Roger,

Apologies for butting in, but I’ve also followed David Harvey’s course on Capital vol 1 and found it very engaging. I’m now tackling what he does for vols 2 and 3. I am keen to understand what Marx meant by ‘fictitious capital’ when analysing finance capital and the credit system.
You might be interested in this talk that Harvey gave on the future of capitalism to the Penn Humanities Forum last year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYzKsiev43Q&feature=g-vrec
I find David Harvey’s approach, combining history and geography as well as (Marxist) economics insightful, although it does lead to a pessimistic view of the immediate future for the 99% and the long term future for everyone.

On the subject of politeness, when I watched the documentary film ‘Just Do It’ about UK climate activists, I was immediately attracted to the notion of ‘civilised disobedience’ as advocated by the woman who believes in serving cups of tea at demonstrations (it’s the British way).
http://justdoitfilm.com/

e mail sent

Email me and I’ll give you my skype address.

Hello Roger,

Perhaps we should talk at more length privately as well as publically? You can email me at the address in my profile and then we can skype if you wish.

The psychological aspect you delve in to is interesting. I would suggest, if you are really interested in this aspect, that you get hold of a copy of Iain McGilchrist’s book The Master and his Emissary. In my opinion it is quite brilliant and important.

It provideds another very powerful lens and one which suggests ways forward.

As for your suggestions about moving out in to other groups – yes, I agree but as you have already found out is usually a very delicate and often very difficult and frustrating task which meets oposition and suspicion at every step.

We are building a group and power relations both within and without any group become important. Odd as it may sound I firmly believe politeness is an important, very often over-looked corrective and defence against the emergence of fascistic, bullying petty tyrants.

A lack of politeness towards rthose who disagree a lack of manners in discussions is the first, and for me, best early warning that I should be wary of someone.

I know it sounds slightly twee, but long experience has taught me that twee though it may sound it is rarely wrong.

Anyway you sound as if you could do with a chat. So contact me if you wish.
As for the party idea it is not dead but waiting for its moment. Landslides happen but only when they are ready.

Many here have studied these subjects in great depth we all have been impacted by the system and have our own experiences of its Bounties and punishments. I remain frustrated as to how one combats the indifference, fear and denial that remains as the outward and admitted perceptions of many people.

I have read often here of others encountering the eyes of their friends glazing over and the uncomfortable impression given “Oh please not that again´´ .

I have tried through writing songs and participating in other areas from my Hobbies of Music and philosophy to get into the mind set of my peer groups and so forth and introduce new angles and perspectives. I have been banned from the Economics Group of the Economist In Linked in, I have been banned from the My Les Paul Guitar Forum and also from the Gibson Forums. I have not been rude or aggressive or even overtly political I have merely refused to conform to the apathetic stance or subscribed to the acceptable Line. ´´I saw a swallow once and summer is upon us always.

The challenge is increasingly to break the hypnotic spell. I have spent several hours reading up on the psychology of group dynamics.

This essay particularly. ( and Wikipedia and various other references pointed to there).

http://www.scribd.com/doc/7168803/Adorno-Freudian-Theory-and-the-Pattern-of-Fascist-Propaganda#

Freudian Theory and pattern of Fascist Propaganda.

This is the ultimate root of the otherwise enigmatic
 personalization
of fascist
propaganda, its incessant plugging of names and supposedly great men, instead of 
discussing objective causes. The formation of the imagery of an omnipotent and unbridled
father figure, by far transcending the individual father and therewith apt to be enlarged into
a »group ego,« is the only way to promulgate the »passive-masochistic attitude … to whom
one’s will has to be surrendered,« an attitude required of the fascist follower the more his
political behaviour becomes irreconcilable with his own rational interests as a private person
as well as those of the group or c
lass
to which he actually belongs.
12

They fail to develop an independent autonomous
conscience and substitute for it an identification with collective authority which is as irrational as Freud
described it, heteronomous, rigidly oppressive, largely alien to the individuals’ own thinking and, therefore,
easily exchangeable in spite of its structural rigidity. The phenomenon is adequately expressed in the Nazi
formula that what serves the German people is good. The pattern reoccurs in the speeches of American fascist
demagogues who never appeal to their prospective followers’ own conscience but incessantly invoke external,
conventional, and stereotyped values which are taken for granted and treated as authoritatively valid without
ever being subject to a process of living experience or discursive examination

The Fascists, down to the last smalltime demagogue, continuously
emphasize ritualistic ceremonies and hierarchical differentiations. The less hierarchy within
the setup of a highly rationalized and quantified industrial society is warranted, the more
artificial hierarchies with no objective
raison d’être
are built up and rigidly imposed by
Fascists for purely psycho-technical reasons.

Hitler’s famous formula,
Verantwortung nach
oben, Autorität nach unten
, (responsibility towards above, authority towards below) nicely
rationalizes this character’s ambivalence.

This is the line pursued by the agitators’ standard »unity trick.« They emphasize their being
different from the outsider but play down such differences within their own group and tend
to level out distinctive qualities among themselves with the exception of the hierarchical
one. »We are all in the same boat;« nobody should be better off; the snob, the intellectual,
the pleasure seeker are always attacked. The undercurrent of malicious egalitarianism, of 
the
brotherhood of all-comprising humiliation, is a component of fascist propaganda and
Fascism itself. It found its symbol in Hitler’s notorious command of the
 Eintopfgericht 
.

