Socialism

Posted: 04 Dec 2005 01:38 pm Post subject: Religion

Since we have been discussing it so much lately I decided to start this new topic.

One group for reason that I am always intrigued with is the Jehovah's Witnesses. I like talking with them if only to serve as some sort of different way to think about my own ideas.

From one of the latest Watchtowers - the cover story title (from memory) why we can't change the world or something to that effect.

The article talks about that some people can make changes - they gave the example of Florence Nightingale’s work to improve the cleanliness of hospital treatment. But the article went on an implied in my mind that such work of individuals is essentially just work against the tide. The article cited some writing that stated that slavery is in fact more prevalent in the world than it ever was - (if wage slavery under abject conditions is included I would agree with that point) but then the article simply says - such problems are not caused by the rich getting richer but by SATAN THE DEVIL.

If I were a member if the capitalist rich and wanted to continue the rich getting richer. I would sure give at least a piece of my money to keep that Watchtower in publication.

imho dave

Posted: 04 Dec 2005 03:06 pm Post subject:

Dave wrote:

Posted: 04 Dec 2005 10:29 pm Post subject:

Yes it's pretty sad-

I'm posting a JW article found at their website: Notice how they set a "problem" up - then they give a few facts as if they have studied the problem and then they throw up their hands and say Oh well - see people have tried to fix this problem- they haven't worked - there is hope in the bible.

The advertising formula that they use - bait and switch:

"In of negative reports from around the world about poverty, there are those who remain optimistic that something concrete can be done. For example, according to a headline in the Manila Bulletin, the Asian Development Bank reported that "Asia can eradicate poverty in 25 years." The bank recommended economic growth as a way to pull people from the depths of poverty.

"Other organizations and governments have put forth a long list of suggestions and plans to try to solve the problem. Among them are: social insurance programs, improved education, canceling debts developing nations owe to industrialized nations, removing import barriers so that nations with a large percentage of poor people can sell their products more easily, and low-income housing for the poor.

"In the year 2000, the United Nations General Assembly set goals to be achieved by 2015. These included the eliminating of extreme poverty and hunger as well as gross inequality of income within countries. However noble such goals may be, many doubt that they can be achieved in this disunited world.

"Practical Steps to Deal With Poverty:

"Since hope for real progress on a worldwide scale is slim, where can a person turn for help? As mentioned earlier, there is a source of practical wisdom that can help people right now. What is it? It is God's Word, the Bible."

Posted: 02 Jan 2006 02:49 pm Post subject:

Dave wrote:

Posted: 03 Jan 2006 12:25 am Post subject:

John I have studied those tapes and bokks by Jos Campbell. Wonderful stuff. I have learned that the entire application of this wisdom can be summed up in just four words.

What four words are, I have no idea.

dave

Posted: 03 Jan 2006 06:46 am Post subject:

I wonder if it's true, as authors like Campbell believe, that myths expose basic human drives that are common in all people. Is the global prevalance of Great Flood myths, Golden Age myths, heroes versus dragons, etc., a result of something deep down inside all human psychology?

Posted: 03 Jan 2006 07:23 am Post subject:

Here is my hypothesis about the origin of religion and myths.

Every possible kind of story gets made up and recited. Most of them will be forgotten. However, some of them get remembered and repeated because, if they were accepted as true, this would provide emotional satisfaction.

The most common example that gets cited is that these stories explain natural events such as thunder, but I don't think that's the main one. I believe the main one is that humans were the first animals intelligent enough to realize they everyone has to die, and this clashes with the instinct to fight for survival. As soon as people hear a story that says that death is a doorway to another world, this has a psychological payoff. If this is true, the commonly cited example, explanations of thunder and other natural events, satisfying curiosity, would seem to be a secondary factor.

Another one is that death seems to leave the ledger book unbalanced. Many good people never got rewarded. Many evil people got away with it. The concept of an afterlife appears to permit justice after all.

It's also a payoff that people can answer their children's questions easily. When a child cries about the death of a grandparent, we can pacify the child by telling them that the deceased has merely traveled to a better place. Once the kids grow up believing that, the story takes on a momentum of its own, now being held to be factual.

In due course, the political and economic features get tacked on. Every king, emperor and president is said to be doing the will of God. Every rebellion against the state is denounced by the state as a rebellion against the whole cosmic order.

All of this is a commission of the logical fallacy known as "argument from consequences." In logic, no proposition can be determined to be true merely because one dislikes the consequences that would follow from it being false.

After all that is said, science still can't disprove the most basic concepts of religion. It could still be the case that a religious belief is true even though many people have believed in it for logically invalid reasons. For all we know, a great cosmic consciousness might truly exist. It's fascinating to speculate about this. I think it's harmful when people assert strongly that they "know", instead of realizing that they're engaging in conjecture. If we can conjecture about it, while never losing sight of the fact that it's a conjecture, it's a fascinating subject.

Posted: 04 Jan 2006 11:11 am Post subject:

Mike wrote:

I wonder if it's true, as authors like Campbell believe, that myths expose basic human drives that are common in all people. Is the global prevalance of Great Flood myths, Golden Age myths, heroes versus dragons, etc., a result of something deep down inside all human psychology?

dave replies:

The first two words of your post says it all.

We actively open ourselves up to think certain types of thought.

One time I read a book about improving memory - one of the trick was to first memorize a list of visual objects sun shoe tree door hive etc. and to associate other things that you wanted to memorize with the items on the list. Stories do the same thing as the list of visual objects. Fill a kid up with stories, true or not and as adults they seem to be able to utilize the stories to provide at least some context or a starting point to deal with the new realities of each day.
Why certain figures, certain themes, travel so well surely has a logical explanation. I don't think about madonnas and floods and the like so I guess not everyone does. Even if these things are not something like eternal truths it's always satisfying to think about the "why" of their prevalance.

dave

Posted: 04 Jan 2006 04:23 pm Post subject:

Mike wrote:

Posted: 04 Jan 2006 10:29 pm Post subject:

John wrote:

"Dave, you made a good point about visualization since that is what the mind retains over what someone may have said. You said that you could not remember four words."

I (dave) had originally written:

"John I have studied those tapes and books by Jos Campbell. Wonderful stuff. I have learned that the entire application of this wisdom can be summed up in just four words.

What four words are, I have no idea. "

I didn't forget the 4 words - those words were "I have no idea."

You should have gone to high school with me as Mike did. I lived my life to tell jokes like that all day long (as well as pass out socialist literature.)

I remember I was in the 5th grade. I had read ahead in my science book and saw that the connection between the arteries and veins were called capillaries. The teacher asked the class the question as to what that connetion was called. She should have known better to call on me when I shot my hand up to answer. "Yes David, what is it? "Catapillars" I responded to the glee of the whole class.

This gets better.

To try to save face by having an 11 year old take away her control of the class - the teacher said to me - why you assinine fool! To which I immediately responded out loud - "You damned bitch." She was so amazed said to me almost in a dare - WHAT DID YOU SAY? So I got to repeat "You damned bitch."

I spent about two weeks standing in the hallway outside of the principle's office over that one but it was worth it.

A year later I had moved up to the new middle school and my father knew the principle. Years later my father told me the story that the principle told my father that I had made quite a name for myself in the school district for calling that teacher a damned bitch. "The thing about it Bob, is that no one disagrees with him on that."

I actually hated to see my senior year come, I was having such a good time.

dave

Posted: 06 Jan 2006 06:03 am Post subject:

I was raised Catholic, but at age 14 I became sexually active, and I didn't want to go to hell, so I became an atheist. ...... ** Then in my 20s I began to study Buddhism, which is still a favorite subject of mine at age 52... I must have read a hundred books about it. Zen psychology has influenced me a lot, but the other Mahayana and Theravada forms of Buddhism to a lesser extent. Now I have a renewed interest in so-called western thought. For the past year I have studying Kant in depth, and the dialectical zigzags that occurred in European philosophy around the 18th century mainly due to the clash between rationalism and empiricism.

** Addendum: I deleted the section that should be left out of my permanent record in the principal's office.

Posted: 06 Jan 2006 02:04 pm Post subject:

You caught me on that one Dave. Laughing

Anyways, Raymond Buckland wrote that then the ancient people looked upon sleep as a form of death. During sleep they would dream that they would see those who have passed away. From those dreams came the belief of the Otherworld where men, women and children went to.

Sorry this was short. I kinda of busy right now.

Posted: 07 Jan 2006 05:12 am Post subject:

John wrote:

the ancient people looked upon sleep as a form of death

dave reponds:

It all depends upon who you wake up with doesn't it?

Posted: 07 Jan 2006 10:51 pm Post subject:

Morality (philosophers call it the subject of ethics) is related to religion, since religions tend to believe that rules of behaivor are handed down to us from above.

I have come to believe in what's called the psychological theory of ethics. For example, when I insist strongly that killing is wrong, that it violates someone's rights, what that specifically means is that I have a strong emotion according to which I want the world to be the kind of world where such killing doesn't occur. But when Jack the Ripper believes that killing is acceptable, that means that he doesn't have the same emotion that I have.

Would anyone like to critique that?

Posted: 08 Jan 2006 04:32 am Post subject:

can you rewrite this? I think you've got as few extra words in there and i can't figure out what you specifically are saying.

"For example, when I insist strongly that killing is wrong, that it violates someone's rights, what that specifically means is that I have a strong emotion according to which I want the world to be the kind of world where such killing doesn't occur."

dave

Posted: 09 Jan 2006 01:25 am Post subject:

There is no source of right and wrong other than consciousness. It's not a commandment from God. It's not based on "natural rights", which is a modern secular attempt to make right and wrong into objective givens. Big-L Libertarians often cite "natural rights" to argue that property rights are absolute, regardless of the consequences, so that a starving person stealing a turnip from a millionaire is the one who is doing something morally wrong. I no longer believe it comes from any "up there" or "out there." A more realistic approach is the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill: to do good is to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people, and to do evil is to produce unhappiness. But different individuals have different solutions to the utilitarian formula, so often it can't be applied directly. To me it reduces to a materialistic world-view, in which we are clumps of atoms, but clumps of atoms with consciousness. Morality can only be based on consciousness, since there can't be any other source of it. It has to be a psychological process, like perception and intellect, but, unlike perception or intellect, a mental process which introduces strong imperatives, compelling us to demand what we feel is good and to condemn what we feel is evil.

Posted: 24 Jan 2006 12:52 pm Post subject:

When I said morality is a psychological process, this shouldn't be confused with what is often called relative ethics.

The term "relative ethics" usual refers to the belief that moral judgments from one culture shouldn't be applied to another culture, e.g., that we shouldn't consider it morally wrong for the ancient Aztecs to have practiced human sacrifice.

That's not what I'm saying. My view is that the statement "this is right" and "that is wrong" are descriptions of the speaker's state of mind. It could that the speaker considers the act to be right or wrong in any historical period, in any place, and in any culture.

Posted: 25 Jan 2006 01:01 am Post subject:

When we speak of cultural differences we are also speaking of religious differnces. Is it right to destroy peoples cultures, practices and religions because Marx thought those things were wrong to have in the first place? I think Marx shot himself in the foot being anti-religious. The same way he shot himself in the foot for being the enemy of Anarchy. Here is what a friend wrote to me today:

Posted: 26 Jan 2006 01:52 am Post subject:

I don't know how much that I would say that religious differences equate to cultural differences - perhaps religious practices as opposed to the religion itself.

Funny - you read words sometimes and you have to wake yourself up becuase they seem like they are from another existence - I got that feeling reading about what someone thought about what Karl Marx thought about 150 years ago. Mr. Karl a madman? I think of what Lincoln said when someone complained to him that Grant was a drunkard - find out what he drinks and send each of my generals a case of it.

Posted: 26 Jan 2006 02:37 am Post subject:

>> I think Marx shot himself in the foot being anti-religious.

But what did Marx really do?

(1) While believing that religion is an illusion, he also described it as something which gives people emotional consolation to get through their suffering, which people will tend to turn to and rely on a lot less after the world changes so that there isn't so much suffering that people need to be consoled for.

(2) He described religion as something which will eventually disappear by itself after a long time of scientific education.

Whether he was right or wrong, those viewpoints aren't that unusual by today's standards. Scientists like Richard Dawkins, and paranormal skeptics like James Randi, talk that way all the time. Those are the things Marx actually said.

Marx didn't try to force this on anyone, but, as a man with a doctorate in philosophy, it was inevitable that he would write whatever he thought about the subject.

Posted: 28 Jan 2006 02:05 am Post subject:

Mike Wrote:

Posted: 30 Jan 2006 07:31 pm Post subject:

Posted: 31 Jan 2006 04:04 pm Post subject:

Mike wrote:

Posted: 01 Feb 2006 12:53 am Post subject:

John - Marx disdained religion? Anymore than he thought that it was a waste of time as he probably though a million things were?

It seems like people are mindless bigots against religion and put the blame on Marx when it is their own bigotry not Marx's.

I was reading an interesting book that talked about Christianity starting off as a subset of the jewish religion - but then as a sizable portion of the Jewish population just would not buy the theory that Jesus was messiah that the message was then taken outside to non-Jews - that the message now became - become a Christian but not a Jewish Christian and eventually an anti-Jewish Christian. "Misquoting Jesus" by Bart Ehrman

dave

Posted: 01 Feb 2006 06:27 am Post subject:

Just about everything bad has been done, at one time or another, in the name of "Marx" or "socialism", including imperialism, terrorism, slavery, and genocide. These things have also been done, at one time or another, in the name of freedom, democracy and justice. We need to educate more people to understand that these evils don't reflect on socialism, just as they don't reflect on freedom, democracy and justice. Anyone can adopt any name for anything that they do, and there's nothing that others can do about it, except use educational methods to defend the good name.

Posted: 29 Sep 2006 12:20 am Post subject:

A post that I had on the wsm list today

Re: Trying to trace a Socialist Standard issue

Dave T. (apprently) quoted from the Socialist Standard article:

> "The Socialist Party has reiterated its ban on people with
> religious beliefs; it says they cannot share the materialist
> philosophy of true socialists. The latest edition of the
> party's journal, The Socialist Standard, concludes a twopage
> debate on the ban by saying that not even Jesus
> could have joined. `We can't think of a single thing
> [Christianity's] mythological founder is supposed to have
> taught and done that would qualify him as a socialist.'
> Labour supporters are also refused."
> Church Times, 12 April 1996.
>

dave searles responds:

I am not a spgb member or member of any of the affiliate parties. I
am just a guest. But they let me speak out here, so I shall.

In my humble opinion, and this is only my humble opinion, I think
that this stand on religion by SPGB is about the equivalent as
teenagers dying their hair pink on one side and blue on the other
and piercing a safety pin through their nostrils. To me
SPGB has adopted this position just to be able to stand out in a
crowd.

Nowhere whatsoever has anyone shown, other than merely asserting
that overall religious beliefs (mythology if you will) are anyway at
all incompatible with being able to understand the materialist
conception of history or being able to comprehend anything of the
material world at all. SPGB leadership cannot actually be so stupid
as to believe that any significant portion of religious people
believe that they don't need to eat in order to live, or that some
guy in a pair of sandals is going to turn a couple of fish and a
slice of bread into a mass feast.

