The Study of Society can not be limited solely to an attempt to understanding social forces. This is the avenue Karl Marx took and is evident in the Communist Manifesto that both he and Friedrich Engels drafted. As with any scientific hypothesis, we are reminded that the word "theory" should be emphasized and not "fact". While many historical facts may be compiled to portray a succession of events giving the impression of some validity, it nonetheless remains as a conjecture... though the idea is later found to have some utility. With respect to Marx's "Scientific Socialism", it was limited to an analysis of social conditions which presented the idea of a recurrence of events involving workers, produced goods and resulting conflicts that came to be supplanted by yet another series of the same in what was conveyed as a cyclical event. While this observation in and of itself was not necessarily wrong, it did however precipitate the occasion for drawing the wrong conclusions... otherwise humanity might well be living in a much better society than the so much nonsense we are experiencing.
While it is true that social circumstances can be altered by production processes involving competition and exploitation of resources, society is itself a product that is susceptible to the forces of nature. If nature were to present us with conditions that limited food production to a single place on Earth, human society would be dramatically altered. Likewise if there was an alteration in exploitable raw materials or their deposits in a particularlized spot in a given territory. Whereas inanimate raw materials are cited as that used for production, humanity itself is not frequently viewed as a product produced by a compilation of various raw materials. The composition of humanity (such as water, minerals, gases) clearly identifies humanity and for that matter, all life forms as a product of natural forces. And though the exact biological succession of events which took place in the production processes remains a type of "trade secret" that humanity's various teams of "espionage agents" have not yet been able to uncover, it nonetheless is widely agreed upon that humanity is a product of its environment. And because there are variations to the basic design, we can surmise that there is either a wide-spread consumer call for variety, or the production process may involve a variability of programming.
If there is not a consumer "reason" for the development of different human and other biological products, then the manufacturing process must be analyzed to determine if the various "production orders" (species, race, etc...) are actually intended of due to some flaw in the system of manufacturing. It is this system which needs to be looked at a bit more closely than Marx and Engels could have imagined doing. Like many others, they too were preoccupied with studying social circumstances from a human-centered orientation. This approach did not taken into consideration variables external to the parenthesis being obsessed about, resulting in an equation that produced a faulty answer. The result of which has brought us to a moment in history where human social conditions are just as troubling as they were during and before the time of Marx. It is a perspective dozens of others have recognized and have themselves tried to deduce a revision of Marxian ideology in order to produce a more comprehensive evaluation of social conditions for the purposes of pursuing advances in solving human social problems. The present is another revisionist approach which applies a reassessment from what is believed to be a larger appreciation of "forces" impinging on the various social stratifications being analyzed by those from their respective subject areas of interest.
It is well understood that acts of nature can alter society just can acts of humanity. For example, a flood can wash away a town just as can a broken dam. Or an earthquake can cause social disruptions through destruction just as can a bomb. No less, a volcanic eruption can bury a civilization like Mt. Vesuvius did to Pompeii in 79 AD and a fire did to Chicago (Great Chicago Fire 1871), Wisconsin and Michigan (The Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871) or the Idaho, Montana and Washington fire (The Big Burn of 1910). Despite the fires being "accidents" due to drought and the primary building material being used was wood without the protection of fire suppression systems and the politics being waged with respect to the desire (by volunteer fire departments) to be employed full time (causing some to start fires to "prove" a full time fire department was needed); such events can and do alter commercialized activities of production. The point does not need to belabored.
Hindsight can bring about foresight in order to forestall problems that occur as part of a causality cycle. In an attempt to increase our foresight, many of us seek some original point of causation... the first incident which can be identified as the starting point. By so doing, an appreciation of successive events can be understood so as to prevent or promote a given incident. For example, those seeking a further grasp of Democracy with an intent of promoting a greater value through an enhanced practice often seek out the recorded mention and subsequent practice of it. Customarily, a review of Athenian democracy is adopted as a strategy for attempting to acquire some realization that may have been overlooked by others, no doubt because they think Democracy has some value. Some do not fully question either Democracy, Communism, Socialism or other types of social governance ideas. Many simply think that the word "Democracy" represents that which is most valuable for human society and accept this notion without too much questioning... if they question it at all.
