01-31-2021, 12:12 PM
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Just as nobody would now accept Darwin as the last word on biological evolution, Einstein as the last word on physics, Freud as the final word on psychology, or Gauguin as the final destination of painting, nobody has a cause to accept that Marx or Engels are the last words on economics. People who want to know the cutting edge in biological evolution (which relates heavily to the war between Man and microorganism, carcinogen, and now Lowy body) do not turn to Darwin, whose works are best recognized as pedagogical devices; they often turn to genetics. Einstein got as much out of physics as he could in his lifetime, and he died sixty-five years ago. Special relativity is almost certainly the last basic physics that anyone could ever discover, and a miracle like Einstein is unlikely to appear again in physics. It is practically impossible to read high-quality literature from about 1920 onward without finding the influence of Freud... which says that Freud is practically a fossil in psychology and psychiatry.
Capitalism is not a suicide pact. It could go one of two ways in the aftermath of Marx. One was to intensify the inequality and repression, culminating in fascism with its stultifying effects on the mind, its degradation of the working class, its elimination of competition (I see the Holocaust in part as an effort by German cartels to eliminate the large number of small-scale capitalists who kept Germany partially competitive. German Jews were a disproportionate share of small-business owners and operators; would-be monopolists find them as much a menace to profit maximization as Commies to the title of ownership of enterprises), and wars for profit that make easy gain for profiteers until the wars go awry and lead to the dissolution of the political system. The other was to humanize capitalism so that the worker has a stake in it. Someone like Henry Ford, who was not a nice person, wanted his workers to see themselves in better housing and using cars to commute to work instead of slow city buses, and to not have to compel their children to be child labor.
More relevant to modern economics is John Maynard Keynes. I could elaborate more, but I will stop there.
Just as nobody would now accept Darwin as the last word on biological evolution, Einstein as the last word on physics, Freud as the final word on psychology, or Gauguin as the final destination of painting, nobody has a cause to accept that Marx or Engels are the last words on economics. People who want to know the cutting edge in biological evolution (which relates heavily to the war between Man and microorganism, carcinogen, and now Lowy body) do not turn to Darwin, whose works are best recognized as pedagogical devices; they often turn to genetics. Einstein got as much out of physics as he could in his lifetime, and he died sixty-five years ago. Special relativity is almost certainly the last basic physics that anyone could ever discover, and a miracle like Einstein is unlikely to appear again in physics. It is practically impossible to read high-quality literature from about 1920 onward without finding the influence of Freud... which says that Freud is practically a fossil in psychology and psychiatry.
Capitalism is not a suicide pact. It could go one of two ways in the aftermath of Marx. One was to intensify the inequality and repression, culminating in fascism with its stultifying effects on the mind, its degradation of the working class, its elimination of competition (I see the Holocaust in part as an effort by German cartels to eliminate the large number of small-scale capitalists who kept Germany partially competitive. German Jews were a disproportionate share of small-business owners and operators; would-be monopolists find them as much a menace to profit maximization as Commies to the title of ownership of enterprises), and wars for profit that make easy gain for profiteers until the wars go awry and lead to the dissolution of the political system. The other was to humanize capitalism so that the worker has a stake in it. Someone like Henry Ford, who was not a nice person, wanted his workers to see themselves in better housing and using cars to commute to work instead of slow city buses, and to not have to compel their children to be child labor.
More relevant to modern economics is John Maynard Keynes. I could elaborate more, but I will stop there.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.