An observation that would apply to any of the so called sacred texts
is that that they contain many truths and some facts.

A person in pain, whatever kind of pain, calls out to god and the
SPGB is going to say that he or she cannot be a Socialist? Such
stupidity could only be born of the same lack of knowledge of the
real world the spgb ascribes to the religious. What do they call
that? Transference?

But like I say, I don't think that it is a real position, just
something to say when things get boring, that's all.

imho
dave searles

Posted: 04 Oct 2006 06:03 am Post subject:

I'll go still further. IMO, belief in the materialist conception of history, Marx's economic model, etc. should not be required of an applicant to join a socialist party. The only requirements should be acceptance of the party's goal and program. Why require anything else? I believe that the MCH and Marxian economics are the most accurate explanation of how social processes operate, but that doesn't mean that I'd rather have the socialist reconstruction delayed for several centuries until other people will hopefully begin to feel the same way about it, with the threat of nuclear or ecological disaster lurking. What's the point in that?

So not only do I believe that religion is acceptable; I believe that numerous other ideological departures should be acceptable also. Besides, we might be _wrong_ in our theories. If Einstein could prove Newton wrong, isn't there just a little bit of a chance that Marxism might need a few updates?

But that claim that someone can't possibly understand the MCH if they believe in the soul or afterlife, the SPGB just made that up out of thin air. There's little or no connection. Sure, if the applicant believes that the way to achieve social change is though prayer-petitioned miracles, rather than workers' organization, then the applicant should be rejected. But there's no inconsistency in a socialist believing in a soul and a heaven. I don't believe in those concepts, but I don't insist that others be very similar to myself.

Posted: 05 Oct 2006 02:36 am Post subject:

Of course you believe in heaven, that's why you live in Stanfordville where you do.

Not be required to believe in the MCOH?? Oh my!!

A little later in the discussion one of the members was talking about how if a person believed in god that they couldn't be a member of the party and then he gave as his proff the state ment that oil and vinegar do not mix. Mt pithy reply was that I would rather someone be in the party who believed in god rather than someone who beleived that somehting could be proven by backing their argument with an analogy.

Posted: 07 Oct 2006 08:58 am Post subject:

You're right that such an analogy is useless. When in the past I defended the use of analogies I was refering only to cases where a consideration was being reduced to one variable, and being compared to another sinlgle problem, like electrons filling orbitals is similar to cars filling a multi-story parking garage, where the single variable in both cases is the filling of the lower available levels before beginning to fill the higher levels. The oil and vinegar analogy isn't of that type.

Posted: 07 Oct 2006 09:13 am Post subject:

Did I explain my hypothesis about how religion was first invented? I think it came about because story-telling will include a large number of combinations, such as heroes, monsters, imaginary places. As soon as someone tells stories that provide comfort, there is selective pressure to remember these, repeat them all over the community, and teach them to children. When someone told the story that, for example, death is not an individual's ending but a doorway to another life, where we will be happy, reunited with loved ones, and see our enemies punished, this story provided so many psychological payoffs that the story got repeated all over the place. All the rest of religion is just filling in the details around this first assumption that a person is a spirit essence inside the physical body. Lepore's theory of the origin of religion. I'm skeptical of the more comon explanation that ancient people invented religion to explain the thunder and other environmental observations.

Posted: 07 Oct 2006 10:03 pm Post subject:

Yes, analogy as a tool to allow or force a different perspective to generate a hypothesis to be tested, muy bien.

I like the religion idea. Each TV network is a denomination?

Posted: 04 Jan 2007 04:17 pm Post subject:

Mike wrote:

Posted: 05 Jan 2007 01:06 am Post subject:

Maybe the social system isn't what makes religion go through phases. Maybe it's the more general type of intellectual development. Before the age of science, God was believed to be involved in every little decision, consciously making this particular thundercloud form. But people like Newton and Kepler offered a different view, that God is present in the order of the universe. They revived the old Greek idea of "cosmos", which implies order and logic in the universe. Okay, so that thundercloud has been formed by means of temperature and pressure and humidity, not by means of a particular miracle, but God's work is seen in the whole structure of the galaxies adn the subatomic particles. I think this is the phase that religion is going through in the age of science. I don't expect religion (in the widest sense of the word) to disappear.

Posted: 05 Jan 2007 04:55 pm Post subject:

Mike wrote:

Posted: 05 Jan 2007 06:44 pm Post subject:

Posted: 05 Jan 2007 07:23 pm Post subject:

I agree with what you wrote Mike. I don't understand where they get the idea that, somehow, people with religious views lack knowledge and or all socialist concepts. Socialism is earth based cooperation that people may one day have. As I recall, the Jewish faith is an earth based religion as oppose to Christianity which is more concerned with heaven. It more like observing behavior to get in. All pagan groups are earth based religions as well.

As Dave wrote..."It seems like people are mindless bigots against religion and put the blame on Marx when it is their own bigotry not Marx's."

Posted: 06 Jan 2007 12:33 am Post subject:

No I don't see xianity as heaven based.

It was an earthly man who laid down that rift, and earthly folk who carried it on.

Some believe in a heaven; but what is that but an attic where fools belive that god will be revealed more than god is revealed here.

IMHO
dave

Posted: 06 Jan 2007 05:04 pm Post subject:

Dave wrote:

Posted: 09 Jan 2007 09:43 pm Post subject:

Here is what I mean't by adaptaton...Biblically, Paul never attacked the idea of slavery but instead told the slave masters that they were no better than the slave they owned. But Paul did tell the slaves to work for their master as they would for their heavenly master and to pray for the emperor and those with political authority. In the present that quote would be implied that Christian workers would work for their employer as they would for Christ. They are also to pray for those in authority, i.e., the president and those who hold political office.

Under SIU, Christian workers would obey those, that they themselves elected along side their fellow workers, administrators and foremen. They would also pray for those who were elected politically in the socialist government. Other religions would also adapt. More later...

Posted: 28 Jan 2007 06:10 pm Post subject:

"Worshippers who believe in the 12 gods of ancient Greece have held a ceremony at the Temple of Zeus in Athens. This is a landmark event to celebrate official recognition of their religion by a court last year."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6283907.stm

___________________________

At the risk of giving someone a coronary by violating the First Commandment, I must say -- I feel that the development reported there is very good. Contemporary organized religions need to be told and retold that their positions are just some individuals' opinions, in no way superior to any other opinions.

The days of Bruno and Galileo being tried for blasphemy are gone. Now blasphemy can be a parlor game.

I don't really think that those worshippers of the Olympian pantheon are serious. I suspect they're using the courts to make a point. The point that modern religion is merely some people's opinion, which in no way deserves a privileged position.

Timothy Leary was probably playing the same game when he argued with apparent seriousness that tripping on LSD is a religious sacrament. I don't think he really believed it, but it was productive that he said it.

Posted: 29 Jan 2007 12:28 am Post subject:

Works of Karl Marx 1843

Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right
by Karl Marx
Deutsch-Französische Jahrbucher, February, 1844
For Germany, the criticism of religion has been essentially completed, and the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism.

The profane existence of error is compromised as soon as its heavenly oratio pro aris et focis [“speech for the altars and hearths”] has been refuted. Man, who has found only the reflection of himself in the fantastic reality of heaven, where he sought a superman, will no longer feel disposed to find the mere appearance of himself, the non-man [“Unmensch”], where he seeks and must seek his true reality.

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man.

Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But, man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man — state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, it enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.

The following exposition [a full-scale critical study of Hegel's Philosophy of Right was supposed to follow this introduction] — a contribution to this undertaking — concerns itself not directly with the original but with a copy, with the German philosophy of the state and of law. The only reason for this is that it is concerned with Germany.

If we were to begin with the German status quo itself, the result — even if we were to do it in the only appropriate way, i.e., negatively — would still be an anachronism. Even the negation of our present political situation is a dusty fact in the historical junk room of modern nations. If I negate the situation in Germany in 1843, then according to the French calendar I have barely reached 1789, much less the vital centre of our present age.

Indeed, German history prides itself on having travelled a road which no other nation in the whole of history has ever travelled before, or ever will again. We have shared the restorations of modern nations without ever having shared their revolutions. We have been restored, firstly, because other nations dared to make revolutions, and, secondly, because other nations suffered counter-revolutions; open the one hand, because our masters were afraid, and, on the other, because they were not afraid. With our shepherds to the fore, we only once kept company with freedom, on the day of its internment.

One school of thought that legitimizes the infamy of today with the infamy of yesterday, a school that stigmatizes every cry of the serf against the knout as mere rebelliousness once the knout has aged a little and acquired a hereditary significance and a history, a school to which history shows nothing but its a posteriori, as did the God of Israel to his servant Moses, the historical school of law — this school would have invented German history were it not itself an invention of that history. A Shylock, but a cringing Shylock, that swears by its bond, its historical bond, its Christian-Germanic bond, for every pound of flesh cut from the heart of the people.

Good-natured enthusiasts, Germanomaniacs by extraction and free-thinkers by reflexion, on the contrary, seek our history of freedom beyond our history in the ancient Teutonic forests. But, what difference is there between the history of our freedom and the history of the boar's freedom if it can be found only in the forests? Besides, it is common knowledge that the forest echoes back what you shout into it. So peace to the ancient Teutonic forests!

War on the German state of affairs! By all means! They are below the level of history, they are beneath any criticism, but they are still an object of criticism like the criminal who is below the level of humanity but still an object for the executioner. In the struggle against that state of affairs, criticism is no passion of the head, it is the head of passion. It is not a lancet, it is a weapon. Its object is its enemy, which it wants not to refute but to exterminate. For the spirit of that state of affairs is refuted. In itself, it is no object worthy of thought, it is an existence which is as despicable as it is despised. Criticism does not need to make things clear to itself as regards this object, for it has already settled accounts with it. It no longer assumes the quality of an end-in-itself, but only of a means. Its essential pathos is indignation, its essential work is denunciation.

It is a case of describing the dull reciprocal pressure of all social spheres one on another, a general inactive ill-humor, a limitedness which recognizes itself as much as it mistakes itself, within the frame of government system which, living on the preservation of all wretchedness, is itself nothing but wretchedness in office.

What a sight! This infinitely proceeding division of society into the most manifold races opposed to one another by petty antipathies, uneasy consciences, and brutal mediocrity, and which, precisely because of their reciprocal ambiguous and distrustful attitude, are all, without exception although with various formalities, treated by their rulers as conceded existences. And they must recognize and acknowledge as a concession of heaven the very fact that they are mastered, ruled, possessed! And, on the other side, are the rulers themselves, whose greatness is in inverse proportion to their number!

Criticism dealing with this content is criticism in a hand-to-hand fight, and in such a fight the point is not whether the opponent is a noble, equal, interesting opponent, the point is to strike him. The point is not to let the Germans have a minute for self-deception and resignation. The actual pressure must be made more pressing by adding to it consciousness of pressure, the shame must be made more shameful by publicizing it. Every sphere of German society must be shown as the partie honteuse of German society: these petrified relations must be forced to dance by singing their own tune to them! The people must be taught to be terrified at itself in order to give it courage. This will be fulfilling an imperative need of the German nation, and the needs of the nations are in themselves the ultimate reason for their satisfaction.

This struggle against the limited content of the German status quo cannot be without interest even for the modern nations, for the German status quo is the open completion of the ancien regime and the ancien regime is the concealed deficiency of the modern state. The struggle against the German political present is the struggle against the past of the modern nations, and they are still burdened with reminders of that past. It is instructive for them to see the ancien regime, which has been through its tragedy with them, playing its comedy as a German revenant. Tragic indeed was the pre-existing power of the world, and freedom, on the other hand, was a personal notion; in short, as long as it believed and had to believe in its own justification. As long as the ancien regime, as an existing world order, struggled against a world that was only coming into being, there was on its side a historical error, not a personal one. That is why its downfall was tragic.

On the other hand, the present German regime, an anachronism, a flagrant contradiction of generally recognized axioms, the nothingness of the ancien regime exhibited to the world, only imagines that it believes in itself and demands that the world should imagine the same thing. If it believed in its own essence, would it try to hide that essence under the semblance of an alien essence and seek refuge in hypocrisy and sophism? The modern ancien regime is rather only the comedian of a world order whose true heroes are dead. History is thorough and goes through many phases when carrying an old form to the grave. The last phases of a world-historical form is its comedy. The gods of Greece, already tragically wounded to death in Aeschylus's tragedy Prometheus Bound, had to re-die a comic death in Lucian's Dialogues. Why this course of history? So that humanity should part with its past cheerfully. This cheerful historical destiny is what we vindicate for the political authorities of Germany.

Meanwhile, once modern politico-social reality itself is subjected to criticism, once criticism rises to truly human problems, it finds itself outside the German status quo, or else it would reach out for its object below its object. An example. The relation of industry, of the world of wealth generally, to the political world is one of the major problems of modern times. In what form is this problem beginning to engage the attention of the Germans? In the form of protective duties, of the prohibitive system, or national economy. Germanomania has passed out of man into matter,, and thus one morning our cotton barons and iron heroes saw themselves turned into patriots. People are, therefore, beginning in Germany to acknowledge the sovereignty of monopoly on the inside through lending it sovereignty on the outside. People are, therefore, now about to begin, in Germany, what people in France and England are about to end. The old corrupt condition against which these countries are revolting in theory, and which they only bear as one bears chains, is greeted in Germany as the dawn of a beautiful future which still hardly dares to pass from crafty theory to the most ruthless practice. Whereas the problem in France and England is: Political economy, or the rule of society over wealth; in Germany, it is: National economy, or the mastery of private property over nationality. In France and England, then, it is a case of abolishing monopoly that has proceeded to its last consequences; in Germany, it is a case of proceeding to the last consequences of monopoly. There is an adequate example of the German form of modern problems, an example of how our history, like a clumsy recruit, still has to do extra drill on things that are old and hackneyed in history.

If, therefore, the whole German development did not exceed the German political development, a German could at the most have the share in the problems-of-the-present that a Russian has. But, when the separate individual is not bound by the limitations of the nation, the nation as a whole is still less liberated by the liberation of one individual. The fact that Greece had a Scythian among its philosophers did not help the Scythians to make a single step towards Greek culture. [An allusion to Anacharsis.]

Luckily, we Germans are not Scythians.

As the ancient peoples went through their pre-history in imagination, in mythology, so we Germans have gone through our post-history in thought, in philosophy. We are philosophical contemporaries of the present without being its historical contemporaries. German philosophy is the ideal prolongation of German history. If therefore, instead of of the oeuvres incompletes of our real history, we criticize the oeuvres posthumes of our ideal history, philosophy, our criticism is in the midst of the questions of which the present says: that is the question. What, in progressive nations, is a practical break with modern state conditions, is, in Germany, where even those conditions do not yet exist, at first a critical break with the philosophical reflexion of those conditions.

