Abraham Rotstein, Weekend Notes XIX

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Freedom and Technology (3)

[24] The peculiar thing about Fromm is he never got beyond The Great Transformation. (These were strongly Marxist ideas.)

He is definitely pre-sputnik and what we are saying is post-sputnik. We must make it clear that this is not the reorganization of society we are talking about.

What is freedom? It is the fear of eternal death. Others say that it is the hope of eternal life and people differ on what that means but they don't differ on what eternal death means. Whether they say integrity or conscience it is the same thing. This fear and its corresponding hope is hat freedom is. This has a f[e]ar and hope, and is meaningless if it is not a condition that we are in.

P. makes the test… […]

The reason is the entrance […]

The fact that our existence […]

[25] With the freedoms, […]

The moral values of every day have less and less connection with basic values. The answer is the lake of recognition of society.

What happens to freedom we don't know, and we just cannot cease living up to the moral requirements everyone knows we are true, […]

This answers […]

The discovery of society takes us out of the superficial dangers of the market economy (superficial meaning immediate). […]

Putting it in simpler […]

[26] […] P. thinks that the truth is what we are saying − that in a technological civilization our inner freedom is invalid, is vain. […]

[27] The whole question of the loss of freedom hinges on "compelled to compel". However, this is only an illustration. Just like Jesus used the illustration that the one with no sins should throw the first stone.

He who says I would refuse to compel others − he has disproved us. Fear is not fear for ourselves but fear for others. […]

[28] […] Buddhism has this similar fear or reincarnation. In Jewry it is expressed only in your share in the destruction of the race through breaking God's convenant. It is not a persona factor. But in all other religions it is you who count.

Fromm didn't get this point. He forgets something which didn't become apparent in the Old Testament and Jesus made this [29] point: it is not the crowd who is going to stone her. That's all right, but what about you? What are you going to do? Give your coat to the poor? There is probably the same thing in the Dead Sea Scroll, and Christianity made vast propaganda with theology and paid no heed to the teaching of Christ.[1] Everyone knows in his heart of hearts that these things make for life.

Fromm doesn't see that this is the way mankind is hit. He might say you follow the externalitities of life, not the internal things.

Fromm has a deep analysis but leaves part of the question unanswered − the technological civilizations is not touched upon. Fromm explains what is meant by alienation.

Fromm doesn't speak of freedom but means something what we usually call freedom. (It is very vague but ou meaning has much more than what's usually attached to it.)

Power is needed to organize and it existence doesn't permit the individual to make his life the center of his inner existence.

This widespread concern can only be seemingly rejected in a joking fashion. This is our common world, not with Christian communities only. Not at all. By their nature the Russians are alive to this. It is usually called the dignity of man. They mean that man isn't supposed to be a liar and hypocrite. It doesn't mean to choose between Eatons and Simpson or the C.P.R. and C.N.R. when we talk of a choice.

[30] With Hegel there is the coming up of economic life but there is no intimation of technology.

With Smith it has a pseudo presence. While he discovered the market he didn't discover the machine. But no one ever noticed the market was a significant transformer of society.

So the machine remained undiscovered, but it was Owen who discovered it and he was all about the machine. That was in 1816 and by then Hegel had done more than one half of his life's work and was terrifically impressed by capitalism.[2]

P. doesn't know if he found the machine in Hegel. Hegel didn't miss much. Also Marx to 1844 is the same story. […]

Already in Comte there is no history, bu the structure of society under the laws.

[31] We follow the story of freedom where freedom is seen to exist (German idealism) and technology − which begins with Owen.

[…] Technology is Owen. Under the reality of society, one takes necessity as a counter to freedom.

Hegel discovered it because the French Revolution failed and he believed in it. Therefore he thought it was necessity that made it fail and made Napoleon follow on Robespierre.

