Items Posted by Jim Kalb
From jk Mon Dec 1 08:04:17 1997
Subject: Re: Comments on antifeminist page
To: g
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 1997 08:04:17 -0500 (EST)
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> My claim would be that the difference is of such a a kind that woman
> ought to be in a state of strict subjection to man.
"Strict subjection" suggests something like a military hierarchy, which
doesn't seem to fit family life. The purposes of family are after all
far more various than those of an army. It seems to me enough that the
man have general ultimate authority.
> How would I ground such a claim? I suppose I would refer primarily to
> various religious revelations ( Christianity, Islam, Judaism,
> Hinduism and so on) and those teachings, symbols and traditions of
> those religions that support my claim.
Do you know of any worthwhile studies of the understanding of sex roles
within the various religious traditions? The things I've run into have
been polemical or revisionist, as well as shockingly naive and
timebound.
> I mean, if they are beings of a radically different sort, then it
> would make sense to claim that they also have a different nature,
> however one may unpack the term "nature". Maybe "human nature" is too
> abstract a phrase here. Maybe only man is truly human while woman is
> subhuman
I'd be inclined to say men and women have different natures that
together constitute human nature. Since man is a social and sexual
animal human nature is a complex thing not fully manifested in a single
human being.
It seems wrong to say woman is simply inferior, since man without woman
is incomplete -- physically, emotionally, socially, reproductively.
For example, our connection to prior and succeeding generations is
through woman. If religious teachings are relevant there are the
teachings that man and wife become one flesh, and that a child should
honor his father and mother. For that matter the Christian standard of
monogamy doesn't make much sense if women are categorically inferior.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Mon Dec 1 22:07:17 1997
Subject: Re: Comments on antifeminist page
To: g
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 1997 22:07:17 -0500 (EST)
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> It is a standpoint which may win one some friends, so to speak. I
> myself, however, am not very much into that kind of game. I am more
> concerned with truth as I see it
Fine, truth is better than games. Certainly almost all public
discussion of sex and gender is stupid and disingenuous, and most often
ill-motivated as well. Each of us has to do as best he can though.
> The problem is that in the present climate of moral abdication and
> apostasy that characterise almost all of the major Christian
> Churches, where are you going to find a theologian or thinker who is
> going to put his head on the chopping block and write not just an
> antifeminist critique but an antifemale one?
I just don't see why antifeminism isn't enough. Being antifemale seems
like being antielectron, opposed to one of the fundamental constituents
of the world.
> In a situation where even the present Pope has apologised to women
> for the " wrongs" they are supposed to have received historically
The Pope admittedly gives away as much as he possibly can.
> The "natural". Very tricky word.
For sure. Still, there's some sense to the notion, and if it can be
applied anywhere broad aspects of sexuality seem as good a place as
any. After all, if my ancestors hadn't done so, where would I be
today?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Wed Dec 3 05:22:50 1997
Subject: Re: Consenting adults and sex
To: r
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 1997 05:22:50 -0500 (EST)
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Thanks for your comments.
> It seems to me that almost every one of the points you make have
> really nothing to do with sex, but that sex is one of the many areas
> people harm themselves in when people don't have standards and do not
> have the kind of character that supports healthy living.
I'd agree there's nothing unique about sexual morality, that its basic
principles are the same as those of say political or ecomomic morality.
As in the other cases though the different subject matter justifies a
separate discussion. Euclid's axioms by themselves are not a
sufficient account of Euclidean geometry, and in morality too you have
to get into the details and specific applications really to understand
grand principle.
> To single out sex in relation to these things, I thik is misleading. Sex
> is not the problem - character is a problem and sex is only one of its
> manifestations.
It is difficult though to speak of character in the abstract, without
reference to more specific human concerns and activities. It is like
talking about "good design" without ever talking specifically about
designing a factory, a wedding ceremony, a boom box, a college
curriculum, or whatever.
> I think we are all oversexed when we single out sex as the cause or
> the object of anything and organize our lives around any particular
> rules about sexual behavior.
We can think and speak at all only by singling things out. And there
are many aspects of good character acceptance of which has a big effect
on how life is organized. It makes a difference to the organization of
my life for example whether I recognize the property rights of others,
whether I feel called upon to discharge my ordinary obligations to my
wife, children and society at large, whether I am moderate in my use of
alcohol and other intoxicants, etc., etc., etc.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Wed Dec 3 05:54:44 1997
Subject: Re: Comments on antifeminist page and so on
To: g
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 1997 05:54:44 -0500 (EST)
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[from the BCP service it appears]
> 1) the woman ought to obey, hence she is subject to the husband in
> authority - although she is also loved and cherished by him;
I don't object to this and don't see it as antifemale. I said the man
should have general ultimate authority, which is what I think the
"obey" comes down to as a practical matter given the practicalities of
married life and the "loved and cherished."
> 2) celibacy or virginity is a value higher than the marriage state.
This makes sense as part of an overall understanding that makes
devotion to God rather than ordinary social life the criterion. Up to
now though the discussion has I think been oriented toward the second
concern.
> My hunch is that this tradition is loathed by feminists and many
> women in general ( most women?), as celibacy implicitly rejects the
> power of the female over men, exercised through sex.
There's something to this -- masculine celibacy leaves women rather out
of the picture. Some women do like celibacy because it makes them
independent. That may be old-fashioned though, I suppose political
lesbianism would be more up-to-date. I suppose there's also liberal
dislike of celibacy because it takes sex seriously as an organizing
principle of human life and rejects the authority of desire and
impulse.
> Finally, and changing the subject, the British media are having a
> field day in rhetorical nonsense over "Nazi gold". Well, I wonder
> when the British will give back "imperial gold", which they looted
> from the peoples of their now defunct Empire.
It's absurd. Why not complain instead about Soviet gold, which was
either confiscated from someone or produced by slave labor? Presumably
the value of *anything* bought from the Soviet Union was attributable
at least in part to assets stolen from owners who were later murdered.
And the fact that people were willing to trade with the Soviets meant
their regime lasted longer. Who cares though about the tens of
millions of innocents who were slaughtered?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Dec 4 07:13:34 EST 1997
Article: 10750 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: The World Culture versus Traditionalism
Date: 3 Dec 1997 22:14:29 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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John Hilty writes:
>your analogical assumption must be that a person born with Fetal
>Alcohol Syndrome cannot have a successful professional career
No, that because of the way people are successful professionals won't
stay that way when they develop severe and progressive alcoholism.
Similarly, because of the way people are successful civilizations won't
stay that way when they develop severe and progressive World Culture.
I find this discussion increasingly silly. It may of course be that my
response to it simply reflects my limited capacity to understand. Each
can decide for himself.
>> The normal relation between a jet fighter and an antiaircraft
>> missile is not cooperation.
>
>That's merely a misapplication of technology as a result of archaic
>tribalistic tendencies.
You're heavy on _a priori_ thought with no connection to the world
that's visible to me. What's archaic about conflict?
>By relying solely on the "noble virtues" to keep your Traditional
>society going, you'll be standing on a rather flimsy limb
I said the noble virtues are necessary, not that they are the only thing
with a social function.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Dec 4 07:13:35 EST 1997
Article: 10751 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the counterrevolution public
Date: 3 Dec 1997 22:18:12 -0500
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raf391@bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>Try Joel Mokyr, _Lever of Riches_, for discussion of supposed
>inevitability of technical advances on those lines.
It was of course inevitable that someone would write such a book.
Banter aside, is the web browser really something likely to have been
missed? Hypertext has been around for some time and it seems a
reasonable straightforward application of the concept.
In any event, thanks for the recommendation.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Dec 4 07:13:36 EST 1997
Article: 10752 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the counterrevolution public
Date: 3 Dec 1997 22:20:20 -0500
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John Hilty writes:
>> By "liberalism" I mean a tradition in political thought articulated
>> most rigorously at various stages of its development by Hobbes,
>> Locke, Kant, J.S. Mill and today John Rawls and many others.
>
>What you are describing here is the tradition of libertarianism, not
>liberalism.
I'm not sure how Hobbes, Kant or Rawls can be described as libertarian
as opposed to liberal.
>No, it is libertarian political theory that constructs a social order
>out of individual preferences and self-seeking behavior. Political
>theories can be distinguished as follows:
Would you name some of the major political theorists you have in mind?
>Liberal socioeconomic systems favor mutual cooperation among
>individuals in the pursuit of common goals.
The contemporary liberalism with which I am familiar tends to rate
personal autonomy very high. We choose our own values, and that's OK.
It therefore tends to favor welfare and equality rights enforceable by
law rather than attempting to rely on voluntary initiatives guided by
common moral principles. Your description seems to suggest something
quite different.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Dec 4 08:59:28 EST 1997
Article: 10755 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the counterrevolution public
Date: 4 Dec 1997 08:53:55 -0500
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cjahnes@msmisp.com (Carl Jahnes) writes:
>the PC is as much a "symbol", an "art(ifact)" as it is a piece of
>technical communications equipment ... it is a "gnostic" symbol, the
>body is bad, spirit is good....
The PC as symbol is an interesting issue. The universe as computer
program, computer-based cosmology, is already with us. So it seems the
symbolism rises to religious significance for many people.
But is the effect really that body is bad? It seems to me that
technology makes body neutral, rather like prime matter, with no
character of its own until the one we choose for our own purposes is
impressed on it. I suppose it's thought bad for body to assert itself
and resist our will, but that's considered a matter of the temporary
insufficiency of spirit (underdeveloped technology) rather than
inherent evil of body.
>>3. Find the effective talking points for the liberal position
>>(civil rights, tolerance, support for the unfortunate) and hammer
>>away at the misconceptions and bad consequences of the liberal
>>understanding of them. Make the point that these things are not
>>unrestricted goods.
>
>By "unrestricted" do you mean that one cannot enact a rationalist
>regulation, like a building code, to solve all problems?
I meant that those things are not unrestrictedly good. They all have to
do with the abolition of certain inequalities, and attempts to abolish
inequality are not always good.
The problem is that social order requires inequality. Elimination of
some inequalities normally means elimination of some principles of
order in favor of others and the inequalities associated with them.
The tendency of current forms of egalitarianism is to destroy every
principle of social order except force, fraud and money, and to enhance
the corresponding inequalities.
>Your typical liberal will ... then say that "morality" is a product of
>the concensus of society, based on "what works" which we develop a
>better and better working knowledge of as history marches along. The
>logic of this position leads directly to an admission that "might
>makes right". But your liberal hides this conclusion from his mind
I think what they try to do is reduce the need for social consensus, so
that each can treat as good, and to the extent possible get, whatever he
wants. The coordination of social life by bureaucracy, market and
judicial system for example reduces the need for social consensus. So
does the emphasis on expertise. One could go on.
>Counter symbols of the Truth must be preserved and proclaimed and put
>forth in the Public Square to show that all's not well in Decaying
>Modernity.
Symbolism is important, but must visibly correspond to substance.
Liturgy expresses a specific understanding of the world and should
correspond to a specific way of life quite different from that led by
others in the West in 1997. It does not, at least not so anyone can
notice.
>Heaven is "immanentized", to be achieved in the here-and-now. Man can
>no more erase the hunger for God than he can re-enter the womb and come
>out according to his own, improved, specifications!
My understanding of the problem is that every man and every society
exists in accordance with a conception of what is ultimately
authoritative. Do away with God and you'll come up with something much
worse, money, power, the joy of destruction, whatever.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Wed Dec 3 11:55:08 1997
Subject: Re: Consenting adults and sex
To: r
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 1997 11:55:08 -0500 (EST)
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> I don't think of singling out different aspects of behavior as
> causative in one's morality.
>
> Basic principle dictates one's behavior in all aspects of conduct.
> For example, if a person is mean spirited, selfish, greedy in some
> aspects, he will be the same in other aspects. A person who is thus,
> will be the same in his sexual conduct as well as his everyday
> conduct. Conversely, a loving, respectful, caring, and giving person
> will also be thus when it comes to his sexual activities.
The saying is "You must be just before you're generous."
In other words, morality requires observance of specific rules
necessary for beneficial ordering of social life as well as conduct
immediately springing from love, respect, care and giving. If the sole
moral standard for dealing with physical objects were "be loving,
respectful etc." then there wouldn't be any rules of property and
there'd be very serious problems. If that same rule were all that
governed politics there would be no procedures of government,
recognized authorities, laws, courts, police etc., and there would also
be problems.
A major point of my discussion of sexual morality is that something of
the same sort applies to sexual morality. As you point out, there's
nothing special about sex that means the way we treat it is
fundamentally different from the way we treat other serious human
affairs.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Thu Dec 4 09:15:30 1997
Subject: Re: Comments on antifeminist page and so on and on
To: g
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 09:15:30 -0500 (EST)
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> I wonder whether voluntary celibacy itself may not be seen as having
> a positive social value.
It is certainly good if some people give up something valuable (normal
family life) for the sake of something better. It adds an additional
dimension to the social world. It makes the transcendent concrete.
> I fear one has to reject the whole mindset, paradigm, set of
> assumptions that have developped in the West since the Enlightenment
> to make a serious attempt at overturning this evil. That is why I
> suspect that some form of religious or supernatural framework has to
> be brought in, otherwise how can one ever hope to remove this cancer?
I agree, actually. Feminism and radical egalitarianism generally is a
reasonably direct consequence of making actual desire the basis of
morality and politics. If that's the basis then "everyone should
equally get what he wants, whatever that happens to be" becomes the
criterion. All hierarchies have to go. The consequence is radical
egalitarianism enforced by an manipulative and illegitimate government
responsible only to itself. The only cure I can think of is social
recognition of an authority that transcends desire, in effect an
established religion.
> The thought of writing something on sexual roles from a religious
> standpoint sounds valuable, even if I have no chance to be able to do
> that right now.
Please do. What's out there is mostly such trash.
> What power on earth is going to try and do the same in the case
> Stalin's successors?
Not going to happen. A communist, as they used to say, is only a
democrat in a hurry. So their stacks of corpses don't count the way
Nazi stacks do even though their stacks are far bigger and greater in
number.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Dec 4 18:44:27 EST 1997
Article: 10761 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the counterrevolution public
Date: 4 Dec 1997 18:32:58 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <34871356.910B7B91@net66.com> John Hilty writes:
>My primary purpose was to question the ultimate success of your
>proposed counterrevolution if even the PC Marketplace and the Internet
>have been heavily shaped by the technical know-how of large
>institutions.
Don't see the relevance.
I've said repeatedly that the existence of large institutions doesn't
bother me. Aside from that, the fact that in a world in which there
are lots of large institutions something has been heavily shaped by
large institutions shows nothing about an essential relation between
large institutions and that thing. Further, even if some kinds of
technical developments were dependent on the existence of large
institutions, so what? There's no metaphysical requirement I know of
that technical improvements keep on being made at some particular rate
or for that matter at all.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Dec 4 18:44:28 EST 1997
Article: 10762 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the counterrevolution public
Date: 4 Dec 1997 18:43:38 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <34873612.B33FD169@net66.com> John Hilty writes:
>Examples of societies that are both liberal and traditional would
>include the Amish and Zuni Pueblo.
This seems to reflect an odd definition of "liberal." I know almost
nothing about the Zuni. A fundamental Amish ideal though is
_Gelassenheit_ (submission), which doesn't seem particularly liberal.
Their _Ordnung_ governs all major aspects of lifestyle; those who
violate it get shunned, even by family members. They cut a special
deal with the Feds to keep them out of the Social Security system, and
don't let their kids go to school with non-Amish or beyond 8th grade.
And they're racist, sexist and homophobic to boot. What's liberal
about all that?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Dec 5 08:29:36 EST 1997
Article: 10764 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the counterrevolution public
Date: 5 Dec 1997 08:27:54 -0500
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John Hilty writes:
>I have classified the Amish as traditional liberals because of the
>egalitarian nature of their society, the emphasis on mutual social
>cooperation, and their pacific nature.
And I would classify Milton Friedman as a classical liberal because of
his emphasis on individual choice and on formal mechanisms for enabling
cooperation and resolving disputes.
Friedman, the Amish, and contemporary liberals all in their way believe
in equality, cooperation and peace. Each interprets at least one of
those things in a way that seems odd to the others. Thus the Amish are
so fond of peace they won't lift a finger to defend it if that would
require the use of force. Contemporary liberals like cooperation so
much they force people to cooperate when they think there ought to be
more of it or they ought to do it differently. And Friedman thinks
it's equal for A to have $1 and B to have $1,000,000, as long as each
can equally do what he pleases with his own and each is equally free to
use his capacities and whatever else he has (but not force or fraud) to
get more.
So who gets classified with whom? My inclination is to classify views
historically, and in accordance with the fundamental understanding of
man and the world they express. I therefore classify Friedman with the
contemporary liberals, and treat the Amish as something very different
>from either. The use of the word "liberalism" for both classical
(i.e., libertarian) and contemporary liberalism show the historical
continuity between the two. As to fundamental isssues, both are
agnostic as to value. Each man's good is what he chooses as his good.
Both therefore emphasize individual choice as the basis of morality and
legitimate social order, and emphasize formal mechanisms not committed
to any substantive value (e.g., the market, counting votes, a judicial
system guided by liberal principles, bureaucratic experts) as a way of
securing cooperation and resolving conflict.
The Amish in contrast are anti-individualistic. A man's good is to
subordinate himself to the will of God and the order of the community.
Individual assertiveness is not favored. Conflicts are avoided mostly
by social pressure to conform to community standards, and resolved when
they arise by a combination of consensus and the joint decision of
leaders chosen for life by a combination of election and lot. Such
decisions gain their legitimacy from coherence with community values
rather than formal process - decisions do not become final until they
are received and accepted by consensus. All that seems *very*
different from any sort of liberalism, and it's not just a matter of
degree of development. The whole orientation is different.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Dec 6 04:58:50 EST 1997
Article: 10770 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the counterrevolution public
Date: 6 Dec 1997 04:36:45 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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John Hilty writes:
>The nation-states of Western Europe, along with Canada, Australia, and
>New Zealand, have a stronger commitment to the social welfare state
>than the United States.
The effect of the social welfare state is that no one need have anything
to do with anyone else. You obey the law (you'll go to jail if you
don't) and you avail yourself of your legal rights.
I have no idea why they should be considered exemplars of social
cooperation. That might be an image that pleases their supporters, who
often have difficulty dealing intellectually with the role of
compulsion in society, but I propose a more realistic view.
>Your confusing libertarian thinking with liberalism again. Milton
>Friedman follows the mold of Adam Smith in his economic thinking.
And Adam Smith is another classical liberal. That in fact is the way
the phrase "classical liberal" is used.
>Your portraying the Amish as an altruistic society, where there is
>positive concern for others (community needs), but indifference towards
>personal outcomes.
I have no idea where you get the last part.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Dec 7 08:07:27 EST 1997
Article: 10780 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the counterrevolution public
Date: 7 Dec 1997 07:21:19 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 22
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References: <65jsim$rpd@panix.com> <3480D232.11F08A78@net66.com> <65srl1$2eg@panix.com> <881446858snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
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In <881446858snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> rafael cardenas writes:
>> In my view the tendencies that define that tradition are identifying
>> the good with the satisfaction of individual preferences, and the
>> search for formal criteria for arbitrating conflicts among
>> preferences.
>is it true of Mill's shift from the greatest happiness of the greatest
>number to the greatest good of the greatest number? And is Kant's
>categorical imperative an 'individual preference'?
