Tag Archives: philosophy

For a global public library in the Age of Artificial Intelligence – and a program for a democratic AI

Posted on by

Article based on discussions with Arthur on 30th September 2026…

Artificial intelligence is usually discussed as a contest between corporations and states, or as a threat to jobs and human control. A more useful question is who will own the systems, knowledge and productive power that AI is creating, and whether they can be organised for the public good.

A political question disguised as a technical one

Debate about artificial intelligence tends to concentrate on spectacular possibilities: machines escaping human control, mass unemployment, disinformation, cyberattack and the prospect of conscious non-human intelligence. These questions matter, but they can obscure the political issue already before us. AI is being built inside an internet dominated by a small number of corporations and increasingly shaped by competing states. The immediate struggle concerns ownership, access and control.

The same technologies could deepen corporate power and state surveillance, or help create a society with far less compulsory labour and much wider access to knowledge. Neither outcome follows automatically from the technology. The result will depend on institutions, political organisation and social struggle.

This is why the argument cannot be reduced to whether AI is good or bad. The more important distinction is between proprietary systems controlled from above and public systems that can be examined, reproduced and improved by a wider community. That distinction also affects the resilience of the internet, the future of copyright, the development of robotics and the distribution of the wealth that automation can produce.

The fragile corporate internet

The internet was designed as a distributed network able to route information around broken links. In everyday life, however, most people reach it through a few corporate gateways. Google, Apple and Microsoft mediate access through phones and computers, while large social-media companies determine much of what users see. The network may be decentralised in principle, but its practical use has become highly concentrated.

This concentration creates political as well as technical vulnerabilities. A severe cyberattack could damage communications, banking, payment systems and other essential infrastructure at the same time. Governments might respond by restricting communication in the name of suppressing disinformation or subversion. Even without a catastrophic failure, algorithmic feeds encourage people to remain inside self-reinforcing circles, consuming material selected to keep them engaged rather than to support serious discussion.

Concerns about AI-generated deception are legitimate. Powerful systems can manufacture convincing text, voices, photographs and video on a vast scale. They may be used for fraud, political manipulation and coordinated attacks on communications networks. The predictable official response will be demands for tighter control over digital identity, software and online communication. Centralised monitoring will be presented as necessary to distinguish authentic information from manipulation.

The infrastructure created to suppress fraud can also suppress dissent. Most people access the digital world through devices controlled by large companies. Their operating systems determine what software can be installed and what communications are permitted. The hardware contains components and low-level software that ordinary users cannot inspect or change. Some restrictions serve real security purposes. Digital signing, for example, helps prevent malicious software from impersonating a trusted application. Yet the same machinery can ensure that only officially authorised programs operate.

A serious cyberattack could provide the pretext for expanding such controls. If banking or communications systems were disrupted, authorities might restore access only through approved channels. Political communication could then be monitored, restricted or traced far more easily. Freedom of information must therefore be treated as part of AI safety. A society protected from rogue software but unable to debate how it is governed would not be safe. It would be authoritarian.

Resilience requires more than stronger corporate security. Essential communication should not depend upon a single provider. Open operating systems such as Linux and decentralised social networks based on independent relays offer a possible foundation. Users should be able to choose the feeds they follow, receive them chronologically and maintain contact without relying on a company that owns the whole service. Engineers also need secure, independent channels through which they could coordinate restoration work if normal corporate systems failed. This is not an assertion that collapse is inevitable. It is a recognition that public communication should not depend entirely upon platforms organised around advertising, data collection and capital accumulation.

A modern republic of letters

A democratic information system would amount to a modern republic of letters: an international network through which people communicate, exchange knowledge and develop ideas without depending completely upon governments or corporations. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, intellectuals living under different monarchies corresponded across borders. Their letters allowed scientific and political ideas to circulate despite censorship and religious division. The network was restricted to a small educated elite, but it demonstrated the value of communication independent of any single state.

Today most of the world’s population is literate and tertiary education is far more common. Billions of people could participate in an expanded republic of letters. That would require decentralised methods of authentication and communication. People should be able to establish that messages come from a consistent source without needing an identity issued by Google, Microsoft or a government. Cryptographic signatures can provide continuity while still allowing pseudonyms where they are necessary for safety or political freedom.

Open protocols could relay material among many independent servers and devices. If normal networks were blocked, information could still be moved physically on portable storage – a sneakernet. No such arrangement would make surveillance impossible, but it would make centralised suppression more difficult. People need not all become computer experts, yet they do need a basic understanding of the systems through which they communicate. Political movements that rely entirely upon opaque corporate platforms remain vulnerable to sudden exclusion, monitoring and manipulation. The struggle for democratic AI is also a struggle for open standards, user-controlled devices and independent channels of communication.

A global public library for the age of AI

Freedom of information should extend beyond the ability to communicate. It should include universal access to humanity’s accumulated knowledge. A global public digital library should therefore stand at the centre of any democratic AI policy. It would preserve books, research, newspapers, music, film and other cultural material while supplying verified sources and computing infrastructure for public AI. Distributed across several countries, it should remain available even if particular networks or data centres failed.

