Abraham Rotstein, Weekend Notes XXI

Weekend Notes (Overview)

Text in English to type

The New West

[2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] ↑

"Freedom and Technology" (5)

[8] [9] ↑

Comments on "Not by Organization Alone, Draft #3

[10] [11] [12]

↑

Robert Owen (6)

[13] In Owen, the transition of part of one society to another hinged on the triumph of example. Owen was the originator of the idea and today the world situation hinges on this thought.

There was also Marx' critique of the Gotha Program. It is peculiar how little educated people know of the program of Erfurt and don't know that the Russian assertions of what the socialist programs is, is quiet well based on it.

What kind of a socialist thinker was he? We are stressing the incredible originality of the man extending almost anything.

Owen says that the worker's labour loses its value because the machine puts him out of his jobs.

Jaspers indicates that Hegel seems to have said that the worker has to work more because the machine depresses the value of the commodity and his work is worth much less. ↑

Marx (4)

[14] The Hegel-Marx chapter should be more about socialist humanism than P. planned. It is a reformed humanism based on the Early Marx. With the article in the New Reasoner, the Early Marx is more clearly focused and Hegel must be made the introduction to that. Borkenau (recent edition of selections of Marx in German) is on the same line and with him everything hinges on human labour getting objectified (reified).

Something must come under Owen which is technology and on a higher level it follows in Hegel and Marx.

P. had a discussion with a very hysterical and blue-stockinged lady. She was fiercely anti-fascist and anti-communist lady and said she was a humanist. Was this a pacifist? Or a sentimentalist? What did it all mean? It was irrational, incoherent. Almost everything she adduced was a Marxist argument. Coming from Eastern Europe it was the only was the language was used. ↑

Shaw (4)

[15] ↑

Jaspers

[16] The book “Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte” was written in 1954-55. It sums up history in the light of our present knowledge. There is a universal growth of religion between the 8th and 2nd century B.C. India and China are linked up with the Hebrew-Greek move but not Egypt and Mesopotamia. “Via veritas et vita”.

The writer who has put P.'s point with the greatest force up to new is Jaspers. He says that if man's ten thousand years are delimited it really consists of to breaths. The first is all of history up to the 18th century and the second begins then and it will take three thousand years for the breath to released.

It was the conclusion that P. had come to, but he didn't have the courage to put it in two breaths and the second period he says is not the “axen-period” but that may come in two thousand years. But that time here may be a fulfillment. Now only one thing is growing, science, technology and everything else is crumpling away, e.g. friendship, decency etc. ↑

Trade and Market (4)

↑

Comments on my letter of the morality of Everyday Life

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Notes

Interdisciplinary Project (8)

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Tribalism

↑ [20] and Greece. These are the aristocratic but every group of assembly or commoners stands under equality, (political not social).

Aristotle

↑

Commentary Article

P. is amazed to what extent the first page of the Commentary article forecast his views ten years later. The technological civilization and the accusation against science is the heart of P.'s position. ↑

Text Informations

Date: March 29, 1958 (Interview)
KPA: 45/17