The Nature of Abstraction

...Or how we internalise the real world

We have, on one hand, an Independent Reality, and on the other our Abstractions from that Reality, converted into forms that can exist in a Mind - as some analogue of those things extracted from that complex world.

And, if we define Abstractions NOT as real features of concrete Reality, but instead, as simplified and idealised reflections in the Human Mind (by which we mean attempts to internalise and understand real phenomena), we have to be very clear what it is that we think about.

For, we definitely assume that we are thinking about the concrete phenomenon that we had observed, but of course, that isn’t entirely true! We can never pack into our mind the full contents of those phenomena, but only a reflection of them, determined by the mirroring implement we use, and manipulative processes based upon previous such extractions.

Now, there are many things to consider with such internalisations. Quite apart from the social verifications, that make final forms common to many minds, we still have to explain why such abstractions are so useful, as well as what they actually consist of, and what they constitute as a whole collection (or even some sort of “system”) within their current residences within our minds. Indeed, this has been realised, time and again over millennia, and has caused Humankind to oscillate regularly between the true basic standpoints of Idealism (there is only the mind) and Materialism (there is only matter). For the accurate communications of one into the other seem to be impossible! But if we stop at merely calling them invented constructions of thought, it would get us nowhere. We would inevitably end up in pure Solipsism, with no concrete gains with respect to the relations of these things to a most certainly existing concrete Reality.

There is undoubtedly, some form of relation between them, and the Reality from which they were extracted and then reconstructed. These objects of the mind will be imbued with two sets of determinators; first, the real world things that elicited them, and second the properties and stored experience of the mind itself. And, they are certainly NOT the same.

The problems arise from both the processes involved in that internalisation, and also in the capabilities of the mind in making relationships relevant to that outside world. There can be no doubt that there has to be some measure of Objective Content in an Abstraction. Something of the Real World must be capable of being both reflected in and stored in the Brain, with enough correct Objective Content to be at all useable.

Yet, this will have to, somehow, include features of that real world situation in forms suitable for processing in the mind, but they will always be guaranteed to be insufficient to completely reflect those real world situations. The fact that anything can actually cross that divide is something of a miracle!

However, the actual processes of simplification and idealisation are gradually becoming clear. The myth of internalising Absolute Truth is also demolished totally. Whatever we internalise will be at best the maximum Objective Content currently possible. That is entirely what we deal in.

Now, let us be clear - not only does the Human Mind perceive real world phenomena, but it also devises and directs real world actions too. So, whatever internal processes the Mind is capable of, they will have been generated by a long history of such interactions, not only by the individual concerned, but in what has been coded for in that person’s genetic material, and what has been settled on in discussion with others in the same social group.

It is just such a nexus of internally present capabilities that deal with perceptions, and determine the kind of abstractions that can be involved. But, they will all be purely cerebral concepts. So, how can they possibly contain any concrete objectivity at all?

Clearly, minds have a history of development, and are certainly NOT wholly internally determined. For, any animal to survive, and even prosper, this internal processing unit just had to reflect the outside World very well indeed. It was certainly a product of evolution, and in the case of Humankind, perhaps the most important. Well, there is a category common to both Thought and Reality - It is Form!

When we say that there are TWO objects – that is both meaningful in the real World, and in Thought. Formal relationships are quite capable of being conceived of in the case of “TWO” – because it is simplified – totally drained of everything other than its “twoness”. And, also for other formal extractions, because they too are always idealised – that is converted from real world determinators, with all their variability, development and depth, and turned instead into fixed, pure forms. These can, indeed, be elements of Thought!

Remarkably, there are rules, which pertain in the real world to do with form, though they are NOT eternal laws, but current relationships in a constantly varying World.

But, and this is crucial, Humankind has found ways of making them appear eternal, by holding a context as still as possible, after also removing as many affecting variables as possible. Humans have learned to tailor or farm Reality so that these formal relationships appeared eternal, and could be internalised in Thought, though stripped of all but a simplified and idealised remnant. Once internalised in Thought, they had to become totally ossified into static or “eternal” things that never changed.

However, this transformation isn’t a ruining tragedy, for as the farming of situations in the real world proved, even such idealised versions can be close to what actually occurs there, but will only remain appropriate there for a time, or alternatively, if the real world ideal context is maintained throughout any actual use.

So, what the mind does in making Abstractions, is it takes a kind of selective snapshot of an aspect of Reality, suitably simplified and idealised and made still, which can then be thought about and related to others, in a World which can exist in Thought – a World of Pure Form alone.

This philosopher, Jim Schofield, has given this category of Thought the name – Ideality, because it is not a mere collection of abstractions, but an actual idealised System of such formal relations, with its own rules and laws. But, they are NOT the same as the forming rules in unfettered Reality, which are never eternal, while those idealised in Thought certainly are!

The usefulness is like the use of a photograph in understanding a scene. It certainly does not lie. But, it is a restricted and ossified view of Reality, telling us something about that frozen moment: a perception. And, we must make an initial effort to decode what is actually going on in this process. This must be tackled before we move on to the next Phase; the Human Mind is not a fixed machine, but a part of Reality subject to evolutionary development and will change in it’s features, facilities and powers, as a result of it’s successful experience in the Real World.

Qualitative Abstractions and Emergences

The latest issue of the SHAPE Journal is on Abstraction. From a beginning some years ago, with The Processes and Productions of Abstraction, this theorist has now made another foray into this subject, this time going well beyond that initial diagram, and has begun to address Abstraction applied to Dynamic Change too. This following paper shows just where this new turn is beginning to lead.

Qualitative Abstractions and Emergences:

Having more generally addressed Abstraction, though mostly at a single Level, and entirely within a local Stability, we now have to leave the confines of such a pluralist standpoint, and instead, reach further into both Qualitative Changes, and, indeed, what we term as revolutionary transformations that create wholly New Levels – termed Emergences.

The whole methodology of abstractions in Science is locked into a strictly pluralist perspective, which sees all acting relations as entirely separable, and this assumption makes any found relations into fixed Natural Laws. But, actually, such can only approximate to Reality, and limit the applicability to within either natural or man-made stabilities only, and, indeed, can never transcend a Level boundary.

And, Laws at a higher Level can never be explained in terms of the prior “producing”, lower Level.

Indeed, it would be entirely incorrect to see the new Level as a natural causal consequence of the Level that preceded it! This might be surprising, but, in doing so, we are applying what is usually acceptable for within Level relations, to still be legitimate across Level Boundaries, and that is not the case.

Why?

It is because such a revolutionary transformation is never a continuous, incremental process, but always involves a truly major crisis and collapse, followed by a fundamental re-building along totally original lines. In other words, none of the factors involved in the re-building would have even been present, as such, in the erroneously-called “producing” Level!

So, we have a major problem!

We have learned how to use the very same methods within each New Level, as were successful within prior Levels. And, though we can get away with this, it will only work for processes entirely within the new Stability. And, we can certainly never fully explain the features of that higher from the lower! Indeed, the source of the newly-created Level is only possible via a situation that the prior Level would never allow – indeed, a general chaotic tumult, in which literally all the characteristic stabilising relations of the prior Level have been totally dismantled! What then occurs is like a rebuilding, not just out of old “bricks”, but also, and primarily, involving entirely new ”bricks” of a new construction.

