Abraham Rotstein, Weekend Notes XV: Difference between revisions
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== "Freedom and Technology" - General Comments (5) == | == "Freedom and Technology" - General Comments (5) == | ||
{{Page |n°=17}} When Emmet Mulvaney read something … […] | |||
Why is freedom a prime problem of religion? Why is it relevant to the world religions? We hear it said that freedom is the prime postulate of Christianity. He who doesn’t believe in God can’t accept the postulate of freedom and he who does must. It is one of the great fashions of our time and it is often added that individualism is rooted in this. Or they might possibly call it the dignity of the individual e.g., Kantian philosophy – autonomie der personlichkeit. Kant took this from Rousseau. The American senators might not know that they are brought up on German philosophy. | |||
[…] | |||
{{Page |n°=18}} … Even the socialists don’t accept the reality of society. They only discovered its existence but don’t accept it as a limiting answer. | |||
{{Page |n°=19}} … It is a wonderful thought of Jesus – don’t judge. If you can’t do it that’s fine. He certainly didn’t keep to it himself. | |||
[…] Then there is a kind of being fed up with it and it begins with Nietzsche and Freud and that is thirsty years 1880 to 1910. Then the social criticism stops and there is this increasing gap between the ideal postulates {{Page |n°=20}} and possibility. That is the same as saying that it is the condition of man, and is life possible? This criticism of society leads up to Ibsen and in eastern Europe of Tolstoy. | |||
For the deduction on the inevitability … | |||
{{Page |n°=31}} P. has one difficulty. So great is the importance of subsistence farming in history that he should have maintained the householding category. It seemed pedantic and he gave it up because it was similar to redistribution. But it is needed for an enormous part of history and P. is of two minds whether he should or shouldn’t keep it. In principle it can’t be distinguished from a faraonic (?) system comprising the whole. | |||
{{Page |n°=32}} […] We ought to have a broad paper on money. The ’49 paper is absorbed in chapter 13. | |||
We will talk about appropriational movements – how broad these are. […] | |||
{{Page |n°=33}} | |||
{{Page |n°=34}} On the whole while religion is not traditionally organized on a market basis, we approximate art and education in this way – although not wholy. One can contrast it with the pure market … | |||
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== Interdisciplinary Project (4) == | == Interdisciplinary Project (4) == | ||
[…] Carter Goodrich … | |||
{{Page |n°=37}} If P. writes the article for Sylvia Thrupp’s new journal he won’t go out of his way, but will continue on the main line and give that. | |||
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=== The New Philosophy === | === The New Philosophy === | ||
{{Page |n°=41}} Peter Drucker | |||
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=== Religion and Capitalism === | === Religion and Capitalism === | ||
[[#mw-page-base|↑]] | {{Page |n°=45}} In Tawney’s “Religion and the Rise of Capitalism” a generalization of Weber’s thesis? | ||
Weber held that religious morality in economic life, which went with puritanism (he said it was Calvinism) involved an ascetic position with regard to secular existence, and was a powerful psychological element in capitalist development. It led to the accumulation of capital. The ascetic element in Lutherianism was not very different e.g., the religious ethics of “callings”. Calvin spoke of the ethics of predestination and grace. This leads to extreme dedication of everyday work involving thrift and self-indulgence. | |||
The thesis is not very true, since when Calvinism first started (1520), no religious ethic of business life existed and capitalism was a much later development. Under puritanism such an ethic did develop, but it is not proved whether economic life such an ethic. Weber’s explanation of capitalism doesn’t start from an economic causation developing a religion causation, but starts from a religious life affecting capitalism in the modern world. But perhaps both phenomena stem from common sources. | |||
Why is Tawney so immensely popular? For ten years this was the book around sociology was taught. Hardly anything else was taken in economic history. P. read both books and also Robertson (Protestant) who protested against Weber and showed that in the Catholic countries the same thing happened. The ethical casuistry developed to the same purpose, allowing capitalist business ethics to spread. [[#mw-page-base|↑]] | |||
=== Economic Motives === | === Economic Motives === | ||
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=== Iron Curtain Literature === | === Iron Curtain Literature === | ||
{{Page |n°=47}} Every one should read recent literature from behind the Iron Curtain because it is so bad. […] | |||
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Revision as of 21:04, 18 April 2019
Text in English to type
Comments on "Robert Owen, Draft #2
[2] This is an important basis at the beginning. […]
The great …
It is an interesting account for someone how doesn’t know about Owen.
In the sentence where we discuss …
There is too much eulogy …
Why did ‘America’ fail? Because the capitalistic discipline of finding didn’t exit.
[3] On this level there are perhaps a dozen things, but now that I have written it it should …
[…]
[4] Preceding this chapter the Introduction would supply it on Owen (myself: and perhaps in the conclusion).
[…] He made a plan part of the administrative Poor Law and he missed the point that there would be no human community. He thought he would mobilize the community without communion.
This book is supposed to be about freedom. The way this book is written, freedom is a desideratum, the absence of which is a criticism of society. Owen himself didn’t think he needs freedom at all. That is a fact. Under freedom of the individual, that he has the freedom to starve. Owen introduced this term.
Owen himself had to introduce the discipline of hunger in [5] the Village of Union – the indentured debtor of a worker who can’t leave. We must go into this. We must limit the points that we make.
[…]
[6] We must be careful about the Builders Guild which was a tremendous movement but failed forever in England. However it continuer in France. All the small contractors said that they could supply the labour and material and make a contract to obtain the capital on a piece-meal basis. We should say more about this idea of the old world and new world existing side-by-side. Also, we must find the right place for socialism. We can only do this if there is an overall idea. It doesn’t matter if the chapter become longer.
