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Mr. Farrar. I do not dispute your claims about those theorists nor do I identify your positions with Fascism. I have read enough of your comments to not make that mistake. Like them or not they gave birth to modern social theory. The good and the bad. I am saying that you are running in good company. My apology if it sounded more than th…
Mr. Farrar. I do not dispute your claims about those theorists nor do I identify your positions with Fascism. I have read enough of your comments to not make that mistake. Like them or not they gave birth to modern social theory. The good and the bad. I am saying that you are running in good company. My apology if it sounded more than that.
There is much more to be said about those men than in your reply. Weber claimed that because Calvinists believed God had preordained whether or not an individual was saved or condemned and no good deeds in this life could change that. They worked very hard to be personally successful because if they were, this would indicate to them that they were blessed by god. And this would indicate to all who was going to heaven (them) and who was condemned to hell. This would encourage the development of Capitalism, and Individualism said weber. This is his greatest contribution. I have briefly stated his major work highly summarized. Many offer it as an alternative to Marx. I think what you said about Calvinism aligns with Weber's claim. Weber was never in a position of power in the government. He was only an advisor who spent most of his life at Heidelberg, I think. In his college days he engaged in many drunken duals using blades and lived with what were considered honorable facial scars the rest of his days. He loved beer. You left out Durkheim. I do not know how you might view him. I know you do not align with Marx. Durkheim, Pareto and Weber were academic scholars. Marx was free-lance. Occasionally an editor. He read several languages. shortly before he died, he was studying general Chinese, as was Weber. He was financially supported most of his life by Engels who, as you pointed out, inherited wealth. Both Marx and Weber wanted to find out why Capitalism developed in the West, but not in China. Neither lived to do it. Although Marx did write enough to fill a large bookshelf.
Thanks Mr Dobbertin. I understand your previous comment now.
A couple of things, it wasn't just Engels that supported Marx, Engles did not have the resources to subsidize Marx profligacy, but it was the "League of Just Men" a collective of finance capitalists.
Marx held the same view as Alexander Hamilton and the dudes who wrote the Constitition, which American mythology have lionized and turned into demi gods,so much so that a book has been printed with their letters and arguments, and "capitalists" have created and sustained organizations, like the Federalist Society, to promote the ideation that the provenance of America and indeed civilization is rule of the elect.
To Marx, the enemy was the middle class, whom he called the bourgeoisie, he talked of labor as an oppressed proletiariat, and indeed it was, until workers organized into unions.
If the Marxists read with critical understanding, and I doubt that anyone who quotes Marx and Adam Smith, ever read their works (doing so requires a supply of toothpicks to keep the eyelids open), does not realize that he only talked about the bourgeoisie and proletariat and not at all about the ruling class,
It takes money to start a business, employ people and produce things that people will buy, and that is not capitalism.
Capital is money, a medium of exchange, Capitalism is not entrepreneurialism, Capitalism is simply the primacy of debt, aka finance capitalism, paradoxically the occupation of the League of Just Men.
What Marx had in mind as regards capitalism and the bourgeousie was Scrooge, and the textile manufacturers, and mine owners. Which is another pararox, because textile manufacturers, paid low wages and employed children to service the looms, a very dangerous job.
Here I confess that my 14th great grandfather founded a dynastry on woolery, from owning flocks of sheep, to waulking, fulling, dyeing and after Henry VII imposed a tariff on export of raw wool, to textile manufacturing, which cost the lives of two distant (very distant) cousins, who were murdered over the likes of damming a stream to operate a textile mill. . Wealthy enough to buy stock in the Virginia Company of London, and finance a third sons, voyage to Virginia to found his own dynastry.
Although this was two centuries before Marx, I am sure that my ancestors would be part of the bourgeoisie that he railed against, and in fact hired children to do jobs like waulking (which as treading on raw wool in tubs of urine, to purge the lanolin.
The Virginia Company, East India Company and all such monopolies were the creation of investors, (called adventurers of the time), who pooled their resources and petitioned the crown for a charter, by which to purse adventurers to bring in resources that would benefit England and the crown.
The purpose of the Virginia Company was to find gold and silver, but there was none to be found in the James River valley, and it almost folded after the starving time, when John Rolfe showed up with a purse full of Turkish tobacco seeds. and from there grew plantations.
These people weren't capitalists. That came later, with the industrial revolution.