Marx, like so many others used his own variation of retrograde historical analysis to provide an illustration of historicity like the formula used in the Christian biblical account. But not all religions rely on the need for establishing some historical lineage of references promoting a before and after theme... as well as what is assumed to follow in the future. Notwithstanding the Bible's naive representation of biological development and interpretation of events involving the subsequent arrival of humanity, humanity's place in the world, and the rather suppositional reason(s) for all of existence; it displays a mode of thinking that is repeated again and again in various subject areas. Whether the reader wants to accept or reject such a formula, does not dismiss the fact that it is a model of thinking that is understood, but that many find it preferable. The pattern of "before and after" is interpreted to reflect a logic similarly referenced in the counting of numbers and the placement of letters in an alphabet... no less the ordering of words and ideas in a sentence, paragraph and successively larger compilations. In short, it is a beginning to end story telling format employed to provide a means for realization of perceptions in a given formula to be used as a method of ordering and prediction.
Yet it is a sequence that is frequently interrupted by those in various leadership or social influence positions. The sequence is frequently undermined by those in governing positions because they enable themselves to do so. They want this ability to remain an entitlement specific to themselves. The problem is that such a circumstance often leads the public to the conclusion that leadership can not be trusted, because the expected trust arrived at by an observed sequence of events does not culminate in the predicted "answer". Communism, Democracy and Socialism... as well as theocracy and other social governance models, are found to be untrustworthy because they present us with before and after models based on equations found to be faulty... and irreparable by using the same type of logic employed to illustrate a given rationale. Hence, as a schematic, it either needs to be revised or tossed aside and replaced with something better.
Whereas in economics we look for fundamentals as a practical model for maintaining a given level of subsistence, so too should we apply this rationale to an analysis of society. As such, let us look at what we presently know about the larger environment in order to establish some fundamental recognition of forces which effect human society. For example, our present estimations say that the Universe is expanding. And although we may not be able to discreetly feel or identify such an effect on human society(s), it is a variable we must include in our equation. Likewise, we have surmised that the Sun will expand on its way to burning out and that this expansion may involve the "consumption" of the innermost three planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth). In addition, the rate of the Earth's rotation is slowing... causing an alteration in the Earth's electro-magnetic field, and that tides are being affected by the retreat of the Moon's presence from the Earth. With respect to all of life, the developmental events of the Earth produced conditions which produced the scenarios from which human were eventually produced. Even though the exact details have not been thoroughly worked out to establish a cause and effect chain of events, this is the "from beginning to end" conveyor belt like succession along which human society has followed. And it is a belt that is not necessarily meant to convey digressions as suggested by the "punctuated equilibrium" model noted in texts covering evolutionary biology. It is a generalization being used to initiate a broadened equation used by Marx in his "Scientific Socialism".
As with the origins of human society, many people look for origins in different areas of human interest such as the origin of a word, the origin of writing, the origin of acting, arts, sciences, philosophy, religion and numerous other topics. Some are adept at recognize parallels in different subject areas and others are particularly insightful about recognizing causal events in human behavior with respect to personal relationships. Some parallels are accepted as a science, others as an art, and still others gain the reputation of exhibiting suspicious qualities. While some may speak of subtle impressions but do not actually have them, others are affected by subtleties and deny the existence of. Variations of such themes no doubt exist as well. While some prefer to attend to what may be called lighter sensibilities, others prefer more coarser variations... like the difference between a child crying because they have fallen over by tripping on their own feet, as opposed to someone being knocked down by a stampeding crowd. Analogously, Marx's Scientific Socialism was the perception of a cause and effect within a larger cause and effect (C and E) theme. It was not "the" only C and E event, it was but one of several. It was simply given greater emphasis as "the" sequence, and not as a variable of a larger sequence.
