What is 'political religion'? posted by lenin

Michael Löwy has a lovely article on Walter Benjamin and capitalism-as-religion in the latest issue of Historical Materialism. I strongly recommend you get yourself a copy. But what Löwy doesn't say is that the final stage of capitalist religion, according to Benjamin, is Satanism. This is from The Arcades Project, composed between 1927 and 1940:

On Satanism: "When the puritans at the Council of Constance complained of the dissolate lives of the popes ..., Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly thundered at them: 'Only the devil in person can still save the Catholic church, and you ask for angels.' In like manner, after the coup d'etat, the French bourgeoisie cried: Only the chief of the Society of December 10 can still save bourgeois society! Only theft can still save property! Only perjury can save religion! Only bastardy can save the family! Only disorder can save order!" Marx, Der achtzehnte Brumaire, ed. Rjazanov, p. 124.

>> ^imstellar28:
I do not enjoy nonfiction which requires faith, because the claims are so intellectually impotent they do not arouse in me any desire to see what the author has to say next. I can force myself through the 11 pages of 10th-grade-level writing from an online pundit such as Kangas, but why should I when the question has already been forcefully answered almost 82 years ago in 224 pages of masterful prose by a genius in the field?
I mean, here are both authors answering the same question:
http://mises.org/liberal/isec1.asp
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/ShortFAQ.htm#liberalism
Just compare the force of writing for yourself.


Nonfiction which requires faith? Neither of those links employ science. They are both intellectual claims, one much more thorough than the other. You can argue in favour of one or the other but don't stand there dismissing one because of "faith".

As an example, in section 2-4, it says:

"It is a matter of common knowledge that national and municipal enterprises have, on the hole, failed, that they are expensive and inefficient, and that they have to be subsidized out of tax funds just to maintain themselves in operation."

Where is this claim backed up? In fact, I'll make the claim nationalised healthcare is highly successful. Take the WHO's World Health Report 2000. Overall rankings are at about page 200.

I know the Mises piece was written in 1927 and it shows. Pages 90-95 detail the argument that monopolies are of no concern, that they are undamaging and can't ultimately manifest. He makes the argument (note: argument) that this holds as long as there is no monopoly on land or a resource. I can say the same thing you did about this raising many more questions. What about entry barriers to the market? The desktop OS market has a huge entry barrier - with Windows with the vast majority of the market share it makes it incredibly difficult to promote your own OS, not because your product isn't as good itself but because the usefulness of your product depends on how much market share it has.

What about situations where there is a high up-front cost like running a cable to a house, but running a larger cable costs a tiny fraction more? With private ownership of the cable, the only way for competition to exist is if they run another cable with that high up-front cost. For x competitors you need to run x cables when simply one large cable could perform the task at a fraction of the cost. This is why you see ISPs subsidised for laying a cable and then regulation forcing the renting out of it to other ISPs, or total unbundling, or other schemes involving last-mile broadband.

Those were just as quick examples. There are dozens of ways in which reality breaks things. There is no general case for the economy.

Thus, my point being, the large text is just another argument. It it not definitive, it is not empirical, it should be shrouded in discussion like everything else. If you regard the two earlier linked writings as arguing from different fundamental bases then you are employing a double standard.

And don't even start implying force of writing and eloquence means a better argument. It just means it's a better read.

Regarding the specific issues brought up, those were examples. What has been discussed about them here is a drop in the ocean.

WikiPedia:

Lieutenant General Vladimir Sergeyevich Ilyushin (Russian: Владимир Сергеевич Илюшин) (born 31 March 1927) is a son of aircraft designer Sergei Ilyushin and a noted test pilot in the Soviet Union. He spent most of his career as a test pilot for the Sukhoi OKB.

Ilyushin is purported to be a cosmonaut; it is alleged he became the first man in space on 7 April 1961. This honor is generally attributed to Yuri Gagarin whose spaceflight, Vostok 1, took place on 12 April.

The theories surrounding this alleged orbital spaceflight are that a failure aboard the spacecraft caused controllers to bring the descent capsule down several orbits earlier than intended, which resulted in its landing in the People's Republic of China whereupon the pilot was held by Chinese authorities for a year before being returned to the Soviet Union. The international embarrassment that would have resulted from having their pilot held is cited as the Soviets' reason for not publicizing this flight and instead focusing their adulation on the subsequent successful flight of Gagarin.

However, there are reasons to disbelieve this allegation, notably that although both were Communist governments, relations between the Soviets and Chinese were strained, and the propaganda value to the Chinese of a Soviet pilot captured flying over their territory would have given little reason for Chinese complicity in a coverup.

