Abraham Rotstein, Weekend Notes XIV: Difference between revisions

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Jesus said don’t judge for your own sake because you are the son of God, and the Jesus position has a deep and good meaning. It is a finer position.
Jesus said don’t judge for your own sake because you are the son of God, and the Jesus position has a deep and good meaning. It is a finer position.
Strike out the first paragraph of the conclusion. We cannot accept it as strictly logical. There is no logic and behind it there was very much more. […] {{English to type}}
 
Strike out the first paragraph of the conclusion. We cannot accept it as strictly logical. There is no logic and behind it there was very much more. It is not an adequate expression of the insight. What I call platitude refers to the common sense way that it is meant to be taken. Also it is self-refuting.
 
I may have blundered into something that we do need. Society has a relevance for man’s inner existence (my sentence). Owen didn’t point to this but take it as a mystification. He said man’s character is shaped by society. By restricting it in my “conclusion” to a technological civilization, {{Page |n°=7}} I have permitted myself to come nearer our thesis.


Also, I shouldn’t use the word “metaphysical” when it looks as if we didn’t know what we meant. The second and their paragraph of the “conclusion” will have to be developed just to be clearer.
Also, I shouldn’t use the word “metaphysical” when it looks as if we didn’t know what we meant. The second and their paragraph of the “conclusion” will have to be developed just to be clearer.
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He was comparatively, as rich as the richest monopolist: as today I.C.I., Alfred Mond, Alfred or Carnegie. Everything he touched turned into gold.  
He was comparatively, as rich as the richest monopolist: as today I.C.I., Alfred Mond, Alfred or Carnegie. Everything he touched turned into gold.  


[…]
There was first the thought how he picked up all this, then that he was pushed and third that it was against his temperament.


The machine arrived creating a new world. The machine was his fate and brought up one horror after another: it crippled the children, caused unemployment and turned the merchants against reform. This got us out of the utopian elements into the new things.
The machine arrived creating a new world. The machine was his fate and brought up one horror after another: it crippled the children, caused unemployment and turned the merchants against reform. This got us out of the utopian elements into the new things.


Harriet Martineau said that … […]
Harriet Martineau said that he wasn’t able to convince people and he put his case in an unreasonable way. His reason is one and the same argument and he never takes up counter-arguments. P. doesn’t think that Martineau is right.
 
When he presents his first plan to the County o Lanark there is not even an association to carry it through. The people would have to be ordered. In the second plan there would be a free association. The idea that the poor would be employed didn’t answer the question of how to sell the goods. The trade depressions stopped everything and there were no markets.


{{Page |n°=20}} The Bellers plan might conceivably have worked in a boom. The paupers couldn’t be used for anything.
{{Page |n°=20}} The Bellers plan might conceivably have worked in a boom. The paupers couldn’t be used for anything.


We said that the capitalist … […]
We said that the capitalist that capitalist, instead of organizing things under his own control, should give his money to a fund. To whom? If the capitalist takes a risk then he wants control, and who would entrust money to some fantastic body?
 
No Villages of Union … […]


[[#mw-page-base|↑]]
No Villages of Union were produced then (although Bentham had money). One was produced about 20 years later but didn’t succeed. That as a practical man he thought it would succeed, shows that ha was obsessed. He thought it could be successful because of New Lanark but he alone was responsible there. When they quarreled in America for example, they couldn’t be dismissed. There was no discipline. He forgot that a factory needs an iron discipline, because it is a technological undertaking. [[#mw-page-base|↑]]


== Frobel ==
== Frobel ==

Revision as of 21:48, 12 December 2019

Weekend Notes (Overview)

Comments on "Robert Owen, Draft #1

[2] This draft shows not only much work, but something in the approach of the person which is valid. The strength is in the straightforward account of bare facts (when I couldn’t avoid giving some of the facts). The more facts the better. The other thing is that I have a special surety of touch in quotation and this shows up when I take a whole sentence and quote it. I introduce it with a few words making the sentences. Putting in the clause on Owen’s being insane in brackets, brings it out entirely and is worthy of Edmund Wilson. It is to the point and concrete.

