Abraham Rotstein, Weekend Notes XI

Weekend Notes (Overview)

Text in English to type

"Freedom and Technology" - General Comments

[2] P. has had time to think about the book. He has thought more about the content and why one writes it. It is extremely simple and we are reluctant to write it, while trying to write something else is not possible. To write this book is very much possible. Perhaps one might have some simple article or essay instead, and why it needs a book is not clear. However it might need a book to be fully said. It boils down to two sentences: freedom in an essential sense is not possible in a technological civilization. We have list the essential freedom and the cause is the technological civilization. The white space recognition of this would make all the difference. If we accept this, then the outlook on the world may be changed greatly for the better. Almost all the complaints are an obscure formulation of this same fact or a veiled attempt to escape it.

History won't stop. All those troubles are vaguely related to human society. They will take a different shape because they are either caused by it or an attempt to evade it, and many things follow including moral degeneration.

The question is to understand what is being aid there. P. became clear on this while writing the Preface and saw that it would have to be changed. But he would have to retain the contemplative approach to the question. Whether we put it this way or not is of no particular importance and P. doesn't attach any special significance to this Preface.

P. realized that everything could be said in one sentence and to [3] […]

The Fascists accepted this and said it was incompatible to have Christianity, and persecuted the Jews because they were responsible for Christianity, which is true. They made peace with the Church on conditions under with the Church meant nothing. All this is quite consistent.

[4] One of the things that P. might do is not to speak of Christianity but of religion. There is not a religion which doesn't deal with man's inner freedom. If he has religion, he has inner life and that is what the rest of life turns on. Religion is like metaphysics.

The Christians don't accept a deeper meaning to their position and you immediately get them against you. You are attacked when you say that something deeper exists aside from its content.

P. is doubtful if it possible or worth at all, to write a book which does not contain an important recognition. However, even bigger and more important positions have been put in a briefer way and one to think about this.

Everything is said in the sentence, that there is a meaning of freedom in which freedom cannot and does not exist.

The actual organization of the book very strongly hinges on freedom and freedoms. But that is so well known we needn't say it is an abstraction. P. stands for freedom. The fight between the West and the East hinges on freedoms. Both stand for freedoms. Our position changes this.

P. would say that freedom is not possible in a technological civilization. Therefore we would mean something definite and thus we have the dichotomy of freedom and freedoms. It becomes the main one for the book. We can have any amount of freedoms that we can wish, and as things are now, we don't get these because we don't get our [5] […]

[6] Everything on a secondary level doesn't stand e.g. what people are saying about Christianity – are we going to be angels and who cares? But this hasn't settled the question of religion and whether it has any importance for me. The atheist for example has another religion and argues with greater sincere conviction that he never does anything against his conscience. These are all Shavian ideas.

P. can't understand why the thoughts that Shaw has expressed most often and most frequently, he has never been credited with. This is one of the mysteries of our time. That thinker who went on repeating himself for 65 years has never been credited with the convictions that he expressed. A paper like that would have much critical truth for almost any of the fashions of our time: e.g. let the devil have free play and he will God's world, (The Devil's Discipline).

What is man going to do with the freedom to do anything? P. rad to Ilona one of the Edmund Wilson's essay where he sums up “Too True To Be Good” in one page. This is by far the most eminent [7] essay on Shaw that P. knows.

P. withdraws the title “Parts of a Philosophical Testament” which we had contemplated last week. (I am much too young for that.)

[8] […] The Marxist and the capitalist position are fundamentally the same. They insist on accepting a dichotomy of man as a material and as a spiritual being. This is denied psychologically and biologically, [9] e.g. you can't grasp a knife unless you relate yourself to space etc.

[…]

The complaint of man in the modern age according to Jaspers is that he doesn't believe in God.

[…]

In P.'s conviction we have to put up with a new sociology. Nobody however takes it seriously.

The Fascists produced a terrible craze with the murdering of the Jews which was done in the name of the salvation of mankind. Also Bolshevism was the “breath of the dessert from the East” (Rosenberg).

The early Marx will be the discussion in Russia for the next 20 years. This is a humanistic line - what is human society? What is human destiny?

All the modern ideas turn on the question that either society becomes perfect and life is unacceptable to the individual or vice-versa. (i.e. that one must give up one's ideals etc.) That's what existentialism [10] is about - the public personal life, the committed one instead of the uncommitted person.

[…] The economistic fallacy …

[11] […] Sartre […]

[12] Ricardo was a Jew and came from the stock exchange and had the conscience about this whole matter - attacking the landlords. Malthus thought up scientific feudalism because he was too humane and didn't go the whole way.

