Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Night school

http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5282058542643659653

How to Give Yourself a Good Education if You are an Intelligent Poor Person

By sbe1, eHow Member

Give Yourself a Good Education if You are an Intelligent Poor Person

User-Submitted Article

Although, nearly every American has access to a public school education, the quality of that education can vary widely from place to place. Most public schools in wealthy areas are excellent and often as good as or better than the best private schools. However, in poor neighborhoods, the quality of education is often terrible and the daily hardships and dangers endured by people who live in poor neighborhoods, make getting an education even more challenging.

Because of the state of our public schools in poor neighborhoods and the mistrust and contempt that poor and poorly educated people have towards education, an intelligent person who finds themself living in this kind of environment may feel that all routes to bettering themselves and improving their mind have been barred.

I hope that, through this simple how to, I can communicate to people who dream of escaping their bad economic situation and dream of quenching their thirst for knowledge that they are not alone and, if they have the determination, they can pull themselves up through self-directed education independent of public school.

However, this how to is not just for school aged people, it is for any intelligent person who wants to improve their lives through the accumulation of knowledge. Anyone can do this if they have the determination and intelligence to do it.

Finally, before we continue with this how to, I want readers who are still in school to understand that I am not in any way encouraging you to quit school. It is very important that you continue going to school and follow these self-education instructions on your own time. It is very important for you to graduate from school. If you are poor and/or if you are a person of color, you are already at a disadvantage in life. Do not compound this disadvantage by quitting school. This how to is about increasing your advantages in life and making your life better.

[Note: to access the web links listed below, copy and paste them into the address field of your web browser.]

Difficulty: Challenging

Things You'll Need:

Library Card and membership in good standing with your local library.
Some money to buy a few important books (see book list below)
The determination to improve your life.

1

Prepare yourself for a difficult but infinitely rewarding journey:

* You are making a big decision by choosing to educate yourself or to supplement your public school education on your own time. This will require you to make major changes in your life.

* You will have to make educating yourself your highest priority: more important than friends, more important than your social life, more important than television or hanging out. I'm not saying you shouldn't have friends or a social life, but with everything you do you should ask yourself: "Do I really need to be doing this? Could I be reading or studying right now?" Obviously, everyone needs to have fun, but when you take on a project like this, you have to understand that your social life will have to be curtailed.

If your friends are understanding and supportive, then you should be able to tell them what you're trying to do and why you can't spend as much time with them as you used to. If they're good friends, they will understand, and if they don't understand or won't support you, then maybe they weren't friends worth having anyway.

* If you have friends or family who will support you in your effort to educate yourself, you should seek their support. However, if you live in an abusive environment where your family won't support you (or even mocks or thwarts your efforts to educate yourself), then you need to find the inner strength to support yourself. Don't ever let other people stop you from bettering yourself.

* Understand that, even if you have support from friends or loved ones, you still have to believe in yourself. Only you can do this and only you can believe in yourself enough to do this no matter how much or how little support you may have--in the end, it all comes down to you.

* If your home or neighborhood is not a good place for you to learn or study, then go someplace where you can learn in peace--like a library, or a coffeshop, or a park. Again, don't ever let other people stop you from bettering yourself.

* If you are still in school: pay attention, follow teacher directions, do your homework, strive to get good grades, and stay out of trouble.
2

Managing Your Time and Organizing Your Life:

Get a cheap date book or calendar, or simply use a sheet of paper and a pen to make a weekly schedule and to do list of your self-education efforts. Include other activities, like work, dates with friends and family, and other appointments and attempt to make your life more organized. Being organized is key to keeping motivated and meeting your goals.

Organize your day around your self-education. Most of your self-education will involve reading and writing, so choose set times for yourself to read and write (and do your homework if you are still in school) everyday (including weekends). If you are in school, you should attempt to get in at least 1 to 2 hours of self-education in everyday (in addition to your homework), if you are not in school, you should devote at least 4 hours or more to self-education each day.

For further information about personal time management see these sites:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~acskills/success/time.html

http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/
3

Change How You Think About Yourself, Knowledge, Education, and the World:

* This isn't about learning skills to make money.

If you look at self-education and bettering your life as little more than a means to make money, you may set yourself up for disappointment and you will also impoverish your learning experience.

Understand that the pursuit and attainment of knowledge is a reward in itself. If you have a love of knowledge, you will succeed financially, because an intelligent, educated, confident, and competent person will always be employable. If you need specific skills for a specific job, learn them! But don't let learning those skills be the beginning and end of your self-education.

* Don't be afraid of not knowing something.

If you don't know something then learn about it--it's as simple as that. Don't feel bad--and don't let others make you feel bad--about not knowing something. Ignorance has the simplest cure in the world: education.

* Don't be afraid of being wrong.

