Abraham Rotstein, Weekend Notes XVI
Text in English to type
Freedom & Technology - General Comment - Mass Society
[2] The two articles in “The Listener” (discussing the Dudintsev book) shift the framework of our work conformism in America, which is a speculative theory on the total origins of the phenomenon. […] … Robert Owen … [3] isn't a single book (perhaps there is Berdayev, but he hasn't the same concreteness).
It also gives us a third front that we cannot ignore. P. is not for a Christian anarchism in Russia, restaging the whole delusion of the denial of the reality of society which P. is fighting.
We have much more to say then we had. Our subject was too narrow. It did smell of something antiquated. The difficulty is to make some room for socialism. Robert Owen is of enormous help. He identified the problems of society with the limitations that society puts upon us in our dealing with the problems of machine.
P. couldn't find the appropriate beginning or the frame till he hit on one that hinges on being more personal and therefore more modest. We are trying to sum up our starting point in a more personal way and with less authority. Once you get the breadth, you lose the authority, unless you act as the personal Saviour coming from the skies and landing with all the truth, and that would be premature. We will write a more modest book and it will have more appeal. However,
P. has discussed with sociologists, the question of Parsonian sociology and was convinced that we really mean the modern sociology which [4] runs through Weber; Marx and Pareto. But they agree that we have rightly understood it. P. agrees with my point that we need more sociology and to have less metaphysical and apocalyptic.
P. wasn't sure that Bledsoe would think that what he sent him is an outline, but Bledsoe knows The Great Transformation and so had no difficulty in understanding it.
P. gave almost a whole day to the question of how one can write such a book, and it is almost impossible […]
Concerning… […]
This book is acclaimed by the mass of students and it is impossible [5] to treat it in a light way, and the real scope of the matter […]
P. wrote something … […]
The problem of freedom never ceased to exist. How is the reality of society compatible with the spiritual interpretation of history or the spiritual nature of man? Only with Hegel and Marx was history apostrophised. (Arendt says that suddenly history came up). One can start the problem of freedom with Hobbes, Spinoza and Rousseau.
This is the human history of the machine that is being written, … […]
To include the Russian […]
P. has given up putting the matter as a syllogism. The biggest job in 1957 is to view the world as a whole - the crisis of socialism. If we do that, it is an important book and no book answering the American problem alone is sufficient if it leaves out China and Russia.
Mannheim says that there is a mass democracy in every industrial society which is unlike medieval society. This individual is a literate person expected to offer a view from a position of self-determination. This is not the case in a traditional society at all. In a traditional society there would be no dilemma of freedom.
[6] That man lives by brea alone is the economistic fallacy in a socialist society.
It is a completely mistaken argument that Hitler and Mussolini came when the problem was resolved (cf. Arendt and Stolpern).
[…] (Cf. The Goethe poem about “der musen”).
[…]
[7] is right and wrong. Aristotle in politics… […] England was always Aristotelian.
[…] The French Revolution took over the absolutes state power of the ancien [8] regime. There was no idea of society.
The Middle Ages and its … E.g. if we go into Francis Bacon, Rober Bacon, science, etc. […]
Jaspers has the idea of the masses. […] Mannheim says the modern society is democratic in an operational sense.
In the sense that each individual was separated by original sin, anarchistic Christianity is the same as atomistic individualism. In Christianity it is not the fate of mankind but the fate of each individual which is the concern. The essence of it is that society is individuals, and this is one of the interpretations of Christianity. This bought Calvin to decide on grace as predestined. Calvin said that this was determined at the time of creation and follows from the deterministic premise of science that everything must have a cause. Robert Owen is not far from this.
In Medieval times, the individual was not activated and now he is (see Mannheim above).
For us … […]
If we sum up the term inner life, […] [9]
Mass Society
[10] Myself: Perhaps what is meant by the term “mass society” is the reality of society.
[…] Jaspers isn't different … [11] P. doesn't believe in the elite and it is a lack of education and coarseness to believe in such a thing.
P. thinks there is a growing in the mobilization of individuals…
[…] … Hume […]
[12] […]
The distinction between government and opinion doesn't exist in a democratic community.
[…]
[13] […] … (Dudintsev) if this is what …
[14] In 1957 it is not the mass danger, it is something … totalitarianism … […]
[15] technological civilization …
[16] For the Christian, power appears as evil because its essence is compulsion. This is because they think that only the government compels. Under the market economy the problem doesn't seem to arise.
[…]
An atheist upholds this as well. Having convictions is the inner life. A person maintains them and is true to himself. This is not belief, this is [17] knowledge, not like the thermometer but from internal evidence. This is a knowledge of the universal character of human experience. (There may be a time when you didn't know it).
Some religions insist upon certain things that stand out. The communism position is a Christian heresy. Christianity is a very vague matter and a number of values swing around in it. The Hindus base their case on nothing - they say so. They feel safer that way, and they think it's funny that we think of anything being certain. Christian anarchism pretends that there is no restriction to live on purely altruistic motives.
The reality of society is a tissue of situations which creates inevitable alternatives. […] The Christians object more to [18] participating than to being victims.
We can't answer the question of how the machine affects the tissue of interpersonal relationships. It reveals that through the above manifestations.
How does it create this situation? It may be through the division of labour, since this is inherent in the interdependence of movements in the economic process and their recurrence …
Notes
Interdisciplinary Projet
[19] ↑
Hegel & Marx
Hegel's term the “burgerliche gesellschaft” (civil society) is what we mean by the market economy. It took P. years to find out what Hegel meant. he was the first to use the term society in Gesellschaft und Staat. Marx probably took the term “politische economie” from Hegel. Marx meant a category like art, law, religion, etc.
Hegel contrasted the economy and society (he meant the market) while Marx consciously included the ideologies of the market system in the term political economy.
Jaspers
[20] P. thinks that by the awakening, Jaspers really means society. The modern world begins with the breakup of the medieval world. To talk about changes of consciousness is not empty of content. To say it was alchemy and science, etc. is true but there is a more topical subject.
People were getting wealthy and the church stopped giving alms when their domains were being secularised. In 1536 England passed a law depriving the church of its possessions.
Jaspers is strong in taking up the lines of general consciousness and comes close to us at one or two points e.g. where Marx dropped the dialectic. ↑
Nationalism
America
Grotius
Grotius said to ignore religious differences. ↑
Photocopies
Manya Harari, “Not by bread alone”
[21]