<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Michael--<br><br>Two brief comments in place of a detailed answer:<br><br>[1] I think we disagree about human nature and its ethical implications. Although our knowledge of human nature is limited, the importance of examining it, especially as a guide to human and humane behavior, has been clear from early on (gnothi seauton) - and is discarded only in the (now quite passé) post-modern world. From Aristotle to Chomsky (via Humboldt and Marx, among others) it has led to imbricated ethical and political conclusions that seem to me quite valid.<br><br>[2] I deny "anachronistically torturing the Ten Commandments into an anarchist manifesto." My notes on the religion of ancient Israel as a compound of atheism and anarchism (i.e., a rejection of the typical theos [god] and arche [sovereignty] of the ancient Near East) are only a severe summary of the results of several generations of criticism of the Hebrew bible - which as you know is the source of principles and even the vocabulary (exegesis, hermeneutics, etc.) of modern literary and historical criticism. "Always historicize," indeed. <br><br>The decalogue in historical context was in fact "a revolutionary manifesto, dedicated to the overthrow of traditional authority and religion." The daughter religions (in Jacob Neusner's phrase) of the religion of ancient Israel - Christianity, Judaism, and Islam - struggle to live up to those as it were founding principles. The principal danger is that they are always able to be turned into religion, i.e. a guarantor of oppressive authority. (All three recognize the danger: e.g., "Jesus called them and said to them, ‘You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant…'" Mark 10:42f. and parallels.) <br><br>More later, perhaps. Regards, Carl <div><br></div><div><br><div><div>On Nov 3, 2012, at 5:38 PM, Michael Gaiuranos <<a href="mailto:michaelgaiuranos@gmail.com">michaelgaiuranos@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Hi Carl:<br>
<br>
Thanks for the reply. Before adding more, I want to emphasize that the purpose
in my responding was in what I perceive as the "call for suggestions"
from people who, for various reasons, can't or won't make it to meetings.
Hence, I am advocating for the kind of plurality that the Jains (and Jung), for
instance, advocate and that Berlin (in Russian Thinkers) notes has historically
been very difficult for humans and human societies to maintain. This is not
just for "humanitarian" reasons: the variety present in such a
plurality ultimately proves more creative, more strategic, and more political
WHEN the group in question can abide by the surface and irreconcilable
differences that such plurality presupposes. If all I'm doing is cluttering up
various list-servs with essentially a non-public conversation, it'd be better
to shift to that domain.<br>
<br>
Summary: [1] the ascription of a single "ultimate desire" to people
(be that freedom, solidarity, understanding, or universality) overgeneralizes
the ultimate desire of one group to the detriment of all other groups; whether
this plays out socially between men and women (as different groups) or through
groups of people (that contain men and women alike) is of secondary importance.
<br>
<br>
[2] Whatever the merits, internal logic, and moral exhortations of Humboldt's
argument (as you have presented it), it leaves unaddressed those cases where
one's SELF-constrained choices (to limit one's freedom) fails or refuses to acknowledge
SOCIALLY-constrained obligations. Where these socially-constrained obligations
get unmet I'm calling irresponsibility. We can assume, with legitimate
optimism, that the great mass of men will want to freely choose even those
social obligations as their own (i.e., it may be a social injunction that I
murder no one, and if I take up that injunction it is because my self accepts
that to be worthy of assent to), even where women are concerned, but this
offers no mechanism (except a cynical insistence on self-interest) to prevent
men (or anyone) from choose not to be constrained by those things that are
truly socially worth keeping. It also means that culture generally will not
necessarily adopt a moral attitude toward neighboring cultures (internal or external).
<br>
<br>
[3] Anachronistically torturing the Ten Commandments into an anarchist
manifesto unnecessarily LIMITS the range of any manifesto we might derive by
that process. Moreover, the liberation that followed from the exodus required
genocide for its implementation; any liberation as an exodus from capitalism
that requires genocide is not desirable, if only because we must perforce be
the victims of that genocide.<br>
<br>
============================================<br>
<br>
And now, in more detail:<br>
<br>
[1] With regard to exclusive or non-exclusive language, first of all my
emphasis was not a critique of the use of the word "man". Rather, I
am saying exactly the opposite of what you propose, because it may be the case
(that is, I suspect it's very likely) that while it's likely accurate to say
that for many men his "...central attribute is his freedom," I won't
assume that for all women that their central attribute is (a desire for
freedom). But more than this, I'm not entirely comfortable or on-board with insisting
on a gender distinction of this--although one can locate plenty of (admittedly
only partial) cultural phenomena to support such a distinction. Rather, I think
there are many people (male and female alike) who desire freedom (the so-called
self-determination) as a central attribute and others (male and female alike)
who desire relationship (what I called nonself-determination) as well. Still
others, male and female, could care less about this and are interested in
abstracting a systematic explanation for the world while still others (male and
female alike) who assert a mystical truth that makes us all into one. I'm not
offering these categories with sufficient distinction nor with necessary
insistence, other than to say that something like these irreconcilable differences
of opinion do exist and confront one another culturally. So, if I accept a
dubious gendered distinction between men (who want freedom, i.e., the right to
freedom from determination) and women (who want the determination, i.e., the
right to determine their freedoms), then the "take away" point in all
of that is the irreconcilable and incommensurable value-systems involved in
that. Collapsing the gendered distinction of man and woman into "human
being" erases this into a weak (and complicitly patriarchal) universalism.<br>
<br>
[2]. I'm a bit unclear how exactly reprising "that while they would break
all fetters in human society, they would attempt to find as many new social
bonds as possible. The isolated man is no more able to develop than the
one who is fettered" answers the issue of "freedom as
irresponsibility" and "freedom from accountability". Let's
assume Humboldt intends, in the rejection of State-mandated (or socially
mandated) constraints so that one might then freely choose one's own
constraints, that the choice of such constraints would not be for the sake of
irresponsibility or non-accountability (to the social world). If that's
Humboldt's point, I congratulate him for expressing an arguably socially
desirable premise. Meanwhile, it is not an understatement--particularly in the
domain of sex and sexual freedom--that men far and away (through infidelity,
prostitution, and rape) exhibit a tremendously disparately greater range of
(sexual) freedom; where sexual freedom is concerned, this not only informs the
sexual freedoms practiced by women but also those freedoms allowed to women, or