German philosophy of right and state is the only German history which is al pari ["on a level"] with the official modern present. The German nation must therefore join this, its dream-history, to its present conditions and subject to criticism not only these existing conditions, but at the same time their abstract continuation. Its future cannot be limited either to the immediate negation of its real conditions of state and right, or to the immediate implementation of its ideal state and right conditions, for it has the immediate negation of its real conditions in its ideal conditions, and it has almost outlived the immediate implementation of its ideal conditions in the contemplation of neighboring nations.

Hence, it is with good reason that the practical political part in Germany demands the negation of philosophy.

It is wrong, not in its demand but in stopping at the demand, which it neither seriously implements nor can implement. It believes that it implements that negation by turning its back to philosophy and its head away from it and muttering a few trite and angry phrases about it. Owing to the limitation of its outlook, it does not include philosophy in the circle of German reality or it even fancies it is beneath German practice and the theories that serve it. You demand that real life embryos be made the starting-point, but you forget that the real life embryo of the German nation has grown so far only inside its cranium. In a word — You cannot abolish philosophy without making it a reality.

The same mistake, but with the factors reversed, was made by the theoretical party originating from philosophy.

In the present struggle it saw only the critical struggle of philosophy against the German world; it did not give a thought to the fact that philosophy up to the present itself belongs to this world and is its completion, although an ideal one. Critical towards its counterpart, it was uncritical towards itself when, proceeding from the premises of philosophy, it either stopped at the results given by philosophy or passed off demands and results from somewhere else as immediate demands and results of philosophy — although these, provided they are justified, can be obtained only by the negation of philosophy up to the present, of philosophy as such. We reserve ourselves the right to a more detailed description of this section: It thought it could make philosophy a reality without abolishing it.

The criticism of the German philosophy of state and right, which attained its most consistent, richest, and last formulation through Hegel, is both a critical analysis of the modern state and of the reality connected with it, and the resolute negation of the whole manner of the German consciousness in politics and right as practiced hereto, the most distinguished, most universal expression of which, raised to the level of science, is the speculative philosophy of right itself. If the speculative philosophy of right, that abstract extravagant thinking on the modern state, the reality of which remains a thing of the beyond, if only beyond the Rhine, was possible only in Germany, inversely the German thought-image of the modern state which makes abstraction of real man was possible only because and insofar as the modern state itself makes abstraction of real man, or satisfies the whole of man only in imagination. In politics, the Germans thought what other nations did. Germany was their theoretical conscience. The abstraction and presumption of its thought was always in step with the one-sidedness and lowliness of its reality. If, therefore, the status quo of German statehood expresses the completion of the ancien regime, the completion of the thorn in the flesh of the modern state, the status quo of German state science expresses the incompletion of the modern state, the defectiveness of its flesh itself.

Already as the resolute opponent of the previous form of German political consciousness the criticism of speculative philosophy of right strays, not into itself, but into problems which there is only one means of solving — practice.

It is asked: can Germany attain a practice a la hauteur des principles — i.e., a revolution which will raises it not only to the official level of modern nations, but to the height of humanity which will be the near future of those nations?

The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the weapon, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter. But, for man, the root is man himself. The evident proof of the radicalism of German theory, and hence of its practical energy, is that is proceeds from a resolute positive abolition of religion. The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest essence for man — hence, with the categoric imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence, relations which cannot be better described than by the cry of a Frenchman when it was planned to introduce a tax on dogs: Poor dogs! They want to treat you as human beings!

Even historically, theoretical emancipation has specific practical significance for Germany. For Germany's revolutionary past is theoretical, it is the Reformation. As the revolution then began in the brain of the monk, so now it begins in the brain of the philosopher.

Luther, we grant, overcame bondage out of devotion by replacing it by bondage out of conviction. He shattered faith in authority because he restored the authority of faith. He turned priests into laymen because he turned laymen into priests. He freed man from outer religiosity because he made religiosity the inner man. He freed the body from chains because he enchained the heart.

But, if Protestantism was not the true solution of the problem, it was at least the true setting of it. It was no longer a case of the layman's struggle against the priest outside himself but of his struggle against his own priest inside himself, his priestly nature. And if the Protestant transformation of the German layman into priests emancipated the lay popes, the princes, with the whole of their priestly clique, the privileged and philistines, the philosophical transformation of priestly Germans into men will emancipate the people. But, secularization will not stop at the confiscation of church estates set in motion mainly by hypocritical Prussia any more than emancipation stops at princes. The Peasant War, the most radical fact of German history, came to grief because of theology. Today, when theology itself has come to grief, the most unfree fact of German history, our status quo, will be shattered against philosophy. On the eve of the Reformation, official Germany was the most unconditional slave of Rome. On the eve of its revolution, it is the unconditional slave of less than Rome, of Prussia and Austria, of country junkers and philistines.

Meanwhile, a major difficult seems to stand in the way of a radical German revolution.

For revolutions require a passive element, a material basis. Theory is fulfilled in a people only insofar as it is the fulfilment of the needs of that people. But will the monstrous discrepancy between the demands of German thought and the answers of German reality find a corresponding discrepancy between civil society and the state, and between civil society and itself? Will the theoretical needs be immediate practical needs? It is not enough for thought to strive for realization, reality must itself strive towards thought.

But Germany did not rise to the intermediary stage of political emancipation at the same time as the modern nations. It has not yet reached in practice the stages which it has surpassed in theory. How can it do a somersault, not only over its own limitations, but at the same time over the limitations of the modern nations, over limitations which it must in reality feel and strive for as for emancipation from its real limitations? Only a revolution of radical needs can be a radical revolution and it seems that precisely the preconditions and ground for such needs are lacking.

If Germany has accompanied the development of the modern nations only with the abstract activity of thought without taking an effective share in the real struggle of that development, it has, on the other hand, shared the sufferings of that development, without sharing in its enjoyment, or its partial satisfaction. To the abstract activity on the one hand corresponds the abstract suffering on the other. That is why Germany will one day find itself on the level of European decadence before ever having been on the level of European emancipation. It will be comparable to a fetish worshipper pining away with the diseases of Christianity.

If we now consider the German governments, we find that because of the circumstances of the time, because of Germany's condition, because of the standpoint of German education, and, finally, under the impulse of its own fortunate instinct, they are driven to combine the civilized shortcomings of the modern state world, the advantages of which we do not enjoy, with the barbaric deficiencies of the ancien regime, which we enjoy in full; hence, Germany must share more and more, if not in the reasonableness, at least in the unreasonableness of those state formations which are beyond the bounds of its status quo. Is there in the world, for example, a country which shares so naively in all the illusions of constitutional statehood without sharing in its realities as so-called constitutional Germany? And was it not perforce the notion of a German government to combine the tortures of censorship with the tortures of the French September laws [1835 anti-press laws] which provide for freedom of the press? As you could find the gods of all nations in the Roman Pantheon, so you will find in the Germans' Holy Roman Empire all the sins of all state forms. That this eclecticism will reach a so far unprecedented height is guaranteed in particular by the political-aesthetic gourmanderie of a German king [Frederick William IV] who intended to play all the roles of monarchy, whether feudal or democratic, if not in the person of the people, at least in his own person, and if not for the people, at least for himself. Germany, as the deficiency of the political present constituted a world of its own, will not be able to throw down the specific German limitations without throwing down the general limitation of the political present.

It is not the radical revolution, not the general human emancipation which is a utopian dream for Germany, but rather the partial, the merely political revolution, the revolution which leaves the pillars of the house standing. On what is a partial, a merely political revolution based? On part of civil society emancipating itself and attaining general domination; on a definite class, proceeding from its particular situation; undertaking the general emancipation of society. This class emancipates the whole of society, but only provided the whole of society is in the same situation as this class — e.g., possesses money and education or can acquire them at will.

No class of civil society can play this role without arousing a moment of enthusiasm in itself and in the masses, a moment in which it fraternizes and merges with society in general, becomes confused with it and is perceived and acknowledged as its general representative, a moment in which its claims and rights are truly the claims and rights of society itself, a moment in which it is truly the social head and the social heart. Only in the name of the general rights of society can a particular class vindicate for itself general domination. For the storming of this emancipatory position, and hence for the political exploitation of all sections of society in the interests of its own section, revolutionary energy and spiritual self-feeling alone are not sufficient. For the revolution of a nation, and the emancipation of a particular class of civil society to coincide, for one estate to be acknowledged as the estate of the whole society, all the defects of society must conversely be concentrated in another class, a particular estate must be the estate of the general stumbling-block, the incorporation of the general limitation, a particular social sphere must be recognized as the notorious crime of the whole of society, so that liberation from that sphere appears as general self-liberation. For one estate to be par excellence the estate of liberation, another estate must conversely be the obvious estate of oppression. The negative general significance of the French nobility and the French clergy determined the positive general significance of the nearest neighboring and opposed class of the bourgeoisie.

But no particular class in Germany has the constituency, the penetration, the courage, or the ruthlessness that could mark it out as the negative representative of society. No more has any estate the breadth of soul that identifies itself, even for a moment, with the soul of the nation, the geniality that inspires material might to political violence, or that revolutionary daring which flings at the adversary the defiant words: I am nothing but I must be everything. The main stem of German morals and honesty, of the classes as well as of individuals, is rather that modest egoism which asserts it limitedness and allows it to be asserted against itself. The relation of the various sections of German society is therefore not dramatic but epic. Each of them begins to be aware of itself and begins to camp beside the others with all its particular claims not as soon as it is oppressed, but as soon as the circumstances of the time relations, without the section's own participation, creates a social substratum on which it can in turn exert pressure. Even the moral self-feeling of the German middle class rests only on the consciousness that it is the common representative of the philistine mediocrity of all the other classes. It is therefore not only the German kinds who accede to the throne mal a propos, it is every section of civil society which goes through a defeat before it celebrates victory and develops its own limitations before it overcomes the limitations facing it, asserts its narrow-hearted essence before it has been able to assert its magnanimous essence; thus the very opportunity of a great role has passed away before it is to hand, and every class, once it begins the struggle against the class opposed to it, is involved in the struggle against the class below it. Hence, the higher nobility is struggling against the monarchy, the bureaucrat against the nobility, and the bourgeois against them all, while the proletariat is already beginning to find itself struggling against the bourgeoisie. The middle class hardly dares to grasp the thought of emancipation from its own standpoint when the development of the social conditions and the progress of political theory already declare that standpoint antiquated or at least problematic.

In France, it is enough for somebody to be something for him to want to be everything; in Germany, nobody can be anything if he is not prepared to renounce everything. In France, partial emancipation is the basis of universal emancipation; in Germany, universal emancipation is the conditio sine qua non of any partial emancipation. In France, it is the reality of gradual liberation that must give birth to complete freedom, in Germany, the impossibility of gradual liberation. In France, every class of the nation is a political idealist and becomes aware of itself at first not as a particular class but as a representative of social requirements generally. The role of emancipator therefore passes in dramatic motion to the various classes of the French nation one after the other until it finally comes to the class which implements social freedom no longer with the provision of certain conditions lying outside man and yet created by human society, but rather organizes all conditions of human existence on the premises of social freedom. On the contrary, in Germany, where practical life is as spiritless as spiritual life is unpractical, no class in civil society has any need or capacity for general emancipation until it is forced by its immediate condition, by material necessity, by its very chains.

Where, then, is the positive possibility of a German emancipation?

Answer: In the formulation of a class with radical chains, a class of civil society which is not a class of civil society, an estate which is the dissolution of all estates, a sphere which has a universal character by its universal suffering and claims no particular right because no particular wrong, but wrong generally, is perpetuated against it; which can invoke no historical, but only human, title; which does not stand in any one-sided antithesis to the consequences but in all-round antithesis to the premises of German statehood; a sphere, finally, which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating itself from all other spheres of society and thereby emancipating all other spheres of society, which, in a word, is the complete loss of man and hence can win itself only through the complete re-winning of man. This dissolution of society as a particular estate is the proletariat.

The proletariat is beginning to appear in Germany as a result of the rising industrial movement. For, it is not the naturally arising poor but the artificially impoverished, not the human masses mechanically oppressed by the gravity of society, but the masses resulting from the drastic dissolution of society, mainly of the middle estate, that form the proletariat, although, as is easily understood, the naturally arising poor and the Christian-Germanic serfs gradually join its ranks.

By heralding the dissolution of the hereto existing world order, the proletariat merely proclaims the secret of its own existence, for it is the factual dissolution of that world order. By demanding the negation of private property, the proletariat merely raises to the rank of a principle of society what society has raised to the rank of its principle, what is already incorporated in it as the negative result of society without its own participation. The proletarian then finds himself possessing the same right in regard to the world which is coming into being as the German king in regard to the world which has come into being when he calls the people hispeople, as he calls the horse his horse. By declaring the people his private property, the king merely proclaims that the private owner is king.

As philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapon in philosophy. And once the lightning of thought has squarely struck this ingenuous soil of the people, the emancipation of the Germans into men will be accomplished.

Let us sum up the result:

The only liberation of Germany which is practically possible is liberation from the point of view of that theory which declares man to be the supreme being for man. German can emancipate itself from the Middle Ages only if it emancipates itself at the same time from the partial victories over the Middle Ages. In Germany, no form of bondage can be broken without breaking all forms of bondage. Germany, which is renowned for its thoroughness, cannot make a revolution unless it is a thorough one. The emancipation of the German is the emancipation of man. The head of this emancipation is philosophy, its heart the proletariat. Philosophy cannot realize itself without the transcendence [Aufhebung] of the proletariat, and the proletariat cannot transcend itself without the realization [Verwirklichung] of philosophy.

When all the inner conditions are met, the day of the German resurrection will be heralded by the crowing of the cock of Gaul.

Abstract | Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right

http://gfdl.marxists.org.uk/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm

-------------------------

I believe Marx was saying that religion was/is a way of projecting into the\sky rather than worrying \about what is actually going on. I'm sure you know that Dickens was Marx' fave writer. In the Xmas Carol, there is the paasage where Marley's Ghost threw open the window and Scrooge saw the ghosts hoving over a homeless woman with a baby huddled in a doorway. The ghosts kept pointing to the woman, the REAL "Madonna" in my NSHO, as if to tell Scrooge to look instead of denying reality. Late3r on, the Ghost of Xmas Present showed him two starving children and threw Scrooge's words about prisons and workhouses right back in his face. People do use religion to justify inequities in this world, but it is also a protest against this world. DeLeon wrote that giving people Xmas dinner as a charity was a sin, and an illustration of the bancruptcy of capitalism. In a decent society, people would be contributors to society insteaqd of a part of an industrial reserve army that suppresses wages. They would not need charity.

Marx said that his purpose was not to disillusion people about religion without consolation, but to make them involve themselves in this world, to make it completely better.

I tell you, with the world the way it is today, the tribalism growing as a cancer that it truly is, I feel like a combination of Heraclitus and the character of MSG's "Cry for The Nations," a prophet/seer named "Salon."
All the talk about SIUs, which I tend to agree with, but leaving the real world to the Bolshevists/Fabians and their identity politics allies, that makes me worry. I feel like I'm some sort of Amos/Ezekiel/Jeremiah, worrying about people who don't care, and knowing what will happen.