In _Utilitarianism_ Mill explicitly identifies "the preferable" with
"the preferred", so what I say is the tendency of the tradition is at
least an important part of his thought. And the categorical
imperative, which was to establish right and wrong and therefore
arbitrate all conflicts, is intended as a wholly formal criterion. I
should add that by a "good" I meant as a rational object of action that
can not be defined wholly formally.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Dec 7 08:07:27 EST 1997
Article: 10781 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the counterrevolution public
Date: 7 Dec 1997 07:31:03 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <65jsim$rpd@panix.com> <3480D232.11F08A78@net66.com> <65srl1$2eg@panix.com> <348603F1.C4855747@net66.com> <881447603snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
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In <881447603snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> rafael cardenas writes:
>the term 'liberal' is a chameleon. The far left (and indeed the
>not-so-far left, the soggy semi-socialists) in europe call right wing
>laissez-faire marketism 'neoliberal'.
My claim of course is that the term is historically coherent. The
libertarians and most others in America are perfectly happy to call
laissez-faire marketism "classical liberalism" or "19th century
liberalism."
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Dec 7 08:07:28 EST 1997
Article: 10783 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the counterrevolution public
Date: 7 Dec 1997 07:49:13 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 15
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References: <65jsim$rpd@panix.com> <3480D232.11F08A78@net66.com> <348235EE.27A3@gstis.net> <34873612.B33FD169@net66.com> <667f7a$4gn@panix.com> <34877D1A.226AA670@net66.com> <668vgq$afr@panix.com> <34884245.8DF8486E@net66.com> <881450388snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
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In <881450388snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> rafael cardenas writes:
>> Milton Friedman follows the mold of Adam Smith in his economic
>> thinking.
>Adam Smith's thought is surely more complex than this: he regarded big
>business as a conspiracy against the public. Does Friedman?
It's true that the thought of contemporary libertarians tends to be
sectarian and flattened out compared with that of actual 19th century
liberals.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Dec 7 08:07:29 EST 1997
Article: 10784 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the counterrevolution public
Date: 7 Dec 1997 07:55:48 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 16
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References: <65jsim$rpd@panix.com> <3480D232.11F08A78@net66.com> <65srl1$2eg@panix.com> <348603F1.C4855747@net66.com> <881447603snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <348A3586.4800@gstis.net>
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In <348A3586.4800@gstis.net> James Hedman writes:
>those are precisely the chief arguments of the two maon arms of the
>liberal order in the United States at the present time. The
>Republican Party argues in the libertarian mode while the Dems
>(especially the "civil rights" idealogues) purportedly push for more
>equality.
Another way to describe the distinction is that while both appeal to
maximum equal satisfaction of actual individual preferences (the goal
of liberalism) the Dems emphasize "equal" and the Reps "maximum" (i.e.,
economic efficiency).
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Dec 7 08:07:30 EST 1997
Article: 10785 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the counterrevolution public
Date: 7 Dec 1997 08:06:19 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 39
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References: <3486024C.6EF2@msmisp.com> <666clj$9gd@panix.com> <881448548snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
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In <881448548snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> rafael cardenas writes:
>> The problem is that social order requires inequality. Elimination
>> of some inequalities normally means elimination of some principles
>> of order in favor of others and the inequalities associated with
>> them.
>Some traditional ('tribal' or 'primitive') societies have a high
>degree of social order, i.e. conventions for good behaviour, absence
>of violence, and so on, but with a high degree of equality also.
Comparatively there is equality, but absolutely there is inequality,
and the inequality is not accidental but essential to the social order.
Some (elders perhaps) are more influential than others, and sex-role
differentiation and (I believe) some form of private property are
universal. If those inequalities were somehow eliminated others would
have to be created.
My claim is not that social order requires extreme inequality or that
more inequality is better than less inequality but that social order
requires inequality. Utopian demands for the elimination of one form
of inequality (sexism or ethnocentrism say) are therefore equally
demands for greater reliance on others (money, bureaucratic position).
I suspect the claim I make is easily misunderstood. If so, it's
understandable. There would be no point to making it if utopian
demands and standards played no material role in contemporary politics.
So in a more reasonable world it's not one that would come up in
discussion.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Dec 7 22:15:23 EST 1997
Article: 10788 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the counterrevolution public
Date: 7 Dec 1997 22:05:23 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 31
Message-ID: <66fo5j$jnh@panix.com>
References: <34873612.B33FD169@net66.com> <3487A66A.43B3@gstis.net> <34883ADB.E6304B92@net66.com> <66b6bd$oep@panix.com> <348B4E07.D3BC0F4F@net66.com>
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In <348B4E07.D3BC0F4F@net66.com> John Hilty writes:
>The social welfare state, in the context of a capitalist economy,
>represents a compromise between the pursuit of individualistic
>self-interest via economic markets (the desire to help oneself) versus
>the altruistic protection of less fortunate others via governmental
>social programs (the desire to help others).
Your claim is that in voting to support the social welfare state the
majority votes against its direct personal economic interests. Don't
recipients of state benefits have the vote? Don't they include almost
everyone? If the majority votes in favor of forced equality does that
show how disinterested the majority is? (I would have thought the
opposite, actually.)
>when Jim Kalb argued that Amish society is anti-individualistic and
>the individual must submit to the higher social order, he was in effect
>saying that the Amish have an altruistic society that is indifferent to the
>pursuit of Own_Outcomes, but has positive regard for Other_Outcomes, or:
>Altruistic_Outcomes = Own_Outcomes (0) + Other_Outcomes(+),
I haven't the faintest idea how my argument is "in effect" what you
say. For obscure reasons you identify "higher social order" with
"outcomes of persons other than oneself." I can't understand why the
higher social order wouldn't have the same relation to one's own
outcomes and those of other people.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Dec 7 22:15:24 EST 1997
Article: 10789 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the Counterrevolution Public
Date: 7 Dec 1997 22:15:07 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 14
Message-ID: <66fonr$kl9@panix.com>
References: <348B42DF.5684@msmisp.com>
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Status: RO
In <348B42DF.5684@msmisp.com> cjahnes@msmisp.com (Carl Jahnes) writes:
>I think in our better moments most of us see this "assertion of the
>body" in the terms the Apostle Paul writes of in Romans 7... "I do
>not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what
>I hate to do..."
Still, human perversity is not I think directly attributable to the
body. Mere balkiness or proneness to decay or even straightforward
sensuality is not what Paul was referring to.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Dec 8 07:54:38 EST 1997
Article: 10792 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the counterrevolution public
Date: 8 Dec 1997 07:52:09 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 59
Message-ID: <66gqhp$sd@panix.com>
References: <34873612.B33FD169@net66.com> <3487A66A.43B3@gstis.net> <34883ADB.E6304B92@net66.com> <66b6bd$oep@panix.com> <348B4E07.D3BC0F4F@net66.com> <66fo5j$jnh@panix.com>
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In <66fo5j$jnh@panix.com> jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>In <348B4E07.D3BC0F4F@net66.com> John Hilty writes:
>>when Jim Kalb argued that Amish society is anti-individualistic and
>>the individual must submit to the higher social order, he was in effect
>>saying that the Amish have an altruistic society that is indifferent to the
>>pursuit of Own_Outcomes, but has positive regard for Other_Outcomes, or:
>>Altruistic_Outcomes = Own_Outcomes (0) + Other_Outcomes(+),
>I haven't the faintest idea how my argument is "in effect" what you
>say. For obscure reasons you identify "higher social order" with
>"outcomes of persons other than oneself." I can't understand why the
>higher social order wouldn't have the same relation to one's own
>outcomes and those of other people.
Actually, I do have an idea why Mr. Hilty says what he does, but I was
too lazy last night to write it out.
Liberal theoreticians characteristically proceed by observing that the
world is full of people who try to get whatever it is they happen to
want (Mr. Hilty's "Own_Outcomes"), and try to construct a political
order that takes that conduct as a basis. So what they do is observe
that no one can get much of anything without social cooperation, and
try to devise principles of social cooperation that should be
acceptable to everyone. The "social contract" dramatizes the
construction of such principles by imagining all the world's
self-seekers meeting in convention and devising a common political
order. It seems clear that no principle would be accepted as part of
the social contract unless it treated "Own_Outcomes" the same for
everyone, in other words that it treated "Own_Outcomes" and
"Other_Outcomes" identically, and both positively. Hence Mr. Hilty's
equation for liberalism.
What about Mr. Hilty's other equations? The Amish, and in fact the
majority of the world's population present and past (who are not
liberals), do not proceed in at all the same way. They believe that in
addition to "the stuff people happen to want to get," which is the
liberal conception of human goals, there are things like the "common
good," the "moral nature of man and the world," the "will of God," and
so on, and believe such things play an essential role in the political
order. As a result, they arrive at political views not simply based on
individual "Outcomes." The attempt to reduce those views to liberal
terms therefore leads to the bizarre results displayed in Mr. Hilty's
equations and discussion.
I should point out that libertarianism, "classical liberalism," is a
form of liberalism. Mr. Hilty's equation for it is therefore simply
wrong. The reason libertarians don't permit "Own_Outcomes_" to be
enhanced by government transfer payments is that it would reduce the
"Other_Outcomes" that their political conceptions value equally. And
in fact one of their major arguments is that government intervention
reduces the efficiency of markets and therefore reduces the aggregate
positive magnitude of all "Outcomes."
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Dec 8 17:47:24 EST 1997
Article: 10795 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the counterrevolution public
Date: 8 Dec 1997 17:44:50 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 44
Message-ID: <66ht92$r3@panix.com>
References: <65jsim$rpd@panix.com> <3480D232.11F08A78@net66.com> <65srl1$2eg@panix.com> <348603F1.C4855747@net66.com> <881447603snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <348C166E.BEA878DE@net66.com>
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Status: RO
In <348C166E.BEA878DE@net66.com> John Hilty writes:
>efforts on the part of non-liberals to redefine modern liberalism as
>the "single-minded pursuit of self-interest" and similar nonsense
I can't think of an instance of anyone engaging in such an effort.
Whom are you quoting? After all, "single-minded pursuit of
self-interest" on the normal construction of those words wouldn't be a
theory of government at all. There are of course those who make the
obvious point that liberalism, classical and contemporary, accepts
pursuit of self-interest as the fundamental human motivation and tries
to construct a social order based on as little additional as possible.
Some people it is true use such language to express their disapproval
of classical liberalism, but that always struck me as intemperate
rhetoric. Maybe there are Randians and such who would define virtue as
"single-minded pursuit of self-interest" but I think their definition
of "self-interest" differs from the usual one.
I am puzzled though by what appears to be a conflict between your
theory of World Culture and your view of liberalism. Your World
Culture is based on money as the sole motivator; the public order does
not depend at all on noble virtues. If they exist at all it's as
private hobbies of no public importance. Nonetheless you seem to
believe that the World Culture is consistent with liberalism.
>Modern liberalism in the developed nation-states of Western Europe and
>North America is a compromise between the social norm of freedom
>(libertarianism, neo-liberalism, classic liberalism) and the social
>norm of equality (pantisocracy, altruism, egalitarian socialism),
>consequently it contains both altruistic and individualistic
>components.
It seems to me more unified than that. After all, the fundamental
liberal concept of freedom is freedom to do whatever it is that you
happen to feel like doing. It's reasonable to think that kind of
freedom will be maximized by arrangements that make sure that all
preferences (e.g., the preferences of non-productive people without
rich uncles, the preferences of homosexuals) are equally favored. So
contemporary liberalism is, I think, true to its heritage.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Dec 9 20:12:44 EST 1997
Article: 10802 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the Counterrevolution Public
Date: 8 Dec 1997 22:31:45 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 20
Message-ID: <66ie31$gk@panix.com>
References: <348CB393.3DFC@msmisp.com>
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In <348CB393.3DFC@msmisp.com> cjahnes@msmisp.com (Carl Jahnes) writes:
>I have found that Libertarians are loathe to admit that they are
>beneficiaries of Government Largesse, in the form of the legal theory
>that turns "corporations" into Persons.
Why is that largesse? There isn't much that can be done through use of
the corporate form that couldn't be done through common-law contract
and partnership (partnership=contract+mutual agency) except limitation
of tort liability, which hasn't been that major a concern until rather
recently.
I suppose having a legal system at all could be viewed as largesse,
legal systems after all make use of legal theories and enable private
persons to make arrangements that get enforced by law, but that by
itself doesn't seem to be what you have in mind. Or is it?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Dec 10 05:52:38 EST 1997
Article: 10806 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the Counterrevolution Public
Date: 10 Dec 1997 05:42:36 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 43
Message-ID: <66lrms$rm4@panix.com>
References: <348CB393.3DFC@msmisp.com> <881711932snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
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X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97)
Status: RO
rafael cardenas writes:
>Nevertheless corporations aren't treated in the same way as persons;
>in important respects they have weaker obligations than persons. For
>example a corporation is not put to death or put in jail if it is
>guilty of homicide, because the idea of limited liability in financial
>terms is extended to limited liability in other terms. There's no
>reason why this should be so
Sure there is. Criminal law has to do with moral guilt. It is
important I think to maintain the connection. Since corporations do
not have souls they can't have moral guilt. Or at least they don't
characteristically have enough of a soul to make it sensible routinely
to treat them as capable of their own separate _mens rea_.
>if a corporation adopts a policy, say, which it knows could have, or
>even which it expects to have, lethal effects on someone, and someone
>is then killed by it, the corporation could be jailed in some way ...
>instead of the usual slap-on-the-hand fine, or at worst jailing (for a
>shorter term, because of their individually diffuse responsibility) of
>directors or employees
To say the corporation knows the policy could or will kill someone is I
think simply to say that those who control and act for it know that.
You seem to believe the corporation has guilt for which it should pay
over and above the guilt of those natural persons. I don't understand
that, at least not as a matter of criminal law.
It's no doubt true that human collectivities can have moral qualities
that don't reduce without remainder to the moral qualities of their
individual members. Nonetheless, people usually try to impose criminal
liability where the moral situation is clearest, and how clear are we
on the nature and extent of the soul of a corporation? People are
usually reluctant these days to hold families or countries collectively
criminally responsible, and a corporation seems a shakier case. And
even when countries *are* in effect held criminally liable, as
sometimes happens after a war, it's not called that and it's not done
in accordance with the forms of the law because the situation is not
easily routinized.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Dec 10 05:52:39 EST 1997
Article: 10807 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the Counterrevolution Public
Date: 10 Dec 1997 05:50:06 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 49
Message-ID: <66ls4u$rv4@panix.com>
References: <348CB393.3DFC@msmisp.com> <881711932snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
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X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97)
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cjahnes@msmisp.com (Carl Jahnes) writes:
>a corporation gets to "live forever", amassing capital to its heart's
>content (gee...look at that anthropomorphism!),
You can do that by common-law contract and agency.
Suppose you, Rafael and I agree to put up $1000 each to carry on a
steelmaking business, each of us appoints the others his agent for
purposes of carrying on the business, and we agree we will be co-owners
of the assets and profits of the business and that we'll keep
everything in the business unless a majority votes for a distribution.
We also agree that if one of us dies, goes bonkers or whatever his
interest will not be distributed to him or his estate but will be sold
to the highest bidder reasonably acceptable to the other two.
Then, since $3000 isn't really enough, the three of us sell "equity
certificates" for $1000 each to the 3,000,000 other readers of this
newsgroup entitling the holder to share pro rata with the three of us
in profits and distributions and by majority vote of certificateholders
to dissolve the business. Maybe (if we needed to do it to sell the
certificates) we would also give certificateholders the right to vote
for representatives who function like the board of directors of a
corporation and choose who actually manages the business etc.
The resulting arrangement doesn't depend on corporation law, but it
could live forever and amass capital to its heart's content. So I
don't understand why corporate law is government largesse in a sense
that the law of property, contract and agency is not.
>while a real person dies and has his estate attacked by inheritance
>tax collectors. State distributed largesse.
Shares of stock are subject to inheritance and estate taxes. Why does
it matter whether the tax is imposed directly with respect to the
assets of a business or with respect to stock certificates representing
an interest in those assets?
>But anyway, if a company is Chartered to mine coal, then, if it
>despoils other property in the process, it has been allowed to steal
>value of property owners.
What difference does it make if it is a corporation or Bill Gates
personally acting on his own behalf who hires the men who do the
mining?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Dec 10 22:45:21 EST 1997
Article: 10808 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Another firing!
Date: 10 Dec 1997 09:55:49 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 21
Message-ID: <66mahl$j7l@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
John Podhoretz, who became editorial page editor of the _NY Post_ after
Scott McConnell was canned for being unPC, has replaced Hilton Kramer
and his "TimesWatch" column on the _NY Times_ with an OK but much less
good column by _Forbes_ columnist Dan Seligman.
My utterly unfounded speculations:
1. John P. like most New York Jews of his generation is far less
cultured than his parents. Kramer isn't policy wonk enough for him, he
actually thinks art and culture and philosophy and stuff like that
matters.
2. The senior Pohoretzes and Kramer have sharp tongues and make
enemies, possibly including each other.
Is anyone more in the know, or is this all too parochial for anyone to
care?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Dec 10 22:45:22 EST 1997
Article: 10811 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Duel
Date: 10 Dec 1997 21:50:18 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 15
Message-ID: <66nkda$ivm@panix.com>
References:
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
In jabowery@netcom.com (Jim Bowery) writes:
>Was the elimination of the duel as an institution of honor among the
>aristocracy a revolutionary or counter-revolutionary transformation?
Revolutionary. The elimination of the duel had to do with the
displacement of the honorable as a social standard by the useful and
profitable. In Plato's scheme (_Republic_, books viii and ix), it is
part of the transformation of timocracy into oligarchy and therefore
part of the centuries-long elimination of the transcendent as an
ordering principle that constitutes the Revolution.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Dec 10 22:45:24 EST 1997
Article: 10812 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the Counterrevolution Public
Date: 10 Dec 1997 22:42:47 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 109
Message-ID: <66nnfn$ne4@panix.com>
References: <348CB393.3DFC@msmisp.com> <881711932snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <66ls4u$rv4@panix.com> <881801379snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
In <881801379snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> rafael cardenas writes:
>> We also agree that if one of us dies, goes bonkers or whatever his
>> interest will not be distributed to him or his estate but will be
>> sold to the highest bidder reasonably acceptable to the other two.
>I'm not sure that the last condition would be possible merely
>under a partnership agreement, at least in English law. The rights
>of the heirs would have to be circumvented by separate trusts
>set up by each partner
As a matter of general concepts of property and contract law there
should be no problem; the heirs should get only what the deceased had,
and if the deceased didn't have the right to a distribution then the
heirs shouldn't inherit it in the absence of a special rule (any more
than if they inherited real property they should have the right to
retrieve it from a tenant with a lease).
I'm not saying you're wrong about English law or that there's anything
bad about English law. The question though is whether ordinary rules
of property and contract would allow enterprises to be established that
survive their founders, or whether there has to be some special set of
provisions (corporate law) appropriately referred to as largesse.
>Even if we agreed that the partnership would be governed by (say) the
>laws of some U.S. state which (by hypothesis) would be prepared to
>enforce the clause in the partnership agreement against the heirs, we
>couldn't be sure that a court in some other country or state where the
>heirs could lodge a claim would be willing to recognize the clause.
Sure. For that matter there might be a country that says heirs of
shareholders have a right to dissolve a corporation and applies its own
law even to foreign corporations. The point though is that even in the
case of partnerships there's nothing about fundamental legal concepts
that compels such a result.
>> Maybe (if we needed to do it to sell the certificates) we would also
>> give certificateholders the right to vote for representatives who
>> function like the board of directors of a corporation and choose who
>> actually manages the business etc.
>Again, I'm not sure that we could assign that right.
Why not? Shares of stock can be assigned and they carry such a right.
