funded civil-litigation-based regulation of, e.g., pollution externalities, which lead to the capture of the bureaucratic regulators by the industries they “regulate”, and which pit relatively-impoverished civil society citizen’s NGOs, in civil courts, against deep-pocketed corporations.  They add to the externalities governance regime grass roots, locally-grounded, democratic regulation, via a new kind of, political-economic, all-citizens voting rights, supplementing external regulation with a new kind of internal[ized] -- externalities-internalizing -- local citizens regulation.

The boards of directors, or local governance boards, inside each local externalities-producing enterprise, in every locality -- those of the remaining corporate enterprises and of the Citizen Stewardship Equity cooperative enterprises alike -- are, per the Citizen Externality Equity Human Right, supplemented, with regard to the social regulation of externalities, by a board of local citizens-elected, -mandated, and -recallable Public Directors, who co-determine, with the traditional governance board, the annual externalities budgets of each enterprise.  If these negotiations deadlock, the [citizens-elected] Tribunal for Externality Equity decides, the losing side paying the costs of the litigation.

The social equity basis of these new Citizen Externality Equity institutions is the principle that citizen publics, in suffering pollution, etc., externalities, in effect purchase, in kind, a kind of equity in the enterprises that produce those externalities, as a collective property right, exercised via the new kind of voting rights, for the election of Public Directors.

This Citizen Externality Equity Human Right includes the right of the entire citizen base of each geographical scale of governance to elect mandated, recallable Public Directors for Associations of Public Directors at the municipal, county, state/provincial, national, and, eventually, at the continental and global scales of social governance.  These Associations of Public Directors then democratically shape the physical plant of society, the deployment of social infrastructure, etc., within each of these scales of social governance.


CITIZEN BIRTHRIGHT EQUITY.  The ‘Citizens BIRTHRIGHT Equity Human Right’ means that each citizen born into human society shall receive an ABSOLUTELY PORTABLE, PERSONAL SOCIAL SAFETY NET, one that is tied, for life, to each individual citizen, from that citizens’ birth.

It means a SOCIAL TRUST FUND for each child born, making EVERY baby a “Trust Fund Baby”.  It means social [self-]investment in every baby born, in every new human life, from birth onward.

It means a socially-supplied individual fund for every citizen, to help defray the costs of key life-history milestones, including costs of professional day care, early childhood education, college education, first home ownership, starting a business, and retirement pension, as well as life-long medical care, unemployment insurance, and reparations to victims in the case of criminal conviction regarding a crime committed by that citizen.

Initially, the wherewithal for these universal trust funds will have to accumulate over time, i.e., during the start-up phase after the first implementation of the Equitarian constitutional amendments, from Citizen Stewardship Equity social rents, paid by citizen stewardship cooperatives, in return for their use of public means of production, etc., until a steady state of constitutionally and statutorily stipulated full funding is achieved.

The uses of these Birthright social trust funds will have to be socially encumbered, with certain statutory “strings attached”, to militate against their misuse.  A generic social safety net will still be needed, to provide standard minimum social welfare support to those who exhaust their Citizen Birthright Equity trust funds prematurely, e.g., due to reparations payments to victims in the cases of those who choose, for themselves, a career of crime, e.g., in the form of prison “room and board”.

The Human Right of ‘Citizen Birthright Equity’ will insure a base-line level of life- opportunity for every new citizen born, regardless of on which “side of the tracks” they were born, and will “level the playing field” of life for each citizen to that degree.  It will also give every citizen “skin in the game” -- a personal stake in the human society that has, by observing this Human Right, invested itself in them.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
CITIZEN STEWARDSHIP EQUITY.  The ‘producers-democracies’ that are the MARKET-COMPETING ‘‘‘socialized producers’ cooperatives’’’ of the ‘Citizen STEWARDSHIP Equity’ [‘collective entrepreneurship’] Human Right [the ‘socialized venture capital’ Human Right], face bankruptcy and unemployment if they fail to satisfy their customers, or prosperity, in varying degrees, if they succeed in such. 

They are an ‘institution-ization’ of the historical experiences of the self-organized, revolutionary, workplace-grounded “producers’ councils”, or “producers’ associations”, that have also formed repeatedly in modern, contra-capitalism revolts.

