Abraham Rotstein, Weekend Notes XIX

Weekend Notes (Overview)

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Freedom and Technology (3)

[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 […]

[28] 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. Everyone knows in his hearts that these things make for life.

Fromm… […]

[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. […]

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-Gascist 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. […]

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: … […]

P. got the idea of ineluctable alternatives from Ulysses which he read in 1922 in the 'Westbarstrasse'. 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.

[…] 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.

Text Informations

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