>Among other things, surely not only would we have to nominate each one
>of the 3m buyers as our agents
No. The holders of the "participation certificates" would have no more
right than debtholders to be personally involved in running the
business. Think of the "participation certificates" as perpetual debt
with variable interest equal to profits that is normally added to
principal rather than paid currently and is negative if the business
runs at a loss.
>> So I don't understand why corporate law is government largesse in a
>> sense that the law of property, contract and agency is not.
>Probably because of the effects of limited liability.
But the holders of participation certificates shouldn't have liability
for claims against the business because the three of us aren't their
agents any more than we would be agents of creditors. They can't tell
us to do anything. They wouldn't even have an unlimited right to find
out what we're doing. At most they can vote for board members, who act
in accordance with a fiduciary duty so they can't give orders to them
either. The three of us have liability, but as a practical matter only
after the $3,000,000,000 put up by the certificateholders is run
through. And then only for torts, since we're smart enough to make all
our contracts limited recourse.
Why should that degree of liability be the difference between largesse
and its absence?
>> Shares of stock are subject to inheritance and estate taxes. Why
>> does it matter whether the tax is imposed directly with respect to
>> the assets of a business or with respect to stock certificates
>> representing an interest in those assets?
>It makes a very big difference, surely; in the first case the taxman
>can force the sale of the business itself or of its physical assets
>(which might prevent the business being carried on), and in the second
>only the sale of the stocks.
So the government has no more rights than the dead man did. In most
cases though it's economically the same - the sale of stock is in
substance the sale of a proportionate share of the business. The
concern seems to be an estate that owns stock that is not readily
marketable and doesn't own much else, so it can't raise the funds
needed to pay the estate tax. I admit I don't know what the
government's rights are in that situation. Even if its remedies are
inadequate it doesn't seem a big enough part of the picture to make the
availability of the corporate form a kind of largesse. Also, where's
the abuse? The person who benefits from the situation is not the
deceased or his heirs or the corporation or its existing investors, but
the guy who buys the stock from the estate at a bargain price.
>It may make more difference in the case of criminal damage, where
>Gates could go to jail but at most some employee of the chartered
>company would.
Why would Gates go to jail unless he was personally responsible for the
crime? And if a shareholder or director had the same degree of
personal involvement Gates did presumably he would be criminally
liable too.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Dec 11 05:36:26 EST 1997
Article: 10815 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Duel
Date: 11 Dec 1997 05:34:27 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 13
Message-ID: <66ofjj$kfn@panix.com>
References: <66nkda$ivm@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
In jabowery@netcom.com (Jim Bowery) writes:
>Why was the American West one of the last regions of the world to
>abandon the duel?
No or not much government. Reasonably equal laws can be maintained
even in the absence of government if a code of honor causes men to
treat respect for their rights and dignity as a matter of life and
death. The classic example is medieval Iceland.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Dec 11 17:28:57 EST 1997
Article: 10818 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Duel
Date: 11 Dec 1997 17:14:25 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 21
Message-ID: <66pok1$b5l@panix.com>
References: <66nkda$ivm@panix.com> <66ofjj$kfn@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
In jabowery@netcom.com (Jim Bowery) writes:
>Why did the Icelanding Althing circa 1000 outlaw the duel (Holmganga)
>within 5 years of adopting Christianity as the state religion?
"Holmgang" didn't mean "duel" in general, it meant that if A challenged
B to duel for B's land, B had to accept and win or he would lose his
land. It was more a rule of property law than anything else. Its
abolition didn't much affect the number of duels, blood feuds and so on
or their importance for the social order.
After abolition of holmgang as before the basic legal rule about such
things was that if you killed or injured someone you had to pay
compensation. Honor of course sometimes required that you do things
for which compensation would have to be paid. Quite often the
provocation to the killing would have created an offsetting right to
damages.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Dec 11 17:28:58 EST 1997
Article: 10819 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Another firing!
Date: 11 Dec 1997 17:26:14 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 41
Message-ID: <66ppa6$cn9@panix.com>
References: <66mahl$j7l@panix.com> <1d11gbh.ttfnqe1i7lelmN@deepblue14.salamander.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
In <1d11gbh.ttfnqe1i7lelmN@deepblue14.salamander.com> wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes:
>Isn't Seligman rather unPC himself, writing about racial IQ and group
>differences? I've seen him in _Forbes_.
Yes. In his initial column he was rather coy, pretending for example
his reason for quoting a sentence about how women boxers would get more
attention from serious fans when they improved their skills as an
example of weirdness at the _Times_ was that the sentence contained a
split infinitive.
>On being a "wonk". Is this just the clerkishness of modern
>intellectuals? (That's not quite right...what do you call people who
>think of themselves as intellectuals and who are paid for their
>opinions?) It doesn't require a wise soul to play the "who's up, who's
>down" game.
A wonk believes that the technological organization of the world is the
ultimate reality. He is someone for whom the Revolution -- the
abolition of the transcendent -- has fully triumphed. For him the only
issues remaining are therefore ones that relate to specific
administrative questions.
>Is it possible that the result of mass education is, at best, to
>prepare a large percentage of students to become clerks?
The whole point of the educational system is to turn top students into
wonks and others into servants of wonks.
>Technicians do not necessarily need high culture, but they do require
>problem-solving skills beyond that of bureaucratic functionaries.
Wonkdom is the fantasy that technology can do everything. Wonks
therefore have no hold on realities except (for Darwinian reasons) the
realities of bureaucratic politics. Actual technicians who deal with
things to which technology is actually relevant have a far closer
relation to the real.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Dec 11 20:39:31 EST 1997
Article: 10822 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Duel
Date: 11 Dec 1997 20:28:21 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 66
Message-ID: <66q3vl$dbj@panix.com>
References: <66nkda$ivm@panix.com> <66ofjj$kfn@panix.com> <66pok1$b5l@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
In <66pok1$b5l@panix.com> jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>"Holmgang" didn't mean "duel" in general, it meant that if A challenged
>B to duel for B's land, B had to accept and win or he would lose his
>land.
A longish discussion of somewhat specialized interest:
There's an article on the holmgang at
http://www.vikingage.com/vac
It was a form of trial by battle, rather than a duel of the kind in
which Alexander Hamilton fell. The feature that distinguished it from
other more important forms of private violence was that it didn't lead
to prosecution:
"there was a way in Iceland and Norway for a litigant to achieve the
justice sought by a faster route than a suit. Anyone could challenge
his opponent to a duel called a holmganga."
Instead of getting a lawyer as in a normal suit you could get someone
else to fight the holmgang for you. Since it applied to more things
than land, though, what I said in my previous post was inaccurate or at
least incomplete.
As their legal system developed the Icelanders modified and restricted
the holmgang to tame it:
"the Icelanders had modified the law to allow the setting up of a
special dueling 'ring' ... In Iceland the blows were regulated, each
combatant taking turns with the challenged man going first ... The
Icelanders, realizing that their population was small and that it was a
waste to have the important men of the country killing each other,
incorporated two rules that virtually ended this loss of life. These
were the rules that combat would end as soon as blood fell to the
cloak, and that the party that lost would pay a 'ransom' of three marks
of silver to the winner in holgangs where the reason for the duel was
not an easily transportable item."
Accordingly, the holmgang was not important in Iceland for long. Most
of the examples mentioned in the article, including those described in
Icelandic sagas like Egils Saga, take place elsewhere.
As suggested, the abuses of the holmgang seem to have been more
important than its uses:
"'References from Iceland and in particular Norway ... show that the
intrepid considered the duel an instrument to better their way of life.
Men of small means would put a claim on alien property by challenging
the owner to a duel. Victory or the challenger's refusal to fight ...
automatically legalized the claim. Berserks ... oppressed the rich by
challenging them to duels.' ... In the early days of the Icelandic
Republic, as it came to be called later, duels for land and/or women
had not yet been outlawed. There is only one reference in the sagas set
in Iceland of a challenge for a woman, and a number of short references
to property duels in Landnamabok in addition to the one noted above,
that show that these type of duels were completely unjustified. As such
they were outlawed and '[a] man could no longer be challenged for his
lands or his women-folk, since the only result of the holmgang the law
would allow, apart from wounds or death, was a claim for the payment of
the agreed upon stakes.'"
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Dec 12 07:08:10 EST 1997
Article: 10828 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Competing Sovereignties
Date: 12 Dec 1997 06:18:38 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 65
Message-ID: <66r6ie$3or@panix.com>
References: <34909C15.5E0F@msmisp.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
In <34909C15.5E0F@msmisp.com> cjahnes@msmisp.com (Carl Jahnes) writes:
>Our liability won't be limited unless we become a legal corporation.
>Our personal assets will be "at risk", and so, we will *act* like the
>owners we are.
How often is a large company bankrupted by liability for torts, taxes
and fines? We don't lose anything until that happens. It's easy
enough to shield our personal assets from contractual liabilities (by
agreeing only to nonrecourse contracts).
Besides, we've got 3,000,000,000 to go through before there's a
problem. And if the consequence of the arrangement is that we are
acting more cautiously than other businesses, and someone doesn't like
that, the agreements could give us a quintuple share of the profits and
charge us only a fifth of our share of the losses. In fact, we might
draft them that way anyway. Glad you suggested the idea.
>Corporations, like any technology, are Manichean. They "abstract"
>parts of the human body to make those parts very powerful, and atrophy
>the other parts left behind.
My point is only that you can get to substantially the same place by
contract, property and agency law.
>The corporate officer exercises ownership without owning.
In my example if we hired a manager and exercised only very general
oversight the manager would be in the same position as a corporate
officer. Actually, it's likely we *would* hire a manager, or at least
two of us would appoint the third as a manager and the third would to
that extent exercise ownership without owning. The situation would
grow more pronounced as time went by and ownership got dissipated among
increasingly numerous heirs and other transferees.
Again, the point is that you don't need corporate law for any of this.
Abolition of private corporations wouldn't change things. If people
find it a convenient way to do business they'll find some other way to
get to pretty much the same place.
>If a corporation causes the death of somebody, all an "owner" might
>lose would be some profits, some capital. As you said somewhere else,
>he doesn't go to jail.
>Your normal small businessman has his life divvied up to pay to the
>victim while he does the time.
Again, the existence of corporate law doesn't change things. If the
normal small businessman does something that displays gross personal
moral culpability he'll do time even if he's using the corporate form.
Announcing in court that he was acting as a corporate officer when he
put out the contract on his competitor won't get him off the hook.
Ditto for the corporate officer. And if a large partnership caused the
death of someone the partners wouldn't all get jugged if their personal
moral culpability was no greater than that of a corporate officer in
the kind of situation you seem to have in mind.
My point in all this is not that there aren't problems with large-scale
rationalized enterprise, but that there are lots of legal forms such
things can take and so there's no magic bullet legal reform like
getting rid of private corporations that would turn things around.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Dec 12 07:08:11 EST 1997
Article: 10829 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Duel
Date: 12 Dec 1997 06:30:23 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 19
Message-ID: <66r78f$4ae@panix.com>
References: <66nkda$ivm@panix.com> <66ofjj$kfn@panix.com> <66pok1$b5l@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
In jabowery@netcom.com (Jim Bowery) writes:
>: "Holmgang" didn't mean "duel" in general,
>The reference you gave, http://www.vikingage.com/vac, and its
>references seem to use "duel" and "holmgang(a)" interchangably.
True enough. I was using "duel" to mean something like "private
violence motivated by honor." I'll admit the word suggests something
more formalized than that. On the other hand, in modern English it's
not at all synonymous with "trial by battle."
>It appears to me that the blood feud rose as Holmganga waned
>From what does that appear to you?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Dec 12 07:08:12 EST 1997
Article: 10830 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Duel
Date: 12 Dec 1997 07:05:07 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 49
Message-ID: <66r99j$5pg@panix.com>
References: <66nkda$ivm@panix.com> <66ofjj$kfn@panix.com> <66pok1$b5l@panix.com> <66q3vl$dbj@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
In jabowery@netcom.com (Jim Bowery) writes:
>: As their legal system developed the Icelanders modified and
>: restricted the holmgang to tame it:
>What is the difference betwen such modifications and restrictions to
>"tame" tradition, and the "reform" which your signature abjures?
Who knows? The changes I suppose were part of the transformation of
Iceland into a reasonably settled community although one in which there
was no state and a code of honor and private violence continued to play
a fundamental role. If you read the sagas it doesn't appear that
holmgang was that important in Iceland even preChristianization at
least after the earliest period. Instead, the regular alternative to
the court system was arbitration, negotiation or extralegal violence
for which compensation would eventually have to be paid. So it seems
to me the changes were probably more an attempt to limit something that
had become anomalous than a cause of the emergence of a new system.
I'm not sure it's really relevant, but trial by battle wasn't abolished
in England until the early 19th century. Someone claimed the right,
and to everyone's amazement the claim appeared well-founded. I don't
consider its abolition at that time a particularly important reform
though.
>On the contrary, your own references establish holmgang arrived on
>Iceland along with its settlers from Norway, and that the tradition
>disappears only in the mists of prehistory and soon after written
>literacy comes to dominate law along with Christianity.
The point of mentioning the reforms that tamed holmgang was that they
took place before the arrival of Christianity. The Icelandic system of
law but no state, backed by honor and private force, lasted hundreds of
years thereafter. And literacy didn't dominate the law in 1006 when
holmgang was abolished.
>Can you see that perhaps some of these young men might have been
>driven "berserk" were it not for the neomoral alternatives being
>offered to them such as being sodomized and dying of AIDS? Was it
>really better that they didn't go "berserk"?
>"Justice" is a very problematic word.
Certainly justice is problematic, violent rebellion sometimes has its
appeal, and there are things worse than dying in battle.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Dec 12 22:19:22 EST 1997
Article: 10835 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Duel
Date: 12 Dec 1997 22:15:24 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 82
Message-ID: <66sukc$il5@panix.com>
References: <66nkda$ivm@panix.com> <66ofjj$kfn@panix.com> <66pok1$b5l@panix.com> <66q3vl$dbj@panix.com> <66r99j$5pg@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
jabowery@netcom.com (Jim Bowery) writes:
>Again, I am asking for your definition of "duel" that precludes
>property rights as a possible primary motive in some cases.
I don't have an all-purpose definition. My usage may have been
inconsistent, although I'm not going back to check.
What's the substantive point at issue? We started off talking about
dueling in general, which I associate with codes of honor. Do you
think I'm wrong on that? I also said that "holmgang" and "duel" are
not synonymous, and argued that the abolition of holmgang in Iceland in
1006 was much less important than you seemed to think. I agree though
that a holmgang is a kind of duel.
>But in honor as the motive, we again see a private dispute involving
>survival issues, such as food and mating. It's just that there are
>few environments, other than frontiers, where morality is such a
>survival issue.
I'm not sure of your point. Dueling is tied to codes of honor, the
meaning of honor is that there are things more important than staying
alive, and its demands are usually more exacting for aristocrats and
others not on the edge of survival.
>Secondly, I'd like to see evidence for Holmganga's outlaw status in
>Iceland circa 1000 being limited to disputes that did not involve
>honor.
Don't understand. Are you asking for evidence of the assertions in the
article that by 1000 you could no longer get a man's land by
challenging him for it?
>Personally, I doubt that the huge die-off that occured in post-
>Christianization / post-Holmganga was as much driven by a change in
>climate as it was a change in the moral structure of the culture.
I thought the usual view was that things went well after
Christianization, better than they had before, until maybe the late
12th c. when social order began to break down because of increasing
inequalities of wealth and power and the beginning of the colder
weather, and that the starvation etc. was later yet.
>Might this not have been due to the fact that the primary function of
>the duel in traditional history was the defeat of sophistry that had
>become so well adapted that verbal recourse was no longer viable? Is
>it not conceivable that sophistry had already won the cultural war in
>19th century England?
Trial by battle stopped being used in England well before the 19th c.
As to sophistry, I suppose that the duel is not the only way in which
the lion defeats the fox.
>Again, I have to ask for your evidnece that single combat continued in
>Iceland except in an outlawed state.
It was outlawed in the sense that it gave rise to claims for damages.
The same was true of skirmishes and battles involving several or many
men. For a slice of Icelandic life in the 13th century you could read
_Sturlunga Saga_, which describes battles, skirmishes and single
combats. The scale of the battles described there seems to have been a
novelty, though.
>the complexification of the legal system seems to follow the spread of
>theology as a special institution involving scriptures or sacred
>writings.
The Icelandic legal system was already quite complex before
Christianization. It took three successive years for the Lawspeaker to
recite the whole code at the Allthing. Read _Njal's Saga_ (its hero is
a lawyer) for accounts of legal maneuverings.
>And there are things worse than dying in single combat, like dying in a
>world war, or even in a blood feud.
Dying alone is no good, neither is dying when so many are dying that
your fate loses significance. A blood feud might be best if you had to
choose.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Dec 13 05:38:45 EST 1997
Article: 10837 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the counterrevolution public
Date: 13 Dec 1997 05:36:28 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 55
Message-ID: <66tofc$in2@panix.com>
References: <65jsim$rpd@panix.com> <3480D232.11F08A78@net66.com> <65srl1$2eg@panix.com> <348603F1.C4855747@net66.com> <881447603snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <348C166E.BEA878DE@net66.com> <66ht92$r3@panix.com> <3490C681.52AEB164@net66.com>
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Status: RO
In <3490C681.52AEB164@net66.com> John Hilty writes:
>Your focusing only on respect for self-expression rights, which is a
>necessary precondition of the pursuit of material self-advancement In
>Modern Liberalism, there is also respect for material rights (such as
>guaranteed food, shelter, and health care), which is an expression of
>altruism towards the less fortunate members of society. Therefore, a
>dualism of social values in Modern Liberalism exists.
Doesn't seem that dualistic to me -- the ideal is always a system that
maximizes people's ability to get whatever it is they happen to want.
I agree there could be a conflict between maximizing aggregate
satisfactions and equality. I don't see though why you call emphasis
on equality and material rights altruistic:
1. You yourself claim in your exchange with Rafael that income
redistribution increases aggregate welfare. If that's so I'm not clear
why you think there won't be redistribution if people vote their own
welfare. It seems to me that those who vote for material rights most
often hope to advance their self-interest by doing so, if not always
their immediate cash flow then their security from material hazard and
their freedom from possible inconvenient obligations to parents,
relatives, children, etc. After all, most of the money that funds
material rights in a welfare state does not go to feeding the hungry,
housing the homeless and so on, but to middle-class benefits.
2. Even apart from concern about their own welfare, it's not
necessarily altruistic for the majority to favor equality. One could
as easily attribute their support of material rights funded by
progressive taxation to envy -- they hate the idea of anyone having
more than they do.
3. People claim that material rights reduce social tension, crime,
what have you and are therefore beneficial to everyone. Some people
must believe those claims and vote for material rights for such
reasons.
4. The effect of material rights is to make it unnecessary for anyone
to show practical active concern for anyone else in material matters.
There's always "someone else," in the form of the welfare bureaucracy,
to look after such things. An extensive system of material rights
should therefore make people less altruistic, since moral qualities
that serve no day-to-day practical function, like concern for the
material well-being of others in an advanced welfare state, tend to
wither and die.
5. Our rulers like material rights because they make more and more
people ever more dependent on them for their immediate personal
well-being. They increase the importance of the state in comparison
with other social institutions. Ruling class love of power is not the
same as altruism though.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Dec 13 09:38:40 EST 1997
Article: 10839 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Taking the counterrevolution public
Date: 13 Dec 1997 09:36:05 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 53
Message-ID: <66u6gl$3jc@panix.com>
References: <34873612.B33FD169@net66.com> <3487A66A.43B3@gstis.net> <34883ADB.E6304B92@net66.com> <66b6bd$oep@panix.com> <348B4E07.D3BC0F4F@net66.com> <66fo5j$jnh@panix.com> <66gqhp$sd@panix.com> <3491A8E1.EF3869FD@net66.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
In <3491A8E1.EF3869FD@net66.com> John Hilty writes:
>It's Dr. Hilty.