The ‘SOCIAL BANKS’ that decide to, or not to, fund the statutorily-qualified business plans proposed to them by citizens’ collectives -- would-be Citizen Stewardship Equity producers’ cooperatives -- are themselves also Citizen Stewardship Equity cooperatives, facing bankruptcy & unemployment if they fund too many cooperatives that fail, hence that default on their ‘social rent’ payments, a share of which forms the revenue of these means-of-production-providing ‘social banks’, or facing prosperity, in varying degrees, if they choose to fund mostly citizen’s collectives that form successful cooperative enterprises, & facing lessened prosperity if they fail to fund cooperatives that succeed, thus letting competing ‘social banks’ fund those winning cooperatives [cf. David Schweickart’s book “Against Capitalism”].

To form a social bank Citizen Stewardship Equity cooperative, a citizens’ collective must successfully apply, with its proposed, statutorily qualifying, business plan, NOT to any other social bank, but to the Office of the Custodian of Social Property, the national Office managed by the nationally, popularly elected Custodian of Social Property, who is the Democratic ECONOMIC GOVERNMENT counterpart of, e.g., the President, or the Prime Minister, of the Democratic POLITICAL GOVERNMENT. 

The Custodian of Social Property manages the social property of the nation [held in Stewardship, NOT in local/personal ownership, by the Citizen Stewardship Equity cooperatives], collects the social rents on the social property held in such Stewardship, transfers the constitutionally and statutorily mandated portion of those proceeds to the Citizen Birthright Equity Fund, remits the constitutionally and statutorily regulated share of those rents to the chartered social banks, as their revenue, allocates an equitable share of the annual means of production investment pool to each such social bank, and manages the replacement of obsolescent means of production, for those Stewardship Equity cooperatives choosing to pay the premiums for the Office’s ‘techno-depreciation insurance policy’, and to construct their new, replacement means of production via the Office, whenever the Office is ordered to do so by the majority of the [also nationally-elected] justices of the Tribunal for Citizen Stewardship Equity. 

Remaining capital-equity stock companies -- “joint stock” companies, private or “public” -- are also eligible to choose to pay the premiums necessary to benefit from this ‘technodepreciation insurance’ social risk management system. 

DEMOCRATIC MANAGEMENT OF THE NATIONAL MONEY-SUPPLY.  The Office of the Custodian of Social Property administers the statutes regarding national social property, including that central form of social property which is the national means of purchase/payment:  the Office administers the national money supply, and the Custodian chairs the commission of nationally-elected, mandated, electorate-recallable commissioners that sets national monetary policy, and that manages the national supply of a new kind of fiat money, a kind which is not “backed” by gold, or by any other [scarce] commodity. 

The Custodian is a popularly-elected, term-limited, impeachable, & electorate-recallable officer. 

If a citizens’ collective feels that the Office has wrongfully denied it a social bank charter, it can file suit against the Office in the [nationally-elected] Tribunal for Citizen Stewardship Equity.  The losing side pays the costs of the litigation.

Each Citizen Steward votes to elect, and can vote to recall, the management of their collective enterprise, & each Citizen Steward votes on all MAJOR managerial decisions.

Each Citizen-Steward producer, as such, enjoys, by constitutional & Human Right, two streams of income:  (1) compensation for time worked, at rates determined via Skills-Markets, not necessarily equal in amount to that earned, per unit of work time, by differently-skilled fellow Citizen Stewards, & (2) an EQUAL share in the net operating surplus of their Citizen-Stewardship enterprise.  Stewardship cooperatives pay a social rent on their means of production -- social property, held in Stewardship, not in local/personal ownership -- a social rent that discourages inefficient [over]use/hoarding of means of production.

These social rents help to fund the Citizen Birthright Equity individual Citizen socialized trust funds, as well as funding Citizen Stewardship Equity means of production start-up investments, for those Stewardship cooperatives who choose to have their means of production constructed by the Office of the Custodian of Social Property, rather than by themselves directly, or other enterprises, under contract, and also funding means of production renewals, for those COMPETING Stewardship cooperatives, in a given line of industry, who elect to subscribe to the Office’s ‘technodepreciation insurance’ policy, ordered whenever technological obsolescence of the old means of production standard for that line of industry is adjudicated by the Tribunal for Citizen Stewardship Equity.