And, this is why the explanation of events like The Origin of Life, in terms of prior, non-living processes is impossible! The actual basic context has been radically altered and relatively few factors remain unchanged, and even those that do survive intact, and play no part in the features of the new system.

So, what happens in the New Levels of Reality?

They beget their own relations and abstractions, though, once more, we always predicate them upon a totally pluralist perspective. Yet, what can these new ideas mean for the universally accepted Principle of Reductionism – which states that all causal sequences are traceable, all the way down to fundamental particles, and their basic Laws? Obviously, it makes such an assumption totally unfounded and unavoidably misleading!

Now, the real, overall trajectory of Development of concrete Reality is certainly NOT pluralist! It may well involve long periods of Stability, in which Plurality is a fair approximation in local, stable contexts, but each and every epoch will always terminate by being continually undermined, by its own internal contradictions, leading to, first, a major crisis, and then, a total collapse of the stability, into what appears to be complete Chaos! But, such is not our usual conception of “chaos”, in which totally random, undirected processes get absolutely nowhere (for that is yet another kind of Stability, is it not? On the contrary, this real kind of “Chaos” is both the most productive and creative interlude that is possible to exist!

We call such an event an Emergent Interlude!

Yet, thus far, in this account, we have only described its initial catastrophic phase. From the results of that dissociation into a seeming Nadir of Chaos, multiple productive processes accelerate, and begin to associate into conducive, ever-more-complex systems.

Why they happen now, is that all such constructions had previously been prohibited, or even destroyed, in the prior Level Stability, but all of its many restraints have since perished along with the Level itself, and so free-forming sub-systems appear everywhere, usually competing, but occasionally forming ever bigger, conducive super-systems, and ultimately one such system not only grows largest and dominates, but also includes sufficient, destructive sub processes within it, directed at all other non-own-system processes and even systems. So finally, a new overall Stability is achieved on a new basis, with its own Laws!

And, perhaps surprisingly, the assumption of Plurality gets more acceptable again, and the old methodology can be used once more, though, of course, with new components.

Clearly, if anyone wants to plumb the causality of Reality from top to bottom, they will never be able to achieve it, using only a pluralist perspective and methods. The crucial links in the causal changes will occur ONLY in the Emergent Interludes, and it is there that a wholly new Holistic Science must be built – literally from scratch!

New Special Issue: Abstraction

Read the issue

Although the following series of papers addresses the question, “What actually is Abstraction?”, in various ways, we must start by being absolutely clear what Man is always attempting to do with the processes of abstraction that he generally uses. For, he is, quite definitely, transforming what he can somehow extract from concrete Reality into purely, cerebral forms, suitable for “thinking about”. Reality-as-is is far too complex, inter-related and evolving to be grasped formally exactly as it appears. Also, Mankind is NOT naturally equipped to handle such complex things. In spite of this, Homo Sapiens is still well-named. His intelligence was a product of the brain’s evolution, due to its relation to more prosaic and everyday problems of survival. But, he then attempted to apply it to much more general problems.

Classically, throughout his evolutionary development, Mankind did not arrive at the sort of means he required to tackle why things came to be the way that they were. Indeed, to get anywhere at all, he had to effectively “pull himself up by his own bootlaces”, and indeed, somehow, “Make Himself”, in gradually beginning to equip himself to make some sort of sense of his World, via struggling to answer the remarkable question, “Why?”!

Naturally selected-for, as he was, as a hunter/gatherer, there was no mental implements available to tackle such questions, so it, unavoidably, turned into “How?” instead, and even in doing this, he had to both simplify and idealise what he observed, and such a general set of processes is termed Abstraction.

What were extracted from concrete evidence were not the required “reasons”, but instead the Forms suitable to be then thought about – conceptions, idealisations and even all-embracing principles, which he as a hunter/gatherer could think about and attempt to apply, as he did with his hunting.

He began to construct an entirely novel means of doing this via Language, and much later, writing, but the crucial developments were in how he abstracted from Reality, and thereafter, begin to think about such forms. Clearly, initially, all he could do was to attempt to fit the ideas he employed in his daily life to such questions, so all his determinators were like himself – a thinking Man. But, also clearly, the one-to-one correspondence with concrete Reality was impossible. Reality-as-is and the conceptions that Man managed to create were not the same things at all, and never could be. Man managed to reveal and extract ever more crucial aspects, views or components, which were turned into elements-of-thinking, and with his well developed mechanisms of sense, thought and subsequent action, that had been made so by selection as a hunter/ gatherer, he managed to use actions, based upon his concepts, to confirm or deny them to an increasing extent. But, they were always cerebral reflections of real things, so that the Absolute Truth of concrete Reality was never possible to be achieved. Let us therefore see what he heroically did achieve, and crucially where and why he failed!

Read the issue

For more on the diagram "Processes and Productions of Abstraction" watch the video below.

The Fall

The Real Origin of the Big Bang? 

Let us assume an almighty collapse of Universe-wide proportions of a prior and flagging Universe, which is finally running out of steam, but still carrying within it the developments and constructions of eons.

Clearly, such a cataclysmic event would have to signal the termination of some prior and stable phase, in which the Universe had been developing within a generally acting set of conditions: the most likely, considering what we know of our presently existing Universe, being one of a long-standing and continuous expansion.

Effectively, only a switch to a new, all-prevailing dominance of Gravity, could cause the termination of that phase, and begin such an all-encompassing collapse.

The universe, throughout its spread, would then begin to fall back, on increasingly more extensive fronts, towards its overall centre of mass. Of course, the question, as to where the collapse would begin, certainly presents the first difficulty.

Close to that centre of overall mass, the effective pull inwards would, necessarily, be small. For, very little matter would be there compared with the universe as a whole. And, also, most of the matter, outside of such a position, would tend to cancel out, leaving only a small imbalance to effect such a pull.

The most likely place, therefore, where the pull towards the centre would all be both one way, and due to the combined mass of the whole Universe, would have to be at the extreme peripheries. For, all the gravitational pull, in such positions, would be inwards, previously overwhelmed by some prior cataclysmic event, which threw everything outwards at a colossal speed and swamped, by that initial impulse, any purely gravitational pulls in the opposite direction. BUT, that event could never be a continuous pressure outward, but something of a short duration, the involved momentum would be continually opposed by the general, inwards pull of Gravity.

Clearly, at some point the expansion would run out of steam, and a switch to a collapse would ensue!

Let us assume, therefore, that the collapse would commence at these extremities. And, as it got closer to the centre of mass, the pulling force would increase, so the fall would continue to accelerate.

But, if that Universe were at all like ours, it would not be uniform: it would consist of innumerable concentrations – from planets and suns, to dust clouds and galaxies. And, if the collapse, from the outer edge, were occurring inwards as some sort of wave, this increasing flow would encounter various differing elements of a fragmentary universe, picking up extra weight, but definitely not uniformly, but instead in various fits and starts – sometimes of absolutely colossal proportions.

It would be like a strong flow of water, superimposed upon a relatively calm pond, but also having various floating centres of different sizes in a relatively stationary ground.

The Fall would not be a simple contraction!

Not only would it cause spinning vortices of some of these obstructions to be created, but it could also precipitate local collapses, and even trigger local explosions and supernovae.

