Abraham Rotstein, Weekend Notes XII

Weekend Notes (Overview)

Text in English to type

"Freedom and Technology" - General Comments

[2] […] The existential criticism begins with Freud and runs to Sartre and is not a criticism of society at all e.g. Tillich, Nietzsche. Shaw accepted the idea from Nietzsche that we need a superman. […]

[3] […] In dealing with Owen, Shaw and the young Marx does the latter come in at end of social discontent? He didn't join in the social pessimism. P. anticipates that the Russians are turning to the early Marx.

[4] Tillich

P. also read Kierkegaard again an read the story of Abraham and Jacob. […] Descartes and a Latin sentence from Newton to prove [5] these people were not atheists. But in this piece there is no specific interest in Christianity and no belief in Christ but there is a belief in God. On the other hand if it is faith irrespective of Christian tenets, then it is not sure if anything else is meant than the firm conviction of the meaningfulness of existence. The Christian position is based on the fact that Jesus redeemed mankind.

P. started the Old Testament and read a lot. It is a confused story starting off several times from Genesis and especially peculiar with regard to the ancestors of the race. As regards the morality of Jacob it is not known if it is a humoresque or seriously meant e.g. the Esau affair.

[…] It means becoming different people - Shavian people. Shaw said that [6] human society won't go to hell and is not dependent on cheap conventions. We can drop them; what we are adjusting to are not the true necessities. We shouldn't talk with big gestures, with big phrases. That's Shaw.

[…] J.S. Mill, “On Liberty” (1839?)

[…] Luther and Calvin did say …

[7] Cromwell Locke and the Seekers - tolerance.

[8]

[9] [10] [11] [12]

[13] […]

Shaw is usually recorded as a critic of society, but he is not. […]

Goodrich, Chapman Terry Hopkins Rousseau [14] […] Mannheim

[15] […] Mannheim says that the masses play a bigger part in political and economic life …

[16] [17]

[18] […] Michael Polanyi read a paper

[19] Tillich's term 'estrangement' is a Marxist term (cf. article in 'Time').

P. is for "religion" rather than using "Jewish-Christian position." Shaw is for that and so is Owen. […] ↑

Introduction to "Freedom and Technology"

[20] Use the outline submitted to Bledsoe (April 24, 1957) for the introduction.

The preface will contain the economistic fallacy while the introduction will contain the dilemma only. The answer will be in the theoretical development and the practical proposals come at the end.

[21]

[22] […] We have three socialist writers - Owen, Shaw and Marx.

In Halasz' book every chapter started low and worked up to a terrific tension.↑

Robert Owen (2)

[23] P. thinks we should borrow more from The Great Transformation on Robert Owen. Much of it is really needed. The "Discovery of Society” background is relevant and should be brought to life on the Owen chapter and no other. In England this is not accepted (The Great Transformation fell through) but this doesn't hold for America. (They know nothing about anything anyway but the American history of England is a different history from the English. What another country wants to know about a country may be quite different.)

Owen was in a unique position. He was on the same level with sovereigns, the Church, and was even ordering Parliament around. Being Welsh he had an equal social status. (The Tudors were Welsh, had they been English they would never have been sovereigns.) MacDonald, if he had been English would have not have been Prime Minister. England didn't have lower class English Prime Ministers. Wales did not have classes and there is no nobility, so that this was possible for the Welsh. Half of the brigandswere called Owen which is a name as Welsh as Morgan.

Owen was a Welshman and had money and could rise to a position of potential influence which twenty-five years later, Cobden and Bright couldn't achieve because they were commoners from Manchester and hadn't gone to Oxford. But Owen needn't go to Oxford. (Write a paragraph on how Owen could rise. This wouldn't occur to G.D.H. Cole but it occurs to K.P.) Cobden and Bright wore black clothes and bowler hats but couldn't get a hearing. They weretje leaders of the free trade movement which was victorious in ten years. The English middle class couldn't be the leaders of the middle class and it was [24] not Cobden and Bright but the aristocracy who went liberal.

[25] […] Malthus

[26] […] New Lanark papers he said that unless we do something the machine will destroy us. But there might be a limit e.g. under the Russian system it turned out that at some points they are doing the opposite of what they want to do. the workers today e.g. Hungary say "we want our own trade unions", socialist state or not.

Owen was the main complainer and was the founder of European socialism. […] [27] [28] Malthus Keynes Owen

[…] Comte had a hierarchy…

[29] …tones of Messianism.

Owen was the first to notice the machine and had a vantage point of tremendous direct power. From the first, his position was an ultimate one.