The idea is technically plausible because much of the world’s published knowledge has already been digitised. Technology companies, universities, state institutions and unofficial archives hold enormous collections. AI companies have assembled vast bodies of text and images for training, often without conventional permission from every copyright holder. File-sharing networks and shadow libraries have also shown that digital material can be copied and preserved globally. Yet this knowledge is divided among private corporate datasets, legally contested archives and public institutions that lack the resources or authority to combine it.

The public still encounters paywalls, incompatible catalogues and copyright barriers, while AI companies sell services built partly upon knowledge produced collectively over generations. A coalition of governments could create a properly catalogued library in which a reader could locate a work by author, title, ISBN or other identifying information. AI answers could link directly to the relevant record and underlying source, allowing users to verify what they had been told. This would address a persistent weakness of current systems, which can provide citations that are inaccurate, irrelevant or invented.

Universal access need not require writers, researchers, artists, editors and publishers to work without payment. Australia and other countries already operate public lending right schemes under which eligible authors and publishers are paid for library use. An international version could remunerate creators from public funds or levies on AI companies, rather than requiring every reader to purchase access to each work.

The details would be difficult. Any formula based on downloads or consultations would need protection against manipulation. Different forms of writing, research and cultural production may require different payment methods. Selection, editing and recommendation would still be necessary. These are practical problems to solve, not reasons to preserve a copyright system increasingly at odds with digital abundance. The guiding principle should be universal access combined with fair remuneration for creative and intellectual work.

Such a library would also challenge the advertising-funded media economy. Search engines and social platforms have absorbed much of the advertising revenue that once supported newspapers and publishers, while media organisations remain dependent on attention-grabbing content and proprietary access. A public library linked to public AI would separate access to knowledge from both advertising and monopoly ownership. It would replace artificial scarcity with a public system of access, verification and payment.

What genuinely public and open AI requires

A global digital library could provide the knowledge base for an international, publicly funded AI network. The leading models now are American corporate AI and Chinese state-directed AI. Neither is an adequate choice for the rest of the world. A third centre could consist of public institutions in several countries, cooperating through common standards and dedicated to research, education and human development rather than advertising, surveillance or military advantage.

Its software should be genuinely free and open source. The term open source is used loosely in AI. A conventional open-source program provides human-readable code from which the executable software is built. Many so-called open AI models provide a file of numerical parameters. Users may run or modify the model, but they cannot reconstruct its development or see precisely which data and decisions produced it.

Open parameters are useful, but they are not the same as a reproducible system. A genuinely public model would disclose its source code, training data, training methods, evaluation procedures and, where practical, intermediate checkpoints. Independent experts could test its behaviour and attempt to reproduce the final system. The public would gain more than assurances from a company’s own safety team.

The preferred standard should be free libre open source software under a reciprocal licence. Anyone could study and improve the system, but anyone distributing an altered version would also have to publish those improvements. Knowledge would accumulate as a commons rather than being drawn from public research and enclosed inside competing firms.

A public AI network could attract researchers who do not want their work controlled by a small number of companies engaged in a reckless race. Corporate salaries may remain higher, but many scientists and engineers would value the opportunity to work openly for institutions with a public purpose. Such a system would not make private AI disappear, nor would it prevent military agencies from developing secret models. It would nevertheless create a credible alternative and give democratic governments an independent source of expertise.

Open systems also require responsibility

Openness does not remove danger. A model that can be modified may be altered to eliminate safeguards. Someone with specialist knowledge might retrain it to assist biological weapons research, cyberattacks or other destructive activity. Completely closed systems concentrate power in unaccountable institutions, while completely unrestricted systems may be adapted for serious harm. There is no simple technical formula that eliminates this tension.

Public systems need rigorous evaluation, controlled access to especially dangerous capabilities and international cooperation. One part of the solution is authentication. Software can be digitally signed so that users know who produced it and whether it has been altered. A similar system could identify recognised public AI models and significant modifications.

Anyone distributing a modified model could be required to identify the changes and sign the new version. Independent organisations could test it and certify that it met defined standards. Users could then distinguish an authenticated public release from an anonymous or potentially dangerous modification. A decentralised web of trust would be preferable to placing all authority in one government or corporation. Different institutions and researchers could verify one another, creating a transparent record of responsibility.

Authentication would not prevent every malicious act. No security arrangement can. It would, however, clarify responsibility and provide a safer basis for open development. The answer cannot be permanent secrecy imposed by American corporations or dependence upon models released by an authoritarian state. Proprietary systems conceal too much, while parameter releases without reproducible training disclose too little. Public scrutiny must be combined with practical safeguards and enforceable standards.

A coalition of middle powers

The future of AI is often portrayed as a contest between the United States and China. Other countries are expected to watch, choose a side and accept the consequences. This underestimates their power. The AI supply chain is international. Advanced systems depend upon specialised semiconductor equipment, sophisticated chips, high-density memory, data centres, electrical infrastructure, research expertise and access to global markets.