Sorry.
>The equations are not bizarre: such things as the "common good,"
>"the moral nature of man and the world," and "the will of God" merely
>define what is positively, neutrally, or negatively valued for own and
>other outcomes, therefore they don't affect the underlying structure
>of the equations at all.
Then religious people would be liberal in your terms, since the outcome
they value is God's will, and they want that outcome in all cases.
Someone who believed in organic social unity, a society in which
everyone has and knows his place because he was born into it, would
also be liberal since that goal would apply equally to all. A rugged
individualist who believed that the best life consisted in individual
struggle based on personal strength, skill, determination and
resourcefulness for self-chosen goals would be a liberal as well since
he wants that life for all.
>libertarianism consists of the single-minded pursuit of self-interest.
What's the point of saying something that's obviously false?
Libertarians believe it's wrong to advance self-interest by means of
force, fraud, acquisition of a monopoly granted by government or
redistributive taxation. Those are obvious and common methods of
advancing self-interest. Since libertarians eschew them they are
plainly not single-minded pursuers of self-interest.
>The Panglossian assumption is made that there is always positive
>correspondence between own outcomes and other outcomes (i.e., mutual
>gain or positive-sum), which, of course, isn't necessarily correct
>(not by a long shot) because many economic transactions are zero-sum
>or even negative-sum games: one person often gains at the expense of
>one or more others.
They believe that contract is by definition positive-sum while
government taxation and regulation are not. As to individual
transactions that seems plausible enough. They also consider the
assumption that the state is in essence reason in action, so that
extensive government intervention can be counted on to promote justice
and common benefit, Panglossian. Their view on that point has
something to be said for it as well. For their overall view to be
correct they don't need to assume invariable positive correspondence
between own and other outcomes any more than their opponents need to
assume that big government always does what is good. In politics
general tendencies are enough.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Dec 14 13:23:58 EST 1997
Article: 10840 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Economic statistics
Date: 13 Dec 1997 18:34:28 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 55
Message-ID: <66v624$ef6@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
All the discussion about the nature of the world that is evolving
around us made me go off and look at the Statistical Abstract of the
United States (1994 ed.) for a while. I thought I'd pass on some
things I picked up:
According to Table No. 615, civilian labor force participation in
America grew from 60.4% in 1970 to 63.8% in 1980 to 66.2% in 1993.
Corresponding unemployment rates were 4.8%, 7.0% and 6.7% (No.
614). So the proportion of the population in paid employment has
been climbing, which suggests that the permanent technological
unemployment people have been forecasting for at least 150 years
hasn't arrived quite yet. Maybe it'll get to be a big problem in
the next few years.
According to No. 706, the percentage of American households with
constant-dollar cash income of under $10,000, under $15,000 and
under $25,000 a year didn't change very much between 1970 and
1992. The number getting from $25 - $50,000 declined, while the
number getting $50 - $75,000 grew and the number getting over
$75,000 grew very substantially, from 5.9% to 11%. So it appears
that increased inequality is less a matter of the rich getting
richer and the poor poorer than of some middle-class people
getting richer and everyone else (speaking in aggregate terms)
staying pretty much where they were.
According to No. 1376, none of the developed countries reduced tax
revenues as a percentage of gross domestic product between 1980
and 1991. All increased the percentage except Norway, which held
steady at 47.1%. In some the increase was quite substantial, as
in the case of Canada (from 31.6 to 37.3%) and the Mediterranean
countries.
In the United States, per capita public social welfare
expenditures in constant dollars were $2,352 in 1970, $3,571 in
1980, and 4,542 in 1991 (No. 572). Over the same period such
expenditures grew from 14.8 to 18.6 to 20.5 percent of gross
domestic product (No. 574). Those expeditures are mostly for
things that aren't means-tested (social security, public
education, etc.), and similar figures for means-tested
expenditures aren't given. The latter however totalled $290
billion in 1992 (No. 577). Presumably a large part of that would
be "public aid," which grew from $16 billion in 1970 to $73
billion in 1980 and $180 billion in 1991 (per capita constant
dollar from $267 to $528 to $705) (No. 572).
From the foregoing one would not have guessed that welfare systems
have been gutted and everything public privatized, or that a new
era of anti-government self-seeking is upon us. Maybe it's about
to happen though, and the downsizing of government that remained
invisible in the Reagan era is about to assume visible form under
someone or other.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Dec 14 13:23:59 EST 1997
Article: 10842 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Corporate rule
Date: 14 Dec 1997 09:32:04 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 89
Message-ID: <670ql4$4l1@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
More thoughts on economic issues, specifically on the extent to which
corporations are our rulers:
Legal form is not the issue. No-one cares whether IBM is a
corporation, limited partnership, or Massachusetts business trust. Nor
does anyone care whether Joe's Candy Store incorporates or not. In
raising such issues, what people mean by "corporations" are large
bureaucratic organizations run for private profit under professional
management elected by equitable owners.
One might find the very existence of corporations and their every act
an exercise of power and therefore rule. If most economic activity is
carried on through such organizations then they will own most
productive property and employ most people. If one thinks of their
exercise of their rights as owners and employers as "power," and of
economic considerations as socially primary, then one might think of
them as the rulers of society simply because of what they are.
With perhaps more justification one might think of consumers as the
rulers, since it is consumers who make the ultimate decisions as to
what shall be produced. In their capacity as workers and therefore
ultimate producers, who decide in the end how much and how hard they
will work, they also decide how much shall be produced. On such a view
corporations would be intermediaries forced by competition and the
profit criterion to convert salable effort into purchasable
satisfaction as efficiently as possible.
>From that perspective "corporations are our rulers" really means "we
are ruled by the technical demands of efficient conversion of salable
effort into purchasable satisfaction." There's certainly something to
be said for that view, although one should add that it is our own
demand for purchasable satisfactions that makes us ruleable in such a
manner.
Often a more definite tie between corporations and formal politics is
claimed. The state or transnational bureaucracies are thought to be a
sort of executive committee representing the interests of corporations.
Again, that might be true by definition. If most economic activity is
carried on by corporations, so corporations by definition are
"powerful" as discussed above, then by securing the rights of contract
and ownership upon which corporate power is based the state is
enforcing corporate interests.
A problem with that line of thought is that it ignores the difference
between establishing general rules and dictating results. Rights of
contract and ownership permit corporations to exist, but they also
permit individual proprietorships, cooperatives, communes, monasteries
and a great many other things. Which form becomes dominant depends
less on formal legal rules than on what people want and technical
considerations. So something more concrete seems necessary to
establish the fact (if it is a fact) of corporate rule.
A problem is that on the face of things corporations don't rule us.
Politicians make the laws, and they're elected by popular vote. To
some extent judges make law, but they're insulated from everything but
moral pressure. Administrators and law enforcement agencies are
responsible to elected officials. Discussions of public policy take
place in the media and the academic world, and both tend to be
antagonistic to business. The media of course are owned by
corporations, but their owners are far more concerned with immediate
profits than molding the public ideologically. Cigar-chomping
businessmen have good qualities, but cultural vision isn't one of them.
It doesn't seem to bother them, for example, that on television
businessmen are routinely cast as "heavies." So the general outlook
presented on TV is that the world ought to be run by people like those
who do the programming, talkers and imagemongers with generally leftish
sympathies.
Corporate campaign contributions and special favors granted particular
corporations don't seem to show that corporations rule us. If anything
they show the contrary, since rulers should be able to get what they
want directly and in accordance with the general rules they establish,
without having to rely on near or actual bribery. In addition, such
things usually have more to do with the well-being of particular
corporations than that of corporations as a class. A favor to
corporation A is unlikely to be one to its competitors.
So how does one decide the question? Possibly by breaking it up into
other questions. Rather than "do corporations rule us" we should ask
whether particular corporations or economic interests have more
influence in particular areas of public and private life than they
should. More generally, we should ask why it is that our life is so
dominated by getting and spending. The Left is no help on that issue
since their concern is that getting and spending be equalized. From
the standpoint of the present political scene we are on our own.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Dec 14 21:12:36 EST 1997
Article: 10848 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Corporate rule
Date: 14 Dec 1997 21:09:29 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 123
Message-ID: <6723gp$p8v@panix.com>
References: <670ql4$4l1@panix.com> <34942B94.DEA@gstis.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
James Hedman writes:
>A good deal of federal legislation is originally dictated by the legal
>staffs of the various corporate and special interest lobbying groups.
That doesn't show much. If I have the power to tell people what to do,
and exercise it freely, and a lot of it has to do with things I don't
know much about, no doubt I will be willing e.g. to let the medical
profession, whom I order to give free health care to me, my family, all
my relatives, fellow graduates of my college, etc., do the initial
draft of what the arrangements will look like. If they want to change
something now and then, and they persuade me it is a good idea, I might
accommodate them and start with their writeup. That wouldn't mean I'm
ruled by the medical profession.
>As to the awarding of federal contracts: most RFP's are written in
>such a way as to favor awarding the particular product or service to
>the company that has already been selected by the requesting agency.
No doubt, but why does that show the selected company is running the
show? If someone hires a subordinate he may have a particular man in
mind and the formal hiring process may be a joke, but that doesn't show
that the subordinate is the real boss.
>The people calling the shots in the bureaucracies when it comes to
>policy are the political appointees.
We can agree that if corporations own politics they own government.
>As for state governments, they are notorious for being "owned" by
>corporate interests.
It seems the issue is the extent to which e.g. the government of
Arkansas does things that benefit Tyson Chicken but are not in the
public interest. I'm sure there are many such things, but in the
overall scheme of things how prominent are they? The government of
Arkansas does lots of things, after all. I know that in Connecticut
the insurance companies have a lot of influence. Still, most of what
the state government does can not be accounted for by reference to
insurance companies. And a lot of things the government does there
that benefit insurance companies, for example helping high school
students learn how to be clerks or whatever, are also in the public
interest. It's in the public interest to train people for the jobs
that are available, providing agricultural education in Iowa or
clerical education in Hartford. It's normally in the public interest
to promote whatever economic activities are important locally, even if
the activities are carried on by large corporations.
>At the local level, those county and city governments not dominated by
>real estate development are non-existent.
If that's so, how did extensive systems of land use controls ever get
adopted? Developers are interested in local government because they
want permits and exemptions. Acquisition of an exemption from a general
scheme of regulation is not the typical activity of someone who
dominates a situation.
>Corporation play state governments off one another in regards to taxes
>and regulations when it comes locating a factory or office and they
>often play county governments the same way within a state.
Fine, they bargain for things. So do employees, big customers,
whoever. A national market means state and local governments have to
compete. Some do it by providing public facilities and services, some
by low taxes, some by education, some by offering special breaks to new
employers. No one has absolute power and everyone has to get
cooperation and support. That doesn't show whose interests ultimately
control. It doesn't even show the people who give the most goodies to
corporations will win.
>> A favor to corporation A is unlikely to be one to its competitors.
>
>Not so. A perfect example of this is the recent congressional give-
>away of high-definition frequencies to the existing television
>broadcasters.
Hardly typical.
>> More generally, we should ask why it is that our life is so
>> dominated by getting and spending.
>
>I've got one word for you son: advertising.
An interesting issue. To what extent is advertising cause or
expression? The appeal of consumer culture in non-Western places where
there's not much advertising suggests it's more the latter. Also the
appeal everywhere of entertainment that stresses immediate
gratification, and the appeal of the abolition of traditional moral
restrictions and disciplines among our intellectual and expert classes.
>They dominate it. And it ain't democracy.
I suppose the question of corporate influence really has to do with the
degree to which governments do things against the public interest in
order to favor well-organized private interests. It's hard to answer
that question without a rather comprehensive view of what the
government should be doing in contrast with what it is actually doing.
Do you have a list of things that should be done and would be done if
the corporations didn't have too much power? Of things that should not
be done but are?
Also, direct democracy doesn't seem to be a possibility in a large
complex society in which the government does lots and lots of things.
People make their interests felt by organizing. So another question,
if corporate influence is bad, is what other well-organized private
interests should be calling the shots instead. Unions have lots of
influence on particular things. There are ethnic and ideological
groups that have hot-button issues they tend to dominate. Are those,
or perhaps some other possibility, better?
The libertarian answer to all this is to limit government so government
influence won't be much of a prize. The conservative answer is closely
related, to respect established arrangements which means that there
will be fewer things for government officials to decide. The liberal
answer in actual practice is to give a public spirited elite general
supervisory power. The Madisonian answer maybe is to let a thousand
flowers bloom so they'll balance each other off, and all interests get
represented and the public interest is realized through compromise. Do
you have a favorite solution?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Dec 15 17:03:25 EST 1997
Article: 10850 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Duel
Date: 15 Dec 1997 08:06:26 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 85
Message-ID: <673a0i$4jf@panix.com>
References: <66nkda$ivm@panix.com> <66ofjj$kfn@panix.com> <66pok1$b5l@panix.com> <66q3vl$dbj@panix.com> <66r99j$5pg@panix.com> <66sukc$il5@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
jabowery@netcom.com (Jim Bowery) writes:
>Instead, you claim that the existence of simple biological motives as
>well as the more complex biological motives of honor, renders
>holmganga in need of "taming".
The Icelanders restricted it I suppose because it was hard to work it
into a settled society. In its original form it unsettled the rules of
property for example. But even in its original form it wasn't
altogether simple, biological and individualistic. If ruffian A
challenged farmer B because he wanted B's land, B could put berserker C
forward to do battle for him.
>I still contend that "staying alive" in a larger sense, is at the root
>of morality. That larger sense is the sense of a society's survival,
>or even just a family/house.
No doubt, if "staying alive" means continuing a certain kind of life.
>I'm looking for evidence that "duels" as you define them were still
>sanctioned in Iceland even after the law against Holmganga. You
>seemed to imply that duals over moral territory (honor) were still
>sanctioned. I don't believe this is the case.
Men still fought over honor. If they injured or killed someone they
had to pay damages. I don't know what you would call that situation.
Most of the fights over honor in the sagas even before abolition of
holmgang gave rise to claims for damages that were eventually paid or
settled. In _Sturlunga Saga_ describing events long after abolition
men are still fighting over the things men fight over, singly as well
as in groups. Iceland was a small place and it's true there weren't
many Lone Rangers or free-floating berserkers around. If A fought with
B the friends, families and allies of both A and B would get involved.
>: As to sophistry, I suppose that the duel is not the only way in
>: which the lion defeats the fox.
>
>But you take it away, and the fox will eventually win the war even if
>not all the battles.
Interesting issue. I suppose that the elimination of all socially
legitimate private violence does put the fox in a very strong position.
Still, you seem too ready to oppose the duel to all other forms of
violence and lump the latter together. I don't believe the duel was an
institution in Republican Rome, but Republican Rome was not run by the
foxes.
>Centralize sovereignty, as was done after Christianization and you
>centralize war powers and therefore the scale of war.
I agree Christianization tended to support centralization of
sovereignty. It also supports individual responsibility and resistance
to state absolutism. The relationships are complicated. The whole of
European history shows that a Christian society can have a code of
honor. I rather doubt that a society that lacks honor can be Christian
though, because a society that lacks honor is probably one in which
men's concerns go no higher than material self-interest.
>Dying alone is just fine if it is against a particularly evil
>individual who might restrain himself given the existence of honorable
>men willing to sacrifice their lives to contain his evil. Such evil
>individuals are frequently at the heart of masses of warring
>individuals and all it would take to save masses of lives would be one
>individual to preemptively challenge the evil one.
But you don't need the institution of dueling for that. Tyrannicide is
no doubt more likely if there's a tradition of legitimate private
violence but dueling does not exhaust private violence.
>One of the pieces of evidence I have that blood feud (and larger scale
>wars) became more important modes of conflict processing subsequent to
>Holmganga being outlawed is the following paper:
>
>"Avoiding Legal Judgement: The Submission of Disputes to Arbitration
>in Medieval Iceland" by William Ian Miller, "The American Journal of
>Legal History" Volume XXVIII, April 1984, No. 2, p95
Miller bases his discussion on the sagas, which mostly deal with things
that happened before Christianization. I don't see any suggestion in
his discussion or for that matter in the sagas that the abolition of
holmgang much mattered.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Dec 16 09:27:31 EST 1997
Article: 10854 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Corporate rule
Date: 16 Dec 1997 09:19:32 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 147
Message-ID: <6762lk$2a0@panix.com>
References: <670ql4$4l1@panix.com> <34942B94.DEA@gstis.net> <6723gp$p8v@panix.com> <882227093snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
rafael cardenas writes:
>> It's in the public interest to train people for the jobs that are
>> available ... It's normally in the public interest to promote
>> whatever economic activities are important locally
>
>This does rather assume that the peasants are _glebae adscripti_:-)
Only if the training is compulsory. There's an important distinction
between binding a man to the soil and offering to give him land.
>If you have a scheme of regulation, and you get an exemption, you steal
>a march on your competitors.
True enough. People say this about South America, that the function of
the scheme of state permits and regulation is to keep business in the
hands of existing interests. My impression is that the same is not
true of land use controls in America, the example under discussion.
>> >Corporation play state governments off one another in regards to
>> >taxes and regulations
>
>it does show that collectively the corporations receive taxpayer
>subsidy.
A state might compete by offering low taxes and little regulation, or a
well-educated work force, or an attractive place for employees to live.
None of those things is necessarily a taxpayer subsidy to corporations.
>Are you sure there's not much advertising? I've never been to India,
>but every film I've seen of Indian towns shows billboards and hoardings
>all over the place. Equally, even if few people have TV, communal TVs
>are watched
Actually I had socialist countries in mind. It seems that rumors and a
few stray images of the Western consumer paradise, together with a basic
understanding of what life is about shared with the rest of the modern
world, was enough to create the fascination.
>the entertainment and the advertising purvey similar images; if you
>show endless movies with interior shots of rich American houses (with
>people snorting or drinking coke, shooting each other or heroin,
>fornicating, etc. in them) it reinforces the advertising.
True, but those who make the movies unlike advertisers are interested in
making money for themselves and don't care whether other things get
sold. If there were a demand for movies about St. Simon Stylites or
recent developments in metallurgical engineering that's what they would
make.
>As for the abolition of traditional disciplines, that started among the
>rich, particularly the publicly observed rich (e.g. pre-war film
stars).
European aristocrats and American tycoons were publicly observed as
well. Which observations are permitted, which are widely disseminated,
and what is made of them depends on interests and attitudes.
There's certainly a connection between practical libertinism and
wealth, but theoretical libertinism doesn't sit well with the
restrictions on appetite necessary to the stability of property.
Denunciations of bourgeois morality, advocacy of free love etc. are
much older than the pre-war film industry, and such things were closely
associated with opposition to those restrictions and property rights in
general. The development and institutionalization of libertine theory
has I think been mostly the work of intellectuals, experts etc. without
much money who tended to resent the rich.
>The intellectual advocacy of, e.g., free love by some early Romantics
>had very little impact; it was when the rich and glamorous were
>observed (one stresses observation; they had always gone in for it in
>private) to go in for it that long-standing libertine arguments began
>to influence the middle classes.
I don't know whether or not poets are the unacknowledged legislators of
mankind. Nonetheless, our general understanding of what the world is
like, and therefore accepted ideals and theory, do seem to matter.
Intellectual issues are *important*. King and Pope didn't end up
dominating Europe because kings and popes just happened to be more
clever than other people. The position of monarchy and papacy in
social thought was crucial, and it made up for all losses and blunders.