even what are described (in cultural discourses) as sexual freedoms allowed to
women, even to this day in our own country (if we're going to pretend we're
cutting edge in that regard). So, if Humboldt's agreement is internally
coherent, and it may be, that's well and good. But, as someone said (it may
have been Kate Ferguson Ellis herself in her study of Gothic fiction, The
Contested Castle, or she may have been quoting someone in that work) but the
separation of the spheres between the (masculine) world of work and the
(feminine) world of domesticity that got especially pushed as the bourgeoisie
rose to power required, in order to work, one central and crucial assumption:
his generosity and her complaisance. The phenomenon of domesticate abuse, which
Gothic fiction in one sense represents a critique of and cry for help against,
results exactly where the man reneges on his part of this bargain. To see this
point carried out to the nth degree, one only has to read de Sade, who in his
own way takes the premises of the separation of the spheres (or, if you prefer,
the conventions of the Gothic novel) and rewrites them with a tremendous
enthusiasm for inverting completely every moral injunction assumed (or at least
expected) of the one who is expected to be generous in this setting.<br>
<br>
In general, Humboldt has long been to my taste. But what my studies of 18th
century female-authored fiction made apparent was how merely tidying up the
exclusivist language of the era doesn't erase the problems present in it. What
this means for us today and now is: how do our cries for freedom not issue at
the expense of others (in the context of this discussion, particularly at the
expense of women, who will still be shouldered with the task of mothering,
teaching, nursing) so that "everyone else" (male or female) can be
free. Perhaps another way to put this is that "freedom" must
necessarily be "freedom from" and what is that from? Freedom from the
mutual obligation imposed by marriage? Freedom from culpability for child
support from idly fathered children?<br>
<br>
I'm not disregarding that Humboldt may not be saying, "freedom under all
circumstances, damn all of your demands," but I'm very leery that a call
for "freedom" that ignores specificity of what that freedom is
"from," easily lapses back into reprising undesirable social
patterns. And since we're white males, who benefit primarily from those social
patterns (however much to our detriment), then I become even sketchier at any
kind of argument that "our freedom" is different or acceptable than
other calls for freedom. This whole exchange is a fabulous luxury--to say
nothing of all of the time and work we were able to spend reading the people
involved in order to have it; other people are busy staying alive. And so are
we, and this is a part of what it means to be alive for us. But it takes no
imagination at all to call this irresponsible. And it takes no imagination to
see how calls for freedom, whether Humboldt's or others, isn't wholly
irresponsible in practice or essence. The opportunity to look at the world in a
strictly individualistic way is not just a luxury, the demand that others
should do so as well is tantamount to a death sentence, since society is
arranged in such a way that the resources needed to support such individualism
are explicitly denied to them in the first place. This, if you will, is why
"poor" people the world over can "afford" to be generous.<br>
<br>
So if Humboldt's argument contains a kernel that answers the noneforceability
of accountability apparent in his argument (as you have presented it), then
that's the part to bring up, not that he abstractly excludes
"irresponsibility" from his notion of freedom. Obviously, he will
believe he does not include that. He'd be kind of ignorant to ignore that his
calls for freedom need to be balanced by something (if not the demands of the
social, since that's what wants elimination). The immediate answer would be education,
or more properly acculturation: you raise men who already want nothing more
than to "be generous" in light of women's "willingness" to
be complaisant. (I put "willingness" in quotation marks because in
the circumstances of the time, the social structures that existed enforced such
complaisance. Recall, women could not inherit anything; if their husbands died,
they had to hope for the generosity of his relatives or they were turned out
into the street. Recall that at the time to attempt self-employment was
extremely onerous, if not socially humiliating--to say nothing of the travails
of going into the sex trade. These social structures far more aggressively
extorted complaisance out of women. by comparison, men only had their social
reputation at work and, to be sure, in the 18th century, that was a mighty
force indeed. But it meant only that so long as all of a man's peccadilloes or
major crimes occurred in the household, then no one had to know about them, and
they would continue unabated.)<br>
<br>
To be clear: "complaisance" means "the quality of being
complaisant, amiable, or agreeable," where "complaisant" means:
"compliant, willing to do what pleases others, and polite or showing
respect". It is not the same as "complacent."<br>
<br>
[3] In general, I find the arguments given for the Ten Commandments
anachronistic, against the tradition of interpretation accorded to them in
Jewish sources ("thou shalt not steal" as "thou shalt not buy
and sell human beings" didn't give anyone pause while buying and selling
wives, for instance), and gratuitously limiting in terms of what we, as human
beings, might demand as moral exhortations, particularly in that most of the
injunctions are negative ("thou shalt not"); one commentary in this
regard claims that greater spiritual merit accrues in the choice of NOT doing
something rather than by CHOOSING to do something. Kant might disagree. I
suggest you'd arrive at a less patriarchal, more workable vision of anarchism
by not yoking that vision (pre- or post-Reformation) to any biblical source.<br>
<br>
Whatever the Torah had to say prior to its revisions by Ezra and Nehemiah are
now apocryphal (unless we want to accept the Samaritans long-standing claim
that the practice of Judaism brought back from Babylonian exile was
illegitimate), what we now have from circa 450BCE represents a nadir in the
valuation of women. It's not the only such nadir, it's just the best known and
most promulgated, but it guarantees that the discourse we carry on (even now)
is grossly distorted by patriarchal values. The demonization of Eve is only the
second step, which is preceded by the denial of a Creatrix. The injunction
against other gods has as its object especially the cults of the Great Goddess
(particularly Astarte). In a practical expression of this, despite the
injunction against lying, which you name as being opposed to the Pharaonic
practice of deceit, in cases of rape, the truthfulness of women brought
punishment down upon them; or one could say, male lying about rape shielded
them from punishment and thus preserved the status quo in exactly the way that
you describe "thou shalt not lie" as being opposed to. You
acknowledge that "honor thy mother and father" drops the mother, and
yet still call this overwhelmingly patriarchal set of commandments as the root of
revolution. It's a revolution that women get only dragged along in at best, as
mothers to the next wave of suicide bombers. (I updated the social
consequences.) Not that this is only true in Islamic settings; all mothers in
Israel give their children to the military.<br>
<br>
I think here is a very adequate summary of the commandments, which can only be
numbered ten by some fancy exegeting: they describe: "the greatest