The Netherlands plays an indispensable role in producing machinery used to manufacture the most advanced semiconductors. Taiwan is central to advanced chip fabrication, while South Korea supplies much of the specialised memory used in data centres. Japan, European countries, Canada, Australia, Singapore and other middle powers hold important knowledge, components, resources and financial capacity. Acting separately, they may struggle to influence American and Chinese giants. Acting together, they would possess considerable leverage.

A coalition could establish common rules governing the development and export of advanced AI hardware. Access to crucial machinery and components could be made conditional upon independent safety evaluation, transparency and compliance with international standards. Such a coalition would not control everything. China has a large internal market and is developing alternatives to Western technology, while American corporations possess immense political power. Coordinated action by countries controlling important parts of the supply chain could nevertheless alter the balance.

The same coalition could fund a distributed global library and reproducible public AI models. Each participating centre could examine the others, share improvements and maintain copies of essential data and software. The network could compete with proprietary American systems and Chinese state releases without becoming an instrument of either bloc. It would also create a practical basis for regulation because public authorities would possess models and expertise of their own.

The obstacle is political rather than purely technical. Governments remain reluctant to confront copyright monopolies, media interests and the companies controlling digital infrastructure. Yet AI is already disrupting those arrangements. Middle powers should stop behaving as powerless spectators. Together, they could become an independent force in governing AI and building a public alternative.

AI will not liberate us automatically

Technological progress does not determine its own political outcome. AI could reduce necessary labour and expand access to knowledge. It could also produce mass unemployment, unprecedented surveillance and a concentration of power greater than anything previously seen. The outcome will depend upon political organisation.

There is no organised international left presently capable of governing this transition. Many progressive people distrust parties and formal organisation, often with good reason. Existing organisations have repeatedly become bureaucratic, sectarian or detached from ordinary people. Rejecting failed forms of organisation, however, does not remove the need to organise. If democratic forces are absent, decisions will remain with the corporate executives, military establishments and political leaders who created the present crisis.

Past revolutions required long periods of experimentation, defeat and renewed struggle. AI may accelerate events, but it cannot remove the need for people to learn how to administer institutions and exercise power collectively. Younger generations have grown up amid economic insecurity, ecological crisis and declining trust in established authority. They are also more accustomed to digital collaboration than any previous generation. Whether this produces democratic transformation or a new authoritarianism remains undecided.

The task is not to wait for technology to deliver a new society. It is to build institutions and movements capable of directing technological development towards human emancipation. Public ownership, open knowledge, shorter working time and enforceable international safety standards are not automatic consequences of AI. They are political demands that require organised support.

A program for democratic AI

An immediate democratic program should connect the institutions needed to control risk with the social measures needed to share the benefits. It should include:

  • Mandatory independent evaluation of frontier AI systems
  • Internationally enforceable safety and transparency standards
  • Cooperation among middle powers that control critical parts of the AI supply chain
  • Protection of decentralised and encrypted communication
  • Greater public knowledge of open operating systems and communication tools
  • Creation of a universally accessible global digital library
  • A new international system for remunerating writers, researchers, artists and publishers
  • Publicly funded AI research centres using genuinely free and open source software
  • Authentication and public certification of AI models and significant modifications
  • Democratic control over AI in workplaces, government and essential services
  • Shorter working time and secure access to income and public services as automation advances

The struggle over the future

These demands are not a complete answer. They are starting points for a political movement that does not yet fully exist. They join safety to ownership, freedom of information to public infrastructure, and technological progress to the distribution of time and wealth.

Artificial intelligence should not belong to a few corporations, military establishments or great powers. The knowledge used to create it should not remain enclosed behind paywalls and proprietary systems. AI is the product of humanity’s accumulated intellectual and social labour. It should be governed as a global public resource.

The technology could reduce drudgery, democratise knowledge and help address problems that have resisted solution for generations. Those benefits will not emerge from a corporate race for profit or a military contest for dominance. They require institutions that can make another future possible.

The most immediate danger is not that machines will inevitably become too intelligent. It is that human beings will continue surrendering their intelligence, knowledge and political power to institutions they do not control. AI could help humanity govern itself, but first humanity must decide to govern AI. The possibilities are bright. The road to them will be tortuous.

Goethe’s Faust: a talisman for our time

Posted on by

Tom G.

Faust’s transformations rely upon magic. As an artistic contrivance this is quite acceptable, but in the real world, where those lower down the pecking order live, something more is required – and that is an economic development that can transform our material existence and provide a foundation for growth. It is here, still under the assistance of Mephisto, that Goethe gives Faust his most dramatic – and for us – his most significant transformation, that of the developer.

Continue reading →

A response to “The legacy of 1968”

Posted on by

Platypus Review 165 | April 2024

On June 24, 2023 at Trades Hall in Melbourne, Australia, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel on the legacy of 1968.[1] The speakers included Andy Blunden, Alison Thorne, and Arthur Dent. Barry York provides his response to the panel.

Continue reading →

Where do correct ideas come from?

