John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873, was a British philosopher, a political economist, civil servant and Member of Parliament (MP). It has been stated that he may have been the most influential philosophical thinker of the 19th century in the English speaking world. His father, James Mill, a philosopher as well, along with Jeremy Bentham, educated Mill. It was James Mill’s intent to educate his son in accordance with Utilitarian thought, a Bentham construct. Upon Bentham’s and his death, James Mill expected his son to carry on the cause for Utilitarianism. With this in mind, Mill’s educational experience was rigorous and he was intentionally kept away from other children outside the immediate family.
Within the first decade of life, Mill became a prolific reader of classics and was appointed the family schoolmaster at the age of 12…an Interesting concept and responsibility. It appears that while perhaps still a teenager, Mill, in concert with his father, wrote and published Elements of Political Economy. Mill gravitated away from Benthamite thought and was instrumental in the development of the economies of scale, opportunity cost, and comparative advantage in trade concepts.
He believed in personal freedom, and emphasized its importance individually and for society. His admiration for his spouse, Harriet Taylor, may have led or influenced him to espouse the stance that irrespective of gender, all persons should be free to voice and act according to their own needs. This was critical for individual development and would provide for the betterment of a society.
It appears that he was considered at some point a philosophical radical. (I’ll have to investigate this later. Obviously, contextual information is necessary.) He might have been fluent in Greek, Latin, and French. One biography mentions that he was involved in political activities. I wonder at this point what those were. His intelligence might have worked as therapy. He suffered from depression at age 20, and historians believe he had the insight that his father’s instructional emphasis on cognitive diminished his not emotional development. He related this dearth in emotional development to his bout with depression. However, his capacity to analyze led him to the reading of poetry, a remedy for his malady. Mill had the grand opportunity to meet d’Eichtahl and St. Simon and other philosophers’ work, including Comte.
Mill advanced the idea that any new philosophical view needed to be incorporated gradually and slowly. Disregarding all segments of prior philosophical ideas was also dysfunctional. His father’s and Bentham’s ideas surrounding Utilitarianism would not be rejected in whole as new ideas and potential social change based in these new ideas would be integrated.
Mill and Marx appear to have a philosophical foundation similarity: they both believed in the importance of individual development and freedom, whether the person is a laborer or a person of wealth, and once again, a man or a woman. The development includes happiness. It has been noted that Mill moved away, to some degree, from his father, who did not exhibit Epicurean (one who believes in modest pleasures) tendencies at all.
Mill produced several noteworthy works, including On Liberty (1859), his System of Logic (1843), The Principles of Political Economy (1848), Utilitarianism (1861), Considerations on Representative Government (1851), The Subjection of Women (1869), and an autobiography published posthumously by his deceased spouse’s daughter in 1873, the same year of his death.
My initial readings about Mill involve language and logic, induction, and empiricism. I conclude that Mill takes the stance that in our use of logic, or how we go about our lives, we must be reasonable and not reject a form of reasoning that may lead to a conclusion that may be contestable. We must be able to infer from the present to the future, and make predictions to be safe, to be function in a social world, and to survive. We conclude based on experience and we use experience to live effectively. It is imperfect. It is an imperfect method. It includes deductive and inductive reasoning in the context of our experiences. It is fallible. But to have absolutism as a goal in this arena is unreasonable. Mill does point out that some logic, based in this reasoning, is more accurate than another. He mentions the use of superstition, leading to more inaccuracy and other dysfunction.
I, as others may, will conclude that Mill espoused a form of empirical relativism. Others confirm this contention, stating Mill believed that knowledge is relative to our consciousness. Our consciousness includes inferences from our knowledge base (past events of like or similar nature). Our state of consciousness, including our beliefs, is from this inference. For example, when we visit a car dealership and open the door of a new car on the lot, we expect to smell a certain smell before we open the door and smell. If we have done this before, we are conscious of the smell prior to the present-day, about to happen, experience. Our knowledge is not from a direct experience in the present; our conscious awareness of reality is inferred from the past. The thought, or expectation is propositional, as you or I are “proposing” a reality in our thoughts. If we have not had this direct experience, but have heard about it, we have a different reality, belief, or knowledge about, and a different empirical understanding of our world, and therein is the relativity of the matter. This viewpoint also reveals the limits as well as the relativity of thought.
More later.

