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Mexico’s Attempt to Save Freud from the Nazis

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Re: Mexico’s Attempt to Save Freud from the Nazis

#51

Post by CryptoPunk »

dang wrote: post #48
CryptoPunk wrote: post #2

Calling Trotsky an intellectual is pretty macabre. The man personally ordered the execution of numerous prisoners of war and civilians. He was a major advocate of the "Red Terror", which introduced new levels of brutality to Soviet political culture that set norms for decades to come. His intellectualism consisted of little more than inflammatory classist conspiracy theories, hate propaganda against the properties cl…

Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological battle. The resulting threads are predictable and boring. We've had to ask you not to start flamewars on HN before. If you keep doing this, we are going to have to ban you. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Intellectuals are no better than anyone else, and often worse, so this ridiculous flamewar started with a non sequitur anyhow.

I could have omitted Trotsky's ideological proclivities, and simply mentioned that describing him as an intellectual given his responsibility in perpetuating mass murder is obscene.

As for the positive/negative connotations of the term intellectual, I would respectfully disagree. No one describes recognized mass murderers as intellectuals, at least not that I'm aware of, and certainly would never limit their description of such a person to merely an intellectual. It would be intellectually irresponsible to not also mention their crimes. It's this lack of recognition that I took issue with. I hope me mentioning that in the future without mentioning ideology wouldn't be deemed as violating HackerNews guidelines.

Re: Mexico’s Attempt to Save Freud from the Nazis

#52

Post by CryptoPunk »

twic wrote: post #45
CryptoPunk wrote: post #2

Calling Trotsky an intellectual is pretty macabre. The man personally ordered the execution of numerous prisoners of war and civilians. He was a major advocate of the "Red Terror", which introduced new levels of brutality to Soviet political culture that set norms for decades to come. His intellectualism consisted of little more than inflammatory classist conspiracy theories, hate propaganda against the properties cl…

The article doesn't call Trotsky an intellectual. Here's the paragraph: > In Mexico, President Lázaro Cárdenas — one of the most popular leaders in twentieth-century history — had turned his country into a haven for persecuted intellectuals: after the fall of the Spanish Republic, he offered political asylum to thousands of refugees, and Mexico received a massive influx of artists, poets, academics, and philosophers…

The by-line says:

the imperiled psychoanalyst would have found himself living among the world’s foremost artists and intellectuals.

And then mentions the hypothetical meetings with Trotsky several times. I interpreted that as Trotsky being categorized as an intellectual.

Re: Mexico’s Attempt to Save Freud from the Nazis

#53

Post by CryptoPunk »

claudiawerner wrote: post #43
CryptoPunk wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>I don't need to read the entire corpus of Marxist literature to conclude that Marxian economics is quackery. You do have to read about modern Marxist economic replies to objections over a century old. The likes of Guglielmo Carcheidi, Kliman and Freeman, and even non-Marxist economists sympathetic to Marx answer many of these problems. >Claiming automation would reduce wages is a basic fallacy that economic laymen b…

>>and this claim you attribute to him only comes from a particular logical view of Marx rather than his own logic.

Huh? I quoted him asserting that mechanization would reduce wages.

Re: Mexico’s Attempt to Save Freud from the Nazis

#54

Post by dang »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #51
dang wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological battle. The resulting threads are predictable and boring. We've had to ask you not to start flamewars on HN before. If you keep doing this, we are going to have to ban you. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Intellectuals are no better than anyone else, and often worse, so this ridiculous flamewar started with a non sequitur anyhow.

I could have omitted Trotsky's ideological proclivities, and simply mentioned that describing him as an intellectual given his responsibility in perpetuating mass murder is obscene. As for the positive/negative connotations of the term intellectual, I would respectfully disagree. No one describes recognized mass murderers as intellectuals, at least not that I'm aware of, and certainly would never limit their descript…

Perhaps we're running into a usage mismatch about how we understand the same word. That often gets affected by cultural differences too.

Just please avoid flamebait and flamewars on HN and especially ideological battle. Those things are not what HN is for, and they destroy what it is for, so we have to be proactive about them.

Re: Mexico’s Attempt to Save Freud from the Nazis

#55

Post by claudiawerner »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #53
claudiawerner wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't need to read the entire corpus of Marxist literature to conclude that Marxian economics is quackery. You do have to read about modern Marxist economic replies to objections over a century old. The likes of Guglielmo Carcheidi, Kliman and Freeman, and even non-Marxist economists sympathetic to Marx answer many of these problems. >Claiming automation would reduce wages is a basic fallacy that economic laymen b…

>>and this claim you attribute to him only comes from a particular logical view of Marx rather than his own logic. Huh? I quoted him asserting that mechanization would reduce wages.

For Marx everything is a tendency, in his logic, we go beyond the simple positive statement and into actual historical development, consider for instance he correctly anticipated the fight over wages between the working class and the capitalists (which today precipitates in the creation of many workers' rights laws), which serves to counter-act the tendency, and a greater rate of exploitation (rather than a lower wage) is one of them. The biggest clue against your reading of Wage Labour and Capital is that Marx believed that a rise in productivity tends to a rise in wages.