The Citizen Stewardship Equity constitutional amendment does not outlaw self-employed capital, private “joint stock” capital, or state-capital.  But all remaining private or “public” capitalist firms must play by the rules of stockholder democracy, must abide by the new, political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRATIC statutes and rules, & must compete, for employees, etc., against Stewardship producers’ cooperatives, wherein those collective self-employers, the producer-owners, decide, democratically, as to how they will be treated by their collective self-employer, i.e., by themselves.  Likewise, all remaining state-capitalist enterprises must abide by the new, political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRATIC statutes and rules, and must compete, for workers, against the workers’ democratically-managed producers’ cooperatives. 

If unlimited or even limited political contributions by enterprises are still allowed by the people, then “public” or private-capital enterprises, by vote of their stock-owners, and stewardship equity cooperatives, by vote of their citizen-owners, would be allowed to make such contributions, but only under equal regulation by constitutional amendment and by statute.

‘‘‘Power tends to corrupt.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.’’’  CHECKS AND BALANCES are the key bulwark against socio-political degeneration into dictatorship.  Of course, checks-and-balances institutional mechanisms are no guarantee against degeneration into dictatorship.  Popular -- populist -- vigilance, against injustice and tyranny, both public and private, are always vital to avert, or to undo, such degeneration.

The prescription is that the -- concentrated-economic-power-subverted -- POLITICAL checks and balances be “aufheben” retained, as REVIVED by the new ECONOMIC checks and balances, in a new societal system of SUSTAINED QUADRUPLE POWER, with ‘inter-mutually’ checking-and-balancing SUSTAINED CONFLICTS among the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches of [popularly-elected] POLITICAL government, and also vis-a-vis the new, ECONOMIC-DEMOCRATIC institutions of ‘‘‘Equitism’’’ -- the new social institutions of ‘GENERALIZED EQUITY’, e.g., of ‘Citizen Externality Equity’, ‘Citizen Birthright Equity’, and ‘Citizen Stewardship Equity’, and ‘Democratic Management of the National Money-Supply’, sketched above.

This will require a VIGILANT social majority, one that knows what it wants -- the better life for all of ‘Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY’ -- and that knows the horrors of the alternative -- CIA-Global-Police-State, Totalitarian, ‘Humanocidal’ State Capitalism, already incipiently rampant in the plutocracy’s “STEALTH EUGENICS”, ‘STEALTH HUMANOCIDE’ mode, already extensively underway, and still without widespread recognition of that fact.

The ‘‘‘social-revolutionary’’’ -- “social-relations-of production”-changing -- transition to ‘Equitarian Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY’ need not be a violent conflagration.  Citizens’ mass BOYCOTTS of the Big, Government-prostituting Banks and other ‘human anti-humanist’ ,‘‘‘Corporatist’’’ Mega-Corporations; populist electoral campaigns for legislatures, executives, and judges at the Municipal, State/Provincial, and National levels, popular Initiatives/Referenda/Plebiscites, and constitutional amendments -- all of these may suffice to change the “social relations of production”. 

However, the self-degenerated plutocracy can be expected to resort to ILLEGAL violence whenever they feel that their power -- and what they think of as the “perks” of that power, their power to pillage, torture, rape, and murder humanity with impunity -- is being challenged by LEGAL means.

Organizing can begin at the grassroots level, campaigning for the adoption of municipal-scale, then county-scale, then state-/province-scale implementations of approximations of the ‘Citizen Externalities Equity’, ‘Citizen Birthright Equity’, and ‘Citizen Stewardship Equity’ Human Rights, before attempting full implementation at the national scale and, later, at the international, global scale, converging upon a democratic ‘Planetary Polis’ [a voluntary, ‘secedeable’ federation of sovereign, national, ‘political-ECONOMIC-DEMOCRATIC republics’]. 
 
























Saturday, November 22, 2014

F.E.D. Dialectical Theory: Seldon's “Brief” Definition.