obligation (to worship only God), the greatest injury to a person (murder), the
greatest injury to family bonds (adultery), the greatest injury to commerce and
law (bearing false witness), the greatest intergenerational obligation (honor
to parents), the greatest obligation to community (truthfulness), the greatest
injury to moveable property (theft)"<br>
<br>
Let us remember that the overwhelming percentage of the text referred as the 10
commandments is taken up with the first give, which exclusive involve "the
greatest obligation" (to worship only YHWH). The text doesn't merely list
injunctions but expatiates all over the place about the details; calling this
an injunction against religion profoundly misses the mark. It's utterly
unnecessary to erect some fantasy this could be the case to argue on behalf of
atheism. Gerda Lerner notes that prior to the cultic revisions, the intolerant
monotheism implicit in "worship none but YHWH" became explicit and
became the basis for exterminating "nonbelievers". Presumably prior
to that, as the Samaritans suggest and reflect, the "worship only
YHWH" part did not demand or imply the annihilation of one's neighbors.<br>
<br>
As for the rest, does identifying the greatest injury to a person, family
bonds, commerce and law, and moveable property credibly and sufficiently
identify? Does the identification of these greatest injuries as murder,
adultery, perjury, and theft represent a credible or compelling list of
ultimate injuries? (It's controversial whether "bearing false
witness" should be understood in a legalistic term, as something like
perjury, or more generally, as lying.)<br>
<br>
I'm not claim the 10Cs are supposed to be a total moral system, so don't
misread what I'm saying that way. They merely point to fundamentals.<br>
<br>
Is murder the worst you can do to a person? (If so, why argue a moral system
that takes slavery as the most fundamental wrong? It would seem slavery is a
more pernicious crime against a person. Murder denies one the capacity to live,
and if man's fundamental nature is freedom, then freedom not only denies the
right to live, but also denies the fundamental nature as well.) Is adultery the
most damaging act against family bonds? (In which case, why are men and women
treated different in adultery?) Marriage, as an institution, was imposed by
one's parents. Just as one is expected to obey and worship the Authority of
god, so must you obey the authority of the parents and not be adulterous. (This
is why honor thy mother and father are necessarily commandment 6). Similarly,
since YHWH and parents are infallible authorities, one should similarly honor
judges. Even to this day, it is imperative at times to lie in court for higher
moral causes, or simply to refuse to speak facts and be punished with contempt
of court charges. And, in a doctrine of anarchism, can theft really be the
ultimate offense against moveable property, when property is theft? The
hypocrisy is glaring and apparent, even without Jean Valjean's
"crime".<br>
<br>
One might recall also that Dante reckoned sodomy, blasphemy, and usury as worse
than murder--and quite apart from whether I agree with him or not, the idea
that murder is the worst thing you can do to someone belies a lack of
imagination.<br>
<br>
What particularly underlies all of these injunctions is the opposite of the
antiauthoritarianism you name, and I doubt that's merely because at some
historical point we totally got the 10C's backward. The issue isn't historical
accuracy, of course, but current utility. Do we get anywhere socially by this
deliberate misreading of the 10Cs? The very fact of resorting to them may be
irremediably indicted with authoritarianism. To make something useable out of them
would involve changing them so completely that one would better have started
from scratch, just as people try to rescue the Golden Rule from its moral
ambiguities, when one might more simply recall the Eastern moral injunction,
"harm none." Doesn't get much more straightforward than that.<br>
<br>
I'm not sure if it's helpful to go far enough backward in time, prior to a
capitalism and religion uninfected by the inputs that helped construct both
since the 18th century in the areas that called themselves civilization. My
point was that the swapping of the metaphor of Mother (as State) in place of
the metaphor of Father (as State) is a difference of emphasis rather than kind,
and particularly problematic in view of "civilization's" rampant sexism
(patriarchal structuring).<br>
<br>
I realize this is a bit "alongside" your response, but then so was
your response. We can say that authoritarianism is a human problem, not a judeochristian
or capitalistic problem, and that judeochristianity (and Islam) and capitalism (particularly
as it was practiced by the Fathers of Industry and Fathers of Science who were
probably more oppressively awful to their own families than Kings were to their
subjects on average) reflect in the main (with whatever lip service otherwise
was seen as necessary) the human problem of authoritarianism. That leaves
authoritarianism as a problem to be solved regardless in our metaphors for the
State as we (all of us) discourse to try to find alternatives to it.<br>
<br>
Thinking of the myth of the Garden of Eden, it is clear that that's a narrative
written by children, not parents. Children blame their parents for everything.
It is parents who fucked everything up, and children can only try to make the
best of a bad situation. it's also apparently a myth written by boys, because
Mom is particularly blamed for fucking things up. No parent, and certainly no
mother (except a genuine traitor to her own kin) ever would have written that
myth. Had a parent written it, they would have insisted they did their best,
would have insisted nothing else could have been done, and so forth. It's no
accident, I contend, that this shows up later in the book of Job, where YHWH
says, "Who are you to question me." But I'm bogging down in details
now. (In point of fact, when one looks at some of the oldest myths in the
world, our status as "child" relative to Nature is certainly an
accurate "starting point". Other world myths, however, don't demonize
the divine parents, who themselves are a later set of figures compared to a
vast undifferentiated Nature in the earliest myths--usually identified as
female, yes, but sometimes bisexual or asexual).<br>
<br>
The point I want to make is that the biblical template has a schizophrenically
parentalistic (not just paternalistic) emphasis. In Genesis 1, written later,
the children blame the parents for the original condition. In Genesis 2,
written first, the father already browbeats his children and demands their
unflinching obedience. In part, this is because children grow up into parents.
But the bottom line for us, searching for alternatives to the current
undesirable social order, means that we remain stuck on either side of
authoritarianism--either we blame others for fucking up or we make excuses for
our own fucking up.<br>
<br>
But we know from statistic that abused children don't always (or even often)
grow up into abusers. The myth that we're doomed to become what we hated as
children (the authoritarianism we rejected as unfair) is just that, a myth. And
so long as we stay stuck in a choice of metaphors between Father, Mother, or
Son (patriarchy excuses Daughters from participating, except as future Mothers,
so there is no need to ask them their opinion), as the only major organizing
metaphors you can pull out of the bible (consider again the Ten Commandments),
then we'll stay stuck. Hence I reject any impulse to make a virtue (or even a
necessity) of the vice of the bible.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 5:54 PM, C.