Herbert Spencer: Imperialists and Slavery

Well, well, well...what do we have here...an accurate depiction of the Bush administration (43) from 100 years beforehand? Perhaps we do. As stated by Spencer, an imperialistic nation actually places itself in peril and subjugates itself as it invades and subjugates another. The imperialist destroys, or at least damages, its own precepts as it involves itself in shortsighted activities. Spencer might take the position that we have handcuffed ourselves with our own shackles with our reckless behavior during the Bush administration. Most believe it is quite reasonable to expect that We will maintain a significant present in Iraq for many years, in one of several capacities over time. Spencer points out that an imperialist nation decrees itself superior to its victims, and in the case of Iraq, he might ask who the victims were, are and will be over the years. This is a tacit result, out of many, for the two nationalities and their representatives, regardless of their positions within each society. It is quite possible that many Americans don't believe that Iraqis are capable and Americans had to come to their rescue. Spencer would perhaps ask: Have we cheapened our culture as a result? Have we become more narrow as a result? Have we all become pawns for the king/emperor, who made the decision to war/invade independent of outside, conflicting information and with deceit? How many hours of each day of work in the past seven years have each of us worked that were allocated to the Iraq war? What percentage of each workers' wage has gone for this purpose? How else have our lives changed as a result of a predominantly unilateral and strike first orientation and evaluate honestly (for the people of the nation state); as well as with true and adequate analysis? Is/was the invasion for not just capitalism, but individual capitalists with cozy relationships within government, the defense industry, and correllary industries with common directorates/leadership? Was the balance of power within the federal governmental structure so schewed that a one-sided viewpoint with centralized power steamrolled any other viewpoint? And finally, Spencer might ask how we, the citizen, "enslaved" by the state's power to control our lives, for we all were working for the government and its actions, could have prevented the most recent imperialistic as well the next advance in name-only of self-preservation?

No time to review at this point. Must part.

Newsweek magazine dated February 16, 2009

Check it out. Entitled: We Are All Socialists Now: The Perils and Promise of the New Era of Big Government.

I have to read. Bye.

Marx's Communist Manifesto

Questions we might ask ourselves:

1. How can we expect that any society will not have hierarchy, class divisions, and power differentials?
2. And, if these (i.e. class divisions) are tempered by cultural aspects that control or direct thought and behavior, how can we expect a revolt by the masses?
3. I understand Marx's argument or belief that capitalists destroy, or are constantly causing their own crises through competition and expansion for survival. Theoretically, but I would like to see/hear an example of how the proletariat responded, step by step, to create massive change. And, I would like to see/hear an analysis, describing events and their causal relationships, once again, step by step, of the deterioration of a society's beurgeois class. What happened? What were their "mistakes"? How did they respond? What factors precipitated each event?
4. I need to discuss how the bourgeoisie "supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education". It makes sense, but further discussion will solidify this process.
5. Are home loans a way that capitalists appease the proletariat? (Just popped into my head.)
We all know that a "man's home is his castle".
6. We do live according to the interests of the ruling class; I have felt this for many years. The "system" convinces us to "get ahead", plan for future challenges; but if we play by the rules of the game, the game is "fixed" so that one can get ahead only so much. The struggle is day-to-day and it continues until death. The ruling class (and I have said this for years of the military) calculates what it can take and what it needs to give back to stay in its position and have its interests reflected in law, civil and criminal, and the enforcement of the law; within the context of federal agency guidance and guidelines that dictate what all must follow, individually or within the workforce/workplace; and perpetuates itself through the media. Do you remember an AT & T's commercial from about 1982? "The system is the solution" was the theme. It struck me then, and it strikes me now.
7. In communistic society, how does the present dominate the past?
8. The bourgeoisie is involved in unconscious destruction of itself. How did humankind "get in this fix"?
9. What socialistic steps have we had to take to keep our U.S. economic ship afloat, if any?
10. Altering the economic system of the world as Marx suggests in the CM...how can this be realistically fathomed? I advance the thought that the socialization of most in the first world precludes this from happening, irrespective of class. Most accept the system as is and the most prominent nation's leader/administration is simply and obviously tweaking the system, the most one might reasonably expect. Inequality will continue to be addressed within a present-day system approach.
11. What is the importance of a nation's military? (Looking for perspective here!) What can a military force really do in today's world? Seems pretty limited to me as the world has changed drastically since WW II, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf War in the 1990s. Somebody recently asked if the military was a closed system. This is part of my point...the U.S. military is and is not, depending upon political forces in the environment at the moment.