[…]
[7] We must have a beginning. Somewhere I must say what story it is that the reader is to expect now. We showed that this is complicated by his fear of revolution, his obsession of gradualism and his utter dedication unto death. … We might call it “Robert Owen Discovers Society”, but P. said this of Aristotle.
[8] Really two things are missing:
1) Why owen? That is the proposition which carries the whole.
2) That must be born out by the problems in the content which comes up.
There must be a transition which banks on socialist efficiency for peaceful penetration of the whole of society. The two societies are capable of existing side by side. […] He was definitively prophetic. We should give two or three cases e.g. the factory is most apparent now.
[…]
[9] We know the concrete position from Dale and Owen didn’t think that Dale did as much as Cole seems to think.
I have the definite task …
[10] [11]
[12] […] he refused compromise with the Christian religion which was peculiar. Atheism was rampant in these circles. These were millionaires. He wanted a purely ethical religion. The French “moral laique” derived from him, also numerous ethical movements.
Owen refused to drop the machine and saw no inherent limitation in it.
[13] … Such a recent beginning (two hundred years) is rarely given to a basic problem of existence. That is why there is something inherently improbable in the position and that is why this is a good beginning with a man who is crazy about the machine and society and to a point is the originator of the socialist hope. […]
[14] … The societies turned socialist through the superiority of their producing methods. Adam Smith didn’t notice machines.
[15] The division of labour didn’t involve machinery.
[16]
"Freedom and Technology" - General Comments (5)
[17] When Emmet Mulvaney read something … […]
Why is freedom a prime problem of religion? Why is it relevant to the world religions? We hear it said that freedom is the prime postulate of Christianity. He who doesn’t believe in God can’t accept the postulate of freedom and he who does must. It is one of the great fashions of our time and it is often added that individualism is rooted in this. Or they might possibly call it the dignity of the individual e.g., Kantian philosophy – autonomie der personlichkeit. Kant took this from Rousseau. The American senators might not know that they are brought up on German philosophy.
[…]
[18] … Even the socialists don’t accept the reality of society. They only discovered its existence but don’t accept it as a limiting answer.
[19] … It is a wonderful thought of Jesus – don’t judge. If you can’t do it that’s fine. He certainly didn’t keep to it himself.
[…] Then there is a kind of being fed up with it and it begins with Nietzsche and Freud and that is thirsty years 1880 to 1910. Then the social criticism stops and there is this increasing gap between the ideal postulates [20] and possibility. That is the same as saying that it is the condition of man, and is life possible? This criticism of society leads up to Ibsen and in eastern Europe of Tolstoy.
For the deduction on the inevitability …
[31] P. has one difficulty. So great is the importance of subsistence farming in history that he should have maintained the householding category. It seemed pedantic and he gave it up because it was similar to redistribution. But it is needed for an enormous part of history and P. is of two minds whether he should or shouldn’t keep it. In principle it can’t be distinguished from a faraonic (?) system comprising the whole.
[32] […] We ought to have a broad paper on money. The ’49 paper is absorbed in chapter 13. We will talk about appropriational movements – how broad these are. […]
[33]
[34] On the whole while religion is not traditionally organized on a market basis, we approximate art and education in this way – although not wholy. One can contrast it with the pure market …
Trade and Market in the Early Empires (4)
[30] Schumpeter
[32]
The Market
Interdisciplinary Project (4)
[…] Carter Goodrich …
[37] If P. writes the article for Sylvia Thrupp’s new journal he won’t go out of his way, but will continue on the main line and give that.
Sartre and Camus (3)
Paul Schweitzer
Notes
The New Philosophy
[41] Peter Drucker ↑
K.P. Personal (4)
Socialism
Religion and Capitalism
[45] In Tawney’s “Religion and the Rise of Capitalism” a generalization of Weber’s thesis?
Weber held that religious morality in economic life, which went with puritanism (he said it was Calvinism) involved an ascetic position with regard to secular existence, and was a powerful psychological element in capitalist development. It led to the accumulation of capital. The ascetic element in Lutherianism was not very different e.g., the religious ethics of “callings”. Calvin spoke of the ethics of predestination and grace. This leads to extreme dedication of everyday work involving thrift and self-indulgence.
The thesis is not very true, since when Calvinism first started (1520), no religious ethic of business life existed and capitalism was a much later development. Under puritanism such an ethic did develop, but it is not proved whether economic life such an ethic. Weber’s explanation of capitalism doesn’t start from an economic causation developing a religion causation, but starts from a religious life affecting capitalism in the modern world. But perhaps both phenomena stem from common sources.
Why is Tawney so immensely popular? For ten years this was the book around sociology was taught. Hardly anything else was taken in economic history. P. read both books and also Robertson (Protestant) who protested against Weber and showed that in the Catholic countries the same thing happened. The ethical casuistry developed to the same purpose, allowing capitalist business ethics to spread. ↑
Economic Motives
Russia (3)
[46] P. thinks that the rehabilitation of Trotsky is the question which is prerequisite to moral sanity and recuperation in Russia.
P. thought that Trotsky openly conspired with the Germans.
They have already rehabilitated Tukhachevsky. Here Stalin was involved and the story is that the Nazi ambassador trapped him and produced false documents against Tukhachevsky which Stalin needed.
Stalin was a person of very shaky morality. The same thing happened previously to Blucher (1939)↑
Iron Curtain Literature
[47] Every one should read recent literature from behind the Iron Curtain because it is so bad. […]
The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism
"Psychology and Ideology" (2)
P. worked hard in New York on the sociology paper with Terry[1]. It is a real sociology of ideology and has much relevance to institutional sociology.[2] ↑