Marx never relinquished necessity but placed it in the material aspect of society. […]

P. has a lecture which he gave on the emergence of reform of consciousness in 1927 or '29. P. gave this lecture to a small group including Kolnyai, Ernst Karl Winter, and Otto Bauer. Winter wanted to build up an anti-Fascist group in Vienna. P. was interested only on his own ideas.

[32] The essential thing in the reform of consciousness was the acceptance of the reality of society.

P. said that one must think as the right wing and act as the left wing do. Winter said the opposite (He was catholic).

The lecture was called "Reformietes Bewusstsein”. It maintained that first there was conscious religious consciousness and second to take upon oneself the burden of society with unalterable alternatives. Thirdly, the reform of consciousness was not absolute but it is a reform of consciousness which receives in itself the need for compromise as resignation, and turns without any qualification to the reaching of these ideals: "in fascism there is a false resignation – social reality is set as impossible to salve it. Out of this national socialism finds no way out but to attack the basic religious position”.

This is the full circle in which left thought moves: the left is bound to the absolute (unconditional) and being in the false consciousness of fighting against religion and morality. P. is the only one to give the left position true rigor of the unqualified. The left necessarily must formulate a position in an absolute way and take up the position outside of society and claim validity through…

P. got the idea of ineluctable alternatives from Ulysses which he read in 1922 in the 'Westbarstrasse'.[3] This lecture was an advance and gave a more definite subject [33] but we didn't have definite criteria.

Rousseau

Owen

[34] […]

If one goes on from Owen to Hegel or Marx one cannot assume a very great interest in the subject. There is a prejudice against Hegel that it is some empty metaphysics. And for Marx that it is just some materialism which has been disproved.

[…]

This is a peculiar thing, living in two or three worlds and not realizing that they are not separate e. g., the Christian interpretation of freedom and Marx on history is not unrelated. Communism is a Christian heresy. These are not values which are distinct and different. Freedom is to follow in the trail of [35] history. Engels said that if we follow history we are free.[4]

[…] The two greatest events of our age were Fascism and Bolshevism.

[35] In Christianity there is a dogma that God can't do the impossible (that is the inconceivable or self-contradictory) but the possible he can do.

[…]

Hegel wanted …

Marx made a double movement. He moved to reality and discovered …

[37] It is much easier to deal with the question as the young Hegel and the young Marx (usually called early). Perhaps he will call it Hegel and Marx, and using "young" for both might imply that we are dealing with infants otherwise known as 'Hegel and Marx in the Nursery'.

Owen

[38] Marcuse is very well usable for our outline of Hegel but he didn't know the young Hegel.

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Marx (3)

[40] …and Marx thought that man created money and it was an objectification of the economic sphere.

Marcuse […]

If Engels said the German working class is the heir to German classical philosophy he meant it was about freedom. Now this concept of freedom is a pure metaphysical construct and therefore consciousness of freedom is a construction.

But this is not really Christian freedom, the care for your salvation of fear of eternal death. Otherwise the modern reader wouldn't understand.

Ultimately, Mary the virgin, is the new Eve − she bears the son of God. Man is conscious and by an act of will raises himself to a higher level of freedom. In Jesus Christ the Saviour this is obscure. But there is some idea of this in Hegel and Marx: consciousness is freedom and the higher consciousness is higher freedom. It has nothing to do with political freedom.

Wetter says that Eve stepped on the head of the serpent and [41] killed it (brute nature). Man is self consciousness and Eve does away with the serpent and a new Eve by an act of fiat bears the son of God, and this is the highest state of freedom which is conceivable.

It is the Hegelian theory that nature is freedom alienated. Therefore in history man becomes conscious of himself, and history ends when man becomes free of all necessity acting out consciously because he knows, etc.

This is what Engels says socialism is, the jump from necessity to freedom and he consciously makes his history.

One must know a great deal to put all this aside and P. doesn't advise me to know it.