The irony is that Marx would hold ind disdain, the very people who idolize him, and commit murder and crimes in his name,like the Bolsheviks and the radical leftists who plaque this country, in my book they are as bad as the MAGAts, but at least are diverse and eqalitarian in sentiment, but too fucking extreme, non thinking and ignorant. Bleeting sheep, just like the MAGAts.
And I am not a middle of the roader, moderate.
For instance, take reparations. I am for reparations in the form of government support for education and providing people who live in ghettos, decent homes, and encourage the movement of enterprises into communities to provide jobs that not only provide jobs, but
personal dignity, and healthy living, the idea of dropping shit loads of money onto people is preposterous and counter productive, we know all we need to know about human behavior and mentality, that showering people with money, only creates more civil and social problems, and people are fools, live in the moment, and run out waste money on useless shit, like Jewelry, expensive cars, furs and other trash. Then it's gone, and they are back where they started and this is irrespective or race or ethnicity.. humans are feckless and live in the moment, with no regard for the future. That's why humanity is in irrevocable deep shit today.
Mr. Farrar. I read The Federalist Papers years ago when I was still teaching. It was not entirely possible to understand them unless one reads the history of the period as well. And one must keep a copy of the Constitution right there on the desk next to the Federalist Papers. while reading them.
You are correct about reading THE WEALTH OF NATIONS by Adam Smith. His pin factory almost put me to sleep many afternoons. He used the phrase "The invisible hand of the market" only once, almost as a throwaway comment in all those hundreds of pages. Today's Economists (who serve the business community) have stretched out the meaning of the phrase way beyond what Smith meant, to the point where they are implying that he was saying what THEY want to say. Which is: the government should leave the "market" alone, not interfere with it and it will always make things work out for the best for us all in the end. That means no constraints on business, no regulations, no taxes. These Economists simply do not talk about how Smith spoke of how he was afraid of how unrestrained Capitalism could do great harm to all of us. They love his throwaway phrase "the invisible hand of the market."
As for "reparations" the damage which was done to Black people was too immense and thorough and too far in the past for there to be reparations. Dead people cannot be recompensed. They're dead. But their progeny can and should be given affirmative action, at least. I agree with you. What we should do is create the best possible institutions for guaranteeing all Americans "the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." I would change that to read "life, liberty and property." Which is what John Locke (from whom the phrase was borrowed) originally said. The many slave owners among the Founding Fathers were joined by conservative non-slave owners in their refusal to quote Lock accurately. So they said we have the right to try to be happy, to pursue happiness. But we have no right to be happy. They said there is no universal right to the property which they all knew is the thing that makes life easier, happier.
I see nothing wrong with affirmative action to help insure that Blacks women, and other minority groups among us are not left behind. Affirmative action is not "reparations" or a "quota System." Affirmative action only insures that members of minority groups will not be passed over and ignored. They will be included in the quest for happiness. They will be given a fair and equal shot at it.
Mr Dobbertin. I almost agree with you, and I do agree in pinciple., bit fee; a need to flesh out two things.
First, reading history. Most of the history that is available is written by people who have been inculcated on the semi official version. My knowledge of history has come about serendipitously, from bits and piece extracted from literature in the genealogical section of my personal library, and books like those of Howard Zinn. For instance there is
https://www.amazon.com/Intimate-American-Revolution-Pittsylvania-Virginia/dp/B01E1RQEW0, it is about Virginia as well as Pittsylvania County, and then there is Albion's Seed, Four British Folkways in America https://www.amazon.com/Albions-Seed-British-Folkways-cultural/dp/0195069056/ref=sr_1_1?crid=ZLSJF59WXFTR&keywords=albions+see&qid=1699109163&s=books&sprefix=albions+see%2Cstripbooks%2C246&sr=1-1
in Books like those one has to extract what appears to be extraneous facts, retain them and put them together.
As regards reparations. What I am arguing for is not money, because it will soon be wasted, that is what people do, especially people who are not accustomed to large sums falling in their lap. And besides, how does one define an American Descendant of Slaves.
