Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?

[Guille]

If there is something that is clear is that a very high percentage of the intellectuals now and before oppose capitalism. In fact, intellectuals have fame of being agianst the order, the power, any time in history. It is very hard to determine why this is. Although one can think of several reasons, these never show a total explanation.

There is a paper written by Robert Nozick that has the same title as this thread. It was comming along his article that has taken me to start this thread. Here I give the link to it: http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-20n1-1.html. Note though, that the article is only an extract of the whole essay. I searched for the whole essay but it is not on the net, although it has been published.

Why do you think that intellectuals oppose capitalism? Or, in general, they oppose the power? Do you agree with what Nozick says?

I really think it is an amussing subject and that it gives a lot to think about. I oppose capitalism myself, but I have my reasons...

[Lloyd Gillespie]

Let me state it simply. The mind, the more educated, develops the habit of natural equilibriating logic. This logic is against capitalism because it is not equilibriated, it is a dis-equilibriating class system, even though I support it more than the other wrecks. What may be required is a mixed equilibriated economic system of truly balanced supply and demand, then maybe the intellectuals could support it. But don't tell the intellectuals, they fear what they don't think of!

Just a hint,
Lloyd

[Guille]

Let me state it simply. The mind, the more educated, develops the habit of natural equilibriating logic. This logic is against capitalism because it is not equilibriated, it is a dis-equilibriating class system, even though I support it more than the other wrecks. What may be required is a mixed equilibriated economic system of truly balanced supply and demand, then maybe the intellectuals could support it. But don't tell the intellectuals, they fear what they don't think of!

It's a good reason. I also disagree with capitalisma lthough there is no better system developed, either economic or simply theoretic-social (postmarxists like Althuser and Gramsci are interesting to read, though). But this is the precise reason that I dislike capialism: the fact that during it's supremacy no new political/social/economic systems have been developed. It just stops that, it is the best system because it is self-reference, a circle, capitalism fights the others by puting capitalism into them. And yet, if capitalism is so good and leads to a state of utopy, how is it that most people don't have happiness? Something is wrong for sure. Also, capitalists claim to be pragmatists and realists. What!? Pragmatism itself is about what is good, but Americans have interpret this as 'what is valuable for our measurement system' they haven't seen that good is different to value, not relative as value. Now they measure everything from money, therefore for the pragmatistm that capitalists take, a piece of art is not valuable itself but in money, just like a scientific or philosophical research. Whiles pragmatism considers everything's positivity from the goodness to it's central role. Also they are not realists because realistm is all about fighting the problem, eliminating them. Whiles america dedicates to get used to the problems, and then have counter-attacks. This is living with problems, but also with good things. This is not realist, realist is getting te problem out.

But of course now to talk about intellectual's opposition to capitalism not only we must refer to the schools-universities as Nozick does in his article, not only to the natural principle of equilibrium, and not only the the long list of errors in capitalism, but also, and most importantly, to the histography of philosophy. After the WWII Europe was destroyed and divided. So bad conditiosn impplied that the goverments had to start from zero, like the states in Africa, by covering first needs (health, work, food) and so had to be much more totalitarian. I'm democratic, but I admit that hne countries are in big trouble, dictators are necesary to come out. Now, France didn't have a dictator, and yet in the 1960s it was already a powerfull country again. But it controlled everything, every single part of people's life, these nearly worked for the state. Such a controlling state couldn't stay like that, and of course here came the famous 1968, months of manifestations. Deleuze met Guatari with whom he would write several books later on. Baudrillard was student under LeFevre, and there were also Lacan, Foucault... And we shouldn't forget the itallians: Negri, Tronti, Vattimo... What is this to do with all? Well, these had seen how their countries were first destroyed by fascism and later on controlled by a false democracy. Therefore, they all enter postmarxism. This wasn't the only cause, of course, philosophers like Sartre and the mentioned Althuser and Gramisci had a lot of intellectual power. It is obvious that the centre of the intellectual philosophical-cultural world was France between 1960s and 1980s (in the 90s most of them died leaving a few: Baudrillard, Mafessoli, Badiou...) and so this meant that the centre of intellectual was anti-capitalist. This is the main reason, I believe.

