St. Paul, Dostoyevsky, and Zizek
Here is a link to some of my further ramblings on marxist/materialist thought. I thought it was too long to be blog worthy. It is in the "formal" section of my main site.

IndieFaith Formal

The Last of Marx
Alright, the last you will here (for now) on Marx and Engels. The Communist Manifesto certainly ends with some provocative contributions. It is not hard to see how western liberals or conservatives found fodder for fear mongering. By the way anyone looking for primary sources on marxist thought (or even anything broadly related to it) should check out marx.org. Blade, it also has many of the writers you mentioned on your "top 10". Some final excerpts.

“The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical, and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.
Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views and conceptions, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?
What else does the history of ideas prove, than that the intellectual production changes in proportion as material production is changed?”


“Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience”

This appears to foresee the current post-foundationalist perspective as well as showing some of the influences which movements such as Liberation Theology would have picked up on. That is, the priority of ortho-praxis over orthodoxy.


Here are the final sections of The Communist Manifesto including the basic tenets of those countries in the most advanced stages of Communist thought.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringin into cultivation of wastelands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.

“In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

One of those most developed countries (at the time of this was published) was Germany and so . . .
“The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European civilization, and with a more developed proletariat, than that of England was in the seventeenth, and of France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.
In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.
In all these movements they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.
Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES UNITE!”


Oh, by the way, Happy Valentine's Day!

is it just me or does my blog take at least twice as long to load as either xanga or blogger? i am really considering 'crossing the floor' at this point. any other complaints about this site? excluding its content of course.

Jesus Loves Hardcore
I'm not sure if I have bored most of my readers away but I thought that I would spice it up a little. Today I was looking at various images of Jesus on the web and came across some famous and not-so-famous "appearences" of Jesus' face. Well here is a prime contender. Some of you will have seen this already. But spread the word before I start charging admission to see. I also thought it would remind us of how hard Rudy and I once were . . .

Now at first it will not be readily apparent, but look closely and you will see that Rudy has Jesus in the palm of his hand.

The world has waited too long.

Commies
While I was much impressed with the still relevant critique which I found in the chapter 1 of the Communist Manifesto I was disappointed by the second chapter which outlines the positive contribution of Communist thought. Isn't this always the case. We are great a criticizing but when it comes to a positive contribution . . .
I admit that I am certainly behind the times when it comes to current Marxist development. However, I am unclear as how it much is has progressed. It seems like the only thriving communist expression is China (are they still technically considered communist?) which has adopted active capitalist strategies to bolster the economy. I would love to learn more about their situation as it seems quite unique on the world's stage (any thoughts out there?)

alright, as promised here are a few captions from chapter 2 "Proletarians and Communists"

"The immediate aim of the Communists is the . . . formation of the proletariat as a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, and conquest of political power by the proletariat."

"The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. . . . You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population."

"The average price of wage labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer. What therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his labour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence."

"All we want to do away with is the miserable character of [bourgeois] appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital."

Perhaps I will leave this for a few installments. Posts are supposed to be short and snappy right?

I have been very interested in the nineteenth century critique of religion. Forthcoming posts will hopefully include Nietzsche's's "Anti-Christ" and Freud's "The Future of an Illusion". I find Nietzsche's's critique so fascinating because I think he is so right and so wrong often on the same point.

The human condition to class struggle
In addition to reading Kierkegaard I have also had the chance to read Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto. Coincidentally Kierkegaard and Engels sat together in at leach one seminar (the lecturer was Schelling). I am largely sold on SK’s insight into the human condition. Addressing the human condition is an element of Marxist thinking that I have found to be extremely underdeveloped. However, there remains much to be appreciated in reading TCM. For those who have not read it I offer here some highs and lows (bear in mind this work was published in 1848). For those who have read it, feel free to criticize.

Chapter 1: “Bourgeois and Proletarian”

The opening line:
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle.”

“The bourgeoisie have resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom – Free Trade. . . . The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its wage-labourers.”

“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.”

“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.”

“The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all . . . walls.”

“Just as it made the country dependant on the towns, so it has made barbarian [sic] countries dependent on civilized ones.”

Speaking of a commercial crisis “In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity – the epidemic of over-production.”

“Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine.”

“The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labour. Wage labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers.”

And here I am a little more critical,

“But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increase in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more.”
Further,
“Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralize the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle.”

This approach has a type of social evolutionary thinking that I simple don’t think it tenable anymore.

“All previous movements were the movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.”

This assumes a unity based on economics which I do not believe does justice to the spiritual and social nature of humanity.

“In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, waging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.”


The chapter concludes apocalyptically in the following,

“The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.”

Chapter 2 to follow . . .