According to Mark Wade, editor of the well known website Encyclopedia Dramatica, "The entire early history of the Soviet manned space program has been declassified and we have piles of memoirs of cosmonauts, engineers, etc who participated. We know who was in the original cosmonaut team, who never flew, was dismissed, or was killed in ground tests. Ilyushin is not one of them."

I was wondering that when submitting it -- though I didn't go to the level of effort that you have to figure it out. It does look like the 1927 model, but it still could be the 30s by the time this particular exchange adopted them. I thought another clue might be the number of digits in the phone numbers they are using, but that also varied by exchange apparently: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_number#History

So I guess I'll tag it as both 20s and 30s until someone comes up with a more definitive answer!

Any future bans of weapons in the U.S. will more than likely follow some tragic event perpetrated by a single, damaged individual-
The Brady Bill was fast-tracked, after just such a convenient event.

A more reasonable approach to disarming a nation would be to place prohibitions on the availability of ammunition.

It is a dead certainty, that the media in the U.S., being the uninformed, uneducated, easily manipulated and agenda-oriented bobble-head tools of their owners that they are, will be instrumental in the dis-arming of the Nation, though it will take some catastrophe, natural or engineered to do so....

synchron, in the U.S., an individual may purchase from another individual, any of the guns on the banned list-they can not be marketed through the manufacturer or retailers-
The only 4 guns I will ever need, are all still legal-
Colt 1911 45
Marlin 45/70 Guide Gun
12-gauge (take yer pick, several semi-autos worth while)
and the fun gun
the 1927 A-1 Deluxe Thompson Lightweight (only semi-autos are legal, the fully-auto Thompson is on the banned list)

The only other gun that one would need would be a long-range sniper rifle, and the one that a proficient user could strike the most fear into a would-be assailant that I would have, is this one-SHARPS ARMS MODEL 1874 HARTFORD SPORTING RIFLE-(same calibre as the Marlin...the gun Quigley used)

All for shock and awe and the continued availability of the ammunition used, the shotgun shell,the 45 acp, and the 45/70, may never be banned-and even if they are, they are the only thing worth reloading.

that was a *quality link. please post it in the sifttalk section (under politics)

In reply to this comment by entr0py:
The thing that upsets me most is that the majority of the congress is complicit in allowing this to pass. We have to expect this sort of thing from Bush, but why are the Democrats helping him? The law "being rushed through" isn't an excuse for it so easily passing in a democratic congress. I see it as a failure by those who voted for it and didn't understand it, and a betrayal by those those who voted for knowing it's contents.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?tab=main&bill=s110-1927

The thing that upsets me most is that the majority of the congress is complicit in allowing this to pass. We have to expect this sort of thing from Bush, but why are the Democrats helping him? The law "being rushed through" isn't an excuse for it so easily passing in a democratic congress. I see it as a failure by those who voted for it and didn't understand it, and a betrayal by those those who voted for knowing it's contents.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?tab=main&bill=s110-1927

Ya just change the title around a bit try Using a Dial Telephone (PT&T/AT&T, 1927)

If it doesn't work, I will promise to give you my next save...

I'm a bit ambivalent on the uses of Wikipedia myself, but following that link from the VTech shootings I learnt about the Bath School disaster of 1927, which was something I'd never known about before then.

So...perhaps there is something to it!

T.S. Eliot wrote the Four Quartets and Willem Dafoe reads one of them from the roof of 600 Broadway in NYC, produced by Robert Galinsky. Eliot made an indelible impression on me in high school, it's been a rhapsody on a windy night ever since.

The full set can be found at http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/

Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26, 1888–January 4, 1965) was a poet, dramatist and literary critic, whose works, such as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", The Waste Land, "The Hollow Men", and Four Quartets, are considered major achievements of twentieth century Modernist poetry. The winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, he is one of the most influential poets of the 20th century. Although he was born an American, he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25) and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Snake_Moan

Black Snake Moan is an upcoming 2007 film slated for February 23rd release, written and directed by Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow) and filmed in Memphis, Tennessee. It stars Samuel L. Jackson as Lazarus, and Christina Ricci as Rae.

When Rae, a wild child (and former victim of sexual abuse) wakes up after a night of partying, she finds herself in the home of Lazarus, a former blues player. Rae is attached to a 20-foot chain held by the well-intentioned Lazarus who intends to "cure" her of her nymphomania.

The title of the film derives from the Blind Lemon Jefferson song recorded in 1927.