A striking feature of the 60s cultural revolution was the absence of
coherent opposition. Opposition was ad hoc and inarticulate, and
unable to present its position as part of a comprehensive,
comprehensible and generally acceptable view of human life. It was
easy to dismiss it as benighted and provincial. The problem was that
the respectable moral and intellectual authorities -- the experts who
are assumed to know how things really work and what will be for the
best -- had long been converted to a fundamentally hedonistic and
technological view of human life. On such a view it is very difficult
to make sense of traditional restraints. Since the people in charge of
making sense of things couldn't make sense of those restraints they
collapsed almost immediately when challenged.
>> it is consumers who make the ultimate decisions as to what shall be
>> produced. In their capacity as workers and therefore ultimate
>> producers, who decide in the end how much and how hard they will
>> work, they also decide how much shall be produced.
>
>Only if you look at the issue on a global scale, and since workers
>don't co-operate or interact on that scale directly, the conclusion
>seems to me to fail.
I assume the comment is on the second point.
Even if you look at workers individually they have a great deal of
control over how much they produce. They choose their jobs. Some work
more than one job, some work part-time. They choose between jobs that
are more difficult but pay better and jobs of the opposite kind. Once
they have a job some work much harder and more effectively than others,
either because they like to be active or because they want to get ahead,
and others do the minimum. Some give themselves to their work and
careers, some emphasize other things.
In addition, workers don't have to co-operate for their preferences to
have an aggregate effect. If they hate to work more than 6 hours a
day, so they're willing to take a lot less so long as the hours are
short, then employers will start to offer the 30-hour week even if
workers never talk to each other about it.
>> On such a view corporations would be intermediaries forced by
>> competition and the profit criterion to convert salable effort into
>> purchasable satisfaction as efficiently as possible.
>
>Or middlemen who follow a policy of divide _and rule_?
There's more than one corporation. Competition among corporations is
real, and it severely limits the usefulness of such a policy.
>> Rights of contract and ownership permit corporations to exist, but
>> they also permit individual proprietorships, cooperatives, communes,
>> monasteries and a great many other things.
>
>I think you ignore the effects of positive system feedback.
I didn't discuss it. Still, all the things mentioned exist and it's not
clear to me why they couldn't become much more common if they fit what
people wanted better than other arrangements. There are obvious reasons
why people might prefer the way things are; for example working for a
corporation limits the personal commitment one must make to the
organization within which he works. You just do your job, get paid and
leave.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Dec 16 09:27:31 EST 1997
Article: 10855 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Duel
Date: 16 Dec 1997 09:22:59 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 54
Message-ID: <6762s3$2no@panix.com>
References: <66nkda$ivm@panix.com> <66ofjj$kfn@panix.com> <66pok1$b5l@panix.com> <66q3vl$dbj@panix.com> <66r99j$5pg@panix.com> <66sukc$il5@panix.com> <673a0i$4jf@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
jabowery@netcom.com (Jim Bowery) writes:
>The corruption of the original institution may have started manifesting
>long before it was outlawed. This, of course, gave rise to blood feud,
>etc.
But why assume that blood feud is a recent development? Among men, I
mean. Man is a social animal in a deeper sense than the other large
mammals. He has language, culture and a very extended period of
childhood helplessness. Those things make a difference.
>Was Rome better served by a conspiracy in the Senate to assassinate
>Ceasar than it would have been by the institution of the duel? Some
>how I think Romulus would have found that situation rather revolting.
But tyrants aren't overthrown by duels. For one thing duels presume
equality, which the tyrant won't admit. Your answer may be that the
duel nips inequality in the bud, but an aspiring tyrant won't have to
fight duels forever. He'll find some way to get troublemakers out of
the way.
>I think we see a very good example of "Christian" society that lacks
>honor in the modern liberal denominations of Christianity where gays
>and feminists are becoming a dominant moral force.
Both the obsolescence of honor in the contemporary West and the
shrinking liberal churches are I think symptoms of a fundamental turn
>from the transcendent that is radically at odds with Christianity. The
name may still be used but the thing is quite different. It's not as
if gender issues were the only point of difference between modern
liberal Christianity and classical Christianity.
>The place you need duels is where you are attempting to prevent the
>rise of evil.
I don't see why dueling as an institution, especially as opposed to the
usual Icelandic arrangement in which compensation must be paid, is
needed to prevent the rise of evil. Why not ambush the guy and pay the
damages?
>Somewhere along the line Holmganga was corrupted by decoupling
>sovereignty from vulnerability to challenge and it thereby disappeared
>as the mythic force behind honor basically because it denied the moral
>force of masculinity.
The Icelanders were very much concerned with masculinity. I don't
think their understanding of it was as radically individualistic as
yours. A man supported his family, friends and relatives, and he could
count on their support. I don't think they considered it less manly to
fight with a friend or brother by your side than without.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Dec 17 06:04:17 EST 1997
Article: 10859 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Economic statistics
Date: 16 Dec 1997 22:46:06 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 56
Message-ID: <677htu$3e8@panix.com>
References: <66v624$ef6@panix.com> <882312944snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
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Status: RO
In <882312944snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> rafael cardenas writes:
>I presume that in fact the rise in participation is attributable to
>more women working, a trend which, if I remember rightly, you deplored
>in an earlier post some time ago (forgive me if I'm attributing
>others' observations to you), and deplored for sound conservative
>reasons :-)
I imagine so, and you may remember rightly although I don't remember at
all. My claim isn't "labor force participation is good" but rather
"whatever our problems are the disappearance of paid employment isn't
one of them." The market is good at turning everything into cash and
it's getting better. That's not the _summum bonum_, but it excludes
some evils.
>I also presume that, in the US as in Europe, a lower proportion of
>women seeking work than of men seeking work are registered as
>unemployed.
I thought it was the reverse, that women have a somewhat lower tendency
to participate in the labor market, when participating to be employed,
and when employed to work full time.
>Or to put it another way most of those below the previous median income
>gained _nothing_ from all the economic growth of those years
>(That isn't likely to be strictly true, of course
Quite true. On both points -- it's also true that average household
size has fallen.
>The effect is what one would expect if the change in income
>distribution was the result of a lottery rather than of rewards for
>effort.
My guess is that it's mostly a combination of two things, an increase
in the spread between the compensation of those at the top and those at
the bottom and a decline in family life, meaning an increase in
unmarried mothers and also in two-income families.
>and (b) more information about the stages in the economic cycle that
>the US was in in 1970, 1980, and 1991 (I think respectively in a boom,
>going down into the trough and at the bottom of it, but I may be
>wrong).
The table actually gives figures at 5-year intervals and then annually
>from 1988. The rise is consistent.
>In addition I don't know what the US spends on the disabled; in the UK
>there has been a huge increase in disability spending since 1980
It doesn't seem to be a big piece of the social spending picture,
although the figures are too scattered to present easily.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Dec 17 09:57:54 EST 1997
Article: 10861 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Corporate rule
Date: 17 Dec 1997 09:57:35 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 111
Message-ID: <678p8v$ggq@panix.com>
References: <882227093snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <6762lk$2a0@panix.com> <882315677snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
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Status: RO
rafael cardenas writes:
>Some aspects of attractiveness may be independent of state activity, or
>even depend on its absence; others, such as good roads, safe civic
>centres, and so on do depend on taxpayers.
Some of them are a good idea quite apart from their attractiveness to
employers. In any event presumably what we're talking about is
situations in which attracting employers is thought to be a good idea
>from the standpoint of the people generally.
>The programmes get good audience figures, but of course they don't
>carry advertising so there's no need for the content to reinforce the
>advertising.
Your initial example was movies, which don't carry advertising. Even
so, most of the successful ones aren't about science or religious
ascetics. Concerts don't carry advertising, and Madonna's a bigger draw
than most chamber ensembles.
>If advertising did not affect what people want, do you think that
>advertising (other than the small-ad kind you get in computer or
>hobbyist mags, which is more informational than promotional) would be
>paid for?
Certainly it affects whether people want Wheaties or Cheerios. I don't
think it has nearly the effect promoting an orientation toward
consumerism that other things do, for example popular entertainment and
the attack on transcendent and particularistic loyalties.
>> European aristocrats and American tycoons were publicly observed as
>> well. Which observations are permitted, which are widely disseminated,
>> and what is made of them depends on interests and attitudes.
>
>Wide dissemination depends largely on technology.
Wealth and technology also make privacy easier to maintain. The basic
issue, though, is what is thought appropriate to disseminate and what
lessons are drawn. John Kennedy's lifestyle was no secret but it
wasn't known among the public. The wickedness of the rich has always
been proverbial.
>> The development and institutionalization of libertine theory has I
>> think been mostly the work of intellectuals, experts etc. without
>> much money who tended to resent the rich.
>
>Beckford's _Vathek_ was not the work of a poor man.
And the Divine Marquis had money and position. That's why I stuck in
the "mostly" and the "tended."
>I don't think that the moral authorities had been converted to a
>hedonistic and technological view
By "moral authorities" I meant psychologists, sociologists and other
behavioral experts. Clergymen and the like were no longer functioning
as moral authorities.
>> Even if you look at workers individually they have a great deal of
>> control over how much they produce. They choose their jobs.
>
>That's an absurd claim! They choose to apply for those jobs which are
>offered and which they think they can get.
The people you run into could not have chosen to go into a different
line of work? Those who are making lots of money could not have slacked
off and made do with less? None of those who are short of cash could
improve their situation through effort?
>They cannot choose (at least without serious impoverishment and social
>degradation) _not_ to take a job.
You speak as if for each worker there is only one possible employer.
>Everyone I know in work is working longer hours (mostly unpaid
>overtime) than they want to.
The urban professionals I know are in that position. If professional
position and possessions is what you are you'll spend your whole life
struggling for things that don't make you that happy but the
alternative is unthinkable. If that's the way others feel too the
struggle will be unpleasant and unrelenting. People will think they
are struggling for survival, but "survival" means social survival,
which involves comparison of your position and possessions with those
of others.
>Do you think sane people _want_ to go to work when they've got flu?
No, but they feel that what they are is at stake.
>But there are far fewer corporations than customers and employees; it
>is possible for coroprations to collaborate far more than for the other
>two groups.
There are millions of corporations, and we're in the age of world
markets. That's not the _summum bonum_ but it does make it more
difficult to corner the market in jobs.
>> You just do your job, get paid and leave.
>
>Is that true of Japanese corporations? Is it true of scientists working
>for pharmaceutical or biotech corporations, who often have to sign
>secrecy clauses which might severely limit their freedom outside work
>or in the next job?
It's not universally true, just more true than in the case of communes,
cooperatives, partnerships, single proprietorships etc.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Dec 17 10:12:22 EST 1997
Article: 10862 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Corporate rule
Date: 17 Dec 1997 10:08:50 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 79
Message-ID: <678pu2$hnn@panix.com>
References: <34942B94.DEA@gstis.net> <6723gp$p8v@panix.com> <34976312.FCD@gstis.net>
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X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97)
Status: RO
James Hedman writes:
>when the someone doing the hiring (or awarding of a contract) is doing
>it at the behest of the political appointee of the legislator who in
>turn has his campaign funded by the contractor then it IS the
>contractor who is calling the shots.
Most likely the contractor's competitors also contributed, and the
contractor also contributed to the campaign of the legislator's
opponent.
>They fund political campaigns. Their influence is diffuse but
>pervasive.
The difficulty is distinguishing protection money from payment for
services. The victims of protection rackets fund the Mob, but would
rather do without. That's why I don't think a question like "do
corporations rule us" can be answered without a clear idea what the
government should be doing that's different from what it's doing now.
>The Republicans speaking mostly for business interests and the Dems for
>both business and governmental interests but wholesale importation of
>non-native workers and the exporting of manufacturing jobs offshore by
>means of free trade is hardly in the best interests of the citizenry.
>From an economic standpoint both benefit many people while they hurt
others. Importing cheap goods reduces consumer prices, and importing a
lower class ought to move most locals up the ladder a couple of
notches.
Also, free trade hurts some corporate interests as much as it helps
others. Apart from the many individuals who benefit it's not
specifically corporations who come out ahead. Both free trade and
immigration, especially the latter, are I think instances in which the
general interests of capital, politicians and bureaucratic managers
coincide.
I agree though that in general on these issues those interests are
opposed to the interests of the people at large. It seems to me
immigration should be severely restricted. So we have some common
ground. Free trade is a less extreme case. I'd suggest a fairly
uniform tariff or other restrictions rather than trying to manage it,
which I think would clearly make gaining influence over government
decisions a basic part of doing business.
>What controls? I see nothing but re-zoning and the paving over of
>anything flat. Except for the odd historic district here or there,
>there seems to be no effective stop to the pro-growth juggernaut.
If there aren't any controls on land use, why do developers care about
local government? Why would they bother running it?
>Our basic industries were grown under protective tariffs and our more
>modern industries such as aero-space and computers via direct
>government subsidies masquerading as "defense" spending.
You classify both free trade and protective tariffs as goodies for
corporations. At least in this case the "corporations rule us" theory
seems to explain too much. And I don't see why you put "defense" in
quotes. I assume changing the word to "war" wouldn't solve your
problem.
>To start with, a recognition that all industrial nations HAVE an
>industrial policy that very much determines the direction of growth.
>The idea that our aerospace industry just sort of "happened" through
>unfettered entrepreneurship is a lot of baloney.
How many people think that about aerospace? It seems to me though that
part of the reason for success of the government involvement was that
it had specific goals and an overriding reason for choosing and trying
to accomplish them. "Industrial policy" suggests something much more
general that would be difficult to formulate let alone carry out
coherently in a political society like ours. The risk is that it would
end up as simply a matter of using the power of the government to grab
goodies for the politically well-placed.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Dec 18 07:57:11 EST 1997
Article: 10865 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Corporate rule
Date: 18 Dec 1997 07:55:34 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 83
Message-ID: <67b6g6$btf@panix.com>
References: <882227093snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <6762lk$2a0@panix.com> <882315677snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <678p8v$ggq@panix.com> <882400064snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
rafael cardenas writes:
>We only need to 'attract employers' because home-grown savings are so
>easily exported, and because rates of return required by investors in
>Anglo-Saxon countries make it more difficult for local businesses to
>compete with foreigners (or large corporations that can make part of
>their profit abroad).
It's true that savers in Goscote can invest elsewhere. In addition to
savings to invest, employing people requires organization, experience in
a line of business, connections with suppliers and customers, good
judgment, ability to take prudent risks, etc., etc., etc. It also helps
if the line of business is a growing one. Maybe all those things can be
found in Goscote in the right proportions. If one has a common market
as large as an English county there is admittedly no guarantee they will
stay there.
You seem to be saying that foreigners and large corporations are
perfectly happy to let Anglo-Saxon investors take the high-yielding
investment opportunities. That seems odd to me.
>But the point is that popular entertainment, advertising, and so on are
>designed to reinforce each others' effect on popular taste.
I don't think popular entertainment is designed to have an effect on
taste. It has that effect, but that's a different issue. A rock
promoter doesn't care if anyone buys anything except tickets to his rock
concert.
>> The people you run into could not have chosen to go into a different
>> line of work?
>
>In most cases, effectively no.
>
>No
>
>> None of those who are short of cash could improve their situation
>> through effort?
>
>No
I find these answers extraordinary although I am in no position to
question your observations and experience.
>Some of the professional people I know are in that position and have
>that attitude. Others are in public-service or voluntary-sector
>occupations where they have knowingly rejected possessions and position
>as a prime criterion.
But then they *did* make choices that affected their occupational
situation. My experience is that few people in public-service jobs are
overworked, but I seem to have experienced a very different world from
the one with which you are familiar.
>Others still are (e.g.) clerical workers who work under a professional
>with that workaholic attitude and who expects his (or as often her)
>juniors to put in the same hours for far lower reward.
I'm not familiar with routine unpaid overtime for nonprofessional and
nonmanagerial people. What I'm used to and what you're used to seem
entirely unconnected though.
>I think they are afraid of destitution at worst, and at best of
>humiliation by those who rail at anyone without employment as a
>scrounger.
If most people effectively have no choices, and must do whatever their
employers say or face destitution or humiliation, and Anglo-Saxon
investors demand extraordinarily high returns on investment, why don't
employers slash salaries radically? Starting pay could be reduced to
something slightly higher than the dole, with few or no increases in
prospect. On your account it appears that people would have no choice
but take it.
According to the 1994 _Statistical Abstract of the United States_
(Table 1365) in 1991 the unemployment rate for university graduates in
the United Kingdom was 3.1 percent. What would the rate have to be to
constitute full employment that would make those people less absolutely
at the mercy of their employers?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Dec 19 08:42:06 EST 1997
Article: 10871 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Corporate rule
Date: 19 Dec 1997 08:39:30 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 22
Message-ID: <67dtei$d31@panix.com>
References: <882227093snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <6762lk$2a0@panix.com> <882315677snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <678p8v$ggq@panix.com> <882400064snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <67b6g6$btf@panix.com> <882479441snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
rafael cardenas writes:
>> According to the 1994 _Statistical Abstract of the United States_
>> (Table 1365) in 1991 the unemployment rate for university graduates in
>> the United Kingdom was 3.1 percent.
>
>I wonder where they got that figure from: it may well have been true
>for new graduates in 1988-9, when there was a surge in demand for them,
>at the height of the boom, but in 1991????
They got the figure from the OECD annual _Education at a Glance_. I
believe it is for all university graduates in the workforce, including
those who graduated in say 1960. More recent figures should be
available from the on-line _Statistical Abstract of the United States_
at http://www.census.gov/stat_abstract/. Unfortunately they're in
*.pdf format and my aging 386 computer doesn't handle them well.
(Since I finally gave in to family pressure things should be different
after next Thursday.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Dec 19 08:42:07 EST 1997
Article: 10872 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Corporate rule
Date: 19 Dec 1997 08:41:08 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 29
Message-ID: <67dthk$d8a@panix.com>
References: <34942B94.DEA@gstis.net> <6723gp$p8v@panix.com> <34976312.FCD@gstis.net> <678pu2$hnn@panix.com> <349A018A.4D7B@gstis.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
James Hedman writes:
>Cheaper consumer goods are a mixed blessing.
No doubt. They're also a very mixed curse.
>My point is that gaining influence over government decisions has ALWAYS
>been a basic part of doing business ... While corprate power is not
>monolithic it is universal. As manufacturing capital has been
>liberated from governmental control by deregulation of currencies and
>the advent of global computer networks, high tariffs (which are
>definitely advantageous to national workforces) have lost their utility
>to owners. There is now a relentless drive to lower costs and what
>better way to do that than drive wages to third world levels.... It
>already IS being used to grab goodies for the politically well placed.
>All the more reason to call it by its real name and to direct it to the
>benefit of the people rather than more and more exclusively to the
>benefit of the rich.
If corporate influence is universal, pervasive and eternal, and both
government controls and their lack are merely its implements, and
government expenditures like defense as well as absence of government
expenditures resulting in lower taxes are simply variant forms of the
pork barrel, I'm not quite sure what arrangements are going to bring
about a government oriented toward the interests of the people.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Thu Dec 4 13:41:48 1997
Subject: Re: Against equality
To: S
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 13:41:48 -0500 (EST)
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> They generally argue that inequalities are naturally based and
> therefore (a) unavoidable in society and (b) moral in the sense that
> what naturally exists is ethical. They do not generally maske the
> latter argument explicitly, but it seems to be implicit in their
> thinking.
Thanks for the references. I had hoped to find moral arguments made
explicitly, but you can't get everything.
> The problem is that any theory taking values and facts seriously will
> be unlikely to affect current liberal and egalitarian thought because
> the latter is based on a preconceved and irrationally held basis that
> is impervious to logic and fact.