G. Estabrook <<a href="mailto:carl@newsfromneptune.com" target="_blank"><span style="color:blue">carl@newsfromneptune.com</span></a>> wrote:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Michael--</span></p><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Without attempting to respond to
your whole argument, I'd offer the following remarks:</span></p><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">[1] The sentence in question (it's
an important one) - "For Humboldt as for Rousseau, and before him the
Cartesians, man's central attribute is his freedom" - comes from a text
written more than 40 years ago, when care to avoid exclusivist language was not
so pronounced, so to speak. The meaning of the passage would be unaffected,
were it to read "...the human being's central attribute is her/his freedom."
And the change would not affect the rest of Chomsky's argument (nor yours).
(See Noam Chomsky, "Government in the Future," Seven Stories
Press.) </span></p><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">[2] The classical liberal concept of
freedom - which Chomsky thinks leads on to anarchism in an age of industrial
capitalism - as an essential element of human nature would be opposed to
irresponsibility and license, as contrary to that human nature.
"...a classical liberal doctrine ... is not primitive
individualis[m], in the style of for example Rousseau. So Rousseau extols the
savage who lives within himself, but Humboldt's vision is entirely
different: '...the whole tenor of the ideas and arguments unfolded in this
essay might fairly be reduced to this: that while they would break all fetters
in human society, they would attempt to find as many new social bonds as
possible. The isolated man is no more able to develop than the one who is
fettered.'"</span></p><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">[3] The notion of the state that you
describe is I think less "judeochristian-esque" than capitalist. If
you'll forgive my quoting myself from a seven-year-old article, here's the
briefest of sketches of how I think we got from one to the other <<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2005/03/29/the-subversive-commandments/" target="_blank"><span style="color:blue">http://www.counterpunch.org/2005/03/29/the-subversive-commandments/</span></a>>:</span></p><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">The Subversive Commandments<br>
<br>
Ignoring government assaults on the Bill of Rights (for which, admittedly, the
remedy under the present US Constitution is impeachment, the responsibility of
Congress) the US Supreme Court has instead fastened its attention on a
political fetish-object: the Ten Commandments. In the midst of an illegal war,
a torture scandal, and lawless administration actions — such as
imprisoning an American citizen, Jose Padilla, for almost three years now
without trial or charge — the court recently heard arguments on
the question (as the New York Times put it), "what does it mean for
the government to display a copy of the Ten Commandments? … a six-foot red
granite monument that has sat since 1961 on the grounds of the Texas
Capitol, and framed copies of the Ten Commandments that were hung five years
ago on the walls of two Kentucky courthouses."<br>
<br>
In an impressive confirmation of the Postmodernist-cum-Humpty-Dumpty theory of
the meaning of words ("The question is," said Humpty Dumpty,
"which is to be master — that’s all"), both sides (as we say)
tell us what the Ten Commandments mean. Conservatives defend the postings in
Kentucky and Texas on the grounds that the Ten Commandments "formed the
foundation of American legal tradition." Liberals on the other hand insist
that the posting is an "establishment of religion," contrary to the
first amendment to the Constitution. In fact, both are wrong: the Ten
Commandments in their historical setting are a revolutionary manifesto,
dedicated to the overthrow of traditional authority and religion.<br>
<br>
The Ten Commandments (unnumbered) were written down perhaps as early as the
fifth century BCE in two passages in the Hebrew bible (Exodus 20:1-17 and
Deuteronomy 5:6-21), but they represent a view that goes back perhaps another
eight centuries to the beginnings of the people of Israel — who were probably
not originally what we would call "an ethnic group." As
described by Norman Gottwald in his magisterial _The Tribes of Yahweh_, the
Israelites as a people began in a revolution of slaves against the
Egyptian empire, a massive rejection of the society of the time. That
society was one of authority and religion, presided over by a king whose
position was guaranteed by the gods. The Hebrews (the word seems
originally to have meant "outlaws") rejected both the kings and the
gods.<br>
<br>
The Exodus events of perhaps the thirteenth century BCE were not so much a
migration (as is pictured in the bible story) but a "going out"
(exodus) from a society and its assumptions. The Ten Commandments are a
proclamation of that revolution, a "Declaration of Independence of
Liberated Israel."<br>
<br>
The text begins with the presentation of a liberator, styled YHWH (a form of
the Hebrew verb "to be"), "who brought you out of the house of
slavery." YHWH is not a god in the sense of the surrounding society.
Gods guarantee authority, and YHWH destroys it: "You shall have no
gods." Idolatry is the greatest sin in Judaism, Christianity and
Islam because it means bowing down before symbols of oppression. Even an
image of YHWH is forbidden — the only image of YHWH is humanity (Genesis 1:26).
To "misuse" the name of YHWH is not a matter of saying
"goddamn": it is to use the name to wield numinous power, as was done
with the names of the gods — that is to say, it is to practice religion.