Posted on by

“Where do correct ideas come from? Do they drop from the skies? No. Are they innate in the mind? No. They come from social practice, and from it alone; they come from three kinds of social practice, the struggle for production, the class struggle and scientific experiment. It is man’s social being that determines his thinking”.

Scan10025

(Cartoon from ‘Rabelais’, La Trobe University SRC newspaper, 1970)

“Once the correct ideas characteristic of the advanced class are grasped by the masses, these ideas turn into a material force which changes society and changes the world. In their social practice, men engage in various kinds of struggle and gain rich experience, both from their successes and from their failures. Countless phenomena of the objective external world are reflected in a man’s brain through his five sense organs  —  the organs of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch.

“At first, knowledge is perceptual. The leap to conceptual knowledge, i.e., to ideas, occurs when sufficient perceptual knowledge is accumulated. This is one process in cognition. It is the first stage in the whole process of cognition, the stage leading from objective matter to subjective consciousness from existence to ideas. Whether or not one’s consciousness or ideas (including theories, policies, plans or measures) do correctly reflect the laws of the objective external world is not yet proved at this stage, in which it is not yet possible to ascertain whether they are correct or not.

“Then comes the second stage in the process of cognition, the stage leading from consciousness back to matter, from ideas back to existence, in which the knowledge gained in the first stage is applied in social practice to ascertain whether the theories, policies, plans or measures meet with the anticipated success. Generally speaking, those that succeed are correct and those that fail are incorrect, and this is especially true of man’s struggle with nature. In social struggle, the forces representing the advanced class sometimes suffer defeat not because their ideas are incorrect ! but because, in the balance of forces engaged in struggle, they are not as powerful for the time being as the forces of reaction; they are therefore temporarily defeated, but they are bound to triumph sooner or later.

“Man’s knowledge makes another leap through the test of practice. This leap is more important than the previous one. For it is this leap alone that can prove the correctness or incorrectness of the first leap in cognition, i.e., of the ideas, theories, policies, plans or measures formulated in the course of reflecting the objective external world. There is no other way of testing truth. Furthermore, the one and only purpose of the proletariat in knowing the world is to change it. Often, correct knowledge can be arrived at only after many repetitions of the process leading from matter to consciousness and then back to matter, that is, leading from practice to knowledge and then back to practice. Such is the Marxist theory of knowledge, the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge.

“Among our comrades there are many who do not yet understand this theory of knowledge. When asked the sources of their ideas, opinions, policies, methods, plans and conclusions, eloquent speeches and long articles they consider the questions strange and cannot answer it. Nor do they comprehend that matter, can be transformed into consciousness and consciousness into matter, although such leaps are phenomena of everyday life. It is therefore necessary to educate our comrades in the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge, so that they can orientate their thinking correctly, become good at investigation and study and at summing up experience, overcome difficulties, commit fewer mistakes, do their work better, and struggle hard so as to build China into a great and powerful socialist country and help the broad masses of the oppressed and exploited throughout the world in fulfillment of our great internationalist duty”.

–   Mao Zedong

May 1963

Hegel, Engels, and the pseudo-left… “All that is real is rational, and all that is rational is real”

Posted on by

Fundamental to a genuine left is this concept:

“Just as knowledge is unable to reach a complete conclusion in a perfect, ideal condition of humanity, so is history unable to do so; a perfect society, a perfect “state”, are things which can only exist in imagination. On the contrary, all successive historical systems are only transitory stages in the endless course of development of human society from the lower to the higher. Each stage is necessary, and therefore justified for the time and conditions to which it owes its origin. But in the face of new, higher conditions which gradually develop in its own womb, it loses vitality and justification. It must give way to a higher stage which will also in its turn decay and perish.”

(Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, 1886)

The following is a discussion from the Lastsuperpower site in 2003 about the philosophical basis of pseudo-leftism. The two contributors are ‘Albert’ and ‘Keza’. It stands up very well fourteen years on, and had a big impact on me at the time. –
c21styork

 

Revolutionaries are historical optimists who stress the inevitability of progress. Pseudo-Leftists are reactionaries who merely denounce how bad things are and actively reinforce the idea that they cannot be changed. But when revolutionaries reject the irrational obscurantism and moralistic posturing of pseudo-Leftists and line up together with the ruling class against them, by asserting that “all that is real is rational”, they are also implicitly saying “all that exists deserves to perish”

Author: albert

Date : Jun 15, 2003 4:48 am

“All that is real is rational; and all that is rational is real”

Hegel’s remark “All that is real is rational; and all that is rational is real.” is central to understanding the philosophical outlook of communism.

It’s worth carefully studying Engel’s explanation of this seemingly paradoxical position, as it sheds a lot of light on some aspects of the problems with pseudo-Leftists and other reactionaries conservatives.

Fundamental to the genuine left is this concept:

“Just as knowledge is unable to reach a complete conclusion in a perfect, ideal condition of humanity, so is history unable to do so; a perfect society, a perfect “state”, are things which can only exist in imagination. On the contrary, all successive historical systems are only transitory stages in the endless course of development of human society from the lower to the higher. Each stage is necessary, and therefore justified for the time and conditions to which it owes its origin. But in the face of new, higher conditions which gradually develop in its own womb, it loses vitality and justification. It must give way to a higher stage which will also in its turn decay and perish.”