What one has to discount, is that in the beginning there are random notes and lack of precision in regard to facts, e.g. 1819, adjustment to machine. Actually, when Owen started to tell them about the machine in the House of Commons there was a riot. They thought he was crazy. He had discovered that the machine will do work in the ratio of 1 to 100 men, or 1 to 1000. Also there were not weaving machines – Kay’s Shuttle was in 1730. All this was spinning machinery.

But the above is a matter of presentation. But if this is a presentation of Owen’s person, the bulk of the writing is strong, successful, original and interesting.

From the point of view of what happened to him, he was showed up against one thing, and then pushed on to something else. It is a tremendous paradigm of human fallibility and weakness. He was pushed from one step to the next and spanned the gamut of the century.

[3] The editing will bring consistency in the total movement but one needs text. P. believes I need to work and go on and not stop. My careful reading pays off and my sentences are not the oft-quoted ones and they are more illuminating than the oft-quoted ones. I had not read enough originally but now I took up what it’s about.

The more I write the better – don’t avoid descriptions and facts and don’t rush on to gestures, movements and big generalization. Actually the writing is such that it is increases clarity but it never makes up for factual information.

P. has no criticism to offer except a trivial criticism so that the main question is the structure of the chapter. It is a formidable opening and so one excepts a story of what he really did. The value of the chapter depends on treating a large number of points.

If Owen was nothing but “unusual” he would be pretty usual. His life’s work is tom come and P. is very eager to have it and the portrait does introduce the story.

We have to get it hard, real and concrete. If we lift it off the ground it loses interest. It becomes an elevated affair and the book cannot be written, because the book is an exercise in keeping one’s feet on the ground and in keeping the ground under one’s feet. One cannot have the ground rise up for the reality of society.

There is loose writing on capitalism and the machine in the beginning. The rest deals with concrete things. 1816 – the unemployment burst in as it did in 1929. The whole of 1795 was the routine wretchedness, and [4] the war can never be absent from the picture. This comes from writing from fragments and not being precise on the fringes. This is a businessman’s world and 1815 was an apocalyptic shock. What will the chapter look like finished? It can be finished quickly and should be straightforward without reformulations of the figure of the person while the repetitious and the semi-repetitious may have to go. If this Robert Owen chapter is finished, then it would be decided whether this book can be written. It needs the editing to make the book possible and P. has assumed a powerful introduction, in introducing the reader to all the chapters. My writing was to be understood as a contribution to the chapter in mapping out the personality and the figure. It is purposeful and effective writing and has attained its purpose, and not in more then one or two spots does it miss the tone or aesthetic effect which is not wanted.

It is a bad title and it is bad to attract attention to the subject. The title might just be “Robert Owen” or “The Eight Years of Robert Owen”.

The idea of the unemployment of 1820 and of 1930 doesn’t belong here.

The question is do I know how the chapter will run? I should write New Lanark again the way I am doing it. It will give me the occasion to describe all the novelties and prophetic character anticipating everything. The way I touch on concrete material I journalistic in the best sense of the word and it means them come alive and interesting and I should not be afraid of detail. Th strength would consist as much in detail as in generalization. The best writing is descriptive, and this is not obvious for the writer who thinks that the descriptive portion is boring. But you really want to know [5] what happened, e.g. the best sentence might be “the grocery shop was on the other side of the street.”

Concerning our work, P. is more hopeful about the power of presentation, especially of the descriptive parts. Of all the generalizing and abstracting, the best are the persona which refer to Owen.

Cole took the “education” took the “education” from the autobiography. He didn’t take Owen’s lectures to the House of Commons on machinery. They said, is this true?

The other thing is the tremendous European standing he had when he describes his friends in Paris. This is not because he was wealthy and successful person, but because people wanted contact with such an extraordinary person.