The Ten Commandments forbid religion (Exodus 20: 1-7).<br>
<br>
The commandment about the sabbath has nothing to do with going to church. On
that day, "You shall not do any work": it is a commandment against
the idolatry of work. The revolutionary Israelites were slaves, valued
only for their work. "We are people, but you have forgotten it." The
next commandment is similar. "Honor your parents" has nothing to
do with obedience: it means not to discard people just because they are too old
to work.<br>
<br>
The rest of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:8-17) are a picture of the society
that was being rejected, a society that claimed the power of life and death
("You shall not kill"). The commandment against adultery is not
primarily about sex (the Hebrew bible isn’t very interested in sex) and the
commandment against stealing is not about property — they’re against
stealing people. Biblical scholars have recognized for many years that these commandments
are condemnations of the powerful who invaded households to
steal concubines and slaves.<br>
<br>
Such a society is based on greed ("You shall not covet") and requires
the protection of lies ("You shall not bear false witness"). The Ten
Commandments sketch the sort of society that the Israelites thought
themselves called upon by YHWH to construct. The commandments are not primarily
individual but communal, a demand for a just community, without the
domination and stratification of most previous (and most subsequent)
civilization.<br>
<br>
Three-quarters of the history of Christianity had gone by before the Ten
Commandments became, on the eve of the Reformation, the primary expression of
morality in western Europe — and then only after a revolutionary
reinterpretation, as the modern attempt to discover their original intent (as
the lawyers would say) shows. For over a thousand years, the tradition of
the seven deadly sins, from late antiquity, formed the basis of Christian moral
exhortation — not the Ten Commandments. The historian John Bossy writes,
"For Chaucer, and indeed for Dante, these had been a high doctrine, to be
left to divines; there were still in the sixteenth century quite well-informed
Catholics … who had never heard of them … [the] transition to the Ten
Commandments as the moral system of the West … may fairly be described as
revolutionary."<br>
<br>
What prompted the revolution in moral theory was the rise of capitalism, as can
be seen in the reinterpretation of the crucial commandment in the early modern
world, that about "honoring your father" ("and your
mother" — set aside for obvious reasons). An entire structure of obedience
is spun out of it — and the other commandments are reinterpreted in its
light — now that the (quite different) notions of of authority in the
thousand-year reign of feudalism are coming to an end. Protestants and
Catholics alike rather suddenly turned to the Commandments, wrenched from
their historical context and twisted in an authoritarian direction.<br>
<br>
The Ten Commandments in their proper historical context commend atheism in
regard to the religion of the gods and anarchism in respect to the laws of the
kings. Arising from a revolutionary people, they support the overthrow of
authoritarian structures in the name of human community. That sounds pretty
good to me.</span></p><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Regards, CGE</span></p><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">On Nov 2, 2012, at 2:33 PM, Michael
Gaiuranos <<a href="mailto:michaelgaiuranos@gmail.com" target="_blank"><span style="color:blue">michaelgaiuranos@gmail.com</span></a>> wrote:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><br style="">
<br style="">
</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">CG and Generally:<br>
<br>
A wonderfully long reply I will not do justice to here now, but I want to add
two points as contextualizations. And since I'm often fatally long-winded, here
they are summarized: (1) any discussion of the character of the State (and our
relationship to it) will be improved by finding alternatives to the
judeochristian-esque elements of the discourse that inform our discussions of
the State; (2) To the extent that "freedom" socially functions as
"irresponsibility" or "license," then those who are asked
to bear the costs of that irresponsibility or license have a claim against such
a conceptualization. <br>
<br>
Both of these are offers (additions, not substitutions) that we all have
necessarily partial understandings of the needs, goals, purposes called for in
social action, so let's not fight about the truth of those partial
understandings but instead draw on their variety as inputs for collective
doing-together.<br>
<br>
===============<br>
(1). Part of what is at stake in Carl's reply and the discourse of what social
action could be taken (or wants to be taken locally/collectively) involves the
details of the metaphor used to describe the State. At the risk of hijacking
the point (especially amongst those who see religion as a waste of time), I'm
going to distinguish our (unfortunately) familiar notion of the Divine (colloquially
known in judeochristian/Islamic terms as god) with a less familiar conception
(known broadly elsewhere as the Supreme Consciousness--and specifically Krishna
in the Bhagavad-Gita).<br>
<br>
I propose there is a justness in bringing this up not because anyone here
believes this but because the judeochristian sense of the divine is, itself,
already a symptom of an outlook (as Krishna is also a symptom of a different
outlook) that underpins vast tracts of other discourses where we live. Yahweh
and Krishna (one could substitute Vishnu, Shiva, Kali, Brahman, Brahma
here--and the fact that one can do this substitution shows the difference of
discourse) are symbols of the broader cultural discourse. because they are
cultural fictions, perhaps the discourse shows up in its purist form.<br>
<br>
The root difference between Yahweh and Krishna (as a metaphor for the State):
humankind serves Yahweh, while Krishna serves humankind. With Yahweh, the State
works in mysterious ways and we are enjoined to work in the ignorance of faith,
grateful for whatever beneficences befall us, uncomplaining at whatever rigors
are asked or exacted upon us, and never questioning (or, if we do, getting
reminded of the Book of Job) that we are small petty things who don't and can't
understand. Of course, in all of this, Yahweh (the State) claims to love us,
claims that any violence it practices upon us is for our own good, and so on.
At root is the ultimate mystery we can and do ask, "Why again do You need
me for anything?" Why in the world does the all-powerful, all-knowing
State need me for anything? One can sense here exactly an article of bad faith.
If my labor (or worship is required, then Yahweh cannot be so all-powerful. At
worst, this is a trick to deny my agency and extort my obedience (if not
loyalty). How can the State require our worship if we are nothing and can
accomplish nothing without It ... and so on. Sheer pragmatism dictates to us
its better really to act as if Yahweh (the State) doesn't exist. Certainly one
should never ask anything of It--at best, you will be ignored; at worst, you
might get Its attention. &c.<br>
<br>
In contrast, Krishna provides an image of the State first and foremost not as a
permanent truth but simply the current manifestation. Here, the State serves as
our charioteer; the State serves us, ever ready to answer, to each according to
her needs, the questions of what is to be done. The existential circumstance of
this--the metaphysics behind Krishna as an image--could be brought in to
complicate this more. But when Krishna is asked if he would explain something,
he replies, "I would be delighted." Transparency is his metier.
Assisting the ends of humankind is his elemental purpose. In this metaphor, the
status of the individual is very different as well, and the answers, "Why
should I worship You" are various, but one of the first is (as Buddha said
explicitly), "Don't worship me." The details of this for the
individual I leave to some other time, but it makes a seque to my second point,
which is briefer.<br>
<br>
Summary: (1) the discussion of the character of the State (and our relationship
to it) may be improved by ferretting out the judeochristian-esque elements of
the discourse that inform our discussions of it.<br>
<br>
(2). Central to CG's reply is the sentence: "For Humboldt as for Rousseau,
and before him the Cartesians, man's central attribute is his freedom."<br>
<br>
Emphasis on "man". I hear this, and I think of the demand (by men)
especially since the enlightenment for women to remain in the home, to remain
innocent (i.e., ignorant), and all the rest. This isn't just a euroamerican
phenomenon of course, but we're in a euroamerican context presently, sot hat's
what I speak to. nor am I simply pointing to the androcentricity of the whole
argument here. To a very great degree, the notion of freedom (particularly as
described in CG's reply) is freedom from determination, freedom from
"unnatural" constrains--and its exactly that that leads to
libertarianism and a need to rescue Humboldt etc from their logical opposition
to the "unnatural constraint" of a State. This "desire for
freedom" (legitimate or not) manifests continuously in our culture as a
desire for irresponsibility, a desire for non-accountability, a desire for--to
put it in a word--license, more than liberty. This is how my friend Neil
jokingly paraphrased "libertarians as Republicans who want to do
drugs."<br>
<br>
The point, of course, is that this freedom (as license, more than liberty--and,
to be sure, it's not like no one has not commented on this: HG Wells for one
asserted that a reduction of liberty leads to an increase of freedom)--this
freedom occurs in a social context, where the self-determining men do so if not
at the expense of women then in the general absence of them. Neumann's Origins
and History of Consciousness (and Campbell's hero mythos) takes as fundamental
the need to separate from the "determination" of
"mother"--and thus, generally, any determination of women in general.