One aspect of that is the idea that “each stage is necessary, and therefore justified for the time and conditions to which it owes its origin”. Pseudo-Leftists assert the opposite. They are able to present themselves as more “militantly opposed” to the status quo than revolutionaries because they refuse to “understand” current reality as “necessary” and “therefore justified for the time and conditions to which it owes its origin”. Instead they simply denounce it from an ahistorical perspective as contrary to some absolute morality.

Anyone critical of the status quo is bound to highlight its negative features and denounce them as intolerable. But by denying that those negative features had their own rational basis the pseudo-Left obscures the rational necessity for inevitable change to the status quo arising from new circumstances that obsolete the justification for the old reality and necessitate a new reality.

Revolutionaries are historical optimists who stress the inevitability of progress. Pseudo-Leftists are reactionaries who merely denounce how bad things are and actively reinforce the idea that they cannot be changed. But when revolutionaries reject the irrational obscurantism and moralistic posturing of pseudo-Leftists and line up together with the ruling class against them, by asserting that “all that is real is rational”, they are also implicitly saying “all that exists deserves to perish” as explained by Engels:

“And so, in the course of development, all that was previously real becomes unreal, loses it necessity, its right of existence, its rationality. And in the place of moribund reality comes a new, viable reality — peacefully if the old has enough intelligence to go to its death without a struggle; forcibly if it resists this necessity. Thus the Hegelian proposition turns into its opposite through Hegelian dialectics itself: All that is real in the sphere of human history, becomes irrational in the process of time, is therefore irrational by its very destination, is tainted beforehand with irrationality, and everything which is rational in the minds of men is destined to become real, however much it may contradict existing apparent reality. In accordance with all the rules of the Hegelian method of thought, the proposition of the rationality of everything which is real resolves itself into the other proposition: All that exists deserves to perish.”

__________________________

Hegel and the pseudo-left

Author: keza

Date : Jun 21, 2003 3:00 am

After reading Albert’s Hegel message I got a bit interested in Hegel and tried to find out what he was on about. The following message results from that. It’s not really finished but I’ve had enough of it for now…

In his Australian article ‘Not in Your Name Indeed’, Barry York described the politics of the pseudo-Left as a “mish-mash” , a “jumble of prejudices”, “more akin to a sub-culture than a political movement”.

I think these words captured something very important about the pseudo-left – in particular its atheoretical and ahistorical nature. Pseudo-left ideology lends itself well to bulleted lists of things to oppose and things to support. At the same time, events in the world are classified according to surface appearance rather than in terms of what underlies them. The pseudo-left may talk of the “underlying reasons” for something like the war in Iraq but this talk is always of “hidden agendas”, “secret motives” and is quite different from studying such events in light of the underlying flow of history.

Hegel’s statement: “All that is real is rational; and all that is rational is real” asserts that history makes sense: “the phantom of a world whose events are an incoherent concourse of fortuitous circumstances, utterly vanishes”.

In contrast, pseudo-left ideology attributes only the most superficial rationality to what happens in the world.

Indeed it seems to me that the pseudo-left has an essentially folk-loric version of how the world works. There is evil and there is good. (Or there is God and there is Satan). Being “good” means being pure and true and perfect and this comes down to opposing the dark forces of evil. It’s an abstract, ideal position which is capable of generating protests but has no serious orientation toward actually changing the world. The feel-good slogan “Not in My Name” captures its nature rather well.

The Hegelian conception of history exerted an enormous influence on both Marx and Engels. Although Hegel was an idealist, his view of history was one in which humans were seen as becoming progressively more capable of controlling their own destiny. He saw history as always progressing in the direction of greater freedom – driven by the dialectical opposition between what is actual and what is potential.

Hegel was an idealist because of his adherence to the idea of the supremacy of “Spirit” (akin to mind) over matter (which he saw as inert – “its essence outside itself’.:

“Spirit knows itself. It involves an appreciation of its own nature, as also an energy enabling it to realise itself; to make itself actually that which it is potentially. According to this abstract definition it may be said of Universal History, that it is the exhibition of Spirit in the process of working out the knowledge of that which it is potentially. And as the germ bears in itself the whole nature of the tree, and the taste and form of its fruits, so do the first traces of Spirit virtually contain the whole of that History.”

and

“The life of a people ripens a certain fruit; its activity aims at the complete manifestation of the principle which it embodies. But this fruit does not fall back into the bosom of the people that produced and matured it; on the contrary, it becomes a poison-draught to it. That poison-draught it cannot let alone, for it has an insatiable thirst for it: the taste of the draught is its annihilation., though at the same time the rise of a new principle.”

Engels pointed out that “according to Hegel certainly not everything that exists is also real, without further qualification. For Hegel the attribute of reality belongs only to that which at the same time is necessary: “In the course of its development reality proves to be necessity.” “.