The autobiography is the loveliest, easiest kind of thing one would want to read and is not like the overwhelming, depressing things that went before. The fact that he was a bore was one of those Victorian sillinesses, and all in all Cole didn’t do well except for the introduction to the Everyman edition. Cole was apologetic, but England ought to be apologetic not the biographer.

What is the drama here? Is it that he finds work to do and doesn’t do it? Is part of it that people do improve?

Owen’s view on individual responsibility is nonsensical and immoral, but his great discovery is character. Owen’s stronghold was that the environment determines character (see my draft page 10 – not the society but environment determines character.)

[6] Also the French proverb is “tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner”.

His statement of the decisive importance on the individual was one of the biggest shifts in man’s attitude to his existence. It is the shifting of responsibility to society. There is nothing in the history of human thought preforming this. There may be determinism in Greek philosophy (they thought of almost everything), cf. the Sophists, and Socrates. But it does not occur in the Enlightenment.

In the French proverb, “comprendre” is understanding from inside – Weber’s “verstehende soziologie”. It is to relive the inner process. “Tout comprendre” means this thing in regard to emotions. It is better not to bring in such a thing.

He does it follow that from understanding something one shouldn’t be angry? Moral judgement assumes responsibility and assumes free will.

Jesus said don’t judge for your own sake because you are the son of God, and the Jesus position has a deep and good meaning. It is a finer position.

Strike out the first paragraph of the conclusion. We cannot accept it as strictly logical. There is no logic and behind it there was very much more. It is not an adequate expression of the insight. What I call platitude refers to the common sense way that it is meant to be taken. Also it is self-refuting.

I may have blundered into something that we do need. Society has a relevance for man’s inner existence (my sentence). Owen didn’t point to this but take it as a mystification. He said man’s character is shaped by society. By restricting it in my “conclusion” to a technological civilization, [7] I have permitted myself to come nearer our thesis.

Also, I shouldn’t use the word “metaphysical” when it looks as if we didn’t know what we meant. The second and their paragraph of the “conclusion” will have to be developed just to be clearer.

(P. has a rule which he invariably applied when he was editing the Austrian Weekly – he would strike the first and last sentence. The first sentence isn’t needed because it is the launching platform).

What should we add to this section? There is factory reform and education. Modern education differs from the traditional memorizing by emphasizing (1) training the mind (2) that the important thing is that the whole personality is involved (cf. Cole, on education and the fourth essay in the New View p. 88). The idea of national education is not important. The basis of Owenism was his theory of education – the power of education to turn the world to a popular course.

In America there was Benjamin Franklin’s educationalism and this was not based on Robert Owen.

Education is an upper class prejudice fed to the lower classes. It’s a thing they haven’t got and is fed and withheld from them. It was largely Owen’s work in the schools which made him a great figure in the world (quote from Cole). When the system of pauper apprentices ceased, he could start educating the children of his employees.

By 1816 New Lanarck became a show place for visitors from all over the world. It was not only Owen’s educational phase but the method he employed (cf. Everyman edition p. 98 and 99).

In education there are three names, Pestalozzi, Rousseau, and Owen. Rousseau doesn’t have small children. Owen is pre-Frobel. His kindergarten preceded Frobel. (Look up “kindergarten”, perhaps there were some before Frobel). All this is the first phase. The Factory and the Village of Union were two different phases.

Concerning dress, it would be very important to get facts on dress. It was intended not to cover the females as previously and to change the idea of female identity.

Modern education says that it is a question of training abilities and faculties, and not memorizing. It also emphasizes self-achievement – to have some aim and achievement.

In his first essay Owen says that any character may be given to any community. In the second essay each child on the playground is to try to do all in his power to make the other happy. He didn’t mean to shape through training and social environment. He wanted to do away with sectarianism (Everyman p. 103) In the third essay, he says to appeal to more senses than one – sight as well as hearing, e.g. walks in the country.