Perfect Vision
Topic: Life in Particular
Today was much anticipated. I have known for some time that my eyesight has steadily worsened. Streets signs are smudged and chalkboards out of focus. Last week a doctor examined my eyes and gave me my first prescription. This morning I went in to get contacts fitted. I have heard from various people that seeing the world through your first pair of glasses can be an amazing thing. My expectations rose high . . . and they were not disappointed. As I walked out of the store the world “popped”. I spent the rest of the afternoon simply enjoying the view. It was a new pleasure just to see.
It did not take long for a sadness to emerge in my thinking. First, I thought my experience will not always be such. The corrected vision will soon be the expectation and my “normal” vision will be the hindrance. Second, I was not convinced that I saw the world truly anymore. Yes, this was an amazing born-again experience in which the amazing presence of creation rightfully reclaimed my adoring gaze. But like the aging of my eyesight so to the accumulation of experience and relationships tend to blur the lines of reality. I now had the “tool” or the “method” to correct these ambiguities. However, this is not my experience of truth. The clinical application of “truth” has not addressed challenges of my life. X + Y has not always equalled peace, joy, or whatever the pursuit may have been. Formulaic approaches to reality foster arrogance and autonomy. It is wonderful that the world “pops” like it does right now; clear lines, perfect distinction. But this is no more the truth of the world around me than bleeding of lines and lives as brokenness and holiness converge.

“Now we see but a poor reflection . . .”

“There is a crack inside of everything, that’s how the light gets in . . .”

sorry, i fixed it now, but one of my asides read "repentance, of this sort, does liberate" I am missing a crucisl "not" there.

Overcome or Overcoming
Topic: Life in Particular
I am not sure if this will be significant for anyone else. I have grown increasingly appreciative of Kierkegaard’s thoughts on the human condition. The following is an excerpt from The Concept of Anxiety in which SK addresses sin and the tendency for humanity to stay only one step behind it, leaving sin with the power and initiative. I have added commentary where it may be helpful. SK’s writing can appear awkward but allow the vivid imagery of perpetual sin witnessed among us emerge.

In repentance sin is posited as actuality (that is repentance is what gives full force and reality to what has preceded it; i.e. the sin.) but repentance does not become the individual’s freedom (repentance, of this sort, does not liberate). Repentance is reduced to a possibility in relation to sin (I think he is saying that sin becomes the substance that give repentance its existence. Repentance is dependent on sin having no influence of its own); in other words, repentance cannot cancel sin, it can only sorrow over it. Sin advances in its consequences (one keeps on sinning); repentance follows it step by step, but always a moment too late (it can never overtake sin). It forces itself to look at the dreadful, but like the mad King Lear “O thou ruined masterpiece of nature” it has lost the reins of government, and it has retained only the power to grieve. At this point, anxiety is at its highest (Anxiety is the condition of “possibility”. That is anxiety is an awareness of what might happen, even though this possibility does not actually exist yet; this is literally being anxious over nothing). Repentance has lost its mind, and anxiety is potentiated (given more power) into repentance. The consequence of sin moves on; it drags the individual along like a woman whom the executioner drags by the hair while she screams in despair. Anxiety is ahead (one is already anxious of the sin before the fact); it discovers the consequence before it comes, as one feels in one’s bones that a storm is approaching (as the act of the sin approaches). The consequence comes closer; the individual trembles like a horse that grasps as it comes to a halt at the place where once it had been frightened. Sin conquers. Anxiety throws itself despairingly into the arms of repentance. Repentance ventures all. It conceives of the consequence of sin as suffering the penalty and of perdition as the consequence of sin (to deal with sin is only to suffer the cost). It is lost. . . . repentance has gone crazy.

To move ahead of sin one requires a “leap” this is posited only in faith. I will read on . . .

Did this make sense to anyone else? I think SK realizes the tendency of Christian repentance to be reactive and under the power of the sin that it follows.

Its Your Move
Soren Kierkegaard exerts a substantial amount of energy clarifying the difference between quantitative movement and qualitative movement. An example of quantitative movement is someone running laps around a track. The number of laps run increases but the movement remains the same. The person is literally running in circles. This movement is essentially no movement at all, it is imminent, closed. Conversely qualitative movement always requires a “leap”. If memory serves, we learned in high school chemistry about the various electron rings of particular elements. For there to movement in these rings external energy is required. Kierkegaard is concerned that we do not mistake the two. If the mistake goes unnoticed the appearance of movement continues but the possibility of change is denied. Now Kierkegaard is shrewd enough not to prescribe how humans may encounter this “leap”. If we may invoke the leap, then it is no longer external (transcendent) resulting in quantitative movement. On the other hand, if I have no influence in the possibility of movement the individual will dissolves and with it my identity. So Kierkegaard teases at the elusive possibility (and reality) of movement.

January 23, 2006; 8:30 pm
I have withdrawn from my doctoral program (and subsequently just voted NDP). I can read my motivations from any number of perspectives. I made this choice for this or that reason. Any number of my readings could expose the quantitative nature of logical or psychological explanation. Am I simply entering lap 2 (or 20 or 2000) or have I emerged on a new plane (a new element, substance, life)? Would I recognize a “leap” if I took it?
God be damned or God be praised.
Blessed be the name of the LORD.