In such tumults, what survives could be from many such sub-phases, and include some surprising survivors too. And, as these would be local any explosions, they would not be sufficient to reverse the speed of the general collapse but would, themselves, be twisted like vortices, creating temporary pauses in the general collapse, and also temporary stabilities within these spinning remnants.

Imagine the event, in all positions, like a fast flowing stream, with individual local obstructions and even explosions, twisted into vortices – all accompanying the general flow.

This indicates that during the fall, many such temporary reversals would inevitably occur, with the effect of breaking up the involved material objects into more and more fragmentary units, but not all of the same minimal size Instead, they would be produced in a diversity of different sub-phases, from different stages of prior development.

Ultimately, we assume a total-universe-involved final crunch, at the centre of its mass, which would result in a final gigantic explosion. But, this would, most certainly, NOT be in a “dimensionless dot” – a Singularity, composed entirely of totally disembodied Pure Energy and nothing else.

Such idealist myths are the extrapolations of Mathematicians, NOT scientists! Clearly, the cataclysm will always precede any such state, and will be diverse throughout its initial execution. The overall result will be generally outwards, but radically altered by its almost continuous and varied sub-phases, all the way down to that final Daddy-of-them-all – the ultimate reverse into an explosion!

This could, indeed, be our famed Big Bang, which would then start a new overall expansion, and the building of a Different and Original, New Universe.

But, as with all such cycles of catastrophe and re-construction, what is produced will never be exactly the same as that which was lost.

Indeed, in spite of the tremendous proportions of the whole Event, it would not start from a single given point in time, but be the final consequence of a whole series of crises, pauses and even temporary rejuvenations.

The final turn around would be the culmination of all these contributions, and would commence in different ways and at different times, until the whole process moves were entirely outwards in an enormous Explosion.

Both the Singularity, and its nature of pure, disembodied Energy are false extrapolations of abstract equations taken well beyond their applicability.

They are Formal Myths!

The actual event has been elsewhere generally traced as a common trajectory in what are termed Emergences, which occur in all kinds of developments, and at all Levels, and none of those investigated are the least like the current consensus by the mathematical cosmologists, who currently rule the roost!

Let us be clear, all sorts of entities, at many different stages of development, WILL come through this gigantic event, and thereafter significantly play a major role in the subsequent developments. At No Point was there only Energy. All strictly pluralist attempts to track the trajectory of the development of the new Universe, from “known” and “eternal” Laws, will never deliver anything of value. They are merely intellectual exercises, based upon incorrect assumptions and principles.

To even begin to tackle the suggested Big Bang, researchers must first turn away from Formal Logic and Pure Mathematics, and begin to study the crucial transforming events of all significant development – the Emergences of the wholly New.

And, no single development path will produce any relevant results. The process will, on the contrary, consist of many diverse strands from the outset, with very different contents, depending upon what happened to those ultimate remnants during the Fall.

The simple bottom-up conceptions, of the pluralist cosmologists, ascribing all subsequent differentiations to initial quantum fluctuations, in an initial Singularity, is clearly unfounded speculation, based entirely on a narrow regime of particle accelerators and atom smashing for their evidence.

IT is the diversity of surviving bits from the Fall that determines these consequent developments. For, that produced final mix, may well include fragments from all sorts of phases, and so the trajectory, of developing competitions and dominances, will be entirely NEW, because of the local unique mixes, and different in different localities, which will then come together to generate new crises and resolutions. Indeed, even during the new general expansion, there will be surprising localities, n that supernovae could be occurring, and local collapses of surviving galaxies completing their final stages of the Fall!

This seems to ensure that though these ideas imply an oscillation between successive collapses and expansions, and, therefore, looks like a never-ending repeat, it will never be mere repetitions.

Every single Universe will, indeed, be different, with its admixture of fragments from diverse phases in the prehistory of the Universe, very different victories in the various competitions, and hence different stabilities will be inevitably established.

It isn’t merely repeating the same every time!

Clearly, the mathematical Singularities play no part in this development, based essentially upon the Theory of Emergences. For, such dramatic transformations never do relate to such formal abstractions, in any known cases! 

For, such Singularities occur when simplified and idealised processes (rather than the actual real ones) inevitably “bomb-out”, and something totally unpredictable from those prior formal descriptions, replaces them. In all real processes, such cataclysms do not totally terminate all previous histories, or deliver pristine and pure beginnings. They will be both dirtier and replete with elements of the past, and will, on turn around, beget a wholly new development.

Science & Thinking

The latest Special Issue of SHAPE Journal (30) is about Abstraction and the primary area in today’s world for such conceptions occurs in Science – a materialist approach to Reality. Nevertheless, what is so carefully arranged for, and then abstracted from, Reality, immediately becomes an object in Human Thought, and hence can very easily elicit an idealist approach, and thus both approaches co-exist within Science, and unavoidably lead to profound contradictions. The following paper gives some idea of what will be addressed in the Special.

Read here

What exactly is a supposed Natural Law – indeed, it can very easily be seen as an “eternal and basic element” in the Universe as a whole? Well, if the usual conceptions of the Development of Reality are correct, such things cannot be that, and can only be aspects of a currently established and maintained Stability, and therefore, definitely not eternal.

NOTE: There is a line of thought, that Development is merely increasing complexity, with absolutely nothing lost in the process, but to make Life a mere complication of fundamental particles and their laws is clearly a major and incorrect oversimplification.

And, if that version is correct, the attempt to analyse everything down to such primitives is, in fact, an unachievable myth, and it will lead to the ultimate “chicken-and-egg” conundrum!

Indeed, any such analysis will really be a study of why Stability occurs, and how its consequent “seemingly eternal” laws get established. Yet, using the usual laws taken from such stabilities as a means of explaining their (the stability’s) occurrences will surely be impossible? Such attempts in Philosophy will be like attempting to explain Reality solely via Technology, rather than via Science! Any results will be limited to the stability involved, and not to Reality in general.

Also, significantly, Emergences like those which produced Life, Consciousness and Civilisation will be totally impossible to explain. Indeed, they seem to be “impossible” to actually even occur via the “eternal laws” merely in some highly-complex concert!

Mankind’s reliance upon such views was, of course, historically unavoidable, and his found means of Abstraction – involving both simplification and idealisation of Reality, was bound to carry him into the study of Stability, rather than the infinitely more difficult problem of Development and Emergence.

The crucial revolutions would be inevitably turned into mere rare mixes of eternal laws mechanistically producing a hierarchy of the very same causes and results in increasingly complex situations.

Now, if all this is true, what must Mankind do to break out of this straightjacket, and begin to tackle the currently inexplicable Emergences of the wholly new? Clearly, the initial construction of a new stability must be addressed, and immediately the question must be, “From what?”

Fragmentary studies of different stabilities have shown that you can never get one stability directly from another. The only way a new system of stability can occur is out of something resembling “total chaos”! The transition between consecutive stabilities, therefore, always involves an intervening major crisis; followed by an almighty collapse into chaos, before there can be any chance of a new stability arising.

For, most stabilities have vastly longer durations than the lifetimes of individuals, so they appear to such observers as eternal. That is why you cannot address these questions adequately, unless History is seriously studied, for only then are the necessary questions, and the trajectory of development revealed.

