Global Society : Dr Dan Brooks, Instructor
MARX REVISITED: THE DIALECTIC RECONFIGURED By Tim Fitzgerald
Great expectations determine our moods and feelings, governing our attitudes toward life itself. Whether the glass is half empty or half full, whether we have succeeded or failed, whether in fact we are happy or sad is largely determined by how we gage life against our expectations. Much of the debate for instance over the merits of globalization stem from our expectations toward the 21st century. Particularly by what thinkers like Karl Marx, Fredrick Engel�s, even Herbert Spencer have told us the future holds forth, and what we may expect in this life that we may treasure for ourselves and each other. That, and not the particulars of events unanticipated by these thinkers - namely global warming, over population, and world wide waste and pollution - we were told were what the recent battle between capitalism and communism in the Cold War was all about. "Wherefore art thou, Romeo," and why hasn't our victory over despotism ushered in the 'new world order' as we imagined? To begin with, those expectations were outlined over 150 years ago, a long time in the span of modern memory, given today's rate of change. But the rate of change contemporary to Karl Marx and his own life time particularly for Western man, has moved quantum leaps beyond the 'Satanic Mills' of EP Thompson, and the Corporate stock jobbers of Engle's period.
Capitalism has birthed globalization - not the communist Utopia Marx predicted. Was Marx wrong because he created faulty expectations? I think not, and as a former neo-Marxist seeped In the method of the historic dialectic, I would like to take a moment to put our present crisis in the context of historical evolution. To examine with considerable modification, the dialectic Marx endeavourer to establish against modern scholarship and contemporary thought. First off, there is probably nothing wrong with Marx evolutionary analysis mankind, in the broadest speaking of general terms. It has moved through four types of culture. And these cultural types have evolved specific forms of social organization initiated by correspoding Ages in the Mode of Production. Admittedly this takes the narrow interpretation of the impact Production techniques had on mankind, but it may prove the most useful. These cultural types, largely recognized today, have been from the Matriarchal, to the Communistic, to servile, to capitalist forms of broad cultural norms and ideas. And I would, making my first modification of Marx, argue the process of evolutionary (Not Revolutionary) change is going to be its re-establishment of Matriarchal culture in the next Millennium. But there is more than that revolution to a matriarchal / Communistic society (to acknowledge Karl Marx's contribution) going on here.
We are in fact going through a sea change of differences. We are not only on the threshold of a new kind of culture embodying a revolution - and I mean Revolution - in thought and action, but also a new mode of Production, New forms of social Organization, new forces of Production that brought these about. There is also a new personality, a new kind of world citizen, not considered since the dawn of the written word emerging before the birth of the City of Ur and the time of Gilgamesh. Man has in fact not undergone such a change in living in style and standards since he first put down his nomadic roots to plant corn and herd sheep. The differences in the way we are experiencing life from the way Karl Marx experienced life is that radical, and that unanticipated by Marx and Engel�s general reference to re-birth of communism and 'withering away of the state. That does not mean that as Thomas Hobbes anticipated John Locke, and Adam Smith anticipated Karl Marx, that Marx didn't anticipate what I am about to outline in detail to re-establish a 21st century understanding of the dialectic in History, and the evolution of change In the mind of Western Man.
Man established himself as an independent species, Homo Erectus, perhaps a million or two million years ago. And slowly though the Old Stone Age he began to mutate to a new form of existence amongst life�s abundance plenty - neither plant nor animal. Throughout an Epoch of Anarchy man evolved through the Old and New Stone Ages down to the Age of Bronze - these Ages dictating the ��mode of Production�� epitomized by Marx and Engel�s and by which process dictated the kind of Matriarchal culture infant man evolved - independent of all other life forms, plant or animal. And that established him for the long walk from prehistory to the historical dialectic. Man probably would not have evolved beyond this point, with the advent of cave dwellings, pictographs, and a Stonehenge on occasion, had not he evolved the Dawn of Trade. The Process of trade accompanying the Birth of the Bronze Age which heralded a decline in the Matriarchal order and the shift amongst advanced primitive societies to a Patriarchal order. Primitive man having established organization for gathering herbs, proving shelter, and a rude language of sorts prior, now moving beyond, to the use of tools: fishing and fire, bow and arrow and cloths. These advances collectively signaling the end of matriarchal culture with a new form of social organization of Savagery and the beginning of territorial struggles and basic, or primitive, communism.
This brought an end to the Epoch of Anarchy and evolved the Epoch of the Entrepreneur and leader/follower motif under which sway we have been living until the last century and whose remaining story of evolution will unfold for the advent of the Epoch of the Collaborators - the Third, and perhaps, final chapter in the evolution of historic man. With such an Epoch lasting from 10,000 to 100,000 years ahead of us, before man as a being re-establishes his compatibility with nature and the mind that was created by the advent of the tool, thereby assuming a compatible role in the ecology of life, restored.
That I can be sure of such an outcome resides in my understanding and interpretation of the birth, rise, and demise of the Epoch of the Entrepreneur, upon which end I am sure we are witnessing, and whose evolutionary death throws I am confident will bring about the ��New Age�� prophesized under somewhat different language and terms, by Marx and Engel�s. Man walks on two legs. The Dialectic of change in the story of Man residing in the interacting of the Mode of Production with a particular �type� of culture, creating in their turn different forms of social organization, forces of production, and evolution of time from one Epoch to the next in mans story of evolution. Not all members in the family of man have evolved at the same pace, but certainly , as a comment on WW Rostow�s �Stages of Growth Theory� - from a much larger stage of historical change the society of man as the rise and fall of civilizations must precede in similar form through the following scenario, or create some appendage there to. Rostow, for his part were probably a false prophet in the annals of Western thought, and yet if he had accepted much of what is to follow, would have made an equally compelling and lasting accomplishment with Marx and Engel�s.