The world of ideas, even more, the history of ideas, is one of the most interesting studies of all. Having read as many philosophers and philosophies that I have, I could never tell what tendency there will be in 10 years. Certainly it is now since the 90s a period of crisis. Will the differences between analytic and continental philosophers dissapear? Will there be a new ground-braking movement? Will we ever manage to eliminate philosophical conditioning (that is, the lagacy of greats is always in us) and at least develop metaphysics without the influence of Heidegger's Hermeneutics, Sartre's existentialism, Husserl's Phenomenology...? I believe we won't, until we get rid of the dominance of a wrong conception of capitalism.

[Lloyd Gillespie]

The world of ideas, even more, the history of ideas, is one of the most interesting studies of all. Having read as many philosophers and philosophies that I have, I could never tell what tendency there will be in 10 years. Certainly it is now since the 90s a period of crisis. Will the differences between analytic and continental philosophers dissapear? Will there be a new ground-braking movement? Will we ever manage to eliminate philosophical conditioning (that is, the lagacy of greats is always in us) and at least develop metaphysics without the influence of Heidegger's Hermeneutics, Sartre's existentialism, Husserl's Phenomenology...? I believe we won't, until we get rid of the dominance of a wrong conception of capitalism.

I agree with you Guille, philosophy and all of modern intellectualism is in a crises, and I would say it started in the late sixties and seventies. Will we solve our problems? Yes, a resounding yes, because we are being forced to by global circumstances in most all of the critical fields, especially economics and philosophy. Will we get past the last part of your above paragraph? Yes, of course we will, but we are going to have to realize we need TOE's in all the critical fields of life's important systems. We need interdisciplinary integration in the worst of ways. That was my reason for mentioning equilibrium. Most are unaware how important a change that's taken place in most disciplines with the Bayes-Nash Equilibriums, and their newest refinements. Many have compared Nash's achievements with that of DNA, and I think it more important, it's just most are unaware of its varried interdisciplinary applications for integrations and new understandings.

Just as an example, few realize that Boolean and Bayesian machine logic, used not only by Google, but also most of the capitalist financial world is surpassing and usurping human logic on a global scale. Just look reasonably at the situation. An item costs ten cents in China and ten dollars in the U.S. There's something wrong here. The greatest dis-equilibrium in world history is taking place, with computer trades pushing the corporations, at the expense of humans' general welfare. The centropic issue we must awake to is the irrational predictions which exist in Bayes-Nash equilibriums, that create real dis-equilibriums, the world now truly faces. I think the entire world, except for a few contrarian economists, is asleep on this one. They must be awakened by inventing TOE's anywhere, in any field, to attract attention to the world's true problems. Nash won the Nobel prize for his work in the fifties in 1995 - better late than never.

p.s.
Another of my favorite philosophers is J.M.Keynes [a true genius in probability logic, as were Boole, Bayes and Nash]
BTW, Huygens was Liebniz's professor and Newton's mentor.

[Guille]

lloyd,

The way to quote other's posts is by clicking where it ays 'quote' at the bottom-right part of their posts. One takes a time to notice. You can break a quote in pieces as I've done by copying [/QUOTE] into each part at the end and the start at all starts.

I agree with you Guille, philosophy and all of modern intellectualism is in a crises, and I would say it started in the late sixties and seventies. Will we solve our problems? Yes, a resounding yes, because we are being forced to by global circumstances in most all of the critical fields, especially economics and philosophy. Will we get past the last part of your above paragraph? Yes, of course we will, but we are going to have to realize we need TOE's in all the critical fields of life's important systems. We need interdisciplinary integration in the worst of ways. That was my reason for mentioning equilibrium. Most are unaware how important a change that's taken place in most disciplines with the Bayes-Nash Equilibriums, and their newest refinements. Many have compared Nash's achievements with that of DNA, and I think it more important, it's just most are unaware of its varried interdisciplinary applications for integrations and new understandings.

Well, n the 60s and 70s there were many french intellectuals making developments, and there was also pop art and underground art later in the 80s. For me, the books "The Illusion of the end" 1992 by Baudrillard and "What is Philosophy?" by Deleuze-Guatarri 1991 mark the end of the French hegemony. I agree with what yous ay about the chanigng moments in which we live. It is not the end, it is just the start for the end. The start for achieving the TOE.

Just as an example, few realize that Boolean and Bayesian machine logic, used not only by Google, but also most of the capitalist financial world is surpassing and usurping human logic on a global scale. Just look reasonably at the situation. An item costs ten cents in China and ten dollars in the U.S. There's something wrong here. The greatest dis-equilibrium in world history is taking place, with computer trades pushing the corporations, at the expense of humans' general welfare. The centropic issue we must awake to is the irrational predictions which exist in Bayes-Nash equilibriums, that create real dis-equilibriums, the world now truly faces. I think the entire world, except for a few contrarian economists, is asleep on this one. They must be awakened by inventing TOE's anywhere, in any field, to attract attention to the world's true problems. Nash won the Nobel prize for his work in the fifties in 1995 - better late than never.