Marx himself had influence from his rebbe ancestors, and Engels revered the likes of Thomas Muenzer.

Posted: 29 Jan 2007 10:01 am Post subject:

Posted: 29 Jan 2007 06:39 pm Post subject:

questing wrote:

Posted: 29 Jan 2007 09:16 pm Post subject:

questing wrote:

Marx said that his purpose was not to disillusion people about religion without consolation, but to make them involve themselves in this world, to make it completely better.

I tell you, with the world the way it is today, the tribalism growing as a cancer that it truly is, I feel like a combination of Heraclitus and the character of MSG's "Cry for The Nations," a prophet/seer named "Salon."
All the talk about SIUs, which I tend to agree with, but leaving the real world to the Bolshevists/Fabians and their identity politics allies, that makes me worry. I feel like I'm some sort of Amos/Ezekiel/Jeremiah, worrying about people who don't care, and knowing what will happen.

dave writes:

Is that what he said? Can you be specific as to the actual words?

Also - I look at the comment about SIU, that this proposal is not about the "real" world, and then that this somehow leaves the world to those who practice "identity politics". From what you have previously written on that theme it seems that you oppose or would have been opposed to say the black civil rights struggle, the struggle by women, the struggle over sexual identity issues as identity politics. Deleonists had their problems with these issues as well until we pretty much concluded that we were a bunch of damned assholes for sitting these struggles out.

I do work on these issues but more in a doing mode. Organizing the SIU, unfortunately that doesn't seem that we can do just now, however I'd love to start.

dave

Posted: 30 Jan 2007 10:31 am Post subject:

John wrote:

Remember that laws and ethics had their beginnings with religion. Despite the fallacies we did learn right from wrong over thousands of years.

dave writes:

I think that may be an illusion.

Posted: 30 Jan 2007 06:20 pm Post subject:

dave writes:

I think that may be an illusion.

I must retract some of what I wrote, however, the idea that something was learned over thousands of years in which ethics and philosophy came about but religion came first. For over two thousand years the concept of treating others as you would like them to treat you still has not sunk in with most people. On the other hand, we could call this a religious socialist concept or a secular one or could we also say socialism is just as much as an illusion?

Posted: 30 Jan 2007 10:13 pm Post subject:

Alright, put it on the calander, I AM GOING TO USE AN ANALOGY.

Religious knowledge of right and wrong is something like my knowledge that if I continue to consume more calories than I burn I will cut about 25 years off of my life. Yet I still beat a path to the refrigerator at every conceivable internal and external prompt.

Amen. Please pass me a sandwich.

dave

Posted: 01 Feb 2007 09:28 pm Post subject:

I'd pass a sandwich to you if I could along with cheese cake and hot coffee. I understand what you mean Dave but religious concepts of right and wrong, depending on the culture, did have its beginning in ancient times with taboos and blessings. Taboos as in a demand of not killing another person--I know I know it is justified in warfare--without running the risk of being tried and stoned to death. Other demands as an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth is repayment of wrong done to another in whatever degree it was commited. This was even applied to livestock if they got out of hand, i.e. killing a human or someone elses livestock. Of course the idea of blessing is the reward of appeasing diety in ritual and in how one treated their neighbor on a daily basis.

In essence, U.S. law came from the Torah. Despite the undesirable aspects, which the capitalist class uses for their advantage, there are laws which can be used to change the government into a socialist government which in turn could be used to transform society as a whole. Is this not what DeLeon had in mind all along? SIU being the industrial government along side civil government?

I have no doubt that philosophy grew out of religion. I have no problem with philosophy because it asks questions and tries to promote answers facing the world today. But to ban religion because Marx had no theorectical use for it (in his introduction) is a violation of democracy and individual freedoms and I know we are better than that.

John T.

Posted: 02 Feb 2007 07:02 am Post subject:

John, why do you write "to ban religion", as though there were people you need to convince? Looking at modern writers who discuss variations on the idea of socialism, I don't see anyone calling for religious persecution. There isn't any contingent of Stalinists who write messages here. Why do you expend effort on this?

Posted: 02 Feb 2007 12:00 pm Post subject:

john:

religious concepts of right and wrong, depending on the culture, did have its beginning in ancient times with taboos and blessings.

dave:

concepts growing out of the material world

john:

U.S. law came from the Torah.

dave:

some ideas transported in through English law and Roman law before that.

john:

Despite the undesirable aspects, which the capitalist class uses for their advantage, there are laws which can be used to change the government into a socialist government

dave

could be used, but no "law' is self-enforcing.

john

Is this not what DeLeon had in mind all along? SIU being the industrial government along side civil government?

dave

that it makes sense to use the political forum if it is there

john

I have no doubt that philosophy grew out of religion. I have no problem with philosophy because it asks questions and tries to promote answers facing the world today.

dave

philosophy asks no questions. We ask them.

john

But to ban religion because Marx had no theoretical use for it (in his introduction) is a violation of democracy and individual freedoms and I know we are better than that.

dave

who said ban religion? did I miss something?

Marx had no theoretical use for it?

Marx had a theoretical use for everything it seems to me.

john

I know we are better than that.

dave

Good and bad I define these term, quite clear, no doubt, somehow but...

Posted: 02 Feb 2007 11:59 pm Post subject:

Actually, I do see that there are still some people who, in the name of communism, want to ban religion. Poll at revleft.com, "In a 'rational' society should religion be made illegal?" - responses: Yes (20 people), No (77 people). My guess is that many of those who said "yes" are teenagers who carry over their adolescent rebellion against mom and dad into their political slogans.

http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=61061

Posted: 03 Feb 2007 05:20 pm Post subject:

Mike wrote:

Posted: 03 Feb 2007 11:31 pm Post subject:

In addition to discussing religion as it may be related to the socialist goal and movement, we may also discuss our personal feelings if we choose to. As for me, I sometimes have the feeling that I can perceive a presence that's very large, on the scale of the whole universe, and at the same time it's immediate and personal, a kind of warmth in the heart. It feels like the earth where I step is sacred ground. It feels like the stars are trying to speak, and I may pause to listen. I interpret this as a spiritual feeling. Because I sometimes feel this, it makes me more open minded to "some kind of religion", although I don't have much use for specific statements of belief, anything that might be written or taught. I'm more at home with Buddhism than the Western religions. This "thing" isn't external to matter, animating matter like a puppeteer, but inside matter. When we feel the texture of a handled object, we are feeling the universal power, because we can really feel, rather than being dead simulations of something that can feel. I don't talk to it with words, and the last time I said a "prayer" in the usual sense, well, I'm showing my age, but Johnson was president. I don't have anything there to vocalize. The sensations are complete without any words. When performing a simple task, like washing the dishes, I find the "time" to be filled with this invisible presence. Perhaps this is religion.

Posted: 05 Feb 2007 06:10 pm Post subject:

Mike, what is spiritual is internal and personal about the universe and what is invisible. Religion tries to explain what is internally experienced. Sometimes I wonder why the world religions are similar to each other in spite that some countries are isolated. In the West religion goes into interpersonal relationships between God(s) and man and the relationships that man has with each other. Both are rooted in ancient times where custums and language was very different than they are today.

Dave wrote:

Posted: 06 Feb 2007 07:45 pm Post subject:

John wrote:

English laws came from both Old and New Testaments. Roman laws were based on their mythological poetry.

dave writes, actually John I believe that much of English Law is based upon Roman law. But that part that english law being based upon the bible, it's just as accurate to say that it is based upon the dictionary that it took a word here and there. Certain parts having to do with the inate worth of people somehow got left out. Hard to figure isn't it?

Posted: 07 Feb 2007 07:54 pm Post subject:

All I was trying to convey here is that laws had their roots in taboos which were based on whatever material conditions they may have preceived at the time. If I am wrong then I'm wrong.

Posted: 08 Feb 2007 09:22 am Post subject:

Taboo simply a certain kind of law. Not all of the laws were based upon taboos I don't think. But no doubt all did spring from the material conditions.

Posted: 08 Feb 2007 09:23 am Post subject:

If youse guys are interested in where laws originally came from, don't you have to refer to the text of some early sets of laws? Example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammurabi%27s_Code (a bit less than 3000 years ago, already well into the age of chattel slavery).

Posted: 13 Mar 2007 11:26 pm Post subject:

I see Mike has some writings off site: You have been taught that it was Marxist for several countries to
outlaw religion, and persecute people for their religious
practices. The real Marx, however, like the First Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution, insisted only that religion is a private
matter, to be kept separate from government. He wrote: "Man
emancipates himself politically from religion by expelling it from
the sphere of public law to that of private law." [4] Marx, "On the Jewish Question" [1843] (p. 35)

http://www.etext.org/Politics/Organized.Thoughts/the.real.marx

It would seem Marx was a practicle person who was perverted in the authoritarian style of the Bulshitviks. Even Marx asked Bukunin, when Bukunin stated that members of his club had to be atheist, if was through a royal (Tsarist?) decree? Marx Conflict with Bukunin

jt

Posted: 18 Mar 2007 03:02 pm Post subject:

Hmmm...

Marx said, don't have the reference now, that "separation of church and state" is not the way to go. Trying to do that only helps bolster an idealism, separate from objective reality.

What you do is abolish the need/desire for religion and it will disappear. Only socialism can do that.

Anybody here ever read Marx' Intro to his Critique of Hegel's Philo of the Right? When there is socialism, there will be no religion because it will not be necessary.

Posted: 18 Mar 2007 10:47 pm Post subject:

There is a difference in "calling people to give up their religion" in contrast to forcing people to give up their religion(s). Jews who lives as Jews will not heed that call no matter what evidence is presented because they have Torah and other writings which pre-date Christianity. Progromes against Jews existed in Russia prior to the so-called revolution and it continued long afterwards. I guess trying to abolish the desire is not going to work either unless you want another holocaust.

Posted: 19 Mar 2007 02:40 am Post subject:

questing wrote:

Anybody here ever read Marx' Intro to his Critique of Hegel's Philo of the Right? When there is socialism, there will be no religion because it will not be necessary.

Marx wrote in that cited work:

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.

dave writes: "abolition of religion as the illusory happiness" is not saying that when there is socialism there will be no religion. He's saying that when there is socialism there will be no need for religion to have to produce the illussion of happiness for us.

dave

Posted: 19 Mar 2007 05:02 pm Post subject:

I never said nor implied that religion will disappear by legislation. You cannot have religion and socialism because religion takes the focus away from objective reality and puts a veil of mystery in its place. The procession of socialism will supplant the need for religion and it will vanish.

Posted: 19 Mar 2007 05:57 pm Post subject:

no I don't believe that I said that you did. But that is the passage in the cited work that you were referring to, or was it not? One way or the other, it is really not that important.

You think that with socialism that religion will disappear because the need for it will disappear? correct?

I think that it really doesn't matter. Perhaps there will be a profusion of religion.

dave

Posted: 19 Mar 2007 10:29 pm Post subject:

questing wrote:

You cannot have religion and socialism because religion takes the focus away from objective reality and puts a veil of mystery in its place. The procession of socialism will supplant the need for religion and it will vanish.

That is just one big ole guess that socialism or so-called communism would make religion disappear. I know people who are Jew, Christian and Pagan and their religious life is just a part of their life. The only way socialism would supplant religion is by force. If that is done then the distiction between socialism and Nazism is blurred.

Posted: 20 Mar 2007 09:36 am Post subject:

+++++++++
because religion takes the focus away from objective reality
+++++++++

I have been having a similar discussion over at the world socialist movement (WSM) yahoo discussion group.

I have asked several times over there for some concrete demonstration which shows that religious people actually focus on the material world LESS THAN non-religious people.

I have asked this question several different times and no takers.

Since there is no actual demonstration of any difference between religious and non-religious people in general in this regard, then the assertion that there is a difference, in itself would be dogmatic and just as without material focus as any religious assertion could possibly be.

Ironic isn't it?

but then lets assume that in fact you could show that religious people in fact had less of a material focus than non-religious people. So what? Maybe we also found the same to be true for one sex than the other, or for older people v. younger people. So what? Is socialism so fragile that it cannot accommodate differences in focus? If it cannot, then it's not worth fighting for is it?

This is not personal to you questing, but sometimes I think that this kind of dogma is perpetuated by the WSM and others just in order to try to attract some attention to themselves, or that they truly do not believe that workers can join together so they make up an excuse like, "well it's because of that damned religion"

imho
dave

Posted: 23 Mar 2007 06:43 am Post subject:

Posted: 23 Mar 2007 06:58 am Post subject:

I don't agree with Marx's claim that pre-socialist society creates the "conditions" that "require" religion. I think religion arises from the uniquely human capacity for abstraction being combined with the animal instinct for survival. The neocortex, which is found only in mammals, and is largest in human beings, grows literally wrapped around the older brain structures that mammals have in common with reptiles. The subcortical brain demands personal survival as the primary goal, and the cortex realizes that we have to die. The only way to resolve that dilemma is to believe in an afterlife.

Posted: 23 Mar 2007 08:13 am Post subject:

Mike wrote:

Religious people believe in the existence of a non-material dimension, e.g., a heaven populated with souls

dave writes, and not all religious people even believe that. I was shocked when a rabbi came into our class at good old Beacon HS and stated that this was not a necessary tenant of Judaism

which made me realize that it is not either of Christianity.

In heaven there is no beer....

Posted: 23 Mar 2007 08:16 am Post subject:

mike wrote

It's possible that nonreligious people more often "escape from reality" through other means, such as reading more escapist fantasy novels. I don't know, but it's feasible.

dave writes:

how about just by acting non-rationally and/or acting against their material interests.

or failing to act according to their material interests.

I could see it if at the time of the actual formation of the SIU we found that no religious people were jining -- "no we don't care to, we would rather wait for some manna to fall from the sky." At that point we just might have to show some concern for our religious comrades - but until that no - but of course we do have to wonder if the non-religious are in fact waiting for that manna from a god named "luck" or another popular one: "status quo".

Posted: 23 Mar 2007 08:51 am Post subject:

mike wrote:

The subcortical brain demands personal survival as the primary goal, and the cortex realizes that we have to die. The only way to resolve that dilemma is to believe in an afterlife.

I believe that you have wandered off into the purple haze a bit on this one.

subcortical brain demands personal survival as the primary goal

let us assume this to be true, although it doesn't seem to be an absolute demand upon the way we act

Moreover I can acknowledge that I, along with my subcortical brain am going into the great dumpster. No soul no nothing except that I will exist perhaps to some extent in surviving people's memory and even that will fade away very quickly. This idea does not contradict any demand of my brain that I am able to discern.