Human society is a product of nature just as are humans. Words and ideas are a product of this product of nature. Simplistically stated, we have: [Nature → Humanity → Words/Ideas]. It is like a word equation easily understood. The occurrence of similar ideas being originated and shared by different people or groups details a similarity in physiology as well as both internal and external influences. No doubt in some instances, that which is said to be discovered by one person may have been discovered by one or more others who were not aware of one another, and their ideas were lost or tossed away by those in their respective environment who did not comprehend the value of their discovery or invention. Similarly, as many have noted that Mark's analysis was a particularly simple arrangement of widely known information, it was he who set the observation into print. Though others may have recognized the same correlations accessed by combining different, but similar situations in various ages, they either did not set their ideas down to print or it was applied to some other content in a different context. Time, place, context and language used in description account for assigned relevancy. For example, if Marx were to have made reference to contrasts involving animal behavior instead of human behavior, the impact of his ideas may have been historically negligible. Likewise, if someone had talked about television or radio in ancient Greece, the reception may have been one in which the person was viewed as being insane.
By presenting the usage of a larger base of information regarding cause and effect situations of human society in relation to a perception of environmental circumstances so as to improve upon the equation Marx and Engels used in the Communist Manifesto, reception of the ideas presented may not seem far-fetched for consideration and further elaboration. By instructively promoting the need for establishing the usage of a tool involving a recognition of subtly occurring fundamentals of behavior being overlooked as products (effects), many of the factions of revisionist ideas may once again become whole numbers more easily understood as a viable equation to be used for applicability.
In examining Marx and Engel's language used in the Manifesto, a recognizable reliance on contrasting dichotomies is present, such as the Bourgeois and Proletarians in the framework of a graded lineage of what was described as class divisions. By subjecting the words and ideas to the underlying patterns employed, we notice a sequencing effect and what can be described as a pattern -of- two. If we include the fact that Marx was influenced by Hegel and Hegel developed a tripartite orientation of Theses- Antithesis- Synthesis displayed in Marx's idea of a Sub- (Middle) Super- structure ordering of society reminiscent of Abraham Masolow's hierarchy of needs formula exhibited with multiple divisions; we see basic or fundamental patterns of human conceptualization. Despite all the variations of labeling and expansiveness which may be additionally coined, these same basic patterns can be variously seen in multiple subject areas as generalities. While one-to-one correspondences can be made, a preference for such should not lead us to overlooking or dismissing the presence of a similar pattern. For example, just because one person wants red, white and blue on their national flag and another person prefers yellow, green and black... both use a three-part structure. Similarly, if one group of scientists named amino acids differently than another group, and may even refer to DNA with different letters, the same underlying tripartite pattern would nonetheless exist.
The point to be made is that the usage of dichotomies by Marx and Engels is a conceptual product having an origin whose historical lineage may have its initial origin in detectable environmental influences preceding human society. The problem with establishing the basis for such a consideration is that many people do not actively catalog information from different subject areas with fundamental patterns that have not acquired a commonality of appreciation in everyday discourse. While some may think in terms of superficial compilations involving a handful of examples or examples from a single subject area, the compartmentalization of numerous instances of a given pattern in different subject areas is more difficult for those whose interests revolve around social themes of mediocrity. For example, while some may recognize the pattern-of-three in the Christian Trinity and the Three branches of the US government, they do not necessarily add additional observations such as the triplet coding system in genetics, the use of three fingers to hole a pen or pencil, or the singularly-minded "three" with respect to the Earth's placement as the third planet from the Sun. But even if such correlations are made, this does not mean that a cause and effect sequence is likewise established.
Marx and Engels relied on contrasts to foment the situation for encouraging further develops of contrasts in terms of trying to provoke social change through contention. They did not promote a realization of dichotomies which were complementary or complimentary. It was not a preference established in their intellectual vocabulary, it was a preference initiated and sustained by an emotional vocabulary. Likewise, an appreciation of a larger cause and effect social event requires the inclusion of variables taken from examples which may have no emotional value. Such an analysis may require a sustained compilation of and interest in such a compilation... past the reinforcement and encouragement that an emotional value can provide and may have originally initiated.