Baudrillard is my favourite, I'll use him here:
We want to know everytime everything faster and faste.r We want to be perfect, and so, to have knowledge of all events at the minimum interval of time,a ctually, if we coudl, we would see them happening all. This is why tv is important here. TV shows us whatver it wants, the images it wansts, and people think that because they are real images taken from the world, they think that then images tell you how everything is. but this the what I call a posteriori induction. If we see a bomb happens in Israel, we think that all days they have bombs in Israel, whiles avctually I have many friends that go sometimes there and nothing happened, it's all a lie. But it's lieing without lieing. That's the problem: in globalized 'advanced' countries, the nearest connection that people have to reality is tv. This is sincerely horrible to think about. Also the role of tv is to achieve a disequalibrated equilibrium, a capitalist communism. This is where tv has a role also: everyone watches the same thing the same time, therefore we are converted into pigs. Just like Pink Floyd's album "The Wall". School system also wants to eliminate my creativty, and of all, and make us be working machines. The whole thng is that, making us the same so that we ahve a perfect capialism: one that is communist. So the few top govern totally over the grand mayority. I listen many poeple say that democracy is the dictationrship of the mayority. Well, yes, but that mayority is dictated by a small minority.

Now, nature goes to equilibrium. This seems plausible. In fact it's one of the few natural total laws that I believe to be true. Every person was different in the past, and is born different, but everyone is very similar today, everyone dies in the same way: independent of how we die, we all die, this is the same. But I don't see equlibrium something good, nor bad, it' is time. Time is adding things, making things happen. And as time goes by, equilibrium happens, that is, mor mbad thing sna dmore good things. Capitalism is getting very fast, so fast that each event is meaningless and ends up not happening. Communism is getting very slow, so slow that each event is never eachieved and nothing happens. They are for me not to ways to live, but to way sto die (as Heidegger described life).

p.s.
Another of my favorite philosophers is J.M.Keynes [a true genius in probability logic, as were Boole, Bayes and Nash]

I've heard of him a lot. But his philosophy is too formal, too practical in that sense. It's not usefull for a 21st century society. Why centreing a view of the world upon the system of value and organised manufacturing-trade? There is more to philosophy than that. Now this ocmes back to the crisis it faces now. Philosophy has alwaysed been and is (I can't assure that it will be in the future, though) the most broad of all our mental tools. This is why it doesn't know where to go, how to be, or when, or who... Philosophy has been a child for 2,500 years, now it's become a teenager, and doesn't know it's place in society. Should it go near economics, with the prctical view of the things in capitalism (as Keynes and other economic theoretics propose)? Or should it go with sociology and history (as Lyotard and others propose)? or should it go with the neurosciences (as proposed by so many philosophers of mind like Dennet)? Or should it go somewhere else? Or should it get lost (as propoed by Carnap)? So many questions that it could occupy a a thesis for university. I'll think about it, but maybe when I'm there the problem of identity has dissapeared.

BTW, Huygens was Liebniz's professor and Newton's mentor.

I didn't know. So we could say that neither newton nor leibniz discovered calculus, Huygens did it all! (if he wouldnt' ahve been there nothing would have been done). But of course that would be like blaming Hitler's mother for giving birth to one of history's greatest (and most pathetic, with Mussolini)tyrans. In fact Leibniz was born the same day that I was but 344 years before, thus I feel a connection to him. He is my favourite philosopher of the 18th century by far.

[baudrunner]

The most important thing to remember is history. Many greats were funded by ruling regimes, royalty or otherwise. A claim to a great discovery was often stolen. In this world:

"To every action, there is an equal and opposite action"

There is no syntax error in the above quote.

[subversion]

Intellectuals know that capitalism is bad because they know that it is based on greed. I would say that anarchy is best but many people do not understand the virtues of anarchy because they do not take it's true definition. All that anarchy means is no formal government. This informal government is the only thing that renders a true egalitarian society possible. Anarchy + honor = utopia

capitalism = greed = no utopia

[Lloyd Gillespie]

Hi SubVersion, here's one for ya. "The true equilibrium of greed can create economic utopias." Let's turn it all over to a philanthropic computer, programmed absolutely benign. The problem with true anarchy is that humans are not nice as youth likes to think. I am much older, and I see humans as far less than capable of living without law. Maybe less government, but not without law - we are bad, and my experience teaches me, we always will be, so we need systems geared to equilibriate our dastardly nature.