If you've made a mistake, welcome to the club--everyone makes mistakes. If you took a chance and made a guess and it was wrong, don't worry about it, find out the right answer and keep moving forward--and pat yourself on the back for having the courage to take a chance.

* Always rely on yourself first to find the answer for something, and if you can't find the answer, then ask someone that you think might know.

Don't know a word? Look it up in the dictionary. Don't know the answer to a question? See if you can find the answer yourself first, then ask someone that you think might know. Turning to yourself for answers first builds habits of self-reliance and self-direction--essential qualities for a self-educator.

* Form your own opinions and don't be afraid to express and defend them.

An intelligent and educated person doesn't just shovel knowledge into their head, they think about what they've learned and make judgments and form opinions. And when an educated person forms opinions, they are not afraid to express them and defend them against criticism. However, if the evidence shows that you are wrong, don't be afraid to admit it.

* Always follow the facts, always follow the evidence, even if it might make you uncomfortable.

As you educate yourself you may encounter knowledge that challenges your beliefs. Don't be afraid to have your beliefs challenged and don't be afraid to abandon a belief if the evidence shows it to be wrong.
4

Foster Good Habits for Self-Education

Be open minded and open to new experiences. Don't be quick to judge other people's behavior or appearance. Be tolerant and make an honest effort to understand why people you might criticize think, act, or dress the way they do before you form an opinion.

Make a point to go places where you haven't gone before and explore. If you ever have an opportunity to travel, take it.

Make a point to expose yourself to unfamilliar things. Go to museums and seek out free musical and theater performances in your area. Expose yourself to music and culture that you may not be familiar (or even comfortable) with.

Always test yourself. If a subject makes you uncomfortable, don't turn away or avoid it, learn more about it. Face your fears and the things that make you uncomfortable and use them as more opportunities to learn.

Meet new people who don't act or think like people you typically interact with in your family or your community. Get to know them and understand them. Make a point to meet new and interesting people wherever you go.

Write down your thoughts about what you experience and what you've learned. Make writing a habit. Buy notebooks and pens and write as often as you can. Most importantly, after you've read a book, write down your thoughts about it in the form of a book report. Do this for every book you read--it will help you retain what you've learned from the book and it will also help you to learn how to think and develop your own opinions.
5

The Key to a Quality Self-Education is Mastery of the English Language

Reading, speaking, writing, and typing correctly, elegantly, and creatively in the English language is the key to every other aspect of your self-education. Bringing your vocabulary, reading comprehension, reading ability, and writing ability up to a college level is essential to being a success in any other subject you might choose to study. In light of this information, the books I suggest that you buy in step 7 might make more sense to you.
6

Your Public Library Card is the Key to Self-Education:

Your local public library will soon become your second home if hasn't already. Using your public library is the only way you can feasibly educate yourself with little or no money. The following eHow guides will help you learn more about your local library and how to obtain a library card if you don't already have one.

How to Get a Library Card
http://www.ehow.com/how_14961_library-card.html

How to Take Advantage of Public Library Services
http://www.ehow.com/how_2043260_take-advantage-public-library-services.html

How to Do Research in the Library
http://www.ehow.com/how_2851_research-library.html
7

Books you need to buy:

These books are, in this writer's opinion, the essential books that you need to own to properly educate yourself. You really should own these books and not just borrow them from the library because you will constantly consult them. I have listed the typical retail price for a new copy of each of these books, but if you search on the web, you are certain to find these books at a much lower price. Also, you don't need to buy these books new. Used versions of most of these books should be available at a used bookstore in your area, you can also find great deals on used books online at sites like http://www.abebooks.com/

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
by Merriam-Webster
Cost new: $23.95

The Elements of Style
by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White
Cost new: $3.90

Essential English Grammar
by Philip Gucker
Cost new: $5.95

All the Math You'll Ever Need: A Self-Teaching Guide
by Steve Slavin
Cost new: $16.95

An Incomplete Education: 3,684 Things You Should Have Learned but Probably Didn't
by Judy Jones and William Wilson
Cost new: $35
8

Recommended Reading by Subject (borrow or order from your local library)

Here are a few book suggestions and links to reading lists for people who are seeking to educate themselves, print out and save the lists you want to use.

Please note: these lists of books are merely to get you started, from these lists you should seek out other related books that will further expand your knowledge. A good place to look for additional books to read would be in the bibliography section of the books found in these lists or other books that are specifically mentioned in the text of these books. For all online texts, I recommend that you print them out for easier reading and for keeping them for reference.