Fiddler on Pantico Run was written by Joe Mozingo, a white man from California, who set out to find his roots. https://www.amazon.com/Fiddler-Pantico-Run-African-Descendants/dp/1451627483/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2LD7E7R9HP2XU&keywords=fiddler+on+pantico+run&qid=1699109374&s=books&sprefix=fiddler+on+pantico+run%2Cstripbooks%2C241&sr=1-1
And his surname is that of an Edward Mozingo, one of the 20 Africans who were sold as indentured servants on the Jamestown Quay in 1619 (Slavery did not come to Virginia until 1655, when a judge ruled that an indentured servant (John Casor) was the personal property of Anthony Johnson, him self black and a former indentured servant, and really legalized by the House of Burgess in 1661, which also legislated that the status of the child was determined by the status of the mother, and made illegal miscegenation.
Anyway, it turns out that Joe toured the country interviewing Mozingo's and found some who were proud members of the KKK, and there is this Judge in Alabama named Tony Mozingo. There is also a Mozingo YDNA surname project at familytreedna.com but the results are not published, unlike other DNA surnamed projects, as a lot of Mozingo's don't want others to know they are of African descent, but shower them with money, and I guarantee they will come out of the woodwork
There is another YDNA Surname Project, the Bass project, and it does publish it's YDNA results, and a good number of them are Haplogroup A, which is African, and a good portion of those are white, and I assume that a good portion if not most are white southerners and racists. One such posted on now defunct GenWeb, that he could't understand why his YDNA was African, Khoisan.
In the Farrar project there is an ADOS named Farrar, who was the 1st Deputy US Marshall in the state of Florida (now deceased) and a woman who used her fathers YDNA, but her fathers DNA is African, haplogroup E-M2, alas she has concocted a fantasy story that her 3rd or 4th great grandfather was the son of a love affair between a Samuel G Farrar and a slave named Fanny. Alas the Census shows that a there were two Samuel Farrars, living just miles from each other in 1870 and 1880, one was black and the other white., but she has her story and is invested in it.
So would these whites, including KKK members and white nationalists also get reparations? This is something that the champions of reparations don't address and completely ignore.
When I think of reparations, I think of the institutional and systemic racism, not just slavery, but so called reconstruction, the Tulsa Massacre, Jim Crow, red lining and the shit going on today.
Money thrown at it can't fix the problem, that this history of racism has caused, but we can invest in education, health care, nutrition for kids, not adults, housing and jobs. That's the reparations I am talking about.
Education is a big one, so is health care. Throughout the US Education is primarily funded by property taxes, and inner city property taxes are low, because we are taxed on value of the property, as a consequence too many schools, not just inner city, are underfunded and thus the kids are barely educated, in some cases they have problems reading and writing. Underfunded schools, means under educated teachers, crap teachers who don't belong in the job, lack of text books (not to mention banned books), no school supplies, no maintenance on schools
There is no solution to racism, there is racism even between African ethnicities (Rwanda, Hutsi's and Tutsi's, who can identify each other by stature and nose.
African slavery, who sold people to Portuguese and Spanish, chose tbeir victims on the basis of race/ethnicity. Tribal warfare, anywhere, is at root a clash of ethnic identities and racism.
Islam claims to be non racist, but tell that to the Africans, Asians who were and are (for all practical) purposes enslaved by Arabs,even today, thanks to modern laws and practices they go about enslavement with a little more finesse,like recruiting victims form lesser developed countries,especially in Asia, and confiscating their passports when they clear customs.
Since you can't solve racism, it is not a problem, because problems have solutions, so it is a difficultry and difficulties don't have solutions, try to solve a difficulty and you only create problems.
The deleterious effects of difficulties can be ameliorated and one way , in the case of sysemic and institutional racism, is removed the barriers that were erected to maintain the status quo, and you can do that by affirmative action, but also by improving the education, health care and employment of the people so longdisenfranchised, and targeting those areas, excluding those who have already risen up, and whites with a smidgeon of blood of a slaveis the place to start.
mr. Farrar I read Zinn's People's History back in the days when I was teaching. I then gave it to one of my kids to read. I bought a copy of Albion's Seed some years ago with the well meaning intention of reading it. But like many other projects it got lost on my bookshelves. I shall go looking for it. Thank you for the reminder.
I am old enough for my Grandfather to have told me about the Tulsa massacre ( I think he was born in 1882). But because he was a flaming racist, member of the Masons; he had the racist version of it in his head. Apparently there was a smaller version of it in Chicago, where he owned a saloon at the time. When I was older and read some history about the Masons, it made me ill to think some members of my family were in that organization. It apparently sprang up in England as a working man's version of the London men's clubs established for the wealthy aristos.