[30]

[31] […] Owen like Shaw was dictatorial - he didn't believe in the people and altogether he was a Fabian. (P. doesn't like that, he isn't a Fabian at all). [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] ↑

Institutional Analysis

[38] [39] [40] [41] ↑

The Economizing Processus

[42] [43] ↑

Book on Money

[44] Work is proceeding towards a book on money and P. started to map out such a book. This would be a completely different approach from anything ever tried. It would drop the market and exchange side (allocation) but would include the origins of market institutions. P. would use his money paper as an introduction and keep to money uses but not have it systematic. E.g. the role of equivalencies and operational devices in the development of money institutions. He would as Ostwald to do money from this aspect, where sale - purchase isn't practiced, only the auction. (this has the feel of a war.) […] [45] Harry Pearson and Arensberg are agreed to make money the main subject and we have enormous money material which has not been used. […] ↑

K.P. on Writing

[46] Sartre says a writer can have two motives: he can express his individuality and he can express his solidarity with everyone. Sartre is for the latter and the content and clarity comes from a kind of humility.

P. thinks is true. It was one of P.'s sources of never becoming a writer. For the greatest part of his life he wrote with definite intent of …

[…] Rousseau

↑

The Canadian Elections

[47] [48] ↑

Greece, Rome and the Economy

[49] Plato's views on the economy were those of an aristocrat. But we can't say this of Aristotle who took up the question of the economy. Plato reflects Socrates who has put to death after the Peloponnesian War. Socrates was regarded as responsible for the defeat of the democracy.

Vlastos agrees on the Aristotle text but otherwise has a Marxist interpreatation. Aristotle died in 322 B.C.

Plato lived to age 90 insinuating himself everywhere by being a great poet. Plato was the student of Socrates. These three lives span the whole of classical Greece. Aristophanes wrote against and made fun of Socrates - “these Freudian corrupters of the youth”, and was probably responsible for his death.

The work with Ostwald brings in the auction as the main form of sale. […]

[50] ↑

Jewish Survival

[51] Jewry survived because the tribal institutions were artificially introduced at the time of Nehemiah in order to have background for reciprocity institutions. These couldn't have been introduced unless there were tribal or clan institutions to support them. Ezra and Nehemiah list all the clans in the Old Testament in 445 B.C. When this part of Jewry returned they were artificially organized in tribes. This made it possible to say that now they should have mutual help and the principle of no gain. That couldn't have been done unless there was a clan organization and in principle this never ceased to work. These remained established in customs, and the principles of mutual help and non-gain survived but this couldn't have been done without family organization. Jewry continued to practice among itself a consistent non-gain organization throughout the ages and when the clan was disorganized the community organized itself on a reciprocative basis. There were no transactions among members of the community.

This discovery is due to K.P.'s method. Reciprocity can not be practised unless we have an institutional basis. It can only be practised if the individual in one group has a correspondent in another group.

The Mishnah is absolutely conclusive and the extent to which the Mishnah excludes gainful transactions is fantastic. P. thinks that this kept the Jews an utterly non-commercial community through millenia. This forced them for a living on the Gentiles (my question, P. agrees). The community was sharply closed. ↑

Notes

Marx (2)

[52] ↑

Edmund Wilson

[53] ↑

Sartre

[54] ↑

Shaw (2)

Bernard Shaw's complaint is that the bourgeois world is an adjustement to a non-existent world of conventions and phobias which were an evasion of the reality of society. What we suggest is the actual reality of society not the delusionary one.

Shaw was a poet, artist and a successful playwright and had an utterly basic philosophical approach. He could use the circus technique and since people didn't accept the reality of society he could have ropes and holes and people would fall through them and stumble.He brings man's body, soul and spirit on the same level. Otherwise's it's in bad taste to play with man's salvation and cut his whiskers with a scissor. E.g. the doctor and the young girl in “You Never Can Tell”. The idea of the practical joke is a Shavian idea - man stumbling down the stairs in his career. Pygmalion is Greek myth. Ths sculptor forms a girl and brings her to life.

P. read Candida. The most amazing thing is the last page of Major Barbara. Also read “Arms and the Man”, “Man of Destiny”. It is quick reading and the shorter one take only one and a quarter hours. P. also read “The Joan” introduction which is nots so relevant. ↑

Dery

[55] ↑

Montague Norman

Henry Clay wrote a book on Montague Norman and Lionel Robbins reviews it. ↑

The Poor Law

P. upholds the thesis that the Poor Law was the matrix of English economic history. […] ↑

Christianity and the Social Revolution (2)

[56] This is a book with brilliant contributions and nothing came of it. Needham, Borkenau, MacMurray, Noel (who was not very good) made on the whole a series of brilliant contributions but they were lost and nothing came of it. The were also Raven's Lewis', and P.'s wasn't bad but nobody ever mentioned it. It wasn't correctly edited and not rightly done. It was edited ultimately by a Unitarian Marxist, John Lewis, and he ruined the book. He later became editor of the Left Book Club and the number of their publications went into the hundreds. It was one of the biggest things in England of the 1930's. ↑

The Great Transformation (3)

↑

Trade and Market in the Early Empires (3)

P. thinks …

[57]

P. was greatly cheered by the fact that Joan Robinson who dipped about in the book recognized the meaning and importance of it completely. […] ↑

China

↑

France

In France literature is being carried on on an unprecedented level of responsibility and political morality.

Text Informations

Date: June 22, 1957
KPA: 45/08