The communal organization of Savagery now giving way to a more sophisticated �Barbarianism� with the advent of the Iron Age, typified by forces of production including: Pottery, agriculture, and crafting iron itself. The social struggle changing from that based on tribalism and survival to a more sophisticate level of subsistence. This evolved into a new type of culture: Servitude, creating slave societies typified by forces of production including: The walled city, the privative machine, and �world� (as it was known) trade. The social struggle was over obedience, and the outcome led to the dawn of Wage labour. The contribution to man of the entrepreneur through this exchange beginning the end of primordial anarchy. This new form of social organization became Feudalism, typified its day by the wind mill and wind power the clock and a guild form of division of Labour. It was marked by a new mode of production, the Steel Age, and ushered in a new type of Culture � Capitalism. Capitalism brought with it a new form of social organization, Nationalism (And it is here in his dialectic that Marx seems to confuse social organization with cultural organization � which I correct herewith.) Nationalism, the first and ascending phase of Capitalism is typified by forces of production including: The Scientific Method, the factory system, and the steam engine as a force of energy. The struggle, unlike the struggle in feudalism for security, now brought an emphasis on sheer size, leading to global conquest and what is known as globalization (the declining phase of capitalism) and the beginning of a new Epoch � that of the �collaborator.� The struggle within globalization is speed itself. Typified by forces of production including: bureaucratic control, the airplane, and the internet. Birthed by the new mode of Production � unknown to Marx � the Electronic Age � and its resolution with space age technocracy and the battle between science and religion�faith vs. fact to eventually spell the end of capitalism. But unlike Marx eminent anticipation, I find the path lies through the entire next 10,000 year Epoch whose origins have just started. Team effort being the watch word of this new, and third, Epoch in the character of man. Its next form of Social organization probably being �Atomic� as this era is brought on by the next changes in the mode of production � the Electronic age. Where the essential struggle is over one's very identity itself, and contrasted with forces of production as Interplanetary travel and biogenetic engineering on a large scale. This new form of social organization, the Atomic, will eventually spell the end of class warfare with a single payer wage system, common world currency, and a Council of World Association replacing the Nation/ State. And yet this all may lie centuries if not a millennium in the future. Marx prophesies of the withering away of the (Nation)/State and advent of global communism eventually being fulfilled. But to get there you must start where you are. This last phase bringing a resurgence of the return to the Matriarchal culture spanning the next millennium, Man eventually becoming so sedentary as to exchange only knowledge rather than products in a state of super abundance from accumulated capital. Physical trade may cease, and travel itself become an anomaly moving into a new form of �Dark� Age awaiting the re-awakening of exchange for its own sake � possibly founded on another phase of servitude. And so the process begins again. Perhaps this time as a caste system not unlike that which ruled India for millennia.Or as discussed in Huxley's "Brave New World." Surely looking back on the path man has made in material comfort he is clearly evolutionary speaking still in his adolescence. A mature being not emerging until the fulfillment of the matriarchal phase and end of youths�, and man�s fascination with property. A concept that will not prove down until the world is prosperous enough and the individual secure enough, that it no longer matters. From my analysis it appears something like that foretold by Marx is inevitably gong to take place. But my estimate is its process requires hundreds if not thousands of years � not decades or a century or two. The world bring too complex, mankind at this juncture too diverse and divided, to bring about the equality and fraternity, the justice and security that are required of all mankind to evolve the remaining evolutionary changes that Marx thought he foresaw with such clarity and brilliance. Time meant nothing to Marx, a scholar devoting his entire lifetime to the esoteric and abstract study of processes and possibilities - of little interest to all but a handful of authorities. But time taken at the tide, requires the deft evolutionary realization of change in man�s heart, as well as his mind, and that , like culture itself is a slow and stubborn potent. Marx having been walking on one leg, omitting it is the 'interface' of man with the tool that creates civilization. Not the tool alone. And that it is the feedback relationship between the mind of man and the tool he posses that creates change. It is said in Alcoholics Anonymous that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That idea is reflected in this study. There are just so many variables in the matrix of history � and no more. And in any case, it remains �if you do what you did, you�ll get what you got.� Meaning without change in attitude toward the tool or the expectations in your mind toward the tool, things will pretty much go unchanged - Global Warming, overpopulation, or disposal of waste and pollution � not withstanding. �May Man Prevail� Eric Fromm wrote decades ago under the shadow of nuclear arms and the Cold War. For Mankind has averted the brink of disaster more than once in the last hundred years, and may, given world wide resources, withstand the collapse of Capitalism more certainly than it withstood the end of servitude with the Collapse of the Roman Empire and a thousand years of persecution and inquisition. And then again, he may as Thomas Malthus predicted in his �Theory of Populations� be left in the wave of indecision and uncertainty by leaving the world calamity by default, and thereby suffer many billions of peoples an inglorious and unenviable end � making Hitler�s Concentration Camps and Stalin�s Gulag but unimpressive forerunners of what is to come. I am in any case, given my methodology herewith, certain of a solution. Welcomed by all, or despised by most. CHART : THE HISTORICAL DIALECT ILLUSTRATED Type culture Social Organization struggle Mode of Production� EPOCH OF ISOLATION Homo Erectus Cro-Magnum Man Old Stone Age New Stone Age Matriarchal - Anarchy - Superstition Cave Dwellings P Pictographs Stone Henge DAWN OF EXCHANGE Primitive - Survival - Bronze Age Herb Gathering Primitive Shelters Organized language Communism - Savagery - Tribalism Fish and Fire Bow and Arrow Clothing EPOCH OF ENTREPRENUER - Barbarianism - Subsistence - Iron Age Pottery Agriculture Crafting Iron Servitude - Slavery - Obedience Walled City Primitive Machine �World Trade� DAWN OF WAGE LABOUR Feudalism - Security - Steel Age Wind Power/Wind Mill Clock Division of Labour Capitalism - Nationalism - Size Scientific Method Factory Steam Engine EPOCH OF THE COLLABORATOR - Globalization - Speed - Electronic Age Bureaucratic Control Airplane Internet Matriarchal II (?) - Atomic - Identity Interplanetary Travel World Government Biogenetic Engineering DAWN OF CONSCIOUSNESS - Syndicalism - The Soul - Knowledge Age Classless society Single Payer Wage Council of World Associations Communism II (?) � Dictatorship / Proletariat - The �Super� Man Universal Tolerance Universal Faith Universal Rights EPOCH OF THE JEDI KNIGHT - Absolutism - Trust - Spiritual Age Telepathic Communication Holistic Healing Transubstantiation Servitude II (?) - God Head - Sharing Property less Communal Monastic BIBLIOGRAPHY Barron, Paul, �Political Economy of Growth.� Covered much of the details for the �Capitalist phase� of the insight in culture. Bober, MM, �Karl Marx�s Interpretation of History,� The starting point for my reconsiderationof the Dialectic. Cavanagh, John, and Jerry Manader eds. �Alternatives to Economic Globalization.� 2nd Ed. (Berret=Koehler, 2004) Insightfuyl beginning for this paper and process for a selection of a topic. El Fisgon, �How to succeed at Globalization,� (Metropolitan/ Henry Holt, 2003) Provided fruitful discussion for insights in the process of this paper. Engels, Frederich, �The Family, Private Property and the State.� The prime source for my understanding of the epoch of Isolation and later periods. Huxley, Aldus, "Brave New World" Suggests the Final Solution to man's struggle which I look upon with regard. Lucas, George, "Star War's" Trilogy (film) A conclusion to the evolution of man, that in some respects I find quite plausible. More, Thomas, �Utopia.� Provided suggestions for the conclusion of my work Ortega y Gasset, �History as a System,� Excellent insight into the �State of Nature� and Early social contract. WW.Rostow, �Stages of Growth Theory,� Formed a pattern, with Engels, for the kind of Dialectic I wanted to undertake.
RESURGENCE OF THE INDIVIDUAL By Tim Fitzgerald
Dilehey re-establishes the role of the individual in his concept of human studies challenging Hegel. In his mind-centered process of uniting experience, knowledge and understanding, he asserts history is a science, that has unique fundamentals separate from the hard sciences. Repeatedly asserting Point of View (POV) as essential to developing intelligent knowledge about the human studies Dilehey distinguishes between hard sciences and human studies in that in the accepted generation of general laws from the sciences, one is limited in his Point of View; whereas in human studies and history Point of View (POV) can assume many different perspectives. This generates individual concepts in a life of the mind that contribute to the co-operative association of the community, broadening and enriching our concept of life and living. Dilehey stating that the mind-constructed world being conceived creates a general outlook or point of view unique to culture, political institutions, and the Epoch the subject concerns.