Thus, the demands of women must--if one is to existentially express "</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times","serif"">man is in his essence [as] a free, searching,
self-perfecting being, </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">"--be ignored or, worse,
combatively denied or denigrated to achieve that "freedom".<br>
<br>
The answer to this does not ineluctably lead to the conclusion that women must
also be thought of as "in her essence a free, searching, self-perfecting
being". If women would be rid of the shackles that patriarchy place on
them--and it's hard to imagine they wouldn't want that--then what
"freedom" means for women in that sense is different than what
freedom means in Humboldt's sense etc (for men). I don't think it's overreading
CG's response to say that one (implicit) metaphor to express the point he is
making--to rescue the logically anti-statist view of Humboldt etc from that to
revisit it in our contemporaneous setting--is an image of state as Mother.
Except to say that the metaphor of Krishna as State is not the metaphor of
Mother as State, it seems obvious that judeochristian conceit of Father as All
explicitly hides the implicit labor of the Mother. This is all for show, it always
has been, for She must be there, because She always has been and is and will
be. Covertly shifting the emphasis of the State's character from the
overbearing metaphor of Father to a nurturing, supportive metaphor of Mother as
State may seem exciting for men who want to be supported while fleeing from the
determination of women to experience an essential freedom, but it does nothing
to desiccate the socially problematic equation of women with Mother that would
leave the shackles in place so men may pursue freedom).<br>
<br>
Against the desire for non-determination by others (what would positively be
called self-determination), there is also the deep desire for relationship with
others, which necessarily presupposes and cannot get rid of determination. Our
most familiar image of this, if we've experienced it, arises precisely in
nondysfunctional families, where the diversity of human expression gets
subsumed under the notion, "We're a family." Sometimes motehrs make
this argument, sometimes fathers, so it's not merely a gendered issue. The
claim to throw off the determinants of the State in order to be free is simply
a restatement of, "So long, Mom. Gotta jet." Even the Christian hero
(Jesus) spits on his mother (so to speak) on the cross. But this says nothing
for what the "mother" is supposed to do. If the impulse to
"relationship" gets ensconced in our culture primarily with Woman,
who is asked to keep together the family, then advocating freedom becomes a
denigration of woman. Either we may say negatively that Woman (with a capital
"W" this is referring to no specific women) "doesn't want
freedom" or (positively) that She wants relationship, interdependence. The
often proposed "solution" of interdependence as for the problem of
too much dependance and or independence thus misses the mark. It only address
half (if that) of the problem.<br>
<br>
The inadequacy of this shows on the social plane where
"interdependence" should manifest as "community". And (in
point of fact) we ARE interdependent in this sense; my well-being is a function
of my interdependent social well-being, but the recognition of that in the
social domain is so vitiated that (1) finding allies who agree is rare, and (2)
trying to model my behavior on that premise gets misread in light of the lack
of recognition. (I'm covertly pointing back to Krishna as a metaphor of State
rather than Mother by saying this, because Krishna emphasizes how our
ignorance, our partial understanding, of social reality becomes the source of
all woe). The various calls by feminists to acknowledge a "female"
sense of relationship points to this, but I will insist that
"interdependence" (as constructed in a patriarchal culture) does not
avoid the pitfalls of patriarchal culture yet. A call for "interdependence"
thus looks like a demand to put on chains, because it is read as a resistance
to "freedom" (just as we read in CG's reply that self-determination
becomes the right to pick which chains one wants to wear). Clearly, it's the
terminology int he discourse that's the first chain, and I'd sooner try without
that as a first step.<br>
<br>
And since I limited myself to the man/woman part of the equation involved in
"</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times","serif"">And, since man is in his essence a
free, searching, self-perfecting being, </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">"
I necessarily left out the issues of class and race that would equally and
fruitfully be brought in as a further qualification of too much unbridled
enthusiasm for freedom and the State as a means for attaining that. <br>
<br>
Summary: To the extent that freedom is irresponsibility or license, those asked
to bear the costs of that irresponsibility have a claim to raise against such a
conceptualization of "freedom".<br>
<br style="">
<br style="">
</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 9:22 PM, C.