I have had a couple of instants where I thought that I was going to die. It didn't change my outlook on death - its just an ending, the ending. ....that's why we drink it here.

or as Phil Ochs wrote/sang:

There's no place in this world where I'll belong when I'm gone
G Em A
And I won't know the right from the wrong when I'm gone
D A Bm
And you won't find me singin' on this song when I'm gone
Em A D
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

And I won't feel the flowing of the time when I'm gone
All the pleasures of love will not be mine when I'm gone
My pen won't pour out a lyric line when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

And I won't breathe the bracing air when I'm gone
And I can't even worry 'bout my cares when I'm gone
Won't be asked to do my share when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

And I won't be running from the rain when I'm gone
And I can't even suffer from the pain when I'm gone
Can't say who's to praise and who's to blame when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

Won't see the golden of the sun when I'm gone
And the evenings and the mornings will be one when I'm gone
Can't be singing louder than the guns when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

All my days won't be dances of delight when I'm gone
And the sands will be shifting from my sight when I'm gone
Can't add my name into the fight while I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

And I won't be laughing at the lies when I'm gone
And I can't question how or when or why when I'm gone
Can't live proud enough to die when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

Posted: 23 Mar 2007 08:15 pm Post subject:

Posted: 23 Mar 2007 08:29 pm Post subject:

Posted: 25 Mar 2007 04:30 pm Post subject:

Posted: 25 Mar 2007 07:07 pm Post subject:

mikelepore wrote:

"I don't agree with Marx's claim that pre-socialist society creates the "conditions" that "require" religion. "

dave writes:

alright, I'll bite, where did Mr. K make that claim?

questing wrote:

"The putrid spawn of capitalistic liberalism."

dave asks, as opposed to the spawn of capitalistic conservatism?

I think I might even turn that around and make capitalism the noun: liberal capitalism and conservative capitalism. I don't know if this changes the meaning, perhaps just the emphasis.

dave

Posted: 25 Mar 2007 08:37 pm Post subject:

Posted: 25 Mar 2007 08:55 pm Post subject:

Posted: 25 Mar 2007 10:56 pm Post subject:

requires religion and requires illussions the same? Well, maybe after about the third beer.

Posted: 26 Mar 2007 06:58 am Post subject:

Religion as a form of illusion, what's talking there is the influence that Ludwig Feuerbach had on the young Marx. Remember that Marx's first gig as a revolutionary, several years before he began to think kindly of socialism, was to write criticism of what he saw as the dual evils of monarchy and religion. Feuerbach attempted to "invert" Hegel before Marx attempted it. To Hegel, alienation is a temporary incompleteness of God. To Feuerbach ("The Essence of Christianity", 1841) alienation is the human tendency to project our own creative powers outside of ourselves and to call the image God. To Marx, Feuerbach's view is half-right, made more correct by adding that the alienation of labor is based on accumulated wealth ruling over its own creator. All three of these writers believed that the incompleteness will be resolved in historical time.

Posted: 26 Mar 2007 11:36 am Post subject:

from their mouths to god's ears

Posted: 14 Apr 2007 10:43 am Post subject:

Something struck me the other day that I haven't seen discussed before, the link or maybe the similarities between religion and sex. What made me think about this was yet another article in the paper about a young person being molested by a Roman Catholic priest. It seems like it's a perfect setup for this to happen - first the whole thing seethes with sex - only a person with the male sex organ can be a priest - only a person who essentially openly agrees not to use that sex organ for the purpose to which it was developed. Having the men wear dresses is only icing on the cake. But other faiths have their dirty little sexual secrets as well.

But getting away from the abuse issue. Then I look at homo/hetero sexuality and those appear almost as simply different religions. Also as sex is mainly or significantly a matter of ritual, so is religion.

And I think of our friends over at WSM and their obsession against anything religious - it seems a lot like homophobes who rail against promiscuity or homosexuality but then you find out that the person secretly practices the very thing that he rails against. And where does religion start and sex stop. So when their on their no religion bent, how far does that go? Is this mere organisational sexual frustration, and its their attempt to try to control it, something like the catholic church does so miserably.

And what of the difference is religious practice or practices between men and women. it seems that this is highly divided according to a person's sex.

And of course during string orgasms it is not unusual for people to speak right out to god. Maybe all religion was born out of sex. certainly a lot of symbolism such as Christianity and other religions as well I think of the Virgin birth. Not only was Jesus born through immaculate conception but Jesus mother was as well. And also the whole thing between male gods and male gods, and on and on.

I don't know what the heck this has to do with socialism, but I just wonder how much this has been looked at. And what the implications are in all of this for the prospect of socialism. So of course trying to mix politics religion and sex all up and get a unified therory of all life.

Posted: 14 Apr 2007 07:19 pm Post subject:

It could be that religions and sex are similar in that both are activities around which people to tend to polarize, some to "evangelize for" and some to "evangelize against."

(Then why not also say business and politics and many other things?)

Some people actually have a mushy emotional reaction when they hear a national anthem or see a national flag (the only emotion those things have ever elicited in me is nausea.)

I'll have to think about this some more.

As for socialists who try to make it a rule that the socialist movement has to fight religion -- I think many of them are probably pushy about their personal preferences in general. In another setting they might have been the people who battled against Elvis music or other cultural features. Perhaps, when people who don't have the temperament to "live and let live" are among the people who join the socialist movement, they still have to find an outlet for that urge. Opposing religion gives them something to be fidgety about.

Let's all say the Latin proverb, "De gustibus non est disputandum" -- "Matters of taste are not disputed."

Now I'm going to correct the common misunderstanding about the meaning of the immaculate conception. It has nothing to do with virgin birth. It means being born without the Original Sin that was inherited from Adam and Eve. By the way, this is the Catholic version. Other denominations, I'm not sure. Mary was derived by immaculate conception. Jesus was not. Mary was the only person in history to be free of Original Sin. Even Jesus was born with Original Sin and was cleansed of it only when he was baptized by John the Baptist.

I don't believe in any of this material, but I can recite it pretty well :-) Yeah, right. Is there a part of me that believes in it, subconsciously?

I like the movies about Jesus and Moses. I find them relaxing. I mean, he's waiting to be arrested and executed, so what does he do -- he goes for as stroll in the garden (of Gethsemony). Not even the Fonz is that cool.

Posted: 14 Apr 2007 07:40 pm Post subject:

De Leon even included the "clergyman" among his list of productive occupations. In "Fifteen Questions About Socialism" he wrote: "... the teacher and the clergyman and the lighthouse keeper perform work that is useful; on the contrary, the detective, the soldier and the lawyer perform work that is harmful, or that harmful social conditions render necessary." [Within Question "V", and on page 32 of the adobe PDF edition]. I remember being quite startled by seeing that, back in my high school days.

Posted: 15 Apr 2007 10:50 am Post subject:

I had written:

I think of the Virgin birth. Not only was Jesus born through immaculate conception but Jesus mother was as well

I now write:

Yes what was I thinking about Mike. Apparently the doctrine reasons backward about Mary that if god chose Mary to be the MDJ (mother of divine Jesus) then of course her soul must have been clean so as a special favor god at the time of her animation suspended nature for Mary and did not allow sin to enter into her. This is not the same as Virgin birth of Jesus.

I love how the "logic" just flows.

But anyway another of the sex/religion tie ins is the requirement for males to have the foreskin of their penis removed in the old testament. Isn't god impressed at my goodness because my parents made sure that this was done to a defenseless and certainly a non-consenting child's dick!!

Posted: 15 Apr 2007 06:01 pm Post subject:

Each religion has its assumed problems that have to be handled through rituals. One of the big ones in Judaism has been that certain things are impure and require us to perform purification rituals. If your mere extremity, the tip of your finger, has touched a reptile, your entire body has to be immersed in water. The water has to be gravity-fed and not scooped, so the invention of aquaducts was a big relief. This purification must be done before you may enter to the temple to do your important worship task, to stab a goat or whatever. If they're that fussy about the impure object touching an extremity, imagine the guilt associated with menstruation or having a foreskin. Also imagine how bad it must be if a bulk dose of impurity is inserted directly, say, by eating pork.

Each religion has it's own form of alienation from the self and alienation from nature. The target "hangup" is something completely natural that the Learned Ones teach the individual to feel guilty about. With Judaism it's a vaguely defined magnetic field called impurity, but other religions vary. Some religions focus more on sexual tension. With some sects of Islam, a man sees a woman's face and thinks that she's pretty, this is a horrible crime. With some native American tribes it was the tension between cowardice and bravery, so you can choose to cut yourself or burn yourself as a rite of purification. What's the underlying pattern behind all of these these world religions? Human feelings and behaviors show severe estrangement from nature. Our own bodies and feelings are considered dirty, something to feel guilty about. A phobia is answered with an obsession. I think feeling guilty is the main thing correlated with religion, and the connections to sex that you mention, such as various myths related to virginity, probably enter into it by way of this medium, by providing more things to feel guilty about.

But why guilt? Because guilt is a way to dwell on the assumption that the mind and body are separate things. This mind wishes it could be pure but finds itself trapped in this disgusting body.

Still true in the scientific age. When the scientific age comes along and says that the mind is electrochemistry in the brain, religious people intuit correctly that the notion of an immortal soul is under attack. That attack is unacceptable because it implies that the mind will die when the body dies, i.e., we won't have eternal life. So how to fix it? You focus on the entrapment of the holy soul in a dirty body.

Teaching people to feel guilty about having a foreskin or a perforate hymen will continue to be helpful here. Ah, the mind seeks spiritual purity, and will surely overcome this disgusting thing called the body. And, while I'm at it, this money in my pocket is a material thing, so I'll put that money in to the religious collection box.

On top of all that, there is aesthetic reinforcement. The flowers are beautiful. The stars in the sky are beautiful. The pleasure is a drug (we know now that neurotransmitters flow in the blood). The pleasure seems to reinforce the ideology -- the beautiful scenery is the handiwork of God. So that means there really is a God. So since there really is a God, that means the divinely inspired book must be accurate. If the inspired book is accurate, then Mary was a virgin. All of this talk puts me into the mood to take even more money out of my pocket and put it into the collection box. Now I'm starting to be a little bit sarcastic ;o)

Guilt has to be promoted as an explanation for class division. It's not permissible to explain the existence of rich and poor, master and slave, by questioning the state's institutions. It must be due to our laziness and sinfulness and other personality characteristics. We can't very well rebel if we deserve our fate, so all we can do is let the dirty material body do another day's work while the immortal soul contemplates some more lofty subjects, like the angels, or advertising jingles for car insurance.

I deviate from the explanation offered by Feuerbach and Marx. (But they came out of Hegel, and I think the entire life's work of Hegel was a load of crap.)

Posted: 15 Apr 2007 06:12 pm Post subject:

Here's a physics problem. It's in the category called statics, where you have a balance of forces so that no acceleration occurs. Jesus is standing on the surface of the water of the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 14). He does this by producing a miracle force to counteract gravity. Suppose his mass is 60 kg. What is the magnitude of the miracle force? Solution: The upward or positive vectors are buoyancy and miracle, and the one downward or negative vector is gravity. The sum of these vectors is zero. Next, since Jesus stands on the surface, the volume of water displaced due to submersion is zero. The buoyant force is proportional to the volume of fluid displaced, so it too is zero. That means the magnitude of the miracle force must equal the magnitude of his weight, which is mg = (60 kg)(9.8 m/s^2).

Same time next week -- we will calculate the wavelength of the red light emitted when Moses waved his staff and made the water of the Nile become red.

Posted: 15 Apr 2007 06:25 pm Post subject:

This joke was originally in the comic strip The Far Side. Paraphrasing from memory.

Two ants are looking up at the Taj Mahal. One ant says, "Man must truly be an all-powerful being to have produced such a wonderous thing." The other ant says, "You don't believe in that Man stuff, do you? If there really was a Man, why would He allow there to be disasters, like insecticides?"

Posted: 26 Apr 2007 08:58 pm Post subject:

I took off for awhile but I am back. I been over at the Messiah Truth Project board and trying to learn Judaism. There is a lot to learn and it is nothing like christianity. It's floating my boat right now. One person stated that all wars were the result of religion. Well, the answer to that was that not all wars were about religion but about conquest. Man has a inate conpulsion to be aggressive enough to fight for the right or wrong reason. Usually man is like a bully ready to fight at the drop of a hat. However, the concept of peace was Judaism's.

http://www.chabad.org/library/article.asp?AID=351781

Posted: 26 Apr 2007 09:47 pm Post subject:

The article the John referred to stated:

"War comes naturally to people. It existed long before any religion. Peace did not. Peace is not natural to the human condition. It had to be taught and learned. And it was a religious idea."

dave writes:

Nice sentiment if it makes you feel better to believe it - but of course there are two major problems - #1 definition and #2 proof so if you do believe it it is on faith, which is perfectly fine if it is understood and identified as such.

For example there is the problem - thinking about peace is thinking a religious thought so it seems to be difficult to say one is caused by the other if they are the same thing.

You know I hate analogies but how about this, ice cream is a desert, therefore desert is caused by ice cream.

No it is not logical, for as much as I truly love ice cream, it does not cause desert.

While we are on the subject, and it is odd that you should bring this up becuase i was thinking about it just today - if there is such a thing, what would you say is the main cultural difference between judaism and christianity (apart from the nuts and bolts of the religion itself )? Of course there is no right or wrong answer, there may not even be an answer.

dave

Posted: 26 Apr 2007 11:45 pm Post subject:

Dave wrote:

You know I hate analogies but how about this, ice cream is a desert, therefore desert is caused by ice cream. I thought that was more of a logical construct as to what came first? The chicken or the egg? We know ice cream did not create desert but desert is ice cream. It is possible that the earning for peace was written as a religious response of the violence early in history. I don't know...I really don't but what is interesting is that Judaism takes peace being revealed from a higher authority. Even Pagans believed that war was induced by a god or goddess being that they either aroused hatred or caused the desire for conquest of other people or lands. It was not always the case that war was done in a name of a god or goddess or one religion against another. Pagan dieties were so very much alike yet the cultures differed.

While we are on the subject, and it is odd that you should bring this up becuase i was thinking about it just today - if there is such a thing, what would you say is the main cultural difference between judaism and christianity (apart from the nuts and bolts of the religion itself )? Of course there is no right or wrong answer, there may not even be an answer.

Judaism does not seek converts as Christianity does. The Jews claim to be a light to the gentile. They believe if that God wanted gentiles to be Jews there would have been no other race on earth but them. Judaism believes in One God and no other so that leave Jesus out of the picture including the New Testament. Human sacrifice is forbidden which in ancient times was common with the surrounding nations and Jesus was a human sacrifice so that was another reason to reject him. Judaism appears somewhat tribal but they don't exclude anyone from their company. That's about all I going to write for now.

Posted: 27 Apr 2007 12:02 pm Post subject:

but if the thought of peace is a religious thought it could be a chicken and egg thing as to which came first. And that doesn't even imply causality of one by the other. Or they are the same thing. You say peace, others say love. If god is love, one can't cause the other. IF a religious thought is a peaceful thought or vice versa you cannot from that infer causality. Causality has to be shown independently.

And of course the "I don't know" is the valid response and is the basis of faith - to believe what you do not know, in essence.

AS LONG as what one does know depends exclusively on the materially verifiable and that what is belived on faith is understood as such, the two systems compliment each other.