But, this is, in fact, one Level of stability in Reality, going through just such a transition, can, indeed, be experienced, and it is these sorts of cases that have begun to allow Mankind to effectively address such questions. They are, of course, the phenomena of Social Revolution, and also, but at a very different Level, in the Thinking of human beings, for similar transitions take place in attempts at Understanding.

And it was in this area that Frederick Hegel began the study of Qualitative Changes in Thinking, as the first systematic study of any kind of Emergences some 200 years ago. For, once again, in Thinking, such revolutions can, and indeed do, take place, even within the thoughts of single individuals.

So, that is how such considerations first began in earnest to step beyond Formal Logic, into a very different kind of reasoning. Hegel made as his ultimate objective the establishment of a Logic of Change, and made absolutely crucial contributions to the gains and flaws in how we think about things, and even how we generate our own-produced dead ends, and hence deliver seemingly irresolvable impasses.

But, of course, being an idealist, Hegel was bound, in spite of his brilliant discoveries, to be severely limited by the ground on which he was studying these processes. They were all about the Mind!

He did indeed produce the most profound studies of Human Thought, but because of this ground, could do no other than end up with the quintessence of Idealism – his Absolute Idea (effectively, the equivalent in Thinking to Absolute Truth in Science. Both were unachievable myths!

From an idealist standpoint Hegel’s discoveries could not be generalised beyond the confines of Human Thought. But, his most avid disciples were the first to realise this, and the best of them, Karl Marx, realised that Hegel’s discoveries of the methods, processes and ideas involved in the developments in Thinking, could also throw light upon the actual concrete Development of Reality itself.

Both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, at about the same time, were realising something very similar in explaining both the Origin of Species and the subsequent Evolution of Life.

So, Marx carried over all Hegel’s gains into a fully materialist stance, which became the basis for a means of dealing with all Creative Developments in Reality, which he termed Dialectical Materialism. Yet, Marx too was a philosopher, and though his contributions were clearly both generally applicable and even epoch-making, the area of study that then had to be addressed was the then dominant disciplines of Science, Technology and Mathematics.

Now, relating discoveries in the trajectories in Human Thinking to developments in concrete Reality is no trivial undertaking, and Marx considered that the most important area was in establishing a dialectical view of Mankind’s Social Development in History, and its significance for that time’s Politics.

Effectively, though he and his colleague Engels did make various significant contributions in the sciences, they were unable to establish the general validity of their methods in Science. The main assault was not carried through to any sort of conclusion.

Now, in one sense, Hegel’s contributions were totally objective. For Man’s handling of all aspects of Reality for they could only be via his Thinking, and Hegel’s discoveries were certainly entirely relevant, even when Man was thinking about Science and concrete Reality in general. Now, as soon as we consider Science, we are, perhaps surprisingly, pulled back from a more general and basic addressing of totally unfettered, concrete Reality itself. For, that is NOT what Science addresses!

Science has a special way of dealing with Reality, for, to make any progress, it first establishes stable contexts to investigate. Indeed, the most significant initial achievement of Science was that it limited all investigations to natural or man-made stable situations only. The first and continuing stage of Science was limited to situations within a Stability! And, the second aspect of the methods involved was that they selectively sought simplifications and idealisations, which were most carefully arranged for, in order to extract them only from such stable contexts. And crucially, it is precisely such versions of Reality that Man then thought about in the usual way (as revealed by Hegel).

Our primitives, upon which we construct causal systems, are things like Charge and Mass – and though we, immediately and unquestioningly accept such as our bases, the warnings of Hegel also resonate here too.

For, he insisted that our assumptions, and even our revealed principles, though clearly useful-within-limits, would inevitably, when pushed beyond their required stabilities, invariably deliver pairs of totally contradictory concepts, which were signals that our arrived-at bases were incorrect.

Let us be clear, what he meant was that the very same bases, would lead to contradictory conclusions, both of which could NOT be true! Yet, without a major transcendence to a wholly new level, we would not be able to proceed, Such Dichotomous Pairs would define the limit to our understanding. And, without the necessary breakthrough, these would cause an unavoidable bifurcation in our explanations. We would simply keep the both! And use, whichever one of the pair delivered some sort of explanation in each and every relevant circumstance. We would pragmatically learn to live with the contradiction unresolved.

And such opposite pairs litter our explanatory narratives, and even lead to the budding-off of subsidiary “sciences” via the more dramatic contradictions.

Even the subject of Physics is now composed of Experimentalists, Theorists and Technologists, who don’t even speak the same languages, and have to be content with the pragmatic offerings of their colleagues without actually agreeing with how they go about their version of the same Science.

So, guess what! Charge comes as positive and negative, while Mass as matter and antimatter. Could these be signals that our very intractable bases are a pragmatic compromise?

And, lo and behold, the whole panoply of sub atomic physics has descended into similar pairings of literally everything in so-called Super Symmetry. So-called impossible to physically explain “properties” also come in pairs, for example so-called “quantum spin”.

We are increasingly presented with the possibility that Science, itself, and most clearly, its assumed basic – Physics, is founded upon flawed conceptions. The one-way, uninterrupted and bottom-up causality, with these as bases, could well be wrong!

And, of course, this diagnosis is daily confirmed by the total abandonment of Explanation at the sub atomic level, and its replacement by form-only equations, let alone an increasingly idealist philosophical standpoint, which all clearly point in the same direction.

NOTE: Indeed Charge and Magnetism seem to be currently developing into a chicken-and-egg situation, and, indeed, stabilities based upon both resonances and recursion (Yves Couder’s work) throw yet another spanner into this mangled mix of “theories”. For, Couder seems to have constructed what appear to be stable entities, entirely out of complexes and interactions of physical oscillations.

It is a significant problem to try to explain Couder’s achievements by the usual means. For, he actually constructs unique stabilities that seem to also have profound significance at the Sub Atomic Level, though achieved entirely within his purely macro-level experiments. The crucial achievement was that of quantized orbits of his “Walkers”, with absolutely NO possibility of an explanation via the ubiquitous Quantum.

So, perhaps surprisingly, materialist Science cannot any longer ignore the gains made by Idealist Philosophy, and especially as the materialists via Dialectical Materialism have long turned their back upon the flaws in the usual scientific approach. So, any demurring of these criticisms by complaining of the mistakes of Idealism, with respect to Prime Movers, cannot be used to dismiss this criticism.

Of course, what it amounts to is realising the unavoidable mis-match between what we reveal, and that we then have no choice in how we deal with it. Answers don’t come “ready-made” within our carefully organised-for simplifications and idealisations. For we had to arrange what Objective Content we could extract into meaningful and increasingly general explanations. It is actually the front-line in changing ourselves!

So, it is not unlike conceiving topology of newly discovered lands. Our initial conceptions will never be wholly correct, and indeed our basic assumptions and even principles will regularly lead us astray, and must be dialectically transcended to re-ground them to allow any further progress.

Current Marxist Works

Some idea of what a modern day Marxist Philosopher does can be illustrated by the following lists of papers, produced by Jim Schofield during the month of August 2014. It isn’t representative of the full range of topics addressed, reflecting not only his scientific specialisms and current political priorities, nor his contributions in Sculpture and Music, but it does show what an active Marxist philosopher is doing in daily producing original work.