How to think and evaluate information:

A Practical Guide to Critical Thinking
by Greg R. Haskins
http://www.skepdic.com/essays/haskins.pdf

Introduction to the Scientific Method
http://teacher.pas.rochester.edu/phy_labs/AppendixE/AppendixE.html

Critical Thinking
by Brooke Noel Moore and Richard Parker

Don't Believe Everything You Think: The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking
by Thomas Kida

Books for People Educating Themselves:

Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want
by Barbara Sher and Annie Gottlieb

Peak Learning
by Ronald Gross

Literature reading list:
http://froggiepopple.tripod.com/id19.html

Science reading list:
http://froggiepopple.tripod.com/id25.html

Mythology and Folklore reading list:
http://froggiepopple.tripod.com/id22.html
9

Recommended online self-education resources:

Read books and documents from the Library of Congress for free
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html

Project Gutenberg is a free online library of literature from around the world
http://www.gutenberg.org

MIT OpenCourseWare - a collection of complete MIT college courses (including complete lectures and reading lists available for free online)
http://ocw.mit.edu

Free online college courses from Carnegie Mellon University
http://www.cmu.edu/oli/

Free Online College Courses from University of Washington
http://www.extension.washington.edu/openuw/

Free College Health Courses from Johns Hopkins Univeristy
http://ocw.jhsph.edu/

Learn Economics for free at the University of Nebraska website
http://ecedweb.unomaha.edu/teachsug.htm

Learn languages for free:

French Language Video Course:
http://learner.org/resources/series83.html

Spanish Language Video Course:
http://learner.org/resources/series75.html

German Language Video Course
http://learner.org/resources/series104.html

Italian
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/modlang/carasi/site/pageone.html

Chinese
http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/ccol/content.htm

Polish
http://polish.slavic.pitt.edu/

Swedish
http://www.personal.psu.edu/adr10/swedish.html

Hungarian
http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/a/d/adr10/hungarian.html

Turkish
http://cali.arizona.edu/maxnet/tur/

Free CPR Course from University of Washington
http://depts.washington.edu/learncpr/

Learn Sign Language from Michigan State University
http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/aslweb/

Even more free online education resources available here:
http://lifehacker.com/software/education/technophilia-get-a-free-college-education****-201979.php

Roots of the Egyptian Revolutionary Moment

Althusser: the pot calling the kettle revisionist

http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=321&issue=114

No more heroes

Posted: 10 April 07

Robert Jackson

Louis Althusser, Politics and History (Verso, 2007), £6.99

The renewed and growing interest in Marxist ideas since the birth of the anti‑capitalist movement has prompted Verso to republish a number of texts under its Radical Thinkers series. The latest set includes this collection of three essays by Louis Althusser, a leading intellectual in the French Communist Party, first published in English in 1972. In the collection the author appraises two 18th century political theorists, the French nobleman Montesquieu and Swiss-born Jean-Jacques Rousseau, author of The Social Contract. Althusser also defends his interpretation of Karl Marx’s relation to the German philosopher Georg Hegel.

Althusser wrote at a time when the stranglehold of Stalinist orthodoxy was beginning to be challenged as a result of political crises in Eastern Europe. The brutal suppression of uprisings in Berlin in 1953 and Hungary in 1956 exposed to many the nature of these state capitalist regimes. A new generation of activists began to look to the ideas of revolutionaries such as Antonio Gramsci and Georg Lukács, who claimed that human liberation was only possible through a process of working class self‑emancipation. Such struggles could allow workers to reach a full understanding of capitalism.

Althusser’s works, including For Marx and Reading Capital, were an influential rearguard action aimed at undercutting what he saw as ‘humanist’ deviations. He attributed them to the influence of bourgeois philosophers, such as Hegel. In Politics and History, Althusser reiterates his view that Marx’s dialectical method, while derived from Hegel, is itself ‘non‑Hegelian’ (p173). However, ideas about alienation and liberation are clearly present in the writings of the young Marx, notably the 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. So Althusser sought to separate the young Marx from his ‘mature’ works.

Althusser proposed that Marx’s writings after 1845 initiated a brand new method. Thus in Politics and History he claims that Hegel’s dialectic was not merely ‘inverted’ by Marx, but fully transformed. For Althusser, Marx’s method in Capital rejected the notion that history was driven by simple internal contradictions. Rather it demanded a more complex model of multiple causality. He thought that changes in social structure were ‘overdetermined’—related to numerous contradictions in various, partly autonomous, layers of society (the economic, the political and the ideological, with the economic having primacy in the final analysis).

Althusser’s arguments in Politics and History frame the legacies of Montesquieu and Rousseau in ways that support this structuralist account of the dialectic. His great admiration for Montesquieu’s book The Spirit of the Laws is clear. Its concept of a separation of the powers of the state into the executive, the legislative and the judicial is enshrined in the constitutions of many modern bourgeois nations. A structure in which each branch is partly autonomous, but exerts a restraint on the others, seems to parallel Althusser’s Marxism. By highlighting Montesquieu’s aim of discovering laws rather than grasping essences, Althusser attempts to downplay the weight of ‘idealist’ influences on the development of Marxism.

