Historical imperative in the mind of Mohamed Hassanein Heikal

[editec]

Bugger.

I have to go back and read them again.

Big ask. I'm still reading vol 1 of Capital. But I will go back and do the Collected Works thing.

Bugger it.

I truly admire your grit for undertaking such a task, but unless you're planning on teaching poli-sci, I think you're wasting precious time you could devote to understanding the world as it exists today.

And if one truly wants to understand the world as it exists today, one must first understand the world as it existed yesterday.

Most political science theories end up being nothing more than the smokescreen behind which pragmatists hide while doing whatever the hell they think they must do at the moment to survive.

We can see how obviously this is true when we consider that Bush II, neo-cons' figurehead numbero uno, is in the process of socializing debts for people who claimed to be the captains of capitalism.

Now, Marx or Engles might think that that's the inevitable triumph of socialism over capitialism, but I think it's nothing more than the triumph of criminal classism over common cause common sense.

Did Marx or Engles imagine that we'd go from a capitalist industrialized world to a post industrial miscommunication society?

No, of course they didn't. Nobody could possible have known what our world would be like today in 1900.

Did they note that the probably outcome of this system is a form of neofeudalism masquarading as a world wide form of free market capitalist system?

No.

But that is likely where this world is headed. Now, notice I say, likely?

That's because I know that fate will flick its fickle finger, and leave us all breathless from whatever new development that absolutely NOBODY could have foreseen, which will be the next event that will dramatically change our collective fates.

Reality is just too damned unpredictable for any of us to assume there are historical imperitives guiding mankind from one collective fate or the other.

Thank GOD for that, too.

 

[Diuretic]

The funny thing is that the more I read of Marx and Engels the better I understand today.

Weird eh?

 

[yahia]

I believe that the inevitable link between the historical and socialist \ form a non-Mntvi
This is another example of the imperative is far from Algstrakip is that the liberation movements in the world have a political and military wings are often bolt from the political wing of these provisions is always comparative studies of international relations in the future depends very
I think that the inevitable link between the historical and political realism is the correct Allowafiep Socialism is not because there are a lot of Allowafiein capitalists such as Henry Kissinger and George Hans Morgnto matrix and many others.

 

[Diuretic]

I think things are shaking out right now. There is a massive crisis in capitalism in the world right now. In my untutored view if the current effort is to replace what went before then that is a huge mistake. This crisis had to happen. It is a flushing out of rubbish. Now we must move forwards. Unregulated capitalism has failed.

 

[editec]

The funny thing is that the more I read of Marx and Engels the better I understand today.

Weird eh?

No, not wierd at all.

They were good scholars who understood their world and the history which brought them into their age rather well.

I'm certainly not dismissing everything they thought as irrelevant.

I am merely dismissing their idea of historical impertivism as a mistaken notion based on their Newtonian physics view of the universe.

The belief that if one knows all causes and one can predict all effects is a quaint notion that one gets from thinking that this is a simple mechanistic universe.

Even Einstien who thought : "God doesn't play dice with the universe" began to see that, in fact, God does precisely that.

 

[Sunni Man]

This crisis had to happen. It is a flushing out of rubbish. Now we must move forwards. Unregulated capitalism has failed.

What makes you keep using the word "forward"?

You act as though there is a goal or finish line, and mankind is involved in some kind of linear historical progression

 

[editec]

I believe that the inevitable link between the historical and socialist \ form a non-Mntvi
This is another example of the imperative is far from Algstrakip is that the liberation movements in the world have a political and military wings are often bolt from the political wing of these provisions is always comparative studies of international relations in the future depends very
I think that the inevitable link between the historical and political realism is the correct Allowafiep Socialism is not because there are a lot of Allowafiein capitalists such as Henry Kissinger and George Hans Morgnto matrix and many others.

If I get the basic meqaning of the above, it sounds to me like you're making the case that, given the leadership of this nation, their attitudes and beliefs, America was bound to become an imperialistic nation, one which people the world round would inevitably fight against.

I don't think that's stretching cause and effect too much, and am inclined to agree (if that was really your point).

Great (as in powerful, I mean) nations become great by expanding their domains.

The USA in that respect is really not all that different than any other Empire building entitity.

And the fact that other cultures inevitably fight back against that intrusion into their realm is, I think not only natural, but a healthy response to Empire.

Americans have been having an internal battle with itself over how we should conduct ourselves in relationship to the rest of the world.

There have ALWAYS been American who oppossed this nation's imperialistic tendencies.

Most noteably, starting with the Spanish American War, Americans took exception with any move to take over lands that we had no intention of making part of the USA, as in for example when we took over Cuba, and the Phillipines.

Unlike our British cousins, whose colonies once stretched around the globe, Americans simply do not make effective colonialists.

For one thing so few Americans ever learn to speak a foreign tongue that when we do find ourselves in charge of non-English speaking populations, we haven't a clue what those people are about, what they need, or why they can't stand having us in charge of their lives.

If I really had to describe the American Gestalt, I'd say that collectively we worship freedom beyond all else.

We worship it so blindly sometimes that we can convince plenty of Americans to go to war on behalf of other nations to secure THEIR FREEDOM -- even when those people are perfectly content with the system they have which looks to us like enslavement.

Some Americans, for example, think that we are going to dramatically change the mindset of Afghanistan.

We imagine that if we're there long enough we can turn that culture into a secular humanist society run by some form of democratic government.

I think that outcome highly unlikely.

I think all we will do is annoy the citizens of Afghanistan who will be passive agressive as long as we are there, and who will then turn their nation into whatever the hell kind of social/political system that they are most comfortable with the moment our troops leave that place.

 

[Truthmatters]

They were right, Marx and Engels I mean. So was Marx's teacher, Hegel, to a degree at least.

But they weren't proposing a grand unified theory of history, well I don't think they were anyway, I will be corrected on that. My understanding, which as I say could be terribly flawed, was that human progress depended on who owned the means of production.

And if you look back they had a point. Hegel had the thesis/synthesis/antithesis idea which I think from memory he might have borrowed from Aristotle but Marx and Engels made it contemporary (for them). They looked back at how the prevailing economic system drove a society and its social changes and figured that was the key. They borrowed, again I think, from the early socialists - St Simon and Owen in particular - and developed their own view of where humanity would and should go.

If you think about history and look at how economics have driven it then it does make sense.

Chuck in a bit of Kuhnian paradigm shift theory and have a look around and it looks like we might be in for an economic paradigm shift. If we move away from laissez-faire capitalism to a more socialistic model, as appears to be happening now and we don't regress, given the failure of the free and unregulated market model then we could be making another forward move in the Hegelian process.

Maybe.

This is my hope.

Im not edumacated enough to understand the various theories you people are speaking of but I do agree with the idea that those who control production control the conditions.

There is some enivibility to the course of history given the basic nature of humans. The balance of powers will always be tenuous. The only way we will find the balance of free markets and social programs is through constant weeding of the garden and wide eyed maintainence of our markets and governments. It will always be a rollercoaster in my belief. Man has a tendency to want to rest on their laurels after they fix something. To kick back and consider the job done. This job is never done and Im not sure man can consistantly be convienced of this in every situation. History and the understanding of it will become ever more important as man progresses. Im not sure man will always heed its lessons or even decipher them correctly.

 

[Diuretic]

What makes you keep using the word "forward"?

You act as though there is a goal or finish line, and mankind is involved in some kind of linear historical progression

I'm an etetrnal optimist!