The Marx Memorial Library

Good afternoon, Sydney Grew! I trust that all is well with you today. If I may nevertheless address both your points below directly:



For the record, a good brunch costs about £10 at Fernandez & Wells, which is not cheap, but for a meal out in central London, it represents reasonable value for money these days.

Somerset House - Fernandez & Wells

I could undercut them, of course, but I do not see much point. It is a good place to meet up! Overheads in central London can be very high indeed, Sydney Grew.

As for the Marx Memorial Library on Clerkenwell Green, I have often passed the building, but I never realised what it was. It is about a mile north-east of Somerset House, and takes about twenty minutes to walk there. I shall inspect the fresco of "The Worker of the Future Upsetting the Economic Chaos of the Present" on some future occasion. My own feeling would be that time is something of an illusion anyway!



On the contrary, I rather like it (work)! Nevertheless, the Marx Memorial Library itself should be reclaimed, in my opinion, by the London Welsh community!

Marx Memorial Library

In 2005, BBC Radio 4 listeners famously voted Karl Marx the greatest of philosophers, Sydney Grew, but I still have my doubts about him!



BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time - Greatest Philosopher - Karl Marx (1818-1883)

According to another great philosopher, Georg Hegel, the goal of the dialectic is absolute knowledge (and freedom) on one level, and the organic society on another, a situation in which the divisions in human nature are reconciled. Karl Marx long ago observed the way in which unbridled capitalism became a kind of mythology, ascribing reality, power and agency to things that had no life in themselves; he was right about that, Sydney Grew, if about little else. Marx said we should let the workers rule OK because then they will rule on behalf of the great mass of society, the working class. Bakunin said no. You shouldn't have any rulers, because if workers are rulers, they will cease to be workers and will be rulers. They will follow the interests of the rulers, not the interest interests of the working class!

This is a bit like George Orwell's 'Animal Farm'. The pigs took over, but no one could then tell the difference. Marx thought that this was all rubbish. Marx thought that people in a different society would be different people, would have different, less self-directed interests, and would work together for the benefit of all. If you look at the history of the twentieth century, Bakunin was right? The short answer may be that history is neither about individuals (Carlyle) nor about societies (Marx), but what Georg Hegel calls 'Geist'. It is the idea that a unified view of history is something mental or spiritual, and therefore the process of history is simply ourselves. Indeed, the great philosopher, David Hume, argued that the science of human nature depends upon the observation of our mind and our observation of other human beings!

Perhaps human nature does not seem to change that much over time, despite the great advances in science and technology? David Hume set out to show that the paradoxes of different interpretations of history could be resolved once we recognised that space and time are not mysterious entities but simply the particular ordering in which our perceptions present themselves to us. In this sense, the unified view that each individual arrives at is likely to be different and, almost certainly in some instances, radically so. Nevertheless, ascribing independent reality to what you have in fact made yourself is a perfect definition of what the Jewish and Christian Scriptures call idolatry. According to Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, what the present anxieties and disasters should be teaching us is to ‘keep ourselves from idols’, in the biblical phrase:



Even in its original Greek sense, economics, 'the management of the home and the estate', cannot really be considered in isolation. Events get in the way. According to Pericles, the man who can most truly be accounted brave is he who knows what is sweet in life and what is terrible, and then goes out undeterred to meet what is to come. So, I think, should we!

Good morning, once again, Sydney Grew! I trust that all is well with you this May Day! If I may nevertheless address your final question directly:



Yes, Sydney Grew! I like Michael Inwood's explanations very much indeed. Thank you for posting them. Michael is at a good college, Trinity, but Trinity College Cambridge still has the edge. Of course, I am no philosopher, at least not by academic training, but as you know, I developed an interest in philosophical dialogue when I started posting on the BBC message boards a decade ago!

Oxford - Philosophy - Michael Inwood

Georg Hegel's big idea is that the reason human beings are involved in a process of perpetual change is that every complex situation is bound to contain within itself conflicting elements, Sydney Grew, and that these are, by their nature, destabilising, so the situation can never continue indefinitely. It breaks down under the strain of these internal conflicts and gives rise to a new situation within which those conflicts are resolved. But then, of course, the new situation contains within itself new conflicts. And so it goes on, indefinitely. Thus thesis is followed by antithesis, followed by synthesis, which then in turn becomes another thesis. The notion of the dialectic is offered to us as the key to the historical process, and the underlying explanation of why it is everything keeps changing. Marxists love it!

Hegel believed that there was a goal, however, and the goal is the greater development of the mind towards freedom. We are therefore moving always towards realising human freedom; and that is a process of increasing awareness of freedom, and of increasing knowledge of ourselves. History represents the development of these concepts: it is not a chapter of accidents, it is not a tale told by an idiot, it is the purposive moving forward of these principles of freedom and knowledge.

So Hegel did perhaps think that the present age must be the highest stage of development, because the end point of the dialectical process is Geist, possibly "Mind", coming to know itself as the ultimate reality, seeing everything that it took to be foreign and hostile to itself as in fact part of itself. It is also a state of absolute freedom, because now Mind, instead of being controlled by external forces, is able to order the world in a rational way. On reflection, Hegel's philosophy actually is the culmination of this process of dialectical change, because Hegel's own mind grasps that it is the only ultimate reality.

Unfortunately, kleines c is not so sure. Hegel's mind, just like kleines c's mind, may not be reality at all, merely a lot of cells effectively talking to each other in the brain. In the same way, 'The Third' may not be reality at all, merely a few posters effectively talking to each other on the world wide web. In Proustian terms, reality is a certain combination of sensation and memory, Sydney Grew! That is enough!

Good morning, Sydney Grew! If I may address your question below directly:



I suspect that a little explanation is required here. In my experience, different people use social media in different ways. Generally, you can assign a particular individual to an online identity and that is all! In the case of kleines c, it has always been slightly different. When I first started posting online a good decade ago, I shared the online account with the rest of my family, and indeed, with some of my colleagues at work. So although there is one individual who can claim to be kleines c, there are several individuals reading these postings and commenting on them.

We all tend to adopt the same style, so it can be quite confusing for other members or posters when they address kleines c. They may be addressing several different people simultaneously, and there may be no consensus about how to reply. So kleines c is merely three people, sometimes more, sometimes less, effectively talking to each other. If it is a question about business, it is likely to involve a lot more people, because the question may be debated at work, and around the world, before an answer is forthcoming!

The first online discussion forum I used was set up in 2000 by the FT. It was, by its very nature, finance orientated, and a lot of the discussions were very technical. Because it was part of work, Sydney Grew, a lot of my work colleagues helped me write well-informed postings. So the meaning of "merely" kleines c can vary quite a lot, depending upon the precise circumstances.