But, I think I'm talking history, and you're more interested in the current affairs angle, so I'll leave it at that for now. — Wayfarer

Oh, those who are unaware of history are bound to repeat its mistakes. - Santayana

You can look all of that up in the encyclopedia, to whit: — Wayfarer

OK, thanks, but what it is about Judeo Christian culture that leads to ındustrial capitalism? It seems to me you are putting the cart before the horse and implying that there is something about the Old and New Testaments that promotes capitalism, but, in fact, other cultures have been active in this..

I seem to recall Judaism and CHristianity had a following in non-capitalist societies for a while, while I do not see how mass production and consumption need an oligarchy of plutocrats.

Moreover, while the first joint-stock company in the UK, at least, is usually said to be Leicester's Muscovy Company, a little digging reveals the existence of other financial formations in other parts of the world. Consider the merchants along the Silk Road, for example.

Or maybe earlier by Luther who taught that all work is holy. The work of the coal miner or tailor or street cleaner is as holy as someone who has taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in a monastery, or pastors and preachers — Bitter Crank

Yeah, but you'd have to be a monk to come out with that kind of tosh. What is the difference between work and play? (Postmodernism for beginners, page 1)

Industrial capitalism is the unique product of Western, Judeo-Christian culture, — Wayfarer

No it ain't. There is so much wrong with this, I don't know where to start. Check out the salt trade in Africa to begin, then explain what you mean by industrial capitalism as against mercantile capitalism and finance capitalism, then explain what you mean by judeo-Christian culture. Man! I am no fan of postmodernism but this post is so full of metanarratives I may be forced to put on my Lyoatrd.

"Success" is important to people, as are the major signs of success, like a congregation possessing a nice building. — Bitter Crank

. Given that what you say as true, of which I am not convinced, you miss the point. This is not about bricks and mortar. It is about people going from a system which guaranteed them a certain level of prosperity (Communism, Kemalist statism) to one where they are confronted by destitution on a daily basis. In the USA, 30 per cent cannot afford basic health care, the others go bust if they get ill, and the workforce is treated as slaves.No unions, no holılidays in the first year? Seriously? In Turkey, employers routinely employ people off the books and refuse to pay their social insurance. CEOs in Turkey have a legal right to carry firearms. Go figure.

No so In countries where the welfare system function , as in Western Europe, and religion continues to decline.

There is definitely a correlation between a rapacious rulng class and widespread organised religion. Many of the Islamic groups thrive because they provide basic welfare. Needless to say, the USA usually characterises them as terrorists.

'They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech.' Gotta laugh.

I guess you're a septic - and like most septics, wrong.

Nah, keep the suckers quiet by providing them with hopes for the after-life when there is no hope in this one.

If you have ever taken LSD, you will never be certain of your perceptions again. In the words of the Greek rationalists, your senses can be great liars. On the other hand, you might think you can see God's hand. But if you perceive the exitence of God, can you trust your own perceptions?

I alwys laugh till tears roll down my goiter when I read yanks discussing Marxism.

Conversation I had with a Bircher Granny in Lake Forest, Illinois.
'Do you believe in socialised medicine?'
'Well, ma'am, I would not be here without it!'
'So you want the soviets to take over the world!'
'Wuh?'

Any upholder of peace that had to choose between the Orange Baboon and Hilarious Hilary should call a moratorium on all political discussion for at least a year.

Foucault is best quoted but never read., Has anyone actually finished a book by Derrida? (Cross out 'finished'.)

The Sokall affair I have come across. I know exactly exactly why it happened, too. In ıts passion for deconstruction and getting away from anything remotely systematic, never mind Marxist, the academic world repeatedly shot itself in the foot. There was loads of bogus work going on - my supervisor in Bristol wrote her thesis on French cinema, but the fact of the matter was that most of the philosophical emanations of postmodernism foreswore objetivity and gave way to subjective readings of the 'text' - or as Humpty Dumpty says, 'A word means exactly what I want it to mean.' So, in legislation we have the fact that the victim of racism, etc. has the right to define the crime him or herself.

From this, more recently, we have the nonsensical phrase of the crypto-conservtive, 'Cultural Marxism' - whatever the hell that means. And we also have achieved the apotheosis of identity politics where whether or not you are allowed to choose your own gender matters more thanwar, pestilence or famine. Petty-bourgeois individualism has become an epistemology in its own right.

A further source of intense amusement concerned a book entitled 'Down the Road and Far Away.' It was ostensibly written by a young Asian girl, and was snapped up by Virago Press. When the author turned out to be ab ABglican clergyman, the sound of book pulping deafened the world of literature.

The Ag people had real shit to deal with, so didn't need to cook up synthetic forms of BS.

Yeah, absolutely. My mother trained in the sixties, I in the eighties, she had to put up with theoretical lectures on modernp. art, I spent months in a South London boys comp. No substitute for shovelling shit.

I started a doctorate in the 1990s and my supervisor was very post m. It was as if here was a product with which he might scoop the market. I transferred to Bristol and studied the semiotics of French televison for two years before realising it was absolute bullshit. there are no social phenomena - merely what our masters wish us to see.

My, this thread is full of liberal naivete. It's as though George Carlin never lived.

1) As my mother used to say about Mussolini. 'I was there', and the postmodern narrative had no force in academia before these woolly headed ex-trots strted publishing non-theoretical histories in the late seventies. You know, the same gang who supported the project for the American century, Wolfowitless and that gang.

There were some publications which mght be deemed post modern, but as it is a term generally used to describe everything from Mission Viejo, to Bliarism to Lacanianism, we are all humpty-dumpty. For example, in the world of architecture it was used for eclecticism, in which case you could say it began under the Victorians. It only got picked up by the corporate media in the 1980s. You know, with feminism and green-painted petrol stations.

And, 2) Hermione, the political process is not fair and the state is not some neutral referee. I am amazed in this day and age I have to say this. It is like 2008 never happened. Identity politics is merely a divide-and-conquer ruse to keep us proles in our place, you know.

Absolutely!! Great answers, guys, but let me draw an unobvious parallel. If you study biblical history, you have problem in terns of determining what happened, what the gospels say happened, who wrote the gospels and who translated and copied the gospels and whether any interpolations were made. Then, we have to interpret what, if anything, they meant.

The same problem arises with post modernism. We have to say, what modernism was, who described modernism thus, whether their description was contemporaneous with the phenomenon itself, whether it was consistently used, when, and by whom. Having established that, we then have to look at the concept of postmodernism, which, while it may legitimately be used to descibe the end of the Edwardian summer, was used by whom and where and when.

Now, the fact it pops up in the world of academe after fifteen years of some of the most militant behavious since the turn of the century, makes me wonder if it were not merely a fad designed to remove leftist academics from their posts. Nobody talks about it anymore. Maybe, having made undergraduates get heavily into debt to get their degrees, the powers that be no longer have to concern themselves with radicalism escaping the campuses. Or, maybe, it was abolishing full employment as a social priority .

As against 'we are all socialists now', we say, ' We are all up to our ears in debt now, and really need jobs!!' Who wants a pseudo-philosophical fig leaf when we just kick the slaves in their economic genitals.

So, all we have left is the epistemological ephemera of the likes of the Slovenian Scruff!!