Marx only identifies the introduction of machinery lowering the wage rate on the idea that with such machinery, workers are more substitutable - but as far as I know he did not account for the rising proportion of people taking up what he described as a "numerically unimportant class", "engineers, mechanics, joiners". In fact, this class of workers has not seen the same reduction or stagnation in the wage rate that Marx saw would happen with low skill workers.

"And precisely taking into account the forms of technical progress which Marx considered - that is the division of labour, capital saving, the mechanization of production and innovations - a fall in the maximum rate of profit can happen only in very particular cases, and no need arises to keep wages at a minimum in order to avoid a fall in the rate of profit."[0]

[0] https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/20976/1/MPRA_paper_20976.pdf

Re: Mexico’s Attempt to Save Freud from the Nazis

#56

Post by CryptoPunk »

dang wrote: post #54
CryptoPunk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could have omitted Trotsky's ideological proclivities, and simply mentioned that describing him as an intellectual given his responsibility in perpetuating mass murder is obscene. As for the positive/negative connotations of the term intellectual, I would respectfully disagree. No one describes recognized mass murderers as intellectuals, at least not that I'm aware of, and certainly would never limit their descript…

Perhaps we're running into a usage mismatch about how we understand the same word. That often gets affected by cultural differences too. Just please avoid flamebait and flamewars on HN and especially ideological battle. Those things are not what HN is for, and they destroy what it is for, so we have to be proactive about them.

Just please avoid flamebait and flamewars on HN and especially ideological battle

Yes understood.

Re: Mexico’s Attempt to Save Freud from the Nazis

#57

Post by CryptoPunk »

claudiawerner wrote: post #55
CryptoPunk wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>and this claim you attribute to him only comes from a particular logical view of Marx rather than his own logic. Huh? I quoted him asserting that mechanization would reduce wages.

For Marx everything is a tendency, in his logic, we go beyond the simple positive statement and into actual historical development, consider for instance he correctly anticipated the fight over wages between the working class and the capitalists (which today precipitates in the creation of many workers' rights laws), which serves to counter-act the tendency, and a greater rate of exploitation (rather than a lower wag…

I was asked by moderators to not engage debates about ideology, so I'm not going to respond to this beyond saying that absolving him of his responsibility for making a prediction that ended up being proven wrong, and for forwarding a claim about the fundamental impact of automation that is a basic economic fallacy, is not intellectually honest.

Re: Mexico’s Attempt to Save Freud from the Nazis

#58

Post by claudiawerner »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #57
claudiawerner wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Marx everything is a tendency, in his logic, we go beyond the simple positive statement and into actual historical development, consider for instance he correctly anticipated the fight over wages between the working class and the capitalists (which today precipitates in the creation of many workers' rights laws), which serves to counter-act the tendency, and a greater rate of exploitation (rather than a lower wag…

I was asked by moderators to not engage debates about ideology, so I'm not going to respond to this beyond saying that absolving him of his responsibility for making a prediction that ended up being proven wrong, and for forwarding a claim about the fundamental impact of automation that is a basic economic fallacy, is not intellectually honest.

Even then, it was not obviously a fallacy; several well respected political economists of the time had similar ideas; both Ricardo and Malthus believed that rising automation would lower wages, though without qualification as Marx had.

Re: Mexico’s Attempt to Save Freud from the Nazis

#59

Post by twic »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #52
twic wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article doesn't call Trotsky an intellectual. Here's the paragraph: > In Mexico, President Lázaro Cárdenas — one of the most popular leaders in twentieth-century history — had turned his country into a haven for persecuted intellectuals: after the fall of the Spanish Republic, he offered political asylum to thousands of refugees, and Mexico received a massive influx of artists, poets, academics, and philosophers…

The by-line says: the imperiled psychoanalyst would have found himself living among the world’s foremost artists and intellectuals. And then mentions the hypothetical meetings with Trotsky several times. I interpreted that as Trotsky being categorized as an intellectual.

I agree that it doesn't go out of its way to clarify that Trotsky is not amongst that set. But then why should it? If it had mentioned that Freud would have met El Santo, you wouldn't be raging about how it had failed to clarify that he wasn't an intellectual.

Re: Mexico’s Attempt to Save Freud from the Nazis

#60

Post by CryptoPunk »

twic wrote: post #59
CryptoPunk wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The by-line says: the imperiled psychoanalyst would have found himself living among the world’s foremost artists and intellectuals. And then mentions the hypothetical meetings with Trotsky several times. I interpreted that as Trotsky being categorized as an intellectual.

I agree that it doesn't go out of its way to clarify that Trotsky is not amongst that set. But then why should it? If it had mentioned that Freud would have met El Santo, you wouldn't be raging about how it had failed to clarify that he wasn't an intellectual.

If it doesn't explicitly exclude Trotsky from the set, my interpretation is going to be that Trotsky is one of those intellectuals.
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