Noting that humans and human society can be altered by environmental events and that basic patterns of change can be identified in environmental events, a means by which the cause and effect situations must be attempted. For example, the "pattern-of-three" in DNA and RNA may necessarily be a replicated reflection of a similarly patterned environmental event... such as the Sun being in the third position. Regardless of the fact that the concept of "three" is a human construction, it is identifiable and easily understood. However, this is not to offer the correlation of the "three" in these two instances as a fact. It is merely a comparison. But if it is a fact, then a change in the Earth's position, however incrementally this is occurring, is nonetheless affecting humans and human society. It is therefore a variable to include in our considerations. While there is no established definitive proof that such an example is of actual value beyond a conveyed supposition, it is nonetheless an alternative.
While there are other patterns recognizable in genetics and basic biological as well as physiological activity, many of these are no doubt inclusive, in that they do not exert any influence beyond a given sphere... much like a person being influential in a given social group, but have no effect external to a parameter limited by any number of factors (reasons). If we limit the Sun, it has a recognizable influence on human behavior and society. If we limit oxygen or water or food, these too have identifiable repercussions. Any one or more of these can cause life to cease to exist. Such generalizations of cause and effect are readily understood without need for conducting experimental tests of verification. Likewise if we were to knock 3rd-placed Earth out of its orbit and have it switch places with some other planet with a different numerical placement in the solar system... Or if we were to alter the triplet coding system of DNA and RNA to exhibit a double or quadruple pattern. Some patterns are more viable and important than others in particular contexts. Which suggests that a different type of genetic coding may be of value in a different context elsewhere in the Universe, or that an entirely different genetics... if it should be called that... may be of more value.
If we alter the environment we can alter human behavior and thus society... at least within the constraints of our physiology. But, as is well noted by numerous accounts of history, there are recurring disentegrations. Some are caused by the environment and others caused by the products of the environment such as human-generated wars, disease and famine. The disentegrations are eventually followed by a resurgence of stability and growth, that should be recognized for what they are: As adjustments, as adaptations to changes in the environment which may include changes in human physiology that may not be easily observed because objectivity is obscured by our close proximity to ourselves and overall circumstances. We are also unable to recognize upheavals in humanity caused by deteriorating environmental events that eventually eventually stabilize for a time after experiencing destabilization.
For the sake of discussion, let's say that we are unable to recognize any environmental event which has contributed to the development of the Christian Trinity concept which developed during a given era. And that those holding an adherence to the concept are more involved in the minutiae of semantic details being attributed than the overall "three" pattern that has further come to exhibit a three -to- one ratio in the form of being described as "three persons in one godhead". The idea of the "three" fusing into a "one" would be like discussing the concept in an alien language. And if you described the recognition of such patterns in terms of being part of an expanded Marxian Scientific Socialism, your comments might be viewed as some sort of extra-terrestrial composition... unless they took offense and resorted to some impulsively rendered anti-theology disparagement.
By recognizing a change in the structure of the Trinitarian formula from a mere "three" to a "three -to- one" product, our idea of a mere three-based origination must be altered to accommodate the 3-to-1 instance as well. It is a sequence which exhibits change... like a change in a production process... like three separate items having been combined into a single construction or a single package. Our initial idea needed to be more flexible, just like the content of the Communist Manifesto should have been, but wasn't... and later revisionists, like newly hired production managers simply moved ideas around like switching employees around to perform different production jobs... but the overall product was not changed. It wasn't the employees at fault, it was the product. It's component structure and packaging did not make it suitably applicable to changing trends. Further modifications in the guidelines for assembly into a better society need to be accompanied with a multi-language step-by-step diagram with the appropriate warranty.
Communism, Democracy and Socialism are all products which need to be updated into an amalgamated whole. It is a three -to- one ratio. It is a pattern that can be recognized as occurring with the Sun and its relationship to the Earth... as part of the progressive development on a course of ultimate discontinuance. From the perspective of Earth as its rotation slows and the Moon recedes, the three "moments" of the Sun as "seen" and influenced by our biology and physiology, are fusing together as the Sun expands. As with the occasional "bursts" of solar flares affecting electronic transmissions, there are occasional "bursts" in the enlargement of the Sun and Earth's slowing rotation which affect human human behavior, and whose causations are incorrectly identified. Such "bursts" are sometimes reflected in the development of "fringe" ideas by those who appear to be more susceptible to the changes. They are like canaries in a coal mine used to detect the presence of a deadly gas or lessened degree of oxygen; they suffer variations of "death" by sometimes finding themselves variously ostracized from family, or friends, co-workers or the overall so-called "normalcy" of their respective social situation. In an attempt to mitigate the effects and retain some semblance of their former "normalcy", they resort to socially accepted coping mechanisms such as the drugs, alcohol, and other consciousness-numbing or dulling efforts.
