steven R. Bayne

My interests are analytical philosophy and the history of political theory.

[steven R. Bayne @SteveBayne]

@AntiWokeMemes I'll drink to that!

[steven R. Bayne @SteveBayne]

@A_Nostalgilct She's a girl having fun, nothing more, nothing less.

[steven R. Bayne @SteveBayne]

@UN @WFP No! There is no obligation imposed on anyone to feed someone else.

[steven R. Bayne @SteveBayne]

THE NEW SOCIALISTS

The current crop of professed socialists divide society largely into two classes: the oppressors and the oppressed. This is a childish oversimplification of Communism. The Communists had it that classes were not defined by a subjective determination of who is being oppressed and who is doing the oppressing.

Communism, properly understood, is a theory that recognizes classes defined by productive relations within an economy; workers, owners, landlords. While the owners may be oppressors, they are not a class defined by BEING oppressors as such. What the phony socialists have done is to create an arbitrarily defined class of oppressed, rather than a class unambiguously determined by the structure of economies. When they speak of the oppressed in a loud voice, they merely whisper in the ears of the working class, a class they have betrayed in exchange for reputation, career, and ego.

The CPUSA in the twenties realizing (somewhat belatedly) that pursuing the class struggle in America was not working took hold of the oppressor/oppressed idea and ran with it. Doing so revealed their failure to achieve what before was the Marxist inevitability of capitalism’s collapse.

This new breed of socialists are duplicitous and an insult to the very ideology they profess to represent.

[steven R. Bayne @SteveBayne]

@SenatorDurbin I'm sick of hearing about the "Dreamers." Worry less about them and more about us. Who really counts in your political game? Let me guess.

[steven R. Bayne @SteveBayne]

@marklevinshow The insurgency of socialism is best thought of as sociological phenomenon with political consequences rather than a political event with sociological consequences.

[steven R. Bayne @SteveBayne]

@RealMelGibson01 Be honest. Which poll are you talking about?

[steven R. Bayne @SteveBayne]

It has been reported that the Iranian regime has blocked internet communication within Iran. I’m surprised that not included in our psyops campaign, as so far reported, is massive air drops of messages to the people.

This is old fashion but it may be worth the cost. So how about a few hundred thousand physical posts dropped over Iran? If nothing else, this would rattle the regime. Why not do it? You have emphasized the need to support dissidents within Iran; but, first, the battlefield must be shaped. This first move does not require the Internet, etc.

[steven R. Bayne @SteveBayne]

@StefanikEl83115 Depends on the gun and the number of purchases. Shotguns, handguns, .22's, etc. should be exempt.

[steven R. Bayne @SteveBayne]

I was impressed by your reference to historical (dialectical) materialism. It is, I think, worth mentioning that there is an important distinction to be made between historical materialism and the materialism that goes back to Democritus. Although the latter was pursued by Marx, while a student, historical materialism commits one to determinism, whereas materialism simpliciter does not. So there is a question.

Can a materialist, indeed and atheist be a good American? An atheist in the Marxist camp is committed to a decidedly un-American ideology; but not so a “scientific materialist” who as a consequence falls into being an atheist. You may find it of some interest that Mao recognized the importance of this distinction in the opening paragraph of his work “On Practice.”
The reason I raise this point is that the idea that of being an atheist need not preclude, a priori, one from being a patriotic American. I love Jesse Watters, but I’m a different sort of person and being able to “go your own way” and be left alone cuts to the meaning freedom.

Your followers may be interested in a very lucid work by a Communist, G. A. Cohen, "Karl Marx's Theory of History, A Defence. Princeton, 1978.

[steven R. Bayne @SteveBayne]

A COMMENT ON AMARTYA SEN’S VIEW OF ETHICS AND ECONOMICS

Several years ago, I became engrossed in lectures by Amartya Sen. Recently, I returned for a second read, dissatisfied by my take from my first read. The lectures are contained in On Ethics and Economics, Blackwell, 1988. In his first lecture, he gives a general statement of where he stands on the relation of economics and ethics. Here is my first impression of his early remarks in the first chapter of that manuscript.

His understanding of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics internal to that work is consistent, but to a degree is inattentive to the relationship obtaining between ethics and economics, on one hand, and that between politics and ethics and economics on the other.

Economics is not a bloodless science. In this regard Sen is absolutely correct; it is not, like physics, “value free.” Here Sen is absolutely right; however, I believe he fails to fully appreciate the difference between ethics, as such, a social responsibility.

I may (and probably will) emend these, somewhat, careless remarks, as I wade through, once again, a very interesting and important manuscript.
https://t.co/dspFFG48EB

[steven R. Bayne @SteveBayne]

@DavidJHarrisJr Yes, that is one reason I voted for him. We have had this outfit run education at great expense and the kids are rarely at grade level. Graduating high school as sem-literate.

[steven R. Bayne @SteveBayne]

@JBPritzker Give it up JB. You are an "oligok."

[steven R. Bayne @SteveBayne]

@GovPritzker Snore

[steven R. Bayne @SteveBayne]

Aristotle had to respond to Plato's epistemology. He did. He "invented" physics.

[steven R. Bayne @SteveBayne]

@Ruby_331 A socialist

[steven R. Bayne @SteveBayne]

@marklevinshow I respectfully disagree. We SHOULD sell him shit! I have had some (albeit limited) acquaintance with Turks in the arts who without making a show of it have expressed distain for Erdogan and his egomaniacal fantasies.

[steven R. Bayne @SteveBayne]

@JBPritzker The only enemy you have the courage to fight are Republicans.

[steven R. Bayne @SteveBayne]

Many, perhaps most us, who were participants in the socialist, anti-Vietnam war, movement of the sixties, can only reflect with a solemn sense of disappointment on the state of mind and being of the motivators of the rising “socialist tide” in America.

In the fifties, there were no “entitlements.” There was “relief.” Meaning: temporary assistance until you get a job. Before the fifties, circa 1912-1941, what MOTIVATED radicals was obvious poverty and extreme hardship among the willing to work poor. Now we feed the “junkies.” We were brought together by hardship and very tough times. NOT so TODAY: today it is about “entitlements.” By the usual standards, there is no significant suffering that cannot be accommodated by green cards, SSI, etc.

This new generation of socialists is fraudulent, led by smug, undereducated, highly degreed activists, many of whom are of malicious intent. People on the left and right must come together and oppose those whose interests are either defined by vanity or an anti-American agenda which if implemented will prove costly to the people of all nations who have a stake in our leadership of the free world.