Frobel: When P. was young, every child had a Frobel-box consisting of little squares, triangles and beads and made little necklaces. Every child played in this way and the box had small compartments with Frobel devices: straw things, squares and triangles. It was one of the greatest [9] systems of man’s civilization and only Frobel used it in the kindergarten. The child learned to move the discs and learned to pile and count them. It was the play-method of teaching. Montessori is a development of Frobel. It consisted of exercises and games through the use of didactic material and self-activity of the child.

Owen advocated country walks, study of nature, and play, always warning the teacher not to stand by as a mechanical person. At that time it was thought that singing and dancing were immoral.

Concerning the factory law, Owen was personally in favor of no child doing any labour until the age of 12. He said that it would pay for the nation to do this. He was against the death penalty and all punishment altogether. All these things he carried into effect.

One must see his immense importance in terms of his intuition and genius.

Concerning the House of Commons incidents, these are contained only in his autobiography. It is amazing how he spoke for the first time in his life, and so was the incident where he calculated the effect of the machine.

We have to add two things to the chapter (1) his discoveries and (2) points that we have listed. The children about three should not be under the direct influence of their parents in order to regenerate society.

Unemployment became quite overwhelming. People were dismissed in the mass. This wasn’t rural but urban unemployment. There was a trade depression and profits went down. The business slump was in the forefront.

[10] This was new because although the poor can be carried by the parish, they don’t suddenly increase ten-fold. Owen means mounting permanent unemployment.

First he said it was the peace, then he goes on to regard is as a national issue then he comes to the monetary problem. He started the financial question of gold. (He didn’t dream of socialism.) He was miles away from understanding the financial system which wasn’t understood for another hundred years. Even in the 1920’s the gold standard wasn’t understood in terms of its importance for the whole financial system. The banking system wasn’t developed at the time and we are not permitted to be facile about this.

Unemployment under these conditions led to the Villages of Union – to continue on the Elizabethan Poor Law.

Another interest in our portrait of Robert Owen is his fate, and without that fate one can’t develop his discovery of society in dramatic terms. We need the sophistication.

The last two paragraphs in the conclusion sum up the problem.

If what I say is correct, that he had it all at a glance (page 2), then there would be no chapter. He did have insights from the beginning e.g. that the machine is fate, and that something tremendous begins with the machine which would affect religion in the future, and there is more which he would have to hide, or people would go mad. He didn’t dream of unemployment or the new market economy. It wouldn’t have occurred to anyone in 1815. Markets existed, America, Asia, and the West Indies, but not in England.

[11] He had no sympathy for capitalism because he hated commercialism and he had a stronger aversion to it than Adam Smith. But without the capitalist prelude it was impossible to have any socialist solution. The whole thing may have been impossible without capitalist organization and there is no facile summing up of capitalism in society. The way out is to follow the actual developments of being knocked against the facts.

Cole couldn’t make up his mind what Owen had read.

He must have appeared as important in Paris.

P. finds Owen’s style excellent, and it is even more so in the autobiography. He seems to have had impeccable address (delivery).

P. thinks we should proceed by putting in the three scenes and then other sub-sections. All the time we should be thinking, what is the point? What happened? How does he go on to the next point?

On education, there is fresh air, nudism, the whole man, play and chance and the children should be drilled but not trained. (This is not militaristic but gymnastic training). All this is New Lanark.

The whole of scientific management comes up here. There is no reason not to take in here, all things for the Villages of Union for education.

There is a reference to democracy that these adults could be le only with their consent – democratic leadership is acknowledge. (cf. his autocracy).

