[MD] Commie Talk and USA bashing?

[skutvik at online.no]

Hello to you Andre

On 8 Oct. you  wrote:

> I have noticed that there are differing opinions/ convictions about at
> which level capitalism and socialism belong. Following Pirsig's advice
> I looked up their definitions. These are from www.yourdictionary.com
> (I do not have a dictionary I can 'lay my hands' on).
 
In my opinion"economics" as a rational (objective) study and/or system 
is intellect, thus both communism's and capitalism's (as economical 
systems, they have a political aspect too) are intellect, while the 
original exchange of goods (be it barter or using money) is a social 
pattern having come under intellectual control. 

> Pirsig on the intellectual level:
> "...the greatest meaning can be given to the intellectual level if it
> is confined to the skilled manupulation of abstract symbols *that have
> no* *corresponding particular experience* which behave according
> to rules of their own" (In A.McWatt's paper "A critical Analysis..."
> p79). Italics are mine because I do not completely know what is meant
> by this.

> However it appears to me that given this guideline both capitalism and
> socialism belong to the *social level*...and so do governments/ the
> political sector with their interventions (when needed), G8 Summits,
> economic Think tanks, International and National Trade negotiations/
> agreements. etc etc. to ensure some sort of  laissez "fairness"  the
> whole operation i.e this is not intellectualising at the abstract
> level. Their big difference being that capitalism has DQ as its
> built-in driving force and socialism hasn't...and that makes the
> difference.

I could not agree more, this definition of intellect is clearly not correct 
MOQ-wisely. Manipulation of symbols is what language is about (plus 
mathematics, logic ..etc) Nor I understand what "no corresponding 
particular experience" means, but Pirsig could not bring himself to 
agree fully with the SOL interpretation (intellect=the subject/object 
distinction) in this case: symbols/what they symbolize. 

Most of LILA conveys the SOL, but at places Pirsig lapses back into 
the "abstract" intellect of thinking, much like SOM's MIND, and inside a 
metaphysics that has forsworn the mind/matter distinction it's 
untenable. In spite of his saying that intellect arrived with the Greeks 
(S/O in a MOQ context) most people around here looks upon my SOL 
as some heresy.  Good Grief!        

> (Without wanting to be facetious I have argued in an earlier post that
> socialism does not exist...in actual practice. That is: it still is in
> the realms of some people's imagination. I certainly don't see it from
> where I am).

IMO "politics" is Q-intellect in the same sense that "economics" is, 
both the OBJECTIVE approach to the originally social patterns rule 
and trade. I guess you are right, nowhere is the totally free enterprise 
(capitalism) or the absolute state-controlled (socialism)  realized.       

IMO

Bo