Lukács recognised in Rousseau’s writings a tendency to reject the mechanisation of society and to resist reification—the way that, under capitalism, relationships between people increasingly appear to take the form of relationships between things. In contrast, Althusser finds an insoluble contradiction in Rousseau’s association of the terms alienation and liberty. The Social Contract asks how a person can find a ‘form of association’ with others such that, ‘while uniting himself with all’ he can ‘remain as free as before’. The clauses of the resulting social contract can, for Rousseau, be reduced to one: ‘The total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community.’ Here ‘to alienate is to give or to sell’. For Althusser this is the first in a number of ‘discrepancies’ running through Rousseau’s work: ‘Total alienation is the solution to the state of total alienation’ (p127).

Althusser goes on to argue that each problem posed by the social contract can only be resolved by being transferred onto a further discrepancy. Althusser recognises that, for Rousseau, the solution to alienation must come from within the world of alienation. For Althusser, however, this would result in alienation becoming an unconquerable fact.

Althusser’s Marxism is a beguilingly complex mechanism, but one that removes the subjective vitality from Marx’s dialectic. Indeed Althusser presents history as a process without a subject. His analysis is based on units of structure, called ‘practices’, rather than on human actors. The structural separation dividing distinct levels of society, which Althusser introduced into his method, was a necessity in order for him to reconcile Stalinist repression with a so-called ‘socialist’ economic structure in the Soviet Union. For today’s movement, there is no future in Althusser’s notion of a ‘theoretical practice’ that is reserved for a few elite Marxist scholars. It is the tradition of socialism from below, in which the mass of working people actively take control of their own lives, which can point the path towards the liberation of humanity from the contradictions of capitalism.

"....contradictions among capitalists are also inherent in the system"

http://directaction.org.au/issue28/managers_find_usa_economy_refuses_to_behave

'Managers' find US economy refuses to behave

By Allen Myers

Official interest rates in the United States have been held almost to zero for nearly two years. In mainstream economic theory, low interest is a “stimulus” measure. The idea is that businesses are more willing to borrow and expand their operations when interest rates are low.

But the economists who claim that they know how to “manage” the economy have egg on their faces. US official unemployment — which understates the reality — remains at almost 10%, the highest rate in more than a quarter century and the second highest since the Great Depression. Although corporate profits are up, they are not being invested in new production; Marxist blogger Michael Roberts notes: “Indeed, US corporate net new investment in fixed assets (that’s after depreciation) is falling for the first time since records began [in 1951].” After getting near an annual growth rate of 5% at the start of this year, GDP growth has shrunk to well under 2%.

This is not to say that US corporations are not taking advantage of the easy credit, as the New York Times reported last month (“Cheap Debt for Corporations Fails to Spur Economy”, by Graham Bowley, October 4). Big companies have been borrowing at a rate at least equal to that of the pre-crisis year of 2007 (when they borrowed US$589 billion). But they have been using the money to buy back their own shares, take over competitors or pay off more expensive debt, or just sitting on it — almost anything except investing in production. This confirms that the current global crisis is one of overproduction, not merely a result of financial deregulation.

Free money

The Federal Reserve’s low interest rate (currently 0.25%) means that big companies can often borrow at less than 1%. For example, Microsoft borrowed US$4.75 billion in September, some of it for three years at a rate of 0.875%. Although the Times didn’t point this out, that rate is already below the inflation rate, which can be expected to rise as one result of the vast amounts of credit being made available. In effect, the big corporations are being given free money.

Microsoft’s borrowing was partly used to buy back some of its own shares. “Other companies”, Bowley reported, “are borrowing to finance acquisitions. PepsiCo borrowed recently to help pay for the takeover of two bottling plants. Hertz borrowed $300 million for its bid to buy a rival car rental company ...”

Meanwhile, smaller businesses, which normally have to use any funds productively, are finding it difficult to borrow. The banks are fearful of smaller companies going under and defaulting on their loans, while corporations like Microsoft are “too big to fail”.

Conflict of interests

According to Bowley, “Economists say it is rational for companies to seize the opportunity to borrow at low interest rates and to buy back shares. But Guy LeBas, a fixed income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott in Chicago, said, ‘It is not particularly beneficial for economic conditions.’”

The contradiction here is a real one: between “economic conditions” — the welfare of the US capitalist class as a whole — and the individual interests of each capitalist. Yes, if economic conditions were better, if capitalists generally were re-investing profits and increasing production, capitalists would, on average, be better off. But this doesn’t happen because investing when there is already overproduction and therefore little likelihood of a good profit is directly contrary to “rational” behaviour for individual capitalists.

The contradiction between capitalists and workers is fundamental in capitalism. But contradictions among capitalists are also inherent in the system. The would-be managers of the economy can’t overcome those contradictions, not with any regulations, no matter how clever. The only way to get rid of the destructive contradictions of capitalism is for workers to get rid of the capitalists by creating a revolutionary government that nationalises the factories, mines and other means of production.

Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir Screener

Profoundly re-visionary

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=6657

Rebecca Pitt celebrates the life, politics and ideas of Jean-Paul Sartre

What do you imagine when you think of a philosopher? Someone who spends his or her time pondering the meaning of existence, but never reaching any conclusion? Or someone far removed from the real world?

Or are you reminded of Karl Marx’s famous words, “Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways — the point is to change it”?

The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who was born 100 years ago this month, tried not only to write about and understand the events of his life, but also use his fame to further a range of left wing causes.

Sartre was born in Paris and, following his father’s death, spent his early childhood in the French provinces.

He spent a lot of time in his grandfather’s library and was encouraged to write by his mother.

The young Sartre saw reading and writing as the main way of receiving and expressing knowledge about the world.

From this fervent belief Sartre would develop what he later described as a “neurosis of literature”, which he explored in his autobiography, Words.

Although Sartre would later claim he was cured of his “neurosis”, he continued to have an immense capacity for reading and writing until he went totally blind in the 1970s.

Sartre studied philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. His interest in this subject had been sparked by the idea that, like literature, it offered “truths”, or knowledge of the world.

While studying at university Sartre met fellow philosopher and writer Simone de Beauvoir, who became his lifelong companion.

After the Second World War they launched a left wing, intellectual magazine, Les Temps Modernes (Modern Times), whose aim, according to de Beauvoir, was to offer “an ideology for the post-war age”.

The journal also involved the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the writer Albert Camus.

Sartre also expressed ideas through his novels and plays. He produced several major philosophical works and wrote biographies of the writers Genet, Flaubert and Baudelaire.

By the time he died in 1980, he had established himself as a major figure in French life, through his ideas, his writing and his association with a number of left wing causes.

Thousands thronged the streets of Paris at his funeral to pay their last respects. Montparnasse cemetery became so packed that someone even fell into his open grave.

Responsibility

What was Sartre saying that captured the imagination of so many people, and why should Sartre’s ideas be of interest to us 25 years after his death?

In the 1972 film, Sartre by Himself, Sartre reveals that in his youth he developed a lifelong interest in “freedom and responsibility”. This idea of freedom motivated Sartre’s political decisions and guided his written work.

At the age of 16, Sartre already viewed colonialism “as an anti-human brutality” because it tried to suppress others’ freedom.

He strongly opposed fascism and racism for the same reason.

Today, Sartre is best known as a “philosopher of freedom” and for this reason his ideas have continuing appeal.

His major work, Being and Nothingness, written in 1943, set out this philosophy, known as existentialism.

Existentialism argues that there is no reason or meaning for existence — we are born without specific purpose and we do not exist because of god or some abstract cause.

We are not fated to behave in certain ways, or to accomplish certain things. Instead, we are born free of meaning. This idea is summed up by Sartre in the phrase — “Existence precedes essence.”

For Sartre, because we are free in every situation, we are also responsible for our own “essence”, or the choices that we make. However, the weight of our own freedom, or the “nothingness of being”, can also lead to “bad faith”.

“Bad faith” is a form of self-denial in which one tries to avoid the awesome responsibility of one’s own total freedom.

In Being and Nothingness, Sartre gives examples taken from everyday life, showing how we interact with the world and other people.

These examples reveal the ease with which we slip into complacency and “bad faith”, and how we cannot escape our own freedom.

Sartre claimed that certain circumstances revealed one’s total freedom as more obvious and demanding than it might have previously seemed.

In 1944 he declared, “Never were we more free than under the Germans… The cruelty of the enemy drove us to the extreme limits of this situation by forcing us to ask those questions which in times of peace can be avoided.”

Nazi repression of France posed a difficult question for its inhabitants — would they accept the occupation or resist it? Sartre delivered a message of resistance to his fellow citizens, in the guise of Greek tragedy, with his 1943 play The Flies.

He also organised a loose resistance collective called Socialisme et Liberté (Socialism and Freedom).

Existentialism’s emphasis on freedom was to prove a popular theory in post-war France and it propelled Sartre to fame. It was also a philosophy that he made accessible through novels such as Nausea.

Existentialism gained its own popularised media image — the stereotype of the black-clad, chain-smoking intellectual writing in a Parisian café.

It also became connected with jazz and dancing.

Indeed, Sartre did all of these things — though not necessarily all at once. The current French National Library exhibition of Sartre’s manuscripts and correspondence decided to remove a cigarette from their poster of Sartre following concerns that it would put off commercial sponsors.

Later, Sartre developed existentialism alongside a growing interest in Marxism.

In 1960 his Critique of Dialectical Reason, an amphetamine-fuelled attempt to synthesise existentialism and Marxism, Sartre argued that Marxism was “the one philosophy of our time which we cannot go beyond”.