[13] Why rebel all the way (Sartre), and if so, in what direction? The Sartre position is rebellion in the wrong direction. […]

[14] […] In a way, it is not the individual who is fighting the condition - but the conditions which are fighting the individual with a delusion - until it bursts like an inflated ballon. P. wrote this 49 years ago and [15] called it the "Passive Drama". The individual tries to maintain his delusion but proves unable to do so. […]

Shaw argues that the indestructible character of society (the reality of society) allows the individual much more freedom than he thinks he has e.g. marriage, estate, God. Society is not based on his good behavior in following conventional rules of the day. He will still follow conventional rules but not of the day. Shaw shows ironically how conventionally he behaves when he imagines he behaves unconventionally. […]

[16]

[17] Under freedom and freedoms we might have the modern treatment of the problem - from fascism, bolshevism, psychoanalysis, existentialism onward. P. thinks it begins with Freud and Lenin onwards (the modern period).

Ricardo

Shaw, Sartre

Owen, Ibsen

[18] […] It begins with Calvin. […]

In Marx there is a complete craze. […]

Owen said that human environment determines character.

Then there is the social novel - Sue, Zola, to show that there are social phenomena. All these show how the individual is caught up.

[…] Turgenev and Dostoevsky. It is not about the individual as such. We distinguish these from the modern period which is from psychoanalysis and Leninism onward ending with existentialism.

The reality of society was realized in more than one hundred ways

[20] From Owen we jump to urbanization, central power, lighting, information and communication, telephone, telegraph, police, newspaper and railways. Then you get public utilities and public service and the danger to society that lies in that.

[21] […] Society isn't the new concern but freedom is the new concern.

Society and the state were distinguished insofar as the state was represented by the government and society was really business life (burgerliche gesellschaft - Hegel). Marx took it from Hegel via Laurenz von Stein. He had written a book on communism and socialism in France and he developed the class theory. Marx took it from there and it was a book of absolute genius.

… Marxism was a derivation of German idealism and French materialism. He discusses freedom mainly in its human meaning a la Feuerbach and this dominates the early Marx. He put the word “social” everywhere, social labour etc. […]

This will provide a counterfoil to the bolschevist ideas on Marxism. […]

The moderns would have inherited from Hegel through Marx the term self-alienation. These terms are used in many ways.

The Communist quibble about freedom is only a quibble. An important part of this is the obscure formulations of the situation and [22] the escapist devices concernine man's essential freedom. There is a strain of nihilism among modern philosophers. […]

In any organized society freedom is limited. Hobbes' …

[23] [24] [25] [26] [27]

[28] The modern complaints occur with Freud, Nietzsche and Sartre. Marx was more of a liberal Christian.

Shaw's vitalism (the life force)…

[28] [29]

[30] P. think that Jaspers is boring and confused stuff. It does contain important insights but, for example, Jaspers thinks that Russia is the end of everything. This is unphilosophical measuring, of using one red for one thing and another red for another. Why doesn't he say something clear, simple and sensible?

In Jasper's book he puts everything on the masses. So does Tocqueville and Maine (i.e. under liberty you never have progress because the masses -and this was Spencer's influence on him). […]

P. discovered his philosopher. Robert Owen was the only person we can point to. He expressed the thought that he didn't realize. It was his actions which proved that he realized it - what he did in the factory.

[31] [32] [33] ↑

Robert Owen (1)

[34] Owen was a remarkable personnality. Everyone commented on it and the descriptions of the sweetness are unanimous. He was a great religious leader without hardly ever talking about religion. This stemmed from his resignation. He was prepared to close down Christianity.

Owen invented the survey method.

He never listened to other peoples' ideas and always explained a set sequence of thoughts which had mapped out. He was not in tone or emphasis ever quite enthusiastic. P. read his report to the County of Lanark and in that report are the most important things. (P. read Owen when he was in America, and found the “Campbell” in the New York Public Library.)

He didn't think of people in the factory as being of his own kind. He remained impersonal. He had a peculiar attitude. One has the feeling of something of a saint and he must have suffered deeply. He didn't think of things in an efficiency way but in a human way (not in a personal but in an impersonal sense.) He almost felt personally responsible for having introduced the machine age.

Adam Smith didn't notice machinery. There is no reference to spinning in the “Wealth of Nations”. The division of labour didn't involve machinery. The workers in the factory would become idiots. A Scottish crofter takes his hand to ever anything while this factory worker has an intellectual deterioration - daft, rough people. He was afraid this would be brutalizing. There is no mention of machines. He meant manufactures. Smith was very much against the employer.