Dear Readers,




In a recent ‘transcripted’ dialogue among Foundation members, Karl Seldon recounted a recent written exchange, in which he provided a remarkably succinct definition of Foundation Theory.

It’s a gem that I wanted to share, also, with you:



. . .A doctrinaire, state-capitalist “[pseudo-]Marx-IST recently wrote to me, asking that I briefly define F.E.D.’s Marxian-Dialectical Theory overall.  The tone of his communication clearly implied that he believed that neither I nor anyone else could ever do so.

I responded to him with the following definition --

“The F.E.D. Dialectical Theory is an emergently ‘‘‘Trans-Modern’’’, Modern/Ancient Hybrid, Universal Marxian Theory, one which is simultaneously ‘Trans-Animist’, ‘Trans-Pythagorean’,
‘Trans-Heraclitean’, ‘Trans-Parmenidean’, ‘‘‘Trans-Platonian’’’, ‘‘‘Trans-Aristotelian’’’, ‘‘‘Trans-Leibnizian’’’, ‘‘‘Trans-Hegelian’’’, and ‘Trans-Goedelian’."   

"It is a theory of the dialectically[ ‘aufhebeningly’]-mathematically mimed physical, and ideic’ [i.e., ‘meme-etic’/‘‘‘mimetic’’’], [self-]combinatoric dialectics of ‘self-meta-«monad»-izing’, ‘meta-fractal’, ‘‘‘meta-dynamical’’’, ‘self-meta-evolving’ [i.e., ‘ontologically self-revolutionizing’] «monads», and their ‘intra-dual’ «arithmoi»-of-those-«monads»/‘‘‘units’’’; their ‘intra-dual’ ‘‘‘assemblages’’’ of ‘‘‘individual natural-historical agents’’’; their ‘intra-dual’ ‘‘‘populations’’’/‘‘‘collectivities’’’ -- viewed synchronically, diachronically, ‘diachronico-synchronically’, and ‘‘‘psychohistorically’’’ --  i.e., viewed contemporaneously, and [psycho]historically; described quantitatively, qualitatively, and ‘qualo-quantitatively’.”

I’m not sure, but I don’t think that he liked my answer.



This is one of the most concentrated verbal encodings of meaning I have ever encountered, either inside the Foundation, or without it.

Of course, even the individual terms that Seldon employed in it name extremely meaning-concentrating memes.

Definitions of those individual terms are available to you from at least two sources --






Regards,

Miguel





























Sunday, November 09, 2014

Albert Einstein's Astute Critique of Capitalism.


Dear Reader,





In May 1949, Albert Einstein published, in the inaugural issue of the Monthly Review magazine, the critique of capitalism, and support for "socialism", that we have quoted below, under the title "Why Socialism?".



Regards,

Miguel








WHY SOCIALISM?


" Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism?


 I believe for a number of reasons that it is.


Let us first consider the question from the point of view of scientific knowledge.


It might appear that there are no essential methodological differences between astronomy and economics: scientists in both fields attempt to discover laws of general acceptability for a circumscribed group of phenomena in order to make the interconnection of these phenomena as clearly understandable as possible.


But in reality such methodological differences do exist.


The discovery of general laws in the field of economics is made difficult by the circumstance that observed economic phenomena are often affected by many factors which are very hard to evaluate separately.



In addition, the experience which has accumulated since the beginning of the so-called civilized period of human history has—as is well known—been largely influenced and limited by causes which are by no means exclusively economic in nature.


For example, most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest.


The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior.


But historic tradition is, so to speak, of yesterday; nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called “the predatory phase” of human development.


The observable economic facts belong to that phase and even such laws as we can derive from them are not applicable to other phases.


Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future.


Second, socialism is directed towards a social-ethical end.


Science, however, cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends. But the ends themselves are conceived by personalities with lofty ethical ideals and—if these ends are not stillborn, but vital and vigorous—are adopted and carried forward by those many human beings who, half unconsciously, determine the slow evolution of society.


For these reasons, we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society.


Innumerable voices have been asserting for some time now that human society is passing through a crisis, that its stability has been gravely shattered.



It is characteristic of such a situation that individuals feel indifferent or even hostile toward the group, small or large, to which they belong.