Sorry,
Lloyd

Intellectuals know that capitalism is bad because they know that it is based on greed. I would say that anarchy is best but many people do not understand the virtues of anarchy because they do not take it's true definition. All that anarchy means is no formal government. This informal government is the only thing that renders a true egalitarian society possible. Anarchy + honor = utopia

capitalism = greed = no utopia

[Lloyd Gillespie]

Hi Baudrunner,

"For every action, there's an equal and opposite action."

Whether you state it action or reaction, it's still the most important quote in the world, as it applies to everything, and I mean everything.

Lloyd

The most important thing to remember is history. Many greats were funded by ruling regimes, royalty or otherwise. A claim to a great discovery was often stolen. In this world:

There is no syntax error in the above quote.

[Lloyd Gillespie]

lloyd,

Now, nature goes to equilibrium. This seems plausible. In fact it's one of the few natural total laws that I believe to be true. Every person was different in the past, and is born different, but everyone is very similar today, everyone dies in the same way: independent of how we die, we all die, this is the same. But I don't see equlibrium something good, nor bad, it' is time. Time is adding things, making things happen. And as time goes by, equilibrium happens, that is, mor mbad thing sna dmore good things. Capitalism is getting very fast, so fast that each event is meaningless and ends up not happening. Communism is getting very slow, so slow that each event is never eachieved and nothing happens. They are for me not to ways to live, but to way sto die (as Heidegger described life).

Guille, ever since the dawn of time, the most difficult thing to recognize has been the irrational dis-equilibria that was actually the largest controlling entity of a particular era's history. As a few examples, who whould have thought to believe that Christianity could have taken over the logic of Egypt, Greece, Rome, at that time? Who would have believed at the time of the Renaissance that a few men's thoughts and ideas would put logic and science back on top of religion? At the founding of America, who at the time would have believed that common sense could have over-ruled the power of all the world's greatest powers, of the era? These are all examples of irrational expectations creating massive re-equilibriums of not only society, but global re-alignments of society. For anyone not to recognize the importance of equilibria and dis-equilibria, as one of the world's most important mathematical histories, I pitty us all.

I've heard of him a lot. But his philosophy is too formal, too practical in that sense. It's not usefull for a 21st century society. Why centreing a view of the world upon the system of value and organised manufacturing-trade? There is more to philosophy than that.

Guille, you'd be all alone on this one amongst economists. In my and many others opinions, Keynes' is by far still the most important economist in the world even today. No economic/philosopher of such stature has stepped to the plate to displace this one man's achievements and importance to the future, not even Nash, even though Nash's equilibrium and probability theories are a welcome addition to Keynes... And, without respect of the formal and practical, we're all going to hell in a hand-basket, on fire. There's no more to philosophy than the over-arching system of thought and or ideation, of all the world's great thinkers, and not just the ones, one personally chooses. If the world would do no more than integrate, Charles Sanders Peirce, John Maynard Keynes, and John Nash, we could do more to solving the world's problems than all other minds on this planet combined. A bit rash, yes, but that important. We must get back to real philosophy, as even mentioned by Plato, about his solution of international equilibriated money.

Now this ocmes back to the crisis it faces now. Philosophy has alwaysed been and is (I can't assure that it will be in the future, though) the most broad of all our mental tools. This is why it doesn't know where to go, how to be, or when, or who... Philosophy has been a child for 2,500 years, now it's become a teenager, and doesn't know it's place in society. Should it go near economics, with the prctical view of the things in capitalism (as Keynes and other economic theoretics propose)? Or should it go with sociology and history (as Lyotard and others propose)? or should it go with the neurosciences (as proposed by so many philosophers of mind like Dennet)? Or should it go somewhere else? Or should it get lost (as propoed by Carnap)? So many questions that it could occupy a a thesis for university. I'll think about it, but maybe when I'm there the problem of identity has dissapeared.

Guille, your teenager philosophy needs to become integral. It needs to achieve a deep centropic integrated view of all - a total vision-logic. As Godel mentioned, we need to define the concept of the concept. We must develop trans-finite reason and logic. In other words, we must perceive the truest mathematical/nature/technology/science concept with a much more thorough direct cognition. The ideation of true equilibria rules the future, or we're all dead!