Re: needs and desireS

["Doyle Saylor" <djsaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Title: Re: needs and desireS




Greetings Comrades,

    Kevin Robert Dean brings up psychology in regard to the question of desires 
and how Marxism is not supposed to be about psychology, or is it?


Kevin,

I wonder though if

sometimes some Marxists tend to feel that aside from answering political

questions, communism also answers psychological problems as well?


Doyle

Marxism has been (is) about class consciousness.  Which must in some sense be 
about the mind.  But Marxism also is about the whole of the capitalist system 
in regard to the creation of class consciousness.  So psychology as it is 
generally practiced in the U.S. and elsewhere is a specific kind of walled off 
field of studying consciousness.  For example psychology does not concern 
itself with neurology.  This odd focus on narrow academic specialties is what 
makes a problem for Marxism which looks at the systemic (whole social) affects 
of class structure upon the consciousness of people within capitalism. 
 Psychology is in Capitalism not about how the economy shapes the mind of 
everyone, but about the mechanics of behavior of people "divorced" from the 
rich getting richer, and the poor having nothing much at all.  And in that 
psychology is different from psychiatry, from sociology, from the thoughts of 
the novelist, etc.  And this walled specificness of psychology is what Marxist 
question with vigor.


Alienation is a good example of how Marxism has addressed consciousness, in the 
sense that one works for the owners of the means of production and the 
reification of ownership alienates workers from their work.  But looking at 
that more closely one gets in the concept that human beings have a connection 
to the work they produce.  That connectedness is a consciousness in human 
beings of the wholeness their life.  For example, human society creates social 
connections.  Human beings feel connected to other human beings.  More or less.


In addition Marx opposed idealism.  This closely follows a sense of 
consciousness, in the meaning that idealism is not materialist.


The arguments against needs and desires primarily on lbo has been about how the 
common attitude in this society is to isolate something, like desire, and then 
make that a thing unto itself.  That thing unto itself which lacks a cohesion 
and connection to social and material reality then follows the traditions of 
religion (platonism root of the Catholic church) which being familiar in many 
and various ways to everyone produce a strong feeling of the "meaning" of the 
thought about desire.  In other words it is most hard in this system to think 
of things as indissolubly intertwined.  So that the fate of workers does affect 
the fate of the rich.  Instead the rich are in heaven you see, and we are here 
in the muck of hell as is the moral consequence of fornicating with work and 
not owning the means of production.


Philosophy is usually considered to be a field of thought which pulls new 
methods or what have you from some creative burst in philosophical individuals. 
 So like psychology philosophy has a reputation for being etheral not 
materialist even when philosophy is materialist.  For example, Marx and Engels 
could not have known much about how human brains work.  Instead they would with 
a sense of history and the panorama of those vistas try to ground their 
understanding in the material reality.  It is clear that they could only go so 
far in their time, and we can go some farther now.  For example it is clear 
that philosophy could be materialized.  That psychology could be unified with 
the whole of the various fields of study of consciousness.  And that these 
endeavors could produce multiple weapons of choice for the working class.


Like What?


Consciousness certainly is about sexist oppression of women.  For the work of 
family construction is world wide thrust upon women.  The consciousness of 
children, the psychology of children, the nurture of children, are issues of 
how class shapes minds.  That sexual relationships are consciousness, and kinds 
of work, for example marriage is meant to shape and channel the consciousness 
of sexual activity.  If not psychology, what can one say, but that marriage is 
about the whole of a relationship between people who take their clothes off and 
feel each others naked bodies everywhere that pleasures them.  As a significant 
element of the contractual agreement that marriage is supposed to exact upon 
the persons who agree to the draconian terms of the contract.  And if those two 
do divorce, then the pain of splitting up is most strongly felt in 
consciousness.


The contractual marriage of Psychology and Philosphy


Kevin,

This may be a stupid question--but is the marriage of Psychology and

Philosophy a viable one or will I see them soon on "Divorce Court"?


Doyle

Marxist advocate collective or group marriage of the community, that is 
materially, whatever sort of narrow field of thought, philosophy, mathematics, 
linguistics, et al concerning consciousness come together into a whole.  The 
contractual marriage of mathematics to the human mind for example is the 
subject of the liberal linguist's thinker, George Lakoff's latest book.  By 
embedding mathematics into the mind, Lakoff materializes mathematics out of the 
Cartesian and Platonic ether world into human reality.  This consummation of 
sexual congress between language and math produces a baby, which grows up into 
an anti-religious and robust Marxist way of thinking.

cheers,

Doyle Saylor