[35] There were other factories in the 15th century, e.g. Jack of Newcomb. The woolen industry was in three different places. It moved from the south-west to East Anglia, where even today high churches (cathedrale) stand in the empty waste. That was where worsted was first spun. Worsted was the center. Then in the 19th century it went to the West riding. During Smith's time it was moving. Manchester was built in 1750 and before there was no Manchester. Smith missed the factory period altogether. First there was Liverpool then there was Manchester and people originally thought that it was a harbor developement.

We can't explain Robert Owen unless he held the thoughts that we ascribe to him. Nothing of his thoughts was possible at the time. We would not have had the use of machines on a big scale either. There was no one to bear the risk. The markets didn't exist for production and sales, and secondly he could not have got the workers. There was also no insurance of freight or transportation, nor a credit system. Therefore there was more need of a risk-bearer than today. Who could take the risk?

This is not business-men's jargon. This is the Shavian truth. Formerly machines were used at the risk of the worker, but there was no investment involved.

Robert Owen is the first of a series of people who knew what the machine was. Owen's personality was one of the greatest achievements of the human mind. Marx thought that although labour notes were impossible, Owen was the only one who had any original thoughts on the right lines. Owen didn't believe in the working class (they were thieves and liars) but believed in the selfless man devoting his life to the task, and in the sovereign who was interested in the welfare of the population.

[37] In a Robert Owen parable, everything was carried out. There was a protest against individualizing Christianity which went to the root of the whole question. He perceived at glance that the machine would organize mankind. Take that literality. It was all seen and said for the first time. The last authoritative words appeared in the same year as Ricardo and the bullion question. (Ricardo organized the core of the matter, the heart [of] the gold standard, not much later).

The machine needed a different society which could not be. Ultimately, the risk-bearer was the state. He didn't realize that the state would be brought into it at all.

Close the Owen chapter with a clear understanding that he had not understood the first thing about the social organization of the economy. He skipped the economy altogether. He saw the technology problem in a most prophetic fashion. He assumed however that machine production would be developed without an entrepreneurial class and a working class and a liquidation of mercantilism and feudalism.

Also Fourier and Saint Simon overlooked the economic organization and the instituting of the process. They just saw the moral impact. The market organization was unknown. Freight etc. didn't exist and it was the St. Simonists who created the banks e.g. Lazard freres.

My point: It is interesting that the utopians come up 120years later.

A the beginning you see the stark character of the development which is later compromised. Also Marx wiped out all the deviants.

One utopian idea that was absolutely successful was the market [38] system. It is a thought-up ideal system and it doesn't last and had all the characteristics of utopia and this was carried into effect.

In Robert Owen one would show that this idea of the reality of society came up at the beginning. He was the inventor of the idea to construct and adjust and initiate but that there would be a limit to that. He didn't however, see the immediate limits that lay in a different direction. This lay in continuity and risk-bearing of the entrepreneurial class in a market system.

Owen's failure is a point to show - the impact of the machine. It wouldn't be only where he saw it, but also in the new social stratification and the instituting of the economic process we call capitalism. He saw socialism before he saw capitalism. He didn't see there would be an economic change and couldn't have seen it because no one had ever seen such a thing.

One of his many concerns was that there would be a working class, not of thieves and prostitutes.

P. doesn't know who he thought was going to start the Villages of Community. Whether there would be shareholders as Fourier thought or maybe he thought it would be philanthropists. Where would the capital come from? It was very easy to sell everything at that time. It was an infinite market and no competition…

P. thinks that there are considerations which could lead one back to the elements to prove that this loss of freedom was suspected over the last 150 years (1810 onward). When Robert Owen said about the machine that this will cause grave evils etc. He forsaw infinite trouble and difficulty.

[39] He devised different costumes for the workers - top hats, frock coats and tails were the general dress. That is what Weller looks like in Pickwick Papers. Until the Americans invented overalls there was no change in dress. Owen had a special dress for his men and women. He also thought there should be music and leisure hour and he made speeches on the sociology of the working class. However he described them as thieves, criminals, prostitutes which they were. They would reside in a village built around a factory - all the questions which we begin to resolve only now.

Also there would be marriage reform while Christianity - that's out because that puts the responsibility on the individual, and these were problems of society. As for the machine, it should be retained but it will cause unspeakable complications. We will have to do many things but after these, there would be a limit. When this is reached we accept it.