This qualification is important, otherwise Hegel’s statement could be taken as no more than the assertion that the status quo (being “real”) is always rational and therefore justified. Such an interpretation would contradict his view of history as a process of progressive change in which what is actual loses its necessity and gives way to its own potential: “It certainly makes war upon itself — consumes its own existence; but in this very destruction it works up with existence into a new form, and each successive phase becomes in its turn a material, working on which it exalts itself to a new grade.”

Getting back to the pseudo-left …it seems to me that their political outlook is characterized by a denial/ignorance of both necessity and rationality (and therefore of reality). Opposition to US imperialism turns out to be an unchallengeable, immutable, stand-alone principle of some sort. The idea that Bush et al could intend to democratize the Middle East – that their old policy is no longer rational (ie that in the current world situation it has lost its necessity) is seen as strange and nonsensical. How could it be possible for US imperialism to do such a thing?

It’s easy to appear as very revolutionary and militant if your stance does not include any appreciation of current reality and necessity. And the opposite is also true – it’s easy to attack those who are being (correctly) radical and militant. Basically you don’t have to feel responsible for anything that happens because such a stance does not involve actually trying to change the world.

In “Socialism, Utopian and Scientific”, Engels said this about Hegel:

“This new German philosophy culminated in the Hegelian system. In this system — and herein is its great merit — for the first time the whole world, natural, historical, intellectual, is represented as a process — i.e., as in constant motion, change, transformation, development; and the attempt is made to trace out the internal connection that makes a continuous whole of all this movement and development. From this point of view, the history of mankind no longer appeared as a wild whirl of senseless deeds of violence, all equally condemnable at the judgment seat of mature philosophic reason and which are best forgotten as quickly as possible, but as the process of evolution of man himself. It was now the task of the intellect to follow the gradual march of this process through all its devious ways, and to trace out the inner law running through all its apparently accidental phenomena.”

Pseudo left ideology does not encourage people to use their intellects to grasp the nature of what is happening in the world . On the contrary it propagates the idea that the truth can be hidden – (and sometimes) that there’s really no such thing as truth, that intuition and “gut feeling” are superior to logic, that the people who rule the world are stupid/irrational enough to “let things get out of control” and so on.

Anyway I’m getting tired of writing this ….

___________

Comments :

(by albert on 06/20/2003)

Thanks for the excellent article!

I’m getting inspired to read up on Hegel again too (also philosophy generally and have started reading Marx’s Notebooks on Epicurus to shed some light on why he wrote his doctoral thesis on atomic physics 😉

One point I’d stress is that it isn’t just the pseudo-Left which suffers from the various problems described. What distinguishes the pseudo-Left is often merely that it dresses up conventional ruling class ideas in a “militant”, “radical”, “leftist” but essentially a “pseudo” guise.

The basic idea that Engels finds appealing in Hegel is “the whole world, natural, historical, intellectual, is represented as a process — i.e., as in constant motion, change, transformation, development”. That dialectical emphasis on a process of progress and development is especially problematic to a decaying, moribund, parasitic ruling class.

Although some sections of the bourgeoisie still sing “Happy Days Are Here Again” and present themselves as at least complacent, if not progressive or revolutionary, the dominant mood is full of doom and gloom – literally terrified of what the future might bring (with a corresponding emphasis on “terrorists” as only one aspect of that).

As Marx pointed out, in any class society the ideas of the ruling class are of course the ruling ideas. That can easily be said glibly but it stands in direct opposition to such views as Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent”.

The ruling ideas, those that dominate education, culture etc, are thoroughly pessimistic and stress the hopelessness of any struggle for change. That is especially the case for state sponsored education (“post-modern” university departments of doom and gloom) and culture (national broadcasters such as the British BBC and Australian ABC bringing daily sermons that everything is going from bad to worse).

The pseudo-Left has been let off the hook because it has been challenged only by the complacent right, which accepts the pseudos self-image as something “radical”, “militant” etc (by denouncing them on that basis, in support of the status quo).

Instead the pseudo-Left must be exposed as a direct reflection of ruling class ideology delivering exactly the official line – that nothing positive can be done to challenge the ruling class since even though they are obviously hopeless, no better alternative is possible.

That is what strips away the “radical” veneer. For example when faced with the usual diatribes against “consumerism” from greenies, these should just be treated as obviously a proposal to reduce real wages and discussed seriously on that basis. “Ok, so you want people to consume less. That’s easy – simply reduce their incomes. So I guess what you would need would be more unemployment – both to reduce incomes directly and to add to the pressure for reducing wages indirectly. That would explain a lot of green policies. I guess if we used less technology that would pretty well guarantee a sharp reduction in productivity and therefore in incomes and consumption. Hmm, interesting approach. Must be appealing to governments and corporations so they would give you a lot of funding. But aren’t you up against History – isn’t there something unstoppable about people’s desire to live better than before?”