Posted: 27 Apr 2007 12:45 pm Post subject:

dave wrote to John:

what would you say is the main cultural difference between judaism and christianity (apart from the nuts and bolts of the religion itself )? Of course there is no right or wrong answer, there may not even be an answer.

John wrote:

Judaism does not seek converts as Christianity does. The Jews claim to be a light to the gentile. They believe if that God wanted gentiles to be Jews there would have been no other race on earth but them. Judaism believes in One God and no other so that leave Jesus out of the picture including the New Testament. Human sacrifice is forbidden which in ancient times was common with the surrounding nations and Jesus was a human sacrifice so that was another reason to reject him. Judaism appears somewhat tribal but they don't exclude anyone from their company.

dave writes:

I was wondering if it wasn't something more basic- I have done little or no study on this subject so it is no prejudiced by reality as Marx Twain might have said - but let me throw two things out

sin and the consequence of it

obligations of a believer

Is the idea of sin the same in Judism as in Christianity?

I look in Psalm 51:

I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.

In the psalm and apparently in Judism the remedy for sin is to have one's heart taught wisdom from god - a mild remedy, purged with Hyssop (an herb).

In Christainity that same sin merely from our mother's conception of us merits death except only if we essentially acknowlege Christainty to be the one true religion.

Am I off on this? Perhaps this is just the recollections of a little boy who would listen in every once in a while to what hey were saying during the service.

dave

Posted: 27 Apr 2007 08:54 pm Post subject:

"Judaism does not seek converts as Christianity does"

It helps here that most people don't practice their written rules literally. If people were actually stoning their neighbors to death for not observing the sabbath, or for planting two kinds of seeds in the same field, or for eating lobster, or any of hundreds of other serious crimes, that could be interpreted as a form of seeking converts, at the very least.

This is the problem with Islam -- that it's just about the only religion in which the members practice the written rules. If an ancient rule says you're supposed to be stoned, people actually stone you.

One of the few occasions in which I'd like to see a lot more hypocrisy in the world.

Posted: 27 Apr 2007 08:59 pm Post subject:

Saying that anyone who is willing to convert to Judaism can have an automatic Israeli citizenship and live anywhere in the 85% part of Palestine that was made into Israel, while Palestinians who refuse to convert to Judaism get relocated to the 15% part of their former territory -- this is another activity that could be interpreted as seeking converts, at the very least.

Posted: 27 Apr 2007 10:47 pm Post subject:

Mike, I don't believe stoning is done by Jews anymore but some sects of Islam has that practice today. This is ancient history on Israel's part since they been diaspora for centuries. You have to keep in mind that this is a Middle East religion. In Africa young girls are circumcised usually with a dull rusty razor. I have no idea what religion that would be.

Mike wrote: It helps here that most people don't practice their written rules literally. If people were actually stoning their neighbors to death for not observing the sabbath, or for planting two kinds of seeds in the same field, or for eating lobster, or any of hundreds of other serious crimes, that could be interpreted as a form of seeking converts, at the very least.

If a person is born a Jew he/she is subject to the Law of Moses and the prophets even if they are not obsevant. It's a birthright. The gentile are not subject except to what is called the Noahide Seven Laws which are :According to traditional Judaism, G-d gave Noah and his family seven commandments to observe when he saved them from the flood. These commandments, referred to as the Noahic or Noahide commandments, are inferred from Genesis Ch. 9, and are as follows: 1) to establish courts of justice; 2) not to commit blasphemy; 3) not to commit idolatry; 4) not to commit incest and adultery; 5) not to commit bloodshed; 6) not to commit robbery; and 7) not to eat flesh cut from a living animal. These commandments are fairly simple and straightforward, and most of them are recognized by most of the world as sound moral principles. Any non-Jew who follows these laws has a place in the world to come. http://www.jewfaq.org/gentiles.htm
I understand that conflict between Arabs and Jews been going on for centuries.

Dave wrote:

sin and the consequence of it The idea is that man has a free will to do good or evil. Jews don't have the concept of original sin or sin nature but that consciouness of right and wrong was the result of eating the forbidden fruit. Sure there is consequences but there is no eternal place of punishment.

obligations of a believer Believing Jews have to observe 613 commandments. Gentiles seven.

Is the idea of sin the same in Judism as in Christianity? No, Jews believe that people have a choice. Unlike Christianity a person has to commit an act before it is considered a sin. All a Christian has to do is think about it and that's a sin though no act was committed.

I look in Psalm 51:5

I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.

In the psalm and apparently in Judism the remedy for sin is to have one's heart taught wisdom from god - a mild remedy, purged with Hyssop (an herb).

In Christainity that same sin merely from our mother's conception of us merits death except only if we essentially acknowlege Christainty to be the one true religion. The context would be different in Judaism and so would the interpretation at times. Since sin is an act that has to be committed. Being born is no sin neither the act of a woman getting pregnant. Since this psalm has a lot to do with Bathsheba and the child David and her conceived the verse may be attributted to that child being born which later died. Bathsheba was married to another man and David committed adultry with her. I will get back to you on this particular passage.
[/b]

Posted: 28 Apr 2007 07:20 pm Post subject:

Yeah, that's what I mean. Jews are perceptive enough to realize that people thousands of years ago said some things that we don't need to continue, like stoning people. Christians also realize that, but some of them mischaracterize their own views by first saying that every word of scripture was dictated verbatim by God and is therefore literally true, but then they are unable to explain why they don't really believe every detail. The following article I copied from a newsgroup illustrates:

From: "Gene Douglas" <genedoug@prodigy.net>
Newsgroups: sci.psychology.psychotherapy
Subject: Letter to Dr. Laura
Date: Sat, 06 Mar 2004 02:13:51 GMT

--- a supposed letter written to Dr. Laura of talk radio fame

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding
God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and
try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can.

When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for
example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly
states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need
some advice from you, however, regarding some of the other
specific laws and how to follow them:

When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it
creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9.
The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not
pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned
in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would
be a fair price for her?

I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she
is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15:19- 24.
The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most
women take offense.

Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both
male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring
nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but
not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath.
Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I
morally obligated to kill him myself?

A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is
an abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than
homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?

Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have
a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses.
Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around
their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How
should they die?

I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me
unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops
in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two
different kinds of thread cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse
and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of
getting the whole town together to stone them? - Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we
just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people
who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can
help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and
unchanging.

Your devoted fan,

Posted: 29 Apr 2007 01:57 am Post subject:

Mike...Pauline doctrine teaches that Christians are not under the Law. On the other hand, I can't explain why those things were written in the Hebrew Bible but they were.

Posted: 29 Apr 2007 11:14 am Post subject:

John wrote:

Pauline doctrine teaches that Christians are not under the Law

dave writes:

And who was this guy Paul? Why does his spewings get any deference whatsoever?

Posted: 30 Apr 2007 12:10 am Post subject:

Paul...the guy whose letters that make up most which we know as the New Testament. His importance is that he was an apostle to the gentiles and often got in trouble with Jews who were Torah observant saying that the Law ended. Of course, most Christains still haven't figured out Pauline doctrine. BTW, am I being roasted here?

Posted: 30 Apr 2007 07:10 am Post subject:

Paul is an interesting character because he started out as a Roman persecutor of Christians, part of Tiberius's "Gestapo". Then one day -- as the famous saying goes, "on the road to Damascus" -- he heard a voice -- Why do you persecute my people? -- and he was immediately converted. I'm inclined to think that this element of unexpected revelation followed by instant conversion was what the emperor Constantine adopted centuries later for his own conversion account, since it's similar -- I think Constantine was in the middle of a battle and he saw a cross in the sky. Also interesting to me - Paul later traveled around to preach so much more than any of the other followers (see an article I wrote about his travels - http://www.crimsonbird.com/history/sailingacts.htm )

But a historian needs to consider the accuracy of the reports. What evidence is there that Jesus and the apostles existed at all? The historians Seutonius and Tacitus mention a Galilean sect that reportedly follows a leader Jesus, but no mention there of seeing Jesus himself. The Jewish historian Josephus actually mentions Jesus but it is also known today that the copies-of-copies-of-copies of Josephus were tampered with by the church in the Middle Ages to add passages acknowledging that Jesus was proven to be the Son of God, and no one knows now how far the tampering with the manuscripts went. That is a complete list of the documentation. (The Bible reports, of course, but it also persuades, and historians have to assume that the persuading affects the reporting.) The lack of third-party documentation about Jesus is troubling to historians because the Romans were like the Nazis in that they persecuted people while also keeping meticulous written records of the gory details. So when I put on my "objective student of history" hat, I have to say it's possible that Jesus is like Heracles -- another doer of miraculous deeds who had a mortal mother and a divine father, about half a dozen centuries before Jesus -- and a confabulation.

Posted: 30 Apr 2007 07:37 am Post subject:

Posted: 30 Apr 2007 07:56 am Post subject:

As a skeptic, I am always left with this rule of logic. We cannot say that we should believe something unless there's evidence that it's false. That's untenable because there are an infinite number of possible combinations of words. The only remaining option is the opposite, which is to doubt everything unless there is evidence of its truth.

An ancient Hindu scripture says that a multitude of witnesses saw the child Krishna place his fingertip at the base of a mountain and lift it above his head. An ancient Christian scripture says that a multitude of witnesses saw Jesus bring a dead man named Lazarus back to life. I wish that a follower of any particular religion would consider that there is the same order of magnitude of evidence for these two events: the passage of a couple thousand years, and an old but revered book.

I take freedom of religion very seriously. That doesn't mean that can't criticize religious thinking, speaking only for myself.

Posted: 30 Apr 2007 08:22 am Post subject:

My own political theory suffers from this dilemma. Freedom of religion must be defended, and religious members are to be welcomed in the socialist movement. However, at the same time, we should advance critical thinking skills in general, which includes the ability to know a logical fallacy when we hear one. It is fallacy to say "X must be true because my parents and teachers said so", "X must be true because I wouldn't like the consequences if it weren't true", etc. How shall I honor other people's rights while being critical of their habits of thought? It's the same dilemma in my personal life. When having a frank conversation with my own relatives who are religious, I tell them: I respect your religious freedom -- I don't argue with you about your beliefs -- I follow the expected protocols, for example, at a wedding I will stand or sit when everyone else stands or sits -- but when *you ask me* for my opinion, then here it is -- I don't know whether your CONCLUSIONS are right or wrong, but I do know that the REASONS you give for arriving at your conclusions are logically invalid. That's what I tell my relatives.

Posted: 30 Apr 2007 11:49 am Post subject:

No John you are not being roasted. The deference that I was talking about was why is this guy given more than a paragraph in the new testement?

I just do not understand why anything the guy said should be of any import any more than anyone else's say so.

Posted: 30 Apr 2007 04:06 pm Post subject:

Paul did more of the writing than anyone else. After Jesus died, Paul was the one who travelled around the whole known world to lecture and write letters.

The New Testament is an anthology of essays and letters that were selected by a panel of editors in the year 325 A.D. at an event called the First Council of Nicaea. They editorial board decided to insert a lot of the material written by Paul. The result of their editing was a new book entitled The Holy Bible.

The essays that they chose were called Canon, and those they rejected are now called the Apocrypha or the Non-Canonical writings. The apparent reasons for omitting the Apocrypha are interesting. In some cases it was because the writer tried to be cute, like a story about little boy Jesus entertaining his little friends by making statues of birds out of mud and then making them miraculously come to life and fly away. Writings showing Mary from the city Magdala having a leadership position at least as important as that of Peter were probably omitted because she was a woman.

But their main purpose was to launch a single unified movement, with everyone agreeing on every little detail (like a socialist party today :o) The new word "Catholic" meant "universal." There was to be only one allowed interpretation of all such terms as soul, angel, etc. If you say the bread "symbolically represents" the body of Christ, instead of saying it "is" the body of Christ, then you could get expelled by the party -- oops, I mean the church. But now we know after the fact that disagreements appeared anyway ... an event called the Reformation.

Posted: 12 May 2007 06:07 am Post subject:

Mike, the writings of Paul existed before the Four Gospels were ever written and that includes Revelation. But your knowledge is impressive as well as Dave's. I am making progress. In no wise have I ever wrote to change either one of you as individuals or how you believe. Not to change the subject but I have a book by Robert Graves, The White Goddess, published 1936, who was a prolific writer and knew how to translate the poetic language of the ancients, stated that Marxism was a pseudo science and that religion, not capitalism, continues to be at war with communism. That's about all he wrote about that subject as he explored the hidden meaning of pagan thought. I believe he was right. Capitalist do not worry about Communism. Those who have religious faith do because communism seeks to destroy all institutions of faith and replace it with materialist doctrine--I do understand what materialism is. Capitalist have capital to protect their interest while those who are religious seek their protection through faith and written ancient text. Despite the flaws of religious thought it remains beautiful in my opinion.

Posted: 12 May 2007 07:56 am Post subject:

Robert Graves, I love his "I, Claudius". I have read that book about ten times.

I think I should write a long essay about De Leon as a reinterpreter of Marx. Talking about materialism, De Leon doesn' t mention Marx's concept that religion is the heart of a heartless world, the spirit of spiritless conditions, etc. To De Leon, the main thing to be said about religion is that when organized religion takes a stand on a concept of politics or economics then the socialist may treat them as any political lobby and not hesitate to dispute them harshly. De Leon also interprets historical materialism mainly in terms of where "the tool" came from, and how human beings were originally the "slave of nature" and later the slave of "the owner" of "the tool."

Posted: 12 May 2007 10:59 am Post subject:

I have disassociated myself from the World in Common list for now and probably for a good while over what I perceive to be antisemitism. I ought to stay and fight it but I really have too may irons in the fire right now in my personal life. I have done as much as I can for now. Look at this last message that I posted and the messages quoted by it.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/worldincommon/message/7162

Maybe I'm being too sensitive but I just will not tolerate this what I perceive to be shit, just as I wouldn't put up with it in questings last post about allowing transexual children to live their beliefs about who they are is an indication of social degeneracy. I just won't sit quietly and accept it. I never have.

dave

Posted: 12 May 2007 11:19 am Post subject:

John wrote:

Mike, I don't believe stoning is done by Jews anymore but some sects of Islam have that practice today.

dave writes:

But a 20th century Jewish commentator of note, Robert Zimmerman, wote an essay about society and stoning, Rainy Day Woman #12 and #35:

They'll stone you when you're trying to be so good
They'll stone you just like they said they would
They'll stone you when you're trying to go home
They'll stone you when you're there all alone
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

They'll stone you when you're walking on the street
They'll stone you when you're trying to keep your seat
They'll stone you when your walking on the floor
They'll stone you when your walking to the door
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

They'll stone you when you're at the breakfast table
They'll stone you when you are young and able
They'll stone you when you're trying to make a buck
They'll stone you and then they'll say good luck
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

Well They'll stone you and say that it's the end
They'll stone you and then they'll come back again
They'll stone you when you're riding in your car
They'll stone you when you're playing you guitar
Yes But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned
Alright

Well They'll stone you when you are all alone
They'll stone you when you are walking home
They'll stone you and then say they're all brave
They'll stone you when you're send down in your grave
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

Posted: 12 May 2007 06:28 pm Post subject:

Dave,

It thought that what Byron was saying is the number of people the Nazis killed for all other reasons combined (labor union members, people arrested for making a critical remark, etc.) may be about as many as the number of people that they killed for being Jewish, and that when this isn't noted then the full reasons for the rise of the Nazis won't be understood, because some modern people may think that antisemitism was the only historical reason for the rise of the Nazis.