I must be conscious of the facts, how terrible were the difficulties and how he did win through. He had dramatic conquests and victories. The [12] manufacturers committee[e]s in the House of Commons used all means against him – intrigues and bitter underhand methods and getting material which was slanderous. He never got out of sorts which we saw by his temperament, also the number of times he was prepared to die. My task is the double character of the limitations that he was under. He didn’t even know what people in his life knew – at the same time he knew much more. In the chapter, include the separate single-spaced quotations in the text. Leave out the references to Jesus but give his consciousness of a mission. He has a figure of a prophet or saint. On page 5 leave out the reference to his autocratic leadership (e.g. Mohammed etc.). It is a cheap phrase and a bad one such as one might find in the evening paper. He only pretended to listen to other points of view. He was the recognized leader of the British working class in 1830-32. On page 5 expand the section where he was an advocate of gradual change. He was one of the greatest miracle makers of the world, and his greatest fear was that he shouldn’t change the world too quickly. He was amazing in his feeling of power and that a miracle would come about if he told the world the truth. There are however at least three instances of his gradualism and we should use these – he insisted on the Archbishop of Canterbury not hearing too much and similarly with the Minister of the Interior. (We should put in about five times as much as we have now about it)? This probably emerged from the background of the French Revolution. He doesn’t want to give [13] the whole truth.

Where I refer on page 6 to his success as a manufacturer – it wasn’t as a manufacturer that the Czar of Russia came to see him.

Make more of his Welsh origin.

When Barnes looked over Nicolas Halasz’ book on Dreyfus, he said that all the politics and the drama were in it, but that he should bring it all the persons and they should be portrayed, and the book has become a wonderful book and everything became alive.

There is a big book which Cole refers to all the time on Samuel Oldnow which was a firm in Wales at the time. From him we know the bookkeeping methods and correspondence of the business manufacturer (see Unwin’s book on Oldnow). Oldnow foreshadowed Owen as a model employer and had diversified interests. Possibly Oldnow’s work influenced Owen and he may have been heavily in debt to Arkwright. Cole points out how it came to affect Owen through Drinkwater.

P. think I should put together the discovery of capitalism under currency and employment. He was amazed at unemployment. Sometimes there were more unemployed, sometimes fewer. While the poor were the standard problem, previously the unemployment hadn’t appeared for fifty years. He said that it was the machine affecting the poor – not the unemployed. He was trying all his life to get workers. Unemployment is a modern term. Up to 1815 there had only been a labour shortage. There was no working class therefore, what can the term unemployment mean? Only in 1834 was the Poor Law passed. There were thus 17 to 20 years in which it was impossible to get a working class started. (i.e. people who looked for their living to industrial employment).

[14] If you read Harriet Martineau these things appeared in the beginning and in the late 1830’s and she argues that everybody can earn a living if he really wants to. E.G. the story of the woman with her beach wagon. The point is that the Poor Law can be defended and a person needn’t apply to the guardians. She didn’t say to work in the factory or at lower wages.

The shock was the children – they were crippled and ruined. There were 500 children in this condition between the ages of 6 to 10. It is no use for Clapham and the others to say there were always children working as agricultural workers – they were at home. P. has no patience with sophistry.

Owen had a good heart and was utterly selfless and had enormous willpower and determination, because otherwise how could he have gone through with everything? He noticed a number of things that no one had ever noticed before. He despised wealth and the rich. He notices what we would call unemployment and at that time was called poor. He notices currency and by then the Bank of England had become Ricardian. (Ricardo’s tracts were written in 1809 or 1811). There was already a slump of the pound. England was paying subsidies to the allies.

Include gradualism and anti-class war. The rich should go to hell, but without any violence. He argued that there was something wrong with the currency but Cobbett argued the same thing. Ricardo had discovered something very important for the future. (cf. the Cobbett references in Cole). This was a gold standard for England but not an all-out gold standard. The Bank of [15] England existed but not the Bank Act. The issue was whether Ricardo’s principles should govern the issue of credit to the manufacturers (P. once read a book about gold by an American author on the discussions proceeding the Bank Act, 1824-44).