 

 

___________________________

 

COMMUNISM and INDIVIDUALISM – A TROUBLED RELATIONSHIP

Posted on by

Concluding Tom’s notes…

A) Lenin On the Question of Dialectics

The relationship between the universal and the individual is just that, a relationship. When taken alone – abstracted – the universal is untrue. It is untrue because it is removed from its relationship with the individual, (its opposite) which alone is concrete. It is the relationship between each that gives each its truthfulness, its lived, actual reality.

I am reminded of Hegel’s “If something is abstract it must be untrue…” and how the communist movement has been alot more comfortable dealing or focusing on the universal – the group, class, people, nation than on the concrete – the individual. We have a problem with the individual; but if dialectics has meaning this must indicate that we also have a problem with the universal.

B) Marshall Berman

Berman’s procrustean role description also applies to the Industrial Revolution and to early periods of capitalism generally. Peasants/small farmers and land holders, rural, labourers and artisans were sucked into the factories of the Industrial Revolution and exploited mercilessly. In Dickens ‘Hard Times’ he describes these modern pegs as ‘hands’, an accurate description of that part of the body the bosses valued. Precious little space for the individual to unfold here. That’s the down side and there are clear parallels between this and pre capitalist peg fitting. The up side was seen over generations and caused by the dynamism of capitalism and the space it created for workers to organise, struggle and develop.

Two points re this:

a) the failure of most of the left to see the emergent role of the individual as a good thing; its tendency to praise in a one sided way collectivism and to associate individualism, again one sidedly, with bourgeois ideology.

b) the working class itself has made it clear through its actions and choices that it values individual growth and development and the economic development which facilitates this.

The question for communists is: do we?

Where the traditions and customs of others determine character and conduct of the individual “one of the principal ingredients of happiness” is wanting.

Marx: “liberal economy and politics generate a contradiction between the individuality of each proletarian and the condition of life forced upon him … labour.” And because the capitalist state (liberal or otherwise) reinforced and legitimised that condition, it had to go – be overthrown.

It seems to me that the conflating of that aspect of ‘liberal’ which speaks of freedom in a general political and personal sense with liberal economics (freedom of capital, of property rights and the rights of exploitation) is indicative of a major theoretical weakness and an opportunistic slide toward an authoritarian suppression of individuality. Marx and Engels were revolutionary democrats and communists. They were in the minority all their lives and much of their polemics were aimed not only at the wacky left ideas but at authoritarian ones.

xviii
The defeat of the revolutions of ‘48 generated alot of despair and from this time to the end of the 1950’s, in nearly all arguments between radicals and their opponents, both parties identified the capitalist economy and the liberal state with ‘individualism’ and equated radical aims with “a collectivism that negated individuality.”

I think he is onto something, especially “a collectivism that negated individuality”. The separation, or negation is metaphysical, one sided. Collectivism thus understood will never get anywhere in advanced capitalist societies as it attempts to negate our ‘new fangledness’. It also conflates as per para above.
The group and personal discipline necessary in a party is thus seen as coerced, a top down crushing of individuality rather than a free act from below, of authentic action undertaken by the individuals concerned, in limiting individuality, where this individuality comes into conflict with the cause or the group’s purpose. One can also identify precisely the same dynamic – and duality – in any group endeavour.

The Marxist Archive entry for collectivism is a case in point. It speaks of collectivism transcending or sublating individualism (a collectivism which does not suppress the individualism of bourgeois society). This seems confused. They get collectivism and individuality right historically and in their definition, but the socialist bit clearly gives primacy to collectivism (without individuality being suppressed) and the transcendent, or dialectical leap, only relates to collectivism. Individualism, which remains ‘bourgeois’, or consistent with the individuality that emerged under capitalism, remains unsuppressed but also untransformed. It is as though dialectics has had a senior’s moment and forgotten that individuality too, must transcend its bourgeois limits.

This ambivalence has been characteristic of ostensibly Marxist theory although not of Marx himself. The bods at the Archive clearly understand that individuality is important but are unable to understand it as dynamic.

“Liberation from the standpoint of the bourgeoisie, i.e. competition, was, of course, for the eighteenth century the only possible way of offering the individuals a new career for freer development.” Marx (SW McLellan p186)

The free development of the bourgeoisie destroyed rural communities, threw millions off the land, thereby depriving them of their livelihoods, and forced them into the hands of the bourgeoisie itself. There was nothing pretty or humane about it. Yet, as Christopher Hill shows, it was not entirely, or even principally, negative. It led, among other things, to much greater economic and productive efficiencies, less expensive and more readily available food and better clothing. It also led to the IR, the consequences of which, as O’Flinn positively observed, we are still getting used to twelve generations later.
“…private property can be abolished only on condition of an all round development of individuals, because the existing character of intercourse and productive forces is an all round one, and only individuals that are developing in an all round fashion can appropriate them, i.e. can turn them into free manifestations of their lives.” Ibid p 191

As with spirituality, we have left the field of individuality and authenticity to the right – which is why we find some of their libertarian ideas attractive (presumably this must also apply to the Spiked crew).