Indeed, the simplest description of this writer’s activities would be “One paper, 1,500 words, a day, seven days a week”. Though, of course, they don’t all end in publication, at least, not immediately. For, many pieces are seen as possible contributions to later, more comprehensive works, which will require research in various areas before they are ready for publication.

So, the first list concentrates upon current contributions produced in a single month that have already been, or will in the near future be, integrated into published works.

The second list, covering a period of about one year is of final publications in the form of contributions to General Issues or complete Special Issues of the SHAPE Journal, which is now in its sixth year, and has amounted to 61 Issues since its launch in 2009.

It is a unique publication, for it, as its name suggests, includes:-

Science, Holism, Abstraction, Philosophy & Emergence (or S.H.A.P.E.) as its contents.

This is a wholly free, Web-based Journal, and is supported by the SHAPE Blog for the usual kind of posts, and a Youtube SHAPE Channel for animations and videos. SHAPE Journal is unusual in the almost half of its Issues are Specials, in which several related papers upon a single topic are presented together, and these are useful as introductions to areas not normally evident in political Marxist publications. While others take the issues involved to much greater lengths and depth. Some idea will be demonstrated by the Special entitled The Theory of Emergences, which takes Revolutions to all aspects of Reality. And The Theory of the Double Slit, which is about the Crisis in Sub Atomic Physics and the confusing anomalies evident in the famed Double Slit Experiments. Other areas are covered from Mathematical Chaos to the Origin of Life, and even an extrapolation of Darwin’s Natural Selection to non-living developments.

Jim Schofield – August 2014

J. Schofield: Current Marxist Papers: August 2014

1 01/08/14 The Emergence of “Policeman Processes” 585

2 02/08/14 Resonances & Recursion in Pendulums 785

3 03/08/14 The Myth of Equation-Based Theories 3290

4 05/08/14 Abstracted Forms I: Quantitative 2083

5 10/08/14 Dialectics (possiblePANEL) 858

6. 11/08/14 Abstracted Forms II: Qualitative 1259

7. 13/08/14 Defeat the Tory Onslaught 641

8. 18/08/14 The Phoenix (from yjr flames) 3840

9 18/08/14 The Tasks of Marxism Today 2358

10. 18//08/14 Ecce Habilis (A sculptural symbol of Early Man) 400

11. 25./08/14 Following a Supernovae 402

12. 25/08/14 Synchronised Resonances & Recursions 910

13. 25/08/14 Zeno’s Paradoxes (possible PANEL) 387

14. 25/08/14 The Contradictory Bases in Science 1487

15. 26/08/14 Clean Hands Profit? 550

16. 28/08/14 To Be, or Not To Be? 1025

17. 30/08/14 Reality and Mind 975

TOTAL 21385

These were current efforts, and only rarely final works, ready for publication. Most are also notes, paragraphs or chapters intended for later, larger works. Also many concurrent corrections and additions to prior papers are not included here, and these probably compose around a third of the total output in any period.

To access the bulk of this author’s published writings, the easiest place is on the Web at the following sites:-

SHAPE Journal (61 issues) SHAPE Blog (250 posts)+ SHAPE Channel on Youtube (6 videos)

Or alternatively direct contact can be made with Jim Schofield - jim@bild-art.co.uk

Recent Issues of SHAPE Journal

June 2013 Wave/Particle Integration Special 20

June 2013 The Loka Sutta Spedial 21

July 2013 Marxism III Special 22

July 2013 Programming Today Issue 31

Aug 2013 The Evolution of Matter Special 23

Sept 2013 Rethinking Physics Issue 32

Dec 2013 The Holist Revolution Special 24

Jan 2014 The Logic of Change Issue 33

March 2014 Yves Couder’s Experiments Special 25

April 2014 Mathematical Chaos I Special 26

June 2014 Myths of Tegmark I Issue 34

July 2014 Analogistic Models I Special 27

Key Early Issues of SHAPE Journal

July 2010 The Theory of Emergences Special 1

Fec 2011 The Theory of the Double Slit Special 3

This paper was taken from the latest Special Issue of SHAPE (29, Work in Progress)

New Special Issue: Work in Progress

Marxist Philosophy 2014

This Special is somewhat different to our usual offerings of this form in SHAPE Journal. It has a very different purpose! Indeed, the reader may well be immediately aware of its unfinished nature, and take issue with some of its note-like offerings. Good!

For this form is intended to encourage criticism and opposing contributions by other present day Marxists out there. SHAPE gets over 100 hits a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year, and an analysis of the topics accessed (on the SHAPE Blog for example) indicates that it is the philosophical works that are by far the most popular. There are readers of our sites in 120 countries (Sorry, 121 – someone in Guatemala added to the total today), and these include not only the usual “surfing” nations, such as the USA, but also an increasing number from Russia, Ukraine, Romania and many other ex-Soviet nations, as well as literally the whole of South and Central America, and recently France, Germany, Poland and Slovenia have arrived in significant numbers too.

But, when the usual outlets for other Marxists’ work are monitored, they are, to say the least, disappointing. What is needed is a new generation of serious and committed Marxist philosophers – constantly extending and deepening the Marxist View. And, they should be addressing the very areas where the non-Marxists are signally failing to make any real contributions.

This Special, therefore, hopes to get a response from them! Comments and even contributions are welcomed. And, as we don’t usually work within the usual Social Networking methods on the Internet, it is suggested that these should be sent direct to us by email: shape@bild-art.co.uk

If writers permit it, their contributions will be published in a Special Issue, (so say which country you are from), and if we get sufficient this could become a regular feature. None of contributor’s details will be given to anyone else! Use nom de plumes if you want to. This philosopher has written almost 650 papers over the last five years and could do with some help tackling these difficult questions!

Read issue

Empty Promises

The Failure of Idealist Physics

The propagation of Electromagnetic energy, across Space, will depend upon two indisputable things. First, it must be how it is produced, and second, how is it transported across that seemingly Empty Void?

The conception that pure, disembodied energy can cross totally Empty Space at a given speed is clearly impossible by any physical considerations, whatsoever, of its possible nature.

Even if you dispense with some kind of continuous medium or particulate carriers, you, somehow, have to deliver a pair of vectors with both magnitude and direction – one electrical and the other magnetic, actually also oscillating regularly (in absolutely Nothing) at a fixed frequency - and without having any material content themselves. What is actually oscillating, and thus containing energy must somehow move across empty space – But how?

To compound this felony we are asked to believe that such totally disembodied oscillations – “Pure Energy” was also, initially, the sole basis of absolutely everything in the Universe. It clearly isn’t true, is it?

Such a position is got away with, because those who now deal in these things are constrained, no longer, by Physical Reality: they have moved to more conducive climes, delivered by the World of Pure Form alone – or Ideality. For, there anything formally defined and self-consistent is always possible! 

Yet most scientists, and for several centuries, felt that they had to assume a space-filling continuous medium – The Ether, to make any sort of sense out of such phenomena. But, it was never detected, and physicists seemed to manage well enough on the formulae, which had been derived from real, extracted data. Maybe the Real World was actually driven by these Formal Imperatives?

Yet, the initial, suggested alternative was Newton’s Corpuscular Theory, so they then conceived of particulate gobbets of pure energy – Photons, as the actual individual bits of Radiation, acting somewhat like particles, but eventually being redefined as descrete gobbets of pure energy or Quanta.