Marx and Social Power - The Effect of Mechanization

In The Grundrisse, once again, Marx continues to describe how the labourer becomes less and less a human being in the industrial setting, as he delineates the psychological and social impact of machinery in the workplace. The labourer's social power has inexorably diminished as machinery has taken over not just physical aspects of each job, but most cognitive aspects, thereby distancing the worker from the final product. I must submit that this is a process that I can accurately label a "degradation" process, in which the worker's contribution is virtually destroyed or of such minusculer importance that, of course, the worker can be readily replaced without production interruption. The workers' social power continues to decrease as objectification increases; the worker and her/his counterparts' psyche die; the machinery lives; and the work and product is that of the machinery now, and not the living human being. Marx now defines the worker as an accessory of the machinery; devoid of any social function or power in its life-activity. The capacity to think, to develop, and to process information becomes inconsequential as technological advancements subsume living labours' social needs.

Social Power - Marx's view

Marx's viewpoint appears to follow this line of thought:



Commodities are capital (partially). Labour is a commodity. As a commodity, labour has an exchange value. A labourer, without capital, must sell his labour to sustain life. But, what is the labourer selling? His life activity, hs very being. His life. He must sell his life in exchange as a means of subsistence. The self is sold when all labour has is itself, and must sell self to capitalists to live.



"Any amount of commodities when multiplied" become greater capital, and greater social power over those who have limited social power, labourers. As capital increases, greater social power is derived for those with capital, the number of labourers needed increases to sustain and produce more capital, competition increases, which in turn, once again, increases the number of labourers needed and concomitantly decreases the labourer's social power as the division of labor and the number of labourers increases, and the means of production changes and becomes more sophisticated. Commodities (including labour and labourers), held by the capitalists, become a social power in and of themselves. A social power held by few over many, a result of the exchange of "living labour power".



Must we be what others want us to be when we labor? Do we always give our social power away? Or, if one has a passion for their work, does that person "sell her/himself" to the capitalist? Marx would we all do and must, even if we have a great passion for our work, in the sense that we have given ourselves or created for ourselves something greater and beyond us, and decreased or eliminated ourselves as human beings, since we now live, and engage in a life-activity no longer ours, for it is work for an abstraction or mission that we have created to minimize our "sale of self" and the pain (i.e. sense of alienation from self) we may feel when we periodically think of our "sale of self".

The Nature of Social Power

It appears that explaining the nature of social power as a concept irrespective of a certain culture, society, bureaucracy, small group, or individual might be a starting point. The question itself requires an extensive answer, and no doubt any answer will not adequately cover all aspects of the concept.