This 50+ year old quote from Barry Goldwater is a case in point: “Every man, both for his own individual good and for the good of society, is responsible for his own development. The choices that govern his life are choices he must make: They cannot be made by any other human being, or by a collectivity of human beings.” (The Conscience of a Conservative, 1960). It’s like Nietzsche with a southern twang.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

Development of the Individual, and the individual in pre-modern society

Posted on by

Continuing Tom’s notes on the individual in communist thought…

“As a man is, so is his philosophy” – Fichte.

The characteristics of individuals are products of social relations. An individual’s character is a factor in social development only where, when, and to the extent that social relations permit it to be.

Self Alienation in Traditional Society

People derived their feelings of personal identity from ascribed roles – assigned without reference to individual differences or abilities – predicted and trained for from the moment of birth. Charles 2nd was pointedly informed that Oliver sought people on the basis of merit and not status, a reflection of two very different world outlooks.

“The domination of the land as an alien power over men is already inherent in feudal landed property. The serf is an adjunct of the land. In the same way the lord of an entailed estate, the first born son, belongs to the land. It inherits him.” – Marx, ‘Rent of Land’ in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 1844.

Advantages: conducive to social stability and shields the undeveloped self from expectations (and disappointments) beyond its station.

Disadvantages: stifles energy and initiative of individuals slotted into ascribed roles.

Individually the scope for disappointment is narrow as expectations are limited to the role one is born into – an emotional security blanket and an emotional and intellectual straight jacket. Now the scope is much wider because there are no limits placed on expectations.

Rousseau lived at a time when feudal ascribed identities had reached unbearable limits for a large number of people. He understood the psychic costs and urged that feudal traditions in habits and manners, for example, be abandoned.

“Individual thought or feeling, insight or initiative, could only be destructive to these traditions and routines. Marshall Berman, ‘The Politics of Authenticity: Radical Individualism and the Emergence of Modern Society’, p100 [Berman had spent the last couple of pages describing how the dead hand of the past weighted down on the aristocracy and the peasants – differently to be sure and advantageous to the aristocracy,- “it was easy to see why the upper classes were willing to make the sacrifice of self which their social roles demanded” he adds next page – but equally limiting in their own way] Hence it was essential for traditional society to keep individuality from developing, at the bottom as well as at the top.” (p101)

”Every man was reduced to a function of the rank which he acquired at birth – or, perhaps more accurately, to paraphrase Marx, the rank which acquired him.” It is perhaps more accurate to say “limited” as reduced implies a ‘from what’ which did not exist.

Marx’s Grundrisse
pp83-4

Pre-capitalist periods see the individual as an accessory to definite and limited human conglomerates. That is, limited, stunted, unable to develop.

The individual of our epoch is a historical result. The individual arises historically and is not posited by nature.

The individual of Smith and Ricardo – the result of the dissolution of feudalism on the one hand and the new forces of production developed since the 16th C on the other. This individual appears as an ideal whose existence they project into the past – not as the result of historical development, but posited by nature, the so-called “natural man”. This “natural man” was appropriate to their notion of human nature. It persists and remains a dominant view.

The more we go back “in history the more the individual is dependent, as belonging to a greater whole”. The epoch that produces this idea of the isolated individual is that which is most developed viz social relations. This is not a paradox as the human individual can only individuate in the midst of society – ie, the more complex the society the greater is the scope for individuation and complex individuals. This process is ongoing.

The Individual in Pre-Modern Society

Authenticity (and hence individualism) is not a problem or even on the radar in closed, static societies governed by fixed norms and traditions. Here, people are satisfied with the roles given, experiencing themselves as pegs, aspiring “only to fit the holes that fit them best.” A static equilibrium. (Berman p xxvii)

This aspect is foundational in Plato’s Republic and why Platonic idealism is reactionary (because so out of step).

Once a man is fitted into the niche he was born for, the loose ends in his nature fall away, “each part of his nature is exercising its proper function” and he takes on that perfect balance Plato calls justice. This niche fitting gives a person their identity (butcher, baker, tailor etc. That these and a host of other occupational descriptions survive today as surnames speak, historically, of prescribed generational roles…)

“Violent class struggles may go on: but they concern only the allocation of particular holes to particular pegs. The board itself, the closely knit but rigidly stratified system of the Greek polis, which defines men precisely by their functions, remains unquestioned and intact.”

And Kautsky thought of Plato as a prototype socialist?? The fact that he did and the fact that he was seen as the leading theoretician of the Second International indicates the depth of the problem for the left around the individual. This idea needs developing.

Pre capitalist societies (and less developed capitalist ones) fit individuals into Procrustean roles and acts as if human individuality didn’t exist – at least not for the masses.

The Stoics rebelled against the procrustean nature of the polis but did so mystically. They didn’t oppose particular orderings of the world, but the world itself. People were alienated from the world and self was to be found beyond the world, transcendentally. They therefore complied with Plato’s polis in their external relations, but not internally and cut their internal world off from an engagement with the external. And a fat lot of good that did!

“Thus the search for authenticity began with a negative interpretation of the world “ [with no positive attempt to change it] – thus was born disengaged conformity/internal ‘liberation’ which, Berman says, has since passed into mainstream western culture.