The cancer infecting the political Left

[Bob Butler 54]

(07-28-2020, 10:33 PM)Einzige Wrote: Ideas do not form material conditions; material conditions form ideas. This is the essence of materialism.

Scientists create systems of ideas like relativity, Marxism or S&H turning theory.  Engineers create things that put these ideas into practical use.  Being an engineer, I sort of think it a two way street.  I tended to take an idea and make it reality.

(07-28-2020, 10:33 PM)Einzige Wrote:

(07-28-2020, 10:13 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I will also state that September 11, Katrina, Iraq, the housing bubble collapse and other likely catalysts were not triggers.  They did not make a transition to the new values inevitable.  Not triggers.  Catalysts.  Both sets of values remained active and seemingly viable.  You have to know the S&H theory to see the handwriting on the wall, to know what is coming.

I deny there's much difference between the two sets of values, tbh.

If you are not involving yourself with the two ideal systems involved in the latest crisis, you are a poor student of turning theory.  Marxism was last a viable set of values when the New Deal was a new deal.  As the result of Marxist theory as it practically gets put in practice became clear, it became a non starter.  Not a factor.

(07-28-2020, 10:33 PM)Einzige Wrote:

(07-28-2020, 10:13 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Again, you cannot count in observations from the last age to tell you anything about this one.  Last age had lots of crisis wars and profit from them and their aftermath.  Now?  Put the observation that capitalists need crises for profits during the Information Age on hold pending their making a profit off a crisis.  In the meantime, think, do not assume.

There's no hard and fast division between the "Information Age" and the "Industrial Age". Hell, Marx called the development of network capitalism back in 1857:

Quote:... But, once adopted into the production process of capital, the means of labour passes through different metamorphoses, whose culmination is the machine, or rather, an automatic system of machinery (system of machinery: the automatic one is merely its most complete, most adequate form, and alone transforms machinery into a system), set in motion by an automaton, a moving power that moves itself; this automaton consisting of numerous mechanical and intellectual organs, so that the workers themselves are cast merely as its conscious linkages.

An impressive foresight of how computers would evolve from a time well before computers.  Give Marx a brownie point or two.

However, nukes, insurgent conflict and computers have changed the basic pattern of civilization.  Notably, violent triggers are rare to nonexistent in major democracies.  No revolutions.  This kind of changes how cultures improve and was not anticipated by Marx.  It renders his whole system obsolete.

(07-28-2020, 10:33 PM)Einzige Wrote: For whatever reason, people treat Marx like a Bronze Age thinker who couldn't forsee the transition to a knowledge economy (which he called the General Intellect):

Not a Bronze Age thinker.  The Bronze Age was back in the Agricultural Age, and Marx was definitely an Industrial Age thinker.

(07-28-2020, 10:33 PM)Einzige Wrote:

(07-28-2020, 10:13 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Also, I see the S&H turnings as a mechanism for how cultures change.  A crisis is the time when the much debated two sets of values from the unravelling are resolved in favor of the new values.  A trigger is an event which makes this process inevitable.  The regeneracy is the time frame when the federal government fully embraces the new values, though it only begins a several year trial and error process as the new values are tried and tuned.  This time the two sets of values debated are the red and the blue.  Did you notice that Marxism is not one of the two?  Did you notice that the blue is the new set?

Blue is part of the old set.

Again, blue is the newer of the two value systems at odds in the current crisis.  That statement show you are hopelessly ignorant of the S&H turning approach to viewing history.

(07-28-2020, 10:33 PM)Einzige Wrote:

(07-28-2020, 10:13 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Thus, we are not working from the same perspective at all.  You are working from an Industrial Age perspective based on Industrial Age observations on how things work, and are pathetically out of date in the Information Age.

See the Grundrisse. Marx foresaw the Information Age and was aware how it would alter the structure of capitalist production. It has not fundamentally transformed its method of surplus value extraction, however.

It seems he did not anticipate how it would effect the changes in values.  Absurdly rare triggers.  None observed.  No revolutions.  This lack of anticipation is not surprising given his time, but renders his whole system obsolete.