In order to illustrate my meaning, let me record here a personal experience.


I recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would seriously endanger the existence of mankind, and I remarked that only a supra-national organization would offer protection from that danger.





Thereupon, my visitor, very calmly and coolly, said to me: “Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?”





I am sure that as little as a century ago no one would have so lightly made a statement of this kind.


 It is the statement of a man who has striven in vain to attain an equilibrium within himself and has more or less lost hope of succeeding.


 It is the expression of a painful solitude and isolation from which so many people are suffering in these days.


What is the cause?

Is there a way out?


It is easy to raise such questions, but difficult to answer them with any degree of assurance.


I must try, however, as best I can, although I am very conscious of the fact that our feelings and strivings are often contradictory and obscure and that they cannot be expressed in easy and simple formulas.


Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being.


As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities.


As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life.


Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society.


It is quite possible that the relative strength of these two drives is, in the main, fixed by inheritance.


But the personality that finally emerges is largely formed by the environment in which a man happens to find himself during his development, by the structure of the society in which he grows up, by the tradition of that society, and by its appraisal of particular types of behavior.


The abstract concept “society” means to the individual human being the sum total of his direct and indirect relations to his contemporaries and to all the people of earlier generations.


The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society—in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence—that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society.


It is “society” which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word “society.”


It is evident, therefore, that the dependence of the individual upon society is a fact of nature which cannot be abolished—just as in the case of ants and bees.

However, while the whole life process of ants and bees is fixed down to the smallest detail by rigid, hereditary instincts, the social pattern and interrelationships of human beings are very variable and susceptible to change.


Memory, the capacity to make new combinations, the gift of oral communication have made possible developments among human being which are not dictated by biological necessities.

Such developments manifest themselves in traditions, institutions, and organizations; in literature; in scientific and engineering accomplishments; in works of art.

This explains how it happens that, in a certain sense, man can influence his life through his own conduct, and that in this process conscious thinking and wanting can play a part.


Man acquires at birth, through heredity, a biological constitution which we must consider fixed and unalterable, including the natural urges which are characteristic of the human species.


In addition, during his lifetime, he acquires a cultural constitution which he adopts from society through communication and through many other types of influences.


It is this cultural constitution which, with the passage of time, is subject to change and which determines to a very large extent the relationship between the individual and society.


Modern anthropology has taught us, through comparative investigation of so-called primitive cultures, that the social behavior of human beings may differ greatly, depending upon prevailing cultural patterns and the types of organization which predominate in society.


It is on this that those who are striving to improve the lot of man may ground their hopes:  human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate.


If we ask ourselves how the structure of society and the cultural attitude of man should be changed in order to make human life as satisfying as possible, we should constantly be conscious of the fact that there are certain conditions which we are unable to modify.


As mentioned before, the biological nature of man is, for all practical purposes, not subject to change.


Furthermore, technological and demographic developments of the last few centuries have created conditions which are here to stay.


In relatively densely settled populations with the goods which are indispensable to their continued existence, an extreme division of labor and a highly-centralized productive apparatus are absolutely necessary.


The time—which, looking back, seems so idyllic—is gone forever when individuals or relatively small groups could be completely self-sufficient.


It is only a slight exaggeration to say that mankind constitutes even now a planetary community of production and consumption.


I have now reached the point where I may indicate briefly what to me constitutes the essence of the crisis of our time.


It concerns the relationship of the individual to society.


The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence upon society.


But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence.


Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate.


All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration.


Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life.


Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.



The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil.



We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules.


 In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production—that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods—may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals.


For the sake of simplicity, in the discussion that follows I shall call “workers” all those who do not share in the ownership of the means of production—although this does not quite correspond to the customary use of the term.



The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker.


By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist.



The essential point about this process is the relation between what the worker produces and what he is paid, both measured in terms of real value.



Insofar as the labor contract is “free,” what the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces, but by his minimum needs and by the capitalists’ requirements for labor power in relation to the number of workers competing for jobs.



It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.




Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones.




The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society.




This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature.



The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population.



Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education).




It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.




The situation prevailing in an economy based on the private ownership of capital is thus characterized by two main principles: first, means of production (capital) are privately owned and the owners dispose of them as they see fit; second, the labor contract is free.