This many-sidedness creates connections by which the historian can generalize about man�s condition through empathy and self knowledge of what it means to be human. Stressing the interdependency of this knowledge, he focuses on the individuality of what it means to be human. Exponding on the experience of our present-mindedness, Dilehey explains the nature of time in human studies, a factor that does not exist in the �hard� sciences and makes the study of man a unique science with characteristics that differ from other studies. From this he argues the rightness of Thucydides statement that man can learn from history and develop certain patterns of events historians can recognize and for which should be the subject of historical study.
THE DAWNING OF SELF-GOVERNING INSTITUTIONS - CULTURAL LIMITS AND THE PROSPECTS FOR MAN By Timothy Fitzgerald
CHAPTER ONE : WE THINK, THEREFORE WE ARE.
Economics, like the other Social Sciences, is about time and how we spend it. Whether a thought (Psychology); an action (History); form of Organization (Sociology); Life Style (Anthropology); Learning (Education); Leadership (Political Science); or Standard of Living (Economics) the Social Sciences are all about time and the way man uses it on earth in his lifetime. And these are the characteristics that distinguish him from other animals and all other forms of existence.
?? The standard of living in society as measured by economics is determined primarily by the values we experience in our culture, what we know about it and ourselves, and the misery we go through in sustaining and experiencing those processes. And so life existence itself is an experience to be lived, a process to be contemplated and a feeling to become attuned to. As a result our culture, our experience is limited only by our imagination and initiative ?the bounding parameters to fulfilling life�s promise and the God given liberty that comes with being human and destine to live.
?? That awareness providing the filter through which we see God�s plan and our purpose in the creation ?or fail to see it.?How we allocate that time, dividing our energies between socially desirable productive or non-productive functions will determine much of the life style our culture offers us. Whether for good or bad, whether our actions are judged right or wrong, whether we see the glass half empty or half full.
?? The Mode of Production may determine the nature of society, but the culture determines the limits of how far that change will go. The West has embarked on a course of political expediency that threatens to engulf the planet in a conflagration of epic proportions as a test of wills brings the cultures and civilizations of the world to a titanic struggle of unimaginable consequences.?Western man has plunged head long into their quest for bounty and plunder, oblivious to the concerns of the rest of the planet. - thereby earning them the endearing animosity of most of the entire globe. Now they must reckon with the consequences.
?? Is it yet possible, through the existing efforts at democratic systems to change our course and alter the fate of mankind, all life, and the hope of the creation? Is there a �third way?a path lying between being and non-being, a common ground both east and west can accept as a foundation for world civilization??And can the West in its plunge toward abundance, set aside its medieval material foundations, finding another road to pursue its happiness ?a path embraced by both East and West, Industrial and developing worlds alike?
?? Has Corporate Organization poisoned the waters for fair and just treatment of citizens in our society? And can the world be made safe for democracy and is it for that purpose or Corporate Profiteering? Must we now deconstruct Western Dogma to realize our hopes for an abundant and resourceful world in light of our own ambitions and objectives about to clash in the halls of Political Discourse ?if not upon the field of battle? These will be the objectives of my Thesis and accompanying studies in course work ?a review of Western Social Ethic, its origins, evolution and application to world society and global community today.
?? In an age in which access is everything, can it make up for the economic roller coaster of surplus and demise? (Norm Chomsky) Most often nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. Surely the ideas that gave birth to Merchant Capitalism and Parliamentary Democracy in England during the age of Reason had a dominant impact on our own young nation as it groped for rationale in its founding and thereafter (See Paine, common Sense, and Madison and Hamilton, the Federalist Papers)
???But now, Modern America, on the threshold of globalizing its social, political, and economic ethos world wide is deeply dependent on this hand full of thinkers for the rationale of its daily domestic and international policy. - a policy that seems with the dawning of each new day more convoluted, contrived, and misplaced than the day before. (See Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader and Al Gore)?Has our reach exceeded our grasp, and could we have been misled by the original thinking at the dawn of another, prior, phase of globalization with the discovery of the New World - and the impact that had on the accompanying Protestant Reformation in formulation of modern Europe?
???Progress remains �the issue?over which the minds of the people strain.?It long been established by thinkers like Max Weber and RH Tawny that the faith the West placed in the intrinsic value of labour, hard effort, and perseverance would be rewarded in this life if not the next, and, that that faith provided the underpinning of Jefferson�s United States of America and the iron will of conquest that brought it into being over the prior two or three centuries. (Weber) But what can we ground society's values upon, if the family is to become marginalized for pursuit of the factory whistle and time clock, for labour economics bordering on wage slavery itself.
?? Have we not forsaken the purposes of self-government in doing so? (Family, Private Property and the State). The foundations of our national institutions, economic and political, are based on contradictory values and beliefs. Cultures are limited by those values and beliefs. But they can not eliminate conflict until they work out the inconsistency and contradictions. Marx said as much from another point of view. Would it still matter if we were not bound by religious, institutional, and national boundaries.?Does the �mode of production determine the nature of society?or has it rather been the creative genius of the mind of man? Does the Mode of Production determine the nature of society, or does the culture it bears determine limits? (Freud)
???The geo-political boundaries set by the experience of colonization and mercantile systems, Institutions and man have kept us prisoners to our soul, our minds, and our future. We cannot abide by the straight jacket of the past. Revolution to Western thinking is on the horizon dawning in the homes and camps of the Third world.?Is that part of the package of wants we are promised we would receive in our economics 1A class? And is it keeping with Maslow�s Hierarchy of Needs?
???Tradition, norms and habit change slowly, whereas the mind, the imagination and the idea move in lightening speed in quantum leaps. Each new �nation?founded on an existing culture ?as all nations must ?only to come to grips with the more formidable limitations of resources human and material, posing serious setbacks in taking their place as equals amongst their peers in the International Arena. (Club of Rome Report, Social Limits on Growth)
???The highest value in existence is Life itself. To paraphrased John Dewey: �All life educates, and formal education is only a small part of the development of the personality.?It follows that Man is a learning species. That this �life time of learning?is one of the characteristics that separate him from the Beasts. How should we live that life of learning? Surely, if one is not learning he/she is falling short of your true potential. For in order to arrive at true understanding, one must experience knowledge in an intimate and personal way. It following that life is not a subject to be studied, but a journey to be experienced.
?? What are we trying to learn? Are we not trying to understand our self? We are striving to know ourselves, even as we know all others and all life. To come to that higher consciousness of wisdom, by interacting with other human beings, and live a self-actualized existence. It follows that to accomplish these goals, we must live co-operatively, sharing our thoughts and actions with others who do likewise. That to stoop to competitivism and conflict nullifies our objectives and destroys our ability to achieve our goals.
?? And what have we learned? We have learned we could kill passionately, love passionately, and dream passionately. That we are a feeling, restless spirit that knows little peace but our own fulfillment and successive accomplishments. Who dwells on the possibilities of radical change, and yet seeks structure and stability in our daily existence.? The act of release from pent up emotion forms the foundation for creative destruction and the cognitive dissonance of genius. Though our life may depend on the survival of another life; it is the ultimate epiphany in life to experience the thrill of pure joy, tempered by a health dose of pensive sorrow
???This drive for order, leads to a sort of cognitive dissonance within ourselves, yielding to our impulsive instincts and creative drives, but yet frustrated deeply by the limits others impose in their communities, societies and civilizations. This torment leads to an anguish and angst that drives us to reconcile in within our private habits, those habits leading to a sense of direction and purpose from which all history eventually flows ?within us all.
