*Are you saying that humans aren't conditioned by the culture in which they are immersed?*

No Poirot, what I am saying is that both genes and environment have
an affect on human behaviour. To think that you can just train
people to be what you want them to be, is a fallacy.

What affect each have on what, is an ongoing debate in science.
Twin studies for instance, on identical twins separated at birth,
make for fascinating reading. But the whole field of neuroscience
is unlocking how the mind works and it pays to take all of this
knowledge into account, not just outdated hypotheses.

Hi Suqeers,

A bit pedantic perhaps ? I don't know how to reference page numbers etc. for an on-line article, but I gave a reference for the quote from Capital.

Perhaps I'm mixing up Bauer and Marx, it's sometimes not clear who is saying what in his article, but Marx does not go out of his way to refute the assertion that, if Jews want full political rights, they can't have both full rights AND want to remain Jews, they can't demand general rights but also seek to protect their 'special' rights, whatever they may have been: exemption from military service perhaps ?

It's an interesting argument but let's translate it to our time, in relation to, say, Aboriginal people:

Aboriginal people shouldn't demand general rights like other 'citizens' and at the same time retain their Aboriginal identity. This might have gone down well with the conservatives back in the 1920s-1940s (and perhaps the Left since the 1970s) - that 'real' Aboriginal people have 'their' special rights and shouldn't want, or be recognised as exercising, general political rights: that would be tantamount to the dreaded assimilation. After all, the only genuine Aborigines are the ones out in the sticks, practising their culture, living off the land, eschewing Western values and the evils of consumerism, as well as the illusory bourgeois notion of 'equal rights'.

Or perhaps in the case of women, he is suggesting that they already have 'special' rights, that it would be absurd for them to demand 'general' political rights, as if they were men. Maybe I'm taking this too far ?

In defence of Marx, he may have been criticising the demands for specific national rights, the rights of small captive nations, as championned by the Romantics and the Counter-Enlightenment - in that light, he could just as easily have written 'On the Galician Question' or 'On the Ruthenian Question'. Or perhaps I'm being too forgiving :)

[TBC]

[contd]

But his denigration of the 'homme' in favour of the 'citoyen' does seem to disallow the right of everybody to their private foibles in the context of equality of political rights. 'Equality' of course was a bourgeois fantasy, only realisable under socialism, so it was idle, just on those grounds, to demand 'equal' rights, until the day of socialism had arrived.

And it does seem that, to Marx, civil society was not genuinely possible under capitalism or any other system but socialism, when in any case it would be superfluous, given that everybody, Jews, Christians, Galicians, Aborigines, women, would be subsumed in a common social soup, and individual opinions and foibles would be, if anything, harmful to the smooth running of his Utopia, the New Society of Socialist Man.

Question: have we moved one millimetre in that direction ? In 160 years ? Has it worked ? Is it more likely to be viable now than when Marx was writing ? If not, then what ? [Okay, five questions].

With respect, Squeers, we need to be careful we don't treat Marxism as if it were gospel-truth religion: we need to hold it up to the light and examine its record, just as we do with capitalism.

Both ideologies have/had fatal flaws. What might be better than both ?

Joe

you explain it well
the difference between..

""the so-called rights of man, the droits de l’homme
as distinct from the droits du citoyen,""

is the same as the right of person hood
awarded to a created fiction..{person under the act}
[like a govt incorerated coorperation]..under the corperations act

and a freeman..[ie not a slave]

the issue has become confounded however
in the main..NOW..a person..is anyone..seeking advantage under any govt 'act'

affectivly..the begger..is by law
is presumed to know..for what he begs

and it is further assumed..that no one deliberatly
choses tyo forgo his freebon status..unless seking some advantage[under the act]

affectivly govt has subverted us all into a clever scam
to the point where corperations now have subverted the fre born standing..usually acorded to only the living

see the lie begins
when you emerged from the waters[at birth]
just like a ship emerging from the waters of the seas..berths

and is then accorded for its cargo
a berthing or landfall certification[under the act]

by telling your mother or father
to apply[apply means beg]..to apply for a birthing ceryification
a legal 'person'..is created...[a cityzen][legally equal in lawfull standing to a slave

ie not a freeborn free man any more

[cause you app-lied/begged..
for this lower..[under],standing

cause your a person..
under ther births/mariages act

thus your a legal 'person',..created by the state

in reality..the person
created under the act...isnt you
[its the certification..of birth]

in time
you as a person/UNDER..the act
need beg for fuerther licences..[drivers licence etc]

all having a lower..
[under],standing..under the act

when you go to court
your called mr...[as in an army rank]
see they are persons[under the act too]
and the person [licence]..is presumed to be you

its a rather clever sceme
but god gave you rights

[equal enjoined freeborn men;..heirs of all creation]
but because no one told you..[ie informed concent]
your contracted[bound]..by personhood..
ie a slave under the act

you begg to regester your car..etc
but you have ONLY a right to use it
because the govt holds the certificate of landing

they securitised these
and these are some of them 'securities'
they bought with your compusory super..[also under the act]

in fact everything you sign
is a security...and has been bundled
by those more clever than you...knowing as a slave..theres nothing you can do[limited lieabilty its great mate]

thus the quote goes on
rights..""are nothing but the rights
of a member of civil society..i.e.,the rights of egoistic man,

of [FREE]man separated...
from other men..[persons/'cityzens]..and from the community."

but how to explain..to a slave he us free
only when..he sets himself free

Loudmouth, I think you're taking the issue of special pleading in the wrong direction.

Nizkor (the holocaust memorial project) http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/special-pleading.html says this:

"From a philosophic standpoint, the fallacy of Special Pleading is violating a well accepted principle, namely the Principle of Relevant Difference. According to this principle, two people can be treated differently if and only if there is a relevant difference between them."

and

"There are cases which are similar to instances of Special Pleading in which a person is offering at least some reason why he should be exempt but the reason is not good enough to warrant the exemption. This could be called "Failed Pleading." For example, a professor may claim to be exempt from helping the rest of the faculty move books to the new department office because it would be beneath his dignity. However, this is not a particularly good reason and would hardly justify his exemption. If it turns out that the real "reason" a person is claiming exemption is that they simply take themselves to be exempt, then they would be committing Special Pleading. Such cases will be fairly common. After all, it is fairly rare for adults to simply claim they are exempt without at least some pretense of justifying the exemption. "

Is Jewish religious/ethnic identification a relevant difference? Marx said it is not and I agree. The Nazi regime said it was and committed terrible acts on that basis. Many Jewish people say it is and the state of Israel was created and has committed terrible acts in its turn as a result. At best such special pleading is an example of the second quote I gave above.

[cont]