Mannheim is greatly troubled in the same way as Rousseau: mankind will only be free if they all want the same thing as society wants and that is possible only if you educate them that way. Hegel says that wisdom and virtue consist of living according to the customs of your people. Margaret Meade says the same - make people wish that they are supposed to want. It is the Rousseau idea again. Alle these problems revolve around the same terms.

What then happens with freedom? Society is real and a man should comply. Then one can't insist on freedom, otherwise life is not liveable.

Lenin said exactly the same thing as the early Hegel (see quotation in Hegel section). If the volonté de tous cannot transcend [42] the volonté générale but can bring the volonté générale at its best. P.'s idea of limits is the Hegelian idea. It is also like Owens “childish unavailing complaints will cease”.

I begin to see there is not much point in evading a point - but if I don't there may be some point to that.

[…] P. will go into some simple formulation like Marcuse. Marcuse is clear and sound and somehow interested in the kind of things that we are working on.

P. sees much more the tremendous power and grandeur of Hegel and why he was such an overpowering figure.

Wetter is not a Catholic on the basis of Catholic philosophy but Catholic belief. His question is, is dialectical materialism incompatible with Catholic philosophy? His answer is no. But he finds the fourth tenets of dialectical materialism unacceptable - the denial of the need for God. He thinks that D.M. is a poor philosophy, but he accepts all of Marx. The Marxian is the nearest to Catholic philosophy and is purely authoritarian (whether the authorities say so or not.)

But what Marxism did was to project the absolute into history. Insofar as you serve history you are free.

Isaiah Berlin is a good book. He really knows things well.

[43] Wetter's book…

Marxism

Lenin

[…] [44] they missed the point and didn't see that technology would increase the reality of society to the point of endangering freedom.

[…]

Myself: What about Marxist economics?

It was all nonsense. Marx was a journalist and Capital was a pamphlet, but it ended up as a complete failure.

… Keynes

Marx believed in Say's Law and Keynes disproved it. P. isn't even interested in good economics, much less bad economics.

In Marx the illusions come in through history. The working class would have to shoulder the mission and he had never thought [45]

Lenin

Feuerbach … but Thurnwald showed it wasn't true. trade is earlier than the division of labour among individuals. Marx had nothing on these matters.

Hegel

[46] Marx didn't know that the early Hegel was so radical. This was so by the time Hegel wrote the Philosophy of Law. He took it from Ferguson and Adam Smith not Ricardo. Ferguson is a precursor of Smith. Hegel saw capitalism coming and he thought it was crazy and was doomed right away, and only the authoritarian State could hold society together. P. had this thought in The Great Transformation (the English edition) that the Liberals brought Fascism in by insisting on laissez-faire.

The Liberal economy makes the omnipresent state imperative. This became apparent in the 1920's but Hegel deduced this in 1810. By the time he got to Jena he developed this.

Marx turned Hegel around in two ways − the subject-predicate (to real society) and from conservative to radical. But Hegel had been more radical than Marx with the idea that such a society was doomed.

P. has read a good deal of Hegel and hunted for the various Hegel editions with some success and continued reading in New York. (He also read the mystery stories of Graham Greene). P. read the Phenomenologie, The Encyclopedia of Sciences the Philosophy of Law, The Philosophy of History, the Philosophy of State (which is part of the Philosophy of Law). P. read recently the documents of Larrson and Hofmeister.

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The trouble with Hegel is that in the early years he wrote under a different name.

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[47] Hegel had the term "Sittlichkeit” often translated as morality but it's really logic.

P. read the proofs of the existence of God and also various other fragments. Hegel is marvelous in originality and giftedness.

P. also read half of the Lukacs and one third of the Wetter.

The first half of Marcuse's book is the clearest presentation of Hegel[5]. But he doesn't understand Marx' economics − the things any child would understand, he doesn't. His presentation of Hegel however, is excellent.

We know the alienation theory is all Hegelian.