???We are all alike, and like other people who have ever lived, predating Homo Sapiens to their point of origins - known their fears, their wants their needs, and through them know all life and life forms. We are a deeply pensive and spiritual species that senses even before it knows, and knows before it speaks. Yet we must acknowledge we may be a barrier to this consciousness within ourselves,?if we withdraw our attention from immediate circumstances for reflection ?though reflection is essential for growth. Yes, knowledge is Power, but it is yet tyrannical to abuse the privilege of power for self interests.
???An ambitious spirit, and a persevering one, man is not put off by simple adversity, but he may after repeated efforts, decide the goal is not �worth the whistle?and turn his attention to other demands and interests, possibly never to return to that original contest in the same determined spirit that he once did. And he still is a free being, often adrift in his own affairs - engaged in the enterprise of living, and charged with the duty to fulfill Gods plan by spending his time on earth in a useful and productive manner, subject to the limitations of the day, and the understandings of his fellow men.
?? Primordial pre-historic cultures may have walked this path of liberty, to have pursued happiness as a stranger in paradise, but was that �life?and could you call that living? (Guns, Germs and Steel)?In the decades ahead we may ponder those thoughts - that we now have that leisure reclaimed.
???Most of our ideas establishing all our major institutions in the United States, regardless of our multi-culturalism, come almost exclusively from Western Europe. Much of that continues today, based on a globalized world community, dependant on media broadcasts and world markets that would make Alexander the Great envious of our privilege. And privilege it is, as long as poverty pockets in Third World societies old and new remain docile and ambivalent toward Post Industrial fate. But in an age in which access is everything, can that?make up for the economic roller coaster of surplus and demise? (Norm Chomsky)
???Yet, it was the creative mind, the learned intellect that first felt the handicap and limitation of the ruling elite in mercantile times. And it was to this dilemma that the Philosophes applied their knowledge, embracing Newtonian mechanics as the metaphor for life. But as products of their times, had they the foresight to see what lay ahead? We know they did not all agree on either the objectives or the outcomes.
???It remained a point of dispute whether capitalism or socialism were the best form of organization to achieve these democratic ideals throughout the 19th century - the world in the last five hundred years having been mapped, re-settled, divided and governed, as a result of the profound discovery of the New World and re-opening trade with the Indies. (Hegel)?At that time, Thomas More had asked, �can we do better?in his short �Utopia?and thinkers have puzzled over that question ever since. The Nation / State really just a fiction to mobilize the populace for the glory of the sovereign and ruling elite, it did not in fact exist prior to the founding of the New world or there about.
???So we come to ask, was all the blood shed on all the fields of battle worth the whistle, or was it as Shakespeare had it �sound and fury, signifying nothing? Each nation /State bending its efforts to provide in these post modern times for the growth of the populace, and enrichment of the masses; but alas, all is not as Marx suggested, �From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.?Yet a consciousness must be developed for progress, as all cultural ethos determine the parameters of social growth (Gramsci).
???We are in fact going through a �sea change?of differences, and we are not only on the threshold of a new kind of culture embodying a revolution -?meaning Revolution in thought and action - but also a new mode of Production, New forms of social Organization, new forces of Production that brought these about. There is also a new personality, a new kind of world citizen, not considered since the dawn of the written word emerging before the birth of the City of Ur and the time of Gilgamesh
????CHAPTER TWO : THE HISTORICAL?DIALECTIC RECONFIGURED
?? Great expectations determine our moods and feelings, governing our attitudes toward life itself. Whether the glass is 'half empty' or half full, whether we have succeeded or failed, whether in fact we are happy or sad, is largely determined by how we gage life against our expectations. Much of the debate, for instance, over the merits of globalization stem from our expectations toward the 21st century. Particularly by what thinkers like Karl Marx, Fredrick Engels, even Herbert Spencer have told us the future holds forth, and what we may expect in this life that we may treasure for ourselves and each other.
?? That, and not the particulars of events unanticipated by these thinkers - namely global warming, over population, and world wide waste and pollution - we were told were what the recent battle between capitalism and communism in the 'Cold War' was all about. As Shakespeare commented, "Wherefore art thou, Romeo," and why hasn't our 'victory' over despotism ushered in the 'new world order' as we imagined?
???To begin with, those expectations were outlined over 150 years ago, a long time in the span of modern memory, given today's rate of change. But the rate of change contemporary to Karl Marx and his own life time, particularly for Western man, has moved quantum leaps?beyond the 'Satanic Mills' of EP Thompson, and the Corporate stock jobbers of Engle's period.
???Capitalism has birthed globalization - not the communist Utopia predicted by Marx. But was Marx wrong because he created faulty expectations? Perhaps not, and as a former neo-Marxist seeped in the method of the historical dialectic, let's take a moment to put our present crisis in the context of historical evolution. To examine with considerable modification, the dialectic Marx endeavourer to establish against modern scholarship and contemporary thought. First off, there is probably nothing wrong with Marx evolutionary analysis mankind, in the broadest speaking of general terms it has moved through. Four types of culture. And these cultural types have evolved specific forms of social organization initiated by the establishing Ages in the Mode of Production.
???Admittedly this is taking the narrow interpretation of the impact Production techniques had on mankind, but it may prove the most useful. These cultural types, largely recognized today, have been from the Matriarchal, to the Communistic, to Servile, to Capitalist forms of broad cultural norms and ideas. And it might be argued the process of evolutionary (Not Revolutionary) change is its re-establishment of Matriarchal culture in the next Millennium. But there is more than that revolution to a matriarchal / Communistic (to acknowledge Karl Marx's contribution) going on here.
???We are in fact going through a 'sea change' of differences. Man has in fact not undergone such a change in life style and standards since he first put down his nomadic roots to plant corn and herd sheep. The differences in the way we are experiencing life from the way Karl Marx experienced life is that radical, and that unanticipated by Marx and Engels in their general reference to re-birth of communism and 'withering away of the 'state''
???That does not mean however that we can not have an understanding of the dialectic in History, and the evolution of change in the mind of Western Man. Man established himself as an independent species, Homo Erectus, perhaps a million or two million years ago. And slowly though the Old Stone Age he began to mutate to a new form of existence amongst life�s abundance plenty - neither plant nor animal.
??Throughout an Epoch of Isolation man evolved through the Old and New Stone Ages down to the Age of Bronze - these Ages dictating the 'mode of Production'?epitomized by Marx and Engels and which processed dictated the kind of Matriarchal culture infant man evolved independent of all other life forms, plant or animal. That established him for the long walk from prehistory to the historical dialectic.
??? Man probably would not have evolved beyond this point, with the advent of cave dwellings, pictographs, and a Stonehenge on occasion, had not he evolved the Dawn of Trade. The Process of trade accompanying the Birth of the Bronze Age which heralded a decline in the Matriarchal order and the shift amongst advanced primitive societies to a Patriarchal order. Primitive man having established organization for gathering herbs, providing shelter, and a rude language of sorts prior, now moving beyond to the use of tools: fishing and fire, bow and arrow and cloths. These advances collectively signaling the end of matriarchal culture with a new form of social organization of Savagery and the beginning of territorial struggles and basic or primitive communism.