My own view is that the basis is quite logical, that radical
egalitarianism is a natural way of developing the view that all values
are subjective and actual preferences morally authoritative. I won't
inflict my theories on you though.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Mon Dec 8 15:43:47 1997
Subject: Re: Comments on antifeminist page and so on and on
To: g
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 1997 15:43:47 -0500 (EST)
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In ECUSA of course acceptance of priestesses is now compulsory. One of
the very few points that is. It makes sense, though, since radical
egalitarianism is now the substance of the Christian faith in
respectable mainline circles, and the Episcopalians are nothing if not
respectable and mainline. We're getting Amelia Bloomer etc. added to
the calendar of saints. I wonder if someone will design special
vestments for her feast day?
Do think of writing on a Christian view of sex roles. It's almost
virgin territory, I think, if done from a non-revisionist and
non-fundamentalist perspective. Even people who don't approve of
priestesses say "well in secular life we of course reject all forms of
sexism" etc. And the struggle would do you good. If it's raining and
you're in a swamp the natural thing to do after all is find dry ground
and build a shelter.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Tue Dec 9 07:47:22 1997
Subject: Re: Article I mentioned
To: c
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 1997 07:47:22 -0500 (EST)
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Thanks for the article.
It's all part of severing the biological connection isn't it? The
physical and even the biological is morally neutral.
Certainly that view is inconsistent with the doctrines of Creation and
Incarnation. The popes come out smelling like a rose on these issues
don't they? No one else kept on saying there was a problem with
contraception.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Tue Dec 9 08:32:57 1997
Subject: Re: Comments on antifeminist page and so on and on
To: g
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 1997 08:32:57 -0500 (EST)
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> I have never heard of Amelia Bloomer
A 19th c. American feminist and social reformer. She's best known
today for inventing "bloomers," the original trousers for women.
Thence my suggestion that someone design special vestments for her
feast day. She was into the 19th c. equivalent of new age religion
too, so maybe a special liturgy would be a good idea too.
She isn't getting a day all to herself, I think she's sharing it with a
couple other 19th c. American feminists, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and
someone else.
> There are soon to be new statues adorning the facade of Westminster
> Abbey, showing amongst others, Martin Luther King!
The greatest of saints. He showed his love of the Word and his fellow
man by copying so many words written by his fellow men. His devotion
exceeded that of the Medieval scribes, since he packed them into his
own writings and speeches as well. An amazing willingness to forgo the
self-assertion of insisting on his own words! Some might not approve
of the extreme admiration of the _ewige weibliche_ that he demonstrated
in so concrete a manner, but his habit of slapping his paramours around
suggests a certain moderation even on that.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Thu Dec 11 07:34:27 1997
Subject: Re: Another firing!
To: st
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 07:34:27 -0500 (EST)
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> Well, if Seligman keeps writing about race, he won't last long
> either.
In the Post he may be somewhat coy. For example, when in his list of
stuff from the Times he quoted a sentence about how women boxers were
going to have to develop their skills to be taken seriously by fans the
asserted reason for quoting the sentence was the presence of s split
infinitive.
> They can't get rid of him, can they? Kramer runs one of neocondom's
> crown jewels -- The New Criterion. Though, if I remember right,
> Kramer once did a column praising maverick Chicago Tribume editor
> Col. McCormick.
They'd lose a lot if they lost the New Crit. Still, he's got his own
way of looking at things, too much so to be a good neocon functionary.
See how even Fr. Neuhaus got into trouble.
> If you want a copy of Levin's book, I know of a store that has one.
> I'm thinking of grabbing it and auctioning it off, but I thought you
> might want it. It's $65. Let me know.
Thanks for the offer, but I'll rely on the NYPL to get a copy. Is my
faith too blind? The library of the Association of the Bar of the City
of New York had a copy of Richard Epstein's _Forbidden Grounds_ that
has since disappeared leaving no trace in their records. Legal
thoroughness, I suppose -- most library copies disappear of course but
they stay in the catalog.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Mon Dec 15 14:20:17 1997
Subject: Re: [Fwd: From the Dean, TESM]
To: c
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 14:20:17 -0500 (EST)
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> I don't know enough about corporation law, except to be dangerous.
I think my points stand up, and that the issue you should be concerned
with is not corporation law specifically but the impersonality of
modern economic life. Artificial persons are a natural symbol of that
impersonality, but aren't necessary to it.
Thanks for the article. The churches will indeed survive, but during
the foreseeable future I think at the cost of becoming increasingly
sectlike and socially marginal.
Any predictions for the Catholic Church? As an outsider an eventual
formal break between the American church and Rome seems to me quite
possible. Then Catholic traditionalists who stay with Rome would fit
into my "socially marginal sectarian" category, and mainstream and
liberal types would join the rest of respectable American religion in a
religion of psychological self-help, liberal politics, and
"spirituality."
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Thu Dec 18 07:43:54 1997
Subject: Re: [Fwd: From the Dean, TESM]
To: c
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 1997 07:43:54 -0500 (EST)
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Some random comments:
>God, if you agree with the short Political Religion synopsis, is always
>a system of "knowledge" held by some elite, the implementation of which
>will make a heaven-on-earth.
I understand the point to be that if you do away with God then some such
thing will take His place.
>And so we have the most totalitarian technologies (an Information
>Retrieval and Centralization System like the one you're getting this
>message on) becoming symbolic of "freedom" or a sort of "techno-
>libertarian paradise".
The nature of the internet needs thought. It's a set of abstract
practices like a system of private property rather than a particular
organization like a state socialist society. Anyone can initiate
anything on it if others choose to go along. That seems to me
important. Like the market, it is in many ways antitraditional but it
opposes the comprehensive bureaucratic organization of society which is
more brutally so.
>So what do you mean by "impersonality"?
Economic life becomes a matter of decisions and functions carried on by
no particular person. Each of us carries out a tiny technically-defined
piece of the productive process that is not comprehensible apart from
that process.
>I think "experiential religion" (charismaniaism) is leading the Church
>into apostacy/a pact with the Devil of Modernity.
It points in different directions. Modernity in religion means
experiential religion. Lower class and provincial people tend to refer
religious experience to something real that transcends the everyday so
what starts as experience can lead them to God. It may be the most
likely way to God for people in some situations. High class well-
connected people, the Bp. Brownings and Griswolds of the world, tend to
refer it to the social order and their notions of how to remake it, so
it leads them to political totalitarianism.
>I further think that there's a sifting going on in these three branches
>of the Church, Anglicans in the West leading the way, Catholics closely
>behind, Orthodoxy I'm not that familiar with.
It's hard for me to think of Anglicans leading the way. They've always
been too much the established church. As the political society goes so
go the Anglicans. It's the Church of England, and England is dead,
dead, dead. The RCs have the advantage of the papacy and international
celibate priesthood, which gives them a certain independence from the
world and institutional coherence with the past. The renewed
availability of the Latin Mass is also I think important.
>You'll have to tell me more about your "socially marginal sectarian"
>category.
As the social order becomes more clearly and explicitly antiChristian
Christians will have to become more separate to maintain their outlook
and way of life.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Thu Dec 18 13:48:11 1997
Subject: Re: R.e. you web site
To: J
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 1997 13:48:11 -0500 (EST)
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Thanks for your note. Comments are always helpful.
> However, there is a lot of evidence that a significant number of
> prehistoric human societies were matriarchal in organisation, with
> women being dominant in public affairs.
For a discussion of such claims, take a look at Sheaffer's patriarchy
site that I list among the links. So far as I can tell, the evidence
has to be quite optimistically read to support the conclusion. In
addition, why prehistoric societies but no contemporary or recent
primitive societies?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Fri Dec 19 09:05:25 1997
Subject: Re: [Fwd: From the Dean, TESM]
To: c
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 09:05:25 -0500 (EST)
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> > >God, if you agree with the short Political Religion synopsis, is
> > >always a system of "knowledge" held by some elite, the
> > >implementation of which will make a heaven-on-earth.
> >
> > I understand the point to be that if you do away with God then some
> > such thing will take His place.
>
> Yes. But it's interesting that that "some such thing" usually has a
> gnostic character.
I don't think technology is exactly gnostic. In technology there is no
God beyond God, and the material world is neutral or rather a necessary
means rather than evil. The knowledge that saves us is the knowledge
that tells us how to remake the material world in accordance with our
desires rather than escape it. The point of technology after all is
that there's no place beyond the world to which we could escape.
> [The internet] increases "atomism" which is the destruction of
> traditional society. Destroying the voluntary organizations, and the
> traditional societies like "family", extended and nuclear, is a
> prerequisite for the deracinated populace needed to people a "world
> culture" (excuse me while I spit out that phrase!).
Less so than central bureaucratic management, which it undermines. It
is easier to survive the unfavorable environment created by the
internet and market than direct attack by state compulsion. If public
life is ordered by market etc. rather than bureaucracy and TV networks
then family and other traditional associations can exist so long as
they have internal ways of enhancing their own discipline, standards,
etc. Such things are possible. In the degree that's needed they're
inconsistent with the public life that has been the glory of Europe,
but you live as best you can.
> It is also symbolic of a panoply of heretical views about the body,
> about human fulfillment.
It is certainly that for many people. Still, the welfare state is
earthly providence which is heretical as well.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Dec 22 05:52:27 EST 1997
Article: 10879 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Corporate rule
Date: 21 Dec 1997 08:46:00 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 18
Message-ID: <67j6io$kv8@panix.com>
References: <882227093snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <6762lk$2a0@panix.com> <882315677snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <678p8v$ggq@panix.com> <882400064snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <67b6g6$btf@panix.com> <882479441snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <67dtei$d31@panix.com> <882576979snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
In <882576979snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> rafael cardenas writes:
>A _total_ figure of that size is easier to understand, since the UK
>statisticians will have excluded those pushed into early retirement,
>which would make a big difference.
In the nature of things the _Statistical Abstract of the United States_
soon runs out of statistics regarding the UK. The most relevant ones I
have regard labor force participation rates. In 1991 for those aged 25
to 54 the rate was 93.4% for men and 72.9% for women. In 1980 the
rates had been 95.4% and 63.4% (Table 1382). For the university-trained
people we're talking about I would expect the rates to be higher than
average. Certainly their rate of unemployment is far lower (3.1% in
1991 against an average rate of 7.1%).
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
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Reply-To: newman Discussion List
Sender: newman Discussion List
From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: The brie-and-white-wine set meet Finster
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <05e801bd10c0$b882ff80$d0f463ce@seth-williamson> from "Seth
Williamson" at Dec 24, 97 06:07:31 pm
Status: RO
> "The historical, popular, and biblical subjects of Finster's
> portraits embody his concept of the inventor as someone whose
> creative process will provide the world's salvation."
>
> Such obtuseness is nearly beyond belief.
But the theory is that talk about God is meaningful only as talk about
the world, that the world especially its spiritual aspects is a human
construction, and that "grace," inspiration etc. must therefore be the
self-transformation of humanity through the work of creative (human)
artists.
Is belief that symbolism is strictly a human way of ordering human
experience obtuseness?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: Christmas with Anne Roche Muggeridge
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <007701bd11a1$384b2ea0$d0f463ce@seth-williamson> from "Seth
Williamson" at Dec 25, 97 08:54:33 pm
Status: RO
Emerson thought that strictly rationalist religion would soon enough
become poeticized while remaining strictly rationalist. After all,
poets were able to find depths in previous developments so why not this
one? You just have to have faith!
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Wed Dec 24 05:38:48 1997
Subject: Re: long time no hearing from you
To: a
Date: Wed, 24 Dec 1997 05:38:48 -0500 (EST)
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> Have you read True and Only Heaven by Christopher Lasch? He has a
> good take on Emerson and refereces to where else to look.
>
> By the way of Emerson, I always recommend I'll Take My Stand by
> twelve southerners. That with Wendell Berry's writings are the
> foundation of agrarian thought in this part of the century..... but
> then again, Fields Without Dreams by VIctor Hansen should be added to
> the list too.
Thanks for the recommendations. Emerson's a fascinating writer. A
prophet or medium? If so, of what exactly? Insane? A pomo ironist
before his time? A solipsist? A public performer? What weird feature
of his, of America, of the world made him a source of Golden Thoughts
for the old high school literary anthologies?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Thu Dec 25 07:40:28 1997
Subject: Re: Thoughts on libertarianism
To: s
Date: Thu, 25 Dec 1997 07:40:28 -0500 (EST)
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> > The objection that the world is too big and complicated for a
> > global welfare state is ill-founded. The diversity of the world is
> > already declining rapidly through advances in communications,
> > expansion of trade, mass immigration and increasing similarity of
> > political, social and moral views. Further, principles of
> > political unity and common action that men find compelling advance
> > continuously on a thousand fronts. In a post-Christian age the
> > state as earthly Providence is a principle without which men cannot
> > bear to live. It will not be abandoned, and its realization will
> > proceed piecemeal, for example though denial of trade concessions
> > to countries not meeting social standards incorporated into "human
> > rights."
>
> I don't get it. What you've described above about the world being too
> big for a welfare state is classic Hayek. This fits in with your view
> that human nature and particularity are too complex for a NWO to
> survive long without breaking down. If a welfare world order can win
> out, so much for libertarianism, right?
The "world" that is too big for a welfare state in Hayek's view could
be the world as it exists within the borders of the U.S., France or the
U.K. My intention was to say that the situation is not so different
for the whole globe. I am attacking the view common for example in
Europe that there is a special long-term relation between globalism and
what they call neoliberalism. If people insist on socialism in Sweden
they'll insist on it globally. Since the paragraph has to do with the
situation within liberalism it is written somewhat from that point of
view, and I agree I handled it in a confusing way.
Right now my inclination is to think that a welfare world order will
win out in principle, because the welfare state is so basic to what
functions as religion today, but it won't work in practice for Hayek's
reasons. So eventually we will get something like the Soviet collapse
and then something like a post-Soviet order dominated by mafias and
neotribalism that eventually will find "stability" in a neo-Khaldunian
world "order."
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Dec 26 20:03:02 EST 1997
Article: 10884 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Thoughts on libertarianism
Date: 23 Dec 1997 09:22:14 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 121
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Status: RO
[The following is not based directly on recent discussions.]
Probably a majority of those who have discussed libertarianism on
a.r.c. have denounced it root and branch. I and others find some good
in it, enough to make common cause with libertarians on issues of
practical politics.
There are problems with libertarianism. Taken straight as a political
philosophy it makes arbitrary individual will the political standard.
That won't do for any number of reasons. It's obviously inadequate as
a theory of the good, and politics can't be separated from general
ethics.
It is nonetheless better than more advanced forms of liberalism. The
two share the same false theory of value, that what is good is a matter
of individual preference, but libertarians make the government do less
to bring about the universal dominance of that theory. They don't
construct an activist state to root out inequality and "illegitimate
domination," and so permit more nonliberal things to exist.
Claims libertarians are enemies of the human race, more so than say the
Clintons, seem to me false. Many people identify libertarianism with
global markets and consequent difficulties for national governments
trying to control things within their borders. For such people
libertarianism and the NWO, which they view as antihuman, are basically
the same.
That view seems mistaken, since libertarianism is not the only possible
form of globalism. A universal homogeneous state is the natural goal
both of globalism and of contemporary liberalism. Experience and
theory (e.g., _Republic_, bks. viii and ix) show that devotion to
wealth tends to develop into a more general concern for satisfaction of
immediate individual desire. Globalism will therefore move in that
direction and so toward a comprehensive universal welfare state even if
its initial effect is to reduce the power of the nation state and
advance property rights.
The objection that the world is too big and complicated for a global
welfare state is ill-founded. The diversity of the world is already
declining rapidly through advances in communications, expansion of
trade, mass immigration and increasing similarity of political, social
and moral views. Further, principles of political unity and common
action that men find compelling advance continuously on a thousand
fronts. In a post-Christian age the state as earthly Providence is a
principle without which men cannot bear to live. It will not be
abandoned, and its realization will proceed piecemeal, for example
though denial of trade concessions to countries not meeting social
standards incorporated into "human rights."
The claim that a system of property rights, free contract, and no
government welfare programs would lead to mass starvation as
technological advances reduce the economic value of most human labor
below bare subsistence seems ill-founded. The past 150 years of
predicted mass permanent technological unemployment have been 150 years
of generally rising paid employment, living standards and life
expectancy. It seems a general truth that better techniques make men
more able to satisfy their material wants, and markets more able to
find uses for all resources including human labor.
In the long term this issue, it appears, has to do with the prospects
for artificial intelligence. If AI is successful, so that most people
become economically useless and in fact a net drain and threat to the
powerful, there are going to be very major problems in any event and
it's not clear what can be done now to improve matters. Increasing the
day-to-day administrative control of the state and therefore the
powerful over social and economic life does not seem likely to help.
Apart from technopessimism, claims that libertarianism leads to gross
economic hardship are based in part on acceptance of the welfare
statist claim that it is possible to have a bureaucratically
administered social order that secures long-term individual prosperity
while respecting individual freedom and accepting technological
progress. It seems to me that both first principles and experience
show that it is not, and the conviction to the contrary is based on
faith in the ability of social technology to give us whatever we want.
To some extent such claims are also based on the contemporary tendency
to make the state the sole locus of collective action and moral life,
so that "we shouldn't have a government welfare system" becomes
identical with "if someone can't make his own living he should just be
let starve." That tendency is a denial of all social bonds other than
the state. Why accept it?
An alliance with the libertarians can be understood as an alliance of
desperation. On the other hand, life is not so logical. "I am a
libertarian" can mean "I have a moral dignity that can not be reduced
to overall utility, and I do not want to be remade in the image of the
universal homogeneous state." As such, under present circumstances it
can be understood as a first step out of the pit into which the modern
world has fallen. One must start somewhere. Libertarianism is an
unstable theory because it makes no sense for property rights to be
ultimate. In the past its internal conflicts have been resolved in
favor of more advanced forms of liberalism; in different circumstances
a contrary resolution might be possible.
What would such a practical alliance cover? Immigration and free trade
are obvious points in American politics on which libertarians must be
opposed. On other major federal issues they are practical allies of
traditionalists and particularists. The "social issues" should not be
a major concern of the federal government in any event. Even at the
state and local level the most important single thing government can do
with regard to social issues is to stop trying to substitute itself for
the family and other prepolitical arrangements. On that those who
favor minimal government are solid allies.
The alternatives to an alliance with small government proponents seems
to be either holding aloof or an alliance with big government
proponents. The first seems pointless - after all, one must deal with
the world as it is - while the second seems to offer no practical room
for anything at odds with currently dominant ideologies and political
understandings. If everything is thoroughly organized from the top
down by big government the outlook for change becomes very dim. A
third possibility might be big government locally, small government
globally. That's not a usable possibility in the United States because
of the size of the country. I'm dubious of its prospects elsewhere
except maybe for localities the size of a Greek _polis_, but if the
French or British think it will work in their countries that's their
business.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: Christmas with Anne Roche Muggeridge
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <02a601bd1244$6dfe4b60$d0f463ce@seth-williamson> from "Seth
Williamson" at Dec 26, 97 04:22:50 pm
Status: RO
>>Emerson thought that strictly rationalist religion would soon enough
>>become poeticized while remaining strictly rationalist. After all,
>>poets were able to find depths in previous developments so why not
>>this one? You just have to have faith!
>
>Sure. But the problem is that you can't find what's not there. Any
>"strictly rationalist religion," as you'd probably agree, doesn't have
>a hell of a lot to "become poeticized" in the first place. They tried
>it during the French Revolution and they just wound up looking
>ludicrous.