Diderot invented a nephew of Rameau and he wrote a dialogue (similar to La chute) with a nephew who is cynical and corrupt but gifted. He is the prototype of La Chute. Hegel regarded that as the key to the French Revolution. If such a person could exist……

Hegel wrote his material for a pre-revolutionary country. Dostoevski also wrote as an author who didn't know that revolution was imminent and therefore is a parallel to Diderot.

In 1805 (before Jena) Hegel wrote: (approximate translation): "confidently and courageously the son of the Gods may throw himself into the struggle for perfection. Break peace with yourself, break with the work of the world, endeavor and try more than the thing of the present and yesterdays. In doing so, nothing that is better than your own time will you achieve, but that at its very best.”

[48] This is a summary of our relationship to the reality of society − to Man's endeavor, to his boundless attempt to go beyond the possible and fulfill at its best.

This was Hegel before he started to Jena. He just started to become a political journalist and failed.

P. had this difficulty on where to bring in the Rousseau, and Hegel was also troubled where to bring it in. Marcuse has the Hegel-Rousseau book.

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Rousseau (2)

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Robert Owen (5)

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Business and Economics

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Comments on my "Freedom's Quandary, Draft #1

Notes

Paul Medow

Politics

[67] Eisenhower

He thought he could achieve it. Both his pacifism and his sound money comes from the Jehovah's Witnesses.

America (3)

Sputnik

Pearson

Kierkegaard

[69] Kierkegaard is a Christian and tests the position of the relation to Christian faith. But it is not the relationship which is the most topical today. His description of freedom is like P.'s − unless you fear something you can't maintain it. What is the anxiety about? Also K's Christian dogmatism can't be maintained today. With Abraham the specific thing doesn't come up but commands [t]o come up and put us in the position of to trust or not to trust.

P's interpretation of freedom is existentialist and never was any other since man reached his peculiar state. P. is not opposed to existentialism. He accepts the challenge and tries to answer it. He goes beyond.

Psychology and Ideology (3)

[70] P. will have something published soon on sociology and is getting something into shape he did ten years ago. This is on the question of institutional change and how strain causes change. What kind of strains are these and in what sens can one follow this?[6]

Ideology is a picture of motives which is normative and valuational. If the strain is very big it will have consequences.

One of the reasons value systems work or don't work is how they are related to motives.

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The Great Transformation (6)

Money (3)

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Greece (2)

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Interdisciplinary Project (7)

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Otto Bauer

[71] When he was in New York. P. spoke to Otto Bauer − the founder of the socialist Christian movement.

K.P. Personal (5)

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Losing Emmet made a big difference. P. couldn't work but he got into subjects of is interest, e. g., the freedom question.

Twenty years ago P. didn't know English economic history and he learned it in three to four years − 1937-40, by teaching it continuously. In that way you really get to know it.

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Editor's Notes

  1. French translation: « Le Christianisme a fait une grande propagande sur la théologie mais n’a pas prêté d’attention aux enseignements du Christ. »
  2. French translation: « Ainsi la Machine resta encore à découvrir, et ce fut Owen qui découvrit tout ce de quoi relevait la Machine. En 1816, ce fut alors Hegel qui après plus de la moitié de sa vie de travail était terriblement impressionné par le capitalisme. »
  3. Must be the Vorgartenstrasse… Cf. Felix Schafer, First Memoirs (1964-1966)
  4. French translation: C’est une chose particulière, vivant dans deux ou trois mondes et sans réaliser qu’ils ne sont pas séparés, c’est-à-dire que l’interprétation chrétienne de la liberté et celle de Marx sur l’Histoire ne sont pas sans liens. Le communisme est une hérésie chrétienne. Ils n’ont pas de valeurs distinctes et différentes. La liberté est de suivre le sillon [“trail”] de l’Histoire. Engels dit que si nous suivons l’Histoire nous sommes libres.
  5. Must be Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory [1941].
  6. See both texts (or two versions of the same project) in 41/07.

Text Informations

Date: December 21, 1957 (Interview)
KPA: 45/14