The nature of such a pure, disembodied quantum of this energy is still physically unknown, though today’s physicists seem perfectly happy with an entirely formal equation-based description alone! Some tried to define wave-packets (myself included) but they certainly don’t fit the bill for many indisputable reasons. Interestingly, this “Pure Energy” can be described formally by mathematical forms, and this, to those who welcome an idealist stance upon Reality, was sufficient to “prove” their position was adequate.

But, what it actually does is to disprove such a stance as meaningless, not only by being in a pure form, but also by having absolutely no concrete substance too!

So, we are left with yet another impossible placeholder – the Photon.

It is somewhat remarkable because following a dissociation of material objects into pure electromagnetic energy, vast amounts of pure, disembodied energy have to be turned into Photons – what else? But, how many and how big will they be? They don’t have to be a single size, but each will consist of a single quantum, involving a single frequency, and a content of energy given by hν. (Where h is Planck’s Constant and ν is the frequency).

Something like this was confirmed by both Planck’s solution of the problem of Black Body radiation, and by Einstein’s explanation of the Photo Electric Effect, but exactly what the form of a Photon is, is still not known.

And, we must not forget interference!

It was easy to explain with extended waves (as in water and air), but how would descrete entities, like Photons, actually interfere? (Especially as ostensibly single Photons were being sent, one at a time, in the Double Slit experiments, act as if interference is happening!)

And, it seems, all the evidence is that such Photons can travel at the Speed of Light – impossible by any material object.

The fact that such ideas, plus appropriate equations, enable a great deal of useful things to be done, doesn’t make them the complete truth, of course, it merely means that there is enough Objective Content in these ideas to allow us to use them effectively in a set of conditions.

The Photon, as with every other concept that Mankind has “realised” and “released” from Reality, delivers only an analogistic model - containing more objective content than any other in this given area. And, as with every other man-devised concept, it will always have limits!

It will, as always happens, precipitate what Hegel saw as Dichotomous Pairs of contradictory conceptual products, associated with our inadequate, underlying assumptions of the nature of the Photon. It is unavoidable in the way that Man struggles to make sense of his world.

And, of course, we have already reached such a predicted impasse, once again, with Wave/Particle Duality – as clearly evidenced by the ill-famed Double Slit experiments.

The fact that “entities” can sometimes act like a particle, while in other circumstances acting like an extended wave, is a perfect example of this! These two ARE contradictory concepts, when applied to the same thing, and prove that the bases upon which we arrived at these ideas are essentially incorrect, and must be replaced!

Yet that still doesn’t happen because the principle driving imperatives are not to actually understand Reality, but merely to use a part of it to some required end. And, with such a standpoint, Man can live-with such Dichotomous Pairs, merely learning when to use one rather than the other.

But, of course, what totally ceases, with such a complete surrender, is the continuing development of our crucial Understanding! We just learn, instead, to juggle our imponderables in multiple ways, with the kind of qualities we value most – “Can we use it profitably?” But, there are still a few among us, to whom such a situation is intolerable.

To really make progress, we must understand more! We are aware of our limitations, but to give up and settle for contradictory variations upon what we know, will simply NOT do! The challenge, of a Dichotomous Pair, must be to transcend it by providing better assumptions, principles and bases.

This current crisis is NOT small!

For, the unresolved dilemmas have been continuing for almost a century, and the World is becoming ever more dangerous with such pragmatists in selfish charge! This situation will require new assumptions, and even a wholly new philosophical stance. We actually DO know what our problems are!

For, primarily, we believe in Plurality – the idealist notion that Reality is generated entirely from a collection of abstract, and eternal Natural Laws, which merely SUM in various, quantitatively-different mixes to deliver absolutely everything! But, this stance has a diametrically opposed alternative – termed Holism, which, in its materialist stance, rejects the idea of totally unchangeable Natural Laws, as well as such abstractions actually driving Reality.

We also know that the so-called Natural Laws are really just purely formal relations that can be encapsulated in mathematical equations. Clearly, this is also unacceptable as a basis for real understanding! For the belief that it is disembodied laws that are actually driving concrete Reality, is pure Idealism, as well as, being a contradictory factor in the long-assumed bases of Science. In fact, Materialism has effectively been abandoned in present-day Physics!

We actually know what is wrong, but as Zeno found out when he revealed crucial and similar Dichotomous Pairs – namely Continuity and Descreteness, some 2,500 years ago, to simply recognise and announce error is never enough! It actually took some 2,300 years for Zeno’s position to be taken further by Frederick Hegel, and yet another major step forward with Karl Marx’s transference of these gains, from Idealist Philosophy, into Materialism.

 To merely see the problem is never sufficient! Such contradictory concepts have to be irrefutably transcended, and that is a very different thing.

For, instead of addressing a one-off anomaly, it must involve a major transformation of the assumptions and premises involved. When this is achieved, it becomes immediately evident, for the revolution in the foundations of our Thinking then opens up new vistas and possibilities, previously hidden by our blinkered way of considering things.

And, there are places to start!

This researcher decided upon tackling the ill-famed Double Slit Experiments, and after a great deal of work upon the premises and assumptions involved, he did indeed find a better, materialist explanation, than what was universally proffered up to that point. The problem, though it had been involved from the very start of Science, came to its final impasse with the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory.

But, needless-to-say, no one turned a hair, when that suggested solution was published! More was necessary, and the Key Concept in the solution of the Double Slit anomalies was the inclusion of a substrate of particles – a 3D paving, of the whole of so-called Empty Space!

This certainly delivered a far superior analogistic model, but still did not cover absolutely everything. Clearly, the attention had to switch to delivering more on this proposed Paving of Space! The same sort of better explanation just had to be delivered that fully explained the Propagation of Electromagnetic Radiative Energy across Empty Space – not to mention the also amazing Action at a Distance too!

For, since Bohr and Heisenberg defeated Albert Einstein at the Solvay Conference in 1927, a whole Cosmology has been constructed based upon the Idealist Copenhagen stance. The problem of Empty Space certainly became the next battleground!

NOTE: Interestingly, even at this early stage, the consequences of a substrate throughout the Universe have proved to deliver many features very different to what is currently believed among present day cosmologists.

Everything from the Big Bang to the Red Shift and Inflation is called into question. An alternative Shell Universe concept has been suggested as a limit to electromagnetic propagation, keeping it only within a substrate-paved Universe, and a consequent Total Internal Reflection of radiation at the physical edge of the Universe, with all its consequences has also been investigated.

It would, indeed, transform all interpretations of what we see in the heavens!

Are Equations True?

One aspect of symbolic equations (representing what are thought of a Natural Laws) is how their unavoidably pluralist standpoint affects exactly what such things are! For, that view sees “Eternal Natural Laws” as a coming together of the natural factors involved to achieve their “summation” into another consequent Law. And this occurs without in any way changing those contributory components.

Thus Analysis is possible, with each level being separable into its components. And such a process is repeatable, level below level, down (presumably) to a final set of eternal, fundamental Laws. Every level, going upwards, is merely a non-modifying SUM! That is what Plurality means, and it is the never-even-mentioned simplifying basis for all of Science!

Now, what effect does this have upon the equations that are tailored to fit real world data?