???? This brought an end to the Epoch of Community and evolved the Epoch of the Entrepreneur and leader/follower motif under which sway we have been living. the last century being the story of evolution unfolding for the advent of the Epoch of the Collaborators, the Third and perhaps final chapter in the evolution of historic man. Such an Epoch may last from 10,000 to 100,000 years ahead of us, before man as a being re-establishes his compatibility with nature and the mind that was created by the advent of the tool, thereby assuming a compatible role in the ecology of life, restored.
?? Such an outcome resides in my understanding and interpretation of the birth, rise, and demise of the Epoch of the Entrepreneur, which end?we are witnessing and whose evolutionary death throws will bring about the 'New Age' prophesized under somewhat different language and terms, by Marx and Engels. Man walks on two legs. The Dialectic of change in the story of Man resides in the interaction of a Mode of Production with a particular �type?of culture, creating in their turn different forms of social organization, forces of production, and evolution of time from one Epoch to the next in mans story of evolution.
??It is noted not all members in the family of man have evolved at the same pace, but certainly , as a comment of WW Rostow�s �Stages of Growth Theory?a much larger stage of historical change for society of man as the rise and fall of civilizations must precede in similar form through the following scenario - or create some appendage there to.?The communal organization of Savagery giving way to a more sophisticated �Barbarianism?with the advent of the Iron Age, typified by forces of production including: Pottery, agriculture, and crafting iron itself. The social struggle changing from that based on tribalism and survival to a more sophisticate level of subsistence.
??This evolved into a new type of culture: Servitude. Creating slave societies typified by forces of production including: The walled city, the privative machine, and �world?(as it was known) trade. The social struggle was over obedience and the outcome led to the dawn of Wage labour. The contribution of man to the entrepreneur through this exchange was the end of primordial anarchy. This new form of social organization became Feudalism, typified in its day by the wind mill and wind power, the clock, and a guild form of division of Labour. It was marked by a new mode of production, the Steel Age, and this ushered in a new type of Culture ?Capitalism.
???Capitalism brought with it a new form of social organization, Nationalism?Nationalism, that forms the ascending phase of Capitalism is typified by forces of production including: The Scientific Method, the factory system, and the steam engine as a force of energy. The struggle, unlike the struggle in feudalism for security, now brought an emphasis on sheer size, leading to global conquest and what is known as globalization (the declining phase of capitalism). Thus beginning a new Epoch ?that of the �collaborator.?
?? The struggle within globalization is speed itself. Typified by forces of production including: bureaucratic control, the airplane, and the internet. Birthed by the new mode of Production ?unknown to Marx ?the Electronic Age ?it holds resolution with space age technocracy and the battle between science and religion�faith vs. fact - eventually spelling the end of capitalism.
?? But unlike Marx eminent anticipation, the path of man lies through the entire next 10,000 year Epoch whose origins have just started. Team effort the watch word of this new and third Epoch in the character of man. Its next form of Social organization probably being �Atomic,?as this era is brought on by the next with changes in the mode of production ?the Electronic age. The essential struggle over one�s very identity itself, and contrasted with forces of production as Interplanetary travel and biogenetic engineering take on large scale
?? This new form of social organization, the Atomic, eventually spelling the end of class warfare with a single payer wage system, common world currency, and a Council of World Associations replacing the Nation/ State. Yet this all may lie centuries if not a millennium in the future. Marx prophesies of the withering away of the (Nation)/State and advent of global communism eventually being fulfilled. But to get there you must start where we are.
?? This last phase bringing a resurgence of the return to the Matriarchal culture - spanning the next millennium. Man eventually become too sedentary as to exchange only knowledge rather than products in a state of super abundance from his accumulated capital. Physical trade may cease, and travel itself become an anomaly, moving into a new form of �Dark?Age awaiting the re-awakening of exchange for its own sake ?possibly founded on another phase of servitude. And so the process begins again. Perhaps this time as a caste system not unlike that which ruled India for millennia.
?? Surely looking back on the path man has made in material comfort he is clearly, evolutionary speaking, still in his adolescence. A mature being not emerging until the fulfillment of the matriarchal phase and end of youths? and man�s, fascination with property. A concept that will not prove down until the world is prosperous enough and the individual secure enough that it no longer matters.
?? It appears something like that foretold by Marx is inevitably gong to take place. But its process requires hundreds if not thousands of years ?not decades or a century or two. The world is too complex, mankind at this juncture too diverse and divided, to bring about the equality and fraternity, the justice and security that are required of all mankind to evolve the remaining evolutionary changes Marx thought he foresaw with such clarity and brilliance.
?? It is said in Alcoholics Anonymous that the definition of insanity is doing the same th8ing over and over again and expecting different results. That idea is reflected in this study. There are just so many variables in the matrix of history ?and no more. In any case, it remains �if you do what you did, you�ll get what you got.? Meaning without change in attitude toward the tool or the expectations in your mind toward the tool, things will pretty much go unchanged?- Global Warming, overpopulation, or disposal of waste and pollution ?not withstanding.
?? Time meant nothing to Marx, a scholar devoting his entire lifetime to the esoteric and abstract study of processes?and possibilities of little interest to all but a handful of authorities. But time taken at the tide, requires the deft evolutionary realization of change in man�s heart, as well as his mind, and like culture itself, is a slow and stubborn potent. Marx walking on one leg, omitting it is the interface of man with the tool that creates civilization. Not the tool alone. And that it is the feedback relationship between the mind of man and the tool he posses that creates change.
?? May Man Prevail?Eric Fromm wrote decades ago under the shadow of nuclear arms and the Cold War. Yes, mankind has averted the brink of disaster more than once in the last hundred years, and may, given world wide resources, withstand the collapse of Capitalism more certainly than it withstood the end of servitude with the Collapse of the Roman Empire and a thousand years of persecution and inquisition.
?? And then again, he may as Thomas Malthus predicted in his �Theory of Populations?be left in the wave of indecision and uncertainty by leaving the world calamity to default,?and thereby suffer many billions of peoples an inglorious and unenviable end ?making Hitler�s Concentration Camps and Stalin�s Gulag but unimpressive forerunners of what is to come. In any case, we may be certain of a solution. Welcomed by all, or despised by most.
????????????CHAPTER THREE : WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT ?
?? Our very existence is inter-connected with all other existence everywhere, and we can appreciate our relationship with the world and the creation as an emotional and intellectual process, as well as experiential. Holding that God is the great �IS??the am that am. The eternal now and resonance and realization of life itself. This is knowable to those that inquire after it - possibly only with the attributes of a wisdom of a higher consciousness obtainable with study and diligence alone.
?? We can all attain such higher consciousness. It is probably even not a function of intelligence. For we have yet to learn there are solutions for every problem and answers for every question. That the Universe evolves from intelligible laws and is a manifestation of reason itself. That we are in life and part of the evolving process. That life is in us all. Where life is an experience to be understood, it is likewise an ongoing dialogue with itself and higher consciousness.
???Yet the tendency of society to put appearances ahead of substance and material acquisitions ahead of intrinsic values is most unsettling. Our communities think they can build and build and build like there is no end in sight, and reap the profits imposed on the consumer ad infinitum, but that begs the issue of limits even to a society as affluent as is the United States. But then, it is growing fact that the United States is based on war and aggression while preaching peace and prosperity. It being no surprise that the bourgeoisie Revolution of 1776 was promoted to instill liberty for the businessman and may the �buyer bewares.?