As to the labour notes there existed an innumerable number of small societies starting small shops and they would then sell to the workers at cost price. Concerning the currency question, when there are difficulties, business wants credit on easy terms, but then the bank is also in difficulties they say that they have to protect their solvency. Therefore they can’t lend and they were dependent upon the Provincial Banks for issuing notes.

This discovery of society is a name for what happens to Owen and also the acceptance of the reality of society. The book as a whole deals with it. That is what the book is about and how does Robert Owen get into it? (The introduction would show what the book is about and would refer to Owen). We should make up our mind if this is a biography or perhaps the biographical part can consist of three scenes. We should develop an outline. The first scene was the factory and the children.

Cole makes a great point that he is suddenly dropped when he says that religion must go. End this part on his failure as a success. He underlines the 1817 speech. This closes the era as a social success, an intellectual success and a personal success. This occurs in 1817 and here we could group the fact that he is up against a system. He sees that there [16] is depression and he discovers that there must be an economic to it and a currency matter. Only when the Villages of Union must be defended will it lead to a new society. He had actually taken the capitalists in.

In what sense is there a road here leading from one thing to the other? He then took up the Marx position, that these Villages of Union would be successful and there would be two worlds, this one and the old one, and that is where the socialism comes in. The thought that a society should be built was an idea that had never entered anyone’s head. Only at the very end he said that the present framework of society need not go. What did he mean? Owen wasn’t writing evening paper articles for the first time. He was saying it. We should now organize the third part around the Village of Union.

The second part is his success with the church. Then he becomes bitter and says the rich are blocking everything everywhere. There is not a single not to support him and he couldn’t even get a seconder.

P. is urging me to take these things à la lettre.

That doesn’t mean that Owen didn’t have a penetrating insight into the heart of things – but not right away. He partly mistaken idea e.g. only do away with money or with the church etc.

But taking these parts, the question is to what outlook did he come? His views on religion and philosophy would be independently presented as a world thought. Add a fourth and fifth stage: America and the trade union career. America follows ins 1824 and then he was the [17] leader of the British trade union movement. They counted about a million members.

He was averse to any political action and this counts him out of the Chartist movement 1838-48. There was also the Reform Act of 1832 and the Poor Law of 1834.

What are the things we need? There are innumerable ventures made in his name (some are given in The Great Transformation). There is the eminently practical character of everything, even though they all failed. There were the Villages of Union, the trade unions and the co-ops which were producers co-ops and would produce for each other and therefore would be free of the market. Nothing succeeded because it was all in the depression. He had first been misled by 25 years of boom then by 25 years of depression (he didn’t go through all of it, see Southgate). The trades union movement was a movement of self help but it differed from a trade union movement. It had grocers and retailers (trades) and was of wide mixture. It was a trade union movement in the limited sense and was smashed in one and a half years (through lockouts etc.) Then there was a builders union for the craftsmen to undertake building themselves. These were working-class movements on a terrific scale.

We want to show a progress – forced one. His secretiveness and reticence never gave it away (Schweitzer said that of Jesus). It is the dynamic of a man who doesn’t want to proceed with any of this. He is afraid of the upset of revolution. He didn’t tell the workers and he had to be pushed. There are perhaps 24 statements about the effects of new radical change. He was in an abyssal contradiction. France was the national enemy [18] and the fear of the French Revolution at that time was as if there were ten Bolshevisms heaped one on the other. They beheaded more of the ruling class than the Russians ever did. Owen had an abiding fear of revolution, violence and class war. Then just imagine what it meant when he had to quarrel with the church. That gradualism and secrecy would save him was an illusion. What we mean by the reality of society as limiting his ultimate reform won’t come up at all. Harriet Martineau said that he couldn’t reason in abstract matters.

He said that none of the other economists had any practical experience at all. He didn’t realize his schemes wouldn’t be profitable in a depression (no markets).

If we take this à la letter we have a story which has the dramatic interest of his being pushed on to a series of recognitions which make up a whole century. We need a sufficiently long breath.