Clearly, the un-modifiable factors are often brought together as summed terms in an overall Equation, describing the resultant Law. No factor is actually modified by their coming together. So, what can we therefore say about such an equation? It can only mean that the changing things within it must be the relative quantitative amounts of the various factors, for their qualitative natures are assumed to be sacrosanct!

What is covered by such an equation is therefore limited entirely to a situation in which NO Factors CHANGE qualitatively: it represents a stable situation, varying only in the amounts of the involved factors.

So, what happens when things do qualitatively change (as they most certainly do)?

This can only involve a switch to another Law, and the only role that the previous conception plays, is that a particular variable is earmarked as a “switch-indicator”, and when that variable exceeds a given threshold value, the switch to the other equation must be made. It indicates clearly what is wrong with Plurality: it just isn’t true!

We are permanently-wedded to the pluralistic stance, and its consequent approach, not only philosophically, but also technologically. For, we ensure that all situations to be investigated conform to a pluralist nature – and we do it by isolating, filtering, farming and controlling them to bring the resulting situation as close as possible to that desired state. We naturally kid ourselves that we are merely “revealing” the “natural, hidden state” by our tailoring, but that is not the case: we are suppressing the modifying inter-relations to bring the situation, unnaturally, to a state in which our pluralist, simplifying assumption hold.

Hence, we don’t find laws about totally unfettered Reality-as-is, but only situations forced into conforming to those ideas, and we call these sought-for, investigatable states – Stability!

Yet, we get away with it, because we ONLY use our equations in identically arranged circumstances to those we set up to extract them.

Now, there is an alternative view to Plurality, which is termed Holism! But, in this un-tailored view, there can be NO eternal Natural Laws. Indeed, all relations are produced by given circumstances, and will change, when the circumstances vary in any way.

Such a thing as an Equation of summed terms, that is unchanging does not represent Reality-as-is, but only forcibly stabilised situations, so though they can be used within such farmed Domains, they are NOT eternal, natural Laws. And, of course, the simplified and mechanistic, and also Reductionist view must be wrong!

Looking back at any classical Equation shows that is NOT what it claims to be - a generality, (that is universally) applicable, but, on the contrary, a particular rule, for use in highly constrained circumstances only. The hierarchy of Natural Laws falls to the ground: it is but a handy myth.

So, why is this important?

It means that our overall conceptions of Reality, and how we conceive of it, and subsequently try to understand it are WRONG! Equations lie as to the real natural properties of Reality. They are instead a set of rules for a technological assault upon Reality for purely pragmatic purposes.

Its significance philosophically is highly damaging, as is repeatedly proved in Modern Physics, where, based generally, upon these particular, pluralist laws, the most speculative nonsense is generated on everything from the Origin of the Universe to its inevitable demise.

Now, I will not pretend that attempting to do Science with a holistic perspective will be easy. It most certainly will not be! But, philosophically, and particularly with respect to Qualitative Changes and the Evolution of Reality, such a stance will be incomparably more real.

The problems arise, when real, natural (and un-farmable) situations have to be dealt with, but even there the Explanations achieved are vastly superior to those based entirely upon pluralist laws”.

Holistic explanations are not new. Indeed, before the advent of quantitative equations, there were remarkable cases of profound explanation, developed by holistic approaches in dealing with multiple factors that modified one another.

So, if anyone is wondering what a holistic approach might reveal, may I suggest Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, V. Gordon Childe’s Man Makes Himself & What happened in History and literally anything on Thinking About Thought by Frederick Hegel. The most revolutionary gains in Science have been made by holistic scientists.

So, pluralist Science does not deal in “Whys?”, but in “Whats?” and “How much?”. It has become quantitative in absolutely everything! Indeed, this is so crucial in most of Science that it has been turned into a purely quantitative subject. More and more qualitative explanations are not addressed. Now, that isn’t Science!

Such a restriction is demanded by a very different imperative, which must have guaranteed production (or prediction) as its most important outcome. And, that can be achieved by current pluralist methods. But, it IS a transformation of what Science always was from its inception, when both description plus production and explanation were given parallel status.

It has now been changed into leaning exclusively towards production and hence Technology. Indeed, even unavoidable qualitative changes are only addressed via thresholds, and do NOT deliver “Why?” at all!

So, to return to the title of this paper – “Are Equations True?”, the answer can only be “No!”, or at the very best –“Only in carefully tailored Domains!” Equations are not generally-applicable, eternal forms of real, Natural Laws in Nature at large.

But they are eternal somewhere else!

They are eternal Laws in the parallel World of Pure Forms alone – which we call Ideality! And that is, of course, the realm of Mathematics. It has NEVER been about Reality-as-is, but can apply in a appropriately farmed version, which because of its artificially contrived purity and simplicity, is indeed predictable, in how we define and create, not to mention maintain certain situations, so that such relations are then close to being true.

Of course, it severely limits all so called investigations to such rigidly stable situations, so it is totally useless in dealing with natural changes and developments. And, its greatest failure has been in how such a formulation affects the actual explaining of phenomena.

“Obeys this Law in these conditions” is merely a description, and NOT an explanation!

Issue 36 of Shape: Space

What exactly is Space? This is a fundamental area. As soon as we attempt to address such a question, and get beyond simplistic “Nothingness”, we find ourselves in serious trouble – for nowhere can we find a total absence of everything – the Ultimate Void!

Perhaps the place we usually consider to deliver it must be so-called Outer Space –the “empty” gaps between the heavenly bodies, but we cannot even be sure of that. Can we say that every single morsel of anywhere (even in that Outer Space) contains absolutely Nothing?

And, the reason for this is surely the very fact of Light Propagation! There can be no doubt that Light is coming in to us from literally every direction, and the more our telescopes improve, the more previously invisible sources are found to exist and can be seen.

Such ideas beg the question “Doesn’t Light need something to propagate it though Space – must it not have some form of vehicle or medium to transmit it?” As you can see, the question isn’t entirely trivial, is it? Our assumption that it is totally empty is a useable simplification, in many circumstances, but it surely is not the last word?

And these questions are not only concerning its nature. For as soon as we get into such questions, other problems arise, for whatever we consider, we have to “ensure” (if that is possible) that what we extract from Reality, and consider and manipulate are valid concepts, and are dealt with via valid methods.

Yes, Space is quite a subject. So, let us proceed!

Read the issue

The Unsolvable Problems of Capitalism

 The Answers are NOT within it!

On what economic basis can a society be constructed and maintained?

My western country is a capitalist society, which is based upon investment, by people with the reserves (wealth) to do it, into enterprises both big and small. The incentive for doing this is that the investor will “own” a piece of the company that has been invested in, and will therefore receive a proportion of its dividends (profits) annually. Also, the holder of the “share” can sell its investment to someone else via the Stock Exchange, and if your (i.e. the investor’s) company is doing well, you can make a profit on that too!

There is NO alternative to this method within capitalism. And, the problem always is, “How does the investor come by the wherewithall to invest?” Well, the present day answer is that they got it from other, prior investments – both in dividends (profits), or in selling other investments for more than they paid for them (profits). Capitalism feeds upon itself, but only, ostensibly, via private entrepreneurs, who fund its development, and thus “kindly provide jobs" for the working classes.

In the modern world the old small-scale production is simply not good enough. It is too expensive! Large-scale production will produce cheaper goods, but will necessarily also require large amounts of initial investments to even get started.