?? These are indeed times �that try men�s souls?as Thomas Paine put it over two hundred years ago and times haven�t changed much�and people haven�t either. In their endearing efforts to be the first revolutionaries to die in their own beds, the Founding Fathers forsook the objectives of self government outlined in Paine�s �Common Since?that motivated the adoption of the �Declaration of Independence? and ushered in a central government no less tyrannical than the one they declared war against in 1776.
?? War and Welfare have dominated the political scene in America for the last century, and it has won the undying gratitude of the conservative right and animosity of the liberal left to the point where dialogue has broken down. Civil society having disintegrated on the alter of private profits ahead of public welfare, and National security ahead of Social security.
?? We are committed to the goals of the nation as they were first uttered, not the professed objectives of the dominant party in power within the last thirty of so years of plutocracy and platitudes. The dream of the founders of the nation to grant sovereignty to the people not a select ruling oligarchy. A nation / state exists for the profit of the people, not the profit of corporations. Its existence is predicated upon its ability to liberate the individual from the daily task of servitude which mankind has opposed since the Walled City and the founding of agrarian labour, and that is subject to certain countervailing forces within the culture that will prevent excesses, and the unbridled ambition of a ruling elite.
???Every individual shouild give unceasingly toward Man�s projects with what they have to offer. Yet we may be reluctant to receive such graciousness in return and remain steadfastly self sufficient and independent to the degree circumstances allow. Believing that those standards don�t apply to others as we apply them to ourselves, putting our faith in leadership by example we welcome anyone else who gives as much of themselves as we try to do. We are all here to serve. There are no passengers on �faith ship?earth - all are members of the crew.?It follows that we treat each person equally with ourself, and believe all persons have the rights that we have shared.
?? Daily we willingly put such faith in others, and in the words and works of man. Believing in the even temperedness of man, and his good nature. As a result, above all. We must cherish trustworthiness and loyalty. Enjoying the endeavors man has set for himself, and believing in his good will ?holding his friendship a sacred trust even if we triage our activities by our own set of priorities while keeping an active agenda of �work in progress.?
?? It appears man is generally headed in a progressive manner, though he has sacrificed much of the spiritual nature of himself for the material wants that he thinks he needs to attain a degree of comfort and stability. Man is basically good, awaiting to unfold his essential potentialities. As do most others; we make the best of what God give us. And loose no sleep over the �if�s, and�s or but�s?of our experience with our existence. Most of us do not question the decisions made by prior generations, but strive to accept life as it comes and as it was presented to us.
??Yet man�s institutions have not been created out of divine inspiration, but most often in a hodge-podge pattern of expediency and urgency. This is an inferior way to create, and we must conclude the evil in men�s lives is due to the short comings in the design of his many subordinated institutions ?not in his heart. As a result we fail to achieve many of our own expectations in any event, as have others who have wrestled to achieve there own. But that success should be measured by our own standards or accomplishment not the reward, accolades or other recognition of others ?by their institutions or otherwise. Success being everybody�s baby but failure an orphan.
?? It follows nature abhors and vacuum and there is no dead time in our lives, and if we are not so engaged, we soon will be. We do not bore easily, and abhor idleness and sloth.?We can forgive foolishness, but have a low threshold of tolerance for �stupid.?
?? We often are given over to sacrificing the honest representation of facts for higher truths, and the revelation of deeper values for superficial appearances. Modern man believes punctuality is next to godliness, yet most people live by their own internal clock, and never found themselves out of place ?ever in society - because of it. Bureaucracy confounds us, and many abhor corporateness with a passion.
We do not at all like to be subject to forced labour in servitude for basic needs, and yet are probably workaholics our daily activity - often striving to achieve, yet taking little time for recreation and leisure.
?? We are fascinated by the history and story of man�s evolution. That he has survived almost in spite of himself. Believing the �Social Sciences?are at best a close approximation of mankind, man being free to determine the outcome of his life on earth. We find the world is a wondrous and mysterious place to behold. The works of nature all abound, leaving us with almost a skeptical of what it holds in promise. Taking nothing for granted or at face value, yet keenly interested in its deeper meanings and relationships.
?? Yes, we are all not given equal opportunity in life, but the world re-allocates choices to yield approximately equal access, and that provides us with at least a few chances to attain our deepest held goals. As a result, most not believe life is a �crap shoot?and that everything and everyone has a purpose and sense of direction, it remaining their responsibility to find it. Finding for everything that has an effect there is a cause, and for every response a stimulus.
?? Our culture and expectations are the determining limit to growth and barriers to change. We may be a servo-mechanism of our environment, but we did not create our surroundings so much as we were born into them. Taking mostly what we need - leaving our wants behind us. Our situation in life not so much a matter of choice as a matter of circumstances. Good and bad depending a lot on whose definition we are going by. Right and wrong implying an inherent error or evil.
?? To most of the world, abandon Property is public property, believing it is na�ve to leave a man hanging at the end of his rope?And like Shakespeare says, if you can�t be true to yourself, you can�t be true to anyone - there are always three positions you may take in any discourse. You may agree, you may disagree, or you may withhold a verdict until such time as you feel comfortable with the consequences.
???Conservatively, it is bad manners and uncivilized to rape and pillage the landscape and the peoples of the planet. It indicates one�s reach has exceeded his grasp and mitigates against our ability to take responsibility for our actions. The representation of the state, as the governing body of the society, in the form of the chief executive officer is everywhere the de jury spokesperson of the society itself ?but in most places the de facto authority to speak rests with the individual�s ability to command an audience.
???Correspondingly, each individual is left responsible for his /her situation though it often is not in according with his desires or choice. By default cooperative Endeavour resulting in unified action funded by the whole, but externalities are funded by the community itself. Sovereignty rests with the people only so long as government is maintained by consent of the governed ?or by civil society. Peace being essential to the soul, and yet confounding the spirit�s emotive realization.
???Citizens do not exist in an amorphous blob, but come with interests and views of class and groups. This is largely discounted, pointedly in some places by these proponents of �Public Choice??it offending that they propose blanket rules for all �individuals.?Knowing all to well Corporations are treated as legal entities and �persons?- hence with the same rights and privileges of a human being. The State as such, has become the sole legitimate recipient of the monopoly of violence. Without which there would be competing interests in geo-political control. The transnational Corporation being such a non-violent competitor of interests under the shield of the legal system of the civilization. That is frankly not what our Constitution was set up to defend. And it is in error that modern Multinational Corporations piggy back on the legal system developed for the individual in his relations with authority, equity, and justice.
???????? CHAPTER FOUR : THE KEYSIAN DIALECTIC
?? Human organization is usually messy. Whether capitalism or democracy, there is much subject to the human faults of fallibility. And we need not accept competition as �King?and all other forms of organization and objectives subordinate to that function. There can be no question one of the most fascinating inquiries in the social sciences has been �what drives the economic machine to greater standards of living and higher life style?
?? This has been the basis of Max Weber's search for the crucible that creates the entrepreneur in his 'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,' where he concluded that the ~{!.~}culture~{!/~} holds the key to economic prosperity and national growth. This had been until recently the accepted explanation for underdevelopment and industrialization as a whole.
?? Joseph Schumpeter builds on this paradigm with his studies in 'Economic Development' and his insistence in the importance of capital formulation for the entrepreneur to act upon. It has largely been the guiding dictum for Developmental Economists during the later half of the 20th Century.
