Abraham Rotstein, Weekend Notes II

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Parsons

The Reality of Society (2)

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My Essay (April 30/56) has linked the concept of the Reality of Society with the new institutional theory. P. used the concept only metaphysically. I used it naturally in a sociology which is not atomistic.

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[9] Owen said… […]

Bernard Shaw is the only thinker who thought of it in this way, that society was limited in the possibility of its ideals but he never drew the conclusion to leave things as they are - on the contrary.

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[11] There are two rationalities, the survival of society, and that of the individual, and here you have the general problem of political theory.

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In Paul: what does he mean when he brings in the idea of Christian freedom? It has something to do with the opposite, with death of sin. It is a metaphor of emancipation. The slave, when {fread} ceases to be a slave. It is a metaphysical experience.

[10] In Westermann: description of emancipation through the Delphic temple - Paramonai.

The Christian idea of society is that it is a relationship of persons. The revelation of the reality of society impiges on Christian freedom. It takes away the immediate topicality of the second revolution. (The latter was about 1935, the reality of society about 1942.)

In the "Essence of Fascim”, Polanyi didn't have the position he reached later. He was strongly influenced by Macmurray's Personalism - the individual in the community is real, the isolated individual doesn't exist. Personalism is not individualistic, but from the point of view of sociology it is.

In 1936 P. was under a strong religious influence in viewing the reality of society. P. had presented such an idea to his English friends in Vienna in the late '20's', so that it wasn't new. The ideal was of a community of persons which was instituted. The there was a society which broke up this ideal. The idea was to achieve a community of persons - which was naive. It took a complex society to reveal the concept of inevitable alternatives.

The "individual-in-community" concept protects one from slipping into an atomistic conception. The Christian conception is that the individual doesn't exist outside the community. He exists through others in the community. No one is alone, because then the concept of life would disappear.

[13] There is nothing of this penetration in the Jewish position. The the people as a whole exists in relation to God. In the Christian position the individual has his being in and through the other. It is not the same as loving one's neighbour as oneself. Loving is not clear unless it means selflessness. […]

[14] Alle personal faith consists in knowledge that things have a meaning.

This is what John's epistle says. John starts, "In the beginning there was the logos”. The Dead Sea Scrolls are along John the Evangelist line. This was a Jewish line of thought, not the Synoptics. The sentences are similar to the Essenes. Tolstoy regarded John as the essence of Christian teachings. (See book by Toltstoy on the reconstruction of John). The Synoptics are the rest of the teachings. The nearest translation of "logos" is meaning. Cf. John: "In the beginning was the Word (logos) - the meaning of things. (Without meaning there would be no persons). "The light shineth in darkness: and the darkness comprehend it not". (i.e. did not encompass it). The first five sentences sum up what must have been the Essene creed. "The light shineth in darkness is not like the Zoroastrian creed of light and dark. Life was like light. The more life the more light. Life equals light equals meaning. These are metaphors for the happy being of inner life. Darkness is passive and doesn't put out or take in light. It is not a matter of belief or faith-moanig is reality. It is what consciousness means. Meaning means getting it and passing it on. No principle can create forms meaning because that principle itself must have a meaning.

[15] Modern positivism… […]

The Messianic aspect in Jewry was not in the Prophets. It existed in strong movements in the third and second century B.C. revealed by the Dead Sea Scrolls. A messianic leader in the past lost his life like Jesus. But in the turn which things take in Jesus, it is doubtful that anything of the kind was present before. The Essenes belief was eschatological, otherwise he banning of women was not possible.

Christianity reached a low again and again but had the power of retrieving itself - St Augustine, the Monastics, the Benedictines, Cluniac, the {friurs} Reformation, Counter-Reformation, then [16] the various secular movements that came with the Enlightenment.

In America, Porestantism created novel movements in Western christianity of the pioneer type from the 18th century on - Benjamin Franklin (?), the Mormons, Shakers, Quakers.

The was an incredible capacity of the Christian church to start afresh being covered with crime and slime, through an expansion or an inward movement. There were frequent mystic periods.

Science revolutionized Christianity. Calvinism was an outgrowth of the scientific spirit, a turning against supernaturalism, the priesthood and miracles. The beginning of the scientific turn was about 1530 and hasn't stopped for a day. Protestant Calvinism as its height was anything but enlightened, but the scientific spirit caused an explosion of a general religious kind. We have to be cautious here, since the more you look into the more puzzling it is. Only in the present you can speak about certainties. (As long as you're sincere you can't go astray).

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Politics and the Current Crisis

[21] Clausewitz' book is still the best one written on power.

The danger in the post-war…

The Institutionalists

Background of the Great Transformation (2)

[24] … P. wrote in 1909 (or 1912)[1] that growing monopoly capital would bring a ruling class sociology instead of an atomistic sociology and develop a ruling class morality. …

The Exchange Triad and the Gold Standard

… [28] P. got his gold standard position from Keynes.

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[29] Bishop (c.f. G. Trans.)[2]

The U.S.A. (2)

The 1958 Book

The Ford Project

Remarks

The Trade Cycle

World Religion

All World religion developed within about 500 years of each other. Jesus doesn't st this date but the Essenes do 200 years earlier. The Jews set the date in Palestine in the 6th century. One relates the Essenes to the Prophets and one gets this range from 8th century - Buddha to the 6th century - Lao-Tze.[3]

What caused this great religious epoch throughout the whole world? It may be a cosmic event, such as cosmic rays. The earth may have got a cosmic shot in the arm. More probable than not something happened and you cannot exclude the whole realm of the earth being influenced from outside.[4]

Meaning of "material"

Questions

Sundry (2)

Editors' Notes

  1. Rotstein means probably “Nézeteink válsága” published in 1910 but written in 1909. -- Santiago Pinault, 18 June 2017 (BST)
  2. (Arch)Bishop Richard Whately: p. 185, Kindle ed. loc. 4391. When, in GT, Polanyi speaks about Whately (and mentions not the 'catallactic' that appears only in the USA period) it's in relation with Ludwig von Mises. Von Mises used the concept of 'catallactics' in Die Gemeinwirtschaft [1922], and after, in an article published in the Verein für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik in 1928: „Bemerkungen zum Grundproblem der subjektivischen Wertlehre“. We also find an occurrence in a simple footnote in Nationalökonomie in 1940, and finally, in 1949, with the whole chapter 14 in Human Action dedicated to “the Scope and Method of Catallactics", or « science of exchanges".
    We can imagine that Polanyi knew the 1922 book and we have several proofs that he read Nationalökonomie. So, as anybody quotes Whately excepted Mises, I think Polanyi quotes Mises when he pretends to quote Whately -- Santiago Pinault, 18 June 2017 (BST)
  3. Polanyi had the same conception in 1923 and “Jézus feltámadása”.
  4. As Polanyi never expressed something like that, maybe they are more 'rotsteineen' than 'polanyian'… -- Santiago Pinault, 19 June 2017 (BST)