Now, of course, the question of where the very first investments came from before sufficient was available in profits or dividends was, indeed, a major problem. It was called Primitive Accumulation, and has been dealt with very well in a prior SHAPE Blog posting (February 2012), as well as in SHAPE Journal Special Issue 22 (in July 2013)

But, we must also address today’s ever-present problem, of sufficient available investment to keep the “immense pantechnicon moving”. For, it gets harder and dearer to set a new production in train, while at the same time older companies are less and less able to compete with those equipped with the latest facilities.

This is unavoidable due to the Declining Rate of Profit – recognised in the 19th century, and still in evidence today! It is, of course, caused by the incessant necessity for technical advance, in order to be cheaper than your competitors. So, not only in new start-ups, but also in updating and improving your equipment, the need for more investment is always arising.

Indeed, the demand actually outstrips the supply, so companies have also to borrow money at high rates to fill the gaps, and this takes the rate of interest that has to be paid OUT of the hands of the borrowers, and into those of the lenders. And these could only be the Banks!

The source of the Banks’ funds will be the wages and savings that they hold for literally everybody. The lender’s main criterion will be, “Will the borrowers continue to be able to pay the necessary interest?”, while a secondary one will be, “Will they, in the end, also pay back the loan?” If the lenders are satisfied with the answers, they will lend the money, sometimes even if the chance of a full repayment isn’t totally assured – but, of course, in such circumstances, the interest rate charged will be upped accordingly!

Now, usually, when a loan comes up for repayment, the loaned-to company simply borrows elsewhere to pay off the past loan, and the new lenders use the same criteria of ability-to-pay in deciding to forward the necessary amount. BUT, this method is NOT based upon true intrinsic values!

More money is loaned than will ever be repaid at the equivalent value, so the debts are extended ever further into the future. The consequence of this is Inflation!

Money values actually continually decline. In fact, it is a very important part of maintaining the capitalist system: for it affects the different classes selectively. As will be shown, it is very advantageous to the capitalists, as their financial mechanisms keep their values in an advantageous balance, but it is quite the reverse to workers, for the latter only lose by inflation.

NOTE: Good indicators are House values! My current home has risen in value from when I bought my first to now by a factor of 100. Is that mostly reflecting intrinsic value, or is it Inflation?

Now, think what this means in terms of loans and investments! What was borrowed and the interest payable will inevitably SHRINK due to inflation, for it involved borrowing at old values, and is increasingly paid off (with interest) at the new decreased values. So, capitalism depends upon Inflation to keep going!

NOTE: Indeed, the opposite possibility, that of Deflation would mean that both interest and even the final repayment value would be much more that what was initially borrowed. Capitalism would collapse!

Also, without the rich investors Capitalism also couldn’t work!

So let us inspect some downright lies.

How does inflation affect Working People? Looking at the current situation we see inflation going up much faster than wages: it makes them constantly poorer, while their masters pay old dues at the new lesser values. They actually gain doubly! For their loans decline in current values, while their workforce becomes ever cheaper! The situation fulfils their needs perfectly: they can overcome the devastating, if temporary, reinstatement of real value, in a depression or slump, by making the Working class pay for the subsequent re-build!

Now, if you think about the past and present methods of Imperialism and Globalisation, it is clear that they were all followed in order to pay less! For, what they were doing was exporting their problems to what was called The Third World would certainly enable that saving. But, in the end, even that was to some extent terminated as the Third World rose up and Empires melted away! 

The biggest and most recent solution was to bring the Socialist countries back into the capitalist fold by showing sections of those populations (those who could, in the right conditions, become rich) just how well they would do under capitalism. And it worked - for a while at least!

China is the best example. It provides goods cheaper because its workers are paid less. But now, both Russia and China are becoming not only markets and sources of cheap labour, but competitors in the capitalist stakes. Why do you think capitalist Russia is such a bogey?

The Arab Spring and current upheavals in the Middle East are other examples of the exploitation. And, in consequence, local populations are correctly blaming Western capitalism for their problems, and not only rebelling against their imposed, dictatorial leaders, but also increasingly mounting an assault upon the real behind-the-scenes manipulators – the western capitalists. It is no wonder that the current alliance against the Islamic State, as well as the USA, also significantly includes the reactionary regimes in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan. What an amazing mix! Are they really in it for humanitarian or moral reasons? You know that cannot be true!

Yet, the Sunni version of Islam, which is claimed to be the Islamic State’s motivation, is the same as that in Saudi Arabia, and of the rulers of Bahrain, regularly acting against their own Shia people. Why would these reactionary regimes line up with the capitalist west?

By the way, it is interesting who does the work in these oil-rich Arab countries? It isn’t the indigenous inhabitants, but brought in labourers from elsewhere without any legal or representational rights.

So, who or what can oppose these collections of parasites?

It isn’t this or that religious group, or anyone else on moral grounds, but only the committed socialists who are for the Workers in all countries, and fight for the End of Capitalism, and its worldwide exploitation and even interventionist wars but only in their constant pursuit of even more Profit! 

The Promise of Virgin Land

The Promise of Virgin Land...

...And the ultimate Terrorist Response

The man finally reaches the crest of the rise, and looks down before him upon vast and verdant grasslands that reach as far as the eye can see. It appears to be entirely uninhabited! Large herds of bison roam steadily along across this seemingly infinite and ideal expanse. Yet, the whole area seems to be completely untouched by the action of people.

The silent watcher had only recently escaped from a war-torn Europe, where he had no chance of getting anywhere, or doing anything to change his desperate existence. He was entirely without education, but he could both farm the land, and handle livestock. And, here, before him, was the ideal and uninhabited place The Promised Land, where he could indeed build a good life.

Then, in the distance, he notices a small group of fast-moving, bare-back riders. They are native “Indians”, and they cut out a few strays from the herd and with bows and arrows manage to down several. They fairly quickly remove the best and easily carried parts of the beasts, and depart, whooping with delight. This, it appears is their land!

But, touching his rifle, the watching man realises that they are no kind of farmer, but primitive hunter/gatherers, and as such they need these vast areas to support their families and their tribe. “What a waste!”, thinks the watching farmer. “This land should be farmed!”

It could support many, many people like himself, and with such resources and this ideal land, they would finally be masters of their own destiny! “We must have these valuable grasslands! For, we could develop vast herds of cattle to feed the burgeoning cities in the east. We could build our own state!”

And, of course, this man wasn’t alone. Not only were there literally tens of thousands regularly arriving in America, looking for just such a chance, but the moneymen and politicians in those eastern cities, had also realised the profits that could be made from these verdant plains.

The Indians had to be removed!

These plains must be turned into productive farms. So, by a continual drift of immigrant farmers, plus the machinations, lies and betrayals of the politicians, this land was taken, and the Indians all but destroyed.

The Indians gradually realised that the treaties and agreements would never be honoured, and the only thing that they could do was to kill all interlopers, whoever and whatever they were. They must forcibly clear their land of the perpetual tide of land grabbers. They could not beat the armies that were sent to “pacify” them, so what is today called Terrorism arose! And then, as now, the solution was the same – “Wipe out the terrorists! For they kill the innocent!” – while also taking control of their lands in order to exploit its benefits to the full.