?? A society does not create new opportunities from Institutional re-organization. Re-organization follows from the birth of new opportunities and the ambition of the entrepreneur to assume responsibility for a wider scope of activity. Modern scholarship omiting the key ingredient of where does the society instill values that make the profit motive motivating.
?? It remains to be proven that educational, social, and personal opportunities must be present in any society in order for the entrepreneur, however motivated to take action and become productive and prosperous. And yet to set these cultural attributes on the doorstep of �Institutions?begs the question - where is the incentive to take advantage of Institutional change.
?? In deed, the examples of Ancient Rome and Medieval Europe point in the exact opposite direction, and instill in the reader a sense of mystification over how Institutional change will create drive and ambition in the culturally impoverished societies of Africa and Latin America. Countries that do not follow the motif set by the Industrial West, and are unlikely to do so without radical change in their cultural beliefs and norms.
?? This society however, still functions under the objectives stated by the Full Employment Act of 1946 and as long as man suffers under the obligation of wage labour and that is the law of the land, we have not set price policy above human need.
?? Nietzsche had once advocated a similar view, in his �Beyond Good and Evil?that there are higher goals than those established in the beginning of the civilization under Plato and the Sophist. The �Ordo?thinkers who place order above all else citing the Weimar Republic as their base line for dysfunctional governmental performance having grossly exaggerated the situation. If dominate control lies with Multinationals in a very uncompetitive world, not with government action meant to act as a �countervailing power? where else are we to look for economic justice if not in the State. For the only recent alternative, emerging NGOs are far too weak, lacking both the power and the authority to take up the slack.
?? Recent research has brought this rule of thumb into question. Do their conclusions follow from their premises. Had they not, in the enthusiasm to defend economic freedom and private property not biased the results of their studies favorable to their hypothesis.
?? Surely, no one would argue from the Socialistic model that economic Growth follows from State ownership of the means of production after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. And yet to look at China, one cannot help but point out the dominant institutions of property and freedom under rule of law, were largely absent from that country both before and after the revolt at Tiananmen Square.
?? The goods and services, the opportunities and choices, the feelings and thoughts are provided by the way our culture is organized and the density of population that forms our social experience.?For a long, long time the culture of the West existed as a primitive agricultural organization, augmented by slavery and serfdom that provided servants to the masters who led Western society and provided for all a sense of direction and purpose.
?? But these Institutions of servitude were later replaced by wage labour and the productive genius of the machine, propelled by a money economy that functioned both as a means to facilitate life styles and standards of living as we have come to know them in modern life. Today, where once people were relieved not to think for themselves, they now freely accept the responsibilities and obligations that come with choices and opportunities of a sophisticated culture in an environment of freedom and liberty ?in the West.
?? These responsibilities come with them the miseries of failure and the despondency of vagrancy and dead time. But that is the function of our institutions that have evolved over millennia and supported by the vast majority of civilization as necessary to sustain our life style and said standard of living.
?? These Institutions themselves have taken on a life of their?own, to come to govern us much as the master governed the servant in times of antiquity ?to determine when we arise, where we spend our time and how and when - when we are at home, on the job, in school or merely putting in �leisure time.?And over the process to find utilization there have developed certain understandings as to the function and purpose of these formal and informal self governing institutions.
?? The customs and taboos that regulate these self governing systems or collection of institutions providing the sanctions and mores that proscribe their behavior and allow them to function.?But it is the actual interrelationship, the functioning integration of the primary factors of production: our educational system, monetary system, production function, level and skill of the population and the market mechanisms that distribute goods and services that we want to examine now.
?? For some time the character of these institutions have been examined and criticized by economists, throughout the West. And that permits us to summarize in the path first set out by John Maynard Keynes the functional limits these institutions impose on our society and culture and the productive possibilities that lie at our every opportunity.
?? In Keynes �General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money?he established a threshold of understanding in national stewardship? to which I would like to return in these studies. Where time is a final barrier, our money supply, productive capacity, Infrastructure, level of population growth, price system, and sophistication of our diverse markets for international exchange, facilitation of labour, and delivery of goods and services likewise determine instituti9oanly the limits on growth and the possibility and potential of society[s future.
?? Much as Keynes observed, the function of these institutions largely determining the health of the nation /state and the happiness of its people. None the less Keynes in describing a demand side economy largely argued the economics institutions would function in equilibrium and compatible with one another. Self adjusting for gluts, famine, depression and hyper inflation to keep prices and the population or laborer at an acceptable level thereby clearing the market and maintaining sustainability. Or at least that seemed to be what he was attempting to describe in his �General Theory.?
?? The key components of Keynes theory being the interest rate and its function in determining both Investment levels and liquidity or debt management in the product and money markets. But these are not the only markets or institutions that need be consulted to maintain equilibrium in the economy of the nation/ state.
?? There are also the labour market, resource markets (not necessarily the same thing) and balance of trade in the Supply side, as well as the General accumulation of cultural goods on the Demand side ?not to mention the existing infrastructure on educational accomplishments of a society. In this thesis we will for the first time since Launderer try to integrate these institutions into the economic matrix as a whole for a General Disequilibrium Model that takes into account most factors that upset the balance of the economy�s distribution and productive mechanisms.
?? In raising the specter of a national economy as a set of institutions, we do not mean to re-open the issue of 'Central Planning'. There is, of course a vast amount of 'planning' due at the Micro level, in corporate headquarters, and this new chart or mapping of the major institutional relationships, is not meant to bring on the specter of Central Planning - though it may suggest some policy changes in the decisions at the National level of Nation/ States. This would include possibly putting to rest the long held issue of Milton Friedman over the supply of Money and setting of interest rates by the Fed. Also the issue of Minimum wage and promotion of Educational opportunities should come to the foreground as matters of growth policy.
?? And with respects statements here about cultural limits to growth, these are meant in the areas of Educational level and real wages, and the possibilities of number of opportunity costs that are available on the level of individual choice, ect. Not the issue of the social costs of pollution, wastes, and overpopulation, which though these have received much attention in the last 30 years as to limits they might put on post-industrial growth, this analysis is much more focused on the limits from cultural diversity and its applicability to conditions Max Weber, to mention one such thinker, found as pre-conditions to economic growth and industrialization.
?? These later issues will give a much clearer view of the policy options for developing world and the course of action they must take to maximize there production possibilities, particularly as to the nature of substitution in the service industry, rather than the correspondent bilateral expansion in heavy industry or other post-industrially necessary infrastructure. That relative change in outlook, resulting in central decision processes in the choices of resource allocation and the use of scarce inputs for given outputs should make it much simpler for developing nations to find a role in the post modern world, and thereby maximize their productive energies and national purpose for the general welfare of their societies.
?? It being well established under neo-Keysianism that their is an equilibrium function between the Money and Product markets. As suggested by Launderer, their is a corresponding equilibrium function on the supply side in the Labour market This study will focus on seven sectors of the economy--which functions of their parameters, will dictate market equilibrium -- or 'dis' equilibrium -- throughout the entire economy.
?? Those sectors are: The established Product and Money sectors of the Demand side, plus the Capital sector, and on the supply side, The Labour sector, plus the allocation sector, Trade sector and educational sectors.