 
18
orality: language itself, devoid of its rational significance, functions in a magical way and
furthers those archaic regressions which reduce individuals to members of crowds. Since
this very quality of uninhibited but largely associative speech presupposes at least a
temporary lack of ego control, it may well indicate weakness rather than strength. The
fascist agitators’ boasting of strength is indeed frequently accompanied by hints at such
weakness, particularly when begging for monetary contributions – hints which, to be sure,
are skillfully merged with the idea of strength itself

This standardization, in turn, falls in line with stereotypical thinking, that is to say,
with the »stereopathy« of those susceptible to this propaganda and their infantile wish for
endless, unaltered repetition. It is hard to predict whether the latter psychological
disposition will prevent the agitators’ standard devices from becoming blunt through
excessive application. In national
–
socialist Germany, everybody used to make fun of certain
propagandistic phrases such as »blood and soil,« (
 Blut und Boden), jokingly called Blubo or the concept of the
Nordic race from which the parodistic verb
aufnorden
, (to»northernize«) was derived. Nevertheless, these appeals do not seem to have lost their
attractiveness. Rather, their very »phonyness« may have been relished cynically and
sadistically as an index for the fact that power alone decided one’s fate in the Third Reich,
that is, power unhampered by rational objectivity.

 The continuous danger of war inherent in Fascism spells
destruction and the masses are at least preconsciously aware of it. Thus, Fascism does not
altogether speak the untruth when it refers to its own irrational powers, however faked the
mythology which ideologically rationalizes the irrational may be. Since it would be
impossible for Fascism to win the masses through rational arguments, its propaganda must
necessarily be deflected from discursive thinking; it must be oriented psychologically, and
has to mobilize irrational, unconscious, regressive processes.

Although
the Fascist agitator doubtlessly takes up certain tendencies within those he addresses, he
does so as the mandatory of powerful economic and political interests. Psychological
dispositions do not actually cause Fascism; rather, Fascism defines a psychological area
which can be successfully exploited by the forces which promote it for entirely
nonpsychological reasons of self 
–
interest. What happens when masses are caught by Fascist
propaganda is not a spontaneous primary expression of instincts and urges but a quasi-
scientific revitalization of their psychology

He defines the realm of psychology by the supremacy of the unconscious
and postulates that what is it should become ego. The emancipation of man from the
heteronomous rule of his unconscious would be tantamount to the abolition of his
»psychology.« Fascism furthers this abolition in the opposite sense through the
perpetuation of dependence instead of the realization of potential freedom, through
expropriation of the unconscious by social control instead of making the subjects conscious
of their unconscious. For, while psychology always denotes some bondage of the individual,
it also presupposes freedom in the sense of a certain self-sufficiency and autonomy of the
individual. It is not accidental that the nineteenth century was the great era of psychological
thou
ght. In a thoroughly reified society, in which there are virtually no direct relationships
between men, and in which each person has been reduced to a social atom, to a mere
function of collectivity, the psychological processes, though they still persist in each
individual, have ceased to appear as the determining forces of the social process.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/7168803/Adorno-Freudian-Theory-and-the-Pattern-of-Fascist-Propaganda#

I am not trying to get a focus on the Fascist, left right binary narrative. a key paragraph from the ones I highlight above is.

The fascist agitators’ boasting of strength is indeed frequently accompanied by hints at such weakness, particularly when begging for monetary contributions – hints which, to be sure, are skilfully merged with the idea of strength itself.

I am acutely aware that we have formed here an in group and need to be careful not to fall prey to the tendency to desert the rational and objective so as to bolster our own group esteem . The problem being of curse that marginalisation is the stock in trade of the hegemonic power structures that have the momentum of a divided and conquered populace distracted and fearfully rejecting anything strange or seemingly weak.

My view is that there is no other option but than to step into the lions den and place the facts in the mainstream this needs to be done with a sort of Buddy system to avoid a sort of martyrdom. A leadership study I just read states that leaders emerge from within groups after trust is gained and acceptance by the group is first necessary before new ideas can be proposed and accepted.

I have encountered a subtle crack down on my own online activities in this regard what I am saying is we need to enter the blogosphere and wider real life groups and back each other up almost as sort of vigilante guerilla groups doing it individually we are easily isolated and reason is not a force that issues as currency in the propagandised smog of popular avatar existence.

I realise David that some were less than enthusiastic about this initiative , what news is there of it ? there is a requirement and it is very urgent. My bell weathers are chiming alarmingly. The banks are getting quite aggressive again and of course as well as watching Greece we should be aware of the problem of Israeli/Us aggression towards Iran.

Forgive the stream of consciousness but one needs to reach out sometimes when one feels weary and helpless and for me it is one of those times. But i do have hope and courage in my heart as well as love for how I believe the world and people really are.

Ancient Greek word for a philosophical concept of balanced sanity.
Wikipedia’s got it down as “conceptually the opposite of hubris”, which is cute and if you say it enough times, it stops sounding like a treatment for a urinary tract infection and starts to sound almost like a geological age.
Also, well….Greek.

And thanks for running this place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skx2oiVT3TE

WHat is encouraging is that if you look at this link in the video to various sources regarding Money and the root of the problem there is Now a wider availability of critical analysis of the system and I believ greater willingness to hear from non main stream endorsed critics ( are any critcs really endorsed)?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gRasNkkeIyl9eiR1-z9X2_bMeIkL22U4qJBK6681MNI/edit?hl=en

David I think this initiatives time has come Hope you had a good trip away and look forward to the next steps.

ANyway Heres the John Deere Rag.

http://youtu.be/iW5YxVq0RqU