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271 [lbo-talk] M. Parenti joins the New Atheists? -- rank: 1000

Doug: 'I could wax Derridean and say that all texts are multiplicities, but the average bible reader - no, about 95% of bible readers - treat the thing as a unitary document, the fucking word of God, the ultimate author.' No so in the Church of England, where the liberals who take it as a metaphorical text, the Devil as an idea, not real, nor is hell and so on. Over time, of course, the CofE fades, as their children lose interest, and what is left of the observing few is the hard cases like ...

Document Size:	5855
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Mar 24 14:19:49 PDT 2010

272 [lbo-talk] Oppression -- rank: 1000

Ted: 'I've just come across the following by Shlomo Avineri on Hegel on "labour" based on Hegel's System der Sittlichkeit composed in 1802-1803and the two versions of the Realphilosophie delivered as lectures in 1803-1804 and 1805-1806.' But Ted, don't you think that the stronger explication of the difference between Marx and Hegel is this: Marx distinguishes between work, that ever-present human necessity, which entails the inescapable fact of objectification, or use-value production ...

Document Size:	5368
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Mar 18 10:32:29 PDT 2010

273 [lbo-talk] the Kultur Krisis -- rank: 1000

SA writes: "A lot of periods may have lacked much objective resistance, but the current period is unusual for how weak even subjective opposition is. There's an unusual level of active identification with the system." I agree with all of that but the last sentence, which is more problematic. There is quite demonstrably a falling away of popular identification with left parties, trade unions, militancy and so on. On one level that leads to greater authority for the employers, and cert ...

Document Size:	5468
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Thu Mar 18 01:09:30 PDT 2010

274 [lbo-talk] green consumers: thieving pricks -- rank: 1000

In my book Green Capitalism, I wrote that 'green purchasing is status affirmation. Buying green marks out consumers not just as ethically minded, but more ethically minded than others. Even more than most consumer trends, green consumer power is about social demarcation. Green goods are directly contrasted to mass consumer goods. Their identity is asserted against less ethical, mass produced goods.' ... 'greens protest against a certain kind of consumption - mass consumption. By their green cons ...

Document Size:	5637
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Mar 17 12:00:39 PDT 2010

275 [lbo-talk] more on who the TPers are -- rank: 1000

Doug: 'Another way would be to say that the left has supported state intervention to prevent depressions'. I remember when state intervention meant getting some money to the poor, not the tax-payer handing over billions to Goldman Sachs or Barclays so that they can pay out those same billions in bonuses to greedy toffs who would happily slaughter every working class American and Brit. I can't belive that that is what Doug had in mind when he wrote about 'taking on the financial elite' (Wall Stre ...

Document Size:	5433
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Tue Mar 16 07:17:14 PDT 2010

276 [lbo-talk] more on who the TPers are -- rank: 1000

Doug: "Ah, ellipses are so useful" I don't doubt the tea partiers are right wing, and have a lot of right wing views. I am just surprised that included in those right wing views is a negative opinion of massive subsidies to capitalism, while the left must adopt the role of defending welfare handouts for billionaire bankers.

Document Size:	4874
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Mar 15 17:09:25 PDT 2010

277 [lbo-talk] more on who the TPers are -- rank: 1000

Doug posts on the tea-baggers: 'That ideological rigidity bore itself out when respondents .. blast .. the Troubled Asset Relief Program (a favorite target of tea partiers)' Yup, plainly they are vicious right-wingers. Why else would they object to Washington shovelling shedloads of money into the pockets of the wealthiest people in the USA? Just as well we have left-wingers who will rally to the support of the long-suffering and victimised bankocracy. Strange times indeed.

Document Size:	4979
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Mar 15 13:35:22 PDT 2010

278 [lbo-talk] Forbes: "There Is No Keynesian Miracle" -- rank: 1000

Bhaskar writes: "Tales of New Labour's demise are premature. I doubt the Tories will be able to eek out anything but a weak minority government." Yes, Cameron's seeming inability to close the deal does show up his weakness. But "New Labour" - the project - that is dead. The Brown government trundles on offering nothing different, but it is plainly dead on its feet.

Document Size:	5110
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Sun Mar 14 10:11:07 PDT 2010

279 [lbo-talk] FYI & Comment if you Wish -- rank: 1000

'I know nothing about the history of the IRA, but I have never met an Irish person (I mean actual Irish people, not the descendents of people who left in 1850 and fantasize about Glorious Ireland) who thinks that the IRA have been anything more than a glorified Mafia within recent memory.' It must have been the non-actual Irish people who elected first Bobby Sands in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, and who continue to elect Martin McGuinness, Gerry Adams and the rest to the assembly in Stormont. It ...

Document Size:	5456
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Mar 10 22:59:25 PST 2010

280 [lbo-talk] Oppression -- rank: 1000

'Stalin, despite being a demon figure for Trotskyists, was almost certainly the Soviet leader with the greatest level of popular support -- without which the Terror would not have been possible.' Mind you, if he was all that popular, he wouldn't have needed the terror...

Document Size:	4624
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Mar 10 13:15:50 PST 2010

281 [lbo-talk] oppression -- rank: 1000

Doug: '"Perry is afraid of the working class. They might scuff his floors." - someone who's known him for decades ' According to Herbert Marcuse, if you visited Theodor Adorno in California, a servant would answer the door, and ask you to wait in the foyer while you were announced.

Document Size:	4652
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Mar 10 11:36:32 PST 2010

282 [lbo-talk] Oppression -- rank: 1000

Chris: 'Ted seems to want to make us into Reason embodied, rather than what we are, an animal that can figure things out.' Wilde: 'We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars'

Document Size:	4577
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Mar 10 11:31:54 PST 2010

283 [lbo-talk] oppression -- rank: 1000

Chris says that you can absorb Marx into Hegelianism. Well, you can assimilate the Left Business Observer into the Fountainhead (or Heidegger into Hitler, you might say) if you want to but you would be mistaken. Not for the first time Ted outlines Hegel's theory and attributes it to Marx. Ted says "Forces of production" are objectifications of ideas. That's what Hegel thought. This is what Marx said: 'it is only possible to achieve real liberation in the real world and by employing re ...

Document Size:	6212
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Mar 10 07:05:54 PST 2010

284 [lbo-talk] Oppression -- rank: 1000

Ted: 'What they say, including what Marx says in the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, is that the historical process is a process that substitutes rational self-determination for instinctive determination through "education" by means of "self-estrangement" within the labour process, a process defined by relations of production.. ' No, I think Charles has it better, your telling elides the difference between Hegel and Marx. Marx is a materialist. ...

Document Size:	5838
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Wed Mar 10 01:34:19 PST 2010

285 [lbo-talk] March 4 -- rank: 1000

Chris: 'as a Brit would react to the confusion between "England" and "the United Kingdom." ' More accurate would be 'as a Scot would react to the confusion between "England" and "the United Kingdom." ' We English tend to think that England is the United Kingdom, and are vaguely confused and irritated when the picts go all pedantic on us.

Document Size:	4750
Author:	James Heartfield
Date:	Mon Mar 8 11:10:15 PST 2010