I think Emerson is insane on this as on so much else, and his faith is
the oddest thing imaginable. Still, is there anything that can be
thought true that can't be poeticized? The French problem was that
they were rushing things, and trying to do by legislative proclamation
what requires the response of the whole man. Possibly rationalism can
be poeticized, but not rationalistically, for example by a bureaucracy
of social psychologists and aestheticians. Why expect the French
revolutionaries to do better sitting down and writing a liturgy for
their religion than more recent liturgical scholars have done inventing
new liturgies for other religions?
I don't think an outlook has to be true or have much content to be
successfully poeticized. Lucretius it is said (I haven't read him)
made poetry of Democritus. Stoicism is adoration of the impersonal
order of the universe. Taoism is ditto, plus deconstruction, and it's
highly poetic. Nietzsche was a poetic writer.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: The brie-and-white-wine set meet Finster
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <02a501bd1244$6d0bae00$d0f463ce@seth-williamson> from "Seth
Williamson" at Dec 26, 97 04:20:01 pm
Status: RO
>>> Such obtuseness is nearly beyond belief.
>
>>But the theory is that talk about God is meaningful only as talk
>>about the world, that the world especially its spiritual aspects is a
>>human construction, and that "grace," inspiration etc. must therefore
>>be the self-transformation of humanity through the work of creative
>>(human) artists.
>
>>Is belief that symbolism is strictly a human way of ordering human
>>experience obtuseness?
>
>That's not particularly obtuse, whether or not it's true, but I don't
>think that was her point. She was simply noting that nobody takes
>Howard at his word.
Understood, and I admit my response was obscure and idiosyncratic.
The point was that the people at the gallery interpret Mr. Finster's
words by reference to what they understand as the real situation. They
give the words the interpretation that makes maximum sense of them,
that makes the truth in them part of the total system of truth. As
they understand sense and truth. Some people, constitutional scholars
for example, call that kind of interpretation an application of the
principle of charity. Should the description of the art be called
obtuse if the person who wrote it was aware that Mr. Finster would
reject it? I think it's quite possible he was.
I think it was Simone Weil who said that rich people who want to
abolish everything that is mean and sordid from their surroundings, and
the man who goes to a house of prostitution, are really looking for
God. Someone following that line of thought might describe a story of
greed and debauchery in a way that would surprise the literal minded.
Here we have the mirror image. Someone thinks he's talking about God
but those whose brie consumption enables them to see more deeply know
he's really talking about human creativity, and when they talk among
themselves they speak of the situation that way.
There are of course problems with that kind of interpretation. For one
thing it makes it impossible for other people to disagree meaningfully
with the interpreter. It's solipsistic. I suppose my basic point was
that those problems don't seem the same as ordinary obtuseness. That
assumes I'm right, and the person who wrote the description knew
something about Mr. Finster and was exercising the interpretive freedom
many people find justifiable today.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Dec 27 09:56:24 EST 1997
Article: 10890 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Thoughts on libertarianism
Date: 27 Dec 1997 07:23:27 -0500
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Status: RO
Carl Jahnes writes:
>They say that government should be "made" small ... I always wonder how
>this "making" happens. I wonder just *who* is this "We the People".
Realism isn't the libertarian long suit. They tend to like very simple
clear principles and they look for others to fall in love with them too.
Some are techno-optimists who believe that omniflexible technology and
markets will make state administration of social affairs impossible. To
that extent it's a sort of Marxist outlook - the stage of development of
the productive forces determines the mode of social cooperation and
therefore property relations, and from that follows other aspects of
social organization and the dominant ideology.
Putting that kind of hard core ideology aside, there does seem to me
sense in saying that in a country more extensive than a Greek polis or
Swiss canton small government is a precondition of government by "We the
People," because a government that decides and administers lots of
things in a big complex country is going to be largely independent of
popular control. So the ideas of limited government and popular rule do
go together I think. Unfortunately though it's limited government that
has to precede popular rule.
>They talk about "making government smaller" but fail to see that it is
>the very compatriots they want to free up who are doing most of the
>bending and buying of law, with their phalanxes of lawyers and
>accountants, all the time adding ream upon ream of legalese to the
>books which must be deciphered by more and more lawyers, and
>administered by more and more civil servants.
I'm not sure why that's a problem for consistent libertarians. The
lawyers and accountants are only needed in an economy that mixes
regulation and private enterprise, and libs don't like mixed economies.
The libertarian willingness to free businessmen in some ways doesn't
mean they want to free them to do anything whatever. There are of
course people who talk libertarianism when it helps them and regulation
when it helps them, but so what?
>And so, it seems to me this wish for smaller government is like a
>component of a Political Religion, pretty much the same one we've been
>infected with for 200 years.
Thoroughgoing libertarians do I think tend to treat their political
beliefs as a religion. Free market economics and whatever proves that
the absence of government would end all problems, etc., etc., etc.
Still, the fact that something can unjustifiably be made a religion
doesn't mean it's all bad.
>The last time I looked, Libertarianism is very uncomfortable with God,
>because God subordinates Liberty to Righteousness.
If made a religion, it certainly is. Still, the state as earthly God
seems to me the greater danger. And God seems to have nothing special
against a libertarian legal order. 1 Samuel 8.
>> For such people libertarianism and the NWO, which they view as
>> antihuman, are basically the same.
>>
>
>I identify the two.
An error, I think. Transnational bureaucracies enforcing international
standards are integral to the NWO.
>It will produce Business Sovereignties which 'outsource' various
>governmental functions, and because it dresses up the same old
>realities in the language of rights and freedom, it will those hungry
>to create this symbolic environment to endure pretty much the same
>state of existence they endure now.
I'm not sure what this means. It may mean that private business can't
perform the government functions people think are necessary, and so will
end up supporting the performance of those functions by government. In
that case I agree. It also seems to me that some government protective
functions that people insist on are impossible to achieve, and declaring
them rights has mostly a symbolic function.
>The thing that World Planners don't yet have a handle on is World
>Religion. The State, in effect, must take the place of "deity" or it
>must elevate something in the place of deity to which all mankind can
>bow down to, or it will not be the true "earthly providence" man seeks.
The main plan I suppose is for the subjects of the NWO to be either
working, or engaged in individual leisure time activities. A wise man
once said that a slave should be either working or asleep, and maybe
watching TV is a reasonable substitute for sleeping.
It's true that ultimate questions are hard to avoid all the time, so
what the NWO is putting together, with the help of the respectable
churches, is a sort of process theology in which God is immanent in the
development of human society, and thus surprisingly hard to distinguish
>from the NWO itself. That, by the way, is one reason the NWO will
aspire to become a universal welfare state, because only so can it
plausibly present itself as a this-worldly realization of the providence
of God.
>But what about "the death wish"? What about the society which is
>"exhausted", because it is constructed around a "partial explaination"
>of what it is to be Human?
My point was not that technological advances guarantee a better life,
but that they tend to reduce suffering resulting from material need.
If people have a death wish it'll still be a death wish.
>Do not we have the equivalant of a Libertarian Society in the olde
>Soviet Union, ruled as it is by various mafias, and former
>apparatchiks?
Libertarians insist on the inviolability of contracts and property, and
effective sanctions against force and fraud. Both seem to be missing in
the former Soviet Union.
>Man is not a machine, Jim. Man can no more construct a "machine"
>environment around him, and expect to prosper, than he can expect the
>State to provide for his every need.
I agree. Still, today the educated and articulate tend to believe man
and everything else is a machine so the possibility has to be discussed.
>What do you mean, "Why accept it?" Why accept what? That the
>government can't provide a chicken for every pot, and deliver
>individual freedom while growing technically more sophistocated all the
>time? Can Business freed by "making" government smaller rationally
>"solve all disputes" without resorting to force?
I mean, "why accept that the government is the sole locus of moral
life?" Government and Business don't exhaust social life.
>And so, the moral dignity I see retained, and fought for, *is* to be
>understood in terms of a sort of Utility, a sort of contentless
>"freedom" which does not understand the existence of organic Social
>Authority. It conceives of this authority, or government, in terms of
>"contract",
Anything whatever can be a first step forward compared to something.
The sanctity of contract at least means that it is possible for a man
to have binding obligations to his fellows, and that the things he does
and choices he makes can be decisively important. It means at least
that not everything is a matter of impulse, administration and therapy.
>But a Libertarian would by his principles have to defend the individual
>at the expense of the "collective".
The distinction between libertarianism and more advanced forms of
liberalism is that libertarians defend the individual only against the
state, not against for example family authority. Libertarianism
therefore leaves much more room for informal and traditional social
authorities than contemporary liberalism.
>The only question is, "Will it let us ignore it?" Will it demand that
>we violate our deepest convictions in order to participate in the only
>kind of unity it can produce? A false unity, based on a false, and
>constricted view of Existence?
Our public life is thoroughly dominated by philosophical liberalism, and
that situation seems likely to continue as long as we have anything that
can be called public life. Libertarianism is the form of philosophical
liberalism most inclined to "let us ignore it."
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Dec 27 21:07:39 EST 1997
Article: 10894 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: "Downsizing" as counter-revolutionary symbol
Date: 27 Dec 1997 20:38:01 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Status: RO
In <34A52C33.1FFD@msmisp.com> cjahnes@msmisp.com (Carl Jahnes) writes:
>The choice of the word "downsizing" is interesting, too. Is the word
>a proper metaphor for counter-revolution? Downsizing can be the same
>sort of mechanical, forumla driven act, as centralizing.
The review does make the process sound rather cozy and controlled.
Does intentional decentralization ever work as planned? And if the
answer is "no," can decentralization ever be voluntary? It seems the
temptation to intervene on the part of a central authority able to do
so would be irresistible. Someone described state and local government
in the U.S. as student government, if the kiddies do something that
strikes the grownups in the national elites as out of line the Feds
step in and keep it from happening. It's very difficult to change that
kind of situation.
>> Modernity has sought universal solutions to life's problems. These
>> have resulted in a dehumanizing uniformity coupled with standardized
>> mass production. They can live with the modicum of social disorder
>> downsizing brings to state-imposed order, which ultimately crushes
>> the individual. Postmodernity accepts that small can not only be
>> beautiful, but that it will empower the powerless, whoever and
>> wherever they might be.
Sounds all very sanitized, a universal solution to life's problems in
fact. Would there be guarantees that there would only be a "modicum"
of social disorder, with standby controls reimposed if disorder reached
more than say 125% of a modicum? And where does the assurance come
>from that small would empower all the powerless? If the city of
Ashtabula declared independence and repealed the American with
Disabilities Act etc. how would that empower schizophrenic lesbians in
wheelchairs? Chances are Ashtabula wouldn't be allowed to do so.
I suppose the book like the communitarian movement shows that people's
thoughts are turning somewhat in the right direction, but it doesn't
sound like there's been much serious thought about the issues yet.
People still think all problems can be solved, everything can be made
nice, it's just a matter of the right organization.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Dec 28 13:40:33 EST 1997
Article: 10899 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: The World Culture versus Traditionalism
Date: 28 Dec 1997 13:38:15 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 42
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References: <34A5E05B.22EE@msmisp.com>
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Status: RO
cjahnes@msmisp.com (Carl Jahnes) writes:
>The spark of life that preserved the cultural heritages of Greece and
>Rome from its ruin at the hands of barbarian invaders, that saw these
>cultural treasures as providential gifts of God, that risked all to
>preserve them and redeem them in the light of God's full revelation of
>Himself and his purposes in the man Jesus, was the Church, the Body of
>Christ, Christianity.
It does seem to me that a civilization based on that of Greece and Rome
needs Christianity to survive.
To be true to itself such a civilization must emphasize universal and
comprehensive explanations. That tendency is admirable, but it's got
problems. It destroyed the polytheism and civic life of Greece and
Rome. It tends to destroy all particular loyalties, all local
attachments, all limits on man's ambition to make himself God. It
makes Western man impatient with the dualisms - one and many, ideal and
reality, mind and body, subject and object - that forever limit the
validity of unified theories, and leads him eventually to ignore those
dualisms or define them out of existence and attempt to establish an
eternal self-contained universal order by force. Left to itself, this
side of the civilization of the West aspires to create a sterile frozen
universal despotism or World Culture; in practice, its end result is
the reign of anarchy, brutality and lies, the war of all against all.
Christianity is the corrective for that side of Western civ. It places
the Creation and the Incarnation at the center of our understanding of
existence. Those doctrines insist in the most forceful way possible on
the reality of dualism, on the goodness of each side, and on the
reconciliation of the two in a unity that to us is utterly
incomprehensible. The doctrines are necessary because they justify our
scientific work and theoretical speculations -- the world of our
experience is real and good and so both knowable and worth knowing --
while also demonstrating their necessary incompleteness even for
practical purposes. They thus make the triumphs of Western though
possible while keeping them in proportion and so preserving the sanity
of that thought.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: Progress in ECUSA
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <00ea01bd13cc$82a8d240$d0f463ce@seth-williamson> from "Seth
Williamson" at Dec 28, 97 03:09:28 pm
Status: RO
There has also been progress in titles. The flier put around
announcing the possibility of watching Griswold's installation in real
time on the net says he will become the "primatial head."
Just thought everyone would want to know.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: Christmas with Anne Roche Muggeridge
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <00f101bd13cd$82726380$d0f463ce@seth-williamson> from "Seth
Williamson" at Dec 28, 97 03:16:38 pm
Status: RO
Seth Williamson writes:
>I think it's quite possible for one's beliefs about reality to reflect
>a dessicated kind of world, evacuated of all spirit, that is
>stubbornly resistant to being poeticized.
I don't know enough about spirit, poetry or the absence of those things
to say. Maybe if I read Lucretius I'd be better prepared for a
discussion - the atoms of Democritus seem as evacuated of spirit as you
can get, but _De Rerum Natura_ is nonetheless said to be a great poem.
>Well, maybe so, but I'm just suggesting that there may well be some
>things to which the "whole man" just ain't gonna respond, no matter
>how much time you allow.
It seems that whatever you think is the fundamental truth of things
you'll eventually respond to with your whole being. Maybe the point is
that there are some things to which the only possible ultimate response
is revulsion and rejection, or turning to stone, or something equally
incompatible with poetry.
It's true that the atheist poetry I can think of is written from the
point of view of someone who's just getting used to the idea so it
doesn't express an ultimate response. Or maybe that's unfair to
atheists, maybe those who are used to atheism don't write poetry about
it as such. Their poems might be presentations of the particularity
and otherness of things, or the uncertainty of language, or the
illusions of thought, or what have you. So it would poeticize an
atheistic outlook but not atheism itself. Is Zen Buddhism both poetic
and atheistic?
>>Why expect the French revolutionaries to do better sitting down and
>>writing a liturgy for their religion than more recent liturgical
>>scholars have done inventing new liturgies for other religions?
>
>Because I suspect in both cases that the god they're crafting the
>liturgies for is, in the last analysis, man himself.
A snappy comeback!
>>Stoicism is adoration of the impersonal order of the universe.
>>Taoism is ditto, plus deconstruction, and it's highly poetic.
>
>Maybe you've read more deconstruction than I have.
Nah. As usual, I was just winging it. Taoists like Chuangtse have lots
of fun demonstrating that all concepts are incoherent and can't really
be applied meaningfully to anything. I called that "deconstruction."
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: The brie-and-white-wine set meet Finster
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <00f901bd13d0$29874c60$d0f463ce@seth-williamson> from "Seth
Williamson" at Dec 28, 97 03:35:32 pm
Status: RO
Seth Williamson writes:
>I think what frustrated Frederica and others who've picked up on the
>patronizing air that hangs about the sophisticates' gushing over the
>likes of Howard Finster comes down to their unwillingness or inability
>to consider the possibility that there are other ways of looking at the
>world.
People are self-satisfied and annoying. It seems to me part of an
overall view of the world that goes very deep that a lot of
intelligent, articulate, educated, cultured people hold. I suppose
what I was doing was looking for the internal justification for the
self-satisfaction that makes it so hard to penetrate. There appears
to be more to it than ordinary obtuseness. More even than ordinary
lack of respect for southern bicycle repairmen who can't spell.
>>Should the description of the art be called obtuse if the person who
>>wrote it was aware that Mr. Finster would reject it? I think it's
>>quite possible he was.
>
>Maybe so. But does that make it any less patronizing? With the best
>will in the world, I still think not.
I recall an anecdote of a lecture given by Paul Tillich in which he
expounded his theories of religion as ultimate concern etc. that caused
Edmund Wilson to become vocally outraged because Tillich had denied him
his right to be an atheist.
Another parallel. Karl Rahner spoke I am told of "anonymous
Christians." Maybe the gallery owner would classify Mr. Finster as an
anonymous brie and white wine fan who believes in the redemptive power
of the creative artist without conceptualizing his beliefs that way.
Yet another -- Mao as "agrarian reformer" and similar
misclassifications of communists based on unwillingness to believe they
are really different from say Hubert Humphrey. In general, it seems
that liberals have a special need to interpret others as "really
agreeing" with them because they want to base government on the consent
of individuals and so have a hard time dealing squarely with
fundamental conflict and the need for coercion.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Dec 28 19:55:40 EST 1997
Article: 10904 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: The World Culture versus Traditionalism
Date: 28 Dec 1997 19:47:54 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 51
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Status: RO
cjahnes@msmisp.com (Carl Jahnes) writes:
>Read Dawson, "Religion and the Rise of Western Culture".
I have. By the way, does anyone know why the current paperback version
has a forward by Rembert Weakland? He doesn't write very well, and
doesn't have much to say on the subject except that he thinks the
multicultural civilization of the future will have lots of religion of
various kinds.
>It may not "seem" so, but it actually "did" need Christianity to
>survive, because that's the historical group which preserved it.
I'll keep the "seem," because the discussion had to do with my grandiose
claim that any civilization based on that of Greece and Rome will die
without Christianity, rather than the far weaker claims implied by
Dawson's historical account.
>Have you ever read, "The Everlasting Man"?
Nope.
>When you say that "these doctrines insist in the most forceful way
>possible on the reality of dualism, on the goodness of each side, in
>the reconciliation of the two in a *unity* that to us is utterly
>incomprehensible..." are you speaking of our 'in between' nature of
>existence?
I was speaking most directly of Creation as the basis of the reality and
goodness of what is created, as well as a source of knowledge of the
Creator, and Incarnation as the incomprehensible unity of the two. All
that gives our existence an "in between" quality.
>Is "dualism" then the reality of being an "in-between" being?
An "in between" being lives in a dualistic world.
>To accept this state of things is humility, one of the virtues that
>preceeds understanding, that preceeds any true "science".
Sure. "Know thyself," as someone once said.
>The doctrines are not "necessary" in the sense that they work. They
>are "necessary" because they are True.
Their necessity for making sense of our situation is evidence of their
truth.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Dec 28 19:55:41 EST 1997
Article: 10905 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: The World Culture versus Traditionalism
Date: 28 Dec 1997 19:54:50 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <883346664snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf391@hormel.bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>Why not Islam?
No doctrine of the Incarnation. The transcendence and arbitrariness of
God is overemphasized. The world is therefore too far from God. It
doesn't matter enough, and isn't rational enough. Philosophy is
therefore more suspect in Islam than in Christianity. Islam had an
early golden age of philosophy and the sciences, but it died.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Sat Dec 27 21:03:40 1997
Subject: Re: heart of darkness
To: a
Date: Sat, 27 Dec 1997 21:03:40 -0500 (EST)
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Status: RO
Literature of the past 200 years? Interesting question. Some random
comments:
Goethe wrote some wonderful lyrics. Ibsen's a good dramatist if you
want classic presentations of Modern Problems. I think of Nietzsche
and Emerson as literary figures and they both wrote beautifully about
issues that are very much with us even though they're both insane or at
any rate incoherent. Mark Twain and D.H. Lawrence both had talents you
don't often find although not civilized and in Lawrence's case
extremely unpleasant in choice of subject matter. I've always had a
fondness for _Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften_. The 19th c. English
novelists are very good but about social life rather than the soul.