Social power, of course, is constructed by persons to establish order and predictability in social relationships, interactions, and expectations. An individual's social status within a social system is associated with power, and defines the degree of power each participant or player maintains at a given time within the system. Roles played by each participant in each circumstance in the social system have a impact on power. Roles can change as a person moves from one environment to another, and therefore, power differentials change, as players change in each circumstance. Informal and formal social power must also be considered as individuals are either placed in or may achieve specific social statuses within systems, both large and small.

Social power can dictate people's access to opportunity and capacity to participate in certain aspects of life, ensuring little social and economic movement. Economic and political systems, along with an individual need to perhaps remain in a one-up-man ship relationship with perceived subordinates, through informal and formal identifiable attributes (ascribed and/or achieved), are in play via a variety of forces in which social power is primary. We all learn the importance of social power in the roles we play, and we make decisions whether we want to remain in the group at hand and attempt to change or maintain our social position and therefore social powerl; engage in denial or perhaps fight to gain more power; alter some attribute/s we possess to change position vis-a-vis others; find peace within ourselves with other positive aspect to the group and the greater structure that is defining our social reality and therefore our identity and potentially self and social concept; leave the group, employer, community, or other defining and potentially limiting entity; create another group with similar objectives but without the inequalities and the resultant power differentials within the group; or attempt to organize a movement to change the greater social structure and essentially topple the power elite within the group or social construct.

It is noteworthy that social power is a product of and is exerted toward or against others within a socially stratified society with inequality and unequal treatment between classes defined by race, sex, education, and many other traits that have a fluid quality, including the present-day, informal or perhaps formal discrimination of overweight persons. Even legitimately recognized power, which includes coercive power to carry out objectives, instituted by governmental processes (e.g. legislation or judicial decision), care accepted at a certain level by the populace even if the it has a de facto unjust result. Most of the United States social power apparatus/construct is accepted, and therefore the class statuses and power differentials are accepted due to a focus on individual achievement and achieved status (and therefore the belief that each person is capable of moving to or from a certain socio-economic status), and that the system has a more fluid nature to it for each person in comparison to societies that emphasize ascribed status and familial lineage to define status and social power. I have met and worked in more than one profession with individuals who readily accept others' acqisition of material items, even in extravigant (i.e. conspicuous consumption) quantities and qualities. Quotes included, "You deserve it, you earned it." These were persons with a sporadic work history, little formal education, prison incarcerations of moderate duration (i.e. two years), a family history of prison incarcerations, substance abuse histories, and other stressors not as commonly experienced in middle class society.

The following paragraph is a summary of Karl Marx's explanation or understanding of social power found in "WageLabour and Capital". First, he maintains that "instruments of labour", or the class of labourers, is a segment or part of capital. (This, in itself, explains how the reader can understandably conclude that labor has little social power.) These instruments of labour, along with raw materials and means of subsistence of all kinds, produce raw materials. The worker, an instrument of labour, becomes capital only when the worker assumes the role of a laborer vis-a-vis a capitalist. Outside of this relationship, the human is not part of capital. However, within the production process, the worker produces through cooperation of some sort, developing relationships in order to produce. Each change in the instruments of production changes social relations between labourers as they have altered activities. Material means of production change over time (e.g. industrially applied technological advancements), defining social relations of production within the work environment and a society as a whole. When this phenomenon (means of production change) occurs it creates a definitive point in history and establishes a new and distinctive society with unique social relationships and production relationships. Accordingly, capital is realized through production and accumulated via labour, in the context of social conditions and circumstances, and according to specific social relations. It is this social context that produces capital. Capital also has exchange value, and the exchange value in a society, giving capital a social nature. Marx has stipulated that a product is a commodity with an exchange value or a price in a social and economic sense. Commodities, products with exchange value, are part of capital and are exchanged and produced via living labour power, and therefore, those with only their labour to offer in exchange for meeting their needs to sustain life have but little social power while those with capital have great social power. Commodities become capital, by virtue of their exchange value, and this capital a form of social power, and this social power subordinates those who must produce the commodities to exist.