Marxism would become irrelevant only after a revolution that resulted in the genuine freedom of all human beings. It would then be replaced by a “philosophy of freedom”.

Sartre himself cites two reasons for his shift towards Marxism.

First, his serious study of dialectics — the philosophy that underpins Marx’s ideas. Second, the changing political climate post-1945 and the influence repressive Cold War politics had on the left.

Limits

Sartre never committed himself to one political party, looking instead for the best way to represent his desire for “socialism and freedom”.

In practice this meant aligning himself with different groups during different periods. In the 1940s Sartre had been involved with the anti-capitalist, anti-Stalinist RDR.

In the 1970s he would align himself with the Maoists.

In the early 1950s he was, by his own admission, a “fellow traveller” of the French Communist Party (PCF), supporting some of their campaigns and writing favourably on the USSR following a visit in 1954.

Sartre’s relationship with the PCF would end when the USSR invaded Hungary in 1956.

In the introduction to his Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre made his views on the PCF clear — Stalinism’s determinism, which downplayed the importance of the individual in consciously shaping history, was indefensible.

The same philosophical work also showed Sartre moving on from the formulations of Being and Nothingness.

He now argued that freedom had to be placed in a historical context, which places limits on individual freedom.

As he later acknowledged, “Historical conditioning exists every minute of our lives.”

Sartre did not simply express his radical views through his philosophical writings. He spoke out on the key political events of his time. From the 1940s onwards was a vocal opponent of French colonialism.

Both he and de Beauvoir signed the “Manifesto of the 121” demanding liberation for the French colony of Algeria. His anti-colonialism nearly cost him his life when nationalist groups attempted to blow up his apartment.

His writings on colonialism, including an introduction to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, marked Sartre out as an exception in the philosophical world — a philosopher prepared to engage with issues of Third World oppression.

Because of the “war on terror”, current interest in Sartre’s work focuses on his support for the right of the oppressed to use violence to liberate themselves.

He also supported striking workers, anti-Vietnam protesters and students in revolt. He was led to question his own role as an intellectual during the French revolt of 1968.

He would speak at rallies, attend demonstrations and sell revolutionary papers. He refused the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964 because “a writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution”.

Sartre was many things — an intellectual, philosopher, biographer, writer, activist and even a pianist, singer and boxer.

He wrote on all facets of human experience and dedicated his work to the fight for genuine liberation.

He urged his philosophy students in the 1930s “to approach the world with a critical mind, to question constantly every acquired notion”.

His philosophy of freedom stresses that the world we live in can be changed and that we are free and responsible for fighting for that change. It is for these reasons that Sartre’s work needs to be read.

New Left revisionism

http://leninist.biz/en/1975/PR246/1.5-Marcuse,Sartre.and.Company

MARCUSE, SARTRE AND COMPANY

The inability of the New Left rank and file and the movement’s ideologists to accept Marxism as an integral teaching and apply it in practice, and the absence of any political ties between the New Left and the revolutionary proletariat have brought about a situation in which the New Left, determined to break away from the illusions held by the “integrated” man in the street in bourgeois society, itself on various occasions has proved the victim of various political and ideological illusions and mystifications that have become an important factor in the formation of the movement’s ideology. This applies among other things to the influence which Maoism has had on the movement’s consciousness and world outlook and which finds expression in a formula taken from its own ideology, viz. "three M’s: Marx, Mao, Marcuse”.

This at first glance strange formulation of New Left sympathies cannot be explained without taking into account the distortion to which events that took place in a distant country and ideas which took shape in a quite different socio-cultural context were subjected in the minds of the European and American New Left. Radicals in the West who had an extremely vague idea of the "cultural revolution" and its true aims and inner mechanisms, in their anxiety to find some sort of moral, political and theoretical model for their actual social activity, were ready to accept in good faith Maoist slogans concerning the struggle with consumer ideology and psychology which were so closely in tune with their moral principles, slogans such as " liquidation of bureaucratic methods" and the "building of true socialism". The New Left was also impressed by the Maoists’ profession of principles of "permanent revolution", of violent (and even armed) methods to bring about the transformation of society, and of "uncompromising struggle against imperialism". An important factor in this process was the presentation of Mao himself not only as a true "revolutionary rebel" but also as the "friend of youth" with a clear understanding of young people’s actual needs and ready without reservation to provide youth with direct access to the levers of power.

The ideas proclaimed abroad by the Maoists were particularly attractive to the New Left in that on the one hand they were couched in Marxist terminology, yet at the same time were clearly imbued with an anarchist spirit, which meant that they were still more in tune with the moods of the European and American radical Left.