We need to break the 5 sections down.

We should deal with capitalism and currency, (the gold standard) anti-Malthus, and Ricardo.

Adam Smith had no direct policy influence at first following the publication of his book. It was only through great statesmen. But later on he had a fantastic influence through the popularizers, McCulloch, and the Harmonists (Bastiat) and later Harriet Martineau. (The radical paid for her book: James Mill, Bentham, Francis Place).

We can use his gradualism obsession as a dynamic. He said to the Prime Minister: I can’t tell you all, it would be too much.

[19] He had a craze for remaining things: the different papers he published, the Village etc.

We assume that he did all these things in New Lanark that he talked about: education, factory management, no punishment, etc…

He was comparatively, as rich as the richest monopolist: as today I.C.I., Alfred Mond, Alfred or Carnegie. Everything he touched turned into gold.

There was first the thought how he picked up all this, then that he was pushed and third that it was against his temperament.

The machine arrived creating a new world. The machine was his fate and brought up one horror after another: it crippled the children, caused unemployment and turned the merchants against reform. This got us out of the utopian elements into the new things.

Harriet Martineau said that he wasn’t able to convince people and he put his case in an unreasonable way. His reason is one and the same argument and he never takes up counter-arguments. P. doesn’t think that Martineau is right.

When he presents his first plan to the County o Lanark there is not even an association to carry it through. The people would have to be ordered. In the second plan there would be a free association. The idea that the poor would be employed didn’t answer the question of how to sell the goods. The trade depressions stopped everything and there were no markets.

[20] The Bellers plan might conceivably have worked in a boom. The paupers couldn’t be used for anything.

We said that the capitalist that capitalist, instead of organizing things under his own control, should give his money to a fund. To whom? If the capitalist takes a risk then he wants control, and who would entrust money to some fantastic body?

No Villages of Union were produced then (although Bentham had money). One was produced about 20 years later but didn’t succeed. That as a practical man he thought it would succeed, shows that ha was obsessed. He thought it could be successful because of New Lanark but he alone was responsible there. When they quarreled in America for example, they couldn’t be dismissed. There was no discipline. He forgot that a factory needs an iron discipline, because it is a technological undertaking.

Frobel

"Freedom and Technology" - General Comments (4)

[21] The introduction only showed that we have … […]

The complaints about society do begin with these situations and do cease with Nietzsche and Freud, and with Sartre it gives rise to the human existence. When they criticizes society they have an optimistic … […]

P. would be extremely loathe to drop the book. P. should put these ideas on record. …

P. would say that the Owen chapter depends upon the degree of his inner determination, and the first chapter, the Introduction, doesn’t now make much sense and cannot be written.

P. would give a presentation from the point of view of the reality of society of what the machine actually did do […]

Interdisciplinary Project (3)

P. is having financial difficulties in the […]

Harry has gone to Bennington and will come in once a month. […]

What can P. do now? The main thing is to produce achievements to substantiate such a claim.

P. is now engaged in organizing the September 9th meeting. […]

[23] P. is working successfully and has formulated the articles for the symposium. […]

P. can't do it without the anthropologists. […]

Harry has gone to Bennington which is an excellent … […]

There is no review out yet … […]

Notes

Sartre and Camus (2)

[24] P. had a talk with terry of “The Fall”. They say that life is the impasse that comes from the […]

"Psychology and Ideology"

Terry is working on an article that P. wrote in 1945. It says that institutional change is caused by various types of strain and the most important is the tension between the actual motives and postulated motives. When do institutions change? When actual motives are too distant from the motives they are supposed to be.[1]

Personal (3)

P. had kidney trouble and had to take sulfa for 10 days. The doctor said that this causes the bad lights. There is a general tension of the nervous system.

Text Informations

Date: August 24, 1957 (Interview)
KPA: 45/10

Editor's Notes

  1. See both texts (or two versions of the same project) in 41/07.