They're dispensible. Actually the same could be said about most modern
literature. It's not like say the _Orestiad_. There are a lot of good
writers but not many who help you touch the basics of life. I agree
that Dostoyevski is very good. And Tolstoi always gets things right.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Sun Dec 28 19:46:14 1997
Subject: Re: Comments on antifeminist page and so on and on
To: g
Date: Sun, 28 Dec 1997 19:46:14 -0500 (EST)
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And Merry Christmas to you. Actually, I think we'll get radical social
breakdown rather than catacombs, leading to a form of society more like
the traditional Middle East than the Roman Empire with a despotic but
inert and corrupt government ruling over a congeries of inward-turning
ethno-religious communities. The Roman Empire was able to exist
through public moral traditions sufficient to order and discipline
public life. I don't think we're going to have that. Who knows,
though? We'll see - there's always a new year.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Mon Dec 29 06:55:56 1997
Subject: Let's Broaden the Discussion
To: am
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 1997 06:55:56 -0500 (EST)
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>Which conception of the realm will triumph -- the organic, which sees
>political entities as expressions and safekeepers of religions,
>cultures, races, peoples and so forth -- or the contractual, which
>sees political entities as faceless and neutral on all the above?
Most likely neither, at least not as anything corresponding to reality.
The former can't be conjured up at will. I think of Naziism as an
attempt to do so, and apart from other serious objections it only
lasted 12 years. The latter is a fiction except as a formal
superstructure supported by organic unity. Contract exists within and
not at the foundation of a social system. The Pilgrims with their
compact and medieval Iceland were functioning societies because
government by consent rested on organic religious and ethnic unity.
What we're likely to end up with instead is a corrupt and inefficient
despotism ruling not by contract or organic connection but by force,
fraud, and the unavailablity of anything better. That after all has
been the usual government in the radically multicultural parts of the
civilized world, the Middle East and South Asia. In such a situation
there is no public life to speak of, but people manage to carry on a
somewhat tolerable life through inward-turning ethno-religious
communities, the _millets_ of Ottoman Turkey or the castes of
traditional India.
None of which is pleasing, at least for those who love the civilization
of Europe. The difficult question is how to avoid such an outcome.
All I can think of is to encourage and protect organic connections that
exist or arise of themselves while recognizing the impossibility of
forcing them. The obvious measures are routine traditional
conservative ones -- elimination of mass immigration, abolition of
antidiscrimination laws, radical shrinkage of the welfare state
including public education and social security, maintenance of tariff
and other barriers to foreign trade, local option on religious
observances in public settings, federalism and local control generally.
Unfortunately, such measures have their own problems. One is that they
amount to an attempt to return things to an earlier state. Can that be
done? If the earlier state of affairs fell apart then, why not now?
Another is that they don't take into account recent developments that
weaken organic connections, such as improvements in communications and
the increasing ability of markets to turn anything whatever into cash.
So something more radical may be needed, which does not however attempt
to force connections that must grow of themselves.
What that thing might be I don't know. Any ideas?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Mon Dec 29 14:56:34 1997
Subject: Re: Christmas with Anne Roche Muggeridge
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 1997 14:56:34 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <199712290030.TAA17739@panix.com> from "Jim Kalb" at Dec 28, 97 07:30:05 pm
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> >>Stoicism is adoration of the impersonal order of the universe.
> >>Taoism is ditto, plus deconstruction, and it's highly poetic.
> >
> >Maybe you've read more deconstruction than I have.
The intended meaning of the second line is "Taoism is adoration of the
impersonal order of the universe combined with something I call
'deconstruction,' and it's highly poetic." Was that unclear?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Dec 30 08:04:23 EST 1997
Article: 10912 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: The World Culture versus Traditionalism
Date: 29 Dec 1997 20:52:27 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 49
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References: <883346664snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <686scq$inl@panix.com> <883438208snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
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X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97)
rafael cardenas writes:
>But the transcendence and arbitrariness of God (his _potestas
>absoluta_) were also emphasized by early 14th-century Christian
>philosophers also: some have argued that their destruction of the
>Thomist synthesis was what made Renaissance science possible.
Even if it is granted that in one setting destruction made a new
development possible, it does not follow that whatever caused the
destruction would have led to the same development in other settings.
In itself the view that the universe is ordered by an utterly
transcendent, arbitrary and incomprehensible principle does not seem
favorable to science. Consider the Muslim religious sciences, the
study of _hadith_ and so on, and compare them to the Christian
theological tradition. The former seem far less hospitable to
speculations continuous with those of classical philosophy. Not
surprising, since the latter developed in the presence of Greek
philosophy.
>the Seljuk and Ottoman sultans were self-consciously the heirs of Rum.
"Viewed themselves as" rather than "were self-consciously," I think.
What political, cultural or intellectual traditions of classical
antiquity did they carry forward?
>a result of Islamic self-confidence, and contrasts with the willingness
>of the Christians to seek a synthesis of the Hebraic and the classical,
>and to revere the classical past. That, in turn, may be connected not
>only with the fact that the Christian upper classes of the late empire
>were themselves the product of classical culture, but with the evident
>inferiority of Western material culture in the early Middle Ages to
>what they could see remaining of Roman material culture. In dar-al-
>Islam, there was no such evident inferiority. Nothing to do with the
>religion as such.
You seem to be saying that Christianity is one thing and the formative
experiences of the Christian community quite another. That seems odd
to me. The need to live with the world and thus take it seriously
rather than ignore it or impose a preconceived order of course goes
back much earlier, to the situation of the Church before Constantine,
the place of Christ's life and ministry in occupied Israel, the
pragmatic failure of that life and ministry, and before that to the
reverses and suffering of the Jewish people during conflicts with
foreigners, Babylonian captivity, and slavery in Egypt.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: The brie-and-white-wine set meet Finster
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <3104456@donner.Dartmouth.EDU> from "Gregory D. Wadlinger" at Dec
29, 97 05:20:38 pm
Status: RO
"Gregory D. Wadlinger" writes:
>My own feeling is that if we can abide securely with the understanding
>that we are but dust, we can look anyone or anything in the face and
>judge it honestly. If we are insecure, we walk and talk around the
>things that give us pause.
If it is our interpretations that create the world then there is nothing
that can threaten us. "The mind is its own place, and in itself/Can
make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." You are right of course that
such a view is at the opposite pole from humility.
Maybe some such view is hard to avoid in the absence of faith that the
fundamental order of the world is beneficent. The only alternative
that comes to mind is an understanding of the self as an illusion.
Then there no need to feel threatened because there is nothing to be
threatened.
So three possibilities have become visible so far:
1. The view that we are part of a real world that does not in any way
depend on us, and we are able truly to know that world. This view
seems difficult to maintain without something like theism, although
scientific materialism tries to do so. After all, one is inclined to
ask, if the world was not made by mind how can it be known by mind?
2. The Kant/Nietzsche/Satan view that our own mind creates the reality
we experience, which is the only reality we need bother with. This is
the one I am attributing to the brie and w.w. types as their implicit
justification for reconstructing Howard Finster in their own image. A
problem is that it doesn't quite work. Kant couldn't do away with the
_ding an sich_. Nietzsche rants, not a sign of calm self-confidence,
and knows how difficult it is really to get rid of God. Satan in
_Paradise Lost_ *relies* on God, he has to keep jabbing at Him to retain
what passes for mental equilibrium.
3. The atheistic Buddhist view that experience and mind are illusions
and liberation lies in understanding them as such.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: Christmas with Anne Roche Muggeridge
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <01e801bd14c6$950ed7e0$cff463ce@seth-williamson> from "Seth
Williamson" at Dec 29, 97 08:59:32 pm
Status: RO
Seth Williamson writes:
>Believing, on the one hand, that ultimate reality is matter and energy,
>atoms and the void--a reality which, though he gave it formal
>allegiance, he found dessicated and evacuated of spirit.
When I try to think through atheism I get puzzled. A problem with the
atoms and the void theory is that it makes the world too comprehensible
and neat. How did the world get that way? Is it forbidden to ask? By
whom and on what authority is it forbidden? And what about the stuff
that gets left out, like the number 37 or my sensation of the color red?
Neither seems to be an arrangement of atoms, but I can't pretend they
don't exist.
So I don't think the atoms and the void theory is a stable form of
atheism. What atheism seems to strive for is a condition in which the
world is utterly incomprehensible. We confront the world and find
ourselves acting in it, and that's all. Contemplation of the
particularity and otherness of the world might then give rise to a sort
of poetry. Is that be what Williams' poem about the red wheelbarrow
and white chickens is about?
Thanks for posting the "Sunday Morning" extracts by the way.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Tue Dec 30 10:46:54 1997
Subject: Re: ACLU sues St.Ann Mo.
To: am
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 1997 10:46:54 -0500 (EST)
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Albert writes:
>At 02:37 AM 12/28/97 -0500, Brad wrote:
>
>>The assault on Christian morals is what got us into this
>>multi-cultural nightmare to begin with.
>
>I would like to know what you consider to be "basic Christian morals".
I can't speak for Brad, but I think he's on to something.
Multiculturalism wants to make all moral traditions equally available to
each of us, which means that none can be authoritative for any of us.
The traditional system of Christian morality therefore has to go,
because it's required to become a matter of private taste and a moral
system can't be understood as such and remain a moral system. What
becomes authoritative instead is individual impulse and desire,
aggregated and reconciled through the market, welfare bureaucracies, and
therapeutic experts.
I think it's true that one source of support for multiculturalism has
been a desire for liberation from restraints imposed by traditional
Christian morals. Sexual restraints are the most obvious example.
Another source of support of course has been the ambition of market
players, bureaucrats and experts to supplant traditional morality with
their own products as a source of order.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Dec 30 21:24:31 EST 1997
Article: 10927 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Thoughts on libertarianism
Date: 30 Dec 1997 21:22:03 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 165
Message-ID: <68ca8b$hv9@panix.com>
References: <67ohem$lfr@panix.com> <34a69352.3154679@news.srv.ualberta.ca>
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tasquith@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca (Tom Asquith) writes:
>Hi Jim.
Hello!
>True, the libertarians or "classical liberals" don't have an
>overarching ethical system, but the typical counter that they pose is
>that they seek to remove the structures that prevent the individual
>from seeking the greater good
The problem is that the ethical system implicit in the constitution of
the state tends to become the ethical system authoritative throughout
society. Life is easier if there's a single cohesive set of principles
of social unity to appeal to, so that's the way things tend to end up.
For a strictly liberal or libertarian polity the implicit ethical system
is hedonism - for something to be good is simply for someone to want it
- subject to principles of equality of some sort. The greater good in a
liberal or libertarian system therefore tends to be the maximization of
some combination of economic output, equality (however construed), and
freedom to pursue idiosyncratic tastes free of legal or social
constraints. Not enough of a greater good to support a stable and
tolerable social order, in my view.
The point in favor of the libertarians is that the institutions they
favor don't do much, and unless the libertarians are completely
successful (which isn't likely) the institutions need not manifest
strict libertarianism. There can be minimal government, at least
compared to what we have now, and for example an established church.
Examples would include Israel under the Judges, medieval Iceland,
common-law England, and the United States during most of its history,
when government was much less active than at present and Protestant
Christianity was informally established.
As to the bulk of the things modern governments do, libertarians and
conservatives agree - the government shouldn't be doing them.
Conservatism requires that informal and traditional institutions like
the family and traditional morality be fundamental to the ordering of
society. It follows that the managerial welfare state, which eliminates
autonomous social institutions like tradition because it wants to
determine outcomes in each particular case, has to go. The market is
something with which conservatism can live far more easily.
Libertarians may believe the market will eliminate everything else and
determine all outcomes, but if people live otherwise in accordance with
say family or religious institutions based on non-market principles the
Libertarian Police won't show up and force them to toe the line.
>that hegemony between the conservative body of thought and the rise of
>market liberalism, when combined with the result of unfettered market
>forces, has the effect of severing communities and reducing reliance on
>cultural and traditional ties. If those people who call themselves
>conservatives start seeing this, is it not conceivable that the
>conservatives might start asking that the dampers be placed on the
>liberalization of the market?
Some sorts of restrictions on the market are consistent with
conservatism, and conservatives have favored them. Simple examples
include restrictions on the sex industry and Sunday closing laws. The
kinds of restrictions of which conservatives approve are normally those
that don't involve the government in managing things. Immigration
controls and a stable system of across-the-board tariffs would be OK for
example.
>BTW, if you have any doubt about the reduction of tradition in the face
>of liberalization, take a look at the changes that have been occurring
>in England in recent years. Tradition has been suffering.
I don't know enough to comment. Go get Sean Gabb and drag him into
a.r.c. and you and Raphael can argue with him for our edification.
>The other liberals at least has certain limits on them--many of them
>only expressing the old patriarchal ideas that were common to some
>older forms of conservatism but shuddering at the idea of dismantling
>the structures of society when in fact, these structures were working
>for them.
In England and for all I know Canada there may be a welfare state
liberalism tinged by Tory paternalism. In America there just isn't.
Does the initial tinge matter much in the long run? The modern state
has neither sex nor soul, and old patriarchal ideas aren't what it runs
on.
>Libertarians, at least as I see them, pose a far greater
>risk...particularly for their lack of concern for the effects of
>throwing society holus bolus into the uncertainty of the market.
If reduction of the role of the state means throwing things into the
market (as it does in the view of both libertarians and welfare-state
liberals) then there is no such thing as conservatism. Conservatism
makes sense only if there are fundamental social institutions not
reducible either to state or market.
>I also find curious that you are using Plato to argue in favour of a
>descent downwards--which ultimately ends in the revolt of the masses
>and the production of new tyrannies.
Argue in favor? I find the theory of social decline set forth in
_Republic_ viii-ix useful in understanding history and determining
where the greatest dangers lie, in an alliance between the majority of
the people and demagogues who promise to give them what they want at
the expense of the rich. As you point out, on that theory we end with
tyranny. To my mind, the practical lesson is to favor things at odds
with the natural line of development from multicultural democratic
consumer society to tyranny.
>A global welfare-state? (This sounds a little too libertarian
>socialist.) Also, there needs to be a justification for the position
>when the majority of the assets rests not in the "community" (for lack
>of a better word) for indeed their interests in such will have been
>extinguished but in the hands of the propertied few.
I think that's the moral ideal of the current civilization. The assets
of course are in the hands of the managerial class. The equitable
owners tend to be people like pension plan beneficiaries who don't run
things and indeed know very little about what's going on.
>-The claim that a system of property rights, free contract, and no
>-government welfare programs would lead to mass starvation as
>-technological advances reduce the economic value of most human labor
>-below bare subsistence seems ill-founded.
>
>I note that there is very little here that is suggestive of conserving
>or preserving.
It's a defense of libertarianism against objections from a welfare-
statist perspective. I put up the defense not because I think
libertarianism is wonderful but because I think the alternative is
worse.
>Also, this general truth could be restated as: "it seems a general
>truth that better techniques make men more able to create their
>material wants." There is no satisfaction. Just the shifting from one
>want to another. I note there was no mention of "needs"-- just wants.
The word "want" was to be interpreted by reference to the objection
under discussion, that libertarianism leads to mass starvation.
>There exists the potential for government as it exists today to engage
>in policies that could not only preserve the family as an institution
>but could further foster its development (e.g., tax breaks for
>companies that allow family members to stay home; benefits for married
>couples--as opposed to penalties; etc.).
What companies don't allow family members to stay home? Changing the
tax laws to get rid of the marriage penalty (which we have in the U.S.)
doesn't sound like much of a refutation of libertarianism even if it's
replaced with a marriage benefit at least unless the high rates of
taxation that makes the matter so important are beneficial.
>Based on the experiments that we have seen here in Canada, the
>downloading of powers to local governments tends to produce the problem
>of the "descent to the bottom".
Is that anecdotal or a real problem? On the whole, I would think that
if government spending etc. makes the locality a better place to be then
that's a reason for employers to locate there. "Others may pay you
more," they could tell prospective employees, "but we offer you the
benefit of living in a place where there are good schools, roads, parks,
etc., etc., etc. Therefore you should be satisfied even though we pay
you less."
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Dec 31 05:43:31 EST 1997
Article: 10929 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: The World Culture versus Traditionalism
Date: 31 Dec 1997 05:01:38 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 34
Message-ID: <68d562$lg1@panix.com>
References: <883346664snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <686scq$inl@panix.com> <883438208snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <689k4r$ds7@panix.com> <883527947snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
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In <883527947snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf391@hormel.bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>> "Viewed themselves as" rather than "were self-consciously," I think.
>I'm not sure quite what the distinction is here.
If I thought I was Napoleon I would "view myself as" rather than "be
self-consciously" the Emperor of the French.
>Well, in cultural tradition there's considerable architectural
>continuity (in contrast to some other areas of the Islamic world);
Hagia Sophia look-alikes? But Spengler said the Pantheon was the first
mosque, evidently designed by a Syrian. Be that as it may the
continuity is not with classical antiquity.
>in political tradition, the Caesaropapism of the Ottomans is an
>example of continuity (both the Caliph and the Patriarch were very
>much under the Sultan's control).
The Ruling Institution of the Ottomans was as little like anything
classical as can be imagined. No organic ties to society, and even
slave officials. No room at all for citizenship. The Caliph was
nothing like a pope or patriarch, more like an emperor, the leader of
the Muslim people in their affairs generally, with no religious
hierarchy beneath him and no special responsibility for doctrine. So
the relation between Sultan and Caliph was more like that between Mayor
of the Palace and Meroving, or Shogun and Emperor. I'm not sure why
domination of the officials of a religion one rejects would be
Caesaropapism.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Dec 31 05:43:32 EST 1997
Article: 10930 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Thoughts on libertarianism
Date: 31 Dec 1997 05:41:03 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 42
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References: <34A9C198.4837@msmisp.com>
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In <34A9C198.4837@msmisp.com> cjahnes@msmisp.com (Carl Jahnes) writes:
>Consider that Libertarians want no restrictions on issues of personal
>(hedonism) morality.
No government restrictions.
>How does a Libertarian keep such a state of affairs in existence,
>since it is the nature of voluntary associations and natural social
>groupings (communities) to proscribe such things to protect themselves
>and their way of life?
Your question is what a libertarian would do when he sees that radical
reduction in the role of the state does not mean libertarian relations
in day-to-day life, since in the absence of the state other
institutions would grow in authority. That depends on what the
principle of unity among libertarians is. In my experience it relates
more to institutions and formal politics than ultimate libertine
values. If they adhered to the latter they would be Bill Clinton
clones. So if it turned out that downsizing the state meant that e.g.
social sanctions against adultery became stronger most would live with
it, certainly most of the intellectually responsible ones, who already
recognize that such would be the consequence.
There are obviously different tendencies within what is called
libertarianism. Also, the evolution from classical to contemporary
liberalism was a natural one. Someone who becomes a libertarian today
though is presumably someone who rejects that evolution. What that
means is ambiguous. There are paleolibertarians, who want very radical
reduction in the role of government, think that would lead to stricter
morality, and approve of that too. There are mainstream politicians
who think libertarian means "fiscally conservative, market-oriented,
socially tolerant" - in other words, limit the budgetary growth of
social programs, reduce regulation and otherwise help business, and
support gay rights and drug decriminalization. There are also those
who think libertarianism means "I go for whatever I want, and that
means sex, drugs and lots of money." I wouldn't suggest getting in bed
with all of those people.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
Do let me know if you have comments of any kind.
Back to my archive of posts.