Of course, there is no such thing as a pure capitalist society in this sense.


In particular, it should be noted that the workers, through long and bitter political struggles, have succeeded in securing a somewhat improved form of the “free labor contract” for certain categories of workers.


But taken as a whole, the present day economy does not differ much from “pure” capitalism.


Production is carried on for profit, not for use.


There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists.


The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job.


Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers’ goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence.



Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all.



The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions.



Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.



This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism.



Our whole educational system suffers from this evil.


An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.


I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.


In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion.

A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child.


The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.



Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism.


A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual.





The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening?




How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?




Clarity about the aims and problems of socialism is of greatest significance in our age of transition.


Since, under present circumstances, free and unhindered discussion of these problems has come under a powerful taboo, I consider the foundation of this magazine to be an important public service."







SOURCE URL:     http://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/











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Friday, November 07, 2014

Opening, Internet Dialogue. The Marxian Dialectical Method.


Dear Reader,


Below I have reproduced the "opening salvo" of a recent internet dialogue on "The [Marxian] Dialectical Method", between "Oscar Saphos" and I.

If this dialogue continues to develop, I will continue to post its continuations here.








OS1". . . .For the purposes of Marxists, however, Dialectical Materialism is nothing other than Historical Materialism. While every science should strive for a dialectical level of inquiry, the dialectical outlook is itself a product of historical development; Historical Materialism has attained this goal, while its subject is human society itself. As such, the dialectical method acquires a unique specificity in the Theory of Historical Materialism, and it is in this sense in which it will defined.

Dialectics signifies several principles:

  1. Totality and phenomena. Real truth applies only to the whole. The comprehension of any component rests in part on understanding its relation to the whole. There is no such thing as a “thing-in-itself”--the subject of all study is phenomena, or interactions which become objectified as things in the mind. 
  2. Monism. Consciousness is real and material; a knowledge of its origins does not make it purely reducible to them. This principle applies, it bears mentioning, both to the consciousness-being dichotomy and to the “natural” realm of which it is a part--the thoughtful investigator understands that matter and motion are only two sides of the very same process, in spite of their necessary separation in theory. 
  3. Materialism. Though consciousness is itself real material, “dialecticians” nevertheless always seek the origins of changes in consciousness in the development of its phsyical substratum; it is being which determines consciousness. 
  4. Change and transformation. All material is by its nature is subject to development, the pattern of which must be discovered. Some developments can remain within the frame of a given logical construction, others require wholly new logical categories to be created. For the purposes of abstract analysis, the problem can be seen as one of “the transformation of quantity into quality.”
  5. Praxis. Those who attempt to apply Historical Materialism acknowledge that all theorizing is actual activity of one kind or another, and so in class society the production and dissemination of knowledge takes on a real role in the class struggle. Praxis signifies the synthesis of theory and practice. The development of theory is, so long as it takes the partisan standpoint of the proletariat, a real and crucial component of the material class struggle, while active participation in the class struggle is simultaneously work which will inform theory. There is not really any distinction between “mental” and “manual” work; the ideological and practical critiques of capitalism are each impossible without the other and are only two components of the same process. It is for this reason that dialectical materialism--the framework for scientific investigation of human society--is implicitly partisan to the socialist cause.

In addition, another aspect of dialectics bears mentioning:

The relationship of dialectics to logic. Hegel’s pattern of “negation” and “negation of the negation” is supposed by some to be a supersession of the traditional syllogism. Nevertheless, dialectics is not a higher form of logic. No formulations which emerge from dialectical inquiry can be logically contradictory. To speak of “contradictions,” for the dialectician, is a way of expressing the antagonisms which are actually found in the real world, specifically in the world of human society. No aspect of Marx’s Theory of Capital, for example, is logically invalid despite the fact that it treats the contradictions of capitalist society. Every logically-coherent theory is limited by the temporal duration of the phenomena it describes, beyond which point it ceases to apply and must be dissolved into the more general higher level of theory."