Finally it should not be overlooked that Maoism appeared to the New Left as the fruit of Eastern culture, and the latter has always possessed attraction of almost magical power for Western nonconformists. Over the last two hundred years or so men in the West have sought in the esotericism of Buddhism and Taoism for a source of strength and inspiration in their struggle against "machine civilisation" and technological fetishism, and for "man’s regeneration". Today interest in the East (or rather in the so-called Third World) has found a new lease of life in the West: it is precisely in the Third World that the West discovers social dynamism, a supposedly “radical” break-up of traditional social structures, determined endeavour to remould the present and regenerate a spirit of egalitarianism and militancy. A haze of exotic contrasts that are dearer to the New Left than any more substantial truths conceals the fact that this social dynamism is often bereft of real content, i.e., anything that goes beyond the confines of sensational and bloody "palace revolutions", that this egalitarianism is of an illusory nature and when it has any real weight is nothing other than equality in poverty, and that, finally, social relations in many Third World countries are based on principles of totalitarianism.

Admittedly the experience of the peoples of the Third World has been gleaned mainly through the medium of concepts formulated by certain ideologists of the national liberation movement that have won popularity in the West, for example from the works of Frantz Fanon. His writings in particular Les damnes de la terre (The Wretched of the Earth) which was published in Paris in 1961 became, to use the words of a contemporary publicist, a "bible for the new American revolutionaries, black and white". Fanon came from Martinique and was closely associated with the FLN in Algeria as doctor, journalist and diplomat. He inclined to conclude that the proletariat of the developed capitalist 51 countries had ceased to be the motive force of the world revolution, the vanguard of the "wretched of the earth, the hungry and the slaves" and that it should be replaced by the former colonial peoples, in general by all those who were subjected to humiliation and oppression, who were “outlawed”. These outcasts who had achieved liberation— both political and psychological—were called upon to bring into the world (if necessary resorting to violence) a spirit of liberation and become the vanguard of those forces fighting for the liberation of mankind.

However the ideas and slogans that crystallised in the context of the Third World were only of a limited relevance for practical implementation by the New Left in America and Western Europe. The New Left needed an ideologist nurtured by the same society as its members, in whom it would be able to see its alter ego, and who would be able to formulate an alternative of some kind that would be more or less acceptable. Just such an ideologist was provided by Herbert Marcuse.

Herbert Marcuse’s biography has been a complex one and his path has not followed any of the main currents of the revolutionary movement. Admittedly in his early years Marcuse was attracted to left groups of bourgeois philosophers, developing their ideas in particular at the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research. Events conspired to see to it that Marcuse become if not an anti-fascist (he was always more attracted by the position of outside observer), then at least a critic of fascist totalitarianism. Finally Marcuse like many other "Frankfurt philosophers" attempted, many years before he became an ideologist of left radicalism, to explain a number of social phenomena by means of psychological factors tracing out the dependence of the organisation of society on spontaneous manifestations of psychic energy.

All these factors helped to account for Marcuse finding himself among those "social critics" who were all of a sudden in great demand in the sixties. "The demand for critical theories of society is easily accounted for by the fact that the contradictions of social development assume the form of violent paradoxes, grasped by the general public.... People, who are aware of themselves as cogs in the overall bureaucratic organisation of capitalism, are bereft of rights 52 and oppressed by the threat of social catastrophes ( including wars), the threat of fascism and militarism, bestow a humanistic halo on ideas of this sort if only because they often find their own moods voiced in these ideas and raised as it were to the level of general social protest, namely their discontent with a specific situation and awareness of the critical condition of the society they live in."

Better than any of his colleagues Marcuse succeeded in formulating both the paradoxes of capitalist society at the contemporary stage of its development, and likewise the paradoxes in the outlook of those representatives of that society, whose very existence is threatened by the material and ideological processes at work within it. He succeeded in giving expression to the moods of the radical 61ite, its restless searching and Utopian edifices. In short Marcuse was offering the very commodity that was in demand at the time.

It should be pointed out that Marcuse himself is very cautious when it comes to assessing his part in the modern radical movement. The Marcuse cult was blown up by the bourgeois press, radio and television, however not only in a deliberate effort to disorientate the anti-capitalist movement, but also for the simple reason that Marcuse’s books and interviews with him—in other words everything he said or wrote—became highly saleable.

Marcuse’s role should not be exaggerated. Many left radicals have not even read his books at all. Many of those 53 who have do not by any means share all his views. Yet at the same time it would be short-sighted to underestimate the significance of this "radical critic", not as personality but as a representative of a specific type of consciousness. Marcuse has little affinity with the New Left movement, in so far as he takes no direct or active part in their political demonstrations and in so far as the movement of the radical Left where its social and political significance is concerned cannot be identified with Marcuse’s theory. Yet there is no doubt that he has exerted a powerful influence on the radical elite. It was precisely Marcuse who defined a number of tenets interpreted by the radical Left as criticism of dominationsubjection relations which they are anxious to do away with. It was precisely Marcuse who urged the New Left to make a clean break with "traditional politics" and "traditional ideology", terms he used to refer to the policies of the Communist parties and Marxist-Leninist theory. It was Marcuse and none other who praised many dubious aspects of the practical activities of the New Left.