G. Estabrook <<a href="mailto:carl@newsfromneptune.com" target="_blank"><span style="color:blue">carl@newsfromneptune.com</span></a>> wrote:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">From the Enlightenment & the
rise of capitalism we've lived in a world in which what makes us human - our
purposeful work of head and hands - is taken out of our control. We have to
sell our work - better, rent it - to the owners of capital if we want to eat regularly
("get a job"): we work under their direction. This is alienation - an
objective situation, not just a psychological state. </span></p><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">That this situation is an insult to
human nature - and seen to be such for generations - was pointed in the first
lecture I ever heard Noam Chomsky delicer, "Government in the
Future" (1971). A selection follows. --CGE</span></p><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">==========================</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">...</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times","serif"">One
of the earliest and most brilliant expositions of this position is in Wilhelm
Von Humboldt's "Limits of State Action", which was written in 1792,
though not published for 60 or 70 years after that. In his view: "The
state tends to make man an instrument to serve its arbitrary ends, overlooking
his individual purposes. And, since man is in his essence a free, searching,
self-perfecting being, it follows that the state is a profoundly anti-human
institution." That is, its actions, its existence, are ultimately
incompatible with the full harmonious development of human potential in its
richest diversity. Hence incompatible with what Humboldt, and in the following
century Marx, Bakunin, Mill, and many others, what they see as the true end of
man. And for the record I think that this is an accurate description.</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times","serif"">The modern conservative tends to
regard himself as the lineal descendant of the classical liberal in this sense,
but I think that can be maintained only from an extremely superficial point of
view, as one can see by studying more carefully the fundamental ideas of
classical libertarian thought as expressed, in my opinion, in its most profound
form by Humboldt.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times","serif"">I think the issues are of really
quite considerable contemporary significance, and if you don't mind what may
appear to be a somewhat antiquarian excursion, I'd like to expand on them.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times","serif"">For Humboldt as for Rousseau, and
before him the Cartesians, man's central attribute is his freedom. "To
enquire and to create, these are the centers around which all human pursuits
more or less directly revolve." "But," he goes on to say,
"all moral cultures spring solely and immediately from the inner life of
the soul and can never be produced by external and artificial contrivances. The
cultivation of the understanding, as of any man's other faculties, is generally
achieved by his own activity, his own ingenuity, or his own methods of using
the discoveries of others."</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times","serif"">Well, from these assumptions, quite
obviously, an educational theory follows and he develops it, but I won't pursue
it. But also far more follows. Humboldt goes on to develop at least the rudiments
of a theory of exploitation and of alienated labour that suggests in
significant ways, I think, the early Marx. Humboldt in fact continues these
comments that I quoted, about the cultivation of the understanding through
spontaneous action, in the following way: He says, "Man never regards what
he possesses as so much his own, as what he does and the laborer who tends the
garden is perhaps in a truer sense its owner, than the listless voluptuary who
enjoys its fruits. And since truly human action is that which flows from inner
impulse, it seems as if all peasants and craftsmen might be elevated into
artists, that is men who love their labor for its own sake, improve it by their
own plastic genius and inventive skill, and thereby cultivate their intellect,
ennoble their character, and exult and refine their pleasures; and so humanity
would be ennobled by the very things which now, though beautiful in themselves,
so often go to degrade it." "Freedom is undoubtedly the indispensable
condition without which even the pursuits most congenial to individual human
nature can never succeed in producing such salutary influences. Whatever does
not spring from a man's free choice, or is only the result of instruction and
guidance, does not enter into his very being but remains alien to his true
nature. He does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with
mechanical exactness. And if a man acts in a mechanical way, reacting to
external demands or instruction, rather than in ways determined by his own
interests and energies and power," he says, "we may admire what he
does, but we despise what he is."</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times","serif"">For Humboldt then, man is born to
enquire and create, and when a man or a child chooses to enquire or create out
of its own free choice, then he becomes, in his own terms, "an artist
rather than a tool of production or a well trained parrot". This is the
essence of his concept of human nature. And I think that it is very revealing
and interesting compared with Marx, with the early Marx manuscripts, and particularly
his account of "the alienation of labour when work is external to the
worker, not part of his nature, so that he does not fulfill himself in his work
but denies himself and is physically exhausted and mentally debased. This
alienated labour that casts some of the workers back into a barbarous kind of
work and turns others into machines, thus depriving man of his species
character, of free conscious activity and productive life." Recall also
Marx's well known and often quoted reference to a higher form of society, in
which labour has become not only a means of life but also the highest want in
life. And recall also his repeated criticism of the specialized labour which,
"mutilates the worker into a fragment of a human being, degrades him to
become a mere appurtenance of the machine, makes his work such a torment that
its essential meaning is destroyed, estranges from him the intellectual
potentialities of the labour process in very proportion to the extent to which
science is incorporated into it as an independent power."</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times","serif"">Robert Tucker for one has rightly
emphasized that Marx sees the revolutionary more as a frustrated producer, than
as a dis-satisfied consumer. And this, far more radical, critique of capitalist
relations of production, flows directly, often in the same words, from the
libertarian thought of The Enlightenment. For this reason, I think, one must
say that classical liberal ideas, in their essence though not in the way they
developed, are profoundly anti-capitalist. The essence of these ideas must be
destroyed for them to serve as an ideology of modern industrial capitalism.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times","serif"">Writing in the 1780's and early
1790's, Humboldt had no conception of the forms that industrial capitalism
would take. Consequently, in this classic of classical liberalism, he stresses
the problem of limiting state power, and he is not overly concerned with the
dangers of private power. The reason is that he believes in and speaks of the
essential equality of condition of private citizens, and of course he has no
idea, writing in 1790, of the ways in which the notion of private person would
come to be reinterpreted in the era of corporate capitalism. "He did not
foresee", I now quote the anarchist historian Rudolf Rocker: "he did
not foresee that democracy, with its model of equality of all citizens before
the law, and liberalism, with its right of man over his own person, both would
be wrecked on the realities of capitalistic economy." Humboldt did not
foresee that in a predatory capitalistic economy, state intervention would be an
absolute necessity. To preserve human existence. To prevent the destruction of
the physical environment. I speak optimistically of course.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">As Karl Polanyi for one has pointed out: "The
self-adjusting market could not exist for any length of time without
annihilating the human and natural substance of society. It would have
physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a
wilderness." I think that's correct. Humboldt also did not foresee the
consequences of the commodity character of labor. The doctrine, again in
Polanyi's words, "that it is not for the commodity to decide where it
should be offered for sale, to what purpose it should be used, at what
price it should be allowed to change hands, in what manner it should be consumed
or destroyed." But the commodity in this case is of course
human life. And social protection was therefore a minimal necessity to
constrain the irrational and destructive workings of the classical free market.<br>
<br>
Nor did Humboldt understand in 1790 that capitalistic economic relations
