On Tue, 12 Jan 1999 03:20:02 +0000 Jim heartfield
<jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
>Well, I won't defend myself, because, as I said, having written the
>piece too quickly, I left the adjectives to do the work.
>
>We must be referring to different Lukes' texts - mine is a short essay
>by him published in a very slim volume (yours is obviously a
>collection). The Russell I'm referring to was published in 1938 (Power
>-
>A New Social Analysis) and is very much written as a third way between
>Marxism and neo-classical economics (not that that is in itself an
>argument against him).
>
>Was Russell a fraud? A loveable one perhaps. In later life he
>campaigned
>against the bomb and the Vietnam War (organising a war crimes tribunal
>with his secretary, Ralph Schoenman - what happened to him?), but
>early
>after the second world war he recommended a pre-emptive nuclear strike
>against the then un-nuclear soviets.
As far as I know, Schoenman is still around and is still I think active in Trotskyist politics. I think his last major political intervention was the organizing of demos in support of Poland's Solidarity during the 1980s. It is said that Russell after having made full use of Schoenman's organizational skills and his talents for fundraising for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, dumped him around 1968 or 1969. On the other hand Schoenman seems to have made profiatable use of his period of association with Russell.
>
>Russell's pacifism was sometimes said to involve an immediate
>armistice
>on the basis of Britain's colonial Empire.
Russell's pacifism of that period was at best only mildly anti-imperialist. Decades later during the Vietnam War, Russell adopted a much more militantly anti-imperialist position.
> He did go to prison for his
>pacifist agitation several times (the first time he was allowed under
>prison rules of the time to have a servant, being a gentleman who
>could
>not be expected to dress himself, but I've never been able to find out
>whether one was recruited from the prison population, or specially
>imprisoned to fill the position).
I am not sure what the answer is to that question. But according to his Autobiography, he found prison on the whole rather agreeable. While there, he wrote his _Introduction to Mathematical Philosohy_, as well as _The Principles of Mathematics_ and he began his _Analysis of Mind_. Russell also reported that upon his arrival to prison, the warder came to take particulars about himself. The warder asked him his religion to which he replied, agnostic. Russell reports that the warder remarked: "Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God." Russell reports that remark kept him cheerful for a whole week. He also reports that while in prison he read Lytton Strachey's _Eminent Victorians_. He laughed out loud upon reading one passage which prompted the warder to remind him that prison was a place of punishment, something that Russell seemed to have difficulty keeping in mind.
>
>The great tragedy of his life was the destruction of his axiomatic
>system of mathematics by the persisting problem of the paradox of the
>classes (a version of the Cretan liar paradox, in fact). It 'put an
>end
>to the logical honeymoon I was enjoying. I communicated the misfortune
>to Whitehead, who failed to console me by quoting "never glad
>confident
>morning again".' In his Autobiography, Russell adds 'I did not attempt
>to work, but the summers of 1903 and 1904 remain in my mind as a
>period
>of complete intellectual deadlock,' adding 'it seemed that the rest of
>my life might be consumed looking at that blank sheet of paper'.
>(p151)
The attempt to resolve the paradoxes of set theory led him to formulate his theory of types. His work in logic during this period also led him to formulate his theory of descriptions which provided the logical basis for analytic philosophy. We should all have tragedies like that.
>
>So yes I probably was being harsh on the grand old man of English
>philosophy.
>--
If we could all be frauds the way Russell was.
Jim Farmelant
>Jim heartfield
>
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