?? These each have four integrated parameters that determine their equilibrium relationships with the other sectors. Equilibrium functions between interest and GNP, between GNP and Prices - for the aggregate Supply and Demand Disequilibrium ?and between wages and population, and between wages and inflation. The independent variables of Investment, or Government spending, Money supply, Productivity measured in GNP, the Misery index measuring effective demand, and the Cost of Living index bringing all factors into an integrated whole.
SECTION FIVE: THE DAWN OF THE STATE
???First off, there is probably nothing wrong with Marx evolutionary analysis of mankind, in the broadest speaking of general terms Four types of culture have emerged. And these cultural types have evolved specific forms of social origination initiated by establishing Ages in the Mode of Production.
??? Admittedly this is taking the narrow interpretation of the impact Production techniques had on mankind, but it may prove the most useful. Was Plato right - were Democracy a greater folly than it was worth, and could man govern earth as God Governed his Kingdom in Heaven. (City of God) For the next two centuries after Hobbes the question was posed, �can Man govern himself, and at what price must society pay to give that much freedom to mankind.?(On Inequality)
???The alternative was to continue to live in the path of medieval theocracy and totalitarian nightmare of ignorance and doubt - feared by all of mankind, who thought as Chairman Mao said in his little RED Book, �Power comes from the barrel of a gun.?(Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic, The Leviathan)
?? Yet, it was the creative mind, the learned intellect that first felt the handicap and limitation of the ruling elite in mercantile times. But the machine has come of age, and the Deist beliefs of the founders that guided the nation away from the ideals of Rousseau and the Enlightenment to embrace the thinking of Montesquieu and the English Parliamentarians that led to their social compact found in the Federal Constitutions. (Montesquieu, Paine)
?? After all, Aristotle paved the way for social Organization to dominate other cultures, and societies, Tacitus and Marcus Aralias commented on the short comings of Imperial rule. Machiavelli railed over the dictates of a thousand year old theocracy that stifled creativity. (Aristotle, Tacitus) John Locke and JJ Rousseau argued for the good in man, not his weaknesses, to establish democratic ideals.
?? Today dozens of nations have entered into a social compact, a contract disseminating order and power from the body politic -ideas merely a glimmer in the eyes of a hand full of dreamers and philosophers a mere three or four hundred years ago. What did they intend for mankind? What hath God wrought ?and what could mankind do about it? No, these were not the first to envision an ordered and �free �society for their citizens. From the time of Socrates, and Solon duly established governments had been challenged with organizing society to reap the fortunes of the culture. (Utopia)
SECTION SIX: ROLE OF THE ENLIGHTENMNET ?RADICAL CHANGE
?? Was this world here and now envisioned by the design enunciated by Locke, Rousseau, and Smith? Is this the �City of God?that Augustine professed could not be reached in this world, but only in the next??And why isn�t it? We have followed that path some ways now, and it should be evident to all there has been an error in the delivery of our freedom to posterity that the global community requires the consensus from a Council of Nations.
?? It remaining a point of dispute whether capitalism or socialism were the best form of organization to achieve these democratic ideals throughout the 19th century - the world in the last five hundred years having been mapped, re-settled, divided and governed, as a result of the profound discovery of the New World and re-opening trade with the Indies. (Hegel)
??Karl Marx warned the West in �Das Capital?of the folly it pursued. Sigmund Freud struggled to free man of his boggy man of fear that cast the bondage of such Leviathans as England, France and Germany. Man now clings to the tenuous life raft of hope in his inventions, high tech theocracy, and new age quest for space, to solve a problem that can only be solved at its origins in the center of thinking past, not the creation of post modern/ post structural, ex-post serial living.
?? Yet Western man tries to escape his past even as he can not attain a future worthy in the name because of the tread mill of wage slavery and media dictatorship propelling tyranny and totalitarianism unworthy of him. Had we embraced the good in man, rather than the evil, from the cornerstone to the keystone we would have a very different society and global community. (Weber) And so man has come to doubt everything he once held true - to meditate on the causal relations between word and deed - between thought and word - the works of modern �Deconstructionists ?like Foucault residing between the lines and amongst the pages of time?(Foucault).
SECTION SIX ?SEVEN : CULTURAL LIMITS ?HUMAN AND PHYSICAL CAPITAL
???????? (omitted)
CONCLUSION: CULTURAL LIMITS
?? That we may repent at leisure the folly of conquest and submission - only to find all mankind now bent on that very project.?Was not all mankind born innocent? Good until he touched the structure of institutions. To what end does he strive? (Rousseau ?again)?All is sound and fury signifying nothing. Is that right? And would it still matter if we were not bound by religious, institutional, and national boundaries. Can we still find purpose in life itself, to continue on the treadmill of the pursuits of happiness and subsistence, if we set aside the time worn argument from predestination - and life in the hereafter??(Federalists Papers)
?? What price freedom and is that a sustainable goal or like fossil fuels, a ghost that merely teases mankind into daring ventures and listless looks?at a world he can not have ?but senses he once attained.? In the decades ahead we may ponder those thoughts - that we now have that leisure reclaimed. Perhaps, leaving the dawning contest between corporate entities and goals and life in the collective whole; between nationalism and wage/slavery; between affluence and the poverty stricken for another time and another generation.
?? May they do better?
?? There can be no escaping Robert Heilbroners conclusions in �An Inquiry into the Human Prospect?- that Industrial Capitalism and its socialist counterpart are obsolete. Written in 1974 long before �post-industrialism?became commonplace, he states �sustainable or steady state?economies must replace unlimited wants / unlimited growth of the Industrial mode of Production. (Heilbroner) Likewise, it is unlikely given the existing failures of democracy in the face of Industrial imperialism, for it to survive in its present form amongst a global economy and world community ? by the former power of sovereign nation / states.
???East and West need not be at odds. Their prime differences lying in the way they approach and solve conflict resolution. But 'deconstructing' all purpose in Western Thought, what is left to live for, if we reconcile ourselves to it BECOMING 'all sound and fury, signifying nothing.'?Yes, we can reduce the economic ideas of unlimited wants and scarcity, with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We can eliminate the law of Diminishing returns and Supply and Demand, by placing wants on a time / space continuum.
?? But what is left if given the perpetuation of gluts and famines of the business cycle - which our intellect tells us will continue indefinitely without National foresight ?but to 'charge what the market will bear,' thereby reducing capitalistic profits to a general exercise in usury, and permanently placing the burden of opulence on the backs of the underprivileged and disadvantaged.
???Is this the world we want to hand down to our children and our children's children? Have we lost all point in the contest for liberty and freedom, having surrendered our sovereignty to corporate dictates - bound by the chains of economic servitude? And can we wrest that freedom away from its institutional origins, without losing sight of the real test of reality that keeps us from the theater of the absurd and a life in hedonistic gluttony. (Al Gore) Surely, the state, of necessity must take a larger role in community organization, and leave the individual free to pursue his own calling liberated from the bondage of subsistence and subservience. May we �do better.?Ralph Nader)
?? I am indebted to the lectures of Ted Hamilton, of Columbia Community College for putting into perspective my disassociated views, and motivating me to take on the task, to Dennis Manning for grilling me on the importance of value and belief in the cornerstone of any culture. To the students at San Jose State in the late sixties who embarked on the expedition to find the source of authority and genius for self-government; and Dr Robert Clark, for convening a Commission, which I was associated with in pursuit of the freedom, and responsibility that comes with such self governing principles.
??This is the result of those studies.