(1) Is that what you understood to have been said? (2) Is it true or false?

Posted: 13 May 2007 07:00 am Post subject:

Mike wrote:

Posted: 13 May 2007 07:02 pm Post subject:

Well, you wouldn't have to argue with someone who agrees with you. But if they have an opposite viewpoint, then you may ask, do they present it in a fair way, or do they cheat by using the God-is-on-my side device as a shortcut to a political answer?

There were many cases when someone with Reverend in front of his name wrote a book that said things like the capitalist being a genius is the source of all the wealth in the world, and labor had little or nothing to do with making the wealth. Or they said that workers forming unions and/or becoming socialists was a grevious sin, and such people would burn in hell. Or they quoted the same "The powers that be are ordained of God" from Romans 13:1 to say that God wants capitalism, the exact same quote that was used in previous centuries by people who claimed that God want slavery or feudalism or monarchy. Some of them said that socialism can't possibly work because of some point taken from conservative economic theory, implying that oh you can trust me on this because I'm a clergyman. Some of them said that a socialist economic system has to be associated with promiscuity, and chastity requires capitalism.

The message there was that those theologians were hiding behind religion, which SLP writers called their "mask" or "masquerade", to perform conservative political lobbying.

Like the modern Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity says oh you can trust my conservative political analysis because I'm a journalist, well at one time it was you can trust my conservative political analysis because I'm a clergyman.

The pamphlet "Fifteen Questions About Socialism" is where we find De Leon's major development of the idea of labor vouchers. The fifteen questions he's answering were taken from an article that was intended by its author to demolish socialism by asking tough questions. Where was that article published? In the newspaper "The Visitor", published by the Catholic Church and distributed in every church vestibule in the U.S., the newspaper rack being located right next to the Holy Water fountain. Let's think a minute -- isn't that clearly a case of someone doing purely political advocacy and trying to hide behind "don't dispute me on this because I wear the vestments"?

De Leon and the after-1914 national secretary Arnold Petersen seemed to think that most of the tendency to say such things were found among Catholic bishops and cardinals, which is the subject of two De Leon pamphlets entitled 'Abolition of Poverty' and 'The Vatican in Politics', and a booklet by Arnold Petersen entitled 'Theocracy or Democracy'. I don't really know myself whether it was associated more with one denomination or another, but De Leon and Petersen usually editorialized against the political activities of Catholic bishops and cardinals. In fact, there really were some wild things coming out of the Catholic Church in those days. When Pope Leo XIII excommunicated Father Edward McGlynn in 1887, it was because of McGlynn's support for the Single Tax movement, a purely political and economic issue, and the Pope's anathema sounded like something from medieval times -- may he be cursed in the stomach, may he be cursed in the liver, etc. etc.

On the other hand, in a 1904 article entitled "Good for Father Kress!", De Leon praised a priest who made a speech at a university saying that he believed in capitalism, and deplored socialism, but also made it clear that "ecclesiastical authority" was NOT the basis of political and economic ideas. In other words, Kress wasn't going to try to hide behind the masquerade. De Leon wrote that it was his "pleasure to applaud an adversary." One of the few cases in which De Leon used the word "sincerity" when describing a speaker who had just bashed socialism.

The SLP wasn't arguing with the clergy about religious beliefs, but about their use of God-in-on-our-side to try to settle political and economic questions. Just one exception that I know of --- on one occasion Petersen went into comedian mode and he mocked the interpretation of the Ascension that says when Mary went to heaven it wasn't only her soul but her body also, and he added that presumably her clothes had to go to heaven also, otherwise she would have to go naked. That's the only time I ever saw an SLP representative belittle what is purely a religious issue. On all the other occasions, it was said everyone's religious views are entirely personal, but if people jump into a debate about politics and economics the party won't let them get away with using religion to hide behind.

Marx and Engels was something else. In their opinion, the whole idea that the human mind is something other than an electrochemical activity that the brain does, e.g., that it is a spirit or soul enclosed within the physical body, is a superstition in the same category as the bad luck supposedly caused by breaking a mirror or seeing a black cat, and in time it would fade away by itself due to improvements in scientific education. De Leon and his followers never got into that subject at all.

Posted: 13 May 2007 09:52 pm Post subject:

[quote="mikelepore"]Dave,

It thought that what Byron was saying is the number of people the Nazis killed for all other reasons combined (labor union members, people arrested for making a critical remark, etc.) may be about as many as the number of people that they killed for being Jewish, and that when this isn't noted then the full reasons for the rise of the Nazis won't be understood, because some modern people may think that antisemitism was the only historical reason for the rise of the Nazis.

(1) Is that what you understood to have been said? (2) Is it true or false?[/quote]

No Mike, Byron wasn't talking about looking at the statistic of six million Jews being killed in isolation as being deceptive - as is any statistic considered in isolation. He said that THE JEWS were being deceptive, and that they were being DECEPTIVE AT BEST.

*********************
From the BBC website
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/holocaust_overview_01.shtml

The Jews were not the only victims of Nazism. It is estimated that as many as 15 million civilians were killed by this murderous and racist regime, including millions of Slavs and 'asiatics', 200,000 Gypsies and members of various other groups. Thousands of people, including Germans of African descent, were forcibly sterilised.

These programmes are best seen as a series of linked genocides, each having its own history, background, purpose and significance in the Nazi scheme of things. The Holocaust was the biggest of the killing programmes and, in certain important ways, different from the others. The Jews figured in Nazi ideology as the arch-enemy of the 'Aryan race', and were targeted not merely for terror and repression but for complete extinction.
*************

And who the heck, if anyone, has claimed that the murder of 6 million Jews gives the full historical reason for the rise of the Nazis?

dave

Posted: 14 May 2007 06:59 am Post subject:

Mike, I am sure that many have done the God-is-on-my-side which includes my former pastor who is a BIG supporter of Bush and Conservatism citing the same scripture that all should be in subject to the governing authorities. He knows better than that since he is well aware that slavery was abolished long ago when it was legal. He is in error for trying to preach Right Wing politics from the pulpit but he is good when it comes Pauline doctrine. Perhaps it is out of fear of the authoritarian communism that we all remember so well or the changing ethics and morals that are taking place. I think it may be fear on one hand but I think they forgot that they are not suppose to force their views on people.

Posted: 14 May 2007 05:25 pm Post subject:

Dave, over in the yahoo forum there may have been some posts that I didn't see. What I did see, Byron and some others report that they have apparently had the experience that expressing opposition to the Israeli government is enough for someone to get called anti-Semitic.

If I say that I want to overthrow the United States government, people will call me disloyal, and dangerous, and a crackpot, but they won't assume that it's because I hate people for who they are, that is, a bigotry. Yet, if I say that I would like to see the overthrow of the Israeili government, people will respond that such a position is anti-Semitic.

Such a charge has been rarely if ever aimed at me because I tend to be clear that I advocate a world government and the dismantling of all national boundaries, which requires the overthrow of all 200 national government in the world. I usually don't write about "the right of Israel to exist", or similar phrases that we might see in mainstream journalism.

But I see it happen frequently that when someone denounces the Israeli government, for various reasons, sometimes because of the way the government responds to peaceful demonstrations with bullets, sometimes for its accumulation of atomic weapons, or other reasons -- the critic will get called anti-Semitic. Most commonly, it happens when someone complains that the Israeili government views inclusion as necessarily being based on exclusion, that in forming the necessary Jewish sanctuary people couldn't think of any other way to do it besides forcibly expelling a lot of people who were already living there. Simply integrating, allowing anyone to live next door to anyone else, which in the 1950s and 1960s was fine for healing the racially segregated southern American states, was not even the table in the formation of Israel in 1948. It had to be forcible expulsion of the former residents to make space for the new residents.

If someone makes a public statement that this has been improper, and cites the sad events that have accompanied the enforcement, which sometimes takes the form of child with rock versus soldier with machine gun, that critic will often get called either anti-Semitic or uncognizant of the Holocaust. Person 1 may say, "It's deplorable to see the soldiers sent against the villagers." Person 2 may then reply, "But there's a lot you're not considering. There was the Holocaust." Someone in the yahoo discussion made a reference to people hiding behind the mentioning of the Holocaust, or some such phrase, as a way to counter criticism of the Israeli government. That's what they were talking about. It sometimes happens. With certain commentators in the broadcast media, it frequently happens. Byron named one of them.

Posted: 14 May 2007 06:33 pm Post subject:

Posted: 14 May 2007 09:58 pm Post subject:

Byron 71417 Wic group wrote:

The death of the Jews is terrible but their co-opting this
tragedy as if it was the only destruction of non-military humankind and nobody
else's, is deceptive at best.

Posted: 14 May 2007 11:14 pm Post subject:

I will now deconstruct the grammar like a good "DeLeonite".

Byron
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/worldincommon/message/7147
> The death of the Jews is terrible but their co-opting this
> tragedy as if it was the only destruction of non-military
> humankind and nobody else's, is deceptive at best.

Dave
> He said that THE JEWS were being deceptive, and that they were
> being DECEPTIVE AT BEST.

If the "their" in the second part of the sentence was meant as a pronoun for the "the Jews" in the first half of the sentence, then yes, that's what he said.

But the subject of the phrase "the death of the Jews" is people who are no longer alive, so they couldn't be currently doing something such as the verb "co-opting". Therefore, it's already established that the subject of the first half of the sentence and the subject of the second half of the sentence must be different people.

You interpreted that to mean that one possibility remains, which is that his word "their" must have been intended as a pronoun for all Jews everywhere.

Another possibility I can think of is that he intended the word "their" as a pronoun for whomever said whatever speech he heard and is responding to.

Posted: 14 May 2007 11:46 pm Post subject:

If someone does say "all" in reference to a population group, does that always make it a form of bigotry? I don't think so. An "all" sentence is probably false, because there are always exceptions. So a sentence, say, "all Americans are greedy" is probably false, but falsity is another issue. What I'm asking now is: is it automatically a form of bigotry? I say no. It's only bigotry when the person making the claim says that the characteristic is genetic. It's not bigotry if the person is making the claim that it's a learned habit. To say that all Americans have a greediness gene would be bigotry. To say that all Americans have fallen under the influence of a cultural upbringing that makes them all greedy -- this would be false, but it would not be bigotry.

When I say this, it get people upset, but the same goes for those who say "all Arabs", "all Filipinos", or "all" any another group ... followed by some stereotype. People are quick to call that racism. I say: wait a minute - did they claim that the the people were born that way, something inherent, or are they claiming that an irresistable tradition has molded them, which is a learned process? If it's the latter, then the "all" makes it false, but it's not racism.

I'm mentioning this because this is a Marxist site, and Marx wrote some particularly horrible generalizations about "the Jew" - he wrote that the real god of "the Jew" is money, "huckstering" is "his religion." However, those remarks were not anti-Semitism, because Marx thought it was a case of cultural learning, and he didn't claim that anyone was that way naturally. It's the use of the generalization that makes it surely false.

Posted: 15 May 2007 12:12 pm Post subject:

So any form of discrimination is acceptable if it is not based strictly upon genetic traits?

No non-Christians may eat, work or live here!
Was Hitler only against genetic Jews - those who were Jewish by conversion had nothing to fear?

Yes it's a Marxist site, but you can't take Marx out of 1843 and simply apply it to the 20th Century where there was an international effort well under way by Nazism to exterminate the Jewish people in toto, actually murdering every third Jew in Europe.

Moreover it is very difficul to understand what Marx was writing in the "Jewish Question" because as is typical in many of his works, he is responding to someone else's writing - in this case someone named Bauer. Most of the writing in the Jewish question is actually Marx's representation of what he thought that Bauer was saying - I have seen many people quote from the Jewish question as to what Marx supposedly wrote and when you dig and pull it all apart you will find that it's Bauer and not Marx. I assume that your references are to the Jewish Question I am in the middle of a muddle and haven't had time to go back to analyze what you have written. Have you ever seen the text from Bauer? I haven't. It seems that would make things easier to understand just what Marx may have been getting at..

But whther something is anti-semitic or not should not depend upon what Marx wrote 160 years ago.

But getting back to your point - to accuse an entire race of being deceptive at best is over the line ESPECAILLY when the implication is that the Jewish people have systematically as a race consciously have perpetuated a lie to try to make the world believe that only they were subject to murder by the Nazis.

From my BBC quote above, that organization identifies the HOLOCAUST as genocide against the Jews, with a number of concurrent smaller genocides against other groups. I can't find the citation, but I think that it was Winston Churchill who first used the word Holocaust (or he was the one who popularized it) as meaning the extermination efforts by the Nazis specifically against the Jews. Did the Jewish conspiracy to deceive control the war time prime minister of England and controls the BBC even until today?

Besides that it was an entirely stupid statement for Byron to have made. If a teenager had made it perhaps we could excuse the poor child's total lack of intelligence of history as being indicative of the condition of education today. Byron's case is not that.

I have to go do some work.

dave

Posted: 15 May 2007 06:52 pm Post subject:

Thanks for reminding me about Marx critiqueing Bauer. I totally forgot about that.

As for discrimination. I'm not talking about limiting anyone's opportunities. (That's always wrong unless there are real qualifications. Denying a blind person a driver's licence would be an example of real qualification.) I'm talking about characterizing behaviors. When these generalizations are wrong it's often quantitatively that they are wrong. If someone says 100 percent of the Eskimos enjoy seafood, and if the actual number is 91 percent, the different between 91 and 100 is quantitative. Then there is a slippery-slope transition to people forming stereotypes which cause social injustice and harm, such as all Italian-Americans are gangsters, all Mexicans smoke dope, etc.

All of the above examples would be, if they were true at all, socially learned behaviors. Let me call that prejudice of the first kind. The person who says it is really making a statement about the social institutions, that thye think there is something about the way of life in that time and place that makes everyone learn a certain behavior. However, when alleging the existence of innate or genetically inherited properties, such as the 18th century bigotry that "Injuns" don't have souls, or Hitler's racial superstitions, let me call that prejudice of the second kind. I guess it's okay for a term like racism to encompass both kinds of errors, but it's necessary to distinguish between them, because they methods for correcting the errors are different for the two kinds.