perpetuated a form of bondage which, long before that in fact, as early as
1767, Simon Linguet had declared to be "even worse than
slavery," writing :"it is the impossibility of living by any other
means that compels our farm labourers to till the soil, whose fruits they
will not eat, and our masons to construct buildings in which they will not
live. It is want that drags them to those markets where they await masters, who
will do them the kindness of buying them. It is want that compels them to
go down on their knees to the rich man in order to get from him permission to
enrich him. What effective gain has the suppression of slavery brought
him? 'He is free,' you say. That is his misfortune. These men, it is said, have
no master. They have one, and the most terrible, the most imperious of
masters: that is, need. It is this that that reduces them to the most cruel
dependence." And if there is something degrading to human nature in the
idea of bondage, as every spokesman for the enlightenment would insist,
then it would follow that a new emancipation must be awaited, what Fourier
referred to as the third and last emancipatory phase of history. The first
having made serfs out of slaves, the second wage earners out of serfs and the
third which will transform the proletariat freemen by eliminating the
commodity character of labour, ending wage slavery and bringing the commercial,
industrial and financial institutions, under democratic control.<br>
<br>
These are all things that Humboldt in his classical liberal doctrine did not
express and didn't see, but I think that he might have accepted these
conclusions. He does, for example, agree that state intervention in social
life is legitimate "if freedom would destroy the very conditions without which
not only freedom but even existence itself would be inconceivable"
which are precisely the circumstances that arise in an unconstrained capitalist
economy and he does, as in remarks that I quoted, vigorously condemn the
alienation of labour. In any event, his criticism of bureaucracy and the
autocratic state stands as a very eloquent forewarning of some of the most
dismal aspects of modern history, and the important point is that the
basis of his critique is applicable to a far broader range of coercive institutions
than he imagined, in particular to the institutions of industrial
capitalism.<br>
<br>
Though he expresses a classical liberal doctrine, Humboldt is no primitive
individualist, in the style of for example Rousseau. So Rousseau extols the
savage who lives within himself, but Humboldt's vision is entirely
different. He sums up his remarks as follows, he says "the whole tenor of
the ideas and arguments unfolded in this essay might fairly be reduced to
this: that while they would break all fetters in human society, they would
attempt to find as many new social bonds as possible. The isolated man is
no more able to develop than the one who is fettered." and he in fact
looks forwards to a community of free association, without coercion by the
state or other authoritarian institutions, in which free men can create
and inquire, achieve the highest development of their powers. In fact, far
ahead of his time, he presents an anarchist vision that is appropriate,
perhaps, to the next stage of industrial society. We can perhaps look forward
to a day, when these various strands will be brought together within the
framework of libertarian socialism, a social form that barely exists today,
though its elements can perhaps be perceived, for example in the guarantee of
individual rights, that has achieved so far its fullest realization
(though still tragically flawed in the western democracies), or in the Israeli
kibbutzim, or in the experiments with workers' councils in Yugoslavia, or
in the effort to awaken popular consciousness and to create a new involvement
in the social process, which is a fundamental element in the third world
revolutions, coexisting uneasily with indefensible authoritarian practice.<br>
<br>
So let me summarize this first point. The first point of the state that I want
to setup as a reference, classical liberal, its doctrine is that the state
function should be drastically limited, but this familiar characterization
is a very superficial one. More deeply, the classical liberal view develops
from a certain concept of human nature: one that stresses the importance
of diversity and free creation. And therefore this view is in fundamental
opposition to industrial capitalism, with its wage slavery, its alienated
labour and its hierarchic and authoritarian principles of social and
economic organisation. At least in its Humboldtian form, classical liberal
thought is opposed as well to the concepts of possessive individualism,
which are intrinsic to capitalist ideology. So it seeks to eliminate social
fetters, but to replace them by social bonds, not by competitive greed,
not by predatory individualism, not of course by corporate empires, state
or private. Classical libertarian thought seems to me therefore to lead
directly to libertarian socialism or anarchism, if you like, when combined
with an understanding of industrial capitalism...<br style="">
<br style="">
</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">On Nov 1, 2012, at 8:03 PM, "E.
Wayne Johnson </span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"MS Mincho"">朱</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"PMingLiU","serif"">稳森</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">" <<a href="mailto:ewj@pigsqq.org" target="_blank"><span style="color:blue">ewj@pigsqq.org</span></a>> wrote:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><br style="">
<br style="">
</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">As a dedicated workaholic I find
this partitioning of one's work and one's life<br>
as being incredibly difficult to understand. I seldom stop thinking about
my<br>
work, even when I am not thinking about my work.<br>
<br>
What is it that makes people hate their jobs?<br>
<br>
Is there some fundamental mismatch between what people do and what<br>
comes natural to them? I find it very natural to immerse myself in my
work.<br>
<br>
*<br>
<br>
I was thinking about this MisMatch/MisAlignment/Incompatibility/Maladaptation
syndrome<br>
thing in regard to the huge number of people who end up in Amerika's Cull Pens,
the prisons.<br>
<br>
Some get captured there as pawns because prisons are good business.<br>
<br>
But really the majority are there because they are MisFits. I recognize
that not<br>
all MisFits end up in the Iron Hotel...<br>
<br>
But there is something Fundamentally Wrong with a society that hates its work
and<br>
wants to spend less time working and more time not working, and something
fundamentally<br>
wrong with a society that generates so many culls.<br>
<br>
<br>
On 11/02/12 8:36, Susan Parenti wrote:<br style="">
<br style="">
</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><br style="">
<br style="">
</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Susan, thank you so much for your
messages about this -- I can't<br>
attend the meeting tonight, but I have an idea I would like to pass<br>
along.<br>
<br>
I try to imagine the different world we would all be living in if the<br>
prediction made in 1965 by a U.S. Senate subcommittee had come true:<br>
that by the year 2000, the standard U.S. work week would be reduced to<br>
20 hours, due to efficiencies created through computerization and<br>
automation. Certainly we've realized these efficiencies, but workers<br>
in the U.S. are working longer hours than ever -- certainly longer<br>
than any other post-industrial nation in the world.<br>
<br>
Why is this? Okay, so a culture of market-driven material competition<br>
would be expected to generate obsessive, irrational behaviors about<br>
work, and just as clearly, overscheduling the employed class preempts<br>
political activism. No doubt, many more reasons could be added to this<br>
list. // Following the script of standard employment models, where<br>
routines and relationships are ready-made, requires less<br>
responsibility and courage than making free choices and dealing with<br>
the consequences. Are we promoting the harder-but-richer path of<br>
greater discretionary time, or are we using one economic crisis after<br>
another to ensure that the same tired routines are reproduced?<br>
<br>
A shorter work week would be an excellent Occupy-oriented argument and<br>
would work alongside arguments against underemployment and<br>
unemployment, and in favor of a living wage -- behind all these<br>
arguments is the need for a fairer parsing of compensation for labor<br>
and the time we dedicate to receive it. As a protest movement, a<br>
reduced work week certainly has a policy dimension, with many<br>
statistical analyses and anecdotes to support legislative reform. As a<br>
political movement, though, it can also be practiced by anyone with a<br>
full-time job, in which individuals make a commitment to take back 10<br>
or 20 hours per week, either overtly (by promoting goal-driven<br>
schedules over absolute schedules, say) or covertly (by being champion<br>
slackers). I like both approaches.<br>
<br>
Sorry again for not being at the meeting tonight -- I hope these ideas<br>
feel worthwhile and welcome at the meeting.<br>
<br>
Best Wishes,<br>
Rohn</span></p>
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