It's not that we can't find multiple instances of patterns not conventionally brought into the consideration of a given topic, it's that most aren't willing to venture into a consideration whereby their respective logic may have to be questioned, or they will have to adopt a a larger repertoire of variables that they have excluded themselves from thinking about through adopted rationalizations for exclusion. However, compiling a larger knowledge by way of including information is not that which is being stressed, even though it might be helpful where larger compilations are useful to establish the credibility of an advocated universality of human conceptualization. The underlined point is that each of our attempts to establish greater social progress belies the fact that they are adopted adjustments adapting to an incremental disintegration involving the obsolescence of humanity. Despite all our good intentions, we are involved with a process attempt to find a point of equilibrium in a moment of stabilized decay... though the stability may give the impression of permanence and that any perceived ultimate demise is so far distant we need not worry about and instead pursue an individualized means of maximizing our self-regard, masked by appropriate social expressions of humility and accepted altruistic gestures.
But let us state some definitives. For example, all workers are Capitalistic when the word "Capitalism" is defined as an economic system based on private ownership of capital and "Capital" is defined as Assets available for use in the production of further assets. And if we expand the last definition to include: to assist those assets (human resources) to be more productive, we may note an incentive for promoting the funding of government programs. Unfortunately, what we mean by a person being "productive" can be widely interpreted to suggest a variety of behaviors. If that which they produce is not likewise productive, we have the occasion for promoting wastefulness. They are a consumer of goods who may not likewise be productive beyond this production level. In fact, they may require one or more others to sustain them, thereby consuming more goods and or services that might well be better utilized elsewhere.
Whereas nature in the wild uses a stratification of inter-species consumption (species are eaten by other species), this same methodology is used by humans along with various hoarding behaviors... such as squirrels collecting nuts or humans collecting money, and some think as a symbolic reflection of primates collecting leaves to improve the comfort of their nesting positions. Our social philosophies are not particularly well thought out. In many cases, we adopt a philosophy to some old social pattern, thinking a mere change in attitude by way of an elected person will suffice to engender a better functioning government in order to address various social ills. We don not customarily think of Communism, Democracy and Socialism as different expressions of the same effort to establish a measure of equilibrium under environmental conditions headed along a course of obsolescence that we can do nothing more than make the best of it.
The Marxian thrusts for emphasizing the importance of class division, anti-Capitalism, and a worker-dominated social governing mechanism to be used as the definitive tools for creating conditions for an enhanced government; is a trio of wrong-headedness. But nor can we rely on the mechanism of a tripartite division of government branches supported by the presumed democratic notion of a checks-and-balances provision, while at the same time denying the bulk of the people to surrender their free will to the Will of a select few. The people themselves should rightly be a definitive part of the process by having an established branch for effecting itself as a direct part of the Checks -and- Balances provision and as the foremost regulatory body from which laws concerning all circumstances can be administered.
And by necessity we should point out that Communism, Democracy and Socialism are not to be "owned" by any minority group as their personal mechanism by which desired entitlements are to be acquired. No matter how much personalized orientations of minority groups may seek to privatize these avenues for themselves, they belong to all of us, and all of us must be in charge of defining the minimum and maximum limits of application and definition. The present formulas of government are not good enough. We have a right to try something else. This "something else" is presently being worked on to establish considerations for producers, products and production methods assigned to an applicable sociological goal for humanity... and not for individuals wanting to use humanity as its private resource to accomplish personal goals at the expense of humanity. And the name we shall call this amalgamated ideology is previewed the concept of a New Government... a Cenocracy.
Page Initially Created: Friday,29-Jul-2016... 02:55 AM
Initial Posting: Friday, 29-Jul-2016... 09:02 AM