^^^^^
CB: I agree with Carl. I have raised this specifically in the past , but nobody listens. See below where I used the term correctly in arguments on lbo-talk. In logic , "Begging the question" does not mean saying something that provokes somebody else to ask a question. It means to make a circular argument but rather baldly asserting as true without any supporting argument , one's own position on the issue in dispute between the parties arguing.
^^^^^
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2000/2000-May/010888.html
Confusion Charles Brown CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us Wed May 24 12:38:04 PDT 2000
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>>> jf noonan <jfn1 at msc.com> 05/24/00 03:20PM >>>
On Wed, 24 May 2000, Charles Brown wrote:
>
>
> >>> Rob Schaap <rws at comedu.canberra.edu.au> 05/24/00 12:35AM >>>
> G'day Charles,
[snippage]
> misrepresented to us (I mean why should North Korea be any
> different?), but North Korea's polity is an outrage against
> Marxist principles no less than it is against Brad's liberal
> ones.
>
> ___________
>
> CB: You are begging the question. What you assert in your
> last sentence is the issue in dispute, which you cannot
> settle by merely asserting your position.
[lbo-talk] anti-fascist agitation Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org Tue Sep 7 08:23:41 PDT 2004
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From: Jon Johanning <jjohanning at igc.org>
On Sep 6, 2004, at 8:54 PM, Charles Brown wrote:
> Joke.
Somehow my sense of humor and yours don't quite match up. I treat everything you write as serious. Perhaps you might try putting in some ":-)"s.
^^^^ CB: Sometimes I pujt :>)'s , but if I did it for every joke, my posts would be too full of them. You've heard of straight-faced humor, haven't you ?
^^^^^^-
Jon: That's exactly my point. Marx, Engels, Lenin, and all the other luminaries of the movement were prone to claim that they could tell "scientifically" where history was going when they were speaking to the masses because they thought that would make them appear to be leaders that the masses should follow.
^^^^^ CB: Well, no that's not the way I would say it. Marx, Engels and Lenin did have a remarkably more scientific way of looking at history - believe me speaking as a scientific anthropologist, theirs was a scientific leap forward in looking at history. And it was appropriate that they should lend this authority to their speeches to masses.
But all of this what they were saying was not some obscure formula like a physicist or chemist. What Marxists were saying to the masses substantially corresponded with the masses direct experience. They dug deeper, but these social and economic and historical issues and facts were substantially part of the direct experience of the working class and poor. Marxists just connect the dots for most people.
^^^^^^ Jon: I suppose this worked with some of said masses, though others, I am sure, were rather skeptical. In any case, it was bunk, because neither "scientists" nor astrologers can look at a social system and see that it is going to destroy itself through "inevitable contradictions, etc."
^^^^ CB: You are begging the question. What we are disputing is whether social science can do exactly that. Have you looked at the history of social systems from the past ? You know, the rise and fall of swivilizations ? Mayas, Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, European middle ages. There doesn't seem to be any that last forever. Are you saying they are destroyed from the outside by non-contradictions.