Abraham Rotstein, Weekend Notes XI

Weekend Notes (Overview)

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"Freedom and Technology" - General Comments

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[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. […]

[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. […]

[18] Owen said that human environment determines character. […]

[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.

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

Shaw's vitalism (the life force)…

[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. ↑

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.

Tostoy 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 …

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The Interdependence of Technology, Fear & Power

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The New Sociology

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Comments on my Preface

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The Economy and 'the Social Question'

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The Great Transformation (2)

[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.

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

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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

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The Early Marx

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Modern Politics (3)

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The Great Transformation and America (3)

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Miscellaneous

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Text Informations

Date: June 25, 1957
KPA: 45/08