MD1"Oscar,

FYI: ‘‘‘The Psychohistorical-Dialectical Equations’’’ & ‘Psychohistorical Materialism’ --
ALGORITHMIC-Heuristic Guidance for Applications of Marxian Dialectical Method:

I have become aware of a new development in Marxian Theory, using a new tool of “universal labor” [Marx] -- a heuristic, ‘intuitional’, contra-Boolean, algebraic dialectical logic -- one that has enabled those who use it to develop a model of ‘‘‘The Dialectic of Nature’’’ -- of an unbroken, self-developing, mounting ‘meta-genealogy’, from pre-nuclear “particles” all the way up to the human, with a prediction as to what comes next: a model of the historical dialectic of natural history as totality, and, “inside” that totality-model, a model of the history of what Marx calls “the social forces of production”, and “the social relations of production”, within “human pre-history” [Marx], culminating in the capital-relation/wage-labor relation, at the core of capitalist society, and the self-cleavage of that society into the wages-/salaries-class-vs.-capitals-class class struggle that this “social relation of production” imposes, until the capital-relation-incented growth of the “social forces of production” internally destabilizes that capitals-system, producing the descendance-phase of capitalist civilization.

Their models also predict/reconstruct the “lawful” emergence of a ‘HUMANOCIDAL’ capitalist-anticapitalist [totalitarian STATE-capitalist] ruling class in descendance-phase capitalism. They predict a terminal, descendance-phase ruling class ideology which is simultaneously ‘capitalist anti-capitalist’, ‘human anti-humanist’, and ‘anti-Marxian Marxianist’.  The “lawful” degeneration of capitalist, representative democracy into totalitarian, humanocidal STATE-capitalism, in the “advanced” nations, is ENABLED by the hyper-concentration of capital-money in ever fewer hands, which, at length, totally obliterates the “checks-and-balances” among the political branches of government, as the descendant-phase plutocracy prostitutes all three branches, plus the news media.  But the desperate, DRIVING MOTIVE behind the plutocracy’s rush to TOTALITARIAN HOMANOCIDE is a deep secret, still not discerned by most observers and theorists.


Using this model, they have derived detailed features of the probable higher successor system to capitalism, i.e., of the higher successor social relation of production to the capital/wage-labor relation, which they call the “generalized equity social-relation-of-production”, or “political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY” -- the “citizen externality equity / citizen birthright equity / citizen stewardship equity human rights”-relation, is decidedly NOT a form of state-bureaucratic-ruling-class STATE-capitalism, a la Leninism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, Hitlerism, Maoism, Castroism, CeauČ™escuism, Hoxhaism, ILism, UNism, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

The ‘Associations of [popularly elected, mandated, popularly recallable] Public Directors’ bodies, implementing the ‘Citizens EXTERNALITY Equity’ [‘GRASS ROOTS regulation of deadly local pollution’] Human Right, may be considered an ‘institution-ization’ of the historical experiences of the revolutionary, territorially/residentially-grounded “community councils”.

The ‘producers-democracies’ that are the MARKET-COMPETING ‘‘‘socialized producers’ cooperatives’’’ of the ‘Citizen STEWARDSHIP Equity’ [‘collective entrepreneurship’] Human Right [the ‘socialized venture capital’ right] may be considered an ‘institution-ization’ of the historical experiences of the revolutionary, workplace-grounded “workers’ councils”.


For more about these historic breakthroughs, see --

http://www.dialectics.info/dialectics/Welcome.html

http://www.dialectics.info/dialectics/Glossary_files/Glossary,The_Dialectic_of_Social_Equity,07SEP2014.jpg


"










For more information regarding these Seldonian insights, please see --

 

www.dialectics.info

 

 

 

 

 

For partially pictographical, ‘poster-ized’ visualizations of many of these Seldonian insights -- specimens of dialectical artas well as illustrated books by the F.E.D. Press, see --

https://www.etsy.com/shop/DialecticsMATH

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

¡ENJOY!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Regards,

 

 

Miguel Detonacciones,

 

Voting Member, Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [F.E.D.];

Elected Member, F.E.D. General Council;

Participant, F.E.D. Special Council for Public Liaison;

Officer, F.E.D. Office of Public Liaison.

 

 

 

 

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MARXIAN DIALECTICAL METHOD'S