We haven't started doing anything of the kind. Instead we started on absolutes. We released moral discipline and the moral system was burst and there was no hope of an integrated concept of right and wrong, but that many views were possible. ↑

The Reality of Society (3)

[40] One of the reasons we don't want to resign ourselves to the reality of society, is because we vaguely hope we can improve on this society before we do. Even those who want to maintain society as it is, don't mean that it stay exactly the same. The Christians position is feared of society as it is and no one accepts it as it is. But then you have to do something - you are immediately put under the compulsion to improve our standards. These are things depending on ourselves.

Tolstoy said that we should work as if we lived forever, but we should behave to other people as if this was the last day of our lives. He meant, that in relationship to others we should be Christians and live as persons and practise the relationship of love. But as member of a society we should resign ourselves to the reality of society. Society is not part of our personal participation and society doesn't die with us. It is not a community of persons that is meant here. Our work follows from our membership in society. If we accepted the community of persons, the division of labour would cease instantly. E.g. if you help the woman with her load then next day she has no job anymore i.e. you take away her job. In Man and Superman, the striker as a unionist … [41] [42] ↑

The Interdependence of Technology, Fear & Power

[43] ↑

The New Sociology

[44] ↑

Comments on my Preface

[45] [46] ↑

The Economy and 'the Social Question'

[47] [48] ↑

The Great Transformation (2)

[49] […] [50] Hayek's book was important in America but not in England. In England Burnham's book was important, but not in America.

Fortune reviewed the Great Transformation right after Hayek's book came out. Davenport, who then came back to Fortune said: what is the American invention? America brought to the world the market economy. P. thinks it is true.

P. spoke with Tawney about Hayek's book in 1944 or '45. P. was in America between '40 and '43 and in England between '43 and '46. He went back in order to sign the book in England because it was addressed: 1) to the British working class, and 2) to the New Deal.

The British Working class didn't take note of it but there was a disproportionate interest in it America. P. didn't know that it had made a big hit in Bennington. (Burkhart bought 25 copies for his friends for Christmas.)

In England in three and half years he lost the time in which he should have done the research. He just wrote the chapter in the Appendix on Speenhamland which nobody took any notice of.

[51] Hayek's book was practically forgotten and didn't influence England at all. Tawney said we had had this discussion 100 years ago.

P. wrote the chapter on freedom in The Great Transformation as a religious position.In England he elaborated it and it looked as if he had a fascist position. It was on freedoms but the reality of society to its limits (Owen). P. hasn't moved much from this position in 14 years. Then in the Commentary article he came back to this question and developed the reality of society material to a point.

The Great Transformation had many weaknesses, but it was structured rigidly with definiteness. ↑

Freud

[52] Freud's are great discoveries for natural science and an expansion of the knowledge of the mechanism of thought which is of enormous interest. As a philosopher, P. thinks nothing of him. And yet his thoughts had an immense importance for the modern mind. Where is the balance of Freud's work? His is an important part in the concept of maturity − one of realism and resignation. We accept all the inevitables and fight against the illusionism. He was a shower-up and showing-up was a very unsound approach because it means one assumes that the necessary things, the shoddy the seedy things, are the real ones. All that is true is that these things are covered up, but this is not the real self. This is in a wrongly-conceived society.

Jews were on the whole not the state-builders of the 19th century. In Israel you find a different attitude from Freud. Because you are not responsible for authority it leads to exaggerating the secondary and negative aspects and overlooking the prime aspects, and this the Jewish mind is prone to do. It strikes people as very clever. But for the person who is responsible, it is difficult to take up such a position. You can criticize the powers that be without ever having understood the nature that power or it's foundations.

The concept of maturity is the result of his own weaknesses. By criticizing Freud a school results in this concept of maturity. It does'nt mean that Freud didn't conceive of this in his old age − he didn't start form maturity but from criticism. Maturity in his clinical practice came up very late.

[53] Freud is not Shavian at all. Freud and Shaw were the two counterpoises of the period. Shaw took people as set characters and he never psychoanalyzes anyone in his plays. Not psychoanalysis but something quite different happens. He socioanalyzes them by showing what contradictory positions they have in regard to social reality. P. thinks he can live quite happily without Freud. His greatest achievement was “The psychopathology of Every Day Life”, the dream, and the book on Wit.

The great discoveries of medicine led to disaster. The discovery of the circulation of the blood killed off tens of thousands and then the discovery of chemicals killed off thousands. ↑

Notes

The Chinese riots on Formosa

[54] ↑

The Early Marx (2)

Engels wiped out the early Marx with dialectical materialism. ↑

Modern Politics (3)

↑

The Great Transformation and America (3)

[55] ↑

Miscellaneous

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Text Informations

Date: May 25, 1957
KPA: 45/07