As for Byron's generalization. It stands out because of the degree of harm associated with this particular one. However, most of us have found ourselves spekaing of a whole group when we really mean "some number of people that I have known ....", as when we say that New Yorkers like hot dogs and baseball, teenagers loved the Beatles, women were crazy about Frank Sinatra, men were crazy about Marilyn Monroe. Now let's go a step further and say something about a regionality or nationality, for example a sentence like: the people of Chicago considered Alfonse Capone to be a Robin Hood, the people of Sicily considered the Palermo mob boss to be a Robin Hood, the people of Colombia considered Pablo Escobar to be a Robin Hood -- uh, oh, now we're getting into trouble, because we're no longer talking about an issue as harmless as saying that teenagers loved the Beatles, kids like chocolate ice cream -- now we're getting into territory that may besmirch people's reputations -- it may. Then a person could go further and say things that, not only "may", but positively do smear people in a way that is already proven do cause injustice -- that the Irish are drunks, the Mexicans are dope-smokers. How does the listener react? We have to decide what the speaker meant by it. In the harmless cases, the speaker is merely taking a shortcut, saving syllables, shortening it to "teenagers loved the Beatles", instead of the more accurate statement "a certain but sizable set of specific teenagers that I have known loved the Beatles." When the generalization is a harmful one -- all Mexicans this, all Irish that -- the speaker is being careless to take the verbal shortcut, because human rights and social equality are at stake.

I don't think Byron really meant to make an assertion about all Jews. I think he heard Alan Dershowitz and his partners on TV and then commented about it with the reduced level of carefulness that a person should only use when the generalization is of the harmless "kids like ice cream" variety.

Posted: 15 May 2007 07:32 pm Post subject:

I must confess complete ignorance as to who Alan Dershowitz is.

Even if you are right as to the to kinds - it strikes me that a person would be very very careful about being at all critical of a population as to how they have reacted to their actual attempted extermination by members a people who they had lived among for generations upon generations with very little support forth coming from the rest of the world.

And so what if every Jewish person was absolutely myopic on the number of Jews killed to to complete ignoring of the rest of the people murdered. So what? It is very painful because that was one of the characteristics that the Nazis described the Jews as being - deceiving. That's one of the reasons that they had to be killed - that one could never trust them.

But then Byron instead of saying Oh I shouldn't have said that came up with some bullshit answer about statements issued by the Israeli embassy focusing on the Jews killed and not the Gypsies, and not the homosexuals among others. If Jews don't speak in a way and in a manner and in a style that we think is the way that they should, they are being decepive at best?

Posted: 15 May 2007 09:53 pm Post subject:

Perhaps these events were what sparked it.

Author Neve Gordon, taking a liberal human rights perspective, criticized the Israeli government's policies toward the Palestinians, so then Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz replied by writing a book that (reportedly) called Gordon a Nazi sympathizer, supporter of the Holocaust, etc.

In a separate incident: Because Gordon teaches at Ben Gurion University in Israel, and yet he opposes the policies of the Israeli government, author Steven Plaut, a survivor of the Holocaust, also (reportedly) wrote that Gordon is anti-Semite, etc., trying to get Gordon kicked out of his teaching career. Gordon then sued Plaut for libel in an Israeli court and won the case.

Posted: 15 May 2007 11:59 pm Post subject:

I have no idea as to any of this, haven't read Dershawiz book have read the lawsuit - none of it. So it seems like people are choosing sides about the various personalities and then like at a sporting match it doesn't really matter what one yells at or about the opposition. Byron allowed himself to be caught up in it.

Posted: 16 May 2007 05:03 am Post subject:

I don't know that side of Dershowitz myself. I know him from his anti-terrorism crusading, where he says Americans should stop whining about the no-warrant searches, the end of Geneva Convention provisions for POWs, the FBI knowing what books we buy, etc. In particular he says it's totally wrong to fight terrorism by asking ourselves why do people around the world hate Americans and then stop doing whatever they hate us for. Instead, he says, the solution lies entirely in increasing the physical force. He's like a Bush and Cheney on pep pills. That is my mini review of his book "Why Terrorism Works." I also have the first chapter of that book in a file, if anyone here would like to read it.

There are also some cases that made Dershowitz a celebrity as a lawyer. You may remember in the 1970s Claus von Bulow was on trial accused of trying to kill his wife with a drug injection. Dershowitz was the defense lawyer. Oliver Stone made a movie about the case called Reversal of Fortune, with actor Ron Silver playing the part of Dershowitz, Jeremy Irons as von Bulow, and Glenn Close as his brain-dead wife.

Posted: 16 May 2007 11:17 am Post subject:

from
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/#2.1

2.1 ‘On The Jewish Question’
In this text Marx begins to make clear the distance between him and that of his radical liberal colleagues among the Young Hegelians; in particular Bruno Bauer. Bauer had recently written against Jewish emancipation, from an atheist perspective, arguing that the religion of both Jews and Christians was a barrier to emancipation. In responding to Bauer Marx makes one of the most enduring arguments from his early writings, by means of introducing a distinction between political emancipation — essentially the grant of liberal rights and liberties — and human emancipation. Marx's reply to Bauer is that political emancipation is perfectly compatible with the continued existence of religion, as the example of the United States demonstrates then. However, pushing matters deeper, in an argument reinvented by innumerable critics of liberalism, Marx argues that not only is political emancipation insufficient to bring about human emancipation, it is in some sense also a barrier. Liberal rights and ideas of justice are premised on the idea that each of us needs protection from other human beings. Therefore liberal rights are designed to protect us from such perceived threats. Freedom on such a view, is freedom from interference. What this view overlooks is the possibility — for Marx, the fact — that real freedom is to be found positively in our relations with other people. It is to be found in human community, not in isolation. So insisting on a regime of rights encourages us to view each other in ways which undermine the possibility of the real freedom we may find in human emancipation. Now we should be clear that Marx does not oppose political emancipation, for he clearly sees that liberalism is a great improvement on the systems of prejudice and discrimination which existed in the Germany of his day. Nevertheless such politically emancipated liberalism must be transcended on the route to genuine human emancipation. Unfortunately Marx never tells us what human emancipation is, although it is clear that it is closely related to the idea of non-alienated labour which we will explore below

Posted: 16 May 2007 05:58 pm Post subject:

"premised on the idea that each of us needs protection from other human beings" -- in my opinion, a very sensible premise, and it will always be with human society until the world itself ends.

If the day someday comes that society has had laws against murder and assault all along, but decades have passed without society having to apply them, because no one has done such things, only then may their begin a discussion about the idea of protection from others having become obsolete. And even then, society shouldn't repeal those laws, just appreciate the end of the need to enforce them, by taking the resources away from enforcement and put those resources where they are needed.

The article that you quoted makes a false dichotomy, as though some scale between positive freedom (let's have wonderful social relationships) and negative freedoms (you are forbidden to kill or assault me) allowed only an either/or choice. The author's phrase "what this view overlooks" shows that an exclusive choice is supposedly to be made. Not only are positive and negative freedoms not bound by an either/or, but, furthermore, they are entirely different uses of the word "freedom", in the same way that "pen" is used in different ways in "a pen is an animal cage" and "a pen is a writing instrument." They cannot be compared for priority. If a writer says that negative freedoms are necessary, this cannot be construed to mean that the writer is relatively deemphasizing positive freedoms.

(On this train of thought, I have just added a topic entitled "The State" to this forum's "fundamentals of marxism" category, and then I posted an opinion to the effect that Marx and Engels have the vocabulary confused.)

Posted: 10 Jun 2007 09:50 am Post subject:

I have been looking at various Christian websites and I have been active at the Messiah Truth Project run by counter missionaries. I picked up some information that God has no form and cannot become a man. Human sacrifice is forbidden in what we would call the Old Testament (an offensive term to use in front of devout Jews) and so there goes Jesus out the window.

Other than that, from the Christian websites that I have skimmed over (no participation) is that they are deathly afraid of socialism and more so of communism. They like the present system because it does not threaten their belief system or worry that the government would force them not to believe in their scriptures or close down their places of worship. Others who love the system are the ones who talk gullible people out of their money.

I do understand the discrimination against atheist since we already discussed that. However, De Leon never wrote against any religious practice in public or private. The Socialist Industrial Union program would not affect religious beliefs, or non belief, and people's life styles would continue. I wonder if this was ever advertised? Commies and anarchist definitely would tell people that they would not tolerate any religion. I do believe they scared a lot of workers away with their attitude.

Posted: 10 Jun 2007 10:56 am Post subject:

John wrote:

and so there goes Jesus out the window.

dave writes:

Holy smokes!!

John wrote:

Other than that, from the Christian websites that I have skimmed over (no participation) is that they are deathly afraid of socialism and more so of communism. They like the present system because it does not threaten their belief system or worry that the government would force them not to believe in their scriptures or close down their places of worship.

dave writes:

forgive them for they know not what they do.

actually, The catholic workers' movement (Dorothy Day) and some groups within established churches are pretty alright. Norman Thomas was an actual preacher.

As to the term Christian - that terms seems co-opted a bit by the religious right. You cannot be a true Christian if you do not believe exactly as they believe (or assume or presume to believe) The very concept of ownership of Christ seems that it could precipitate more than a few lightning bolts directed at the unholy blasphemers.

John wrote:

The Socialist Industrial Union program would not affect religious beliefs, or non belief, and people's life styles would continue. I wonder if this was ever advertised? Commies and anarchist definitely would tell people that they would not tolerate any religion. I do believe they scared a lot of workers away with their attitude.

dave writes:

good observation John, and perhaps that was their purpose if even subliminally?

Posted: 10 Jun 2007 05:16 pm Post subject:

Dave wrote:

Posted: 10 Jun 2007 10:45 pm Post subject:

And as have said at least a half dozen times before the whole idea of from each according to ... comes to us directly from Acts of the Apostles not that it's sociialsm as I see it, but its hard to say that big G is against socialism and/or communism when she wrote that down in the Bible in her own very deified hand.

Posted: 10 Jun 2007 11:18 pm Post subject:

And I love preacher Casey in Grapes of Wrath when he tells Tom of the dream that he had of the great communion of souls so powerful that he just knew that he couldn't preach anymore. Grapes of Wrath Chap 4. If you don't have access I'll OCR the pages. I go back to that section about once a year it's so real.

Posted: 10 Jun 2007 11:29 pm Post subject:

Sad commentary:

Article in Today's AP:

Filed at 1:55 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- Inmates at the federal prison camp in Otisville, N.Y., were stunned by what they saw at the chapel library on Memorial Day -- hundreds of books had disappeared from the shelves.

The removal of the books is occurring nationwide, part of a long-delayed, post-Sept. 11 federal directive intended to prevent radical religious texts, specifically Islamic ones, from falling into the hands of violent inmates.

Three inmates at Otisville filed a lawsuit over the policy, saying their Constitutional rights were violated. They say all religions were affected.

''The set of books that have been taken out have been ones that we used to minister to new converts when they come in here,'' inmate John Okon, speaking on behalf of the prison's Christian population, told a judge last week.

Okon said it was unfortunate because ''I have really seen religion turn around the life of some of these men, especially in the Christian community.''

The government maintained that that the new rules don't entirely clear the shelves of prison chapel libraries.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Feldman told U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain that prison libraries limited the number of books for each religion to between 100 and 150 under the new rules. He said officials would expand the number after choosing a new list of permitted books.

Feldman said the removal order stemmed from an April 2004 Department of Justice review of the way prisons choose Muslim religious services providers. It is not exactly clear why it took so long for the order to be put into effect, but prison officials said they needed time to examine a long list of books.

Feldman said the study was made out of a concern that prisons ''had been radicalized by inmates who were practicing or espousing various extreme forms of religion, specifically Islam, which exposed security risks to the prisons and beyond the prisons to the public at large.''

Feldman said the review by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons concluded that prison chapel libraries were not adequately supervised.

''The presence of extremist chaplains, contractors or volunteers in the BOP's correctional facilities can pose a threat to institutional security and could implicate national security if inmates are encouraged to commit terrorist acts against the United States,'' the bureau's report said.

The review suggested audio and video monitoring of worship areas and chapel classrooms and screening of religious service providers. It also recommended that prisons reduce inmate-led religious services and consider constant staff monitoring of inmate-led services.

A Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman in Washington did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Feldman said inmates are permitted to order books on their own and bypass the chapel libraries. ''So fundamentally this is not a case about what books the inmates have the ability to read,'' he said.

However, inmates say the rules have had a chilling effect.

Inmate Moshe Milstein told the judge by telephone that the chaplain at Otisville removed about 600 books from the chapel library on Memorial Day, including Harold S. Kushner's best-seller ''When Bad Things Happen to Good People,'' a book that Norman Vincent Peale said was ''a book that all humanity needs.''

''There is definitely irreparable harm done to us already, and we would like the court to issue the injunction to get the books back as soon as possible,'' he said.

Inmate Douglas Kelly, who described himself as a representative of the prison's Muslim community, complained of ''a denial of our First Amendment rights.''

He said books on Islam already were the least represented in the library's collections and were reduced by half in the Memorial Day removal.

''A lot of what we are missing were definitely prayer books or prayer guides and religious laws on the part of the Muslim faith,'' he said.

The judge said the lawsuit might be premature because the inmates had not yet followed prison administrative complaint procedures. She declined to block the book removals, the remedy sought by the lawsuit.

Ron Kuby, a civil rights lawyer who has represented a former head Islamic chaplain banned from the state prison system after he was accused of making extremist statements, called the prison book removal ''a mass Memorial Day book burning.''

But he also said there might be limits to relief the prisoners can seek because prisoners' First Amendment rights are severely limited.

Posted: 14 Jun 2007 04:46 am Post subject:

Sorry that I am jumping from post to post but there is a lot on my mind. Capitalism, from the article, will restrict religious teachings when it perceives it a threat to profits I would guess. Any religion is a threat to Anarchism and Communism of every stripe.

Dave wrote:

Posted: 14 Jun 2007 07:09 am Post subject:

Posted: 21 Jun 2007 08:06 am Post subject:

Dave wrote:

Posted: 21 Jun 2007 08:29 am Post subject:

John:

Thanks for the reference I hadn't seen that before. Sure we're both referring to Acts - but also i want to clarify - I didnt meant to imply that the idea of communism came from Acts, for that is how mankind lived for the first years of our existence apparently, no I was referring to the specific words, from each ... to each..., those words came directly from Acts.

dave

Posted: 21 Jun 2007 08:41 am Post subject:

I know you were referring to each to each being taken from Acts. Luxemburg had a good article since the Commonism was not based on production buut on the selling of what they had for distribution. My POV is that they did this among themselves waiting for The Second Coming. Wink

John

Posted: 22 Jun 2007 01:36 am Post subject:

Well I'm not so wild about Comrade Rosa's fact basis. It was a commununism based upon tribalism - a cheap way of living if you have a common theme like a blood line or a new religious belief or place plian old necessity drigving you. Waiting for the second coming or the first meal of the day might be more like it.

e.g. tke a look at Fred at

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/originfamily/ch06.htm

his discription of the remnats of tribalism in the Roman empire.

Posted: 22 Jun 2007 09:54 am Post subject:

Sorry Dave...file not found but I do have the PDF file which I will read.

Posted: 22 Jun 2007 10:37 am Post subject:

Try it again.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch06.htm

also I repair some mispelling in my previous post:

"a cheap way of living if you have a common theme like a blood line or a new religious belief or plain old necessity driving you"

dave