Marcuse is of course not the first nor the only ideologist of the radical Left, and his theories are not as original as his more ardent supporters and the bourgeois media have tried to suggest. The evolution of the New Left’s ideology, particularly during the early stages of the movement’s growth are, as pointed out earlier, closely linked with the name of the well-known American sociologist G. Wright Mills.

There are a good number of things which separate Wright Mills from Marcuse. Despite various misconceptions and his bourgeois limitations Wright Mills was a progressive thinker bold enough to challenge anti-communism. He was one of the first American intellectuals to pay due credit to the Cuban revolution (at the beginning of the sixties after visiting Cuba he published an interesting book entitled Listen Yankee! which made a strong political impact). At the same time a number of theses taken up by the New Left and later elaborated by the radical ideologists of the sixties, including Marcuse, stemmed originally from Wright Mills’ writing. It was he who in the autumn of 1960 published in the New Left Review an open letter in which he attempted to formulate the basic principles of the New Left. Although Marcuse in his critical works and speeches makes hardly 54 any references to Wright Mills, it can be said without exaggeration that as an ideologist of the protest movement of the sixties he owes a considerable debt to the author of the Power Elite.

Among the philosophers and sociologists whom the radical Left held in high esteem, particularly in Europe, and whose views definitely helped to shape the world outlook of those taking part in the protest movement the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre deserves special mention. During and after the May events in France he took an active part in the debates among students, encouraging and supporting the radical Left.

The outlook of the New Left was moulded under the strong influence of existentialism, above all as represented by Sartre and Camus. In fact it can even be said that existentialism found "second wind" in the ideology of the radical Left, although it appears here in a vulgarised form that its “fathers” had always criticised. Indeed a good number of prominent ideologists of the radical Left of today went through an existentialist training and are extremely well-grounded in some of the existentialist concepts. This applies above all to Marcuse, who at one time was a pupil and follower of Heidegger’s. It was also the case with Regis Debray, a pupil of Sartre, and Frantz Fanon who was also indisputably influenced by existentialist philosophy.

An essential precondition of the radical Left’s negative and critical attitude to social reality in advanced industrial society is their acknowledgement of the absurd nature of that reality intrinsically hostile to man, senseless and irrational. This outlook of the radical Left’s “finds” itself in 55 the existentialist conception of the absurdity of existence and revolt, particularly in that form which had been elaborated by Albert Camus in his L’Homme Revoke. Supporting the Nietzschean proposition that "God is dead!", i.e. the negation of authority as such, as a symbol of social repression, the existentialism of Sartre and Camus is very much in the same key as the radical Left’s anti-authoritarianism. In so far as the radical Left is unable to find in social reality the material preconditions of liberation, it adopts as the starting-point for its arguments abstract-Utopian ideals. Moreover these very ideals, just as the need to implement them by means of revolt are deduced from anthropologically reduced social reality, from abstract man, from his existence as a non-determined freedom of choice.

When writing of the radical ideology of the sixties, mention must at all cost be made of the fairly large group of bourgeois philosophers and sociologists who unlike Sartre and Marcuse did not take part in political struggle, nor even in the New Left’s theoretical discussions. Yet they played a conspicuous role, if not in the direct formation of radical views then at least in the theoretical substantiation of radical Left’s attitudes and action. Their number should include such figures as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, Ernest Bloch and Jurgen Habermas. The activity of the majority of these sociologists was in one way or another bound up with the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research, and despite disparities of approach and political orientation they all came out against bourgeois totalitarianism and the ideology of integration and tried to find a path leading to a world free from repression.

At the end of the sixties and beginning of the seventies when the New Left movement entered the next stage of its development, trends, moods and values began to come to the surface, whose advocates could no longer closely associate their views and sympathies with the schemes of Sartre or Marcuse. New sources of intellectual inspiration were needed, new idols who would sensitively reflect the changes in the world outlook of the New Left and in their turn offer methods and plans in keeping with new demands.

It was then that Charles Reich and Theodore Roszak appeared on the scene and won truly wide popularity: these 56 two sociologists, while retaining the critical drive of their predecessors, at the same time expressed more accurately the inclinations for intellectual self-criticism, which are predominant in the New Left movement today. For inner transformation of the agent of radical change which in the future might lead to radical change in society itself.

However it is important not to exaggerate the differences between Charles Reich and Theodore Roszak, on the one hand, and their predecessors on the other. They complement rather than contradict each other, in the way that the radicalpolitical and cultural-enlightenment orientation in the New Left movement complement each other and overlap. Although different “generations” of ideologists in the protest movement lay emphasis On different methods of action, they paint existing society into which fate has cast them and the new world into which they are anxious to lead mankind, in almost the same colours.

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